The Sixth Lamentation (14 page)

‘I’d
like to read it.’

‘I
burned every copy, thousands of ‘em. But I’m thinking of writing another. Now,
Father, your glass please, it’s empty.’

Anselm
was rapidly slipping out of his depth. These were Roddy’s waters, not his. But
by tomorrow night he’d be back in Larkwood obeying the bells, so he dived in
with Conroy and swam for his very life.

Anselm woke between two
and three in the morning, lying on the kitchen floor with a block of English
cheddar in one hand and a potato peeler in the other. Conroy was nowhere to be
seen. He could remember little of their conversation except for one exchange
which seemed to bring them both to sobriety. Conroy had asked what Schwermann
was supposed to have done, and Anselm had told him. Conroy’s face had darkened
and his features had contracted in pain. He’d played with his glass, rolling
its slender stem between his thick, gentle fingers.

Very
slowly he’d muttered, ‘Once you’ve heard a child cry out to heaven for help,
and go unanswered, nothing’s ever the same again. Nothing. Even God changes.’

Chapter Thirteen

The
first notebook of Agnes Embleton. 2nd May

Father Rochet was
right about the Germans. Within months of taking control a census of Jews was
ordered. At the time I was pregnant, so this would be late 1940. Madame Klein
and I had moved out of her apartment to a rental property she owned in the
eleventh arrondissement. ‘I do not want to be too conspicuous,’ she said. But
it was a strange thing to have done. For while she became just another face
among the crowd — the crowd in question was unmistakably Jewish where, with
all the others, she would easily be found. It was a poorish neighbourhood but
many of her friends from our musical evenings lived there. I think she wanted
to be with her people when the end came, for she knew I would be safe, come
what may as a ‘Christian’.

Madame Klein obeyed the census. I did not. The first round-up
followed a few months later, of foreign Jews. Shortly afterwards, every Jew had
to hand in their wireless to the police. She did, and I didn’t. Then there was
a huge round-up in our area, lasting about a week. By the time they’d finished,
all our friends from the music group had gone. Do you remember Mr Rozenwerg? I
saw him with two gendarmes. He walked calmly on to the bus wearing his prayer
shawl and a wonderful big fur hat. Twice they came to our door. Twice they
looked at my papers, nodded and told Madame Klein, my ‘grandmother’, not to
bother looking for hers. Isn’t that strange? She would not give herself up to
them, but neither would she take any forged papers from Father Rochet. But that
was Madame Klein. The net began to close, for the next orders were that Jews
could not change their address and had to obey a curfew

They knew where you lived and you couldn’t get out. The whole
rotten, stinking business was under way

Then Father Rochet called together his knights.

3rd May

My little boy was
about ten months old. So that would be early 1942. It was the same group as
last time. Except for Victor. Father Rochet had not spoken to him for months
and someone said they’d seen him dressed as a policeman. Father Rochet nodded.
Victor’s family apparently were very pleased with him.

The Round Table was ready to operate. Acting alone or in pairs, our
task was to collect children from a pickup point and take them outside Paris
where they would be hidden. Someone else would take over after that.

Jacques was the coordinator among ourselves. He would be the sole
link with Father Rochet and would tell each person where and when to do ‘a run’,
distributing any travel papers that might be needed. He was the natural choice
because members of his family, based in Geneva, handled the other end of the
escape route.

Father Rochet stressed that if caught, stay calm and blame him. ‘All
you have to do is say I told you the parents were ill, and I’d asked you to
take the children to stay with a relative. Leave the rest to me.’ I asked him
wasn’t he frightened of what they might do to him? ‘No, no,’ he laughed. ‘I’ve
lived among tombs all my life. I’m not scared of dying.’ Afterwards, Jacques
said that worried him because there was a weak streak in Father Rochet. He
often smelled of wine, even though he was a priest. He was the sort who might
well cave in under the pressure. ‘Never,’ I said.

I did several ‘runs’, my own boy on one arm, a little charge in the
other. They passed without hitch or hindrance.

4th May

About this time
there was another order from on high. All Jews had to register the names of
their children. That is what it was like. Every now and then there’d be a new
requirement or regulation affecting the Jews. The next one was to wear a
six—pointed star with ‘Juif’ printed across it. Jacques and some friends from
the university decided to protest by wearing a star with their names on. Come
to think of it, I think Jacques’ said ‘Catholique’. He was duly arrested. The
memory of that day is bitter for many reasons.

Almost overnight, thousands of people suddenly became visible,
separated from everyone else by a single piece of yellow cloth. I saw two
girls, twins, walking hand in hand, dressed in the same clothes, and with
sky-blue ribbons in their hair. Over their hearts, neatly sewn, were these
yellow stars the size of my hand. I stopped on the pavement and watched them
pass, dumbfounded.

That makes me think of Madame Klein, a week or so before the
regulation came into force. She is sitting by a tall lamp-stand, glasses on the
end of her nose, carefully sewing the yellow cloth on to her black dresses. She
has three of them. I don’t remember her going out any more. She took fresh air
by the window, describing the statues of musicians in Parc Monceau, or the
turns in the paths and the odd people she used to meet there.

Worried about Jacques after his arrest, I went to see Victor at
Avenue Foch, hoping he could help. On the way I saw Father Rochet. He looked
more dishevelled than usual and nipped down a side street. Anyway, Victor
crawled from under his stone and I asked if Jacques was all right. He couldn’t
even bring himself to speak to me. He just stared back in a way that scared me
and showed me the door.

A few days later I bumped into him on the Champs-Elysées. ‘I know
what you’re up to,’ he said. And he warned me to back off from the heroics. I
suppose I should have seen it then, that he was capable of selling us all down
the river. But it never entered my head. Instead, I did something which, I’m
ashamed to say I have often relived these past fifty years. I gave him a great
big belt across the face. It was glorious.

13th May

The end came on
14th July 1942, Bastille Day I had been given a ‘run’. It was straightforward
enough. I went to a dummy social club, set up by OSE, and there I collected a
little boy I met his mother. She was about my age but very beautiful, with dark
green eyes. Needless to say she was distraught. It was like a scene in a film
about a sinking ship. I am there, taking the boy who will survive, but with no
space left on the lifeboat. Anyway the mother had no papers, so the plan was I
would leave my boy with her and her son would come with me, relying on my
papers if we were stopped. Her last words to him were, ‘I’ll see you very soon.

I took the train from the Gare de Lyon to a village in Burgundy I
was met by a monk who took me to a convent with an orphanage. That was it. I
took the next train back to Paris.

I got to the social club in the middle of the afternoon. They told
me my boy had cried after I’d gone so I took him straight home. Trudging up the
stairs, I heard a low cough from am open door. It was an old busybody who lived
on the first floor, Madame Vigmot, who often complained about the noise. She
shook her head, pointing up at the ceiling. I leaned in. She whispered that
Madame Klein had been taken away She’d fought and they’d dragged her down the
stairs by her hair. Then three others had come, half an hour ago. They were
waiting upstairs. I asked for a description and one of them was obviously
Victor. There was a German soldier and a nurse.

I walked out on to the landing. That was the turning point in my
life. Because I could have walked down the stairs, on to the street and out of
Paris. But it was only Victor. He’d come to explain about Madame Klein, with
the nurse. All my papers were in order. There was nothing to fear. The German
just wanted to know why I was living with a Jew Anyway, I hadn’t seen Jacques,
I couldn’t just slip away So I went up the stairs. It all happened very
quickly, but in my mind it is painfully slow

The German soldier was Eduard Schwermann. I had seen him once
before, sitting with Victor in a café. Father Rochet had pointed them out to
me. Well, Schwermann barked something. Victor asked for my papers; everything —
birth certificate, baptism certificate, the lot. I passed them over. Another
bark. He wanted my parents’ papers. Shaking like a leaf, I dug them out of the
cupboard. My boy started to cry Schwermann didn’t look at a single piece of paper,
he just put them in his pocket. He barked again. ‘Downstairs,’ said Victor. Off
we went. The nurse followed.

I was taken into the street and round a corner, where a couple of
parked vehicles were waiting — a truck with some soldiers in the back and a
car. Both engines started. The rest is a blur. As I was being pushed into the
back of the truck Schwermann pulled my boy out of my arms and handed him to the
woman. She ran to the car and it pulled away I was dragged off my feet, kicking
and screaming. I can’t remember much after that.

21st May

I don’t know how
long I was locked up in Paris, and I don’t know when I left. But I was taken to
La Santé prison and later transferred to Auschwitz.

It was in that appalling place that I had a bit of luck. I’d been
there about four or five months. Up at 3 a.m. Standing in the yard until 7 a.m.
Then labouring till I dropped. Constant, indiscriminate beating. One afternoon,
a group of French women arrived. About two hundred or so. They marched through
the gates singing ‘La Marseillaise’ . They were political prisoners and their
detention at the camp was later the subject of a complaint by some government
or other. I didn’t get to know them immediately because I got typhus. For ten
months I was in quarantine, and that probably saved my life because I was
pulled out of the Auschwitz regime just as I was losing the will to survive. For
six months I lay in a bunk beside Collette Beaussart, a former journalist who’d
been deported because of what she thought rather than anything she’d done.
Every day we talked of the simple things we’d like to do if ever we were free.
She wanted to make jam and I wanted to eat it. I can’t remember what else we
said, but the words formed a sort of ladder and I clung on to them, unable to
move up but not slipping any further down. When I came out of quarantine, the
French politicals were being moved to Ravensbrück the next day in response to
the protest. By some clerical error, or so I thought, my name was on the
transfer list. In fact, Collette had told the camp officials I was one of their
number.

We left Auschwitz in 1944 and I remained at Ravensbrück until it was
liberated by the Russians. I worked like a slave in the Siemens factory, making
telephone equipment. I thought it would never end. When it did, the Germans
abandoned the camp, leaving a few of us behind to deal with the sick.

22nd May

I have often
wondered whether I should tell you about your past, never mind my own. But now
the two are inextricably linked. I cannot give you partial truths. So, read
these words slowly and understand that I hope not to hurt you. I’m telling you
part of your own history and, however painful it might be, it is yours and no
one else’s.

I met a woman who had only just arrived in the camp. I could not
understand her language, so I know nothing about her. Not even her name. I
think she was Polish. She had two children and was gravely ill. Ravensbrück was
a women’s camp so I can only assume her husband, your grandfather, had been
taken from his family at some time in the past.

You don’t need words to express certain things, or to understand
them. So I think, in what mattered, we made contact with one another. She knew
she was dying. She knew her children would be left all alone. She knew I was
the last person she’d ever speak to. Pleading sounds the same in any language,
and she asked me to do something, over and over. I held both her hands,
muttering helpless assurances in French. I knew she was begging me to look
after her twins, Freddie and Elodie. And I knew she was comforted by my
replies. She died while we were talking. Her hands lost their grip, as if she’d
let go of a rope, and she fell back. I did not have a name for her, until you
were born. I called her Lucy, after you. And you have grown to have her
delicate, haunting features.

The rest you know I returned to Paris with fifty or so other camp survivors.
We were all terribly thin and a waxy grey-green colour, with brown rings under
our eyes. As we lined up on the platform at Gare de l’Est, everyone stopped and
stared in silence. They began ‘La Marseillaise’ . It was the most moving moment
of my life. The last time I’d heard it was at Auschwitz.