Asylum

by Moriz Scheyer

  Most enviable of all is their unshakable certainty that the short span of our earthly existence is no more than a preparation, a transition to eternal life.

  In other respects, though, their life is very far from being enviable. They lead an existence whose rigours are difficult for someone on the outside to imagine. Let us take these Franciscan nuns here as an example.

  We have here a group of Sisters who tirelessly look after patients none of whom can ever be cured; even that satisfaction is denied them. Their task is not merely that of caring for the sick, but also that of tending to the insane. Here in Labarde, moreover, we have quite a number of patients who soil their bed on a nightly basis, and who therefore have to be cleaned and have their bed changed, not once, but several times a night. And there is hardly a night that passes without some kind of attack or crisis.

  Well, one may say, these are all things, after all, which are part of the duties of carers in the outside world, too. And that is true. But in the world outside a nurse will have a day shift or a night shift, and will then be relieved; they will also have days off; days away from the workplace; holidays. Here in Labarde, our Sisters are on duty constantly. For everyone the day begins at five in the morning and ends at eight-thirty in the evening. Between eight-thirty and five is the time to sleep–or should be. But for those Sisters who are in direct contact with the patients, there is no such thing as undisturbed sleep. Their patience and gentleness in these conditions are, frankly, beyond words.

  Or consider another example: Soeur Scolastique, the cook. At the age of sixty-two, she has the task of preparing meals for about a hundred people. For decades she has stood at her stove, seven days a week, every month of the year, starting at five in the morning. She is hard of hearing, and by no stretch of the imagination could she be called robust. ‘If I can’t carry on any longer,’ she says, ‘they’ll replace me. But as long as I still can, I must.’

  What, then, of the other Sisters? Each has her own ‘emploi’, her own particular area of activity for which she is responsible: the grounds, the cows, the laundry, the tailoring, etc. Each of them has a workload that, in the world outside, would not be imposed on any worker, or on any farmhand–not even on the most humble servant. And no normal workforce would accept the other aspects of their living conditions here, either. Very few of the Sisters have their own–tiny, unheated–cell; the others live in a communal dormitory. As for nourishment, even in normal times it is barely sufficient to keep the Sisters healthy. They eat in order to be able to carry out their work. In the fiercest midsummer heat they must go about dressed in exactly the same way as in winter. Non-serious illnesses–even quite painful ones–are only acknowledged when they develop into serious ones.

  There is no retirement age. Most of the Sisters only cease to work when they cease to live.

  Should one then begrudge these women a little bit of peace and quiet–begrudge them the fact that the walls of the convent, which exclude them from all the pleasures of the world, at least also protect them from its noise and ugliness?

  But even within the refuge of these four walls it is not always easy to maintain a sense of inner peace.

  It should not be forgotten, after all, that these women, for all their self-denial, remain creatures of flesh and blood, that they still have human responses and reactions. Even the strictest rule of an Order, with all the homogeneity it imposes, cannot destroy completely all the differences and oppositions of character and replace them with a perfect unity or uniformity.

  Even within the walls of a convent human nature remains what it is, and human beings are still imperfect. Everyday concerns have their effects here, too, and even those who have dedicated themselves to Heaven find that they cannot always keep themselves in that elevated state of grace; there are relapses into worldliness. And then not all those nuns who believed themselves to be called are also chosen. Not all of them are saints. But for those who are not, it is all the harder, and more meritorious, to lead the life of a saint. They are even less to be envied than those who are never troubled by temptations.

  I do not know if there is such a thing as Heaven. But I do know that, of the nuns that I have met, there is not one who would not deserve to enter it.

  27

  A glimpse through a peephole

  Convent; hospital; hospital; convent… It was like living in a bubble. We had no radio, and only occasionally had sight of a newspaper–which would be one of those disgusting rags whose nauseating love of Hitler made them look like a French translation of the Völkischer Beobachter. My wife and Sláva went from one task to another–which is, after all, the best way of keeping oneself occupied, and of not thinking too much.

  We were almost totally cut off from ‘outside’. Nonetheless, there were people who came to visit us in our den, and through them we met others, too; and we got to hear this or that piece of news. In a way we were better able to observe and judge events on the outside, seeing them from this hiding place, than if we had been outside ourselves.

  Some books were even brought to me in my retreat–the works of Eugène le Roy,* for example, which would otherwise certainly have been unknown to me.

  The Rispals visited us as often as they could. They would come singly or together; they would come in all weathers, sometimes even on the darkest and most icy winter evenings. Between visits Hélène Rispal would write to us, too, addressing the letters to Madame Marguerite or Monsieur Maurice. Our family names were known to no one apart from the Mother Superior.

  Here I must jump ahead for a moment. I want to quote from just one of these letters, a letter that she wrote to us one day, when she had sensed, from afar, that we were beset with new worries and anxieties.

  In February 1943, scarcely three months after our arrival, Mère St-Antoine was called away from Labarde to be Mother Superior in La Trène near Bordeaux–to our great sorrow and distress. Her successor was to be one Mère Espérance. We wondered whether the new Mother Superior would be amenable. If we were not able to remain at Labarde, what then? Where would we find another refuge? Our peace was shattered once more.

  At this point we received the following letter from Hélène Rispal, delivered to us by her husband:

  My dear, good friends,

  If circumstances should prevent you from remaining where you are, you must not suffer even a moment’s anxiety on that account. You have put your trust in us, and we will keep you safe–and keep you safe to the end.

  Please do not worry, my dear, dear friends. You have overcome far greater obstacles in the past than the one which rises before you now. You belong to us, you are under our protection, we will not let anything stop us: we will protect you.

  My husband will explain to you what I decided earlier tonight. I embrace you as I love you.

  Hélène

  I cannot add anything to this testament of fidelity and devotion.

  I cannot go into the details of Hélène Rispal’s plan to keep us safe in the event of the new Mother Superior’s refusal to let us stay in Labarde. I can, however, say this: that the execution of the plan would, once again, have entailed enormous trouble as well as personal risk for the Rispals.

  Fortunately, none of that was necessary. Mère Espérance agreed to our continued stay in Labarde.

  The seventy-two-year-old Mère Espérance is an outstanding person in her own way, although very different from her predecessor. On a first impression she seems rather unapproachable; but once you get past that, you find a heart full of human kindness. What may be mistaken for coldness and distance is really just a kind of shyness and loneliness. Mère Espérance is not an outgoing personality, but she responds gratefully if one makes the first approach. Naturally there was something of a period of transition, while we got to know each other better. I believe that I may now say that we enjoy her total sympathy.

  A short time before her transfer, Mère St-Antoine had given asylum to another individual, whom she lodged in an farm building near the institution. A ‘coll
eague’ of ours, if you like–another fugitive, although one who had not, fortunately, gone through what we had. His case is, nonetheless, worth recounting.

  Monsieur Fanchtein was a French Jew, resident in Paris, baptised many years previously and married to a ‘one-hundred-percent Aryan’, with whom he had three young children. He had been called up at the beginning of war, and after the débâcle was demobilised at Belvès, which is how he came to make the acquaintance of Mère St-Antoine. He later returned to Paris, where he worked as a clerk in a factory.

  When the décrets juifs were issued, Monsieur Fanchtein neglected to report himself as a ‘non-Aryan’. No one imagined that he was Jewish. His wife is a devout Catholic, and his children attend a convent school. He could carry on his life as normal.

  But, as ill luck would have it, he had to renew his identity card. The official at the Préfecture de Police, who had learned his lessons well from the Germans, was suspicious. Fanchtein? Fanchtein? You are clearly Jewish. Why did you not report?

  Monsieur Fanchtein denied it, protested his ‘innocence’–but to no avail. As he was unable to produced the required ‘proof of Aryan status’, he was indicted. The next stage was the investigating judge–another Frenchman who turned out to be an able pupil of the Germans.

  ‘You are not Jewish?’ he began politely. ‘Then I am sure that you will have no objection to undergoing a small procedure involving the court doctor. A pure formality.’

  And the court doctor–who also knew what he owed the Germans–certified that Monsieur Fanchtein was circumcised. He certified it with sincere regret; but duty is duty.

  Prosecution. Indignant speech from the state prosecutor. Spiteful observations from the presiding judge. Judgement from the French court: six months’ imprisonment.

  Fortunately, Monsieur Fanchtein had been provisionally released: the criminal was allowed twenty-four hours’ grace before beginning his punishment. He used these twenty-four hours to remove himself from the appointed expiation of his crime by running away. He knocked on Mère St-Antoine’s door; and she did not close it to him.

  Monsieur Fanchtein is one of those French Jews who would previously have thought that ‘something like this’ could never happen in France. He admitted as much to me himself. In the course of time we became good friends.

  Labarde is on a hilltop. In the valley below, as well as on the slopes opposite, there are a large number of scattered farms. I gradually came not just to know who owned each of these farms; I also got to know these owners quite well by reputation. Gabriel Rispal knows nearly all of them, and sometimes he would tell us stories about his farmers. So too would Vorms, who lived in Guiraud, on the other side of Belvès, in close proximity with farmers. The Sisters of the Convent had contact with the farmers, too. It was thus possible for me to form a picture of the rural mentality.

  From a political point of view the attitude of the farmers in most cases left nothing to be desired. Many of them were later to play an active role in the uprising of their country, in the Resistance and fighting in the Maquis. Among the casualties of the Resistance movement there are a large number of farmers.

  The Dordogne, moreover, was regarded even as early as 1943 as a particularly suspect département, and was to suffer ever harsher persecutions in the form of the terror of the German ‘reprisals’.

  As regards the social attitude of the rural folk, on the other hand, and their attitude to the privations suffered in the cities, it cannot exactly be claimed that they were imbued with a particularly strong fellow feeling. If one listened to the farmers talking, one would hear expressions of great sympathy for the poor devils in the city–for all those, that is, who could not keep up with the inexorable inflation of prices on the black market. But expressions–with a few noble, but isolated exceptions–was all.

  Let me mention one small, but very typical experience, which Rispal related. He had asked a very well-to-do farmer to let him have two kilos of ham at a halfway affordable price, because he wanted to send it to friends in Paris–working-class friends. The farmer didn’t want to know. Rispal appealed to his conscience, painting a vivid picture of everything that a family with many children in the capital was having to go without. The farmer listened attentively, thought it over for a moment and finally declared with a furrowed brow: ‘Poor people! But if I were you I wouldn’t send them anything. You see, your friends in Paris have been used to hunger for a long time now. A food parcel like that–how long does it last? A matter of days. And after that your friends will find it all the more difficult when the hunger starts–like beginning all over again. No: trust me. You would do much better not to send them anything at all, even if I were to give you the ham.’

  Not long after our arrival the Rispals brought their nephew, René Mathieu, a teacher and the mayor of St-Cernin-de-l’Herm, a small market town in the Dordogne. It had been Mathieu who, without even knowing us personally, had arranged our false identity papers. We also made the acquaintance of his delightful wife, Henriette,* also a teacher, and later of her sister, Madame Rousset, who taught at the École St-Esprit in Bergerac and was the wife of a prisoner of war (another teacher). Later all of them were to play an important part in the Resistance.

  Through the Mathieus and Madame Rousset I gained an insight into the admirable clandestine activity that a large number of teachers were involved in, both inside and outside their schools. In school, these brave men and women had found a way of telling their children the truth about the Germans within the framework of their lessons. An indication of the challenge that this kind of teaching entailed may be taken from the fact that the Minister for Education, Abel Bonnard, for example, had not balked at actually removing unpalatable things like the French Revolution and the Napoleonic victories from the curriculum. It was, however, incumbent on teachers to emphasise the disastrous errors committed by France since time immemorial in her relations with the peace-loving Germany, as well as to highlight the glory and greatness of the Third Reich in the most vivid manner.

  But while these men and women were endangering their livelihoods and their freedom daily by their activity within the school, outside it they did not hesitate to risk their very lives. In addition to the spiritual sabotage, the work they undertook later in the active Resistance and in the Maquis should never be forgotten.

  For someone like René Mathieu it has gradually become his main job to give assistance and food to réfractaires;12 to conceal weapons; to take care of persecuted Jews, to transmit secret messages to the Resistance, to issue false identity papers and ration cards. The fact that he is so far still at liberty, indeed that he is still alive, is pretty much a miracle.

  Even before the War, in a quite other context, Mathieu accomplished some quite extraordinary things.

  He succeeded in introducing sewerage in his district, and in having his school fitted with warm and cold showers, lockers and other such conveniences. Revolutionary acts, when one considers the living conditions of the rural population of the Périgord. Under the pretext of tradition, of following the customs of one’s forefathers, there is a backwardness, even among the well-to-do farmers–a lack of cleanliness, in fact an illiteracy in matters of hygiene which one would hardly believe possible in Western Europe. If one tries to enlighten people, to teach them a better way, one always comes up against the same blinkered, irrefutable argument: ‘C’est comme ça’–‘That’s just the way it is.’

  One may well believe that Mathieu had to overcome very considerable resistance, indeed hostility. Now, of course, everyone in the district is very proud of their teacher and mayor.

  A visit from the Mathieus was something like light relief for us. It was not just that they would come bearing all kinds of delicacies, for after these generous gifts had been shared out, Mathieu would begin to give free rein to his irrepressible optimism, which would brook no contradiction. He is a magician–an alchemist of interpretation: even the most depressing news is changed in a moment into the gold of confidence.

>   His optimism can be contagious. In the autumn of 1943 we allowed ourselves to be persuaded by him to a great act of recklessness–leaving our hiding place and spending a day with him at his house in St-Cernin. He picked us up with a car and brought us back in the evening. All went well and Mathieu was triumphant; he had been right yet again.

  It was a day that we looked back on for a long time. A celebration of hospitality, which had a most unusual effect on us–at the same time intoxicating and also exciting. It was a little like a fine vintage wine, at once bringing forgetfulness and arousing ghosts.

  We sat at a beautifully laid table. In a home–a family home with its atmosphere of permanence and calm, surrounded by hundreds of objects that had been assembled over a period of decades, which had been handed down from generation to generation. They are only things, of course; you can do without them if you have to; but still, you become attached to them.

  We, too, once had a home like this, with its hundreds of superfluous things that we had become attached to. Was it really only five years ago that we had been turned out of it? Not five decades–five centuries? However indifferent you may feel you are, standing by the grave of your former self… there are moments when, all of a sudden, you cannot resist its power. The grave suddenly opens up.

  It was not that I was ungrateful; it was not that I would ever forget that it was only a miracle that had brought us our room at Labarde. Nor did I fail to appreciate the warmth and friendship that surrounded us: I drank them in to the full. But I could not help suddenly looking upon myself–ourselves–as though we were people long dead. And it was not the present, but rather the past that appeared to me as ghostly, impossible to grasp.

  Another wonderful person that I have got to know in Labarde is Monsieur Maisonneuve, the mayor of Ste-Foy, which is our own district. He had been let into the secret of our situation by Mère St-Antoine. For a long time now he has been issuing false ration cards for us.