The Foundling's War

by Michel Déon

  Magnanimously, in order not to embarrass him further, Palfy concurred.

  ‘Very well! Let us say that the war’s outcome remains unpredictable.’

  ‘For you!’

  In truth Julius was convinced that Germany was falling into an abyss, which was an excellent excuse for exploiting the position in which the Wehrmacht authorities had placed him. His wealth was already safely stashed away in Switzerland, Spain and Portugal.

  ‘For my children!’ he assured Palfy, to whom he entrusted these missions. ‘They find life boring in our dear old Germany. Their futures will be international, and as for me, I love only Paris and Frenchwomen.’

  His wife, from whom he had lived apart for many years, had just died. Although neither man spoke of it, it was expected that he would marry Madeleine as soon as circumstances permitted. Hadn’t he bought a delightful country house for her at Montfort-l’Amaury?

  This agreeable, cheerful, careless reality, so perfectly self-interested, masked another, less light-hearted, for the French who were not invited to the feast. The winter of 1941–2 was hard not just for the Wehrmacht. In France people’s reserves were running out, their clothes were wearing thin, and they were dying of cold. Their days, by the German clock, seemed shorter, as if life had shrunk, stifled by darkness. Uncertainty reigned. Posters announced the execution of hostages. People learnt that there were Frenchmen and -women who were disobeying the orders of the occupying power, and that that power was beginning to strike back. The question of where to shelter Claude became pressing. She had suddenly improved, almost inexplicably, and was getting up, dressing, looking after her son again, and wanting to leave Nelly’s studio. Nelly assured her that there was no hurry. It seemed out of the question to go back to Quai Saint-Michel, where it was more than likely that the trap was still waiting for her. The Gestapo’s French branch must have realised that Rudolf had taken them for a ride and were continuing to try to track her down. The concierge, warmly congratulated by the police, was revelling in her importance. One morning, as soon as he had seen her leave for the market, Jean ran up to Claude’s apartment. Helped by Palfy’s chauffeur, he emptied the wardrobes and drawers. He felt wretched, as if he were violating her privacy, sweeping up the knick-knacks she treasured, a photograph album, her underwear, Cyrille’s favourite games. It was all stuffed into suitcases and taken down to the car. The question of where Claude could safely stay remained. Jean thought of Saint-Tropez, but she refused point-blank.

  ‘Without you? It’s out of the question. I’ve got Cyrille and you. I can’t live so far away.’

  Jean travelled to Gif-sur-Yvette one afternoon, when he was certain not to bump into Laura. In shirtsleeves in his icy studio Jesús was painting a hill and a tree where they met the sky.

  ‘Jean, you are kind. You don’ forget me. We mus’ celebra’ that.’

  His mood became less cheerful when he heard what had happened. Of course he was willing to look after Claude and Cyrille, but there was the question of Laura. Jesús admitted that he did not know Fräulein Bruckett’s feelings. They did not have long conversations and in bed they talked about other subjects besides politics. Nonetheless, he did not think that Laura was, in reality, quite such a simple person as she seemed. An ordinary secretary in the Department of Supply? It was too straightforward. She enjoyed unusual privileges in an administration that was used to calculating very finely. She owned a car, dined at the Kapermeisters’ and slept at Gif while her colleagues were billeted in a hotel on Rue de Rivoli. Jesús also confessed that he did not know what she was thinking, apart from the days when she arrived joyfully waving a letter from her brother at the front. None of this bothered him personally because he was Spanish, neutral, and bored stiff by politics. Even so, it was not certain that she could be confided in blindly, as it seemed probable that her modest job was combined with a more important function. Half the Germans were watching the other half, who were watching them too. Everyone was playing hide-and-seek.

  ‘Listen,’ Jesús said, ‘we’ll try. Come tomorrow. It’s Christmas. No need fo’ explanations. Laura will find that natural. Then, well, we see …’

  Nelly was leaving for the south-west to spend the holidays with her parents.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘my dear papa’s so happy I’m back at the Comédie Française, he begged me to come. My rehearsals start on the second of January. I shall submerge myself in nature. Maman has made a confit d’oie and pudding. We’re going to drink some of Papa’s reserves of Corbières with a cassoulet. Until you’ve tasted Maman’s cassoulet, you haven’t lived. One day, if you’re a very good boy, I’ll take you with me. This year you have to spend your Christmas with the love of your life, but don’t forget your girlfriend. And don’t worry about me: Maman warms my bed every night before I go to sleep. No need for a chap at all. No fucking under my parents’ roof is my motto!’

  Palfy was leaving for Switzerland. Julius and Madeleine were going to Spain and Rudolf was returning to his wife in Berlin. Christmas was separating them all, as it did in peacetime. They were travelling in private carriages, sleeping cars. Madame Michette was the only one travelling third-class. They were preparing a surprise for her homecoming at the Sirène. After so much emotion and so many journeys she longed for a family atmosphere. As for the gallery whose management Jean was finally to take on, it would not open until the beginning of January. He was free.

  Jesús was waiting for them at Gif station in the pouring rain. They took refuge in a café, next to a glowing stove. Certain scenes haunt us for a long time, with no explanation, and Jean was not to forget the two hours they spent in the café, its marble-topped tables, its zinc counter, the posters advertising aperitifs and the grubby waitress who refilled their glasses of red wine. Labourers came in, dripping with rain and smelling of wet leather and wool. They shook themselves like dogs and hung up their oilskins on the coatstand, under which a rivulet formed. On the door Jean read backwards

  Jules! But he was Jules-who too. The memory of Nelly tugged at his heart. He would have sworn that having Claude back would erase the other’s presence so completely that he would not think of her. But Jules-who was thinking of Nelly, and the previous night they had slept together. You can’t separate everything. It’s impossible. Somehow something is always left behind. Studying Claude as she talked to Jesús, he was surprised by her face’s transformation. Her changed features bore witness to the suffering she had gone through, to an anxiety she needed constantly to be distracted from. The smallest thing upset her. Whenever someone came in, an unfamiliar face, she suddenly tensed for several seconds, hugging Cyrille to her as if the stranger had come to take him from her. Jean realised that morning how much she had truly changed. The taut skin of her gaunt face exposed the veins at her temples and the base of her nose. She clasped her hands together to hide her trembling fingers, flinched whenever someone ordered a drink too loudly, and shivered constantly despite being next to a glowing stove. The waitress laid their table and brought soup bowls, a basket of bread and a small carafe of wine. A young woman with coarse hair that was as straight as straw, wearing a black schoolgirl’s blouse, collected their food coupons and placed them in an old metal cigarette box. The waitress returned from the kitchen with a steaming pot and a ladle. Ignoring the labourers’ banter and complaints, she filled the bowls to the brim. The soup steamed and a silence fell as they sipped the first spoonfuls, after which the men served themselves bread and wine. Jesús started sketching on a drawing book Cyrille had brought with him. Jean put his hand in Claude’s and her smile of artificial gratitude revealed to him how far removed from the present she was, how much she was still beating her lovely forehead against an imaginary barrier. During the last two days in Paris she had seemed better, but Jean suddenly gauged the fragility of her recovery: the smallest thing could break her – even the heavy atmosphere of this country bistro might be enough, the smell rising from wet clothes in the room’s Turkish bath-like heat, the man at the next table wh
o was pouring a spoonful of red wine into his soup, a ritual that reminded Jean of his own childish disgust when Albert had sharpened his soup the same way, greedily contemplating his wine-laced bowl. The rain ran in sheets down the bistro’s windows and there was nothing to be seen of the village except, from time to time, the outline of a hastening figure. The waitress stationed herself behind the counter and opened Le Petit Parisien. The front-page headlines announced the British retreat in Malaysia, Japan’s attack on Hong Kong, and two battleships sunk in Alexandria harbour by Italian frogmen. The waitress closed the paper again. She only skimmed it these days, since the censors had forbidden the horoscopes because spies used them to exchange secret messages using the signs of the zodiac.

  As abruptly as it had started, the rain stopped. Sunshine spread across the street, a white light so intense it was blinding on the other side of the window. Jesús hoisted Cyrille onto his shoulders and was the first to leave, singing. Jean carried a suitcase in one hand, holding Claude’s arm with the other, but he did not need to hold her up. In the crisp air her colour and will returned.

  ‘How it’s all changed!’ she said.

  In three weeks the countryside had been transformed, shedding the last of its green. The skeletal trees in the forest stood in a thick carpet of dead leaves of beautiful shimmering gold and dark red. From the bare fields a bluish mist rose like a smoker’s breath. The house appeared at a bend in the road, set back, sheltered by an avenue of ash trees whose enormous roots clutched at the leaf mould like the talons of a bird of prey. Jesús had replaced the wobbly front door with one made of oak and two cramped ground-floor windows with a wide bay that let a golden light into the single downstairs room. The fire had gone out while Jesús had been away, and only glowing embers remained. Claude pressed her cheek to the still warm stonework around the hearth, then dropped into a tattered Louis XIII armchair whose springs poked through its torn upholstery. Jesús revived the fire with small pine logs, and flames suddenly rose so intensely that the rest of the room felt glacial.

  Jesús wanted to make ‘real’ coffee. He battled with the wood stove.

  ‘You should help him,’ Claude said to Jean, who had sat on the floor at her feet and was playing with Cyrille.

  Jean helped him. All through her life Jeanne had battled with a wood-burning stove, refusing in her latter years to switch to the bottles of gas that were taking over on the farms from the archaic stoves that used branches and small logs of resinous, scented wood. So he got the cooker going again, and they heated water for coffee. Claude dozed. Jean lay at her feet, his head turned to her, watching for the slightest movement the face of a woman who still hid the truth of herself from him and whom he had now decided he had to know completely, even if it meant becoming obsessed by her. The leaping flames coloured Claude’s features, lessening the pallor of her cheeks and her temples’ transparency. Jesús coaxed Cyrille outside.

  ‘We are collectin’ mushrooms and pickin’ up snails!’

  Cyrille let himself be wrapped up and put on the mittens Toinette had knitted for him, and they disappeared into the birch forest. Claude opened her eyes and saw Jean looking at her.

  ‘How long are they going to be gone?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. An hour maybe.’

  She sat up and pushed her hand across her brow.

  ‘I’d like to sleep. Come with me.’

  He followed her into the bedroom, which was warm from the fire downstairs but dark, illuminated only by the dormer window that looked out onto the birch forest. Claude undressed and lay down.

  ‘Come,’ she said again.

  He lay down beside her. She was burning. As he hugged her to him he realised that this time she was ready, that the cruel refusal imposed on her was crumbling, leaving them, at last, face to face.

  ‘I love you,’ she said.

  Jesús’s return dragged them awake. He was tossing logs onto the fire, stoking the stove. Cyrille’s piercing voice came up through the floor.

  ‘So are you going to play battleships or not, Jesús?’

  They listened, then the Spaniard’s resonant voice was raised.

  ‘Cyrille, you are cheatin’!’

  ‘I always cheat with Maman.’

  ‘If you was my son, I would smack you’ bottom.’

  ‘Just try it. You’re not strong enough.’

  There were shouts, puffing and panting and eventually Cyrille’s victorious voice.

  ‘Both shoulders! You’re touching, Jesús. You lose.’

  ‘It’s true, I los’!’

  Jean got dressed and went downstairs.

  ‘Where’s Maman?’ Cyrille asked.

  ‘She’s resting.’

  ‘She’s been resting a jolly long time, she must be tired …’

  They had collected black chanterelles and a few snails, and some sweet chestnuts that they were roasting in the embers. Jesús was putting up a Christmas tree, a young fir, and making cutouts of gold paper in the shape of shooting stars and figures from the Nativity.

  ‘That’s the donkey!’ Cyrille said.

  ‘No, ’e’s no’, silly boy! ’E’s Sain’ Josseph …’

  ‘Or it could be the Virgin Mary.’

  ‘If you don’ sink I ’ave any talen’ I’ll go and ’ang myself up by …’

  Cyrille stretched his neck and cocked his ear to hear the end of the sentence.

  ‘By the what?’

  ‘The ’airs in my nose!’

  ‘All right … I thought you were going to say something else.’

  Jean’s arrival put an end to the argument. Above their heads they heard the floor creak at Claude’s footsteps.

  ‘So is she coming?’ Cyrille asked. ‘What’s she doing?’

  Claude came down as Laura arrived, laden with parcels. Jesús unloaded the car.

  ‘We’re goin’ to wisstan’ a sieze!’ he said.

  She had thought of everything, even the candles for the tree, which was transformed under Jesús’s skilful fingers. On their earlier visit she had seemed to Jean dull and submissive. What revelation had suddenly changed her, so that this young woman, no natural beauty and charmless with it, should, against expectations, reappear as someone so extraordinary that her entrance was stunning, as though a new being had replaced the old? She kissed Cyrille, then Claude and Jean.

  ‘Tonight,’ she said, ‘we forget everything.’

  ‘Yes, oh yes … everything!’ Claude replied, taking Jean’s hand and squeezing it, communicating her joy and her serenity. The pressure of her hand brought back the events in the bedroom and the agreement Jean believed had at last been sealed between them. For a second, in the moment of sadness and dejection that follows pleasure, he had been afraid that Claude’s surrender had been a farewell. But she was there, warm, her hip pressing against him, quiet, pacified, finally giving free rein to the tender sensuality she had held back for so long. With a finger he lifted up a stray strand of hair from her beautiful forehead. She caught his hand and kissed it.

  ‘Maman!’ Cyrille cried. ‘You don’t kiss men’s hands.’

  ‘Yes, you do, my darling. When it’s Jean’s.’

  Next morning Laura did not come down when it was time to open the presents. Cyrille wanted to go upstairs and fetch her. Jesús caught his arm.

  ‘No, Cyrille. Leave ’er, she’s cryin’.’

  ‘Why? It’s Christmas!’

  ‘Yes, and as you are a big boy, I’m goin’ to teach you somethin’ you’ll remember all you’ life. Yes’erday, before she came ’ome to us, she found out that ’er brother ’ad died in Russia. She didn’ say nothin’ because she didn’ wan’ to spoil our party. She’s very brave.’

  ‘What is “died”?’

  Jean felt Jesús’s emotion, his inability to explain.

  ‘It means,’ he murmured, ‘that she’ll never see ’im again.’

  ‘Never ever?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘What did he go to do in the war?’

&nb
sp; Jesús, his voice breaking, said only, ‘’E was an officer.’

  ‘German?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We have to kill all the Germans, that’s what Uncle Vladi says. And Grandmother wants to see them all dead too.’

  ‘Be quiet, Cyrille!’ Claude cried, so pale she looked as if she might faint. ‘Be quiet, my darling.’

  ‘But Uncle Vladi knows those things.’

  ‘Be quiet.’

  ‘The Germans are making war on Holy Mother Russia.’

  ‘There’s no mo’ Holy Mother Russia!’ Jesús said. ‘There’s no’ one country that is holy any mo’.’

  ‘That’s very sad. So why did he died?’

  Jean put his arms around Cyrille and lifted him up the way Albert had once, long ago, lifted him.

  ‘For nothing, for nobody. And remember something else, Cyrille: the men who’ve died don’t have a country any more. They’re all brothers.’

  ‘So everything’s all right at the end. Then … can we open the presents?’

  For a long time the men of my generation were taught that to obtain too quickly and with too little effort the object of their desire would provide no satisfaction, not even to their self-esteem. Worse, they would find themselves tiring rapidly of the object in question. Subsequent generations have felt an instinctive suspicion for such traditional morality. Instinct – I mean the instinct of the moment, with everything wild and intuitive that that implies – instinct tells them that the desired object or person loses its desirability in the course of waiting, and so becomes devalued or degraded. In us, likewise, spent desire is robbed of its spark of energy. How can it stay alive when it is subject to fragmentation and dilution in a sea of temptation? When women were not easy (I’m talking about yesterday, not the day before yesterday, for, as we are too apt to forget, morals go through fashions of rigour and laxity in a way that ought to make us more modest in our claims about the extent of our victories in the name of liberty), when women were not easy, the gift of one of them inspired in him who possessed her a feeling of satisfaction and pride that contributed greatly to the perfection of pleasure. We speak here of love. We could be talking about houses, cars, horses, books or jewellery. In a society where temptation is all around – not a consumer society – as the overused phrase has it patience is the virtue of fools. To practise such a virtue is to be defeated from the start. Youth swiftly grasps this, by a special grace it is given. War and its repercussions, or rather the miseries of war and their repercussions, have a tendency to break the fragile bonds that linked us to our long-term desires. Tomorrow belongs to no one, and today demands thrilling, fleeting pleasures that rarely touch the heart and never the soul. Every satisfied desire is wreathed in the glories of a farewell. It is a gauntlet thrown down. And as it is bound not to be picked up, the gambler wins or feels he has won. There is no time to reckon gains or losses. Victory is already past, its traces rubbed out. For sensitive hearts, a poignancy and sadness remain. Some detect in all this a proof of the existence of God, arguing that the act of procreation, even without the intention of giving new life, is an act of faith and a gift. But does God not feel a deep and enduring bitterness, after having created us so little and so ill in his image that the best one can say is that He’s no artist? Possession is no longer the highest aspiration of an existence, the affirmation of a personality whose guiding principle we would like to pass on. Possession is merely a fleeting desire that, once satisfied, leaves barely a trace. What? Was that it? Once more, we speak here both of love and of life’s playthings: houses, cars, horses …