by T D Griggs
‘Serge?’
He turned back. ‘Yes?’
‘You’ll be here tomorrow?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ve got an appointment in St Malo in the morning. Can you keep an eye on things here?’
‘Of course.’
‘And maybe we can grab a bite to eat tomorrow night, if you’re free.’
The invitation clearly surprised him, but I could see it pleased him too. He ducked his head shyly and stepped out into the night.
39
I had expected Rabbi Silbermann to be a scholar in his sixties, but he couldn’t have been much over thirty-five. He reminded me of a middle ranking bank official, careful, meticulous, and dark suited. He took the sheets from the printer and flicked rapidly through them, peering through steel framed glasses. He marked a passage here, a line there, in yellow highlighter.
‘There’s not much, Monsieur Madoc, I’m afraid. I was hoping I could show you more. But this is mostly background on the Rosen family from before the War. Certificates, qualifications and so on. Let me just make sure I haven’t missed anything.’
I waited patiently, gazing out of the window of his office at the ramparts of the old city. Holidaymakers were walking in the morning sunshine, posing and photographing one another in their bright clothes. Above the battlements the masts of ocean-going yachts trembled against an azure sky.
‘You’ve seen this photograph?’ Rabbi Silbermann showed me a print-out of the Rosen family group.
‘Yes. I have a copy.’
‘It was taken in February 1939. Gustave, Rachael and their daughter Madeleine. Christine tells me the boy was a local lad who lived with them. But perhaps you knew that?’
‘His name was Robert Hamelin. My father ferried him across the Channel a few years after this picture was taken, when Hamelin was with the Free French.’
‘And that’s why you’re interested in the Rosens? Because your father knew this boy?’
‘It’s one of the reasons.’ I opened my wallet. ‘This is a copy of a map my father brought with him when he escaped from St Cyriac in 1944. It’s La Divison, the Rosens’ family home.’
He took the sketch and studied it. ‘Why did he have this?’
‘That’s something I’d really like to know.’
He handed it back to me. ‘I wish I could help. I’m afraid I haven’t found much about the Rosens at all. Although I can tell you they were extremely unlucky.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Jews were being systematically marginalised almost from the start of the Occupation. There were Statuts des Juifs in October 1940 and June 1941 and all kinds of other regulations restricting their business activities. But they weren’t rounded up en masse until July 1942. Even then it was supposed to be only foreign Jews that were taken, although in practice any Jew who fell into the net was fair game. Still, I’d have expected the Rosens to be relatively safe until at least then. They were French citizens, with a strong tradition of service to the state. Gustave had been mayor, after all, and was a decorated veteran of the first war. So why were they arrested in May 1942? It sounds as if someone had a grudge against them.’
‘That sort of thing happened?’
‘Oh, certainly. A lot of betrayals were motivated by simple jealousy. Many of the Jewish doctors who were turned over to the Nazis were shopped by their own colleagues. Restaurateurs were betrayed by rival restaurateurs, housemaids by rival housemaids.’ He looked up. ‘You find that surprising?’
‘I guess we’d all like to think we’d behave differently.’
‘Sadly, we wouldn’t. None of us can imagine what it was like to live through those years. It was utter moral chaos.’
‘What do you mean by that, exactly?’
‘Have you ever seen photographs of St Malo in 1944, Monsieur Madoc? It was flattened. This ancient town you see from the window is entirely rebuilt, stone by stone. It took them nearly thirty years. The original city was bombed out of existence in a few weeks in 1944. Medieval churches, ancient houses, the 12th century Cathédrale-St Vincent - not to mention the homes of tens of thousands of people – bombed flat. Not by our enemies. By the Allied airforces, who wished to deny the place to the Germans.
‘St Malo wasn’t alone, of course. Scores of other Norman and Breton cities were destroyed, too. No doubt the cause was just. I would say it was, as a Jew. But it’s easy enough to understand how, if you lived here, you might believe yourself to be in the grip of insane forces against which no code of honourable conduct could prevail. You might look upon other people’s heroism as folly. You might be prepared to pay almost anything just to keep your wife and children safe. Forgive the lecture, but I repeat it every now and then to remind myself that these were just ordinary people. That it could just as easily have been us who sold out the Rosens and thousands like them.’
‘They were sent direct to the camps?’
‘Most of the Jews rounded up in France were taken to Drancy in northern Paris. It was a French-run transit centre. Over a period of months the inmates were sent by train to Auschwitz. Very few came back.’
He held up a single sheet of paper. It was the scanned-in print of an original document, and I glimpsed blockish type, an official crest, and the claw of a stamped swastika.
‘It’s a transit order,’ Silbermann said, ‘made out by one Oberleutnant Diermann, at the local Waffen-SS HQ. Two Jewish adults and a juvenile. Family name: Rosen.’
‘That’s all there is?’
‘After they left St Cyriac, that’s it.’ He put the paper with half a dozen others and handed them to me. ‘It’s unusual for a family to disappear quite so completely. The checkin system at the camps was pretty meticulous. And a lot of effort went into tracking down missing Jews after the War – by the Jewish community, the police, various charities, family members. But there were thirty million displaced persons floating around Europe in 1945. A lot of people just vanished.’
‘Did no one know the Rosens outside the village?’
‘No one who chose to remember, it seems. They weren’t active in the Jewish community, they had no surviving family. There was no one to bear witness. They were just shoved onto a railway truck, and dropped off the edge of the world. It’s not the most dramatic story from our archive, but it’s no less tragic for that.’
‘Did anyone witness the arrest?’
Silbermann lifted his index finger. ‘Ah, now, that at least is documented. May I?’ He took the papers back from me. ‘A local man saw the police arrive at the Rosens’ home, bundle them into a car and drive them away. All over in a few seconds – the house left open, a meal still cooking on the stove. The witness went in and turned the gas off, he says. The least he could do. That kind of thing.’
‘Who was he, this witness?’
‘It’s here somewhere.’ As he thumbed awkwardly through the papers they slid from his hands. ‘Damn.’ He got down on his knees and gathered them.
‘And who took his statement?’
He looked up at me. ‘A Red Cross mission after the War. The witness says he wanted to intervene, but didn’t dare. Not that you can blame him. Half-a-dozen armed thugs in uniform turn up and arrest your neighbour; you’d be a brave man to get in the way. And it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had.’
Silbermann stood up, took out his steel-rimmed glasses and put them on.
‘Here we are.’ He traced his finger down to the bottom of the page. ‘Your witness was a chap called Garnier. Mathieu Garnier.’
I drove back towards St Cyriac with Silbermann’s photocopies on the seat beside me and the image of the Rosens’ arrest in my head – Rachael and Madeleine clinging together, portly Gustave struggling to retain some dignity. And young Mathieu Garnier watching helplessly as they were driven away, then entering Rachael’s neat kitchen to turn off the gas under the dinner the family would never return to eat.
I pulled up on the verge just above the bridge over the Vasse. Here and there weekend an
glers sat with picnic baskets and iPods. I stood at the parapet and gazed down towards the mouth of the river. To my right the water rushed through the antique sluices which fed the pools where cress grew in vivid green carpets. The air was filled with flashing dragonflies and birdsong.
40
Henri’s place was half-empty when we arrived at a little after eight that night, but was beginning to fill up by the time Serge had finished his second plate of frites and was working on his third. I had stopped eating some time before.
We were sitting at a window table, just beside the door. Boats jostled in the little harbour. The Gay Dog was moored against the staging directly opposite the restaurant. Gunther had been working on a splendid wooden figurehead now mounted on the bow – a bare-breasted woman, almost life-sized, with golden tresses and blue saucer eyes. This vision rose from time to time above the edge of the quay, glanced coquettishly at me and dropped out of sight again.
Conversation between Serge and me had been stilted at first, but a couple of glasses of wine had loosened him up and we’d been chatting about the house and the building work. Quite suddenly he put down his knife and fork.
‘I do love her, you know,’ he said.
He sat very straight and stared defiantly into my eyes.
‘Love,’ I repeated. The word hung in the air between us.
‘I don’t suppose I’m exactly what you hoped for. Not for Katrine.’
‘Is that what you are, Serge? For Katrine?’
‘For as long as she wants, I am.’ His chin lifted. ‘I don’t imagine you think I’m good enough.’
‘Lighten up, Serge,’ I said. ‘I’m her father. Nobody’s good enough.’
‘After what you’ll have heard about me, I mean.’
I said nothing.
‘It’s not all true,’ he blundered on, ‘though some of it’s true enough. And I just want you to know that all that’s behind me. I haven’t been in any trouble for three years, Monsieur Madoc, and there isn’t going to be any more of it. I’ve worked really hard. I’m going to graduate, and when I do…’ He faltered as he saw the look in my eyes. ‘You haven’t heard?’
I couldn’t help smiling. ‘Not a thing.’
‘You will,’ he said, hoarsely.
‘I don’t pay much attention to gossip.’
I poured us both another glass of wine. He drank some but didn’t say anything. The silence lengthened and became awkward. Finally, when I was on the point of making some flippant remark just to break the tension, Serge pulled a couple of sheets of paper out of his jacket pocket and handed them to me across the table.
‘I nearly forgot, Monsieur Madoc. These are for you.’
‘What’s this?’
‘Tide tables. For the night your father escaped – 14th of June 1944, right? The night the priest was killed.’
I glanced at the sheets with their dense columns of figures. ‘Jesus, Serge, this looks like nuclear physics…’
He moved his chair around so that he could see the print-outs. ‘Here. On 14th of June, 1944, low tide at St Cyriac was 22.31 hours.’
‘And high tide?’
‘About six hours later, obviously. Here: 04.15 on the morning of 15th of June.’
‘But it would have been light by then.’
‘Pretty much broad daylight, at that time of year.’
‘So all that time, between ten-thirty on the night of 14th of June and four-fifteen the next morning, the tide was running into the estuary?’
‘That’s what it says here.’
‘And they couldn’t have got out against the tide?’
‘No chance in a sailing dinghy.’
‘But Dr Pasqual heard the church clock strike twelve on their way through the village. And Mathieu Garnier told him that as soon as my father saw the boat they couldn’t hold him back. So we’re talking one or two o’clock, latest, when they set sail.’
Serge frowned. ‘But –’
A battered Chrysler truck drew up outside and parked carelessly between the iron bollards on the quay. The Garniers got out. There were three of them this time, the old man, his son Yannick, and a second younger man, whom I took to be Yannick’s brother and was cast in the same mould: big, powerful and shabby. Serge stiffened. I felt the same way.
The three men came into the restaurant, laughing loudly at some shared joke. As he closed the door Yannick’s gaze brushed across me, and then on to Serge. But he kept his eyes stony and followed the others wordlessly to the bar.
‘Are you still hungry?’ I asked when they were out of earshot.
‘Lost my appetite.’
I took out my wallet, and looked around to catch Henri’s eye. I couldn’t see him at first, but then he appeared from the crowd around the bar carrying a fresh bottle of Muscadet. He cracked his napkin like a whip and set the bottle down between us.
‘From the gentleman at the bar.’ Henri splashed a little wine into each glass. ‘Using the term somewhat loosely.’ He stalked away.
Serge and I looked at the bottle and at one another.
‘You could always send it back,’ he suggested.
‘Discretion is the better part of valour,’ I said majestically. I filled his glass.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I haven’t got the balls to make a scene. You stay here. I’d better find out what this is all about.’
The Garniers were at the far end of the bar, the boys either side of the father. All three were smoking and there were beers set up in front of them. The room was crowded now and there was a steady burble of conversation and laughter, but it petered out as I made my way between the tables. Yannick was in the middle of a story, but he stopped as I approached, his mouth still open. He nudged his father, who glanced up, put down his glass and slid from his bar stool to face me. The old man bared yellow teeth.
‘Monsieur Madoc,’ he said, and stuck out his hand. ‘Hope you enjoy the wine.’
I took his hand, not knowing what else I could do. ‘I’m not sure I know what I’ve done to deserve it.’
‘Oh, just being neighbourly,’ he said. ‘I want to put that little misunderstanding behind us. I had a word with Dr Pasqual, see, and, well, he’s a wise old bird. Pointed out that me and Yannick were out of order that day. That you probably didn’t know the way things were done around here.’
‘Did he?’ I said.
I tried to imagine frail Dr Pasqual dressing down this old villain, like some kindly headmaster reprimanding the school bully.
‘Now don’t get me wrong, Monsieur. Private property’s private property, when all’s said and done. But we weren’t very welcoming. What with the dog and all. Yannick feels the same way.’ He turned to the bar. ‘Yannick?’
His son lifted his beer glass the merest fraction in my direction. The other boy stared fixedly at the counter top in front of him.
‘Matter of fact,’ Garnier said, ‘you’ve done us a favour. We could never decide about La Division, but it’s high time we did something with it. And now we will.’
‘Will you? What will you do?’
‘It’s a danger to life and limb, that old place. Like I said, that’s why we don’t want people poking around it. We’ll have it pulled down. My younger boy, Stephan here, he’s going to build a bungalow, when the weather improves. He’s getting married, see.’ Garnier leaned forward and gripped my elbow. ‘You go back and drink your wine now, Monsieur Madoc, and we’ll forget that little spot of unpleasantness, eh?’
I made to pull back but he tightened his grip and brought himself close enough for me to smell his sour breath. ‘But a word to the wise. If I was you I wouldn’t trust that gipsy kid. I wouldn’t trust none of them, but especially not him.’
He released me and turned away before I could reply. I went back to the table. After a few minutes the Garniers trooped out again, nodding to us they passed, and drove away into the night.
‘Monsieur Madoc?’ Serge ventured after a while.
‘I’
m not supposed to trust you,’ I said. ‘That’s according to the Pillar of the Community.’
‘Well, there’s a surprise.’ He took a sip of wine. ‘Anything else?’
‘They’re going to knock La Division down. Knock the old farmhouse down and build a bungalow.’
‘Why now? After all this time?’
‘It’s young Stephan. He’s in love, too. There’s a lot of it about.’
Serge opened his eyes very wide.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe it either.’
41
Wind rattled branches against scaffolding. I glanced at the glowing numerals of my watch: 4.32. I was keenly aware of the emptiness of the house around me, of the noises and unfamiliar shadows.
I knew that I would not be able to sleep again, so I got up and made some coffee and drank it at the kitchen table. When it grew light enough, I took the map from my wallet, grabbed my fleece, and let myself out of the house.
The last streetlamps of the village fell away behind me, and the dawn sky opened like a vault, a quarter moon riding between ribs of cirrus. After fifteen minutes I stood panting by the Celtic cross while a startlingly cold wind hissed through the hawthorns. At the bottom of the slope I moved into the trees and followed the path until I could see the paddock at the back of La Division.
The entire seaward fence had been replaced. The new barrier was higher than before and topped by razor wire. I rested my hands against the cold metal and this small and almost silent contact triggered a frantic barking. The dog came bounding through the grass, teeth bared.
I stood back.
I could see the old farmhouse away to my left, half smothered by the undergrowth, now utterly unreachable. Soon it would be gone altogether, and some breezeblock cube would squat over the site of the Rosens’ home. I turned and walked away towards the beach.
I took out the gold sovereign and rolled it between my fingers. A fulmar sailed across the sky high above, touched by the rising sun. I watched it for a moment then sat against the grass bank that edged the sand, drinking in the sounds of the sea, trying to order my thoughts.