‘That’s good,’ he said without much conviction.
‘I think when I’m bigger I’ll be a Catholic.’
He looked at me kindly.
‘You’re Jewish, Joseph. Even if you choose my religion, you’ll still be Jewish.’
‘What does being Jewish mean?’
‘That you were chosen. You’re descended from the people chosen by God thousands of years ago.’
‘Why did he choose us?’ I asked. ‘Because we were better than the others? Or worse?’
‘Neither. You don’t have any particular assets or faults. It just happened to be you, that’s all.’
‘What just happened to be us?’
‘Having a mission. A duty. To bear witness before all men that there is only one true God, and, through that God, to make men respect their fellow men.’
‘I don’t think we’ve done a good job, have we?’
Father Pons didn’t answer.
‘We were chosen all right,’ I went on, ‘but as targets. Hitler wants us dead.’
‘But that could be why, don’t you think? Because you are an obstacle to his barbarities. It’s the mission God gave you that is unique, not you yourselves. Did you know Hitler also wants to get rid of Christians?’
‘He can’t. There are too many of you!’
‘For now, he can’t. He tried in Austria and very quickly gave up. Still, it’s part of his plan. Jews first, then Christians. He’s starting with you. He’ll finish with us.’
I realized that there was a feeling of solidarity behind what Father Pons was saying, not just kindness. It reassured me a little. Then I remembered the Comte and Comtesse de Sully.
‘Father? If I’m descended from this line that’s gone on for thousands of years, and it’s respectable and everything, does that make me noble?’
‘Yes,’ he said, after a surprised pause, ‘of course you’re noble.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
I was relieved to have my intuition confirmed.
‘To me, all men are noble.’
I ignored this addition and focused only on what suited me.
Before leaving, Father Pons patted me on the shoulder.
‘This might shock you,’ he said, ‘but I don’t want you taking too much interest in the catechism or Catholic worship. Just settle for the minimum, all right?’
He walked away, leaving me seething: so, because I was a Jew, I wasn’t really allowed to be part of the normal world! I was just being lent a tiny corner of it. I couldn’t grab it for myself! The Catholics wanted to stick together, bunch of hypocrites and liars!
I was furious and went to find Rudy so that I could blurt out my anger towards Father Pons. He didn’t try to calm me down but encouraged me to keep my distance.
‘You’re right not to trust him. That oddball’s not everything he seems. I’ve found out that he’s got a secret.’
‘What secret?’
‘Another life. A hidden life. And one he’s ashamed of, I’ll bet.’
‘What is it?’
‘No, I mustn’t say anything.’
I had to pester Rudy all afternoon until eventually, exhausted, he told me what he had discovered.
Every night after lights out, when the dormitories were closed, Father Pons crept silently down the stairs, unlocked the back door as carefully as a thief, went out into the school grounds and didn’t come back for as much as two or three hours. While he was out he left a light on in his apartment to give the impression he was there.
Rudy had noticed and then checked these comings and goings when he himself was nipping out of the dormitory to go and smoke in the toilets.
‘Where does he go?’ I asked.
‘I haven’t a clue. We’re not allowed out of the Villa.’
‘I’m going to follow him.’
‘You! You’re only six!’
‘Seven, actually. Nearly eight.’
‘You’d get expelled!’
‘Do you really think they’d send me back to my family?’
Even though Rudy refused point-blank to be my accomplice, I did manage to persuade him to give me his watch, and I waited impatiently for nightfall, not even having to fight off the urge to sleep.
At half past nine I snaked between the beds out on to the corridor and from there, hidden by the large stove, I watched Father Pons go down the stairs and sidle silently along the walls like a shadow.
With devilish speed he undid the chunky lock on the back door and slipped outside. Slowed by the full minute it took me to close the door without any creaking, I almost lost track of his slight figure disappearing through the trees. Was this really the same man, the worthy priest who saved children, now scurrying away under a clouded moon, more sinuous than a wolf as he skirted round bushes and stumps that tripped me up as I followed barefoot without my clogs? I trembled at the thought of being left behind. Worse than that, I was afraid he might vanish because he seemed such an evil creature that night, implicated in all sorts of strange spells.
He slowed down in the clearing at the far end of the grounds. The boundary wall rose up behind him. There was only one way out, the low iron door that opened on to the road, next to the deconsecrated chapel. For me the chase ended there: I would never dare carry on, in pyjamas and with freezing bare feet, tailing him through that unfamiliar countryside in the dark. But he went up to the small church, took a disproportionately large key from his cassock, opened the door and snapped it shut behind him, locking it.
So was this Father Pons’s secret? He went to pray alone at night, on the quiet, at the bottom of the garden? I was disappointed. Was that it? How humdrum! My toes were wet and I was shivering with cold but all I could do now was go back.
All of a sudden the rusty door swung open and an intruder, someone from outside carrying a bag over his back, came into the grounds. Without a moment’s hesitation, he went over to the chapel and knocked on the door in a quiet rhythmical way, probably conforming to some code.
Father Pons opened the door, exchanged a few whispered words with the stranger, took the bag then locked himself in again. The man left straight away.
I stayed behind my tree trunk, open-mouthed with amazement. What sort of trafficking was Father Pons involved in? What was he collecting from that bag? I sat down on some moss, resting against an oak tree, determined to wait for the next delivery.
The nocturnal silence crackled all around me, as if burning with a fire of tension. Furtive sputtering sounds, cracks followed by nothing and explained by nothing, brief rustlings and cries that were as incomprehensible as the mute terror they provoked in me. My heart was beating too fast. A vice was crushing my skull. My fear was producing all the symptoms of a fever.
There was only one thing I found reassuring: the tick-ticking of Rudy’s watch. It was there on my wrist, friendly and unflappable, not in the least awed by the shadowy darkness, still telling the time.
At midnight Father Pons came out of the chapel, locked it up carefully and headed back to the Villa.
I was so exhausted I almost stopped him in his tracks then and there, but he slipped between the trees so quickly that I didn’t have time.
On the way back I was less cautious than on my outward journey. I crushed several twigs underfoot. With each crunch, Father Pons stopped anxiously and peered into the darkness. When he reached the Villa Jaune, he went inside and I heard the scrape of keys as he locked up.
Finding myself locked out of the boarding house − now, that was something I hadn’t thought of! The building stood before me, upright, compact, dark and hostile. The cold and the hours of waiting had drained my strength. What was I going to do? Not only would everyone discover, come morning, that I’d spent the night outside, but where was I going to sleep now? Would I even still be alive in the morning?
A hand came down on to my shoulder.
‘Come on, get inside quickly!’
I jumped automatically. Rudy eyed me up and down with a pitying expression.<
br />
‘When I didn’t see you come up after Father Pons I realized you had a problem.’
Even though he was my godfather and was unbelievably tall and I had to make his life difficult if I wanted to maintain my authority . . . I threw myself into his arms and − for the time it took to shed a few tears − accepted that I was seven years old.
In break time the following day I told Rudy what I had discovered. With a knowing nod, he pronounced his diagnosis:
‘Black market! Like everyone else, he’s trading on the black market. That’s all it is.’
‘What’s he getting in that bag?’
‘Well, food of course!’
‘Why doesn’t he bring the bag back here then?’
Rudy floundered at this obstacle.
‘And why does he spend a couple of hours in the chapel without any lights on?’ I went on. ‘What’s he doing?’
Rudy ran his fingers through his thick hair as if trying to pluck an answer from it.
‘I don’t know, do I? . . . Maybe he eats what’s in the bag!’
‘Father Pons eats for two hours and he’s still that thin? And everything in that huge bag? Do you really think so?’
‘No.’
During the day I watched Father Pons at every opportunity. What mystery was he hiding? He was so good at behaving normally that I ended up being afraid of him. How could he be so good at pretending? How could he put everyone off the scent like that? The duplicity was horrible! And what if he was the devil in a cassock?
Before the evening meal Rudy bounded over to me gleefully.
‘I’ve got it: he’s in the Resistance. He must have a radio transmitter hidden in the old chapel. Every evening he’s given information and transmits it.’
‘You’re right!’
I liked that idea straight away because it saved Father Pons, rehabilitating the hero who had come for me when I was with the de Sullys.
At dusk Father Pons organized a game of dodgeball in the yard. I decided not to play so that I could properly admire him: free, kind, laughing, surrounded by the children he had saved from the Nazis. There was nothing evil emanating from him. Only his goodness shone through. It was blindingly obvious.
*
I slept a little better in the days that followed. I had, in fact, hated the nights ever since I arrived at the school. There, in that iron bed, between the chill sheets, beneath our dormitory’s imposing ceiling, lying on a mattress so thin my bones knocked against the metal bed springs, and despite sharing the room with thirty classmates and a prefect, I felt more alone than ever.
I dreaded falling asleep, I even wouldn’t allow myself to, and while this struggle went on I didn’t like my own company at all. Worse than that, it disgusted me. I really was worthless, a flea, more insignificant than a cowpat. I railed at myself and scolded myself, promising myself terrible punishments: ‘If you let yourself go, you’ll have to give away your best marble, your red agate, to the boy you hate the most. I know, to Fernand!’ But, despite my threats, I still succumbed . . . whatever precautions I took, I woke in the morning with my hips stuck to a warm wet patch with a heavy smell of cut hay, at first enjoying the feel and smell of it, even rolling in it contentedly, until the realization dawned, mercilessly, that I had wet the bed yet again! I was all the more ashamed because I had succeeded in staying dry for years by that age. Now the Villa Jaune was making me regress, and I couldn’t understand why.
For a few nights − perhaps because, as I nodded off with my head on my pillow, I was thinking about Father Pons’s heroism − I managed to control my bladder.
One Sunday afternoon Rudy came over with a conspiratorial look in his eye.
‘I’ve got the key . . .’
‘What key?’
‘The key to the chapel, of course.’
We could now check on our hero’s activities.
A few minutes later, out of breath but still keen, we were stepping inside the chapel.
It was empty.
No pews or pulpit or altar. Nothing. Roughly plastered walls. A dusty floor. Dry shrunken spider’s webs. Nothing. A tired old building with nothing interesting about it at all.
We daren’t look at each other, each afraid we would see our own disappointment reflected in the other’s face.
‘Let’s go up the bell tower. If there’s a radio transmitter, it’ll be high up.’
We flew up the spiral staircase. But there were only a few pigeon droppings waiting for us.
‘Oh come on, this can’t be happening!’
Rudy stamped his foot. His hypothesis was falling apart. Father Pons was slipping through our fingers. We couldn’t get to the bottom of his mystery.
What was worse for me was that I could no longer convince myself he was a hero.
‘Let’s go back.’
As we cut back through the woods, tormented by what Father Pons could possibly be up to every night in that empty place with no lights on, we didn’t exchange a single word. I had made up my mind: I wouldn’t wait another day to find out, particularly as I was risking a renewal of my bedwetting.
Night. The countryside dead. The birds silent.
At half past nine I took up my post on the stairs, with more clothes on than the last time, a scarf around my neck, and my clogs wrapped in felt stolen from the craft workshop so that I didn’t make any noise.
The shadow hurried down the stairs and set off into the grounds where every outline had been erased by the darkness.
Once I reached the chapel I jumped into the clearing and tapped out the secret code on the wooden door.
The door was drawn ajar and, without waiting for a reaction, I slipped inside.
‘But . . .’
Father Pons hadn’t had time to identify me, he had simply seen a rather smaller than usual figure nip past. Out of habit he had closed the door behind me. So there we were, trapped in the gloom, unable to make out each other’s features or even an outline.
‘Who is it?’ cried Father Pons.
Horrified by my own daring, I couldn’t manage an answer.
‘Who is it?’ he said again, in a threatening voice this time.
I felt like running away. I heard a scratching sound, then a flame flared up. Father Pons’s face appeared behind a match, distorted, twisted and disturbing. I backed away. The flame came closer.
‘What? Is it you, Joseph?’
‘Yes.’
‘How dare you leave the Villa?’
‘I wanted to know what you do in here.’
In one long breathless sentence I told him about my doubts, my tailing him, my questions and the empty chapel.
‘Go back to your dormitory at once!’
‘No.’
‘You will do as you’re told.’
‘No. If you don’t tell me what you do here, I’ll start screaming and the other man will know you haven’t managed to keep the secret.’
‘That’s blackmail, Joseph.’
Just then the knocking sounded on the door. I fell silent. Father Pons opened the door, put his head out and brought in the bag after a brief hurried discussion.
‘You see, I was quiet,’ I pointed out once the clandestine delivery man was far enough away. ‘I’m on your side, not against you.’
‘I don’t tolerate spies, Joseph.’
A cloud moved away from the moon which shed its blue light into the chapel, turning our faces a grey putty colour. Father Pons suddenly seemed too tall and too thin, a great question mark traced out on a wall in charcoal, almost exactly like the Nazis’ caricature of a wicked Jew seen all over our neighbourhood, his eyes so bright they were unsettling. He smiled.
‘Oh, come on then!’
Taking my hand, he led me to the left-hand side of the chapel where he moved aside an old rug stiff with grime. A ring appeared in the floor. Father Pons pulled it and a flagstone opened up.
Steps led down into the dark body of the earth. An oil lamp stood waiting on the first step. Father Pons lit it and clim
bed slowly into the underground space, waving me on behind him.
‘What do you find beneath a church, my little Joseph?’
‘A cellar?’
‘A crypt.’
We had reached the last step. A cool smell of mushrooms wafted from the depths. Was this the earth breathing?
‘And what do you find in a crypt?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘A synagogue.’
He lit a few candles and the secret synagogue Father Pons had put together appeared before me. Beneath a cloak of richly embroidered cloth, he kept a scroll of the Torah, a long parchment covered in sacred writings. A photograph of Jerusalem indicated which direction to turn to when praying, because it is through that city that all prayers are taken up to God.
Behind us were shelves laden with things.
‘What’s all that?’
‘My collection.’
He showed me prayer books, mystic poems, rabbis’ commentaries, and seven- and nine-branched candle-sticks. Beside a gramophone was a pile of shiny black discs.
‘What are those records?’
‘Prayer music, Yiddish songs. Do you know who was the first collector of human history, my little Joseph?’
‘No.’
‘It was Noah.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘A very long time ago, the world was blighted by constant rain. The water caved in roofs and tore down walls, destroyed bridges, covered roads and swelled rivers and streams. Huge floods carried whole towns and villages away. The survivors took refuge on mountain tops, where at first they found safety but eventually the constant trickle of water caused the rock to crack and split apart. One man, Noah, predicted that our planet would be completely covered in water. So he began a collection. With the help of his sons and daughters, he managed to find a male and female of every living creature, a fox and a vixen, a tiger and a tigress, a cock pheasant and a hen pheasant, pairs of spiders, ostriches, snakes . . . everything except for fish and aquatic mammals, which were proliferating in the swelling oceans. At the same time he built a huge boat and, when the waters reached him, he loaded all the animals and all the remaining people on to the boat. For several months Noah’s Ark sailed aimlessly over the vast sea that the earth’s surface had become. Then the rains stopped. The water level crept down. Noah was afraid he might run out of food for those living on his ark. He released a dove which flew back with a fresh olive branch in its beak, proving that the mountain tops were at last emerging above the waves. It was then that Noah realized he had succeeded in his extraordinary challenge: to save all of God’s creatures.’