‘And that is how I met a wonderful man, Josef Bremer, who became something of a father to me. All my life he has been a source of advice and encouragement.’
‘Incredible,’ said Anselm. ‘Whoever it was probably knew your mother, knew you, and just did it, forsaking recognition or repayment. It is the sort of thing that makes life worth living.’
‘And worth the dying.’
Anselm had the strange sensation of something hot having passed him by A trace was left behind, slightly acrid, like exhaust from an engine, but then it was gone, quickly dispersed by a breath of air. Salomon Lachaise said:
‘I found my home in the art of the Middle Ages. It has brought me great joy … and pain … always the bitter and the sweet.’
Not entirely sure the true meaning of the words had reached him, Anselm thought of the rivalry of academics, known to surpass even that of children. Consolingly he said, ‘Like all homes .’
‘And, no doubt, like all monasteries,’ said Lachaise.
‘Verily’ Automatically, insensitively, Anselm said, ‘You remained alone?’
‘Yes… although I nearly got married once …
‘What happened?’
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.