The Sixth Lamentation

Chapter Nineteen

1

‘Apollo adored the Sibyl so he offered her anything she wished,’ said Pascal, turning a beer mat round in circles. A gathering of other conversations drifted from the debating room out to where they sat on the veranda. Putney Bridge lay black against a scattering of white and orange evening lights.

‘And?’ said Lucy

‘She asked to live for as many years as she had grains of sand in her hand. He granted her wish but she refused to satisfy his passion.’

‘Sounds like a good deal to me.’

‘Not entirely’

‘Why?’

‘She forgot to ask for health and youth.’

‘Ah.’

‘So she grew old and hideous and lived for hundreds of years.

‘Doing what?’

‘Her old job, writing riddles on leaves, left at the mouth of her cave.’ He sipped his drink. ‘That’s the part of the myth I like, the fragility of what she had to say; words written on leaves, easily made incomprehensible if disturbed by a careless wind.’

Lucy could only think of Agnes, the sand all but gone. She said, ‘I understand her, though, wanting to live so much.’

‘Yes, but life pushed on is always death pulled back. It comes. In a way there’s something dismal about wanting to postpone what you can’t avoid.’

‘But it can come too soon.

‘That’s what the Sibyl thought.’

Lucy admired his lack of complication — but with nostalgia: her own simplicity had been mislaid. She had seen death at work, its industrious regard for detail, and, like the men who dug up the roads, its preference for doing the job slowly

‘I think you’d get on with my grandmother,’ she said.

They had met at Pascal’s suggestion. He gave no reason; he just asked. So they sat down with no purpose other than a shared inclination to know one another better. Leaving the Sibyl behind, Lucy raised the key question:

‘What do your family think of you dropping journalism for all this?’

‘Not pleased at all.’

‘Do you mind if I ask why?’ She had the sparkling enthusiasm of a specialist.

Settling back, like a long-distance driver who knows the road, Pascal said, ‘It’s all about guilt, really’ — he flipped the beer mat — ‘even though none of us were around at the time. To put it bluntly, the whole family ran off to the south, leaving my great-uncle Jacques behind in Paris. Okay it was his choice, but it’s an unpleasant fact. If they’d stayed with him, maybe they could have done something after he was arrested.’ He sipped his beer, thinking. ‘That’s probably not true, but it’s one of those peculiar notions. Once thought, it won’t go away They settled on the Swiss border and Jacques was deported to Mauthausen. They survived. He didn’t. The lack of symmetry says it all. After the war they made sure Jacques was remembered. It was all they could do. Schwermann and the rest had vanished. So I grew up with a complex memory of remorse, pride and what you might call unfinished business.’

But, as Pascal explained, the family memory had become complicated by the political career of his father, Etienne, and the complex mood in France during the 1960s. Myths assembled after the war to smooth out the realities of Occupation —the mix of resistance and cooperation — had come under attack. Heroes were denounced, villains rehabilitated. And it was within this public struggle that Pascal’s father had deftly trodden the political stage. He’d had considerable ambition and a considerable problem: his father, Claude, had been a supporter of Vichy and he couldn’t refer to Jacques’ exploits without placing a spotlight on collaboration and plunging his name into the maelstrom of conflicting views about the past. So while Pascal had grown up with a memory of stolen retribution, the official family line on war crimes had become one of merciful forgetfulness. Let the past bury itself. Thus, when Paul Touvier was arrested in the late eighties, Etienne had been for understanding the moral complexity of the time, but the high-minded Pascal, then seventeen, had advocated judicial retribution. After all, he’d been a French servant of the Reich. That row had caused no lasting harm. For his parents it had been just one of the more extensive entries in the Register of Differences filled out by Pascal as he defined himself against them, made colourful by adolescence and by that fact destined to fade back into unanimity once he’d grown up and seen things as he should.

Pascal did grow up, and things did fade, but, as always happens, far less than his parents expected. He became a political journalist with a side-interest in Vichy, producing one or two scoops about notorious figures who had lived comfortable lives in post-war France undisturbed by their past. This was closer to the family bone, and, looking back, it was only a matter of time before Pascal’s research touched upon Jacques’ life and, by default, upon his father’s understanding of his prospects. It was Pascal’s career, however, that flourished. Appointed as the Washington correspondent for Le Monde, he moved to the United States, and that was when the door to his present life opened. By chance he found the memo referring to Schwermann and Brionne. He said, ‘After reading that I knew there was a good chance of finding them. It was a moment of crisis, believe me.

That moment took Pascal home to a bright Paris morning, the sort that could generate a song. His mother was happily moving in and out of the salon, relieved to have her boy at home again; father and son were enjoying the bashful pleasure of shared manhood come too soon. Pascal spoke, knowing the coming cost, the loss of amity: ‘I want to find him.’

Etienne put down Le Monde, read with a new enthusiasm since his son’s elevation, and stubbed out a cigar. Monique came in, buoyantly suggesting a walk in the park. She withdrew, uneasily, at a signal from her husband.

‘You can’t,’ he said.

That command had a peculiar effect on Pascal, pushing him down the road. ‘I can.’

‘You mustn’t.’

‘What about must?’

Another silence.

‘Pascal, France has suffered enough.’

‘That’s not the test.’

More silence, with a chasm opening wide. Pascal’s father reached over, with both hands: ‘I beg you,’ he said with barely suppressed panic, ‘look at things with older eyes, just for a moment, with the wounds of those who endured the Occupation. Why do you think de Gaulle, of all people, reprieved the death sentence on Vasseur and Klaus Barbie in the sixties? Why do you think d’Estaing honoured Pétain at Douaumont in the seventies? Why did Mitterrand shake Kohl’s hand at Verdun in the eighties? Because sometimes we cannot make a synthesis of the past, and there comes a time when we have to forgive what we can, when it is better to forget what cannot be forgiven. Your generation is obsessed with the failures of your forefathers. Let them judge themselves. You wouldn’t have done any better.’

‘I’m sure I wouldn’t, but that’s why an obligation rests on the next generation — to expose the past for what it was. This is not just about Jacques. It’s about history. Getting it right. The same year Barbie was convicted, Le Pen said the gas chambers were a minor detail of the war. There’s a kind of forgetting we have to stop.’

His father, exasperated, said: ‘Pascal, I’m asking you to leave it be. Leave the past alone.’ Etienne went angrily to his study without waiting for a reply as if parental censure was sufficient to deflect a disobedient son.

As with most adult passions, they are born in childhood. The strength of Pascal’s conviction had not come from his family as such but from their butler, Mr Snyman. He’d known Jacques and had told Pascal all about The Round Table. For Pascal he was a patriarch, the only survivor of the times. After his father left the room, Mr Snyman slipped in.

‘Did you hear all of that?’ asked Pascal.

‘Yes.’

‘What would you do?’

‘It’s not what I’d do that matters; it’s what Jacques would do. If he could.’

‘And what’s that?’

Mr Snyman took a step closer, his hands raised as if what he had to say was so fragile it might break if not physically handed over. ‘He’d hunt him down. Schwermann is one of those few people responsible for something that lies on the other side of forgiveness. ‘

Pascal went upstairs and knocked on the study door.

‘Papa, I’m sorry. I have to do this.’

‘You’ll regret ignoring my advice.’ His father stood with his back to his son. With profound disappointment he said, ‘You care more for the dead than the living.’

Monique stood at the door, wavering between husband and son. She was crying.

Then Pascal said something untrue, something he did not mean and which he bitterly regretted afterwards. But it sounded good. ‘And you care more for political preferment than the truth.’

They had, of course, spoken since; and Pascal had said sorry, and his father had said it didn’t matter, and his mother had run out to the patisserie. But it was too late. Certain things, once said, can change at a stroke the interior workings of love, leaving the outside architecture untouched. Perhaps, thought Lucy, that was why Agnes had taken such deep refuge in silence.

Pascal made contact with Jewish groups and Resistance organisations in Paris who formed a consortium: the laborious process of gathering evidence began. The anxiety of the investigators was that Schwermann had kept a low profile as far as the paperwork was concerned. His name rarely appeared in print even though sources demonstrated he must have been at certain meetings and received particular memos. And no one knew the name under which he was hiding. Then Pascal received an anonymous letter posted from Paris. He said, ‘It contained one line: “The name you seek is Nightingale.” I thought it was a hoax but I passed it on.

The problem of building a case strong enough to secure a conviction, however, remained a concern. It was while discussing this matter with Mr Snyman that Pascal had been urged to find Victor. Mr Snyman had said:

‘I knew Victor. He was like a brother to Jacques. Things became difficult between them when they fell in love with the same woman — I forget her name … the war split them further … but now, after so many years, when Jacques is dead… I am sure he would speak out.’

Lucy studied Pascal’s animated face with concealed horror: he seemed to know nothing of Agnes. The narrative moved on, leaving Lucy stunned by the omission. The allegations were formally laid with the Home Office. And, life being what it is, no political discomfort came to trouble Pascal’s father. The lesion between them lay open, through a fear that was never, in fact, realised.

A bell rang, urgent and frantic, for last orders. Pascal and Lucy decided to leave. On their way out Lucy caught the eye of The Don — as she’d named him — that warming fusion of Gandalf and Father Christmas. As before, he bestowed a nod.

Standing outside, Lucy said, ‘Brionne is not going to walk into a police station. It’s a fond hope, nothing else.’

‘I know,’ said Pascal with resignation. ‘We need a miracle.’

‘I thought you said we couldn’t mention God?’

‘In certain circumstances God has a habit of mentioning himself.’

2

Anselm’s confidence in finding Victor Brionne lay not in his investigative powers, for he had none, but in one of the more prosaic features of modern life: the proliferation of countless documents with lists of names and addresses. The Inland Revenue, the Department of Social Security, National Insurance, the National Health Service Central Register, the Drivers Register, and more, beyond imagination. Three things only were needed by an amateur in Anselm’s curious position: the name of the person concerned; a contact in the police involved in the investigation of a serious crime (which opened many closed doors); and a good reason why that contact would reveal what they learned to the amateur.

Anselm was relatively sure he possessed all three conditions. He knew the name; instinct suggested DI Armstrong could be the contact; and her cooperation might be forthcoming if its basis was the finding of a key witness for a major trial, Anselm’s only request being to have the first interview The plan crystallised almost by itself while he was still in Rome. And as it did so, Anselm’s recognition of his own importance in the scheme of things expanded proportionately, producing a sense of power that he tried to suppress but which he acknowledged with a dark flush of pleasure.

3

Ordinarily Anselm had two periods of manual work — one in the morning before Mass, the other in the afternoon until Vespers. However, the Prior had agreed to release Anselm whenever necessary to pursue anything to do with the task he had received from Cardinal Vincenzi. That broad principle was stretched to encompass games of chess with Salomon Lachaise at the guesthouse. But since his trip to Rome Anselm had found it difficult to look his companion in the face — for he was now burdened with a riddle: ‘Schwermann had risked his life to save life: And his task of finding Victor Brionne now set them apart, for it was this man who would reveal the meaning of the words.

They sat either side of a table, black against white.

‘No talking,’ said Anselm as they were about to start.

‘But in the beginning was the Word,’ replied Salomon Lachaise.

‘Indeed,’ said Anselm.

Salomon Lachaise then sprinkled the early stages of play with abstract enticements — an unworthy attempt, thought Anselm, to distract his opponent: ‘A violation of language is a violation of God: (‘Mmm’, said Anselm.) ‘… in hell there are no words.’ (‘Mmm.’) ‘… and yet the silence of the Priory brings forth words of praise.’ (‘And other things,’ murmured Anselm.) ‘… the world will be redeemed by words.’ Anselm marked that one for future use. -

‘Is it not strange,’ continued Salomon Lachaise on a fresh tack, ‘that God, on one reading of Exodus, refused to disclose his name to Moses when he first revealed himself?’

‘Yes,’ said Anselm. He eyed the tight configuration of pieces. Each move seemed to spell trouble but there had to be a way out.

‘And is it not stranger still that God should change the name of his servants to mark a new beginning?’

Anselm looked up sharply into a face of restrained curiosity. ‘What do you mean?’

‘God made the covenant with Abram and he became Abraham. Simon the fisherman became Peter the rock. There are lots of examples.’

‘I see,’ said Anselm, returning his attention to the battle.

‘The change of name obliterates their past, bestowing a blessed future.’

‘That’s a good point. I might use that one Sunday’

‘And when the Amsterdam synagogue expelled Spinoza for his ideas, they invoked God to blot out his name under heaven.’

‘That’s interesting,’ said Anselm genuinely

‘So who was it that dared to take the place of God and give that man across the lake a new name, a new life?’

The two men faced each other. A sensation of rapid foreshortening brought the gentle gaze of Salomon Lachaise unbearably close to Anselm’s secret. They sat as friends: one of them waiting patiently for judgement, the other, Anselm, engaged in an enterprise that might absolve the need for a trial — hope and its adversary at one table.

‘That’s another good point.’ They were the only words Anselm could assemble that did not require him to lie.

Salomon Lachaise reviewed the state of play upon the board and, with a look of quiet amusement, toppled his king. ‘Anselm of Canterbury, I resign.’