The Sixth Lamentation (11 page)

‘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.