Iain Pears - The Dream of Scipio

Faced with such a call, the reaction was swift. Manlius achieved everything he desired, doubts about him faded away, his advocacy of the treaty with King Gundobad was accepted almost without question. Over the next week, fifty converted, a hundred and four left, and five died. The incident was recorded, passed from mouth to mouth, written about in letters, and eventually, many years later, found its way to Gregory, the saintly and able Bishop of Tours. He recorded it twice—once more or less accurately in a manuscript lost in the fifteenth century, and once less so, transferring the events and the words to Saint Avitus a century or so later, repeating the same story because the simple repetition excited in him not suspicion that his source was doubtful, but joy that the same events occurring twice confirmed the will of God. Through him, and others who borrowed his arguments and turns of phrase, the words of Manlius echoed down the centuries, becoming fainter and stronger by turns, whispering into the ears of Clement, of Olivier, of Gersonides and his servant Rebecca, and on to Julien, Bernard, Marcel, and many, many others. This was his immortality.

JULIEN DROVE BACK to Avignon afterward, ran out of fuel outside the railway station, and abandoned the car by the side of the road. He left it unlocked and walked straight off, looked up at the goods train, immobilized on the tracks above him, puffing pathetically. He sometimes thought all the trains in France had spent the last four years sitting idly at stations, waiting for some order to be given. Nothing moved anymore, except in slow motion.

He headed for the lycée that had been converted into a makeshift prison. His lycée, indeed, where he had enjoyed the triumphs of youth before he volunteered for the army in 1917. Where Bernard and he and Marcel had first met. And he understood the passion that Marcel felt at this moment, how he wanted so much to triumph at last.

He remembered the schoolroom, probably still decorated with the same tables of the alphabet; he remembered the smell of the place, the way the paint peeled in the corridors. The maps, though, would have been changed, taken down so that Alsace and Lorraine would not be shown as French; the bust of Marianne, symbol of republican France, which used to decorate the hallway, had no doubt also vanished, removed and put into storage on Marcel’s order some three years previously. But unchanged would be the teacher’s podium, where Bernard had once taken his pen-knife to the teacher’s desk.

Everyone had watched him do it; a crowd had gathered around, laughing and sniggering. Only Marcel had stayed at his desk, conscientiously working, doing his best as usual to keep up, making best use of his time. Had Julien been one of the crowd? He could not remember. He remembered it only as a filmgoer; the scene in black and white, the giggling children, the sudden hush and scramble as Monsieur Julot the teacher came back into the room; the suspicious look, and then the questioning.

“What has been going on here?”

And how had he accomplished it? How had Bernard managed to get the blame poured onto the top of Marcel’s innocent head? “Julot is a Jew,” Bernard had scratched, and the beating Marcel received was severe, not because of the vandalism, although that was serious enough, but because of the magnitude of the insult. Bernard put his arm around him afterward, said he was his best friend, made him feel better.

“No one here of that name.” He had managed to get into the building, demanded to see the officer in charge, and explained why he was there. He had come for Julia.

“Don’t be absurd. The préfet said she was here. I am to telephone him, and he will sign the order to have her released.”

He shook his head again. “All the Jews were moved out this afternoon; orders of the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs.”

Julien stared. “What?”

The man sighed; a bored sigh of one who has to deal with complaints far too often. “There was a convoy to pick up Jews. It was short of numbers from Marseille. So . . .”

“Who said that?”

The man did not reply. What did it matter? It was not his concern.

“Where has she gone? What are they doing with her?”

Another weary shrug. “You’re asking the wrong person. I am merely in charge of guarding this place.”

“You must know something.”

The panic in Julien’s voice struck a chord. Some sort of human connection was made. “Look, I don’t know. All Jews are to be taken to an assembly point, then they will be transported to work camps. That’s all. Now, go away.”

“Where is she? Please tell me.”

He sighed. “They were all taken to the railway station,” he said impatiently. Anything to get him to go away. “And that’s where they will still be, I imagine.”

JULIEN RAN; he had never run so fast; the years of walking had made him fitter than he ever realized. At least once a policeman shouted at him to stop, suspicious of anyone running in the slow-motion country, but he paid no attention, and the man lost interest. He ran down the rue de la République, down what used to be the cours Jean-Jaurès, down to the walls, across the big boulevard that skirted them, and over to the station.

It was quiet; he tried to block out what that meant. As he ran in he started shouting uncontrollably. “Where is the train? Where is the train?”

The few people there paid him no attention, beyond curious looks. He ran to the platform, found a guard, and grabbed him. “Where is the train?”

The guard pushed him off roughly, and Julien lunged forward again, then tripped and fell heavily on the concrete. “Please,” he said, panting so hard he could scarcely speak, “I beg you, tell me.”

“What train?”

“The one that was here. With the people on it. The convoy.”

“The Jews, you mean?”

He nodded.

The guard paused, and looked down the line. Nothing here, his gesture seemed to say. “It was in the goods yard. It went ten minutes ago.”

He looked at Julien for a moment, considered offering him some help. Then he looked at the clock; his shift was over, he was late. It had been a long day. He flicked his cigarette onto the tracks and walked away.

OLIVIER TRIED to think, for a while, that something might be salvaged from the catastrophe, but knew he was fooling himself. He knew and understood nothing. Ceccani could feel the great sweep of history whirling around him, and thought in centuries; he had taken on the guardianship of the soul of Christianity. He was prepared to sacrifice, himself and others, to discharge his duties toward Christendom, and to obey the will of God. Daily, he grappled with mighty matters of an import Olivier could only guess at; the poet was a mere human, Ceccani something more than that.

Although he understood this much, it meant little to him. His universe was smaller, more petty and more circumscribed. Having buried Althieux, seen Pisano run away frightened for his life, been close when a man murdered his wife, smelled the charring of a riot, knowing that the plague threatened them all, he found he cared little for the future of Christendom, was indifferent to the power of the papacy. This was not his business. All he cared about was Rebecca and Gersonides, locked away, liable to be tortured and killed. His mind was insufficiently grand to see further than that. And indeed, he realized he was not even preoccupied with Gersonides; he felt—for now he felt only and could not think—that everything in creation, his soul and hers, the soul of all men, depended on her continuing to live.

He walked the streets all afternoon and into the night, the only person in the entire city mindless of the plague, knowing full well that it had no power over him whatsover; that although it might one day claim him for its own, it could not do so until he had reached the decision that he knew he must make sooner or later. He could bow to the wishes of his master, obey the laws of men as they were unwritten but understood. For Ceccani had given him everything—money, encouragement, a place in the world, even something approaching friendship. In return he expected loyalty; it was a fair bargain, freely entered into and universally recognized. No one would accept that throwing that over was justified. It was not self-interest, although the consequences of breaking the ties that bound him to Ceccani would be terrible enough. Rather it was a matter of honor, the simple fact that nothing could possibly justify what would be a breathtaking treason. Olivier was considering playing the part of Judas; a squalid little Judas betraying his master for no reason except for what the world would consider a base infatuation.