The Foundling's War

by Michel Déon

  ‘No. I was cast in the ordinary mould of village primary school and lycée.’

  ‘I detest the Jesuits. Well, cordially detest them.’

  He made a comical gesture with his arms as if he was about to strangle the entire community. His laughter followed him as he plunged into the wood, where the hessian of his sacks camouflaged him instantly.

  Jean clapped his palms together. The teal took off and spiralled up above the pool before hiding themselves again in the reeds.

  Jesús was sawing the last log.

  ‘One hun’red! And Chris’mas mornin’! I am the only man in the worl’ who ’as sawed one hun’red logs today. Come inside. Lunch mus’ be on the table. The boy came to find you three times.’

  Laura did not join them. Jesús said she did not want to make their lunch gloomy. She was not hungry. She had not cried but sat still in an armchair, next to the window, her eyes full of images. When he bent over her he could see her brother there, playing with her as a boy, a garden, a wide meadow where there stood ricks of hay that they sprawled on, a sandy Baltic beach, bordered by a curtain of mist hiding the boats whose anxious foghorns sounded at regular intervals. Jesús told himself that when she had reviewed these images she would feel quieter. They were her prayer for the dead, for a young infantry lieutenant buried beneath the snow.

  Jean told the story of his encounter that morning. Cyrille wanted to talk to the scarecrow who did not scare away the teal. Jesús had never seen him, but knew of his existence. At Gif, in the cafés and shops, they discussed the man in the woods as if he was a legend. A few walkers had glimpsed him fleeing at their approach. A search by the gendarmes had produced no results. They had entered the hunting lodge, which was a true pigsty. Yet the man existed, and Jesús had sensed him one day outside the front door, invisible in the bushes, spying on him. A sensation more than a certainty. A madman, without a doubt.

  ‘He’s not mad at all!’ Jean said. ‘Very sensible, actually, apart from the fact that he thinks he’s Blaise Pascal.’

  ‘Blaise Pascal?’ Cyrille said. ‘I know him. He plays every morning in the Luxembourg Gardens. He’s a little boy. He wears red. He’s got a submarine.’

  ‘So there are several Blaise Pascals. Why shouldn’t the man in the woods be one of them?’

  Jesús admitted he did not know Blaise Pascal and that, being wholly ignorant of his personality, he did not see why the teal hunter should not call himself that. For one thing, the little boy in red with the submarine claimed that was his name and nobody thought he was mad, since they let him carry on playing in the Luxembourg Gardens.

  ‘What’s even more interesting than his name,’ Jean said, ‘is what he lives on. He doesn’t smoke or drink, and boasts about it, which would seem to indicate that he must once have smoked and drunk a lot. He also claims to have once possessed a collection of paintings …’

  ‘I can do him a drawing,’ Cyrille said. ‘Jesús showed me how.’

  ‘If you like I’ll take him one, and perhaps he’ll rediscover his taste for life when he finds out it’s the work of a small boy. Then I’ll know who he really is.’

  ‘I want to go and see him now.’

  Jesús promised Cyrille he would take him.

  After lunch Claude bundled up her son and he went out with Jesús. Jean stayed behind, standing warming himself at the fire. He watched Claude clear the table. She had not said a word during lunch.

  ‘Come here. I want to be alone with you.’

  ‘We are alone.’

  ‘No. The way we were yesterday.’

  He took her hand and drew her to the stairs and then into the bedroom where she stayed standing by the window.

  ‘Take your clothes off,’ he said.

  She did as she was told, indifferently, almost as if she was not there, and her nakedness felt all the more shocking to Jean.

  ‘Do you want me?’ she asked, her face pale, her eyes feverish.

  ‘Completely.’

  She got into bed and he joined her. She was neither wanton nor reticent, just outside time. Then, as he caressed her, she seemed to come back to herself and wrapped her arms around him. Later she said again, ‘I love you.’

  He felt like crying. He wanted to clasp her to him all his life, to never let her go more than a metre from his side. All of their misfortunes came from their not being able to live together.

  ‘I love you too,’ he said.

  She kissed his neck. He stroked the back of hers. Their legs were intertwined so tightly that their desire, satisfied moments before, revived without a pause. Jean said nothing. He carried on holding her tightly, deferring until later, for ever, the questions and answers that would make him so unhappy that they might not see each other again. Claude fell asleep. He bent over her face, which still wore the traces of recent days. Her private suffering made her features, usually so peaceful, even more beautiful. Jean did not recognise her. An immense tenderness gripped him: it was a face full of pathos. Her courage had left her; she had surrendered. He realised that from now on he would have charge of her as she, for nearly two years, had had charge of him without his noticing, so discreet and restrained had she been in helping him to survive. It was thanks to her that from now on he would be a man and through her that he had known a happiness, before they made love, that no other woman would ever be able to give him again. He knew too that Claude’s deep generosity caused her problems and that mean spirits would always be tempted to do her injury. It was a time to remember that he had wounded her himself on at least two or three occasions, and that he continued to wound her by his affair with Nelly. He looked for excuses. They were all too easy.

  The front door slammed. He heard Cyrille’s voice and got dressed. Claude curled up under the sheets. He went downstairs.

  ‘Where’s Maman?’

  ‘She’s asleep.’

  ‘We didn’t see Blaise Pascal but we saw his house. It’s not nice.’

  Jean realised that Laura was in the room, dressed and with a travelling bag standing ready by the door.

  ‘Where are you goin’?’ Jesús said.

  ‘To Paris, to ask for leave to see my parents in Germany.’

  Jesús looked helpless at the idea of having to live without her.

  ‘Will you come back?’

  ‘Of course. My life is here now, nowhere else.’

  Jean was struck by her choice of words, at odds with her forced smile.

  ‘Are you going away?’ Cyrille said. ‘That’s sad. Then I’ll stay with Jesús and make him feel better.’

  Laura crouched down and held out her arms. The child ran to her. She raised her eyes, filled with tears, to Jesús.

  ‘A little boy is so sweet!’ she said.

  Jesús did not answer. He had abandoned many sententious ideas about women but he still stuck to a number of firm resolutions about fatherhood, or at least was unwilling to admit that a crack was starting to show.

  ‘I’m goin’ with you to Zif. I’ll walk back. I need the exercise.’

  ‘You’ve just had some with me,’ Cyrille observed.

  ‘No’ enough! Cheeky boy!’

  ‘No, stay!’ Laura said. ‘It’s better to say goodbye here.’

  She kissed Cyrille, then Jesús, and went out, her travelling bag in her hand. They heard the car’s engine as it came out of the barn and turned down the rough track. Jesús poured himself a large glass of cognac which he drank in quick mouthfuls, facing the fire. Simply and without boasting he explained to Jean that until meeting Laura he had led a marvellous life. Nothing touched him; everything was like water off a duck’s back. But she had skinned him, and now he felt everything with an almost painful acuteness. He had learnt the anxiety of waiting, the sadness of going away, and on the nights he was alone, it grieved him not to make love. Everywhere she left signs for him, those small signs of care a woman lavishes on the man she loves. How do these things happen? he demanded. Who was trying to get at him through Laura, who wanted to destroy his arti
stic solitude? His voice broke.

  ‘Jesús,’ Jean said, ‘you’re talking nonsense. You’re drowning in words. Be careful or you’ll start to believe it … And I know you won’t believe it, but you’re going to listen to me tell you again that Laura has demolished your fixed ideas in order to uncover the artist you really are. Since she came into your life you’ve been painting for yourself, you’ve shown La Garenne the door, and you’ve started signing your pictures Jesús Infante, which is an exceptionally fine name for a painter. It makes me happy, Jesús, that you’re unhappy when Laura goes away. It’s good for you! In the past you were mostly getting away with a generous tip and a kick up the backside. You shoved all those girls unceremoniously out of the way to make space for Laura.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘An’ who decided all that?’

  ‘That’s the big question.’

  Cyrille had gone upstairs to see his mother. He was coming back. Halfway down the stairs he called to Jean.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have to come upstairs, Maman’s crying.’

  Jesús looked reproachfully at Jean. Claude was crying and someone or something was behind it, even if one accepted the notion that women easily became sad. The Spaniard shrugged. Jean met Cyrille on the stairs.

  ‘Leave me with your maman. I can cheer her up better if I’m on my own.’

  Cyrille for once obeyed without protest.

  Her head buried in a pillow, Claude was sobbing. Jean covered her bare shoulders and moved his hand towards her neck, which cried out its innocence, almost a child’s neck attached to a lovely woman’s body. He told himself that a man could fall in love with Claude just by glimpsing that soft space of downy skin under her hair. A vulnerability was hidden there, but it was also the secret of her graceful way of carrying her head. For the first time he felt its tension, contracted by fear, by a quivering terror that only subsided when he placed his lips at the hairline of her ash-blond hair. She turned over and sat up in bed, her cheeks shining with tears, with such a sudden intent in her eyes that he was afraid in turn and stepped back.

  ‘I’m getting up,’ she said. ‘I’ll get dressed and go down. Tell them to wait!’

  He held her by the shoulders and shook her.

  ‘No. I’m here.’

  She smiled and did not stop him when he bent forward to kiss her unfeeling lips.

  ‘Jean, are you certain that Lieutenant Bruckett’s dead? Over there. In Russia. That he’ll never rise up from the snow and curse us with his frozen arm? You have to tell Laura it wasn’t me who killed him.’

  ‘No, no, it wasn’t you.’

  ‘The Russians kill all lieutenants. Cyrille’s never going to be a lieutenant. Promise me.’

  ‘I promise you.’

  His heart aching with a deep and terrible anxiety, Jean released her shoulders.

  ‘Darling, get dressed. It’s cold.’

  ‘You know they held me down in a freezing bath?’

  He hugged her tightly to stop her seeing his own tears and begged her, ‘Wake up!’

  ‘But I am awake!’

  She pushed him away and made a pout of reproach as though he did not understand her.

  ‘Oh Jean, Jean, don’t leave me, I love you, I love you …’

  She laughed through more tears, tears of happiness now, like a lover choking with joy at the beloved’s return. Night was filling the sloping-roofed room, but neither thought of lighting a lamp.

  ‘Where’s Cyrille?’ she asked.

  ‘Downstairs with Jesús. Perhaps we should join them.’

  He picked up Claude’s underwear from the floor, her corduroy trousers and the sweater she had worn at lunch. She ignored her underwear.

  ‘Aren’t you putting anything on underneath?’ he asked.

  ‘No, it’s nicer being like this.’

  They went downstairs. Jesús was drawing on a big piece of paper. Cyrille, sitting on the table, was watching him.

  ‘Maman,’ he called, ‘Jesús is doing the man in the woods for me, the way Jean saw him this morning. You’re not crying any more?’

  ‘No, my darling. You can see I’m not.’

  ‘Then why were you crying?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  He lost interest in the question and leant over towards Jesús.

  ‘Is Laura still in her room?’ she asked.

  ‘Laura’s gone to see her parents.’

  Claude threw two logs on the fire and slumped into an armchair. Jean opened a book he had borrowed from Nelly’s shelves. Where else? The people he spent time with didn’t read. Even Claude possessed only Russian authors she hadn’t opened for a long time. Palfy was happy with his newspapers and Madame Michette devoured spy novels. Only Madeleine was deep into Proust, but she hired her Proust from a reading room, the idea of buying a book having never occurred to her and Blanche de Rocroy not being the type to suggest it to her. He opened the book Nelly had lent him and heard her cheeky, husky voice.

  ‘You want a book, Jules-who? Why? You won’t read. You don’t read when you’re in love. Take this anthology. You can recite some poems to yourself and try to hear my voice. If a poet bores you, try another one, then another one, till you’ve found the one who talks to you best about yourself. Then you’ll be much happier than with a big fat novel about an illicit love affair between a man on the night shift and a woman on the day shift …’

  It was a thick volume in a sandy-coloured binding that called itself an anthology of new French poetry. He opened it at random.

  To you, Germans – with my mouth at last released from military reticence – I address myself.

  I have never hated you.

  I have fought you to death with stiffly unsheathed desire to kill very many of you.

  My joy sprang to life in your blood.

  But you are strong. And I wasn’t able to hate in you that strength, the mother of things.

  I took pleasure in your strength …

  The date of the poem was 1917. The author was called Drieu la Rochelle. Jean turned to Claude; her lips were quivering. She stared at him.

  ‘Do you think they’ll punish them?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sure they will.’

  ‘That’s all right then.’

  He took the hand she had let fall. For an instant he recalled the blissful moments, gathered one by one, before Claude had been his. How could he get them back? Stroking her knee in the train that had brought them from Clermont-Ferrand, the way they kissed on the cheek every time they met or parted, her dressing gown falling open to reveal her breast, her nakedness in the mirror in their hotel room at Saint-Raphaël. Did all that have to lose its meaning, just because they had made love? Did a single act reduce to childishness all the feverish, intense emotions that had fired your imagination? From the age of thirteen until he was twenty he had written down in an oilcloth notebook his reflections and impressions of the life that was opening up before him. The notebook had got left behind in the tankette they had abandoned in the village square. Monsieur Graindorge, the surveyor, had doubtless picked it up and had a good laugh reading it. Jean felt he would have liked to add another entry to his old notebook that evening: ‘One sort of love, the most beautiful and the only really precious sort, comes to an end the moment you sleep with the woman you love for the first time. The stolen kisses, her half-glimpsed body, become childish things. An enormous, superb, intoxicating but obscene adventure begins. An immense amount of tenderness is needed to stop it degenerating into debauchery. Only in idealised romantic novels is the act of love portrayed as a marvellous levitation, the earthly flight of two bodies. The reality is not so magical, and that less magical element makes everything scary. Two bodies fall to earth, suffering the vertigo of emptiness, the return to oneself, a moment of appalling indifference. Sounds, smells, precautions can ruin everything. I’d be wiser never to make love to the woman I most care for, and instead to do it very often with w
omen I’ll never be attached to. If I’m honest, the most balanced period of my life was the time between my first night with Nelly and my first afternoon with Claude. I didn’t realise it. Now I know it. My pleasure with Nelly may be over for good. With Claude, it’s perhaps the start of a long and difficult road to the prize …’

  Claude’s hand squeezed his hard, as if reminding him to protect her, but her gaze remained turned to the fire.

  ‘Jean … There’s someone watching us.’

  ‘There’s only Jesús and Cyrille.’

  ‘No, someone else. Behind my back.’

  Later – wrongly, because she was right – Jean remembered that it was this fear of Claude’s that had aroused his first suspicions. Before, she had (he thought) just been talking nonsense, floating in a semi-comatose sea of sedatives.

  But Jesús looked up, stared at the window, and leapt to his feet to run to the front door, which he threw open. The fire crackled, spitting a ball of smoke.

  ‘Maman, it’s snowing!’ Cyrille shouted.

  Jesús came back in, holding a whitish form tightly by the arm, a man covered in snowflakes. Claude wailed and threw herself into Jean’s arms.

  Jesús closed the door behind the figure, who shook himself and took off his hat, leaving the top of his head and upper part of his face free of snow.

  ‘Why was you spyin’ on us be ’ind the window?’

  ‘I am sorry, so sorry. Deeply sorry, Madame.’

  There was nothing frightening about him: he was more comic than anything else, twisting in his hands (in white leather gloves) a silk-brimmed hat of the sort known as an Eden. Jean recognised him more from his voice than his dress. The man from the woods had gone to considerable trouble. The melting snow already forming a pool at his feet revealed him dressed for polite society: a soberly elegant pinstriped navy-blue suit, black pointed shoes and in his hand a cane with an ivory knob.

  ‘Maman, Maman!’

  Cyrille was crying, clinging to his mother’s legs as she, shaking convulsively, hid her face on Jean’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s nothing!’ Jean said. ‘It’s just a visitor.’