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

was far enough away. ‘I’m on your side, not against you.’
    â€˜I don’t tolerate spies, Joseph.’
    A cloud moved away from the moon which shed its blue light into the chapel, turning our faces a grey putty colour. Father Pons suddenly seemed too tall and too thin, a great question mark traced out on a wall in charcoal, almost exactly like the Nazis’ caricature of a wicked Jew seen all over our neighbourhood, his eyes so bright they were unsettling. He smiled.
    â€˜Oh, come on then!’
    Taking my hand, he led me to the left-hand side of the chapel where he moved aside an old rug stiff with grime. A ring appeared in the floor. Father Pons pulled it and a flagstone opened up.
    Steps led down into the dark body of the earth.An oil lamp stood waiting on the first step. Father Pons lit it and climbed slowly into the underground space, waving me on behind him.
    â€˜What do you find beneath a church, my little Joseph?’
    â€˜A cellar?’
    â€˜A crypt.’
    We had reached the last step. A cool smell of mushrooms wafted from the depths. Was this the earth breathing?
    â€˜And what do you find in a crypt?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    â€˜A synagogue.’
    He lit a few candles and the secret synagogue Father Pons had put together appeared before me. Beneath a cloak of richly embroidered cloth, he kept a scroll of the Torah, a long parchment covered in sacred writings. A photograph of Jerusalem indicated which direction to turn to when praying, because it is through that city that all prayers are taken up to God.
    Behind us were shelves laden with things.
    â€˜What’s all that?’
    â€˜My collection.’
    He showed me prayer books, mystic poems, rabbis’ commentaries, and seven- and nine-branched candle-sticks.Beside a gramophone was a pile of shiny black discs.
    â€˜What are those records?’
    â€˜Prayer music, Yiddish songs. Do you know who was the first collector of human history, my little Joseph?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜It was Noah.’
    â€˜Never heard of him.’
    â€˜A very long time ago, the world was blighted by constant rain. The water caved in roofs and tore down walls, destroyed bridges, covered roads and swelled rivers and streams. Huge floods carried whole towns and villages away. The survivors took refuge on mountain tops, where at first they found safety but eventually the constant trickle of water caused the rock to crack and split apart. One man, Noah, predicted that our planet would be completely covered in water. So he began a collection. With the help of his sons and daughters, he managed to find a male and female of every living creature, a fox and a vixen, a tiger and a tigress, a cock pheasant and a hen pheasant, pairs of spiders, ostriches, snakes . . . everything except for fish and aquatic mammals, which were proliferating in the swelling oceans. Atthe same time he built a huge boat and, when the waters reached him, he loaded all the animals and all the remaining people on to the boat. For several months Noah’s Ark sailed aimlessly over the vast sea that the earth’s surface had become. Then the rains stopped. The water level crept down. Noah was afraid he might run out of food for those living on his ark. He released a dove which flew back with a fresh olive branch in its beak, proving that the mountain tops were at last emerging above the waves. It was then that Noah realized he had succeeded in his extraordinary challenge: to save all of God’s creatures.’
    â€˜Why didn’t God save them himself? Didn’t he care? Had he gone away on holiday?’
    â€˜God created the universe once, once and for all. He made instinct and intelligence so that we could cope without him.’
    â€˜Are you being like Noah, then?’
    â€˜Yes. I collect things, like him. When I was a child I lived in an African country called the Belgian Congo, because my father worked there; the whites so