THE HOUSE OF IZIEU
Copyright © 2020 Jan Rehner
Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Collective Agency (Access Copyright).
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.
Cover design: Val Fullard
eBook: tikaebooks.com
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The house of Izieu : a novel / Jan Rehner.
Names: Rehner, Jan, author.
Series: Inanna poetry & fiction series.
Description: Series statement: Inanna poetry & fiction series
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200208217 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200208225 | ISBN 9781771337250 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771337267 (epub) | ISBN 9781771337274 (Kindle) | ISBN 9781771337281 (pdf)
Classification: LCC PS8585.E4473 H68 2020 | DDC C813/.6—dc23
Printed and bound in Canada
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210 Founders College, York University
4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3
Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax: (416) 736-5765
Email: inanna.publications@inanna.ca Website: www.inanna.ca
THE HOUSE OF IZIEU
a novel
Jan Rehner
INANNA PUBLICATIONS AND EDUCATION INC.
TORONTO, CANADA
For Jake and Kyle
ALSO BY JAN REHNER
Almost True
Missing Matisse
On Pain of Death
Just Murder
THE CHILDREN
Sami Adelsheimer
Hans Ament
Nina Aronowitz
Jean-Paul Balsam
Max-Marcel Balsam
Elie Benassayag
Esther Benassayag
Jacob Benassayag
Jacques Benguigui
Jean-Claude Benguigui
Richard Benguigui
Barouk-Raoul Bentitou
Albert (Coco) Bulka
Majer Bulka
Lucienne Friedler
Egon-Heinrich Gamiel
Liliane Gerenstein
Maurice Gerenstein
Henri-Chaïm Goldberg
Joseph Goldberg
Claudine Halaunbrenner
Mina Halaunbrenner
Georges Halpern
Arnold Hirsch
Isidore Kargeman
Liane Krochmal
Rénate Krochmal
Max Leiner
Claude Levan-Reifman
Fritz Löbmann
Alice Jacqueline Luzgart
Marcel Mermelstein
Paula Mermelstein
Theodor Reis
Gilles Sadowski
Martha Spiegel
Senta Spiegel
Sigmund Springer
Sarah (Suzanne) Szulklaper
Herman Tetelbaum
Max Tetelbaum
Charles Weltner
Otto Wertheimer
Emile Zuckerberg
PRESENCE AND ABSENCE
THE HOUSE STILL STANDS, a large white house on a long, sloping hill, nestled against the blue-shadowed foothills of the Jura mountains in a tiny corner of France. To the right of the house, sprays of arching, red-berried shrubs border a path that leads to the barn; to the left, a decorative terrace with white balustrades stretches toward lush fields of wild grass that ripple in the wind. A wide circular fountain filled with clear water dominates the front courtyard, while brown cows graze in the lower meadow, just below the old granary.
The view from the house is stunning, uninterrupted, bordered by pine-covered mountains, and centered by wide-open sky and the shine of water, a sweeping slice of the Rhône River. A flock of birds catches the eye, a mass of silver wings swinging in upward drifts across the sun.
All this beauty, and yet no one stumbles upon this place accidentally. The village of Izieu, a mere scattering of houses, is miles away and the narrow road twisting up the mountain is a wilderness of ivy and brambles. Encroaching tree branches meet overhead, turning the road into a green tunnel.
Step into this space and the air is electric, charged with all that once happened here. Time slides in some unfathomable way and suddenly you are there at the moment it began. The clock ticks. The hour strikes.
You want to shout out to the children, “Run! Hide! It’s not too late!”
But the children are playing, drawn back to the place where they were happy, their spirits woven into the woods, sparking off the surface of the river. Their bodies are sketched in shadow, their movements slightly out of rhythm, jumpy, as if you were watching an old black-and-white newsreel.
Three young boys swing from the limbs of a craggy apple tree. Two sisters, hand-in-hand, shyly watch from the mossy edge of the woods, lingering in patches of shade. Another group of children has turned the fountain into a wading pool. You hear the lilt of their voices above the splashing. A toddler bounces up and down as if there is too much energy in him to be contained in one small body. In one corner of the terrace, two teenagers steal a kiss.
The rush of a child’s breath whispering into your ear is like the flutter of a butterfly wing, a soft puff of displaced air that you wish you could capture in a jar and keep forever.
You lay the palm of your hand on the bark of a tree just to check on reality and you imagine that a child once lay their hand on that very spot, or maybe that spot is now further up the tree, further than you can reach, up in the tangle of branches above your head.
But time buckles again and you are back in the present, abandoned amid an aching vacancy.
You squint your eyes and blink and blink again, but the children are gone and it does no good to shout into the wind that they should have been safe. They should have been.
You wander inside now, hoping to find their sharp presence again, touching, naming, and identifying, acknowledging the significance of a child’s crayon drawing, row upon row of empty desks in a makeshift classroom. Upstairs, there is a dormitory, yawning space where once there were beds, pillow fights, faces reflecting the light of candles, warm hands reaching out to comfort.
There are photos of the children, some blurry, some clearly in focus. You feel an urgency to learn every name, memorize each set of eyes, each nose, each smile, every freckle and twist of hair. But you are quickly defeated. Each face is a universe.
The stillness of the photographs is inherently elegiac. Sometimes, the paper evidence of a crime is more reliable than memory or testimony.
Outside again, you stand in the front yard and stare up at the House of Izieu, solid enough to have survived for over a hundred years and yet, in retrospect, as ethereal as a dream. The dream lasted for only a moment, but that moment was brilliant.
Then the light goes out. Nothing prepares you for it. The loss. The darkness. Nothing moves, not a leaf, not a bird, not you. The river stops flowing. The moment has come.
The story is too terrible to speak of in the present tense. You must slide into it from the past, the details trapped in the tangled nets of history.
THE GATHERING