Noah's Child (6 page)

‘Let's go back.'

As we cut back through the woods, tormented by what Father Pons could possibly be up to every night in that empty place with no lights on, we didn't exchange a single word. I had made up my mind: I wouldn't wait another day to find out, particularly as I was risking a renewal of my bedwetting.

Night. The countryside dead. The birds silent.

At half past nine I took up my post on the stairs, with more clothes on than the last time, a scarf around my neck, and my clogs wrapped in felt stolen from the craft workshop so that I didn't make any noise.

The shadow hurried down the stairs and set off into the grounds where every outline had been erased by the darkness.

Once I reached the chapel I jumped into the clearing and tapped out the secret code on the wooden door.

The door was drawn ajar and, without waiting for a reaction, I slipped inside.

‘But . . .'

Father Pons hadn't had time to identify me, he had simply seen a rather smaller than usual figure nip past. Out of habit he had closed the door behind me. So there we were, trapped in the gloom, unable to make out each other's features or even an outline.

‘Who is it?' cried Father Pons.

Horrified by my own daring, I couldn't manage an answer.

‘Who is it?' he said again, in a threatening voice this time.

I felt like running away. I heard a scratching sound, then a flame flared up. Father Pons's face appeared behind a match, distorted, twisted and disturbing. I backed away. The flame came closer.

‘What? Is it you, Joseph?'

‘Yes.'

‘How dare you leave the Villa?'

‘I wanted to know what you do in here.'

In one long breathless sentence I told him about my doubts, my tailing him, my questions and the empty chapel.

‘Go back to your dormitory at once!'

‘No.'

‘You will do as you're told.'

‘No. If you don't tell me what you do here, I'll start screaming and the other man will know you haven't managed to keep the secret.'

‘That's blackmail, Joseph.'

Just then the knocking sounded on the door. I fell silent. Father Pons opened the door, put his head out and brought in the bag after a brief hurried discussion.

‘You see, I was quiet,' I pointed out once the clandestine delivery man was far enough away. ‘I'm on your side, not against you.'

‘I don't tolerate spies, Joseph.'

A cloud moved away from the moon which shed its blue light into the chapel, turning our faces a grey putty colour. Father Pons suddenly seemed too tall and too thin, a great question mark traced out on a wall in charcoal, almost exactly like the Nazis' caricature of a wicked Jew seen all over our neighbourhood, his eyes so bright they were unsettling. He smiled.

‘Oh, come on then!'

Taking my hand, he led me to the left-hand side of the chapel where he moved aside an old rug stiff with grime. A ring appeared in the floor. Father Pons pulled it and a flagstone opened up.

Steps led down into the dark body of the earth.
An oil lamp stood waiting on the first step. Father Pons lit it and climbed slowly into the underground space, waving me on behind him.

‘What do you find beneath a church, my little Joseph?'

‘A cellar?'

‘A crypt.'

We had reached the last step. A cool smell of mushrooms wafted from the depths. Was this the earth breathing?

‘And what do you find in a crypt?'

‘I don't know.'

‘A synagogue.'

He lit a few candles and the secret synagogue Father Pons had put together appeared before me. Beneath a cloak of richly embroidered cloth, he kept a scroll of the Torah, a long parchment covered in sacred writings. A photograph of Jerusalem indicated which direction to turn to when praying, because it is through that city that all prayers are taken up to God.

Behind us were shelves laden with things.

‘What's all that?'

‘My collection.'

He showed me prayer books, mystic poems, rabbis' commentaries, and seven- and nine-branched candle-sticks.
Beside a gramophone was a pile of shiny black discs.

‘What are those records?'

‘Prayer music, Yiddish songs. Do you know who was the first collector of human history, my little Joseph?'

‘No.'

‘It was Noah.'

‘Never heard of him.'

‘A very long time ago, the world was blighted by constant rain. The water caved in roofs and tore down walls, destroyed bridges, covered roads and swelled rivers and streams. Huge floods carried whole towns and villages away. The survivors took refuge on mountain tops, where at first they found safety but eventually the constant trickle of water caused the rock to crack and split apart. One man, Noah, predicted that our planet would be completely covered in water. So he began a collection. With the help of his sons and daughters, he managed to find a male and female of every living creature, a fox and a vixen, a tiger and a tigress, a cock pheasant and a hen pheasant, pairs of spiders, ostriches, snakes . . . everything except for fish and aquatic mammals, which were proliferating in the swelling oceans. At
the same time he built a huge boat and, when the waters reached him, he loaded all the animals and all the remaining people on to the boat. For several months Noah's Ark sailed aimlessly over the vast sea that the earth's surface had become. Then the rains stopped. The water level crept down. Noah was afraid he might run out of food for those living on his ark. He released a dove which flew back with a fresh olive branch in its beak, proving that the mountain tops were at last emerging above the waves. It was then that Noah realized he had succeeded in his extraordinary challenge: to save all of God's creatures.'

‘Why didn't God save them himself? Didn't he care? Had he gone away on holiday?'

‘God created the universe once, once and for all. He made instinct and intelligence so that we could cope without him.'

‘Are you being like Noah, then?'

‘Yes. I collect things, like him. When I was a child I lived in an African country called the Belgian Congo, because my father worked there; the whites so despised the blacks that I started a collection of local black artefacts.'

‘Where are they now?'

‘In the museum in Namur. Thanks to a group of
painters, they've become fashionable now: it's called “Negro art”. At the moment I'm working on two collections: my Romany collection and my Jewish collection. Everything Hitler wants to wipe out.'

‘Wouldn't it be better to kill Hitler?'

He gave no reply but led me over to the piles of books.

‘Every evening I come here to meditate over these Jewish books. And during the day, in my office, I learn Hebrew. You never know . . .'

‘You never know what?'

‘If the “rains” carry on, if there isn't a single Hebrew-speaking Jew left in the cosmos, I could teach it to you. And you could pass it on.'

I nodded. It was so late at night and the crypt seemed so fantastical, an Ali Baba's cave wavering in the flickering candlelight, that this all seemed more like a game to me than reality.

‘Then people would say you're Noah and I'm your son!' I exclaimed in a shrill, fervent voice.

He was touched, and knelt in front of me. I could tell he wanted to put his arms around me but didn't dare. It was wonderful.

‘We're going to make a deal, all right? You, Joseph, are going to pretend to be a Christian, and I'm going
to pretend to be a Jew. You'll go to Mass and to catechism, and you'll learn about the life of Jesus from the New Testament, while I will tell you about the Torah, the Mishnah and the Talmud, and we'll write out Hebrew letters together. All right?'

‘It's a deal!'

‘It's our secret, the biggest secret ever. You and I could die if we give this secret away. Do you swear you'll keep it?'

‘I swear.'

I re-enacted the convoluted gestures Rudy had taught me for sealing an oath, and spat on the ground.

From that night on I was entitled to a clandestine double life with Father Pons. I hid my nocturnal expeditions from Rudy, and managed to dampen his interest in Father Pons's behaviour by turning his attention to pretty blonde sixteen-year-old Dora, an easy-going girl who worked in the kitchen and helped the bursar. I claimed she stared at Rudy whenever he wasn't looking at her. Rudy fell headfirst into the trap and became obsessed with Dora. He actively enjoyed sighing over some love-interest that was way out of his reach.

Meanwhile I was learning Hebrew with its twenty-two consonants and twelve vowels but, more
particularly, I began to notice the real motives, beneath outward appearances, that were governing the school. By a clever twist in the rules, Father Pons made sure we respected the Sabbath: Saturday was a compulsory day of rest. We could only do our homework and learn our lessons after vespers on Sunday.

‘For Jews, the week begins on Sunday, for Christians it's Monday.'

‘How come?'

‘In the Bible − which Jews presumably read just as much as Christians − it says that when God created the world he worked for six days and rested on the seventh. We should do the same. According to Jews, the seventh day is Saturday. Later, the Christians wanted to make a distinction between themselves and the Jews, who didn't accept Jesus as the Messiah, and they maintained that it was Sunday.'

‘Who's right?'

‘What does it matter?'

‘Couldn't God tell people what he thinks?'

‘What really matters isn't what God thinks of people but what people think of God.'

‘Mm-yes . . . What I think is God worked for six days and then he hasn't done anything since!'

Father Pons always threw his head back and laughed at my indignant comments. I was constantly trying to minimize the differences between the two religions in order to reduce them to one; and he always deterred me from simplifying things.

‘Joseph, you want to know which of the two religions is the true one. But neither of them is! A religion can't be true or false, it's a template for a way of life.'

‘How do you expect me to respect religions if they're not true?'

‘If you only respect the truth, then you won't have much to respect. 2 + 2 = 4, that's the only thing you'll be able to respect. Apart from that, you'll keep coming across unreliable factors: feelings, expectations, values, choices − all fragile, fluctuating constructions. Nothing mathematical about them. Respect isn't about what's been confirmed, but what's been suggested.'

In December Father Pons's crafty double-dealing meant we celebrated the Christian festival of Christmas at the same time as the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, a trick that only the Jewish children noticed. On the one hand, we commemorated the birth of Jesus, decorated the crib in the village and
attended Christian services. On the other, we had to go to a ‘candle workshop' where we learned to make wicks, melt wax, dye it and mould the candles. In the evening we lit our finished works in the windows; the Christian children were, therefore, rewarded for their efforts while we Jewish children could secretly take part in the rites of Hanukkah, the Festival of Light, a time of games and gift-giving when people are expected to give alms and light candles at dusk. How many of us at the Villa Jaune were Jewish? And which of us? No one except Father Pons knew. When I had suspicions about one of my classmates, I never let myself pursue them further. Lie and let lie. That way lay safety, for all of us.

In 1943 the police descended on the Villa Jaune several times. Each time they picked a year-group and ran identity checks. Genuine or fake, our papers stood the test. Systematic searches through our cupboards failed to find anything either. No one was arrested.

All the same, Father Pons was worried.

‘For now we're only dealing with the Belgian police. I know those boys, or, if not them, at least their parents; when they see it's me they daren't push things too far. But I've heard that the Gestapo are
doing surprise raids . . .'

Even so, after every scare, life went back to normal. We ate little and badly, dishes made of chestnuts and potatoes, thin soups with turnips chasing each other round the bowl, and warm milk by way of pudding. We boarders got into the habit of breaking into someone's cupboard if he had received a parcel by post; then we might find a box of biscuits or a jar of jam or honey, and we had to eat it as quickly as possible for fear of being robbed of it in turn.

In the springtime, during a Hebrew lesson when we were safely locked inside his office, Father Pons was having trouble concentrating. Furrowing his brow, he even stopped hearing my questions.

‘What's the matter, Father?'

‘We're getting close to First Communion time, Joseph. I'm worried. I can't make the Jewish children who are old enough to take First Communion join in the ceremony with the Christians. It's impossible, I don't have the right. Not with respect to them or with respect to my faith. It would be sacrilege. What am I going to do?'

I didn't hesitate for a moment.

‘Ask Mademoiselle Marcelle.'

‘What makes you say that?'

‘If there's one person who'll do whatever they can to get in the way of communion, it's Dammit, don't you think?'

He smiled at my suggestion.

The following day I was allowed to go with him to the pharmacy in Chemlay.

‘He's such a sweetheart, that boy,' grumbled Mademoiselle Marcelle when she saw me. ‘Here, catch!'

She threw me a honey-flavoured pastille.

While my teeth struggled with the sweet, Father Pons explained the situation.

‘Damn it, that's no problem, Monsieur Pons. I'll give you a hand. How many of them are there?'

‘Twelve.'

‘You can just say they're ill! Bingo! All twelve confined to the infirmary.'

Father Pons thought it over.