He thought of Salomon Lachaise: had he known that Schwermann was his father? His mother hadn’t told him. It was a secret too painful to disclose. Involuntarily Anselm suddenly recalled their first meeting, when he’d seen the small dark figure by the lake, cut out against the sky Salomon Lachaise had said, ‘I’ve come to look upon the father of my grief,’ and then, moments later, he’d fallen on his knees before a man, a first meeting with a stranger, exclaiming, ‘I am the son of the Sixth Lamentation.’ Then Anselm remembered his friend’s description of his mother, poring over the photographs of their lost family by candlelight with never a passing reference to the father he’d never known … the man whose name he’d never once mentioned in Anselm’s presence. She had kept her secret, somehow, but Salomon Lachaise had eventually divined its shape… perhaps when she, struck with terror, had begged her son to leave the past alone after he’d announced his intention to help track down the man whom she knew to be his father. Yes … for sure … Salomon Lachaise had known… and he’d waited until the final moment before issuing a condemnation that only he could give.
Anselm looked around, ready to cry The calm of Parc Monceau had been chased away by children; irrepressible, joyful, not yet hating school. Two or three darted past him, trails of sand falling from cupped fingers. His eye picked out the approach of a young woman aged about twenty-three or four. She glanced at her watch and lifted high a small bell, the kind Anselm had once seen round the necks of goats in Provence. She rang it vigorously releasing a thin tinkling heard more by its pitch than its volume. At the signal, other teachers casually appeared and ushered their urchins into a line of twos. Each child held the tail of the coat in front, forming a train. When the counting was over they were led off, singing a song that vanished on the wind.
After they had gone, Anselm rose and walked slowly after them, out through the ornamental gates and into the empty street.
Epilogue
‘I saw the Sibyl at Cumae’
(One said) ‘with mine own eye.
She hung in a cage, and read her rune
To all the passers-by
Said the boys, “What wouldst thou, Sibyl?”
She answered, “I would die.”’
(Petronius: ‘Satyricon’, translated by
Dante Gabriel Rossetti)
The second notebook of Agnes Embleton.
Written out by Miss Wilma Harbottle.
Dear Jacques
‘Night and day I have lived among the tombs, cutting myself on stones.’
Do you remember that? Father Rochet said it, laughing, and he added, ‘No, I’m not afraid of dying.’
It was the day we were all called together to set The Round Table in motion. Father Rochet said if anyone was caught they were to blame him. I was worried on his account, about what they might do, and he just laughed. And afterwards you said he was the sort of chap who would cave in under pressure. Do you remember?
Now that I’m dying, I can see lots of things far more clearly than I ever did before. When all the faces of my youth started coming back, I looked far yours. You didn’t come. That’s what first set me thinking. And something tells me you’re still alive.
I have spent over half my life revisiting July 1942, always believing you and I, and our oldest friends, were betrayed by Victor. But, as I’ve said, I started seeing things differently. It wasn’t Father Rochet who caved in, was it? It was you.
Did it happen when you were picked up for wearing that Star of David? I never sensed the link before, between your arrest that June and the breaking of The Table in July. But as this note is being written, they’re preparing to put Schwermann on trial. Everything I hear moves from your arrest to the betrayal a month later as if they were unconnected, yet it’s obvious to me now that they were. I’ve looked back again. As usual, you organised the run. All the others were picked up in the afternoon, except for you. When I got out of Ravensbrück I was told you stayed at home after your family had gone. Why? Not for me. I was already in La Santé prison. Did you hang around so the Germans could find you easily? I don’t think so. No, something went badly wrong on that terrible day and it has something to do with that last run. So, Jacques, if anyone waited patiently for the knock upon the door that night it wasn’t you. Surely it wasn’t Franz … Mr Snyman?
You had a hand in my dying, and our little Robert’s. You didn’t mean to, or want to. And if you have lived, as I believe you have, it has been no life. If 1 could see you again I’d kiss you and tell you what you must desperately want to hear. Instead, I raise these old hands of mine: may God protect you, always; and forgive you, as I do now.
Agnes
Author s Note
This novel weaves fact and fiction. The historical framework of the trial and the details of life in Paris during the Occupation are all (I hope) accurate. The Vél d’Hiv round-up occurred as described but I could not replicate the horror of what actually transpired.
The progress of judicial retribution after the war causes pause for thought. It was not until 1980 that Herbert Hagen, Kurt Lischka and Ernst Heinrichsohn, three Nazis closely involved in the deportation of Jews from France, were brought before a court in Cologne. Only two out of the thirty or so convicted in their absence by the French authorities had served a sentence (Karl Oberg and Helmut Knochen). Numerous alleged war criminals settled in Britain, but legislation enabling prosecutions to take place was not passed until 1991 (the War Crimes Act) . Three hundred and seventy-six suspects were investigated. A third of them were dead, and twenty-five were innocent. The first trial took place in 1995 after a £5.4m investigation and collapsed due to the defendant’s ill health. A second (and probably the last) prosecution was concluded in 1999. Anthony Sawoniuk was convicted of murdering two Jewish women in 1942. The name of one was unknown.
The reader wanting to better understand the previous paragraph, and the purging of Nazi Germany in general, could profitably consult Blind Eye to Murder by Tom Bower, cited below.The Round Table did not exist, although monasteries throughout France were involved in similar activities. The idea was prompted by an event in the life of my mother, Margaretha Duyker. As part of a smuggling operation she took an infant by train out of Amsterdam to Arnhem but was arrested by the Gestapo. The child was taken away. She was imprisoned and eventually released. She died of motor neurone disease in 1989.
The Gilbertines never came to France. That is an invasion of my own making. They were the only English-born religious order and did not survive the Dissolution. At their foundation, the monks (canons, to be precise) followed The Rule of Saint Augustine and the nuns that of Saint Benedict. For simplicity I have opted for the latter.
For the purposes of the plot I have taken small liberties with the manner in which deportation records and other formal documents were compiled during the Occupation of France. I have rather ignored the security arrangements of the Old Bailey.
The facts in this novel were harvested from a variety of sources that traverse this tragic period of French history. It would be impractical to list them all but I record my debt to the following: