Their host burst out laughing.
‘Well, well, well!’
Marceline modestly acknowledged her success. Jean stood, embarrassed and conscious of how ridiculous he looked.
‘He can sleep in the storeroom back there,’ the woman said, getting to her feet with difficulty, her legs swollen by poor circulation.
‘We’ll make a bed up for him. Has he eaten?’
She could not bring herself to address him directly.
‘Yes,’ Jean said, ‘thank you. Foie gras and cold veal. But I’ve been drinking champagne so I’m a bit thirsty.’
‘We only have water.’
‘There’s nothing better.’
They looked at him, puzzled and anxious. The words ‘foie gras’ and ‘champagne’ aroused a strange reaction in the woman.
‘Perhaps the storeroom isn’t very comfortable. We could put him in the boy’s room. He’ll have to leave the shutters closed in the morning.’
‘I’ll be here to collect him tomorrow before eight,’ Marceline said. ‘He won’t be any trouble. I’ll bring him a change of clothes. Where are your things? At Nelly’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘Give me the key.’
‘Knock before you go in.’
She raised her eyebrows, concerned, and he added, ‘Nelly may not be alone.’
‘I’ll know what to do. Go to bed and sleep well. Tomorrow will be tiring.’
She seemed about to salute as she disappeared with decisive steps down the path. Jean thought that if she came across the two tarts in Rue Troyon again they would be in for another mouthful.
‘My name’s Jeanne,’ the woman said.
‘My mother was called Jeanne too.’
‘I have a son your age. He’s a prisoner in Silesia.’
‘He was studying at the Arts et Métiers,’30 the man said. ‘My name’s Paul. We’ll show you your bed. You must be tired.’
The bedroom smelt of mothballs. Photographs of actresses plastered the walls.
‘We’ll have to open a window,’ the man said. ‘You’ll get a headache if you don’t. We have a lot of moths.’
Jean drank a glass of water, got undressed and lay down. For a few minutes he listened to them tidy the main room without speaking, before they went into the neighbouring bedroom, where he heard whispering. Their bed creaked, and Paul started snoring almost immediately. Jean lay with his eyes open in the darkness. Everything was unravelling. He thought of Julius, who must be mad with rage and anxiety, of Nelly packing a suitcase for him on Marceline’s orders, of Claude assailed by anguish in her drugged dreams. He was distancing himself from her. Another current was carrying him away. His easy life was coming to an end. He felt a satisfaction so keen he sighed with pleasure: it was curious to be joining the Resistance, dressed as a woman, on the day of St Jean himself, to be borrowing the bed of a prisoner of war who, before being called up, had collected the photographs of three German actresses: Marlene Dietrich, Leni Riefenstahl and Brigitte Helm. The smell of mothballs persisted, despite the open window. A pair of cats fought furiously on the path outside until someone threw a saucepan of water at them. Silence fell again. Paul’s snoring subsided. Jean wondered what the couple lived on, old before their time, withdrawn from the world in the heart of Paris in a tasteless neoclassical house, whose imitation Henri II furniture made it nearly impossible to move around. Without a thought for their own safety they sheltered the strangers Marceline brought them at night. In the wake of Madeleine’s soirée they represented another, very different France that one was tempted to forget when one lived in the artificial, glittering milieu he had inhabited up till then. Paul made him think of the man whom he still, out of gratitude, thought of as his father. Albert and Jeanne, Paul and Jeanne. The same preoccupations, the same narrow horizon, but within the limits of its narrowness a generosity and courage that were there when they were needed. Jean hoped their son was aware of their qualities and did not reject them or reproach them for not belonging to the world of lovely film actresses in which he lived in his dreams, far from the braces and slippers of Papa, and the waxed tablecloth and crochet work of Maman.
*
He was awoken by the dawn and it took him a while to orientate himself in the unfamiliar bedroom. His first gesture had been to stretch out his hand for Nelly and encounter only the rough, tightly tucked-in sheet, and he immediately realised that from now on he would miss her more than he had expected. He tried to remember their embraces but could only call one to mind, of infinite force and happiness, when they had made love together on the rug in front of the open fire before Marceline had brought Claude back, soaked and bruised and already unhinged. How could he erase the last six months, rekindle the pure flame that had consumed him since the meeting in the café at Clermont-Ferrand? There would never be anything more beautiful than what he had lived through with Claude in the dismal Paris of those years of 1940 and 1941. He had not forgotten any of it and at the same time he felt her, the woman who would always be for him the very image of dignity, slipping away from him. He regretted having made love with her on the spur of the moment, at a stroke putting an end to the rapture which had united them and borne them on, leaving them more wounded than satisfied, overcome by the awful sadness of quenched desires. It had been much more beautiful when they slept chastely in each other’s arms, like children, transported by a desire that only enhanced their tenderness. Blaise Pascal now waited like a spider in his web to pounce on Claude. The thought horrified Jean. The harm had not yet been done, but seemed unavoidable now that Jean had to flee, because, curiously, escaping from the arrest orchestrated by Julius, saving life and liberty, meant equally risking his life and losing his liberty.
At eight o’clock Marceline marched into the bedroom, carrying a suitcase. She burst out laughing.
‘Just look at you!’
In the mirror he saw his face smeared with lipstick and eye shadow from the night before.
‘I forgot that good girls take off their make-up before they go to sleep.’
‘It’s a question of self-discipline! I’ve always insisted my girls take care of their skin after work. With all the rubbish they plaster on their faces, by the time they’re thirty they’ve got skin like a sieve. Cleanliness is the key to health.’
‘Did you see Nelly?’
‘Yes, of course, and I didn’t need to knock either. She was on her own. She’s packed you a suit and some clean underwear herself. She was crying. She wants to see you. Though now’s not the time.’
‘I expect you find it all a bit like something out of Corneille.’
‘That’s what I said to her. We’ll arrange something later. For now we have to get you out of Paris.’
‘I need to go to the gallery and get some money.’
‘Constantin’s dealing with it. He’s going to let me have it later today.’
Jeanne made coffee for him and buttered some bread. In her dressing gown with her bare feet in slippers with holes in them, she looked more depressing than the night before. She avoided looking at him and he realised that she found it hard to cope with the presence of a man of her son’s age. Paul was more friendly. Opportunities to talk were few and far between.
‘Did you see Laval’s speech?’ he asked.
‘Vaguely.’
‘You should reread it. There’s someone who thinks Germany ought to win.’
‘Apparently he’s negotiated a return of prisoners in exchange.’
Jeanne turned towards him, her eyes sparkling with anger.
‘What prisoners? And who’s going to choose them? I don’t believe it.’
Paul looked down. His choice of subject was unfortunate. But what could he talk about? Everything was getting worse. Rommel had taken Tobruk, the Afrika Korps had crossed the Egyptian border and the Wehrmacht had reached Kharkov. The spring offensive was developing from the north down to the Caucasus. Nowhere was there a glimmer of hope. Paul was silent. He rolled a cigarette and immersed himself in Le Matin.