The Sixth Lamentation (10 page)

It wasn’t me who made the choice that set us apart. It was Jacques.
By then he was studying Classics at the Sorbonne. He turned up once ‘by chance’
at the Conservatoire and I showed him Chopin’s death mask and a cast of Paganini’s
long pointed fingers. He said something about relics in Saint Eugene across
the road. When I told Madame Klein that night about our meeting, her eyes
narrowed and after a long pause she said, ‘I think you should go for him,’ and
I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ A week later I saw him at a recital when I hadn’t
said I was playing. Shortly afterwards, by an old bookstall where the shelves
were fastened to the outside wall, he muttered, ‘There’s something I have to
tell you.’ But he couldn’t get the words out. I had to put various suggestions
to him. He shook his head mournfully after each one. Eventually he looked away
from me and grimaced, ‘I think I might be attached to you.’ I felt nothing. But
I woke the next morning with a fountain spurting from the pit of my stomach.

19th April.

Victor must have
known, but he said nothing. Maybe because we never spelled it out he never took
it seriously Remember, words were very important to him. If something hadn’t
been reduced to language he didn’t understand it. And, appropriately writing
that sentence reveals how careless I was. For Victor wrote poems for me and I
should have taken him, of all people, at his word. They were lofty with plenty
of classical allusions, making them sufficiently impersonal to be safe. I kept
them in a book. I should have told him to stop, but I didn’t. You see, on the
face of it we were a trio, and I didn’t want to cut Victor off. But lurking
within that laudable sentiment was the truth — a reluctance to give up the
attention he gave me. Against myself I encouraged him, ever so slightly, but I
did it without really meaning it. It’s called vanity.

I told Jacques that Victor was just showing off. Our failure to
speak up became a sort of conspiracy of pleasure between us, in the secret kept
from Victor who blindly carried on. I remember the three of us looking over the
waters of Launette to the Isle of Poplars at Ermonville. Victor recited
something about Euterpe’s aching soul before Rousseau’s empty tomb. Jacques and
I listened, watching creamy clouds drift across the sky, making his words our
own. But I knew Victor wrote them for me. Maybe Jacques did as well.

And there you have it. Jacques and I, and Victor soon to be
disappointed. That was the beginning of the end.

Same day

And all the while
something else was under way The weekly musical gatherings, the summer outings,
had brought us all together and we grew up side by side. Through the keyhole,
after everyone had gone one Sunday might, I could see them. Father Rochet
finishing off the bottles. Madame Klein at the table, telling him not to drink
too much. But each of them looking very pleased with themselves. Looking back,
I can see it was the beginning of The Round Table. Father Rochet was calling
together his knights for when the time was right.

Chapter Ten

1

Anselm’s presence during
that harrowing confrontation in the woods had established an understanding
between him and Salomon Lachaise such that future relations could never be
characterised by mere acquaintance. They had stood on the same burning ground.
A few days later, just before his flight to Rome, Anselm knocked unannounced at
the door of ‘The Grange’, a small B&B with a name plaque of heavy iron. He’d
planned a walk deep within the monastic enclosure to The Hermitage, a shack by
a stream where no one ever went except with the Prior’s permission — which he
had obtained. Salomon Lachaise emerged, smiling and expectant, and Anselm led
him back to the Priory to a locked oak door in a high wall of Saxon flint.

The
bent key was ancient and large and required both of Anselm’s hands in the
turning. The door swung open and they stepped through into the hungry silence
of the fields. As with many hidden places in the grounds of a monastery, the
fact that it was cut off produced in those who entered a surprising sensation
of having been freed, set loose from a captivity they had barely recognised.
With a light step they set off for The Hermitage in the distance.

‘How
long will you stay?’

‘Until
he goes.

Anselm
said, with feeling, ‘It was most unfortunate that you should meet him in the
way you did … without warning … or preparation.’

‘I
could never have prepared myself.’ His relaxed face scanned the rolling fields,
sunlight flashing upon his heavy glasses. ‘Anyway, I always look for something
to be grateful for.’

Anselm
flinched at the notion of thanks. But Salomon Lachaise said, ‘I am glad my
mother was not there, to see him and to see me before him. It would have been…’The sentence vanished, not through emotion but because the right word did
not exist.

Anselm
asked, ‘Does she know that you are here?’

‘She
died before he was exposed,’ he replied evenly ‘I am also grateful for that.’

‘Tell
me about her,’ said Anselm, tugging, he suspected, at the one significant
thread of a seamless garment.

‘In
many ways I am here on her behalf. Her story will never be told. And neither
will mine.’

Anselm
understood that to be an imposing refusal, but Salomon Lachaise continued as
though it had been a preface:

‘Like
so many others, the war told her who she was and who she wasn’t. She thought
she was a young Frenchwoman, a Parisian, with a sister, two brothers and the
usual clutch of uncles and aunts … and, out of mind, a couple of estranged
German grandparents she’d never known. There’s always someone that everybody
else isn’t speaking to. Then France fell and the occupier told her she was
Jewish — on account of the grandparents. She’d never seen a synagogue in her
life.’

Anselm
slowed, for Salomon Lachaise was keeping slightly back; but the small man
maintained his position, almost out of sight, close to the shoulder of his
guide. His deep voice came on the air, while Anselm could only see the empty
fields, the wild abundance of the grass.

‘My
mother and I escaped to Switzerland with the help of a smuggling ring known as
The Round Table. Then the border closed. The rest of the family were taken…’

Anselm
said, to the breeze, ‘Did she know anyone, where she settled?’

‘No.
Like all the others she lived waiting, waiting, waiting … during the war… after the war … until she died … in some sense always waiting. But
no one else survived.’

The
bare grass ran to a long line of trees, their tops hazy where the
phosphorescence of the sky fell upon them. Diffuse sunlight picked out against
the vague green a sloping wall of The Hermitage.

‘Hitler,
she liked to say, had been responsible for her conversion. Confronted with
such evil, she said, there had to be a God. She crossed the border a believing
Jew There were many like her … alone, cut off, yet free … and there was
help. She opened a kosher shop beneath a bridge … in a sort of cavern …
the shelves were packed with mysteries last seem by Solomon. And yet …
paradise? Not quite. The shop became a meeting place for those who’d got out,
and all of them were looking for someone, hoping by a wild chance that they
might turn up. My mother did what she could to help, refusing payment, wiping
the slate clean, but most of all she simply listened. She never mentioned her
own loss. Ever since, hope, for me, has not been about anticipation … but
endurance. Like the food taken at Passover, from a very early age I was introduced
to the bitter and the sweet.’

They
reached The Hermitage. Salomon Lachaise stared at the parched silver timbers
with wonder, as though they were part of the Holy City. Through age and want of
repair the whole shack sloped to one side. A covered veranda fronted a stream
that chattered between low banks towards a copse. Anselm said:

‘We’re
allowed to come here for a few days at a time. There’s tap water, a stove, a
couple of chairs and a bed … little else.’

They
sat in the shade of the veranda, and Anselm asked, ‘Did you ever find out
anything about your family … those you lost?’

‘We
only ever talked of them once,’ said Salomon Lachaise. ‘I asked, late one night
when I was in bed. She said, “Get up and put your coat on.” I did. Back we went
to the shop. She pulled out a cardboard box of photographs and a menorah …
and there, by the dim light of eight candles, she gave me through tears the
names for the faces … then she put them back under the counter. That was as
far as she could go.’

‘She
kept them in the shop?’

As if
explaining what should not be uttered, he replied, ‘She spent her waking life
there, in that cavern.

Anselm
held in his mind the image of a woman, alone, the till counted, ready for home.
She locks herself in, comes back, lights the candles and reaches for the box,
that lid. Ah, thought Anselm … that’s why she turned the key … to let
her tears free. He said, ‘So you never learned anything about them?’

‘No. At
first, I constructed lives for them. Later, I took refuge in learning. It was a
most remarkable sensation that only left me as I got older, but I would read
through the night as if those strangers of my blood were there in the room,
inhabiting the shadows. That is how I reclaimed them for myself. And, with
their help, I did well at school. It was said I had considerable promise.

‘That
must have been a joy for your mother.’

‘It
was. But there was very little money around. I was expected to work in the
shop, but then … my life changed.’

‘What
happened?’ asked Anselm.

‘Something
extraordinary. At the beginning of the term I was due to leave school I was
summoned to the headmaster’s office. Sitting in his chair was a wiry fellow
with a stiff, self-important manner — a lawyer, it turned out — who had come on
his client’s behalf to see me. His message was simple enough. He had received
funds from “a survivor” to secure me a university education.’

Anselm,
marvelling, said, ‘Some would call that a blessing.’

‘Indeed,’
replied Salomon Lachaise with a numinous, inquisitive smile. ‘So you would. My
mother did the same. She spent the remainder of her days trawling over the
names of all those she had helped, wondering who it might have been so she
might thank them. She saw a door open before me, and in due course I passed
through to a whole life, a whole universe I would never have otherwise known.’

‘And
your patron’s identity remained a secret?’

‘Yes.’

Salomon
Lachaise explained that the lawyer had entrusted administration of the finances
to a local solicitor of his choosing — insisting on separate representation in
case a conflict of interest arose between his client and the young Lachaise.

‘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.’