Isaac's Beacon

by David L. Robbins

  The harbor was more frigid than she’d realized; Éva’s limbs began to lock. A man with no life vest cried out, but she could not reach him before he sank.

  Éva dogpaddled in a slow circle. Fleeing lifeboats surrounded her. Some part of the Patria split; the rending made a terrible vibration, the final drowning of the colossus. She became lost in the immenseness of the calamity, floating among people drowning. Her legs and hands stopped moving, the vest alone held Éva up. The dreadful scene became sluggish and the screams grew muted. The liner moaned again, a toll for those still onboard. Two hundred Jews jumped all at once, plummeting around Éva. The lifeboats, already filled, didn’t know what to do. Some turned back to help, most sped their oars away from the Patria and the sputtering passengers in winter clothes that weighed them down.

  Chapter 4

  Éva

  Éva could barely keep her chin above the cold water. Thousands of steel rivets popped as the Patria’s white hull slid under.

  Éva didn’t know how long she’d been floating. The ocean liner was nearly gone, groping for the bottom of the bay, swallowing all the water it could take. Loose luggage drifted by, bodies too, facedown as if watching the Patria disappear. The buckling ship groaned in the murky depths of the harbor. All else was silent. The klaxons had been submerged, the lifeboats rowed to safety, the calls for help had stopped.

  Éva’s teeth chattered, her arms and legs felt muddled. She’d been forgotten in the vast field of flotsam, foam, and the drowned.

  The cold made panic feel like sleepiness. She had much to do, promises to keep to her father. She’d made it to Palestine, then nothing more. The dead bobbed around her, they’d broken their promises, too. The dying liner exhaled again, like the sound of her name.

  Her name had not come from beneath the water, not sighed by the Patria, but skipped across the surface.

  “Éva!”

  She couldn’t paddle to turn herself in the water, to face shore and the sun over Haifa, or the sound of a motor.

  Someone hooked her by the life vest and snatched her into the empty motor launch. He hefted Éva onto the floor of the craft, then wrapped her in a blanket. At her feet, Emile set her mother’s shoes.

  Éva’s teeth clacked too hard for her to speak. The pilot, a policeman, nodded, then turned his attention to his tiller.

  Emile brought his face close.

  “Found you.”

  For the first time, Éva became aware of alarms ringing in the city; clamor streaked over the water. Huddled on the skiff’s floor, she dripped and struggled to find warmth. The launch motored among the bodies and baggage, looking for survivors. Emile went to stand in the bow.

  The launch was one of many smaller boats scouring the flotsam. Éva hadn’t seen or heard any of the craft, she’d been so numb. Jews, British, and Arabs from the city crisscrossed in fishing dinghies, work boats, pleasure craft; they plucked corpses out of the harbor and rescued others who, like Éva, could do nothing to save themselves but float.

  The boy hauled eight more of the living from the water. They slumped around Éva, shivering wild-eyed and crying the names of family members, begging the launch pilot to go find them in the water. A few had strength enough to yell, point, and demand. Emile told them to stop, the little boat could hold no more.

  The skiff motored to shore. Vessels of many sizes hurried from the docks; the whole harbor and city clanged with bells and horns. Emile collapsed beside Éva.

  “Who did this?”

  She extended the blanket around him like a wing, to add his warmth to hers on the fast ride to shore.

  Under the eyes of British soldiers, Éva and Emile stepped onto the dock. The guards herded them into the customs house.

  Survivors from the Patria’s lifeboats crowded the three-story receiving hall; also, the processing of the hundreds who’d not left the Atlantic had begun. Women from the Jewish community in Haifa, the Yishuv, handed out donated fresh clothes; Éva took a dry blouse from a woman who touched her shoulder kindly. Éva moved along barefoot, carrying her shoes. Emile stayed at her side and accepted no charity.

  In lines, the Jews handed over their identification booklets in exchange for receipts. A British woman put hands on Éva to feel her shivering. She disappeared, to return with a blanket. Éva put on her mother’s shoes.

  Emile gave up his ID booklet, pocketing a thin receipt. Éva explained to a soldier that her booklet was in her father’s coat which she had lost. The soldier understood enough German to hold up his hands to stop her and scribble her name on his ledger.

  The soldier asked, “Atlantic or Patria?”

  Éva and Emile both answered, “Atlantic.” They hadn’t yet boarded the doomed liner.

  The soldier pointed at the left of two doors in the rear of the customs hall. There, the Atlantic passengers queued. The two thousand survivors of the Patria filed through the righthand door. Most had no luggage; they’d lost their bags. The soldier waved Éva and Emile on.

  “Viel Glück,” he said. Good luck.

  A hundred at a time, the immigrants were grouped by which ship they’d been on, then ushered out of the customs house into a bright morning. Éva and Emile joined a cluster from the Atlantic in a gravel lot, surrounded by warehouses and armed guards. Two buses idled, waiting for them. The Jews, still in shock, turned slow circles. Many kneeled; Éva, too. Under her knees the ground was hard. She shrugged off the blanket to let Palestine’s sun warm her.

  The bus carried the immigrants not far, to a limestone blockhouse. The guards told them to leave their bags on the buses. Inside, the Jews were divided into men and women. Éva’s clothes were collected by more Yishuv women and taken away to be treated. Nurses checked the naked people, probed private areas, and asked questions about health. Before sending each woman on, the nurses poured a stinging fluid over every head to treat for lice. Finally came a hot shower, the first for Éva in weeks. She grew flush in the flowing water, all the women did; they lathered soap bars over their skins and let themselves sigh and steam.

  Their returned clothes smelled of the delousing liquid. Outside in the sun, surrounded by a dozen police, Emile waited with the men. He bore the same stink of pesticide, but his black hair was combed.

  “They’re treating us like cattle.”

  Éva said, “Clean cattle.”

  The buses carried them out of Haifa on good, paved roads. A truckload of British police led the way; another trailed. New construction dotted the foothills, all the street signs were in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. Scrub brush filled the crevices between the stone houses; much of the vegetation flowered. The light was rich on everything.

  The buses drove north, keeping the sea on the left. Beside the road, Arab boys led mules or rode them barebacked. Jewish children played in a schoolyard. Green and golden minarets rose above a few Arab towns. Several ruined, burnt houses sulked near the road.

  The rolling landscape stayed stony and monotonous for a half hour, until the bus turned off the paved road, to bounce down a short dirt lane between the posts of a barbed wire fence. Policemen swung the gates open. The Jews pressed to the windows for their first looks at rows of peaked roofs and clapboard walls. Dozens of single-story barracks were pressed close together, connected by weedy ground and blue gravel pathways. Smoke curled from chimneys in the shade of eucalyptus trees.

  The buses stopped at a building marked Refugee Center. The Jews from the Atlantic stepped off the two buses, some with valises. Emile whispered he was sorry for the loss of her father’s coat. Someone must have taken it out of the lifeboat at the quay in Haifa.

  “I have my mother.” Éva rose to the toes of her shoes. Emile spread his own waistcoat across her shoulders.

  The pair of buses drove off through the gates. Inside the wire, armed guards paced in watchtowers every fifty meters. Scrubby hills blocked the view to the sea, but Éva could smell the w
ater. In the other direction, the land ran sandy and pebbly until it rumpled into hills that hid the distance.

  Éva and Emile waited with the Jews in the sun. Faces appeared in many cabin windows. No one wandered outside the barracks.

  More British policemen emerged from the Refugee Center. They made announcements in English, German, and Polish about cleaning and cooking; the Jews were responsible for their own upkeep. After all thirty-four hundred from the Patria and Atlantic were transferred to the camp, ration booklets would be distributed.

  Each cabin held thirty. The Jews were instructed to separate by families, then by gender, and choose their own shelters. They should get to it because more were on the way.

  The policeman making the announcements from the porch stood tall under a stiff beige cap. He tightened his lips between statements, pouting at troubles to be borne. Before the crowd turned away to start inhabiting the camp, an elderly gent called out, “Where are we?”

  “You, sir, are in the Atlit Detainee Camp.”

  “How long will we stay here?”

  “Longer than you’ll like. And not as long as you’d like.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’re not aware?”

  “Aware of what?”

  The policeman rose on polished boots and clasped hands behind his back. Clearly, he did not relish what he had to say next.

  “Starting last week, I suppose while you were at sea, it has been ordered that all illegal Jews are to be deported to a refugee camp on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. You will be detained there for the duration of the war. Afterwards, you will be found suitable homes. Not in Palestine.”

  The commander strutted away to his office. In his wake on the porch he left a dozen police, nicely turned-out in khaki. One repeated the commander’s words in English.

  Emile walked off without Éva; several youths followed him into the camp.

  Chapter 5

  Éva

  December 8

  Atlit Refugee Camp

  For two weeks, rumors in Atlit became like bread; each person hungrily tore off his piece then passed along the rest. Those concerned with food sought whispers about rations. Others wanted news of the war in Europe and the German occupations. Notes and letters from relatives in Palestine were smuggled in by locals who brought supplies to the camp. When the letters contained news, they set off firestorms of gossip and debate. Speculation over who sank the Patria fueled arguments into the nights: the Arabs, the British, German provocateurs, even the Yishuv? The Jewish Agency was reportedly working to convince Britain to let the Patria and Atlantic passengers stay. Word was that America was weighing in on the Jews’ behalf. Some said the people of Haifa were planning to raid the camp, there was going to be a jailbreak, a battle. Others said the people of Haifa had abandoned the Jews in Atlit.

  Emile grew thinner inside the wire. He became overly passionate and difficult company for Éva. He cursed too much for a boy. She carried bits of food in her father’s opera coat to help feed him.

  Mrs. Pappel had returned that coat on the second day of their internment. She’d taken it off a Polish woman she found wearing it in the camp. Gonif, Mrs. Pappel spat in Yiddish. Thief. Éva’s identification card was still in the pocket. Mrs. Pappel told her to keep this to herself. The less the British knew about any of them, the better.

  Mrs. Pappel was housed in a bloc of barracks set aside for the sixteen hundred Patria survivors; she’d been onboard when the white liner sank. Like Éva, her son and daughter-in-law were quartered with the Atlantic passengers. Mrs. Pappel rarely saw them. When she did, her daughter-in-law made a show of a fresh smock or undented hat. Somehow, the young bride had not lost her immense suitcase; Mrs. Pappel believed this was accomplished at great risk to her son. She felt scorned in their presence and avoided them.

  Mrs. Pappel stood in the doorway to Éva’s barracks, in silhouette against the morning sun. Éva ushered her inside.

  “It’s always nice in here.” Mrs. Pappel nodded at the thirty girls in the barracks. “Young.” From colored paper, the girls had cut flowers and daisy chains and peeled off the pretty labels from food tins to paste them on the walls. The barracks smelled of washed wood; the girls had elected a leader who gave them chores. Some had just returned from their showers before breakfast, scenting the barracks with damp hair. Some said good morning to Mrs. Pappel to show they were pleasant.

  Mrs. Pappel sat on Éva’s cot. “Your mattress is nicer than mine. You have springs. Mine is on slats.”

  “You can move in here with me. I’ll make room, we can sleep together.”

  “It’s alright. I’m stuck with all the alt veyber.” Old women. “It’s where I belong. Half are older than me. The woman beside me has typhus or something, I don’t know, she won’t stop coughing. They wash everything, all day. Trust me, darling, the older you get, the more things need washing out.”

  Mrs. Pappel rose off the cot. She pinched the shoulder of Éva’s sweater to lift her, too.

  “There’s a shipment of hand-me-downs from the Yishuv coming in. Let’s go.”

  Outside Éva’s barrack, children played on ground dusty from lack of rain. This time of year in Austria, the earth would be snow-covered or muddy; in Palestine the December air felt cool and arid. A week ago, Éva had let one of the girls crop her hair short.

  The white gravel pathways were swept and maintained by the internees. On the walk to the main gate, Mrs. Pappel said that the Jews were a clean people.

  “And we’re not drinkers. Can you imagine, being locked up in here like this with no liquor? Who else could do this but Jews? Not the British.”

  “Tell me about London.”

  “Back in the twenties, Mr. Pappel worked there in the movie business. He was an accountant. We stayed for twenty years. We had a son.”

  “What happened?”

  “Morrie died during an air raid. Heart attack. I got a call from his secretary.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Morrie died and I got a call from a secretary. This is the English.”

  Near the kitchens, old men gathered around a pile of firewood, sitting on upturned logs. They had no tobacco or newspapers, but they had their concerns, enemies, and friends, so they argued.

  Walking past, Mrs. Pappel tapped fingertips on her breastbone.

  “Morrie, alav ha-shalom, would have been right there. He would debate with those gray heads for hours, then come home and say nothing. He had a joke, a favorite. A boy comes home to tell his father he’s gotten a part in the school play. His father asks what part? The boy says a Jewish husband. The father makes him go back to tell the teacher he wants a speaking role.”

  Mrs. Pappel and Éva were not the first at the main gate; dozens of women milled about. A few girls told Éva they liked her short hair; others gave her sideways glances. Mrs. Pappel dove into the many conversations, hands to her cheeks while some scandal was related, then palms over her breast at surprising news.

  After an hour of waiting and mingling, a canvas-covered truck arrived. The police tugged the gates open. The driver halted in front of the camp offices, then a woman swung down from the cab. A lean man came from the passenger side, cigarette on his lips. Éva had never seen a woman driving a truck. She wore trousers and suspenders, a brown wool cap, shirtsleeves rolled up, and hair shorter than Éva’s. She and her helper set to unloading. Mrs. Pappel and the others dug into the boxes of donated clothing. They tried on items, passed along the pieces they didn’t want, and draped the bits they would keep over their arms. Once all the boxes were off the truck, the driver handed down a dozen chairs and small tables, each grabbed as fast as it was set down.

  Éva wanted to speak with the driver. Before she had the chance, the woman and her helper bounded into the cab and roared off in the same rapidity with which they’d arrived.

  The
women traded clothes until the commandant emerged from his office. He stood on the porch and cleared his throat, but none paid him mind. One of his men strode forth to bellow.

  “May we have your attention?”

  The women looked up in mid-swap. Mockingly, the policeman said, “Thank you.”

  The commandant moved to the railing, hands behind his back. “There will be an announcement shortly over the camp public address. Please go back to your barracks.”

  The statement accelerated the pace of their bargaining, to finish and go. Clothing over her arm, Mrs. Pappel stepped out of the crowd toward the commandant.

  “What kind of announcement are you talking about?”

  The commandant arched an eyebrow. “Your English is excellent.”

  “It’s not my fault.”

  “Were you onboard the Patria or the Atlantic?”

  “The Patria.”

  “Her Majesty’s government has seen fit, for humanitarian reasons, to allow all passengers on the Patria to remain in Palestine. It has been deemed that by surviving the sinking, you have suffered enough. Those who were still onboard the Atlantic will be deported tomorrow at sunrise. Congratulations, I suppose, are in order to you.”

  The commandant made a shooing motion at the women.

  Mrs. Pappel gripped Éva’s wrists. “We’re staying. My God. We’re staying.”

  She hopped foot to foot; the secondhand clothes fell off her arm. Éva pulled out of her grasp.

  “I’m happy for you. Mazel tov.”

  “What? What’s wrong? We’re going to stay in Palestine.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are. You weren’t on the Atlantic.”