Read Online Noah's Child by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt - Free Book Online Page B

jumbled words, his eyes glazed, haunted. I threw myself at him and hugged him to me even though I was wet; it was a protective gesture, the sort of thing I would have done to Rudy.
    Only then did I hear what he kept saying:
    â€˜Thank you, my Lord. Thank you, my Lord. For my children, I thank you.’
    Then he turned his head towards me, seemed to become aware of me and, abandoning self-control, collapsed in my arms in tears.
    Some emotions − be they happy or unhappy − prove so strong that they break us. Father Pons’s relief so overwhelmed us that it had a contagious effect, and a few minutes later twelve little Jewish boys, naked as the day they were born, and one priest in his cassock were all clinging together, soaked and overwrought, laughing and crying at the same time.
    A vague sense of happiness carried us through the next few days. Father Pons smiled the whole time. He confessed to me that he had drawn renewed faith from that turn of events.
    â€˜Do you really think it was God who helped us, Father?’ I asked, making the most of my Hebrew lesson to voice the questions that were plaguing me. Father Pons looked at me kindly.
    â€˜To be honest, no, my little Joseph. God doesn’t get involved in that sort of thing. I’m feeling happy since that German officer did what he did because I’ve regained some faith in human nature.’
    â€˜Well, I think it’s because of you. You’re in God’s good books.’
    â€˜Don’t talk nonsense.’
    â€˜Don’t you think that if you behave in a godly way − doesn’t matter if you’re a good Jew or a good Christian − then nothing bad can happen to you?’
    â€˜Where did you get a silly idea like that?’
    â€˜From the catechism. Father Boniface . . .’
    â€˜Stop! That’s dangerous nonsense! Humans hurt each other and God doesn’t play any part in it. He made men free. So we suffer or are happy quite independently of our good qualities and our failings. What sort of terrible role are you attributing to God? Can you imagine for a single second that someone who escapes from the Nazis is loved by God, but anyone who’s captured by them isn’t? God doesn’t meddle in our business.’
    â€˜Do you mean that, whatever happens, God couldn’t care less?’
    â€˜I mean that, whatever happens, God has done what he had to do. It’s up to us now. We are responsible for ourselves.’

    * Pumice stone

Four
    A second school year began.
    Rudy and I became closer and closer. We were different in every way − age, height, concerns, attitude − but, instead of driving us apart, each of these differences only made us more aware of how much we liked each other. I helped him by clarifying his muddled ideas while he protected me from fights with his strong stature but more particularly his reputation as a bad pupil. ‘You can’t get anything out of him,’ the teachers used to say, ‘we’ve never come across such a hard nut to break.’ Rudy was completely impermeable to any kind of learning, and we admired him for it. The teachers always managed to ‘get something out of’ the rest of us, which proved we were weak, corrupt and had a suspect tendency to accept compromise. They got nothing out of Rudy. The perfect dunce: pure, unadulterated, unblemished and confronting themwith total resistance. He became the hero of our other war, the war of pupils against masters. And disciplinary punishments were doled out to him so frequently that his wild-eyed, unkempt head was adorned with another wreath: the crown of martyrdom.
    One afternoon when he was in detention and I was passing a piece of stolen bread through the window, I asked him why, even when he was being punished, he was still passive and unwavering, and refused to learn. He opened up to me:
    â€˜There are seven of us in my family: two parents and five children. They’re all