by Chris Petit
On Karl-Heinz’s first summons, Sol had been so scared of being shot he had to be carried into the room by his guards, only to find Karl-Heinz and Willi in shirtsleeves, lounging around an overheated office drinking real coffee and smoking. They offered him his own research team under their protection.
But the job had brought little security. Neither Karl-Heinz nor Willi was around much, and rivalries among camp staff accounted for much spoiling of others’ pet schemes. Sol had eventually reported his fears to Karl-Heinz, finding him more generous than Willi.
‘Willi might have saved Jews,’ Sol said, ‘but business was business.’
Hoover added, managing a little irony of his own, ‘The combination of profit incentive and neutrality is always a dangerous one. You and your team were moved to the house I had found?’
Sol nodded. ‘I was afraid to leave the camp. It seemed more secure than the unknown, and when they took away our uniforms and set us up in this place with fields all around, we didn’t know what to think. All we were told was that anyone trying to leave would be shot.’
Willi had turned up casually to announce that they would be working under something resembling regular conditions. But the peace of their surroundings only fed their anxiety. After one of Sol’s team hanged himself, Willi and Karl-Heinz lost interest, and the project was dismantled. When the others were taken off, Sol was made to wait behind. Then Hoover came. His arrival, Sol believed, was a sign he was about to be killed.
‘But it wasn’t,’ said Hoover. ‘My guess is Karl-Heinz wanted you alive, as a character witness, should the need arise?’
Sol said, ‘Up to a point.’ He looked at me and said, ‘But why don’t we show your friend what you and Willi were really up to in the war?’
Hoover
ZURICH-PORRENTRUY
SOL HAD SOMEONE HE WANTED me to meet and somewhere he wanted to show us, a drive away. The little man enjoyed playing ringmaster and obviously derived pleasure from his grudges. It was equally plain that he had a nasty surprise in store.
Old habits kicked in: eyes open, mouth shut. I could see I was doing nothing to alleviate Vaughan’s suspicions by exercising my right to remain silent.
Sol arranged for us to collect another man, introduced only as Jean-Pierre, from a downtown hotel. He was in his sixties, too young to have been in the war. He had curling grey hair and an imposing manner and wore an enviably smart cashmere overcoat. I thought of Willi and Karl-Heinz, both handsome, both dressers. They had the sharp air of men ahead of their time, men who dabbled with new and dangerous medicine, and made up the rules as they went along. I was different, much more the watcher.
Sol said our trip would take a couple of hours. Jean-Pierre was keen to catch the late flight back to Brussels. He had been waiting for us, like Sol. In spite of his demeanor and firm handshake, there was something missing in his eyes.
He was from Belgium, apparently, which made us countrymen, in origin at any rate. I don’t know why I spoke to him in French, as he spoke good English and I have always had a problem with my first language. It reminded me of a petit-bourgeois upbringing sooner forgotten, a deleted period, summarised by a single image of the crooked stairs of my childhood, with me standing at the bottom, one hand on the newel post, looking up into the dark.
Jean-Pierre talking about himself was like watching a slowly developing photograph. I don’t know at what point I decided I had spent time in the house of his childhood, had in fact seen him: two boys in overcoats in a soggy garden throwing stones into a pond, a tall poplar in the background. The image was, of course, conditional. I had no idea if the boy I saw grew up to be the man in the car. But it was not impossible, in a world of assignation, that the owner of the house had been his father and the man Jaretski had questioned me about.
Part of me didn’t want to know if he had been the son of the man in the house, because I could guess only too well what had happened. We avoided the word Jewish. He talked about growing up in Brussels. He could not remember much about it. Most of his early memories had also been erased. In the first instance his had been a charmed and enviable upbringing compared with mine: the lash of the belt, the beating frenzy because I had wet myself. The terror of release; hence, perhaps, Dr Freud, the attraction of a life of secrecy.
When I was growing up in Liège, there had been stories among us kids of a man who disembowelled children, and we all believed in him. From my convalescent bed—I was a sickly child—I could see into the back room of a house opposite in which a man lived and which he apparently never left. Mostly his curtains were drawn. The few times they stayed open he stood staring at me. I decided he was the murderer—even though I also suspected my father. After one particularly bad beating, I went down to the police station and denounced the man in the window as the child murderer.
Since the murders were a myth, the police were bemused, and I was put down as a troublemaker.
When I was taken home, I expected the worst. There was the indignity of being collected by my mother, then the terror of anticipating my father’s reaction. And yet. I am still not sure what lesson I learned from the incident—the value of deflection, perhaps, and of identifying another target. My father, I was sure, would be beside himself with rage. And yet. Perhaps he recognised something in me which conditioned him, too: a profound deviousness. God only knew what dreams lurked in his head. He beat me, but perfunctorily, and we both knew it. He told me I had been right to be wary of the man in the window across the way because he was a Jew. I felt both vindicated and shamed. So, a confession of sorts: whatever Jean-Pierre’s fate had been, I was complicit.
I had to ask Vaughan to stop the car. I said I was feeling sick from the road and needed air. His look at me in the driving mirror asked, Guilty conscience?
A meadow sloped away from the side of the road, down to a thick belt of firs. The grass was dry and crackled underfoot. Vaughan stayed up on the crest by the car, leaning on its bonnet. Sol I couldn’t see.
Jean-Pierre walked in the same direction, some distance away from me. We met at the end of the meadow. There was birdsong. High white clouds raced above us, yet on the ground there was barely a breeze. A cattle bell sounded off in the distance.
Jean-Pierre said we must be very close to the border. When he and his family had crossed into Switzerland from France in the summer of 1942, the boundary had been marked.
He had not been aware of what Jewish meant until the Nazi invasion of 1940, then only vaguely. By the time of their escape he still had no proper understanding of the reasons for their flight, apart from what it was costing his father. He knew about this because his mother, for want of anyone else to confide in, had told him. She had called him her little man. He had offered to remain behind to save money.
They had crossed France travelling on local transport, which had taken days. I had made the same sort of journey myself, trying to look like a man of limited horizons, used to travelling only small distances. In spite of their parents’ tension, Jean-Pierre and his brother had managed to turn the journey into an adventure.
Their border crossing had been at a spot much like the one where we were standing, with a slope and trees like those below. By then Jean-Pierre and his brother were flagging and scared of the dark. He had clear memories of the final hike and luggage being abandoned. His father had taken them by the hand for the last stage, repeating all the while that they were climbing to freedom. Their guide had handed them over to another on the Swiss side who had taken them to an empty house in nearby woods where they had stayed several days. There his father had announced they were safe at last. The Swiss, he said, were a good people, tolerant and not warlike.
At this point Jean-Pierre broke down and was inconsolable. He waved me away and I left, hoping to save him embarrassment.
We returned to the car separately. Vaughan was standing with his hands in his pockets. Sol was in the car, unreadable as ever.
We drove in silence to a small, typical Swiss town, solid, prosper
ous, and unchanging. It seemed to have a special significance for Jean-Pierre, who grew more restless and anxious.
Sol directed Vaughan to a street at the top of a hill in the old town. Where two roads joined stood a tiny square, little more than a widening in the road with a chestnut tree and parking for a few cars. We stopped and got out. Jean-Pierre stood silently for a long time.
Finally he said, ‘It was the feast of the Assumption. From the window I could see the procession in the street. The nun had told us when my brother asked.’
Sol pointed at an elegant grey building in early baroque, more secular than religious, surrounded by a high wall, and asked, ‘Is that the convent?’
Jean-Pierre nodded. I looked at Sol, figuring it was time for an explanation, but Sol was still riding the mystery.
The convent was not locked. Big wooden doors with heavy handles opened to reveal a long, cool hallway. Nobody was around. A smell of lavender polish hung in the air. Vaughan seemed uncomfortable in religious surroundings. Sol gave me a nasty smile.
Eventually Jean-Pierre found a caretaker, an old woman bent from arthritis, who kept her eyes averted as she muttered that the nuns were in retreat and unavailable. Jean-Pierre, previously polite, turned cold. ‘Isn’t God’s mansion always open to his humble sinners, madame?’
She mumbled something incomprehensible. Jean-Pierre started banging open the doors lining the corridor. Shafts of evening sunlight spilled onto the dark floor. The caretaker flapped her arms and told him to stop, then scuttled off.
I was trying not to guess what this might be about, afraid that my own understanding would be brought into question. I was sure now that what Jean-Pierre was looking for in those rooms implicated me, as Sol well knew.
The nuns were sitting in the refectory in silence, about twenty of them, white-habited, at three tables positioned at right angles, as in depictions of the Last Supper. They were staring at Jean-Pierre. He told them his name and said, ‘I have come to speak to someone who was here in 1942.’
For all their reaction, he might as well have not existed. They appeared quite intractable.
‘I am staying here until someone speaks to me,’ he said, louder. ‘I will shame you into talking.’
He moved into the space between the tables, directly asking the older nuns if they remembered him from 1942. None answered. Sol watched with grim intensity. Vaughan gave me a shrug to say he didn’t know what was going on. The nun in charge finally spoke and told us we must leave, as nothing could interfere with their retreat.
‘And if we don’t,’ said Jean-Pierre, ‘will the police come, like the last time? A Jewish boy in a Catholic convent, now there’s a fine thing. And what a welcome you bitches gave!’
There was a collective intake of breath. Jean-Pierre said if anyone spoke up he would make a large donation to a charity of their choice. When that drew no response he picked on the senior nuns at the top table, asking if any had a conscience. Finally an old sister stood up and shouted, ‘Enough!’ This drew a flurry of whispers, and the mother superior banged a bell on the table, like a judge bringing a court to order. She called for silence and ordered the sister to sit down. In a clear act of willed disobedience, the old nun refused and walked out.
She led us to one of the rooms off the corridor and locked the door. ‘Do you remember me?’ Jean-Pierre asked, and, eyes cast down, she admitted she did. She was about my age, but her face remained unlined. All the nuns at table had been round-faced, well fed, and complacent. A life of contemplation clearly did wonders for the complexion.
Loud bangings on the door were followed by different voices ordering the sister out, one telling her, ridiculously, that it was against regulations to be in a locked room with men. Jean-Pierre opened the door and swore. His language appeared to electrify the nuns.
On relocking the door, Jean-Pierre said to the sister, ‘I don’t have long. Let me remind you. My family and I came to Switzerland from Belgium in 1942, seeking asylum, but when my father tried to register with the local authorities, we were detained. My mother, brother, and I were taken here where we spent some days locked up in the roof, next door to your bells, which rang every quarter and made sleep impossible. Such was the consideration shown us by the holy sisters.’
The sister nodded and said she had brought their meals. Jean-Pierre told her to tell us what had happened. She would not speak until he squeezed her arm hard. Her hands shook. She whispered, ‘You were sent back.’
Turning to us, he said, ‘Let me give you an example of Swiss diligence. The Gestapo were waiting for us, which means someone must have phoned to say we were coming.’
The sister fell to her knees, a picture of remorse and pity, saying there was nothing she could have done. A banging started outside again. Jean-Pierre told the sister that we lived in an age of meaningless apology, and offered a sneering one of his own for interrupting their meal.
A man’s voice outside the door announced that he was from the police. At this Jean-Pierre looked around, like someone whose nightmare was catching up. He gabbled his frantic account of their deportation. There had been a police escort. Their father had been waiting outside the convent and passersby began remonstrating with the police. There had even been pushing and shoving after the boys’ mother had pleaded not to be sent back to a certain death.
The sister was still on her knees, weeping, hands joined in supplication. Jean-Pierre told her he would not be mocked by her prayers. He shouted for everyone to go away and to leave him in peace. Vaughan looked embarrassed. The gleam in Sol’s eye remained.
Jean-Pierre leaned down towards the nun, ordering her to listen. He said his mother had been wailing like a scene from the Bible. The fight had already been punched out of his father. Until that moment, Jean-Pierre had believed in his parents’ ability to keep them safe. ‘We were taken away in a big old Citröen taxi, and at the border my father was made to settle the fare. Soon after we were separated, and I never saw them again. My brother died six months later from an illness I never learned the name of.’
The banging kept up. Sol prompted Jean-Pierre, ‘Tell us what you remember about this man.’ He was showing him another copy of the old photograph of Willi Schmidt, Karl-Heinz, and me. Jean-Pierre said, ‘He was standing in the square watching as we were taken away.’
‘How can you be sure?’ asked Sol.
‘Because he was the man who arranged the escape.’
I shook my head in denial. ‘Who are you talking about?’
‘Willi Schmidt,’ he said.
I asked how Jean-Pierre could remember a fleeting glance after all these years. He pointed at the picture of Willi. ‘He was standing outside. My father, when he was being pushed into the car by the police, staggered like he had been hit. The blow was caused by something he had seen. I looked and saw this man standing in the street watching, smoking a cigarette, away from the rest. He had organised our escape. My father told me in those last minutes.’
I experienced what I can only describe as a gallows-lurch, followed by a sensation of falling, as if every foundation I had known had been kicked from under me. The banging on the door became the banging of my heart. I knew what I was accused of. Sol had his case all worked out.
‘It was a whole fucking operation,’ Sol said. ‘They weren’t the only ones.’ He looked at me with hatred. ‘You and your friend Willi sold them all out. You let the poor bastards buy their way out for a fortune, then pocketed their money.’
It wasn’t true, I protested. Even the sister was looking at me queerly. Absurdly, I wondered how we were going to get back to Zurich. The idea of us travelling in the same car was unthinkable. It crossed my mind again that Sol had been involved in Karl-Heinz’s death. He had the motive, and he probably wanted me gone, too.
Jean-Pierre stared at the sister, the surviving witness to his family’s fate, then slipped from the room. This caused an immediate hubbub outside, marked by a voice of ponderous authority.
Half a dozen nuns flap
ped around two uniformed policemen. The older one looked resentful and underpromoted, a slow-moving, ruddy-faced man with a large head. The other one was barely eighteen. The incident was typical of the Swiss: a minor infraction followed by a full recital of the rule book. The mother superior chipped in, the voice of righteousness. Jean-Pierre ignored her. The officials who had sent his family back to the Gestapo were probably not so different.
Jean-Pierre walked away without a word. The difference this time was that he could, however strong the tug of the past. The police called after him. They were so ponderous that even the mother superior’s patience was tested. Jean-Pierre’s disregard of their authority had unsettled them, and they conferred uneasily.
A sense of throwback cloaked everything: nothing had changed in sixty years, since Jean-Pierre had last been there. Which was when I realised what he intended. I had been so dumbfounded by Sol’s accusation that I had failed to read Jean-Pierre. I asked the mother superior which way he would have gone. I had to ask twice. I told her to keep the policemen there, unless she wanted another death on her hands.
The stairs were steep. I was breathless well before the top. Sol, following, kept having to stop. I doubted my power to reverse destiny.
Jean-Pierre was sitting in the open window, the last of the evening sun behind him. It was hard to make his features out. He seemed calm as he surveyed the room which he had last seen as an eight year old. My arrival barely registered. He was talking to the dead as if they were there with him. If I could get close enough, I decided, he would let me lead him away.
