Noah's Child by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt Page A

neck towards me.
    â€˜What did you say, Joseph?’
    I suddenly understood how terrible what I had said sounded to my parents’ ears. I was flooded with shame! Too late! Even so, I said it again, hoping that the second time would have a different effect to the first.
    â€˜Can’t I stay here?’
    Uh-oh! It was worse! Their eyes filled with tears; they looked away towards the window; Father Pons’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
    â€˜Do you realize what you’re saying, Joseph?’
    â€˜I’m saying I want to stay here.’
    The slap struck me before I could see it coming. Father Pons, his hand smarting, looked at me sadly. I looked at him, astonished: he had never hit me before.
    â€˜I’m sorry, Father,’ I mumbled.
    He shook his head sternly to mean that wasn’t the reaction he wanted; he flicked his eyes at my parents. I did as I was told.
    â€˜I’m sorry, Papa. I’m sorry, Maman. It was just my way of saying I was happy here, my way of saying thank you.’
    My parents opened their arms to me.
    â€˜You’re right, my darling,’ said my mother. ‘We’ll never be able to thank Father Pons enough.’
    â€˜That’s right,’ agreed my father.
    â€˜Have you heard, Mischke, he’s lost his accent, our Josephshi has. You wouldn’t know he was our son.’
    â€˜He’s right, though. We should stop all this wretched Yiddish business.’
    I interrupted the conversation by staring straight at Father Pons and explaining, ‘I just meant it’s going to be hard leaving you . . .’
    *
    Back in Brussels, it was all very well happily exploring the spacious house my father had rented now that he had started up in business with vengeful energy, and it was all very well succumbing to my mother’s caresses, her gentleness and her lilting intonations, but I felt lonely, drifting in a boat without any oars. Brussels was huge, endless, open to the four winds, lacking the boundary wall that I would have found reassuring. I could eat my fill, and wore clothes and shoes that fitted properly, I was amassing quite a collection of toys and books in the beautiful bedroom that was for me alone, but I missed the hours spent with Father Pons thinking about the world’s great mysteries. My new school friends seemed insipid, my teachers robotic, my lessons meaningless, my home boring. You can’t settle back down with your parents just by kissing them. Over three years they had become strangers to me, probably because they had changed, probably because I had changed. They had lost a child and got back an adolescent. The hunger for material success that now drove my father had altered him so much that I had trouble recognizing the humble, plaintive tailor from Schaerbeek beneath the prosperous new import-export entrepreneur.
    â€˜You’ll see, my son, I’m going to make a fortune,and you can just take over the business later,’ he announced, his eyes shining with excitement.
    Did I want to be like him?
    When he suggested preparing for my bar mitzvah by signing me up for a cheder, a traditional Jewish school, I instantly refused.
    â€˜Don’t you want your bar mitzvah?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Don’t you want to learn to read the Torah, and to write and pray in Hebrew?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜I want to become a Catholic!’
    The response wasn’t long in coming: a swift, sharp, violent slap. The second in only a few weeks. After Father Pons, my own father. For me, liberation meant mostly liberating people’s slapping hand.
    He called my mother and asked her to listen. I said it again, I confirmed that I wanted to adopt the Catholic faith. She cried and screamed. That same evening I ran away.
    By bike, and going the wrong way several times, I retraced the journey to Chemlay, and reached the Villa Jaune at about eleven o’clock.
    I didn’t even ring at the gate.