by Bodie Thoene
The matron smiled grimly. Her right front tooth was capped with gold, which added to the impression that she was a caricature of the tough, hard Nazi jailer. “I told you, Frau Rosenfelt—stealing.”
“Tell me, please, what I have stolen?”
The matron leaned back and reached into a packing crate. From a box of sawdust and newspapers, she pulled a porcelain figurine. She held it up triumphantly and placed it on the trunk beside her. Light from a grimy window shone on the delicate figure of Mary and the Christ child.
Mrs. Rosenfelt gasped. The figure of Mary and her little boy had, indeed, been one of her favorites. “But . . . where . . . I have not seen that piece in nearly three years!”
“You admit you are familiar—”
“Familiar!” Mrs. Rosenfelt scoffed. Mary, with clear skin, bright eyes and long dark braid, timelessly captured in a smile of delight as her young son held up a small wooden boat he had made for her. Here was a holy moment between mother and child. Yes, Mrs. Rosenfelt knew the piece well.
“When the thousand figures of the Rosenfelt collection were absorbed by the Reich, this was not among them!”
The old woman’s heart fell. Could this be the reason they had detained her? She had given the figurine to her housekeeper, Frau Haefner. “I gave it to a friend as a gift.”
“It was not yours to give!” the matron roared. Her face reddened with fury.
“It was mine. More mine than you can know. You see, I posed for the figure of Mary. My little son Daniel was the child Jesus,” Mrs. Rosenfelt said quietly. “Yes. Mine.”
The matron nearly choked at the words of the old woman. “You are saying to us, to the Reich, that you posed for this—”
A smile flitted across the thin lips of Mrs. Rosenfelt. “I was much younger then, I admit. Even a beauty—”
Her words were cut short as the matron spit in her face. “Sacrilege! A Jewess and her spawn posing for a holy—”
Bubbe Rosenfelt felt silent as she wiped the spittle from her face. For a moment she thought she would be ill; then a new indignation took hold of her. “I thought that is why Herr Hitler had all images of Jesus removed from the churches. You did not know your Christ was a Jew, Frau Matron?”
The matron was speechless in her rage. She gaped at the tender figure of mother and child. “You . . . you . . . this art is stolen, and now you will pay for it!”
“How did you come by it?” Mrs. Rosenfelt raised her voice gruffly.
“Your Frau Haefner confessed.”
“Did she confess that her employer had given her a personal gift? Her heart had been broken by the desecration of the church by Nazi symbols, and so I offered her—”
“This is enough! Now I will call my Oberführer and we will see how you feel in a Gestapo cell!” The matron spun on her heel and reached for the door.
“Before you do that,” Mrs. Rosenfelts aid coolly in a voice that carried some dark threat, “you would be wise to contact Colonel Beich at the Office of Immigration. He might have some word of advice for you. Something about the family connection of this old sow, as you have so named me.”
The matron seemed not to hear. She slammed the door behind her as she left the room. Mrs. Rosenfelt heard the key turn in the latch. The silent, empty room was a welcome relief after nearly half an hour of threats and insults.
She moved toward the old trunk and pulled herself onto it until she sat beside the porcelain figurine that had caused her so much trouble this morning. Poor Frau Haefner must also be in some sort of terrible trouble. Why would she confess a crime that was no crime at all?
Mrs. Rosenfelt looked down at the image of herself and Daniel so many, many years ago. Gently she touched the smooth, happy face of the child with her own aged finger. She could remember when the face of Mary had been her own mirrored reflection. Of course, no one could possibly see the resemblance now, but how wonderfully obvious it had been once! She had told Frau Haefner the secret when she gave the piece to her on their farewell. Remember, it is a Jewish mother and her son. “Can you remember that, Frau Haefner? Will you still be able to pray if you think of that? Or must all Germans remove their God from their hearts to worship Hitler?”
Frau Haefner had wept bitterly that day. Not only was her mistress being robbed of all her belongings, but after thirty-seven years of service, Frau Haefner was no longer able to work for a Jew!
What happened to my devoted housekeeper? Mrs. Rosenfelt wondered. And what is to become of me? She glanced nervously at her watch. There was less than an hour left before the Cristobel was scheduled to sail. The Nazis would certainly not allow her to leave in time. The trip to the Gestapo headquarters would take up most of the hour.
She clutched the porcelain figurine to her as if she had found an old friend. “Well, then, you have got me into this. How will you get me out of it?” Then she chuckled softly at the irony.
She had barely spoken when the door flew back and a young red-haired officer in a black tunic stepped into the room. “Heil Hitler!” he cried.
When she did not reply he looked momentarily confused.
“So, you are keeping me off the boat over this?” Mrs. Rosenfelt slid off her trunk. “You Nazis have taken Christ out of every church, and now you will arrest me for giving this to my servant?”
The young officer did not reply. He clapped his hands and shouted at two dock hands who waited nervously behind him. At the signal, they moved awkwardly into the cramped space and hefted the trunk.
“How long will you detain me?” Mrs. Rosenfelt demanded, still clutching the figurine.
The officer jerked his black-gloved hand out in a gesture that demanded she give him the porcelain. She held it a moment longer and then extended her hand and the figurine. A fraction of a second before the officer grasped the statue, she opened her fingers. He shouted as it tumbled from his grasp and smashed into a thousand pieces on the hard concrete floor. Head and arms, smiles and eyes, flowing folds of cloth and the tiny sailboat became sharp splinters that sprayed over the spit-shined jackboots of the startled officer.
His mouth opened and closed as he stared at the shattered glass littering the concrete. At last he whispered in disbelief, “It was worth thousands—why?”
Mrs. Rosenfelt did not feel regret for the broken figurine. Yes, it had been one of the best among the thousand or so that had been in their priceless collection. The piece had been famous. There were a few more in the edition. No doubt the Nazis would steal one from some other collector. Of course, it would not be the first of the edition, but—
“A tragic blunder on your part, Herr Officer,” Mrs. Rosenfelt replied coolly. “Your first error is my arrest.” Again she glanced at her watch. The great whistle of the Cristobel bellowed from the dock. “The second error is detaining me.”
“I came—” he could not take his eyes from the smashed treasure at his feet—“I was coming to tell you . . . a mistake. We thought . . . that is, Colonel Beich says you are the aunt of . . . an important American . . . and . . .” To finish his stammering and incoherent thought, he clicked his heels and shouted, “Heil Hitler!” Shards of porcelain crunched under his boots.
“You are telling me I am free to go?”
He bowed slightly in agreement and clicked his heels again. “And I am instructed to tell you that charges have been—”
“Dropped.” Mrs. Rosenfelt inclined her head slightly and picked her way out carefully through the mess. “Oy, such a pity you broke this. Worth thousands, no doubt.”
The clean, sleek hull of the Cristobel was still waiting at the dock when she emerged.
***
As the gulls above the Darien increased in numbers, wheeling and crying the approach to England, the ships and small fishing vessels in the sea lanes became a common sight. Trudy and Gretchen made a game of calling out each new sighting and then guessing the flag under which the craft sailed.
“England!”
“No, the flag is American—at least I think so�
��like the one on our ship.”
There was a certain pride when, indeed, one of this vast and varied armada displayed a flag that was identical to their own. Somehow, sitting beneath this American flag made them all feel a small part of the mysterious and wonderful country. The colors were the same as the British Union Jack, but everyone knew that this was because the Americans had fought the English kings and tyrants to make their own country. A brave bunch, those Americans.
Great steamers and liners and freight ships much sleeker and newer than the Darien carried this banner. The glory of those vessels was keenly felt by the ragged voyagers who watched them pass and waved as if they were old friends meeting on the street corner.
Young Aaron, who had spent the afternoon on the bottom step leading to the bridge, paid little attention to the squeals of the little girls and boys who pretended now to be pirates searching for a schooner to pillage. Aaron had other matters of grave importance on his mind. Balanced precariously on his lap was a worn red volume, Karl Baedeker’s Handbook for Travelers. It was a 1901 version describing Great Britain and Wales in the German language. The folding maps inside the book were carefully unfolded and held from ripping in the wind. The traveler’s guide had once belonged exclusively to the young man, and he guarded its contents jealously from the old men and women who flocked around him like a herd of tugboats nosing an ocean liner.
When a dozen passengers pointed toward a spur of land jutting into the sea and called that this must be the mouth of the Thames, Aaron shook his head in solemn disagreement and the crowd waited expectantly to hear what place this was on the Baedeker’s map.
“Spurn Heat,” Aaron announced like a professor of geography. This strange British name was pronounced and mispronounced around the deck until the point of land disappeared in a mist and Aaron raised his hand to point and say, “Here is Humber and there is Gremsby.”
“Humber . . . Humber . . . Humber? There is a place called Humber? But where is the Thames? And where is London, boy?”
Little fishing boats peeled off into another enormous-looking bay. “Still not the Thames,” Aaron proclaimed with authority. “It is called the Walsh.” He raised his chin slightly with a gesture that pointed to some distant place that only he could see. “Over there is a harbor called Boston on a river called Witham, which leads to another city called Leeds.”
This lesson from Baedeker’s was far more interesting than Torah school had been.
“What is next, Aaron? What will come after this Walsh place? Nu! Tell us, Aaron.”
Aaron became a sort of prophet. “We follow the steamship lanes.” The assembly looked at the water as if there were a visible lane the freighter would follow. Hmms and ahhs of understanding rippled through the impromptu class.
Aaron continued. “Then we round a part of England that looks like a mitten.” He held up his hand to display four fingers as they would be tucked into a woolen mitten on a cold day. On the tips of each finger he placed a city: Wells, Cromer, and Great Yarmouth rounded the curve, and Dunwich, the Naze, Blackwater, and Foulness followed his index finger.
These names were tried on Yiddish tongues without much success. At last, Aaron pointed decisively to the curve in his hand where thumb met the index finger. “And here is the Thames!”
Everyone held up imaginary mittens on left hands. A sigh of contentment rose up through the flock. “The Thames is here! And the great city of London is there . . . right in the crook of your thumb. This lesson is as plain as a hand in front of your eyes! Oy! Who said this congregation does not know where we are going?”
The terror of battleship wakes diminished as eager eyes studied phantom maps and repeated foreign-sounding cities over and over again. “Perhaps in England we will have a chance to walk a bit on dry land while the captain provisions the ship, nu?”
“Already two days. The earth will move beneath us when we walk, we are so used to the wobbles of the sea.”
“Still . . . solid planks. A store where we can buy a pillow maybe? A blanket? You think these English docks sell deck chairs?”
“You have money, Chaim?”
“More than that—maybe they will take that poor creature to a hospital. How he must be suffering! Oy!”
This sentiment was shared by everyone on the ship. Captain Burton, it was rumored, had already radioed ahead to the English authorities for an ambulance and a stretcher to carry the poor stowaway to medical help. Yes, this was a good thing, this stopover in England. The British were kind and gentle people, Aaron told them. His father had told him so.
At last, the Darien labored down the index finger to the crook of the thumb and the mouth of the Thames. Was it possible that all of them, even the surly Orthodox Jews, were now on the deck? The passengers were packed like kosher herring from bow to stern. The rabbi of Nuremberg began to sing in a quavering voice, and the hymn of praise was caught by stronger voices. They had so much to be grateful for. Here in these waters there were no Nazi battleships. No stones would be hurled at them from the docks or bridges. Here men were civilized, and such a thing could not happen.
***
It was Trudy who first raised her arm to point at the little naval vessel speeding across the water toward them. “Look!” the child cried. “Look, Mama, it is flying the English flag!”
The Union Jack posed stiffly in the wind as the little boat altered its course slightly to intersect that of the Darien. Klaus swallowed hard. The men in their British uniforms stood scowling up at them. Their commander raised a bullhorn and shouted up to Captain Burton: “In the name of His Majesty, you are denied anchorage in British waters! Again, I repeat . . . ”
Maria and Klaus looked back at the dim glass of the bridge. The shadow of Captain Burton raised a fist in defiance, but the thrumming engines of the freighter groaned and dropped to an unsteady heartbeat as the ship stopped in the water. The passengers moaned as one suffering human soul together. So this was their welcome to civilization!
What radio communication had been taking place between Burton and the port authorities? Klaus suddenly wondered.
“SS Darien!” the commander of the naval vessel bellowed. “You are denied anchorage in British waters! You will change course or we shall be forced to take punitive action.”
Worried refugees crowded around Maria for an interpretation of the ominous-sounding words of the Englishman. “What is he saying? What? They will not let us stop even awhile here? First Nazi battleships, and now the English! Oy! We look so dangerous?”
The door to the bridge burst open. Maria could see the first mate at the helm. Captain Burton stood grimly gripping the railing as the naval vessel came alongside. Burton’s lips moved, silently cursing the arrogant sailors who now called up, demanding to come aboard.
A rope ladder was lowered by a crew member who obeyed the single nod of Burton’s head. The old rabbi from Nuremberg stepped near to the rail and muttered a prayer for deliverance as the British commander boarded with five armed sailors. Captain Burton did not offer to come down from his perch. Nor did he invite the British sailors up. He simply stood with arms crossed until they dusted off their white trousers and shielded their eyes against the sun as they looked toward him.
The British commander stood in the center of a semicircle of his men. Rifles were unslung and the men turned to face the crowd of refugees.
“I want you to tell them!” Captain Burton shouted. “Go ahead! Tell them that we are denied anchorage even for a few hours for provisions!”
The British commander put a hand on his hips, his legs apart to brace himself in case some desperate character charged him.
“Your ship carries unauthorized cargo,” he called back. “Potentially dangerous to our country as the immigration quota now stands.”
“Tell them how you won’t let us get close to shore because you are afraid some might jump ship and swim to land. Go ahead! Explain why you are doing this, Commander, after two hours of radio negotiation!”
The refugee
s pushed nearer. They seemed unafraid of the weapons.
Trudy hugged Gretchen, who proclaimed loudly, “I won’t jump into the water unless God parts it again!”
Ada-Marie added in a small voice, “Mama, I cannot swim!”
The commander did not look at all distressed by the crowd around him. Indeed he maintained such a superior stance that Maria could not help but think how much like a German officer he seemed.
“This is not a matter that I have within my power to change,” the Englishman said. “I am following orders from higher authorities. We have been warned that a shipload of illegal immigrants sailed from Hamburg. We simply have no room for you. The quotas are full, and—”
Captain Burton interrupted angrily. “And I explained that this is a temporary stop. A few hours.”
“We refuse to take that chance. You will not be allowed any closer to Southampton or London. You have been warned.”
As if to emphasize this point, two more British ships—coastal cutters—sounded horns as they raced to reinforce the first vessel.
“Then for the sake of human decency,” Burton called back, “will you provide medical attention for the injured seaman below decks?”
He was speaking of the battered man from the ventilation shaft. Every passenger knew the fellow was not a seaman, but perhaps these Englishmen would take him to a hospital on the land.
“You have received the reply of the immigration authorities on that matter as well, Mr. Burton. You say the fellow lost his papers? Without proper papers we will not take responsibility for—”
“Medical supplies, then?” Burton roared the question like an accusation.
The British commander hesitated, then turned and called down to his ship’s crew. “Send a first-aid kit up here!”
A silent minute passed until a small white metal box with a red cross was brought up the side and given to the commander. This was then taken by the doctor, who flipped open the lid, rummaged through the meager contents and shook his head in dismay. “Our fellow has been burned. He will be in a great deal of pain when he awakes from our last bit of morphine. He may well die.”