Munich Signature

by Bodie Thoene

  “Got no ’am n’ h’eggs.” First Mate Tucker began his spiel again; then he noticed that it was Maria who stood before him. “Poor blighters don’t speak a word of English, do they? Now, tha’s awright! Y’ can tells ’em fer ol’ Tuck that we’ll ’ave ’em talkin’ like the king’s own guard afore we reach port, eh?” He winked at Maria and dumped another helping of porridge onto her plate.

  ***

  As the waiter poured her coffee cup full, Bubbe Rosenfelt raised her glasses for a better look at the little blond boy holding so tightly to the tall, handsome man’s hand. Something stirred her memory. Had she seen this child before? Bright blue eyes with long lashes. Straight blond hair poking out from a blue wool cap. Navy blue suit, cut in the fashion of an English schoolboy. The gray silk scarf. An aviator’s scarf. All the little boys seemed to want to wear them since pilots and airplanes had come of age. Indeed, there was something familiar about this handsome child.

  The boy looked up at the man at his side. The man seemed quite preoccupied, looking everywhere about the dining room. Bubbe studied the man’s features now. If he seemed familiar, she reasoned, it was only because he slightly resembled the new American movie star, James Stewart. His face was a bit more angular, true, but he had a boyishness about him and a way of carrying himself that made him seem as if he might want to join a group of Brooklyn boys in a game of stickball.

  The maitre d’ led them directly to her table. They were to fill the two empty chairs on her right. Bubbe smiled pleasantly at the child. It would be good to spend the lonely mealtimes in conversation with a little boy. How she missed the children! She thought of the peppermint candy in her reticule. She would find some reason to present a piece to him.

  Introductions were made of the five others who shared the table. “And this is Mrs. Rosenfelt. May I present Mr. John and Master Charles Murphy.”

  Bubbe Rosenfelt tried not to let her surprise show as Charles and Murphy took their seats. Of course. This boy’s picture had been plastered on every newspaper in Hamburg two years ago. He and his brother. What was his brother’s name? His father had published the newspaper. What was the child doing with this American fellow?

  Charles sat at her right elbow. He searched the face of each adult around the table, finally letting his eyes examine the pince-nez glasses dangling from the button of Bubbe’s black dress. She smiled down at him and then broke her own taboo about speaking in German. She slowly lifted the glasses and perched them on the bridge of her nose.

  “I must wear these to read the menu, you see,” she whispered to Charles in the precise accent of one who had lived in Hamburg for a long time.

  His eyes warmed with the familiarity of that soft inflection. It had been a long time since he had heard words spoken with precisely that tone. It had been a long time since Louis had been gone, and longer still since Father had disappeared into the teeming masses of Vienna.

  “Can you read the menu, Herr Charles?” she queried gently, now aware of why the boy wore his scarf even here. She did not wish to ask him anything that could not be answered with a nod or a shake of his head.

  He answered with a negative shake of his head.

  “Then shall I read for you?”

  Charles nodded.

  Murphy conversed lightly with the other passengers, keeping an eye on Charles and Mrs. Rosenfelt as he spoke. They had come too far to take any chances now.

  Murphy watched as Bubbe read the choices from the menu card. Surely this dear old Jewish lady could be trusted with Charles! Surely here, on the Queen Mary, bound for America, Murphy could relax and not worry about being followed by Gestapo agents around every corner. Surely here, now, they were finally safe.

  Bubbe held the menu card out at arms’ length, and it caught the light. The menu was inscribed in gold on stiff linen parchment with the logo of the Queen Mary at the top. “You can have any of those choices that the waiter will bring you, or perhaps Mr. Murphy would not mind if you accompany me over to the buffet table where we may choose anything we wish to eat?”

  Charles nodded his head enthusiastically and tugged on Murphy’s sleeve for permission. Murphy, bombarded by the opinions of a businessman from New Jersey about the differences between the French liner Normandie and the Queen Mary, had to ask Mrs. Rosenfelt to repeat her question.

  “Would you mind, Herr Murphy, if I take your . . . ah, your son to the buffet table?

  At the word son, Murphy started. He studied the eyes that gazed deeply into his and saw compassion and understanding. “I am somewhat familiar with your situation, Herr Murphy,” Mrs. Rosenfelt said with a tone that carried a profound significance. “I will be happy to accompany Charles to the buffet; he is quite safe with me, I assure you.”

  Murphy smiled. “Sure. There’s nothing to worry about here.” He turned to Charles. “You hungry, kid?”

  Charles nodded. A muffled “uh-huh” ruffled the scarf.

  He motioned toward the buffet table as Bubbe leaned toward Murphy. “I am from Hamburg,” she said. “I thought perhaps Charles and I might become acquainted since we will be sharing the same table for the crossing.”

  “You’re from Hamburg, too?” Murphy’s face reflected a moment of apprehension.

  “Originally from New York. I am leaving Hamburg for many of the same reasons as Charles, I imagine.” Her words conveyed that she knew whatever there was to know about the Kronenberger affair in Nazi Germany. She, too, was acquainted with grief. “Would you mind if Charles helped me at the buffet table?” She displayed her cane, an indication that buffet tables were somewhat difficult. “To manage a walking stick, one’s plate, and then to manage the serving spoon is somewhat complicated unless one has grandchildren nearby. My grandchildren are all en route to the States in a different way. Might I borrow Charles from you?” There was amusement in her eyes. Something about her made Murphy doubt that she needed a cane. Indeed, she hung the walking stick over her arm as she and Charles circled around the heaping table. Pointing at this tray or that tray, she held out her plate to Charles, who spooned the helpings for her. They admired the ice dolphins and then, together, they stopped to listen to the string quartet, paying special attention to the cellist.

  Charles carried both heaping plates back to the table.

  “. . . and I have five lovely great-granddaughters. Trudy, who is named after me, almost eight years old. Then Katrina, who is very serious. Then Louise. Louise is almost six and very pretty. How old are you?”

  Charles held up five fingers. He was also almost six.

  “Gretchen is almost five. And then the baby is Ada-Marie who is four next month. Oy! Such a handful.” Bubbe let a touch of Yiddish slip into her conversation. “Perhaps you will want to come and play with them when they come to New York. It would be nice to play with children from Hamburg, would it not, Charles?”

  Charles frowned. He was not certain that he wanted to play with any children from Hamburg except for Louis. Every other playmate had been cruel. In the end he had not had any other friends but Louis, and only the company of his mother and brother. Then his father. Finally Leah and Elisa, and now . . .

  “But then perhaps you would not wish to play with girls, nu? In Brooklyn where I come from, little boys play games called Kick the Can and stickball. You might enjoy that more. Still, there may come a time when you wish to meet some very pretty girls from Hamburg.” She reached into her reticule and fished out a round, paper-wrapped peppermint. “My thanks for helping such an old lady. Now eat your breakfast, and afterward you can have the candy.”

  Eating in public was a difficult accomplishment for Charles. He bowed his head slightly and with his left hand he raised the scarf until it covered the bridge of his nose. He shielded his mouth with his hand as his mother had taught him, and then he chose very small bites. Soft things Bubbe Rosenfelt had said were good to eat.

  Whenever any of the adults looked curiously at him, Bubbe Rosenfelt asked a question to distract them. Charles liked this old wom
an with her gray hair and her straight back and black dress and funny glasses and accent from Hamburg. She felt very much like someone from home. Comfortable. Like Louis and Father and . . . like Mommy. He wanted to ask her why her granddaughters were not on the boat with her. But then, none of his family was here either. Maybe it was just the way things were. Had they always been this way, he wondered? Some come to America on the Queen Mary and some on another ship while others cannot come at all.

  In the corner the music reminded him of Vienna and Leah. Charles wanted to show Bubbe Rosenfelt Leah’s cello. Then she would know that he really did know about cellos even if he did not know how to read the menu card.

  ***

  The sea of the gray Atlantic had risen again and the swells that slapped the hull of the Darien were taking a toll on the passengers.

  First Mate Tucker organized a battalion of adolescent boys headed by Aaron who swabbed the decks and washed the breakfast tins. Those passengers who could manage the climb had struggled up to the misty air of the top deck in order to breathe deeply and regain control of their churning stomachs.

  For Tucker, so many passengers languishing on the deck meant an opportunity for an English lesson. Bandy-legged and rubber-faced, he strolled cheerfully among them asking in his cockney accent, “An’ ’ow are y’ tod’y?”

  Broken English replied to his query, “Am I feelink fine, dank hue.” Then another helping of porridge would be served over the rail to the fishes of the Atlantic.

  Maria leaned heavily on the arm of Klaus as they staggered along the pitching deck. Trudy, Katrina, Louise, Gretchen, and Ada-Maria followed like ducklings in close order.

  “Mama is sick,” Gretchen explained to Ada-Maria. “See how white she looks.”

  “Papa also is white,” Ada-Marie observed.

  “It is the porridge,” Louise said. “Like glue.”

  “I ate glue once.” Ada-Maria put her hand on her stomach at the memory. “But I didn’t get so white as Mama.”

  “That is because you did not eat it for breakfast,” Katrina said. “If you eat glue for breakfast it makes you white.”

  Now Trudy, the eldest, spoke with authority. “It is not the porridge that makes everyone so sick. It is the waves. Lurching. Lurching. Lurching.”

  “Is that why we have no Torah school today? Is the rabbi from Nuremberg also sick?” Gretchen asked.

  “Everyone is sick,” Louise replied. “Except us. And I do not feel so good right now myself.”

  Ada-Marie spotted Tucker strolling toward their little procession. “He’s not sick either.”

  Tucker waved broadly. He seemed not to notice that Maria was ill. “An’ ’ow is Muvver Goose an’ all the li’l geese tod’y?” he asked brightly.

  They answered with one voice. “We are very fine, thank you, First Mite Tucker.” Then Maria, Louise, and Trudy paused to lean over the rail. After a moment Klaus joined them to jettison his breakfast into the waters.

  “Why don’t you get sick, First Mite?” Ada-Marie asked.

  “Because I lives ’ere. An’ I’m used ter it, see? Y’ll get used ter it, too.” Tucker answered without sympathy.

  “Please, God,” Klaus gasped, “may we not be here that long!”

  As if in ominous answer to that half-hearted prayer, the good ship Darien shuddered and died in the water. The thrumming of her engine stopped until only the splashing of waves against her hull was heard.

  Tucker cursed, then scrambled toward the hold as the voice of Captain Burton shouted “All hands!” over the loudspeaker.

  Two other crew members sprinted for the hatch.

  “What can it mean?” Maria whispered.

  The ship drifted to port as a swell caught her. “We are not moving forward,” Klaus said, still sick.

  “Does this mean we will have to stay here a long time, Papa?” Gretchen looked miserable. She sank down to sit on the deck as other passengers clustered in small worried groups to speculate on what might be wrong.

  Once again the stern voice of Captain Burton crackled over the speakers. “We have lost a steam line to the engine. A minor repair. We will be delayed an hour at most. Make the best of it.”

  ***

  One hour passed, then two. Still the engine of the little freighter did not spark to life. The heavy silence was augmented by the fog that closed in around the ship. Thoughts were lost in the lapping of water against the hull.

  Shimon heard urgent whispering in the corridor.

  “He can’t be moved.”

  “Cap’n says ever’body up on deck. Even the sick feller ’ere.”

  “But he can’t be moved. There is more danger to him up on deck. The dampness—”

  “Look, Doc, all I can tells y’ is tha’ we’re dead in the water in the middle of the shipping lanes. Smack in the center. We’re pickin’ up the radio of somethin’ big.”

  “Then, can it not help us?”

  “Help us? She can’t even ’ear us! Somethin’ ’as gone amiss with the transmitter, an’ Cap’n says if she should ram us, we got more chance of survivors comin’ out of the water if we’re all up top.”

  “Some are so ill they cannot walk.”

  “Then we’ll ’ave ter carry ’em. Includin’ this big bloke, ’alf dead though ’e may be.”

  “Lifeboats. Life vests. Have we enough?”

  “This ain’ no cruise ship. She’s a freighter, an’ as such she’s got enough of such items fer a freighter’s crew.”

  There was a long silence as the meaning of the seaman’s words penetrated Dr. Freund’s stunned consciousness. A tiny, decrepit tramp steamer adrift in the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic. Radio transmitter too weak to send a distress signal but strong enough to hear messages of a large ship close by.

  “Send me four strong fellows to carry the patient up,” the doctor finally complied. “Although it will make no difference to him if we are rammed. He would be just as well off here below as in the icy water.”

  “Cap’n’s orders” came the reply. “Ever’body on deck.”

  Shimon did not speak as four husky young men carried him up into the thick mist shrouding the open deck. At the instructions of Dr. Freund, they placed his stretcher beneath a tarp tent. All was silent except for the murmured prayers of the rabbi of Nuremberg. Family groups huddled together, clinging to one another as they stared out into the slate curtain that surrounded the Darien.

  Shimon recognized the five little girls who had brought him the lilies. He could not remember their names. He tried to concentrate, tried to remember their names as he watched them cling to the skirt of their pregnant mother and lift hands up to their tall, gaunt father. Was there ever such pain on a man’s face? The father of those children closed his eyes in tight-lipped agony at his own helplessness. He looked first at one child and then another. Whom to save? He could not save them all if the ship were rammed.

  Shimon groaned with that man’s agony. Five little girls. A wife. Shimon had only his own life to give up. What must it be like to wonder whom to save?

  The rabbi now felt silent. The Darien moaned, metal creaking a protest as the water pushed her from one trough to the next. There was no human voice except that of the frantic, cursing seamen who worked below on the recalcitrant engine. Dull silence. Hearts racing. Breath that mingled with the fog.

  Then one head raised as if to sniff the air. Another and another turned to face the starboard side of the ship. In the distance the faint rush of water could be heard, and behind that the low thrumming of an engine.

  Now everyone heard it. Straight away to the starboard. Yes. They could hear the engines of the great ship. Rushhhh. Rushhhh. So swift to destruction. Right on course. Unheeding of the heartbeats, unaware of the father who had decided they would all simply die together. He could not choose. He would not choose among his precious little ones.

  The rabbi began to pray again. Other voices joined him. Like the sound of the wind through the trees, the great ship swept toward them t
hrough the fog.

  18

  The Closed Curtain

  Leah intertwined her fingers in the mane of the little Haflinger mare she rode. The trail loomed up the face of the mountain in a series of tortuous switchbacks. Hooves clattered and scrambled against the rocks, sending showers of pebbles and gravel sliding away from the narrow path to plummet down the thousand-foot wall.

  “Stand in your stirrups,” Franz Wattenbarger called back to her. “Put your weight over the mare’s shoulders.”

  Leah obeyed immediately, as she had done whenever the handsome young Tyrolean man had issued some command throughout the long, arduous journey from the farmhouse. Now the house was a mere matchbox beneath them. In the last mile they had ridden above the tree line until the high valley where the farm nestled was a neat patchwork of newly cultivated field in the center of a carpet of green forest. One hundred yards beyond the trail, a waterfall gushed over the boulders and tumbled down into the abyss until it finally emerged as a thin ribbon of peaceful blue bordering the Wattenbarger farm. In the previous weeks, Leah had sat quietly beside that stream while young Louis had whooped and run in the wide fields.

  Even though they were still within the boundaries of Austria, Leah had felt safe on the farm. Safe from the Nazis. Safe behind a tall green curtain of peace that surrounded the home of the Wattenbarger family. As the other refugees had been taken from the haven one by one, Leah had not felt an urgency to escape. She and Louis were the last of the little company to leave. If it had not been for the immense danger her presence brought to the kind family, she would have begged to stay. The words and prayers of dear Marta had brought her comfort and courage. She had found faith to trust that somehow God held Shimon firmly in His hand.

  “I won’t know how to pray without you to show me,” she had whispered in her tearful farewell to Marta.

  “Just talk to the Lord, child.” Marta had embraced her and led her quickly to the side of the little horse. “And remember, it is written: ‘Whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.’” Then Marta had pulled out a well-worn Bible from the pocket of her apron and tucked it into Leah’s fleece-lined coat.