The Sixth Lamentation

by William Brodrick

  ‘I knew it was you from your outfit,’ said Conroy ‘Here, give us your bag,’ and off he went, whistling, while Anselm trailed behind, all pores opening.

  Conroy compressed himself into a flaming red Fiat Punto, with Anselm at his side, and took the autostrada to the city.

  Crossing the Grande Raccordo Anulare and accelerating towards the west bank of the Tiber, Anselm sensed a gradual disintegration in conventional road positioning. A slanging match of horns, bewildered voices and Latin passion tumbled through the open window, while Conroy made various offensive hand signals to right and left. There seemed to be a wide digital vocabulary the sophistication of which had completely escaped Anselm’s well-informed schooldays. The whole mêlée was thrashed out under the blessed heat of the sun and a cloudless cobalt sky

  ‘Been here a month now and I’m beginning to get the hang of it,’ said Conroy, his gesturing arm at rest on the doorsill. ‘I thought Rio was bad, sure. But here you’ve got to play to kill. No arsing around, you know, or they’ll have your cojones on pasta.

  Anselm didn’t quite know how to respond. It wasn’t the usual language of recreation at Larkwood. He kept a firm grip on the door handle while Conroy clattered on.

  ‘I’m brushing up my theology. Then back to Paula and the kids.’

  Paula? Kids? Anselm had to reply He’d start with the children.

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Too many’ Conroy waved his first and little finger at a priest on a bike.

  Anselm’s eyes widened involuntarily ‘I see,’ he observed, politely sympathetic but resolved now to make no further enquiry about Father Brandon Conroy’s domestic arrangements. Each took a side—glance at the other.

  ‘Loosen up, Father, I’m only having a laugh,’ chuckled Conroy his hands off the wheel while he scratched his shoulders. ‘Street kids. The homeless. São Paulo. I’ve been at it thirty—five years.

  Anselm laughed. Small buttons flew off some carefully ironed garment of childhood restraint. He’d never met anyone like Conroy in his life, except perhaps Roddy: they both gave copiously from the wine of themselves. The Punto weaved its way into the narrow streets of Trastevere and Conroy, tired of rambling, turned to enquiry:

  ‘Anyway, what brings you to Bernini’s twisted columns?’

  ‘My Prior received a fax asking me to attend a meeting at four o’clock tomorrow ‘

  ‘Sounds serious.’

  ‘It is. We’ve just had a Nazi land on us claiming “sanctuary”.’

  ‘My arse.’

  ‘Funnily enough, that’s what my Prior said:

  ‘Really?’ asked Conroy, surprised, gesturing in response to an attack of horns.

  ‘Not in quite the same terms.’

  ‘Thought not.’

  They drove on. Conroy was thoughtful. He’d slowed down his driving and the roads were somehow all the quieter for it. He said, ‘Who’s your meeting with?’

  ‘Cardinal Vincenzi.’

  Conroy chewed his bottom lip. ‘There’s only one other higher than your man, and that’s Himself.’ The jester was no longer at the wheel. With the earnestness of experience he asked, ‘But why you?’

  ‘I used to be a lawyer and I speak French. Our visitor was based in Paris during the war. That’s all I can think of.’

  ‘Father, let me give you some advice, all right? I know this place.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Let’s just say I’ve had my little run-ins. If you’re going to get dragged into Church politics, you’re entering one of those tents at the circus packed with curved mirrors, twisting and pulling things out of shape. Be careful. Don’t go by appearances. Nothing’s what it seems here.’

  The car came to an abrupt halt and they walked into San Giovanni’s, Conroy restored to his former self, shouting out for peaches, Anselm trailing behind, subdued.

  2

  Beniamino Cardinal Vincenzi, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, welcomed Anselm as if he were an old friend from whom he had been separated by cruel misfortune. He had a disarming warmth wholly Italian in its excess, which almost concealed his formal identity — that of a highly polished diplomat more familiar with crisis than tranquillity. He was short and round with dark olive skin, the burden of his office carried by gleaming eyes that lured condolence as he spoke. He drew Anselm to one of three elegant chairs forming an intimate triangle at the furthest end of the room. One chair was already occupied by a priest in a neat black soutane, a red sash draped across one knee. He was introduced as Monsignor Renaldi. Of paler skin than his master, he conveyed a similar warmth, its expression subdued by an air of professional competence. He had the happy sheen of a recently appointed Recorder. Anselm took his seat by a small, highly polished table with legs like a dancer on tiptoe. A green cardboard folder lay upon it. Bright sunshine flooded through graceful windows on to paintings of sober men dressed in scarlet. They watched with old, expressionless eyes, keeping their own secrets.

  Cardinal Vincenzi said, ‘Father, I must give you some delicate information, the sort that is never printed. What you are about to be told you must not repeat, save to your Prior. You must appreciate that with an institution like the Church one cannot always allow the complete truth to meet the stream of public enquiry. There’s a place and a time. Occasionally that moment never arrives. It can be very difficult, keeping silent about what you know That burden of silence will now be placed upon you.

  Monsignor Renaldi smiled at Anselm encouragingly, as though it were a burden that had its rewards.

  The Cardinal said, ‘I have sought your help because of the arrival of Eduard Schwermann at your Priory.’

  Flattered and slightly inflated, Anselm nodded with self-conscious gravity.

  ‘A great deal is already known about him, but we know a little bit more, something that would greatly compromise the Church if ever it were made public: He was a man of expansive gestures, but his arms lay still, as if wearied. ‘Monsignor Renaldi will explain.’

  ‘Let me give you the stark outline of the problem we face.’ The Monsignor spoke confidentially like a calm doctor before a specialist operation. Anselm noted the reddish tint to the cheeks, a morning inflammation caused by shaving close enough to draw blood. ‘Immediately after the fall of France, Eduard Schwermann was posted to Paris. He was only twenty-two. He served as an SS-Unterscharführer in the Jewish Affairs Service of the Gestapo and his duties involved supervising the deportation of Jews to the death camps. A French policeman of roughly the same age, Victor Brionne, was assigned to the same department. They were, shall we say colleagues. So, we have two young men, a low-ranking German officer and a collaborator, both involved in grave crimes against humanity:

  Monsignor Renaldi paused, widening his warm eyes slightly. ‘Let me now take you from Paris to Notre-Dame des Moineaux, a Gilbertine Priory in Burgundy It is at the centre of a smuggling operation to hide Jewish children, as a result of which its Prior, Father Morel, is shot against the monastery wall in July 1942.’

  Anselm felt the burdened eyes of the Cardinal upon him. Monsignor Renaldi patiently smoothed an eyebrow with a delicate finger and continued, ‘Now we come to our problem. We don’t know what evidence has been presented to the police in England but we in Rome are certain of this: the Allied forces broke out of Normandy at the end of July 1944. The war was over. Schwermann and Brionne fled Paris together and arrived at Les Moineaux on the twentieth of August 1944. De Gaulle marched into Paris a week later. Both men lay concealed until December 1944. They left with forged identity papers. As far as we know, neither of them was seem again.

  A charged, heavy silence fell. Sensing an invitation to speak, Anselm said, ‘That’s inexplicable.’

  ‘We have been thinking about these facts longer than you, but our conclusion is much the same,’ replied the Cardinal.

  ‘Are there any monks left from that time?’

  Monsignor Renaldi said, ‘Only one is ali
ve, a Father Chambray, but he returned to the world shortly after the war. We’ve already approached him, but unfortunately he was not entirely cooperative.’ Moving on rather too quickly he said, ‘We are lucky enough, however, to have a report that was written by the Prior in early 1945.’ He reached for the green folder on the table and withdrew several sheets of pale yellow paper.

  ‘Before you read this,’ he said, ‘I want to say something about the author. It was written by Father Pleyon, a man who quietly acquired a great reputation for wisdom and holiness. He came from a distinguished family with extensive political and diplomatic connections and would in all probability have followed the path of his forefathers into government service had the Lord not called him to the hidden life. But as you no doubt know, certain lights cannot be concealed. He became a confessor to those who carried the responsibilities he might have borne, individuals who often have no guide competent enough to understand the peculiar problems that come with worldly authority. It was this man who became Prior after the execution of Father Morel, and it was this man who presided over the escape of the two men with whom we are now concerned.’

  Monsignor Renaldi handed the papers to Anselm.

  The report was addressed to the Prior General of the

  Gilbertine Order. A covering note showed it had been passed on to the Vatican, into the hands of Archbishop Alfredo Poli, Secretary of the Cipher, who had simply marked it: ‘Noted’.

  Anselm turned to the front page. After the usual obeisance, Father Pleyon had described the events already reported to Anselm The text went on:

  The smuggling ring was called The Round Table and involved a former member of the community, Father Rochet, who had been based in Paris. This monk had left Les Moineaux in disgrace, although I do not think it necessary or relevant to disclose the circumstances of his departure. I beg your indulgence on this matter, for I would prefer to protect my brother monk’s dignity by not formally recording the reason for his ignominious downfall. Prior to his departure I managed to secure a placement for him in a parish where 1 had connections, informing in advance a family known to me for many years named Fougères who, I was sure, would give him a warm welcome. I cannot be certain of this, but it seems that from their meeting was eventually to spring the smuggling operation to which I have referred. As you are aware, France fell in June 1940. Father Rochet visited Les Moineaux in the October after a census of Jews had been ordered in Paris by the Nazis. He came with his proposal for The Round Table which was accepted by the then Prior, Father Morel. The function of the Priory was to hide the children in the orphanage run by our sister community and to provide false identity and travel documents — the skills required to produce such things being possessed by two of our monks when they were in the world, one an artist, the other a printer.

  In unknown circumstances The Round Table was tragically broken in July 1942 and Father Morel was shot. Fortunately the detachment of soldiers that came to carry out the execution did not search the convent. Had they done so they would have found several children whose passage to Switzerland was still under preparation. I became Prior and was holding that office when Schwermann and Brionne arrived in August 1944.

  Anselm turned the page and read the last few sentences:

  I used my connections to facilitate their escape to England with false identities. Schwermann was given the name Nightingale; Brionne was called Berkeley The reason I took this grave step is complex, and I now set out a full explanation which, you will readily understand, treads upon matters of profound secrecy. Appearances were never perhaps as deceptive as that which I now disclose.

  Anselm glanced down the page, scanning the empty lines.

  Monsignor Renaldi said, ‘While we are fortunate in having the report at all, we are not so fortunate in that Father Pleyon died before he could complete his revelation.’

  ‘Not a good time to die,’ Anselm said, handing the letter back to Monsignor Renaldi.

  ‘That was our conclusion,’ said Cardinal Vincenzi, settling his paternal gaze upon Anselm. ‘No doubt you see our difficulty. We do not have an explanation that meets the facts.’ Speaking fluidly as though there was no time to pause, he went on, ‘You may have heard about priests and prelates helping fleeing Nazis’ — Anselm had, but it was so vague and so beyond his own experience of the Church that it lay on the fringes of relevance, almost as a fiction — ‘and that is another problem on my desk, but you can forget all about that.’ As if to wave away any possible connection, he added, ‘At the time, the Church was very concerned about the advance of communism, and out of that fear some of our wayward sons assisted fascists on the run.’ It was a local problem, his tone suggested. ‘The institution forever has its prodigals. In due course I will have to answer for them.’ He gave a worn, sour smile. ‘But, as I say, you can forget that.’

  Smoothly removing any hiatus for reflection, Monsignor Renaldi said, ‘The unanswered question remains: why did this community hide these two young men? It is perhaps stating the obvious, but the only ones who need to escape are those with something to fear. That is our worry. And, in the absence of an explanation, we are forced to consider logic.’

  The application of reason alone to such a problem struck Anselm as a particularly desperate measure. And somewhat unconvincing. But nothing had been hidden. They had told him all there was to know Monsignor Renaldi said, ‘I understand you were once a lawyer.’

  ‘Yes, but not a particularly good one. My practice was restricted to hopeless cases, and they tended to stay that way’

  ‘Well,’ said the Monsignor appealingly half-amused, ‘what do you make of this one?’

  The question jarred with Anselm. It was an approach he used to follow at the Bar when trying to prompt an intelligent, obviously guilty crook into seeing sense; it often pulled them on side. However, the vulnerable look of Beniamino Cardinal Vincenzi, the man who presided over the Secretariat of State, a noble dicastery of the Roman Curia, banished such tawdry associations. Anselm wanted to help. He thought for a long while and then said, ‘On the face of it, Father Pleyon must have thought that both men were blameless. But if that’s the case, he must also have concluded that proof of innocence could never be made known to the public. Otherwise he would not have found it necessary to devise an escape strategy. ‘

  Quietly and slowly, Cardinal Vincenzi said, ‘But what if they were guilty? What then would you make of the assistance provided?’

  Anselm scavenged for an innocent explanation. ‘He must have known something of sufficient importance to outweigh whatever Schwermann and Brionne may have done.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Cardinal, assuaged, ‘they are the only possible explanations.’

  ‘And,’ added Anselm, gathering confidence, ‘I would have thought Father Pleyon must have already known and trusted one or the other, otherwise he would not have taken the risk of facilitating their escape.’

  Monsignor Renaldi and the Cardinal glanced at each other like two judges sitting in the Court of Appeal. They shared a look of agreement, acceptance of a submission they hadn’t thought of. The case was won. Monsignor Renaldi said, ‘If Schwermann is brought to trial the role of Les Moineaux is likely to become public knowledge. We need to know why Father Pleyon acted as he did:

  ‘Of course,’ said Anselm, as though he, too, were encumbered.

  ‘You may well know,’ said the Monsignor, ‘that those who tracked Schwermann down succeeded because someone disclosed the identity under which he had been hiding.’

  Anselm nodded.

  ‘We think that person might have been Victor Brionne. Apart from Father Chambray, no one else alive would know the name. This has given us some encouragement that he may be prepared to speak the truth, regardless of personal cost, if he can be found.’

  The Cardinal spoke with an enticing note of solemn commissioning. ‘Father, I would like you to track down Victor Brionne and discover what really happened in 1944.’

  Monsignor Renaldi rose, urging Anselm to
remain seated. Beneath the dull gaze of painted Cardinals he walked the length of the room to a large panelled door and slipped out. The Secretary of State brought his eyes on to Anselm. They contained concern and fear and, to Anselm’s elevating satisfaction, gratitude.

  Cardinal Vincenzi summoned Anselm with a wave of the hand to an open window overlooking the Vatican Gardens.

  ‘I want you to understand the delicacy of the situation,’ he said confidingly ‘These are difficult times for the Church. Relations with our Jewish brothers and sisters are especially fragile as we try to resolve nearly nineteen hundred years of shared hostility. A great deal has been achieved in the forty years since I was ordained. But the role of the Church before and during the war is a particular stumbling block, especially what is alleged against Pius XII.’

  ‘Anguish, silence and diplomacy?’ asked Anselm, suddenly thinking of Salomon Lachaise and the empty, hungry fields.

  ‘The caution of the Pope was shared by the world,’ the Cardinal replied simply He looked over Rome, which was glistening under the sun, the heavy hum of business afar. ‘You are fortunate, Father, in not having to negotiate the boundaries of responsibility. I’m afraid dealing with history has always been a trading activity of sorts. We are bidding for a manageable form of truth. It is a most delicate exercise, for I am trying to protect the future from the past. ‘

  The Cardinal moved away from the window, taking Anselm paternally by the arm. ‘Which brings me to the Schwermann case. In these difficult times the last thing the Church needs is a war crimes trial tearing open the wounds we are trying to close, and that is what I fear will happen if he reveals precisely who effected his escape in 1944. With your help I need to prepare myself for that eventuality.’

  The Cardinal walked Anselm to the panelled door, his heavy hand upon his shoulder. He blessed him and said goodbye. As the door opened, Monsignor Renaldi appeared on the other side. Their steps echoed down high corridors and wide stairs until they reached a side door on to the world. Upon opening it, they were struck by a rush of heat. The Monsignor, squinting in the light, said offhandedly, ‘I suppose if Berkeley can demonstrate Schwermann’s innocence then all well and good. But if he can’t — well, it would have been better, for everyone, if we’d left him alone. Don’t you think?’ He smiled confidentially and withdrew.