The Sixth Lamentation fa-1

by William Brodrick

  Throughout the various government departments that carried out the orders, however, there were obviously shades of opinion and levels of knowledge.’

  ‘Is it fair to say that a substantial number of people — officials and members of the public — were unaware of the killings, and believed that “resettlement” meant just what it said?’

  ‘Many may have done so, yes, but only at the outset.’

  ‘Subsequently, did French cooperation, if that is the word, proceed in an untroubled fashion?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The general population were appalled by the mass arrests of 1942. Thereafter, State anti-Semitism, which had prevailed through indifference or agreement, was gradually undermined by civil resistance. Thus, when Eichmann wanted to move against the French Jews, the authorities refused, no doubt wary of how the public might respond. Official capitulation slowed down, under protest, and the deportation programme floundered. By this stage, rumours of what “resettlement” meant had begun to trickle through. Thousands went into hiding. By the end of the war there were still two hundred and fifty thousand Jews in France. But the scale of the killing was horrendous. A quarter of the Jewish population were murdered.’

  ‘My Lord,’ said Mr Bartlett, ‘may I suggest a short break? These are not easy matters for the jury to hear.’

  ‘Or indeed any of us,’ said Mr Justice Pollbrook. ‘Half an hour, ladies and gentlemen.’

  3

  Lucy stood with Mr Lachaise and Max outside the courtroom. Max had his hands thrust deep into his pockets and was staring at the floor. Mr Lachaise said:

  ‘What we are hearing is a prelude to the argument for ignorance. It is heartbreaking.’

  Lucy glanced at the small man with the ever-gentle manner, still wearing the same cardigan. Who was he, beyond his name? She dared not ask. In a peculiar way he frightened her. He spoke with chilling authority.

  ‘In 1941 Radio Moscow revealed that Soviet Jews were being massacred by advancing Nazi troops. In 1942 the BBC described large-scale transfers of Polish Jews from ghettos to camps. Reports of mass extermination in places like Chelimno got to London in May 1942. The Polish Resistance informed London about the gassings at Auschwitz in March 1943. You cannot annihilate a people without the world finding out.’

  Max, with his eyes still fixed on the floor, his shoulders pressed inwards, folding into himself, suddenly whispered, harshly: ‘The Defendant is my grandfather. I’m sorry. You can’t possibly want me anywhere near you… or to come to my studio… I think it’s best if-’

  ‘I know exactly who you are,’ said Mr Lachaise in the same dry, authoritative voice. ‘And I want to see your paintings.’

  The usher pushed open the door to the court and called everyone back. Mr Lachaise took Max by the arm and Lucy followed.

  4

  Within minutes Mr Bartlett had referred to the reports of killing described to Lucy during the adjournment, some of which had not been publicised at the time of receipt. He then said: ‘As regards the population in France, they may have come across non-specific rumours that some people would not have believed?’

  ‘Unfortunately’

  ‘For the rumours were incredible?’ ‘That is part of the tragedy Yes.’

  ‘Reasonably rejected by any right-minded person?’

  ‘Not quite, Mr Bartlett. You appear to have missed the point I made before. Cooperation floundered because there were others who did believe the rumours.

  ‘But you do accept there was room for both positions — acceptance and rejection.’

  ‘Of course.

  Mr Bartlett stopped asking questions. Lucy sensed the turning of a lens, a movement away from the last words to a sharpening of focus on what was about to come next. He said: ‘Would you credit Mr Schwermann with the same beliefs and suspicions as a French policeman aged twenty-three based in Paris?’

  Doctor Vallon all but laughed. ‘The proposition is offensive. He was part of the machinery. He had daily contact with Eichmann in Berlin.’

  ‘There is no room for doubt?’

  ‘In my view, no.’

  ‘None whatsoever?’

  ‘None.’

  Lucy felt deep unease. Doctor Vallon was only saying what Mr Bartlett expected him to say

  Mr Bartlett said, ‘Would you be so kind as to consider Volume Seven, section A, page two.’

  Doctor Vallon was handed a ring-binder. He found the page and gave a nod of recognition.

  ‘This is a telex from Paris to Department IV B4 in Berlin, dated August 1942,’ said Mr Bartlett.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘From Mr Schwermann?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To Adolf Eichmann?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Please tell the jury what this telex is all about.’

  ‘It reports that a thousand Jews had been transported from Drancy to Auschwitz.’

  ‘Turn the page, please. This is a memorandum referring to the same transport. What does it record?’

  ‘That sufficient food for two weeks had been provided in separate trucks by the French government. ‘

  ‘This was not an uncommon practice, Doctor Vallon, was it?’

  ‘No, but-’

  ‘Don’t be grudging with the facts, Doctor Vallon; it is there in black and white. Provisions were being sent with these passengers.

  ‘I’m not being grudging with the facts-’

  ‘This is entirely consistent with resettlement, rather than extermination?’

  Doctor Vallon closed the folder and snapped, ‘None of the food was distributed. It was taken by the guards at Auschwitz.’

  Unperturbed, Mr Bartlett said mildly, ‘Answer the question, please. The texts are consistent with a perceived policy of emigration, and wholly inconsistent with a policy of execution upon arrival, are they not?’

  ‘As words on a page, possibly’

  ‘Don’t scorn ordinary meaning, Doctor. These are words, not runes.

  ‘I’m well aware of that:

  ‘Anyone reading these documents could have understood them to reflect a policy of resettlement outside France. Yes?’

  ‘An ignorant reader might think that fifty years after the event, but not the author. I keep stressing to you, he was a part of the machinery. There are other SS memoranda in these files which expressly state the Jews were to be ausgerottet — eradicated.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Mr Bartlett in a measured, patient voice. ‘And none of them were written by Mr Schwermann, were they?’

  ‘No, but-’

  ‘And there is not a shred of evidence that Mr Schwermann ever read them?’

  ‘Well, we don’t know. ‘

  ‘There is no suggestion that he used such language himself?’

  ‘Not as such, but it is an obvious inference that he-’

  ‘Doctor Vallon, we’ll leave the jury to do the inferring. Among this mass of documentation there is not a single sentence that demonstrates Mr Schwermann had explicit knowledge of extermination, is there?’

  ‘There isn’t a piece of paper that says so, no.

  ‘And there are lots of other pieces of paper that record very different terms to ausgerottet, terms that we know Mr Schwermann read and used.’

  Doctor Vallon had guessed the next direction of attack. He said, ‘Yes, and they’re all tarnung — camouflage.’

  Mr Bartlett opened a file. ‘Indeed,’ he said warmly ‘Perhaps now is the time to consider the innocence of language, whose ordinary use can so easily trap the unwary, even the likes of yourself. Please turn to File Nine, page three hundred and sixty-seven, and consider the words on the schedule.’

  A clerk brought the file to Doctor Vallon, who went on to agree that the German High Command were extraordinarily concerned about the vocabulary to be used when describing the process of deportation to Auschwitz. It was variously described as Evakuierung (evacuation), Umsiedlung (resettlement) and Abwanderung (emigration), or Verschickung zur
Zwangsarbeit (sending away for forced labour). Even the architects and engineers at Auschwitz referred to the gas chambers as Badeanstalte fur Sonderaktionen (bathhouses for special actions). Their memoranda recorded the phrase in quotation marks. And, of course, the entire apparatus of genocide was named die Endlosung (the Final Solution).

  Mr Bartlett said, ‘The whole point of the exercise is to deceive the reader or listener, is it not? Someone somewhere is expected to believe the surface meaning?’

  ‘Yes, I accept that.’

  ‘There were three meetings held in Paris to plan the Vel d’Hiv round-up. Mr Schwermann attended two of them. The understanding was that those arrested would be deported “for labour service” — is that right?’

  ‘Yes — even though thousands of children would be taken.’

  ‘Phraseology that Mr Schwermann could reasonably have taken at face value?’ pressed Mr Bartlett.

  ‘I have already told you, he is one of the deceivers, not one of the deceived. He will have seen other documents that refer to extermination.’

  ‘Would he? Do you always read the notes of the meetings you miss or avoid?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I do.’

  ‘Do all your colleagues?’

  ‘No. No, they don’t, actually’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor Vallon.’

  Mr Bartlett promptly sat down.

  ‘That is enough for today,’ said Mr Justice Pollbrook with a weariness of having seen it all before.

  5

  Lucy went to Chiswick Mall and listened to the news with Agnes. There was a lengthy report on the evidence of Doctor Vallon. Agnes listened impassively while Lucy broke ice cubes in a saucer, feeding the melting fragments to her on a spoon. Agnes turned them over in her mouth like boiled sweets, her eyes glazed as one hearing a dull story on a wet afternoon.

  Time mocked the survivors, thought Lucy. Everyone who lasts long enough becomes an end point in history, and then they must listen to others pass judgment upon what they have not known. But even after all this time, could there be any serious doubt? Schwermann must have understood the circumlocutions of his masters, just as Pam had understood Freddie’s.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  1

  In the natural course of things, Father Andrew made many decisions, passed off as ‘suggestions’, that Anselm was unable to fathom. One such was the proposal that Anselm ‘might’ show Father Conroy the North Country on the way to finding Victor Brionne. To Anselm’s mind sightseeing did not blend with the task of confronting a fugitive collaborator. But the ‘suggestion’ had been made. There was some sense to the proposal: it transpired that Con was writing another book after all (only this time he intended to ignore its likely condemnation by Rome). Frequent travel to the library at Heythrop College, London, and hours of drafting at Larkwood had worn him out. He needed a break.

  And so, on the day Lucy listened to the considered views of Doctor Pierre Vallon, the two men left Larkwood first thing after Lauds. With Conroy at the wheel they sped north, the skies getting wider and brighter, the horizon flatter and longer. Anselm’s mind opened like a plain and he saw scattered here and there, like totems, the outline of those who had recently crossed his path; and Conroy sang wonderfully mournful songs to himself about a betrayed woman and her abandoned child, a young father on a British prison ship and a ditty on violent child abuse. You had to cry; you had to laugh.

  Anselm turned his mind to the conversation with Father Chambray the night before, noting bitterly how apposite it was that the truth should finally have made its way out in a confessional. Father Pleyon, a monk of Les Moineaux, had betrayed The Round Table. Unforeseen executions had followed. And by an inexplicable, almost comic quirk of circumstance, Father Pleyon had become the new Prior. Why was it, thought Anselm, that chance so often assisted the wicked? Schwermann and Brionne had been handed a lifeline just when they might have been brought to justice: their accomplice had become the Prior and had lived long enough to secure their escape.

  But Father Chambray had pieced together some fragments. He had read the signs. He had told Rome and they had done nothing. And, in dismay, he had left his Priory and his church, a priest for ever in a wilderness without sacraments.

  ‘Con,’ said Anselm, ‘would you mind not singing for a moment?’

  ‘All right, so.’

  ‘Tell me again what Sticky Fingers told you.’ Anselm had already been told, but he wanted to place the little Conroy had found out in context now that he had spoken to Chambray

  Conroy pursed his lips, thinking. ‘The Vatican Secret Archive holds two reports from Les Moineaux, and both had been withdrawn by your man Renaldi in early April 1995.’

  ‘Just after Schwermann was exposed.’

  ‘Aye. The first was written by Chambray shortly after the end of the war.

  Anselm knew what it contained, and he would soon see a copy

  ‘The second was written a year or so afterwards by Pleyon, just before the Lord called him to Himself. It was sent on to Rome by the new Prior with a note saying the old skin didn’t get a chance to finish whatever he wanted to say

  Anselm, like Father Chambray, could now read the signs that had fallen into his hands. He placed himself before an earnest, sincere Monsignor quietly watched by an attentive Cardinal, each knowing the whole narrative set out by Chambray But they had only disclosed the incomplete report of Pleyon, knowing it was the beginnings of a self-preserving fiction. ‘I’m trying to protect the future from the past,’ the Cardinal had said.

  Conroy returned to his singing and Anselm slept. They lunched and then pressed on, saying little. As late afternoon cloud gathered over the rolling Cheviot Hills, Conroy pointed to the signpost directing them to Victor Brionne’s hideaway After a few miles of empty, windswept road they reached a display board, informing the unwary that Lindisfarne was a tidal island. They were just in time to cross the narrow causeway before the cold, slate-blue sea crept over the sands and cut them off from the mainland. By the time they had found their bed and breakfast, booked by Wilf the night before, no one could reach or leave the island.

  When night fell, Anselm left his companion in the bar and wandered outside, over to a cluster of solid monastic ruins, a fortress carved out of the sky. Standing alone with the wind in his face, he joined himself to the Celtic monks who had once gathered beneath brooding arches by a sea that ran to the ends of the earth; he said the psalms of Compline, as they had once done, while the sharp night enclosed him. Then he walked along a rocky shore towards a large house with its windows lit, the curtains left open. A wooden plaque on a gatepost bore the name ‘Pilgrim’s Rest’. Anselm leaned on the adjoining wall, concealed by darkness, looking in upon a play of domestic contentment.

  Robert Brownlow sat at a piano. Adults and children, seemingly endless in number, passed to and fro across the glass as if on a stage, each with a walk-on part. Most were laughing, cans or cups in their hands, little boys and girls with beakers spiked with straws, and no one seemed to notice the old man seated by the window, looking out into the night as if he were alone.

  That must be Victor Brionne, thought Anselm, and none of his family realise he carries a secret, except perhaps Robert. All available generations had gathered for a bash, untouched by the trial in London that had never been more than words in a news-. paper, remote but disturbing if read, destined to be thrown out with the cold leftovers within a day or so. Anselm suffered a stab of grief on their behalf, Was it really necessary to pull down what had been built over fifty years? Should the little boy with the beaker have to lose the grandfather he thought he had? Or go to school and hear whisperings or taunts? But then Agnes Embleton was approaching death, unknown to the judicial process, a forgotten victim. Lucy had once been a child with a beaker spiked by a straw but she had not been spared by ignorance. The vindication of one family entailed the destruction of another.

  Anselm turned away heavily, wishing dearly that he did not have a part of his own to play:
the awful role of the minor character who brings the news he does not understand, whose brief speech shatters unsuspecting lives, and who then walks off for a smoke in the dressing room. That would be Anselm’s contribution to the Brownlow family history.

  Brownlow Again Anselm strained to recover a stirring at the back of his mind evoking a pleasant sensation. It was a name he’d known as a boy

  2

  Max Nightingale’s studio was a single room above a pet shop in Tooting. He said he lived elsewhere but a camp bed stood folded in the corner next to a small fridge, a Primus, a wobbly clothing rail and other innumerable signs of sustained habitation. Leaning against each wall were canvases stacked three or four deep. The walls themselves were covered with work in progress. Light swam among the colour. It was extraordinarily peaceful.

  Max was self-conscious but seemed pleased to bring Lucy and Mr Lachaise into his private place. He glanced easily at the walls as if they represented a quiet gathering of his silent family, not one of whom had the capacity to cause acute embarrassment.

  Mr Lachaise walked slowly past each canvas, his glasses off, his face peering at the fluid marks of the brush, once wet, now caught glistening in time. He took several steps back, replacing his glasses. ‘Quite wonderful,’ he said, almost to himself.

  Max had withdrawn to one end where an easel was angled against the light, beside a table with jars and saucers huddled by a battered box. He kept away from Lucy, though not obviously, rearranging brushes and tubes of paint. Turning round she saw a painting hung upon the back of the door.

  The picture described the hint of a face, perhaps an open mouth crying out, amongst swathes of gorgeous yellow and orange, breaking down in places to smatterings of diaphanous brown and gold, lifted up, as it were, like tiny hands. It was more a study in colour than shape, but the coincidence of lines suggested such a fragile purpose that the viewer was compelled to impose a reading upon it. Lucy understood its mood and wanted to run her fingers along the frail ridges of paint.