The Foundling Boy Read Online Free PDF Page A

and, looking up, found himself staring into a face full of warmth and innocence and smelling a scent of nectarine, lightly spiced with garlic. She was lovely, she was simple, she was not for him. As he left, he presented her with a big box of nougat that she accepted with exclamations of pleasure. Her name was Marie-Dévote.
    The road through the Esterel wound deep into the red rock and through pine forests whose scent washed over him in great gusts. The car responded joyfully to the effort Antoine demanded from it. Its tyres squealed in the bends and it leapt up the hills and grumbled on the descents with that sweet musical sound that only a Bugatti makes. Behind it trailed aerial pools of castor oil-scented air. Antoine drove through Cannes and Nice without stopping. They were towns for winter visitors, deserted during the summer. Beyond the port at Villefranche, signposts indicated Menton and the high cornicheroad. He slowed down. Night was falling on Mont Boron. At altitude and this time of evening, the Bugatti’s engine was at its best and would take off at the slightest pressure of his foot, but Antoine was no longer in any haste. In three days, time and space had lost their meaning. After he had seen Geneviève he might go on to China. This admirable machine, so precise and eager, would never develop a fault. At La Turbie he stopped near the Trophy of Augustus to look down at the coast, where the yellow lights trembled and twinkled along the sea like a rosary. A bit further on, at Roquebrune, he noticed at the roadside a little restaurant whose terrace overlooked a slope sown thickly with plum tomato plants. The patron stood at the door in a singlet and linen trousers. An enormous, still-pink scar cut across his face like a stripe, deforming his mouth. He spoke with difficulty. Antoine sampled
soupe au pistou,
stuffed
fleurs de courgettes
and fried anchovies. The man served him with a weary casualness. In the kitchen, behind a bead curtain, two women were moving around busily: they could not be seen, but their shrill voices were audible, one young, one old. They did not appear, and once dinner was over they slipped away without passing through the restaurant. Antoine requested a
digestif
. The patron brought a bottle of Italian grappa and two glasses and sat down opposite him.
    ‘So you travel like that, eh?’ he said. ‘Leave us poor devils standing.’
    Raising a hairy hand, he stroked the awful scar on his face with his fingertips, sighed, and gulped down his glassful.
    ‘What about you? What did you get?’
    ‘Oh, practically nothing. A few splinters in my right shoulder. Six months ago another piece came out. I’m not complaining.’
    ‘Except for hunting …’
    ‘Except for hunting.’
    ‘Where did you get to?’
    ‘Army of the Orient. What about you?’
    ‘Verdun. Douaumont. Do you like this grappa?’
    ‘Not bad. A bit young. I’m from Normandy, calvados is my drink.’
    ‘I wouldn’t say no. They used to give us a glass before we went over the top.’
    They drank for a while, silent, then carefully exchanging a few words that let each place the other. Antoine would willingly have finished the bottle, but there were still a few kilometres to go, and the smashed face in front of him depressed him terribly. So many soldiers went to war with the idea of sacrificing their life, or possibly their left arm, but not one imagined that they might as easily come back with their face a pulp, and look like a monster for the rest of their days. He was conscious of his own cowardice, but without cowardice, as without lies, life was impossible. It looked as if there was a night of reminiscing ahead, scenes and stories spilling out in bulk across the tablecloth, stoked by the warmth of the grappa.
    ‘Were you an officer?’ the man asked, his expression wary.
    Antoine felt sorry for him. He had no desire to leave a bad impression, or deepen the certain bitterness of this defeated man.
    ‘No,’ he said,