Noah's Child (8 page)

One afternoon when he was in detention and I was passing a piece of stolen bread through the window, I asked him why, even when he was being punished, he was still passive and unwavering, and refused to learn. He opened up to me:

‘There are seven of us in my family: two parents and five children. They're all intellectuals except for me. My father's a lawyer, my mother's a famous concert pianist who plays with all the best orchestras, my brothers and sisters all had diplomas by the time they were twenty. Nothing but brains . . . and all arrested. Carted off in trucks. They didn't think it could happen to them, which was why they didn't hide. Such intelligent, respectable people. What saved me was that I wasn't at home or at school! I was traipsing about the streets. Sole survivor because I'd gone walkabout . . . So, you see, studying . . .'

‘Do you think I'm doing the wrong thing learning my lessons?'

‘No, not you, Joseph. You've got what it takes and
you've still got life ahead of you . . .'

‘Rudy, you're not yet sixteen . . .'

‘I know, it's already too late.'

He didn't say any more, but I could tell he too was furious with his family. Even though they had vanished, even though they never contacted us, our parents still played a constant part in our lives at the Villa Jaune. I know I resented mine! I resented them for being Jewish, for making me Jewish, and for exposing us to danger. Crazy, the pair of them! What was my father? Hopeless. And my mother? A victim. A victim because she married my father, a victim because she failed to gauge her own terrible weakness, a victim for being just a kind, devoted wife. I may have felt contempt for my mother, but I still forgave her because I couldn't help loving her. On the other hand, I was pervaded by a hefty hatred towards my father. He had forced me to be his son without showing any ability to ensure I had a decent fate. Why wasn't I Father Pons's son?

One afternoon in November 1943, Rudy and I climbed up into the branches of an old oak tree that overlooked the surrounding countryside with its great spread of fields laid out before our eyes. We were scrutinizing the bark to find the nests where
squirrels hibernated. Our feet skimmed the top of the wall around the grounds; if we had wanted to we could have escaped, jumping down on to the path round the perimeter and running away. But where to? Nothing was worth more than our safety at the Villa Jaune. We kept our adventures within its walls. While Rudy heaved himself higher up, I parked myself on the first fork in the branches and, from there, I thought I caught sight of my father.

A tractor was coming down the road, heading straight past us. There was a man at the wheel: even though he had no beard and was dressed like a farm-worker, he looked enough like my father for me to recognize him. And I did recognize him.

I was transfixed. I didn't want this to be happening. ‘Please don't let him see me!' I held my breath. The tractor spluttered under our tree and trundled on towards the valley. ‘Phew, he didn't see me!' But he was only ten metres away and I could still have called out to him, caught him in time.

With a dry mouth and holding my breath, I waited till the machine had become tiny and inaudible in the distance. When I was quite sure it had gone, I came back to life: I breathed out, blinked, shuddered. Rudy sensed that I was upset.

‘What's the matter?'

‘I thought I saw someone I knew on the tractor.'

‘Who?'

‘My father.'

‘You poor thing, that's impossible!'

I shook my head to get the stupid idea out of my brain.

‘Of course it's impossible . . .'

Wanting Rudy to feel sorry for me, I put on a face like a disappointed child. In fact, I was delighted I had avoided my father. Besides, was it actually him? Rudy must have been right. Could we live only a few kilometres apart without realizing it? Not likely! By nightfall I was convinced I'd dreamed it. And I erased the episode from my memory.

Several years later, I found out that it was in fact my father who had come so close to me that day. My father whom I rejected, my father whom I wished was far away, not there, dead even . . . I can try justifying that wilful contempt − a monstrous response to him − with my vulnerability and panic at the time, but I will still feel the full, searing, burning shame of it till my dying day.

*

When we met in his secret synagogue Father Pons would give me news of the war.

‘Now that the Germans are getting caught up in Russia and the Americans have joined the fight, I think Hitler's going to lose. But at what cost? The Nazis here are more and more frantic, tracking down the Resistance with furious determination, driven by despair. I'm very frightened for all of us, Joseph, really very frightened.'

He could sense some threat hanging in the air, the way a dog can sense a wolf.

‘It's all right, Father, everything's going to be OK. Let's keep on with our work.'

I had the same tendency to be protective with Father Pons as with Rudy. I loved them both so much that, to quell their anxieties, I adopted a reassuring and unshakeable optimism.

‘Can you make the difference between Jews and Christians clearer for me, Father?'

‘Jews and Christians believe in the same God, the God who dictated the Ten Commandments to Moses. But Jews don't recognize Jesus as the promised Messiah, a longed-for envoy from God; they see him as just another Jewish sage. You become a Christian the moment you feel that Jesus really is the Son of
God, that God was incarnate in him, and died and rose again in him.'

‘So for the Christians that's already happened; for the Jews it's still to come.'

‘That's it, Joseph. Christians remember while Jews live in hope.'

‘So a Christian is a Jew who's stopped waiting?'

‘Yes. And a Jew is a Christian from before Jesus.'

I was quite tickled by the idea that I was a ‘Christian from before Jesus'. What with the Catholic catechism and my clandestine initiation in the Torah, religious history captured my imagination more than the childish tales borrowed from the library: it seemed more physical, more intimate, more concrete. After all, these were my ancestors, Moses, Abraham, David, John the Baptist, even Jesus! The blood of one of these men probably flowed through my veins. And their lives were never bland, no more than mine was: they fought and shouted, wept and sung, they risked their own lives at every turn. What I didn't dare admit to Father Pons was that I had incorporated him in this history. I couldn't picture Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator who washed his hands, with any other face but his: it seemed quite logical to me that Father Pons should be there in the Gospels, so close
to Jesus, somewhere between the Jews and the future Christians, a confused intermediary, an honest man not sure how to choose.

I could tell that Father Pons was disconcerted by the studies he subjected himself to for my sake. Like many Catholics, he previously knew extremely little about the Old Testament and discovered it with a sense of wonderment, as he did passages from rabbis' commentaries.

‘Joseph, some days I wonder whether I wouldn't do better to be a Jew,' he would say, his eyes bright with emotion.

‘No, Father, stay a Christian, you don't know how lucky you are.'

‘Jewish religion puts its emphasis on respect, Christian religion on love. And I'm beginning to wonder: isn't respect more fundamental than love? And more achievable too . . . Loving your enemy, as Jesus suggests, and turning the other cheek, I admire all that but it's hard to do. Particularly at the moment. Would you turn the other cheek to Hitler, Joseph?'

‘Never!'

‘Neither would I! It's true I'm not worthy of Christ. It would take more than my whole lifetime to be like
him . . . And yet, can love be a duty? Can we rule our own hearts? I don't think so. According to the great rabbis, respect is higher than love. It is a constant obligation. That strikes me as possible. I can respect people I don't like and those I don't mind about. But love them? Anyway, do I really need to love them if I respect them? Love's difficult, you can't produce it at will or control it or deliberately make it last. Whereas respect . . .'

He scratched his smooth scalp.

‘I wonder whether we Christians are just rather sentimental Jews . . .'

And so my life went on, punctuated by my studies, our sublime reflections on the Bible, my fear of the Nazis, the antics of the Resistance which was becoming stronger and more daring every day, games with my classmates and walks with Rudy. Chemlay was not spared in the bombing, but the English pilots avoided the Villa Jaune, possibly because it was a long way from the station, but almost certainly because Father Pons had taken the precaution of raising a Red Cross flag on the lightning conductor. Paradoxically, I really enjoyed air raids: I never went down into the shelters with my friends but, along with Rudy, I watched the show from the roof. The
Royal Air Force jets flew so low we could see the pilots and wave to them.

In times of war the greatest danger is growing used to it. Particularly becoming accustomed to danger itself.

Dozens of people in Chemlay challenged the Nazi occupation with clandestine activities, eventually underestimating their strength; as a result of this the announcement of the Normandy landings cost us dearly.

When we heard that waves of well-armed American troops had set foot on the continent we were intoxicated by the news. Even though we had to keep the fact quiet, we couldn't wipe the telltale smiles off our faces. Father Pons seemed to be walking on air, like Jesus on water, happiness radiating from his features.

That Sunday we couldn't wait to go to Mass, longing to share this near victory with the locals, at least by exchanging meaningful looks. We all lined up in the playground a quarter of an hour early.

Along the way, farm workers in their Sunday best winked at us; one woman gave me some chocolate; another put an orange into my hand; a third slipped a piece of cake in my pocket.

‘Why's it always Joseph?' grumbled a classmate.

‘'Course it is, he's the handsomest!' Rudy called from the far end.

It was just as well: my tummy was constantly empty, especially as I was having a growth spurt.

I waited for the moment when we would pass the pharmacy because I suspected that Mademoiselle Marcelle − who, along with Father Pons, had saved and protected so many children − would be beaming. Perhaps she would be so happy she would toss me a few boiled sweets?

But the metal shutter was down over her windows.

Our group reached the village square early and then everyone, schoolboys and locals alike, stopped dead in front of the church.

Through the wide-open doors we heard rousing music surging from the organ pipes, which were blasting at full volume. I recognized the refrain in disbelief: our Belgian national anthem!

The crowd stood rooted to the spot. Playing our national anthem like that right under the Nazis' noses was the ultimate outrage. It was as good as saying: ‘Get out, run away, you've lost, you're nothing now!'

Who would dare be that insolent?

The first to see her started to mutter amongst
themselves: Dammit! With her hands on the keyboards and her feet on the pedals, Mademoiselle Marcelle had set foot in a church for the first time in years so she could tell the Nazis they were going to lose the war.

Euphoric and excited, we stood around the church as if watching some dazzling and dangerous circus act. Dammit played damn well! Much better than the anaemic organist who did the services. In her hands the instrument boomed like a barbaric fanfare, all red and gold with a blaring brass section and virile drums. The notes rolled out to us powerfully, reverberating through the ground and making shop windows rattle.

All at once there was a screech of tyres. A black car braked in front of the church and four characters leaped out.

The Gestapo officers grabbed Mademoiselle Marcelle who stopped playing but started hurling insults at them:

‘You've had it! It's over! You can lay into me but it won't change anything. You're pathetic! Nancy boys! Impotent!'

The Nazis bundled her unceremoniously into the car, and it set off.

Father Pons, paler than ever, made a sign of the
cross. My fists were clenched, I wanted to run after the car, catch it up, punch the bastards. I grabbed his hand, it was icy cold.

‘She'll never say anything, Father. I'm sure she won't say anything.'

‘I know, Joseph, I know. Dammit is the bravest of us all. But what will they do to her?'

We didn't have to wait long for the answer. At eleven o'clock that same evening, the Villa Jaune was raided by the Gestapo.

Mademoiselle Marcelle, even under torture, had not said a word. All the same, during a search of her house, the Nazis had rooted out the negatives of the photographs used on our false papers.

We had been unmasked. No need even to drop our trousers. All the Nazis had to do was open our passports and they could identify the impostors.

Within twenty minutes all the Jewish children at the Villa Jaune had been gathered into one dormitory.

The Nazis were exultant. We were gripped with terror. I was so terrified I couldn't think straight. Without even realizing it, I meekly obeyed their instructions.

‘Against the wall, with your hands up. Quickly!'

Rudy slipped in beside me but it did nothing to reassure me: his eyes were popping out of his head in fear.

Father Pons threw himself into the fray.

‘Officers, this is an outrage: I didn't know who they were! I never guessed for a moment these boys might be Jews. They were sent to me as Aryans, true Aryans. I've been tricked, made a fool of, my credibility has been damaged.'

Even though I didn't immediately understand Father Pons's attitude, I was sure he wasn't trying to plead his own innocence to avoid arrest.

‘Who brought these children here?' the officer in charge asked curtly.