Asylum

by Moriz Scheyer

  He too looks us up from time to time, either on his own or in the company of his aged mother, a very robust, red-faced lady, whose eyes sparkled with good nature. Hers is a spirit which is still very much alive. The son’s love for his mother is incredibly touching; she did not merely bring him into the world; she is his whole world. One senses this from every word, and every look that the two exchange. And this love is the stimulus for the good that these two individuals do, too; it prevents them from becoming dulled.

  A short time after the departure of Mère St-Antoine there was an inspection of Labarde by the chief Mother Superior, Mère Sainte-Anne, from the chief house of the Order, at Devèze. I had quite a long talk with this distinguished woman. Rather than attempting a character sketch, let me confine myself to recording a few of the things that she said to me.

  For example: ‘I have two Jewish families hidden in a house belonging to our Order, in Rolleville near Le Havre, under the very eyes of the Germans; and I stake my entire honour on saving them for a better future. For a number of months I have also been putting up English soldiers.’

  Or again: ‘We in the convent should not concern ourselves with politics. But that does not mean that we must not know what is going on, if only so that we are aware where our duty as human beings–and as French people–lies.’

  And lastly: ‘Those of us who do not want to see the present as a model for the future must keep our eyes open–but at the same time we must often keep our ears closed.’

  As I listened to the words of Mère Ste-Anne, I considered, with admiration, how the greatness of the Catholic Church consists not least in its capacity for putting the right person in the right position. It may one day be reduced to ashes by the Germans, but Rome will still remain the Eternal City.

  28

  Music

  ONE, DAY, IN THE AUTUMN OF 1943, Gabriel Rispal brought us a substantial package. When we opened it, we could hardly believe our eyes: what appeared was a radio.

  It was the Rispals’ own radio. They had felt that we could not remain on our own any longer without a radio. And since it was not possible to get hold of another one, they lent us their own… And so we had a radio. This was something quite magical: it meant not just that we could listen to London, New York, Algiers, but also that we rediscovered something that had long been denied to us: music.

  Concerts; operas; song. In Labarde. The very anticipation of this pleasure was something wonderful. As soon as we had installed the radio, we began to go from one station to the next, eager to get a taste of everything.

  There was some music which brought me a complete escape–not just from the present, but from time itself. If I listened to Mozart, then I ceased to suffer from the present, ceased to drag the past along with me as a burden; ceased to feel the threat of the days to come. I felt my dark destiny fall away from me. It was like a blessed release of the self–a death, a dying.

  Beethoven, on the other hand, made me forget the present. It brought the message that above and beyond the vile blasphemy that constitutes our times there is, still, such a thing as God’s kingdom among human beings. The message that is proclaimed in the Third Leonore Overture by the offstage trumpet: it seems to come from Heaven. Beethoven was shattering, but not depressing; he brought tears which were the tears of release, not of despair; a bursting-open of the heart; a torrent of rain after a long, dreadful drought. Behind this ghastly grimace, a different life was made manifest–a life full of tragedy and beauty.

  But something else was made manifest, too. While Mozart transformed everything into his unique realm of enchantment, Beethoven was capable of giving rise to something like a scream–a scream which cannot be suppressed.

  It is not the case that beautiful memories are necessarily a solace. They may be so, when there still exists some point of connection between them and the present. Otherwise such memories may be a source of pain; like those moments of truth that finally dawn during a sleepless night of anxiety, such memories may simply have the effect of throwing a particularly relentless light on the present–of increasing your awareness of what you have become. They are a reminder of the many deaths that you have died since then, a reminder of all that has died within you.

  Vienna. Vienna before March 1938. The Great Hall of the Musikverein.* The festive, elevated atmosphere of the Philharmonic Concerts. That apparent confusion of sound which is the tuning of the instruments–in itself a symphony of enticing promises. The familiar faces in the orchestra. The conductor’s rostrum. Franz Schalk, Felix Weingartner, Bruno Walter.

  The Vienna Opera. Fidelio. And then, suddenly, after all these decades, I see Gustav Mahler* before me again–that noble, illuminated face of the ascetic; the face of a master, a devotee at the altar of genius; I suddenly feel again, with every nerve in my body, the excitement, the sense of solemnity, of consecration inherent in the moment when he raises his baton in the darkened house. From the concertmaster’s rostrum Arnold Rosé has his gaze fixed on him intently, his bow poised. Among the cellos sits Friedrich Buxbaum. Mildenburg sings Leonore, Schmedes Florestan, Hesch Rocco, Demuth the Governor. I see them now; I hear them now.

  Then, my last performance of Fidelio, as late as the beginning of 1938. And the Lied von der Erde–that song of another earth. Bruno Walter, the great disciple and inheritor of Mahler, conducted on both those occasions.

  After the invasion of Austria, Bruno Walter had gone to France and there taken French citizenship. Herriot* brought him his decree of naturalisation in person.

  On the occasion of a visit which I made to him in Paris, François Mauriac* told me how proud he was of this new compatriot. Mauriac had attended some of Bruno Walter’s performances in the Salzburger Festspielhaus. Later, he had heard Walter’s revival of Carmen at the Vienna State Opera. ‘I actually had the impression that I was hearing the opera for the first time,’ said Mauriac. ‘No Frenchman has ever succeeded in revealing Bizet’s work in this way.’

  Bruno Walter was able to save himself in time. Pétain’s France would not have hesitated for a moment before handing the juif Walter over to the Germans.

  Gustav Mahler is long dead. And Bruno Walter, fortunately, is in America, beyond the reach of the Swastika-Reptile. Otherwise, they would both have perished miserably in a concentration camp. Gustav Mahler and Bruno Walter–two ‘Jewish pests’ to be exterminated.

  How many pests of this sort were among the countless number of Jewish children done to death by the German people–the nation of Hitlers and butchers? How many pests of this sort–geniuses, who would have been called to do great things in all the different realms of art and of science–have already been nipped in the bud in the ‘Extermination Camps’?

  29

  Eugène le Roy

  ANOTHER EXPERIENCE THAT I OWE to my time in Labarde is that of making the acquaintance of Eugène le Roy.* In spite of having exerted myself since my youth to gain a reasonable knowledge of French literature, I must admit that I did not even know the name of this great epic writer. In mitigation I may mention that it is a sin of omission which I share with a large number of very well-read French people. Le Roy cannot disappear into oblivion, but from the point of view of the wider public he has yet to be discovered.

  He died many years ago–in 1907. It is a good thing that he belonged to a completely different generation; his noble heart would have found this world of ours difficult to bear. It is overwhelmingly likely that this great Frenchman would have ended up in a concentration camp.

  In terms of style as well as the time of their writing the works of Eugène le Roy seem to belong to a world far, far from any kind of ‘contemporary reality’. Far, too, from any sense of fashion. But this is precisely the source of their universal value, their ageless beauty. In their simplicity, their breadth, their sense of peace and of harmony, they seem to stand above any particular time–like Nature itself. They seem to have sprung–without art and without effort–from the soil of the Périgord, like a delicious fruit. But in fact
they are the creation of a great writer and a genuine man.

  The stories of Eugène le Roy seem all to confine themselves to the land and people of the Périgord, this unique region in the south-west of France. In reality, though, their scope is the whole world: their charming local colour and their characteristic folk themes are a reflection of life in general. Here is the deep, quiet wisdom of a heart whose beat may be slow, but which never ceased to take the part of the weak and the oppressed, never tired of taking a stand against injustice, deceit and hypocrisy, even when these evils are sanctioned by the written and unwritten laws of the bourgeois order. This was the cause of the hostility that le Roy encountered in certain reactionary, or even simply conservative, circles, in spite of the fact that he abhorred politics and never belonged to a party.

  In his personal life, too, Eugène le Roy followed those unimpeachable ethical standards which are implied by his work. He scorned honours and profit, despised all public acclaim, had no pride or vanity, and would not make any kind of concession or compromise. He was not interested in career or in social acceptance. He merely desired to continue straight along his own path.

  There is a certain internal logic to the fact that he was nearly sixty years old when he was, purely by chance, ‘discovered’.

  The senator Alcide Dusolier was waiting for the train to Périgueux one day at a small railway station in the Périgord; and he bought a copy of a local newspaper, L’Écho de la Dordogne. Purely out of boredom, he even read the feuilleton, an instalment of the novel Le Moulin du Frau, by one Eugène le Roy. Dusolier was so enchanted with it that he went to the offices of the newspaper in Périgueux in order to find out something about the work and its author.

  Eugène le Roy? Oh, they said, he’s an old eccentric; a modest official in the tax office in Montignac, who writes in his spare time. The senator went to Montignac, looked up Eugène le Roy and eventually, almost by force, obtained his permission to show his Moulin du Frau to the publisher Dreyfus in Paris–who immediately published it. Dusolier’s confidence was not misplaced: the book was a great success. Émile Zola and Alphonse Daudet both expressed their admiration to the author. People tried to persuade him to move to Paris.

  But right up until the end of his life, Eugène le Roy refused to leave the Périgord. He even declined the Légion d’honneur, not wanting to be or become anything other than the modest tax official in Montignac. A wonderful individualist. As for the idea that after his death they would one day erect a monument in his honour in Montignac–he would simply have smiled.

  It is certainly not my purpose here to give a description of the life and work of Eugène le Roy. All I wish to do is to point him out; people of goodwill–people who suffer–will perhaps find a friend in him. Today, more than ever, we need books which are not just ‘literature’; which offer something other than pretentious artistic games–dazzling, but ultimately empty and pointless. More than ever we need books that come from the feelings of the heart, not the deliberations of the intellect. Books that take us by the hand, and guide us. Books that help.

  To all those who may be in need of such help, I can only say: read the works of Eugène le Roy–at least Le Moulin du Frau and Jacquou le Croquant. But above all Le Moulin du Frau. Read this wonderful book and, if you have children, give it to them to read. At some point in the future it may make it a little easier for them to fulfil that very difficult task: to remain a decent human being. It may also keep their hearts from drying up in indifference and idleness.

  Notions which are called into question nowadays, obviously–notions which evince a superior smirk. For that very reason, though, it may be that they are more important than ever. And for that very reason, too, the work of Eugène le Roy is called upon to outlast this age, too, just as, in its proud modesty and single-mindedness, it has survived many names that were trumpeted everywhere yesterday and are today forgotten.

  30

  Informers

  A BOY OF ABOUT TWELVE goes into the Gestapo building in Bergerac. ‘What do you want here?’ they ask him. ‘I am from Belvès,’ the boy explains. ‘I need money and I have come here to denounce a Jew.’

  He is immediately taken to a friendly official, to whom he gives the name and address of an Alsatian Jew who is in hiding in Belvès: Salomon, Rue Pelevade. He then receives his payment of 500 francs, and departs.

  The boy does not leave it there, though. He catches the next train home, and goes straight to Monsieur Salomon–stricken by remorse, you are no doubt thinking. That would be a fundamental misunderstanding of this enterprising character. Rather, he has hatched a plan to catch two birds with one stone. He is hoping for a double reward for his labours.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he says to Monsieur Salomon by way of introduction. ‘The reason I am here is that you are in a very serious situation. Don’t ask me how, but I happen to know with complete certainty that you were denounced to the Gestapo in Bergerac today. For this information I require a fee of 2,500 francs. It is a very small fee–but my main concern was to be of service to you.’

  Monsieur Salomon seized his benefactor by the collar and threw him out. He then went to Gabriel Rispal and told him the whole story. Rispal sought out the boy and interrogated him until he became exhausted and admitted everything. He then took the little informer to the brigadier of the gendarmerie, Monsieur Dubeau, a fine man, who even then was already working secretly for the Resistance. Dubeau locked the boy up. This, however, did not alter the fact that Salomon and his family had to disappear from Belvès that very evening. They fled to Mathieu’s in St-Cernin. And indeed Salomon had not left a moment too early: just after midnight four Gestapo men came in a car from Bergerac, to pick up the Jew. On this occasion they had to content themselves with looting his dwelling thoroughly.

  ‘I need money and I come to make a denunciation.’ There you have the business of the informer, reduced to its most brutal, cynical essentials. The Germans guessed right, when they promised themselves great successes with this trade in human misery and human life. As for the reward offered, they were more than generous: it started at a few hundred francs and could go as high as hundreds of thousands, even millions. A person who kept his eyes and ears open could be assured of the most wonderful returns for almost no effort at all. There was money available for other kinds of collaborator too, of course: it was lying there in the street. All they had to do was bend down–bend low before the Germans–and pick it up. But these informers did not even have to bend down: all they had to do was open their mouths and spit out a name. No more than that.

  And yet the Germans were able to make substantial savings to the budget of their Judas money, for alongside these professional informers there were also many keen amateurs, who would do the job by anonymous letter, without any hope of reward. For this last category of informer, whether male or female, the knowledge that they had sent their fellow human beings to torture and death was the really important thing.

  For all their sophisticated developments in the creation of terror, the Germans would still not have managed to do so much evil in France had they not so often had informers to act as their guides in villainy. Every successful catch, every vile deed that they perpetrated, required particular items of local and personal information which they could only get from informers. Such French citizens as these frequently showed them the way to things which, left to themselves, they simply would not have found. The most malicious, dangerous enemy of the Resistance was this invisible, inaudible work of denunciation.

  Quite truthfully, the German Gestapo would have been enough on its own. But side by side with that official Gestapo we had also the officious one–the private, French Gestapo.

  The attitude of some French people towards those informers who were discovered and dealt with by the Resistance was quite remarkable, too. To listen to them, you would have imagined that we were talking not about villains who had finally received their just reward, but about innocent individuals who had been randomly slaughtered
by the ‘terrorists’. Friends and relatives clasped their hands together above their heads–look, they cried, these were harmless, law-abiding citizens who wouldn’t hurt a flea; and then one day they were treacherously ambushed and shot. Where will it end? Is nobody safe now?

  It was a waste of time trying to point out to these people the connection between cause–the deed carried out in the darkness–and effect.

  The laments of these sensitive souls were, of course, most welcome to the Germans and their French accomplices. They served, in a melodramatic way, to underscore their propaganda against the ‘terrorists’, the ‘bandits’, the ‘communists’. (I mention here only the commonest of the descriptions that were constantly applied to the Resistance in the press and on the radio.) Indeed, the Germans even hit upon the idea of having genuinely innocent people murdered by French assassins provocateurs. One need think only of the murder of the ex-Prime Minister Sarraut, among others. Full of outrage, the murderers then laid the crime at the door of the Resistance, rushing to the cry: ‘Stop the murderers!’ Thus a climate of opinion was created which could be exploited to discredit the Resistance, even among many of their sympathisers.

  The Occupation brought to light the secret powers of the Resistance, as it were the discovery of a wonderful treasure; but at the same time, sadly, also the infamous activity of Denunciation–like a revolting heap of vermin.

  31

  In place of a chapter on the Resistance

  AN ACCOUNT OF THE RESISTANCE IN FRANCE would require a whole book, not a chapter; and this book will be written, in all kinds of different forms, by many different authors. Not to mention the sublimated account of the Resistance that will be found in every other realm of artistic endeavour: fiction, painting, music, sculpture, theatre.