L’Honor-de-Cos
November 25, 1942
Father Glasberg knew that all the children except three had survived and were safely in hiding. Their well-being was all that mattered to him. He could not explain why, but he felt himself to be French despite being from the Ukraine; just as he had always felt like a Catholic, despite his Jewish background. He was constantly the opposite of what the rest of the world said he should be. He imagined that the Vénissieux children felt something similar.
For his safety, the cardinal had sent Glasberg to serve as a parish priest in a church far from Lyon. The small chapel in the village of Léribosc in Occitania could have seemed like an embarrassing, exiled demotion. To Glasberg, however, it was paradise on earth. He had lived in many cities and had traveled throughout many countries, but in that private corner of the world, he discovered the peace that nature brings.
Glasberg took long morning walks. Roe deer, eagles, foxes, and all sort of wild animals were daily sightings. In the afternoons, he visited his parishioners, most of whom were of advanced age. He sat and drank coffee or played cards with them. As pastor of this kind of flock, Glasberg was content to let life unfold as it wished. The world continued its course, and he no longer felt responsible for saving it. He knew that such rest was a gift from God, a kind of parenthesis in his life, and he was willing and eager to enjoy it.
That day he studied the pattern of snow forming over some nearby mountains. The destruction wrought by discontented men crazed with ambition and greed had no place there. The mountains seemed to say, “Let the world keep spinning no matter who rules it—we’ll still be here.”
Father Glasberg thought about the children and the three interminable days they had spent together, bonded through worry and sleeplessness. He suspected that his life would have been worth it had he managed to save only one of them, but there were over one hundred! He wondered where they were and what they were doing right then. Each of those individual lives had the potential to become a multiplying force of happiness and love. He was aware that the good he had done for those children was good done for the whole of humanity.
He sat on the rock bench in front of his humble abode and gazed at the fields, now barren for the winter. He imagined the leafless trees and fruitless stretches of land resurging with life in the spring. That was the way of things. No matter how unbearable the obstinate cold of winter, life would rise from the ashes. Behind each death lay a new beginning, just as a seed must die to produce its abundance.