‘Against the wall, with your hands up. Quickly!’
Rudy slipped in beside me but it did nothing to reassure me: his eyes were popping out of his head in fear.
Father Pons threw himself into the fray.
‘Officers, this is an outrage: I didn’t know who they were! I never guessed for a moment these boys might be Jews. They were sent to me as Aryans, true Aryans. I’ve been tricked, made a fool of, my credibility has been damaged.’
Even though I didn’t immediately understand Father Pons’s attitude, I was sure he wasn’t trying to plead his own innocence to avoid arrest.
‘Who brought these children here?’ the officer in charge asked curtly.
Father Pons hesitated. Ten long seconds crawled by.
‘I’m not going to lie to you: all these children were brought to me by Mademoiselle Marcelle, the pharmacist.’
‘Didn’t you find that surprising?’
‘She’s always entrusted orphans to my care. She’s been doing it for fifteen years. Since long before the war. She’s a good person. She had connections with a charity that works with disadvantaged children.’
‘And who paid their fees?’
Father Pons’s face drained of all colour.
‘An envelope arrives every month for each child, in his name. You can check the accounts.’
‘Where did these envelopes come from?’
‘From our patrons . . . Who else would it be? It’s all in our files. You’ll find the references.’
The Nazis believed him. Their leader was drooling just at the thought of getting his hands on those lists. But Father Pons didn’t falter, he turned on the attack.
‘Where are you taking them?’
‘To Malines.’
‘And then?’
‘None of your business.’
‘Will it be a long journey?’
‘Bound to be.’
‘Well, let me sort out their things, pack their cases, get them properly dressed and give them something to eat for the journey. My sons, we can’t treat children like this. If you’d put your children in my care, would you be happy for me to let them leave just like that?’
The officer with the sweaty hands hesitated and Father Pons made the most of this pause:
‘I know you don’t mean them any harm. Come on, I’ll get everything organized and you can come and pick them up at dawn.’
Trapped by the emotional blackmail and disarmed by the priest’s naïvety, the Gestapo officer wanted to prove that he himself wasn’t a bad man.
‘At seven o’clock on the dot tomorrow morning, they’ll be washed, dressed, fed and lined up in the playground with their luggage,’ Father Pons insisted gently. ‘Don’t make this difficult for me. I’ve been looking after them for years: when a child is put in my care he is in safe hands, I can be trusted.’
The Gestapo leader glanced quickly over the thirty or so Jewish children in their nightshirts, realized he wouldn’t have lorries before morning, thought how tired he was feeling, shrugged and said grudgingly:
‘All right, Father, I trust you.’
‘You can, my son. Go in peace.’
The Gestapo men in their black uniforms left the school.
Once Father Pons was sure they were far enough away he turned to us.
‘Boys,’ he said, ‘no screaming or panicking: you’re going to get your clothes in silence, and get dressed. Then you’re running away.’
There was a long sigh of collective relief. We gathered our things in silence. When we were done, Father Pons called his helpers, five young seminarians, from the other dormitories, and shut them in the room with us.
‘My sons,’ he said, ‘I need your help.’
‘You can depend on us, Father.’
‘I want you to lie.’
‘But . . .’
‘You have to lie. In the name of Christ. Tomorrow I want you to tell the Gestapo that masked Resistance fighters raided the villa shortly after they left. You’ll say that you put up a fight. And, actually, to prove your innocence, you’ll be found tied to the beds here. Do you agree to being tied up?’
‘You can even punch us about a bit, Father.’
‘Thank you, my sons. I’m not against punches on condition that you do it yourselves.’
‘And what will happen to you?’
‘I can’t stay here with you. The Gestapo will no longer believe me by tomorrow. They’ll want someone to blame. So I’m going to escape with the children. Of course, you’ll tell them that I tipped off the Resistance and was in cahoots with them.’
The next few minutes saw the most extraordinary show I have ever witnessed. The young seminarians set about punching each other with amazing diligence, concentration and precision, one on the nose, another on the lips or an eye, and all asking for more if they felt they weren’t looking battered enough. Then Father Pons tied them firmly to the bed ends and stuffed rags in their mouths.
‘Can you breathe?’
They nodded. Some had bruises on their faces, others blood coming from their noses, all had tears in their eyes.
‘Thank you, my sons,’ said Father Pons. ‘And to help you hold out till morning, think of Our Lord Jesus Christ.’
With that, he checked that each of us had a small piece of luggage and then led us down the stairs and out of the back door in total silence.
‘Where are we going?’ whispered Rudy.
Although I was probably the only one who had any idea, I kept it to myself.
We cut across the grounds to the clearing and Father Pons stopped us there.
‘My children, I’m sorry if you think I’m mad: we’re not going any further than this.’
He explained his plan and we spent the rest of the night putting it into action.
Half of us went to get some sleep in the crypt under the chapel. The other half, which included me, spent the next few hours erasing the true clues and establishing false ones. The ground was soaked from recent rain and sank under our feet with a squelching sound: it couldn’t have been easier to leave a beautiful trail.
So our group walked on through the clearing and left the park through the narrow doorway. Then, digging our heels into the soft soil, snapping the odd branch and even deliberately dropping a few belongings, we went down across the fields to the river. There Father Pons took us over to a jetty.
‘Right, they’ll think there was a boat waiting for us here . . . Now we’re going to head back but we’ll have to walk backwards, boys, so they think there were twice as many of us and so we don’t leave any footprints going in the wrong direction.’
The walk back was slow and laborious: we slipped and fell − hard work on top of our fear and mounting tiredness. Back at the clearing, we still had the most difficult bit to do: hiding any trace of our footprints towards the disused chapel by beating the damp ground with foliage.
Dawn was just breaking when we joined our sleeping classmates in the crypt. Father Pons carefully closed the door and the trapdoor overhead, lighting just a single candle as a night light.
‘Go to sleep, my children. There’s no bell to get you up this morning.’
Not far from where I had flopped to the ground, he cleared a space for himself between some piles of books which he stacked around him like a brick wall. When he saw me watching I asked,
‘Can I come into your room with you, Father?’
‘Come, my little Joseph.’
I slipped in beside him and lay my cheek on his lean shoulder. I barely had time to feel his kindly smile on me before falling asleep.
The following morning the Gestapo swarmed into the Villa Jaune, came across the bound and gagged seminarians, screamed in frustration, followed our false trail down to the river and carried on looking for us beyond that point. It never occurred to them that we might not have fled.
It was now impossible for Father Pons to show himself above ground. It would also be impossible for us to stay in the secret synagogue set up beneath the chapel.
We were very glad to be alive but now it was living itself that posed all sorts of problems: talking, eating, relieving ourselves. Even sleep offered no refuge because we could only lie on the bare ground and had to take it in turns.
‘You see, Joseph,’ Father Pons said good-humouredly, ‘the time they spent on Noah’s Ark can’t have been a barrel of laughs.’
It was not long before the Resistance came for us one by one, to hide us elsewhere. Rudy was among the first to leave – possibly because he took up so much space! Father Pons never pointed me out to the people who came to take us. Was this deliberate? I liked to think he was keeping me with him as long as possible.
‘Maybe the Allies will win sooner than we think? Maybe we’ll soon be saved?’ he would say with a wink.
He used these days and weeks to improve his and my knowledge of the Jewish faith.
‘Your lives aren’t just your lives, they bear a message. I can’t let you be exterminated. We must work.’
One day when there were only five of us left in the crypt, I pointed to my three sleeping classmates and said:
‘Father, I wouldn’t want to die with them.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because, even though I live with them, they’re not my friends. What have I got in common with them? Just the fact that we’re victims.’
‘Why are you telling me this, Joseph?’
‘Because I’d rather die with you.’
I let my head loll against his knee and confided in him.
‘I’d rather die with you because I like you best. I’d rather die with you because I don’t want to cry over you or, worse, for you to cry over me. I’d rather die with you because then you’d be the last person I saw in the world. I’d rather die with you because, without you, I’m not going to like heaven, I’d even find it scary.’
Just then someone drummed on the door of the chapel.
‘Brussels has been liberated! We’ve won! The English have liberated Brussels!’
Father Pons leaped to his feet and took me in his arms.
‘Liberated! Did you hear that, Joseph? We’re free! The Germans are withdrawing!’
The other children woke up.
The Resistance let us out of the crypt and we started running and jumping through the streets of Chemlay, laughing all the way. Whoops of joy came from every house, people fired gunshots into the sky, unfurled flags from their windows, started dancing in the streets and bringing out bottles of alcohol that had been hidden for five years.
I stayed in Father Pons’s arms right through till the evening. As he discussed the events with all the locals he wept tears of joy. I wiped them for him. This was a day for celebrations so I was allowed to be nine years old, and to sit like a child on the shoulders of the man who had saved me; I was allowed to kiss his salty pink cheeks, allowed to laugh out loud for no particular reason. I stayed with him all day, glowing with happiness. Even if I was heavy, he never complained.
‘The war will be over soon.’
‘The Americans are advancing towards Liège.’
‘Long live the Americans!’
‘Long live the English!’
‘Long live all of us!’
‘Hurray!’
Ever since that day, 4 September 1944, I’ve always believed that Brussels was liberated because I had suddenly declared my love for Father Pons. It had a profound effect on me. Since then I have always expected firecrackers to go off and flags to come out when I have declared my feelings for a woman.
Five
The next few days proved more dangerous and murderous in our region than the war itself. During the Occupation the enemy had been clearly visible and, therefore, in our sights; during the Liberation shots were fired from all quarters − neither controlled nor controllable − and chaos reigned. Having brought the children back home to the Villa Jaune, Father Pons barred us from leaving the grounds. But Rudy and I couldn’t resist hauling ourselves up into our oak tree whose branches reached over the wall. Gaps in the foliage gave us a view over the plain, a bare expanse stretching to farms in the distance. From there, although we couldn’t watch actual fighting, we could see its effects. That was how I came to see the German officer who had chosen not to denounce us in the showers; he was taken past in an open-topped car, in his shirt-sleeves, splattered with blood, his face bruised and head shaved, held by armed liberators taking him to face some retribution I couldn’t bear to imagine.
Provisions were still a constant problem. To quell our hunger, Rudy and I took to looking through the lawn for a dark green grass with thicker leaves than the rest; we would pick a handful before popping the whole bunch into our mouths. It was bitter, disgusting, but at least we felt we had a mouthful.
Gradually things went back to normal. But no good news came with that. Mademoiselle Marcelle, the pharmacist, had been subjected to appalling torture before being deported to the East. How would she get back? Would she get back at all? For we now heard confirmation of what we had suspected during the war: the Nazis had been assassinating their prisoners in their concentration camps. Millions of human beings had been slaughtered, shot, gassed, burned or buried alive.
I started wetting the bed again. Terror was now retrospective: I was horrified by the fate I had been spared. Shame became retrospective too: I thought about my father, how I had glimpsed him but hadn’t see fit to call out to him. Had it really been him? Was he still alive? And my mother? I started loving them all over again with a love multiplied ten times by my remorse.
On cloudless nights I would leave the dormitory to go and gaze at the sky. When I stared at ‘Joseph and Maman’s star’, all the stars seemed to start singing in Yiddish again. My eyes would soon blur with tears, I couldn’t breathe, lying pinned to the grass with my arms outstretched, eventually choking on snot and tears.
Father Pons no longer had time for my Hebrew lessons. He spent months chasing about from morning till night, tracking down our parents, tackling the encrypted registers set up by Resistance networks, and applying to Brussels for lists of deported people who had died.
For some, news came quickly: they were the only survivors in their families. Outside lessons we comforted them and took care of them while, deep down, we worried for ourselves: Will I be next? When it takes this long, is it good news? Or the worst?
Once facts started being substituted for hopes, Rudy made up his mind he had lost all his loved ones. ‘I’m so schlemazel, that’s the only possible outcome.’ Sure enough, Father Pons came back week after week with grim confirmation that his elder brother, then his other brothers, then his sister and finally his father had been gassed in Auschwitz. Each time my friend was crushed by towering silent pain: we spent hours at a time lying on the grass, holding hands and looking up at the sky full of sunlight and swallows. I think he cried but I didn’t dare look for fear of humiliating him.
One evening Father Pons came back from Brussels bright red in the face from pedalling so quickly, and ran over to Rudy.
‘Rudy, your mother’s alive! She’ll be getting to Brussels on Friday, in a convoy of survivors.’
That night Rudy was so racked with sobs of relief that I thought he would die, suffocated by his own tears, before he even managed to see his mother again.
On the Friday Rudy was out of bed before dawn to get washed and dressed, polish his shoes and do himself up like a smart townie with neatly waved, slicked-back hair, so that he was only recognizable by his prominent ears. He was so excited he couldn’t stop chattering, skipping from one subject to another, leaving sentences half finished so he could get on to the next.
As he had arranged to borrow a car, Father Pons decided I should join in the journey so, for the first time in three years, I put aside anxieties about my own family’s fate.
In Brussels light rain, a dusting of water, wafted between the grey buildings, misting the car windows with a transparent veil, and making the pavements shine. When we arrived at the big, smart hotel where survivors were being droppe
d off, Rudy hurried over to the red- and gold-liveried concierge.
‘Where’s the piano? I need to take my mother to it. She’s a fantastic pianist. A virtuoso. She gives concerts.’
Once we had located the long, lacquered instrument in the bar, we were told the survivors had already arrived and, having been deloused and disinfected, were being given a meal in the restaurant.
Rudy ran all the way there, accompanied by Father Pons and myself.
There, stooped over bowls of soup, scrawny men and women with dull skin clinging unbearably to their bones, all with the same rings under the same vacant eyes, and so exhausted they could barely hold their spoons. They paid no attention to us at all because they were so frantic to feed themselves, afraid someone might try and stop them.
Rudy scoured the room. ‘She’s not here. Is there another restaurant, Father?’
A voice rang out from one of the benches.
‘Rudy!’
A woman stood up and almost collapsed as she waved to us.
‘Rudy!’
‘Maman!’
Rudy ran over to the woman calling to him, and took her in his arms.
I couldn’t reconcile her with the mother Rudy had described to me; a tall regal woman, he had said, with a magnificent bosom, steel blue eyes, and long thick luxuriant black hair that people couldn’t help admiring. Instead he was hugging a little old lady who was almost bald, with staring, frightened, washed-out grey eyes, and whose wide, flat, bony body showed through her woollen dress.
But there they were whispering Yiddish sweet nothings in each other’s ears, and crying on each other’s shoulders, and I concluded that Rudy might not have got the wrong person but had probably embellished his memories.
He wanted to take her away.
‘Come on, Maman, there’s a piano in this hotel.’
‘No, Rudy, I want to finish my meal first.’
‘Come on, Maman, come here.’
‘I haven’t finished the carrots,’ she said, stamping her foot like a stubborn child.
Rudy was taken aback: this wasn’t his domineering mother any more but a little girl who didn’t want to miss out on her food. Gently touching Rudy’s arm, Father Pons suggested he should respect her wishes.