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 Celine’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, Cecile, Philippe, Tomas, Monique, Melaine, Francoise, Alban, Therese, 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 Francaise 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 Francaise. 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
