‘A woman.’
‘Are you sure she’s not a transvestite?’
‘Absolutely sure.’
‘Phew!’
If Claude had dinner at her mother’s — which seemed to be happening more frequently, as though Anna Petrovna, apprised of the danger her daughter was running, was doing her best to take her in hand — he stayed the night at Nelly’s. Sitting on a deep-pile carpet in front of the fireplace where a wood fire crackled, she would question him.
‘What have you read, then?’
‘The Thibaults.’20
She shrugged.
‘Average. What else?’
‘Remembrance of Things Past.’
‘Better. Who’s your favourite poet?’
‘Before I met you, I didn’t know anyone who knew how to recite poetry.’
‘What do you want to hear?’
‘Whatever you like.’
She closed her eyes, suddenly absent again, and her voice rose, so poignantly that it enveloped Jean.
‘My heart beats only with its wings
I can follow no further than my prison wall
Oh my friends, lost beyond all recall
It is but your hidden lives I’m listening to …’
‘Who’s that by?’ he asked.
‘Reverdy.’
‘I don’t know him.’
‘You scrumptious boy.’
When they were alone together, she did not drink.
‘With you,’ she said, ‘I don’t need to be unbearable in order to exist. You’re kind. You’re actually extraordinarily normal. Not machosistic, as old Madame Michette would say, not machosistic for a second. I might be unhappy for a few minutes the day you leave me.’
‘Who says I’m going to leave you?’
‘Me. I know you are. And deep down I don’t care, just like I don’t care about you. You’re not irreplaceable.’
‘I know. What about Duzan?’
‘Dudu? Oh, he’s for life. I’m his Omphale.’
‘He’s not Hercules.’
‘No, he’s not … but I’ve told him he’s an arse so often that he believes it.’
‘He told me you had an unhappy childhood.’
‘Me? Not for a second. I love my papa and maman. He works on the railways, she’s at home. Stationmaster at a little village in the south-west. He’ll never get another promotion and he doesn’t mind a bit. Ever since he was a child he’s written poetry, and all his poems are as bad as each other, but he doesn’t know that. He’s a member of the Société des Gens de Lettres and he thinks it’s something very similar to the Académie Française. He’s kind and generous and has always got his head in the clouds. A poet, you see. He’s had several near-misses changing the points. Otherwise he’s a very good stationmaster. One day we’ll go and see my parents. You’ll see my mother look at me wide-eyed. She says I’m like my father, artistic. He adores me because I’m his revenge on the people who don’t understand him. When a magazine rejects his poems he’s unhappy and shouts at everyone at the station. Otherwise he’s awfully nice. One in a million. I tell myself it’s from him that I have inherited the little light burning in me, that makes me not like the other actors around me, and him not like the other railway workers around him.’
*
Jean should have been torn between Claude and Nelly and he felt confused not to be, failing to grasp, in the happy surprise of it all, that the two women complemented each other and left him no freedom whatsoever. He went from one to the other as if to two different pleasures. Claude’s beauty had the appearance of tranquillity, yet was anything but tranquil. Nelly’s was that of a charming, false muddle. One was half hidden behind a stubborn secret, the other was open and laughed and glittered like diamonds. He could not have borne Nelly without Claude, and without Nelly he would not have been able to put up with the kind of relationship Claude offered him. Nelly was visible to everyone. Claude remained hidden. That was why he did not want Palfy to see her again or want Madeleine to know her. He thought about Jesús and decided that he was allowed.
Earlier it seemed to us unimportant for this account of Jean’s life to know whether he went to the Chevreuse valley with Nelly the day after their first night together. This was a mistake. In fact it was extremely important, and let us say here and now, having made enquiries, that they didn’t, giving in instead to Madeleine’s pleading that they should come and meet her Pole, another key individual in the Germans’ organised plunder of France. But Jean felt that Jesús was one person he wanted to introduce Claude to. He wrote to him. From Paris, where she returned to work every day, Fräulein Bruckett telephoned Jean’s office. They would expect him that weekend.
‘That’s good timing,’ Nelly said when she heard the news. ‘I was about to feel bad about leaving you on Saturday and Sunday. Dudu’s taking me to a château whose name I’ve forgotten. Some people he swears aren’t in the least bit annoying. Go to your friend’s. A bit of fresh air will do you good.’
*
Jesús was waiting for them at the station at Gif-sur-Yvette. He had got fatter. Not in his face so much, but his waistline had thickened. He carried Cyrille on his shoulders for the two kilometres to the farm. Laura came home early every evening, and left again at dawn in her little car. She was the vital force of their house. As soon as she arrived she would shed her field-grey uniform, put on a pair of corduroy trousers and a sweater, and cook, dust and pickle vegetables. Jesús had turned a barn into his studio. Jean saw immediately that he was working for himself, feverishly and with a pleasure that transformed him.
‘You see, Jean, I’m on my way again. I’m paintin’, do you hear, I’m paintin’. No more bollocks. I am an artis’! No’ a clown for La Garenne. You know’e came to see me?’
‘When?’
‘Yes’erday.’
The previous day, in fact, La Garenne had turned up at the farm, puffed out from the two-kilometre walk, brandishing a piece of paper.
‘I’ve got the certificate, I can reopen my gallery! Jesús, you can’t leave me now. All this nonsense has cost me a fortune. Not counting my mother’s burial. She wanted it all first-class, the organ at Saint-Sulpice, six horses, mountains of red roses and invitations for all of Paris society …’
Jean disabused Jesús. Louis-Edmond had conducted his mother to Montparnasse Cemetery with the least possible pomp. As for the certificate, it was yet another fraud. A Professor Montandon, a so-called ethnologist approved by the Commissariat of Jewish Affairs, had certified on official notepaper that the subject of his examination had been circumcised in his youth for medical reasons. La Garenne had sworn that his name was unimpeachably authentic, that he was indeed the descendant of a crusader, and that because his true father was not in a position to recognise him he had had him adopted by a proxy. So yes, he was officially called Levy and had suffered for it since childhood, because he could not stand Jews.
‘’E disgust’ me,’ Jesús said. ‘I’ave chucked him out. In Spain is no Jews! We is all a lil’ bit Jewish, thanks to thee Inquissición. Yes, all converted an’ good Christians. If you’ad seen him! He was cryin’ … Get out, filthy antisemite, I tol’ him. Laura drove him back to the station …’
The studio looked out onto an orchard whose trees were bare with the approach of winter. Beyond the orchard a line of poplars bent in the wind. Jesús took no notice of the gold and grey Île-de-France countryside. His easel stood in front of the window, and he painted the Andalusia he knew, the Mediterranean, its skies purged of all content by the noonday heat. Jean wondered if Jesús really was a great painter, a marvellous force of nature exploding into colour.