The Foundling Boy Read Online Free Page A

and answer the questions of mechanics who walked respectfully around the car, examining it. The same model, a Type 22 driven by Louis Charavel, had recently won the Boulogne Grand Prix, and the automotive world was beginning to talk aboutEttore Bugatti and his little racing cars that were beginning to eat away at the supremacy of the monsters made by Delage, Sunbeam, Peugeot and Fiat.
    Antoine felt so relaxed that he stopped to have dinner at Chartres, after changing his tyres and four spark plugs and filling up with petrol. Afterwards he drove straight out of the city and into the night. His headlamps lit no more than a few metres of the road ahead and he had to ease back on the throttle, driving inside a small, tight circle of light that threw trees up as he passed and pierced the thick shadows of sleeping villages. Two or three times on the outskirts of a town he almost drove into an unlit farmer’s cart. He felt as if he was playing Russian roulette and stepped on the accelerator once more, drinking in deep draughts of the cool night as dense as a mass of black water rolling over him. At about two o’clock in the morning, apparitions began rearing up at the roadside. He was driving in a trance that was close to drunkenness: columns of soldiers in sky-blue uniforms were marching northwards, followed by towed artillery, 75-mm guns that paused to fire between the trees. Each shot pierced the night with a burst of red and yellow. He passed a convoy of ambulances coming towards him that left a long trail of blood on the road, then floated to the surface of a lake that muffled the noise of the engine and the screech of the tyres. Here he felt marvellously well for a moment, but then was buffeted by waves and the bodywork groaned and the muffled engine stopped with a hiccup. He fell asleep on the steering wheel, waking up at the first rays of the morning sun in a ploughed field, soaked in dew. The engine fired straight off, and he bumped back to the road. Day was breaking over the Bourbonnais, with its white villages and pretty cool-smelling woods. He carried on to Lyon, where he arrived shortly before lunch after following the banks of the sluggish Saône. He was thirsty and hungry and stopped at a roadhouse by the Rhône. He was served with a jug of Beaujolais, saucisson and butter, while children and gawpers surrounded the Bugatti, parked at the kerb. It had suffered during the night. Squashedmosquitoes and moths dirtied its fine blue bodywork, and its spoked wheels bore traces of its trip across the field. But even as it was, it still looked like a thoroughbred at rest, its neck proudly tensed, its round rump with its cylindrical petrol tank. Antoine arranged for it to be washed at a garage and only then thought of himself. His hardy woollen suit was holding out, but his soiled shirt and day-old beard did not suit the owner of a thoroughbred. He bought a shirt and changed into it at the barber’s after the barber, a small, catty man he could not bring himself to speak to, had shaved him. He was in a hurry to get started, to feel the warm wind stroking his face once more and hear the engine’s happy purring. Lyon’s deserted streets surprised him. Not a single passer-by, not a tram, the curtains all drawn and shutters shut, café terraces empty without a gloomy waiter in sight, the Rhône unfurling its bluish cold waters between banks of pebbles, Fourvière on the hill blurred in a heat haze that smothered even the sound of its bells. The Bugatti, rolling between gleaming tram tracks down cobbled streets, tried vainly to dislodge this strange torpor by the clamour of its four cylinders. Lyon was at lunch.
    By mid-afternoon he had reached Valence. Another France began here, on the road out of town, in the pale green and grey of its olive trees. A violent surge of happiness filled Antoine. He knew now where he was heading. The road led all the way down to his daughter Geneviève. It had all been planned for a long time, and