The Sixth Lamentation (33 page)

‘This
is a telex from Paris to Department IV B4 in Berlin, dated August 1942,’ said
Mr Bartlett.

‘It is.’

‘From
Mr Schwermann?’

‘Yes.’

‘To
Adolf Eichmann?’

‘Correct.’

‘Please
tell the jury what this telex is all about.’

‘It
reports that a thousand Jews had been transported from Drancy to Auschwitz.’

‘Turn
the page, please. This is a memorandum referring to the same transport. What
does it record?’

‘That
sufficient food for two weeks had been provided in separate trucks by the
French government. ‘

‘This
was not an uncommon practice, Doctor Vallon, was it?’

‘No,
but—’

‘Don’t
be grudging with the facts, Doctor Vallon; it is there in black and white.
Provisions were being sent with these passengers .

‘I’m
not being grudging with the facts—’

‘This
is entirely consistent with resettlement, rather than extermination?’

Doctor
Vallon closed the folder and snapped, ‘None of the food was distributed. It was
taken by the guards at Auschwitz.’

Unperturbed,
Mr Bartlett said mildly, ‘Answer the question, please. The texts are consistent
with a perceived policy of emigration, and wholly inconsistent with a policy
of execution upon arrival, are they not?’

‘As
words on a page, possibly’

‘Don’t
scorn ordinary meaning, Doctor. These are words, not runes.

‘I’m
well aware of that:

‘Anyone
reading these documents could have understood them to reflect a policy of
resettlement outside France. Yes?’

‘An
ignorant reader might think that fifty years after the event, but not the
author. I keep stressing to you, he was a part of the machinery. There are
other SS memoranda in these files which expressly state the Jews were to be
ausgerottet
— eradicated.’

‘Yes, I
know,’ said Mr Bartlett in a measured, patient voice. ‘And none of them were
written by Mr Schwermann, were they?’

‘No,
but—’

‘And
there is not a shred of evidence that Mr Schwermann ever read them?’

‘Well,
we don’t know. ‘

‘There
is no suggestion that he used such language himself?’

‘Not as
such, but it is an obvious inference that he—’

‘Doctor
Vallon, we’ll leave the jury to do the inferring. Among this mass of
documentation there is not a single sentence that demonstrates Mr Schwermann
had explicit knowledge of extermination, is there?’

‘There
isn’t a piece of paper that says so, no.

‘And
there are lots of other pieces of paper that record very different terms to
ausgerottet,
terms that we know Mr Schwermann read and used.’

Doctor
Vallon had guessed the next direction of attack. He said, ‘Yes, and they’re all
tarnung
— camouflage.’

Mr
Bartlett opened a file. ‘Indeed,’ he said warmly ‘Perhaps now is the time to
consider the innocence of language, whose ordinary use can so easily trap the
unwary, even the likes of yourself. Please turn to File Nine, page three
hundred and sixty-seven, and consider the words on the schedule.’

A clerk
brought the file to Doctor Vallon, who went on to agree that the German High
Command were extraordinarily concerned about the vocabulary to be used when
describing the process of deportation to Auschwitz. It was variously described
as
Evakuierung
(evacuation),
Umsiedlung
(resettlement) and
Abwanderung
(emigration), or
Verschickung zur Zwangsarbeit
(sending away for
forced labour) . Even the architects and engineers at Auschwitz referred to the
gas chambers as
Badeanstalte für Sonderaktionen
(bathhouses for special
actions) . Their memoranda recorded the phrase in quotation marks. And, of
course, the entire apparatus of genocide was named
die Endlösung
(the
Final Solution) .

Mr
Bartlett said, ‘The whole point of the exercise is to deceive the reader or
listener, is it not? Someone somewhere is expected to believe the surface
meaning?’

‘Yes, I
accept that.’

‘There
were three meetings held in Paris to plan the Vél d’Hiv round-up. Mr Schwermann
attended two of them. The understanding was that those arrested would be
deported “for labour service” — is that right?’

‘Yes —
even though thousands of children would be taken.’

‘Phraseology
that Mr Schwermann could reasonably have taken at face value?’ pressed Mr
Bartlett.

‘I have
already told you, he is one of the deceivers, not one of the deceived. He will
have seen other documents that refer to extermination.’

‘Would
he? Do you always read the notes of the meetings you miss or avoid?’

‘As a
matter of fact I do.’

‘Do all
your colleagues?’

‘No.
No, they don’t, actually’

‘Thank
you, Doctor Vallon.’

Mr
Bartlett promptly sat down.

‘That
is enough for today,’ said Mr Justice Pollbrook with a weariness of having seen
it all before.

5

Lucy went to Chiswick Mall
and listened to the news with Agnes. There was a lengthy report on the evidence
of Doctor Vallon. Agnes listened impassively while Lucy broke ice cubes in a
saucer, feeding the melting fragments to her on a spoon. Agnes turned them over
in her mouth like boiled sweets, her eyes glazed as one hearing a dull story on
a wet afternoon.

Time
mocked the survivors, thought Lucy. Everyone who lasts long enough becomes an
end point in history, and then they must listen to others pass judgment upon
what they have not known. But even after all this time, could there be any
serious doubt? Schwermann must have understood the circumlocutions of his
masters, just as Pam had understood Freddie’s.

Chapter Thirty-Four

1

In the natural course of
things, Father Andrew made many decisions, passed off as ‘suggestions’, that
Anselm was unable to fathom. One such was the proposal that Anselm ‘might’ show
Father Conroy the North Country on the way to finding Victor Brionne. To Anselm’s
mind sightseeing did not blend with the task of confronting a fugitive
collaborator. But the ‘suggestion’ had been made. There was some sense to the
proposal: it transpired that Con was writing another book after all (only this
time he intended to ignore its likely condemnation by Rome) . Frequent travel
to the library at Heythrop College, London, and hours of drafting at Larkwood
had worn him out. He needed a break.

And so,
on the day Lucy listened to the considered views of Doctor Pierre Vallon, the
two men left Larkwood first thing after Lauds. With Conroy at the wheel they
sped north, the skies getting wider and brighter, the horizon flatter and
longer. Anselm’s mind opened like a plain and he saw scattered here and there,
like totems, the outline of those who had recently crossed his path; and Conroy
sang wonderfully mournful songs to himself about a betrayed woman and her
abandoned child, a young father on a British prison ship and a ditty on violent
child abuse. You had to cry; you had to laugh.

Anselm
turned his mind to the conversation with Father Chambray the night before,
noting bitterly how apposite it was that the truth should finally have made its
way out in a confessional. Father Pleyon, a monk of Les Moineaux, had betrayed
The Round Table. Unforeseen executions had followed. And by an inexplicable,
almost comic quirk of circumstance, Father Pleyon had become the new Prior. Why
was it, thought Anselm, that chance so often assisted the wicked? Schwermann
and Brionne had been handed a lifeline just when they might have been brought
to justice: their accomplice had become the Prior and had lived long enough to
secure their escape.

But
Father Chambray had pieced together some fragments. He had read the signs. He
had told Rome and they had done nothing. And, in dismay, he had left his Priory
and his church, a priest for ever in a wilderness without sacraments.

‘Con,’
said Anselm, ‘would you mind not singing for a moment?’

‘All
right, so.’

‘Tell
me again what Sticky Fingers told you.’ Anselm had already been told, but he
wanted to place the little Conroy had found out in context now that he had
spoken to Chambray

Conroy
pursed his lips, thinking. ‘The Vatican Secret Archive holds two reports from
Les Moineaux, and both had been withdrawn by your man Renaldi in early April
1995.’

‘Just
after Schwermann was exposed.’

‘Aye.
The first was written by Chambray shortly after the end of the war.

Anselm
knew what it contained, and he would soon see a copy

‘The
second was written a year or so afterwards by Pleyon, just before the Lord
called him to Himself. It was sent on to Rome by the new Prior with a note
saying the old skin didn’t get a chance to finish whatever he wanted to say

Anselm,
like Father Chambray, could now read the signs that had fallen into his hands.
He placed himself before an earnest, sincere Monsignor quietly watched by an
attentive Cardinal, each knowing the whole narrative set out by Chambray But
they had only disclosed the incomplete report of Pleyon, knowing it was the
beginnings of a self-preserving fiction. ‘I’m trying to protect the future from
the past,’ the Cardinal had said.

Conroy
returned to his singing and Anselm slept. They lunched and then pressed on,
saying little. As late afternoon cloud gathered over the rolling Cheviot Hills,
Conroy pointed to the signpost directing them to Victor Brionne’s hideaway After
a few miles of empty, windswept road they reached a display board, informing
the unwary that Lindisfarne was a tidal island. They were just in time to cross
the narrow causeway before the cold, slate-blue sea crept over the sands and
cut them off from the mainland. By the time they had found their bed and breakfast,
booked by Wilf the night before, no one could reach or leave the island.

When
night fell, Anselm left his companion in the bar and wandered outside, over to
a cluster of solid monastic ruins, a fortress carved out of the sky. Standing
alone with the wind in his face, he joined himself to the Celtic monks who had
once gathered beneath brooding arches by a sea that ran to the ends of the
earth; he said the psalms of Compline, as they had once done, while the sharp
night enclosed him. Then he walked along a rocky shore towards a large house
with its windows lit, the curtains left open. A wooden plaque on a gatepost
bore the name ‘Pilgrim’s Rest’. Anselm leaned on the adjoining wall, concealed
by darkness, looking in upon a play of domestic contentment.

Robert
Brownlow sat at a piano. Adults and children, seemingly endless in number,
passed to and fro across the glass as if on a stage, each with a walk-on part.
Most were laughing, cans or cups in their hands, little boys and girls with
beakers spiked with straws, and no one seemed to notice the old man seated by
the window, looking out into the night as if he were alone.

That
must be Victor Brionne, thought Anselm, and none of his family realise he
carries a secret, except perhaps Robert. All available generations had gathered
for a bash, untouched by the trial in London that had never been more than
words in a news-. paper, remote but disturbing if read, destined to be thrown
out with the cold leftovers within a day or so. Anselm suffered a stab of grief
on their behalf, Was it really necessary to pull down what had been built over
fifty years? Should the little boy with the beaker have to lose the grandfather
he thought he had? Or go to school and hear whisperings or taunts? But then
Agnes Embleton was approaching death, unknown to the judicial process, a
forgotten victim. Lucy had once been a child with a beaker spiked by a straw
but she had not been spared by ignorance. The vindication of one family
entailed the destruction of another.

Anselm
turned away heavily, wishing dearly that he did not have a part of his own to
play: the awful role of the minor character who brings the news he does not
understand, whose brief speech shatters unsuspecting lives, and who then walks
off for a smoke in the dressing room. That would be Anselm’s contribution to
the Brownlow family history.

Brownlow
Again Anselm strained to recover a stirring at the back of his mind evoking a
pleasant sensation. It was a name he’d known as a boy

2

Max Nightingale’s studio
was a single room above a pet shop in Tooting. He said he lived elsewhere but a
camp bed stood folded in the corner next to a small fridge, a Primus, a wobbly
clothing rail and other innumerable signs of sustained habitation. Leaning
against each wall were canvases stacked three or four deep. The walls
themselves were covered with work in progress. Light swam among the colour. It
was extraordinarily peaceful.