The Sixth Lamentation Page 8

  After a thoughtful pause, Salomon Lachaise said, ‘She ran off with the maths teacher.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  They both looked at each other and burst into ringing laughter.

  2

  Evening light came with a faint chill. Together they retraced their steps through the fields, away from The Hermitage crouching by the stream. When they had gone a fair distance Salomon Lachaise stopped and turned, as though taking a mental snapshot of a place to hide.

  Anselm said, ‘I meant to say sorry for the fact that … he is here at all.’

  ‘Thank you. I have to say your Prior must be singularly unconcerned about appearances.’

  ‘He is, actually But it wasn’t his decision.’

  ‘I see.’

  Tact and a sudden disquiet prevented Anselm from disclosing that it had been the Vatican’s proposal. He simply said, ‘I know it looks bad.’

  ‘Perhaps it is bad,’ said Salomon Lachaise. ‘For someone like me it could so easily belong with all the other springs of lamentation which, I am afraid, are not simple misunderstandings. ‘

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Anselm apprehensively Immediately he wished he’d let the matter pass.

  ‘There are too many to mention … they run wildly one into the other, from the first charge of deicide … to the expulsions of the Middle Ages … through to the complicated time of anguish, silence and diplomacy In my own way I, too, have known these.’

  It was the old agonising problem for Anselm. He was forever confronting the face of a church to which he belonged, many of whose features he did not wholly recognise. He said, ‘I hope Larkwood offers you something different, another kind of spring.’

  Salomon Lachaise, glancing over his shoulder, said, ‘I have already discovered one, in a place I least expected to find it.’

  They walked on, the light swiftly thinning, the mad swooping of distant birds suddenly ended, leaving the sky bare, unscored. The high monastery wall grew larger, a dam between great banks of trees.

  Salomon Lachaise said, ‘Do you know which great romance of literature emerges beside the pogroms of the Middle Ages as they erupted across Britain, France and the Rhineland?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘It is the poetry of the mystic king … Arthur, The Round Table and the Grail.’

  ‘How strange. ‘

  ‘It’s as though the attacks upon the Jews and medieval chivalry belonged to the same cultural flowering. And then, fifty years ago, some genius set up a Round Table to save the Jews, to redeem its association with ancient hostility.’

  Anselm, intrigued, glanced at his companion. Lachaise’s head was lowered, his face dark as he said, ‘Isn’t it all the more tragic, then, that the person who broke it apart was—’

  Anselm finished the complaint, to demonstrate his understanding, his profound regret, ‘—able to find refuge in the arms of the Church.’

  Salomon Lachaise seemed not to have heard. They had reached the oak door in the wall. Anselm forced in the key and turned it heavily They parted, promising to meet again, and Anselm felt the slow, piercing influx of shame: he had quite deliberately said nothing about his planned trip to Rome, which had imperceptibly come to present itself as something disagreeable. Unable to shake off the discomfort, he hurried back to the Priory. Climbing the spiral stone stairs to his room, it dawned on him that Salomon Lachaise had told him everything, and yet, with calculation, with regret, he had told him nothing.

  Chapter Eleven

  The first notebook of Agnes Embleton.

  20th April.

  How can I now think of my Jewish comrades as different from the rest of us? For we were one group. The fact is they had been hunted, we had not, and the hunt was still on. I suppose I too should have been scared, because I was, am, half Jewish. But my identity on that level was indistinct. The inks had run together. I discovered just how separate they were one morning when looking through Madame Klein’s desk for a letter opener. I found a baptismal certificate in my name, one in my mother’s, a marriage certificate for my parents, and a death certificate for my mother. A whole Christian history lived out in Normandy I saw the scheming hand of Father Rochet, although I couldn’t imagine how he’d done it. Pretending to be cross, I asked him, ‘Why?’ He grabbed me by each arm and the smell of stale wine hit me in the face. ‘I hope to God you’ll never need them,’ he snapped. ‘These are dark times, Agnes. If you doubt me, read widely Read what others are thinking in the streets you walk.’ That night he gave me Céline’s Bagatelles pour un massacre. It described France as a woman raped by Jews, looking to

  Hitler for liberation. For the first time in my life I did not feel safe.

  The reports poured in from Germany. Jews banned from this, Jews banned from that. You might as well make your own list because everything was on it. And, of course, more camps. We knew it wasn’t just regulations for the death toll went on and on, long before Kristallnacht, and long after. So the music drained out of our Sunday gatherings. There were too many questions to ask. ‘Should we get out while there’s still a chance?’ ‘How much will it cost?’ ‘What about so-and-so’s grandmaman?’ ‘And her cousin, the one who’s ill?’ There were no easy answers. You must realise these people had either grown up in France or had fled from somewhere else. They’d had enough. They wanted to believe they were safe. That said, two families did jump and made it to Canada, but they left behind half their blood because of visa problems. That was a warning in its own right, for the doors of escape would soon close. We had a party for them and Mr Rozenwerg sang a Yiddish song of farewell. He was the old man I told you about, the one through the keyhole who understood Father Rochet’s warning. After all these years I’ve remembered his name. I cannot think of that might without seeing the faces of those who stayed behind, trusting in better times when the endless partings would cease. That is my overwhelming feeling of those days, a gradual falling apart, of broken pieces being broken still further.

  The Germans occupied the Sudetenland, and them invaded Czechoslovakia. Next, Poland. They were on the march. War was declared. That was when Father Rochet called the meeting.

  21st April.

  No one knew who else was coming. Each had been told it was secret, although in my case Madame Klein had already been informed. We all knew one another for we were the non-Jewish members of our Sunday gathering. By then we were all aged between twenty (me, the youngest) and twenty-three. I must name them: Jean, Cécile, Philippe, Tomas, Monique, Mélaine, Françoise, Alban, Thérèse, Mathilde, Jacques and, of course, Victor.

  Same day

  We met in Father Rochet’s presbytery on 1st November 1939. It was a large, yellowish room with a very high ceiling, and a single central light without a shade. The grate was empty, and you could smell the damp. There were no curtains, We were so cold that no one took their coat off. Yet Father Rochet didn’t seem to notice.

  He said he’d called us together to form a ‘Round Table’ of knights dedicated to chivalry. I remember thinking that he must have been drinking. But he was deadly sober. He said he’d always loved the stories of Arthur, the dream of a fairer world and the longing for the return of the King. I recall that distinctly He said life is a great waiting. There was no King, as yet. So we had to struggle for the dream in the meantime.

  Do what? asked Victor. Father Rochet said that if France fell the Nazis would move against the Jews in a matter of months. Many would not be able to escape. But we could make a small difference. The Round Table would smuggle children to safety. He could not tell us when or how or where or who else was involved. He just wanted to know if we would act as young parents, older brothers and sisters, taking a child from A to B.

  We all looked at each other, huddled in the cold, sitting around a huge oval table. Father Rochet drew a circle in the air with his finger, bringing all of us in on his scheme. Everyone nodded. Including Victor, but he voiced some doubts.

  I should tell you something else about Victor.
He was an organiser. Very practical-minded. He was the one who’d arranged the picnics, getting everyone to the pick-up point on time, allocating different jobs and so on. He liked lists and crossing things off. After Father Rochet’s little speech he said he didn’t think the Germans would ever march along the streets of Paris. If they did then the survival of everyone would be through cooperation, not confrontation. Including the Jews. That would be the key, finding an accommodation. In due course that is precisely what Victor did, at the expense of everyone in that room.

  As I recollect, Father Rochet replied that Victor would soon change his mind about cooperation when he felt a jackboot up his bottom.

  22nd April.

  I discovered the full explanation for The Round Table in two parts, one openly, the other at the keyhole.

  First, I asked Father Rochet and he told me it was a private literary joke.

  At the turn of the century a political movement called Action Française had been formed, dedicated to re-establishing the monarchy It was an extreme right-wing organisation, attracting certain types of Royalists and Catholics. Its leadership and many members were notoriously anti-Semitic. Soon it had a youth movement called the Camelots du Roi and they entertained Paris by rioting in the streets with the Socialists.

  So far, I understood it. Then he said this: he wanted to use the myth of Arthur from the Middle Ages to carry out his own small purge of history — the Christian persecution of the Jews. The Round Table, he said, would enact the chivalry denied to Jews in the past. I didn’t understand what he meant at the time. Father Rochet was a learned man, always reading something, and he knew tracts of medieval verse off by heart.

  But now the keyhole, which made a bit more sense.

  Madame Klein asked the same question as me. Father Rochet replied that he was swinging a punch at his old Prior who had thrown him out. There had been a bitter election for the leader of the monastery and one of the candidates had had connections to Action Française. Father Rochet had made a stink about it, hoping to stop him getting elected. He’d failed. Shortly afterwards, Father Rochet had been shown the door.

  For opposing him? asked Madame Klein. Wasn’t there another reason?

  There was a long pause, so I looked. Father Rochet had his face in his hands. I never heard the reply.

  23rd April.

  The Germans took Paris in June 1940. I’m afraid from mow on my memory is all in pieces, some large, some small. Many of the simple day-to-day details have been blotted out, and not the things I’d rather forget. It has always been a curse of mine.

  I have disconnected pictures in my head.

  I am standing near the Gare Montparnasse. I don’t know what I’m doing there. Thousands are queuing for the trains, desperate to get out. Gaunt, hot faces. Hordes of people burdened with everything of value they can carry, and children running wild. For months afterwards there were notices in the shops from mothers listing the names of their lost boys and girls, just like those ‘Have you seen … ?’ things in the newsagent describing missing pets. Name, age, colour of hair and so on.

  Next I am standing at the gates of a park. This must be later on. It is deadly quiet. A pall of black smoke hangs over the city. An old gardener tells me, ‘That’s our boys. They’ve set fire to the oil reserves. We’re on our own now.’ The streets are empty. I remember thinking the buildings are like a wall of scenery, where maybe there is nothing behind the façades but planks of wood and trestles, holding up a front. Paris is hollow and if you knocked upon its dome with a hammer you’d only hear an echo. There are two dogs trotting down the Rue de ha Bienfaisance, sniffing at the closed doors.

  I don’t remember the moment they came. But I can see those wretched flags everywhere, on almost every building. I am standing on the Champs-Elysées watching a parade. They did that every day with a full military band. At some point they even landed a plane on the Place de la Concorde. They were great ones for letting you know they were there, the Germans. Hitler turned up at some point but I have no recollection of it whatsoever, which is gratifying.

  At first they were extremely polite, which surprised everyone. And that’s not all. I remember seeing a truck by one of the bridges, with soldiers leaning out of the back charming the girls with jokes and chocolate. With some success, I might add. I think it was Simone de Beauvoir who said now that they were here there were going to be lots of little Germans running around.

  What else? A curfew, the hours sometimes changing. Shots in the night. Queuing endlessly for food. Everyone awfully hungry. Bicycles everywhere, because special permits were required to drive (Jacques’ father got one because he was a doctor). People heaving cases along the pavement or using a wheelbarrow That was daily life under the Germans.

  I know it doesn’t sound so bad to you, seeing the war as you must from its outcome. But for those of us who were there, the fall of Paris, the fall of France, was devastating. From the moment they came and soiled our streets the mourning began. I cannot tell you how dark those times seem to me. And all around the Germans were on holiday That’s another memory I have. I can see lots of young soldiers larking about, taking photographs of each other in front of the Arc de Triomphe. Some of them have an army-issue guidebook.

  I think it is the frailty of time that brings people together. When you don’t know if you will even see the year out, and you’ve lost a great deal, you seize what happiness comes by In those days, we all held on to each other in different ways. For Jacques and me there was a strange, satisfying desperation about our coming together, as if we were one step ahead of misfortune. One evening Madame Klein, trying to winkle an admission out of me, said, ‘I expect you see rather a lot of young Fougères?’ I said I did. She said, ‘I suspect he rather likes you.’ And I told her to stop it. She was a terrible schemer, that woman.

  But then we both got a big surprise, way beyond her suspicions and my expectations. I became pregnant.

  1st May.

  My generation doesn’t talk about this sort of thing. Things got out of hand. It only happened once but, as you will appreciate, that’s all it takes.

  Jacques displayed his Catholic entrails, as Father Rochet put it, offering to marry me within the week, As he spoke I all of a sudden saw him dressed in a respectable black uniform, safely behind the rail of a huge ship, throwing me one of those circular life rings. Standing over his shoulder was a severe captain, his eyes concealed by shadow Then he was just earnest Jacques again, alone with me by the windmill in Montmartre. I said no, not yet. I’ve never been that good at giving explanations so I described my picture. He couldn’t see what I was trying to say I said, ‘Give it time.’

  Jacques’ family were the best kind of Catholic — principles never interfered with practice. They welcomed me and our child for what we were — part of their fold. Madame Fougères was very pleased: she already had one grandchild from Claude, a boy named Etienne. One day she said, they’d play together.

  I suppose it was a very modern arrangement. I lived overlooking Parc Monceau and Jacques was a stone s throw away on the Boulevard de Courcelles. Our infant was happily tossed between the two households. So I think we would have married, eventually In all that matters he was an utterly devoted father, but he clung to wilful ignorance when faced with the more unpleasant chores of parenting — like most men I have known (including Freddie) .

  Notwithstanding the ‘Not yet’ to marriage, I did agree to a baptism, if only because I wanted Father Rochet to place his hands upon my boy All I remember about the ceremony is sticking my head around the parlour door afterwards and seeing him alone with my baby I instantly thought of that story by Maupassant, ‘Le Baptême’, about the lonely priest caught crying over an infant. That was 21st April 1941.

  I have said nothing about Victor. He found out about Jacques and me by chance. And it was ironic that he should stumble upon us in the way he did. I said in passing to Father Rochet that an anti-Semitic exhibition had just opened in Paris,’ Le Juif et la France’.
He told me to keep well away from such filth. But Jacques and I decided to go anyway On the day, Victor suggested going over to Saint-Germain-des-Prés to hobnob with the intellectuals solving the problems of France in a café. Jacques and I made our different excuses, met up secretly and headed off. Who did we meet at the exhibition? Victor. And for reasons best known to himself, Father Rochet had urged him to go.

  After that I have only two or three other memories of Victor. When I told him I was pregnant, it was as though I had struck him across the face with the flat of my hand. I didn’t see much of him from then on and neither did Jacques. He withdrew, as if betrayed, and only came forward to witness the consequences of his revenge. For come it did.

  Chapter Twelve

  1

  Left to his own devices, Anselm would have preferred to walk — a long, irreverent ramble through the vineyards of France, blistering his feet on the Alps, drinking too much wine and then descending, light-headed and a boy again, through the landscape of frescoes on to Rome. Instead, he did as he was told and took the 12.15 p.m. flight from Heathrow to Fiumicino. He was to stay with a community of friars at San Giovanni’s, an international house of studies incongruously situated between two restaurants near Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, beneath the Janiculum Hill. A priest would collect him.

  Anselm was standing in the arrivals area in his long black habit, beginning to feel the heat, when he was greeted from behind by a back-slapping friar in cut-off shorts and a T-shirt:

  ‘Hello there, I’m Brandon Conroy But call me Con.’

  He had the build of a shaven ox with hands like pit shovels. But the most startling feature was his eyes, china blue, elfin and glittering, deeply set beneath a brow of heavy bone.