The three of us were brought closer together. Every day that we were able to live without fear was something that we experienced each time as another blessing–a gift. At the end of the day we went to bed with one wish: that this great fortune might be granted to us on the next day, too. We did not take it for granted for one moment. After all, we only had to think what was being done to others, who had not found any Rispals, or any Labarde.
We do not know whether it will be granted to us to remain in Labarde and to survive. I write these lines at the end of December 1943. Germany is a very long way from being defeated. It may be that our sojourn here is merely a final stay of execution that has been granted by destiny. But even if that were the case, we will have been fully conscious of, and thankful for, every half-peaceful day that we have lived here: we regard them as gifts.
25
Blessed are the poor in spirit
OUR SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT HERE consists of two elements. On the one hand, the inmates of the hospital–the enfants, about eighty in number.
‘Enfants’, children: the word is here used to express a concept of neighbourly love. All the patients here are referred to by this term, from the youngest, five-year-old Monique, to the oldest, the nearly-eighty-year-old Marie Mass, who was brought here as a ten-year-old orphan by the Assistance Publique. Marie Mass has lived within these walls for nearly seven decades: many thousands of identical days and nights. Were it not for her terrible fear of death, however (for she is mentally ‘normal’), Marie Mass would be completely happy.
On the other hand we have the convent, the communauté of fifteen Sisters, under the guidance of the Mother Superior. It is a microcosm in which worldly values and standards have no place. The microcosm is, however, no less full of work and trouble, of dramas great and small. But all these are borne in the belief that our days on earth are no more than a fleeting, trivial pathway to another life, the life eternal. This belief gives the Sisters the strength to do without any earthly thanks or reward; and this applies to the twenty-year-old Soeur St-Félix just as much as to the eighty-five-year-old Soeur Marthe, who still works in spite of her age.
And these two little worlds–the mentally ill, the ‘abnormals’, and those who look after them with so much dedication–intertwine to form a whole, in a way which has taught me to be less ready with a number of received ideas that one tends to go about with.
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.’
The kingdom of Heaven? Provided that they are not suffering from some painful bodily affliction, the ‘poor in spirit’ are already blessed on earth. They live without having to fight, and death has no terror for them; they have no conception of it. Marie Mass is ‘rational’; that is why she has such a terrible fear of dying. The others, on the other hand, in their ‘irrationality’, are possessed of that highest form of wisdom, which protects them from suffering.
A number of them are subject to delusions of one kind or another. This delusion, however, in its every logical ramification, will be more real to them than our realities.
One of our enfants is an old woman, Mémé, who once, many years ago, was a telephone operator. Every day she conducts highly animated conversations, for hours at a time, on an imaginary telephone with imaginary partners. Once, in the middle of such a conversation, one of the Sisters came into the room suddenly. ‘Excuse me,’ Mémé said to her interlocutor, ‘I must ring off now. Soeur de l’Annonciation has come in, and what we are talking about does not concern her. I shall ring you again later.’
Others, who seem to exist in a semi-conscious state of lethargy, are periodically subject to violent emotional outbursts, which appear like some kind of earthquake of the subconscious. In these cases, though, nothing is allowed to inhibit their behaviour, which takes its course without restraint or punishment. The most that is done is to separate them from the others for the duration of the crisis. In the worst case, where they threaten others with violence, they may be placed in a straitjacket. The punishments that our own consciousness of reality would cause to us ‘normal’ people, if we allowed our emotions free rein, are not something that they have to contend with–never mind severer punishments than separation or a straitjacket.
Then we have Germaine, a shy, peaceful, to all appearances completely harmless individual. Germaine had formed a particular attachment to Soeur Benigna; she would follow the Sister everywhere and obeyed her slightest gesture. One day Soeur Benigna was moved, and in her place came one Soeur Marie-Bernard. Germaine could not abide the new Sister, and simply ignored her. But when Soeur Marie-Bernard once insisted on the performance of a task, Germaine–who was normally completely quiet and submissive–leapt upon the Sister, pulled off her wimple and showered her with the filthiest words of abuse. Germaine did not lose her ‘position’ as a consequence: she is ‘simple’. What would happen to a ‘normal’ person in a similar case?
Moreover, these people are able to lose themselves in their dreams without any sort of hindrance. Most of them slip from waking to sleep, and from sleep to waking, until they finally slip into death. Neither in waking nor in sleep has life been a source of fear to them.
I think very often of Minou. I never heard her utter a word, and could easily have concluded that she was mute.
One of the patient bedrooms shares a wall with our room. When it is quiet, every movement, every sound from next door can be heard through the thin wall. And night after night, always at the same time, ever so softly, a delicate, ghostly melody would start up in the dark. It was like a sweet, forgotten song of childhood–a secret caress. A fragment of a dream–a dream turned into sound. It was Minou who was singing to herself like this, for a minute, or for two minutes, night after night. No one told her not to; she was simple.
One night she was singing; but suddenly stopped in mid-song. In the morning she was found dead.
Irrespective of age, our enfants are also children to the extent that they have remained in an original state of nature.
Take their self-centredness, for example. They live in a house guided by the principle ‘love thy neighbour’; but most of them have absolutely no conception of their neighbours. There is a sort of herd instinct which makes them tend to stick together; but if one of their number disappears, many of them do not even notice.
Since our arrival at Labarde several of the patients have died, young as well as old. But since the word ‘dying’ has no significance for the mentally retarded, a death makes not the slightest impression on them. And the funeral procession, led by the Mother Superior and a priest, which goes from the chapel to the small cemetery behind the convent, is to them just a welcome change to the routine. They do not feel the obligation to put on a sad expression, to interrupt what they are doing, or to engage in insincere, unnecessary eulogies. ‘Elle est partie’–She’s gone away–is the most response you will get if you ask about the deceased. She’s gone away. What more needs to be said?
At night-time there is an empty bed in the bedroom. But not for long: soon a new patient will come in and the bed will be occupied again. Nothing has changed: one face is replaced by another. No one was expecting an inheritance from the departed; no sought-after post has become available at her death–nothing that would initiate a competition among the others. Whether she is alive or dead, the soup still arrives on the table at the usual hour for everyone else.
This is, after all, a home for the simple.
Another aspect of this ‘original state of nature’ among the poor in spirit is their openness. They can allow themselves to give their thoughts honest, unadorned expression. When they talk, they do not make speeches, and they have no use for white lies.
One day I was walking past the cowshed with Jacquot Rispal. Louisette, whose animal greed knows no bounds, was about to chew on a huge mangelwurzel, still covered in dirt.
‘Can I have a little bit, Louisette?’ I ask her. In answer she presses her index finger to her left eye, which means: ‘You’ll have t
o wait a long time for that.’ I nudge Jacquot. ‘What about me?’ he asks. ‘Won’t you give me some, either?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ she coos happily, in her rough bass voice, offering him the root, ‘oh, yes, I’ll definitely give you some, because you are young and handsome, Monsieur Jacquot.’
One day the Mother Superior received an instruction, via the mayor of our municipality, to the effect that all those patients who might be encountered outside the institution must be provided with an identity card. There were about fifteen who were employed in agricultural work and needed this document, and therefore first of all a photograph. My wife, who had managed to get hold of a Kodak, undertook the role of photographer.
Huge excitement for all those chosen. Each one of them tries hastily to pretty herself a little; even among the most pitiable specimens of humanity there remains a trace of feminine coquettishness. All the others are severely disappointed. (They have no idea how wonderful it is simply not to need an identity card; they cannot imagine that there are countless individuals right now who would give anything to be beyond the Good and Evil of the identity paper.) They are unhappy; but the one who takes it worst is Madeleine.
Of all our enfants, Madeleine is perhaps the ugliest. Barely twenty, she looks like a shrivelled, crooked old woman–or perhaps like an embryo. Her appearance is something that takes some getting used to, even though God knows we are hardened to such things here in Labarde.
Madeleine’s sobs are heartbreaking; she wants to have her photograph and her cartité, just like the others. No words are of any use whatever. She carries on crying and begging until finally my wife promises her: ‘All right, Madeleine, you shall have your cartité. Just calm down, and I will take your picture.’
Beaming, Madeleine takes up her pose; and my wife takes the snap. Job done. Only, Madeleine wants to have her cartité right there and then. It is not so easy to explain to her that she has to wait for a while.
‘You didn’t have any film left in the camera,’ I say to my wife, once we are back in our room. ‘Of course I didn’t,’ she replies, ‘but don’t worry. She’ll get her cartité.’
My wife proceeds to cut the portrait of a film star out of an old magazine–a beauty with perfect waves, languorous eyelashes, a tremendous low-cut dress, diamond earrings and three pearl necklaces. She takes a piece of pink card, and sticks the picture on to it. She adds the word ‘MADELEINE’ in calligraphic writing, at the bottom. The fact that Madeleine can neither read nor write is of no importance whatever. This is the way it is done.
I go and fetch Madeleine. ‘You see,’ says my wife, ‘because you were good, your cartité is already ready. Here you are!’
Madeleine takes the piece of card, examines the picture and falls into a veritable ecstasy of joy. She then runs to the Mother Superior: ‘Ma mère, I’ve got it, I’ve got my cartité, and look! What a good picture of me it is!’ The Mother Superior, the Sisters–the entire house–are called upon to admire the picture. And each time Madeleine repeats with delight: ‘What a good picture of me, what a good picture of me!’
I don’t know why I ever entertained the smallest doubt about the procedure. Madeleine has never looked in a mirror; she is unshakably convinced that this picture of a film star, complete with the perfect waves, the pearls and the jewels, is her picture; and therefore it is her picture. Truth is what we believe.
(Among ‘normal’ people, too, most of us would rather see, on the cartité of our life, not the picture of the person we really are but a fiction: how we would like to appear. And while many may succeed in deceiving the world around them, to how many is it given to deceive themselves too–and to go on doing so right to the end?)
The ‘weak-minded’ Madeleine has no conception of all this. Her mirror is this picture of the beautiful film star; her illusion is truer than our pretended realities; and therefore her cartité is more accurate than so many genuine identity cards.
This episode with the identity cards brought to my attention the superiority of our enfants from another point of view, too. For there is not one ‘non-Aryan’ amongst them.
They are at home here, and that is the end of the story. Even the most mentally incapable of them is still a citizen, and stands under the protection of the law. They have nothing to fear, and do not need to hide. We, on the other hand… we are hunted animals. If Einstein were here, he would be a hunted animal. Louisette, with her mangelwurzel between the teeth; Madeleine with her cartité–they would never understand it, but, in terms of human rights, they should feel enormously superior to an Einstein… a Bruno Walter*… a Franz Werfel.
Blessed are the poor in spirit. For theirs is–already–the earth. Just as long as they are ‘Aryans’.
26
Nuns
BEFORE DESTINY BROUGHT ME to Labarde, I had a superficial, conventional–and therefore almost wholly false–notion of the world inhabited by women in a convent.
Nuns… The word strikes certain chords; it brings with it a series of associations connected with strictness and solemnity, and also with something idyllic and lovely. Mortification and meditation; the playing of organs; bright voices from an unseen choir of angels; prayer; walking silently amid the flowers of the convent garden, behind high, protective walls.
What else did I believe I knew about the women of a convent? That they had renounced everything that most women look to for fulfilment in life; that they look after the sick and the poor; that they instruct and educate children, and also that they have incomparable skills when it comes to capturing the souls of the young. I have a cousin who spent her youthful years in a convent. Decades later, long married and with a grown-up daughter, she would undertake long and difficult journeys just in order to see one of her former teachers for one or two days. I used to smile indulgently, seeing this as some kind of prolonged adolescent attachment. How well I can understand it now.
Mère St-Antoine may herself serve as an example of what a nun can actually be–although this remarkable manifestation could hardly be taken as the norm.
For Mère St-Antoine, her office represents not just an aim, namely that of being worthy of eternal life, but also a means, namely that of mastering life here on earth. The faith of this woman–who is by no means young, and who, besides, has some quite serious health problems–instils in her a truly remarkable energy and physical strength. Her noble heart may be a heaven; but her sound understanding of human nature is very firmly planted on the earth. I have seen her smile as she embraced a child covered in scabies; and I have seen her carry out the most menial tasks with the same smile. I have seen her control a woman in the grip of a frenzy by the sheer power of a look; and I have seen her guide her great institution with the far-sightedness and organisational ability of a seasoned businesswoman. She has had a small stage constructed, on which she allows her charges to perform theatrical pieces on special occasions; and she has also installed a laundry at Labarde, as well as a number of pieces of agricultural equipment, which would be desirable items for many an ordinary, secular business.
That, then, is Mère St-Antoine. An exceptional character, to be sure. But even the normal, ‘average’ nun leads a quite different sort of life from that commonly imagined.
‘They have renounced worldly things.’ It is such an easy thing to say–without thinking what it really means. ‘Still,’ people will say, ‘in compensation for that, they don’t have the struggles of life; the fight for daily survival; the anxieties about old age. They may spend their whole lives within the walls of the convent; but these walls protect them from the storms and devastations, from the disappointments and sorrows of life on the outside. Actually, their position is rather enviable.’
Let us look at things a little more closely.
Well, yes–they are enviable. They are enviable for the inner strength that has enabled them to sacrifice everything by which they might have achieved peace, both inwardly and externally. Most of these women were still very young when they took the veil; life lay enticingly before the
m; many were very attractive and had no shortage of admirers.
They made a renunciation. More than that: they killed, with their own hands, everything that Nature demands, everything that life holds out as a promise to other women. It is this inner power of resistance that is enviable in them; so too their balance, their cheerful resignation; their silent, unshakeable patience; their ruthless severity towards themselves, which leads them to undertake the most menial and thankless tasks without any other satisfaction or reward than that which their faith promises them: the reward of God. Also to be envied is the unwavering spirit of humility in which they follow the law of obedience. They submit to every command as to the dispensation of Providence, regarding the decisions of their superiors, too, as nothing other than instruments of God’s will.
I once expressed to one of the Sisters my admiration for this practice of renunciation which is involved in life in the convent. ‘But we knew about that beforehand,’ she replied, with a gesture that seemed to say: none of that is terribly important.
This same Sister was transferred to another house within the Order. Which meant that after eighteen years of service in Labarde, one fine day she received the order to leave next morning for her newly appointed location. Eighteen years–eighteen years of familiarity, of attachments, with people and things. She did not find the leavetaking easy; what human being would have done? But not for one second did it enter her head to enquire as to the reason for her transfer, let alone to oppose it. Her duty was to obey; and she obeyed. That is enviable.
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