by Mark Helprin
One hundred and fifty men emerged from the gangways and assembled on deck in fifteen groups of ten, looking smarter in their organization than did the British, who were grouped into rough lines. The Jews carried wicker shields almost exactly like those of their opponents. They had web belts from which hung clubs and (to Levy’s surprise) knives. They were for the most part broader and more muscular than the marines, but much shorter. They had no firearms. However, four groups comprising forty men were lined up behind what Keslake had thought to be some sort of improvised chairs, which were actually rubber slings. Behind each slinger was a small pile of stones and a powder monkey, who dropped a stone into a breechlike contraption from which it was shot. The fifth group climbed into the two crow’s nests and into the breastworks of steel and sandbags on the superstructure. They manned two steam hoses (from the breastworks) and three stations for throwing Molotov cocktails. “Good God,” said the British as the little army took position. Keslake was astonished, and his marines were nervous; suddenly it was no longer a picnic. Shackleton sailors manned machine guns, and Stanford trained her 115 mm.’s on the Lindos Transit. The coast was six miles away.
“Put down your weapons,” said Keslake. “We have vastly superior force, and are going to board.”
“Keslake...” said Levy, waiting for a long time before he finished, “I would like you to know that my name is Paul Levy. I am from Norfolk, Virginia. I spent most of my adult life fighting the Battle of the Atlantic so that convoys of our men and matériel could get to Britain. I saw a lot of my friends die, we picked up a lot of British sailors ... and you are a first-class compassionless motherfucking son of a bitch.”
This angered Keslake, but not his crew. They had not been insulted, only he. And yet, in a spirit of anger, he then ordered them to board. He realized as Shackleton thudded against the port side of the Lindos Transit and gangways were rolled over and tightened to bolt the ships together that his men were not throwing themselves across as he would have done, but were proceeding delicately. As the British sappers began to cut the wire the Jewish steam men sprayed the fences with live heat, driving the sappers back. It was so effective that a few minutes passed with no progress at all. The steam men were proud of their work and leaned over their metal barricades uncautiously. Levy saw it, and he also saw the machine gunners take aim. He did not know the nationality of the steam men. They probably spoke several different languages anyway, and there was hardly enough time. “Get back,” he screamed over his microphone. But they did not understand. A Shackleton machine gunner fired and killed them. One of them fell backward and landed on the deck, injuring a slinger.
The sappers dismantled the wire very quickly, and when the Lindos Transit was still five long miles from the Palestine coast, British marines began to board her. As they started coming down gangways and cargo nets the Lindos Transit veered to starboard and back again, halting them just long enough for the slingers to take aim and fire. The technique was extremely effective. The slingers had had a week of organized practice during which they fired at dummies hung from racks in the locations of possible boarding ramps and nets, and they had developed excellent aim. The first barrage was one of small pellets, perhaps ten or twenty from each sling. In half a minute more than a thousand coin-sized rocks rained down on the marines. Some were knocked unconscious and lay on the decks; some were driven back; some held; and some kept on coming. But as they were too few they were quickly subdued by the battle groups. The slingers kept on slinging, having switched from shot to rocks and rubble of considerable size. These did not hit very often but forced everyone on Shackleton to be extremely careful, a harassment which did not last, for the Shackleton gunners sprayed the decks in front of the catapults with heavy fire. As planned, Levy ordered them abandoned, and the operators rushed to the augurs and specially adapted cargo cranes. The plan was to have been the capture of the British ship by auguring into its portholes and runoff vents, dropping the cranes onto the decks like grappling hooks, and looping steel cables over its chocks and then winching them tight. Levy was to have announced to the British that if they did not retreat he would blow holes in his keel plates and scuttle the Lindos Transit, capsizing the British warship in the process. The Lindos Transit was in sufficiently critical disrepair to sink in about five minutes. In five minutes, not even the British could cut through the several grasping augurs, cables, and crane hooks, and no one could prevent the Lindos Transit from going under.
Keslake had not thought that he would still be fighting at only four miles from the coast. That gave him three miles, since at a mile his seventeen-foot draft would almost certainly ground him. At fourteen knots, he had about fifteen minutes to subdue the ship. He still thought he could win, but he had Haifa informed of the situation and he requested that troops be sent to the beach. Whether they would arrive on time and in sufficient number was none of his concern. Were they to be necessary it could only mean that he had failed. So he combined his anxiety and his astuteness, and quickly recognized some sort of threat in the strange machinery on the deck of his quarry. The microphone clicked its hollow echo. “If anyone touches those machines, he will be shot. Captain Levy, inform your men about this in their own language. Shackleton gunners, carry out this order in one minutes time.”
Levy too had been calculating. He thought that in less than fifteen minutes he could make it just by resisting with his deck force and keeping the enemy out of the wheelhouse and the engine room. His men were so positioned and drilled. He heard the echo of his own speaking machine: “Captain Keslake, you will have your way. Congratulations on guessing my plan. But I need at least three minutes to inform my men in their several languages of this new order, since we had not thought to practice it in English.”
“Two minutes,” said Keslake, to which Levy replied, “Very well.”
The interpreters spoke slowly to fill up the two minutes. They were only two and a half miles from the coast and could see the white beaches, and individual trees at the tops of ridges. Before the interpreters had calmly and elegantly elongated the new instructions, the marines were pouring onto the Lindos Transit. There was nothing to stop them except hand-to-hand fighting—no catapults, no steam, no threat of capsizing, no wire fences, and Levy did not use the Molotov cocktails for fear of a great slaughter.
The real battle had begun, with Keslake informing his marines that they had five minutes to win or their ship would run aground. They fought like madmen, but the Jews responded in kind. Many were badly injured and lay bleeding on the deck. Some were knocked over the side, after which Stanford lowered some boats. Using clubs and shields, fighting on the deck of a ship steaming over a blue sea toward an Asian coast, the men felt as if they were in another time. But then in fear of running aground or losing his prey, or both, Keslake told his marine major to use any force necessary to reach the bridge and stop the ship. A squadron of marines with submachine guns fired into the massed defenders to clear a corridor to the bridge ladder. The Jews fell, their glossy yellow wicker shields rolling away from them over the deck and into the sea. There were gasps and cries. Sweating under their pan helmets, the marines winced at what they had to do. The coast was a mile and a half away, the beaches empty and white.
13
THE LOWER decks of the Lindos Transit were silent except for the confused speaking of the wounded and dying. On wooden tiers of plank bunks, the old men, women, and children could not see the blue sky or the beaches ahead. Instead, it was hot and close and lanterns swayed back and forth as if the ship were simply delivering freight to a tranquil island in the South Seas. They heard automatic weapons fire and the occasional exchanges over the loudspeakers. For them it was not an unusual position or occurrence—to be huddled in a dark low place while the world outside fought and built-up things were leveled.
Europe was in ruins; two thirds of the Jews had been slaughtered; the rest dispersed, broken, and separated. And yet the remaining Jews could play music, write words, build, make children.
Their insides were destroyed, but messages came to them from all about. Clocks ticked, light rays were refracted, fires burned, the sea rose. Nature persisted like a metronome, saying, Keep on, keep on, keep on. And one by one, piece by piece, the strong ticking was joined by hearts revived, by instruments of warmth and creation. The silence vanished and natural laws which had withstood all assaults appeared once again as ultimate guides, as they had been in the beginning and will always be—lines along which shattering can make itself whole. As they watched the lantern in its pendulum motion, light emanating from it, they did not know that they were slowly being healed.
In the long and difficult night before the siege, perhaps because of the tension, or her diet, or God knows why, Katrina had begun to feel the first labor pains. What she did was not surprising, especially in view of her years in camps and in hiding. She sought the emptiest part of the ship, where the lower deck met the slant of the bow, and she crawled into a rope locker which smelled of pitch and pine. It was dark and hot, but comfortable on the canvas and hemp, and isolated. She was alone, as if she had her own room again. The water against the bow reminded her of Russia and the rain on the slate roof. The smell of pine was like her house, and the pitch like the railroad tracks and new ties which had held down golden hinterlands. She wanted to have the baby, to nurse it, to sleep, to be in peace. She was also somewhat ashamed. It was as if she wanted to be the first to see the child, to make certain that she could love it. At the peak of the siege her pains came thick and fast, and the child was born in darkness onto the heavy ropes and canvas. There was silence until she opened the locker door a crack and the cooler air made the baby cry. It was a raw unbelievable scream laden with emotion and energy, and it shocked her because it was so new and so powerful. Where did he find such strength? she asked herself, and then she wept.
Before the marines had arrived on the bridge and taken Levy prisoner, he had given two commands. The first was that the engine room was to be bolted shut from the inside and that the motor men were to keep up full speed until the ship ran aground, no matter what they heard from the bridge. The second was that the rudder cables be cut so that the ship could travel only in a straight line. An English lieutenant rushed to the engine room telegraph and signaled full stop. He then took the wheel, which was limp and turned too easily to have been connected to a ships rudder. Levy had a wide grin. They were a mile or less from the beach, where Palmach trucks were waiting and the British Army was nowhere in sight. For fear of running aground, Shackleton had disengaged but was still alongside, hanging back a few hundred yards. Only fifteen marines remained on board, and would be overpowered by the Palmach. Levy glanced at the wheel turning free.
Two children who had been playing below decks oblivious to the terror above, reported to their mother that they had heard a baby crying. At first she refused their entreaties but then followed them to the rope locker. They hung on her skirts as she cautiously opened the door, fearing that a rat might spring out. There was Katrina, holding her child too tightly for its own good. The woman realized that to save the infant she had to get it immediately into the light and air, wash it, cover it, and bring it to a doctor. The baby was so tiny and so feeble that she feared for its life. But Katrina became hysterical and would not let go, so the woman slapped her hard across her face and pulled the baby away. Katrina sank back on the ropes. The light coming through the hatch was a blur of colors because of the water in her eyes. The woman rushed off with the baby, intending to return for Katrina. Katrina was silent, for she had not understood.
The Lieutenant used Levy’s microphone and informed Keslake that the rudder cables had been severed and the engine room would not respond. They were three quarters of a mile from the coast and between shifting uncharted bars. Keslake picked up his binoculars and glanced at the beach. He could see the faces and caps of the Palmach, but not one British soldier. Risking a great deal, he ordered full speed ahead and took the helm himself. His officers were numb with their own beating hearts. Feeling the surge of speed he had summoned, Keslake eased his ship about and pointed his lancelike prow at the bows of the Lindos Transit. The Palmach was rowing out in surfboats and rafts. Shackleton hesitated as at the top of a wave, and Keslake rammed her fiercely against the port bow of the Lindos Transit, opening a huge gash and knocking the ship to the side. He then veered off and made for open water. He had done what he could in the face of stubborn opposition. His day was over.
The bow of the Lindos Transit began to go under, and by the time the ship was several hundred yards from shore it dug into the sand and stopped its momentum with a great release of steam. The Palmach came aboard and began the evacuation. They had to leave half a hundred behind because the British had been sighted driving at great speed down the sea road from Haifa. Those abandoned included the two doctors, the wounded, the newborn infant, and Levy. They were seized and put in detention.
The two vigilant children rode away with their mother on the back of a farm truck. They pulled at her and said, “What about the mommy on the ship? Where is she?” The mother hushed them.
That day Keslake lost his passion for the chase and for arms as well. Twenty-six died. Many more were captured. Some fell into the sea and drowned. About 350 immigrants had at last escaped the acrid soil of Europe, and they rode shaken but singing in old trucks under the sweet trees and warm air of a place where there were farms and endless orange groves full of green, fragrant, waxy leaves. Paul Levy became a Jew. Katrina Perlé died alone. And her son, Marshall Pearl, was born.
II. THE HUDSON
1
MARSHALL WAS not yet two months old when he arrived in New York Harbor aboard a French ship, the Égalité. A visa and “passport” were attached to his basket crib. No one would make off with them, since the photographs were of a prune-faced infant. Also in the packet was a letter addressed to Marshall’s future parents, whoever they would be. It was sealed with red wax upon which were stamped a three-cornered hat, a duck, a crucifix, and a ring of blurred Latin. Inside was Paul Levy’s narrative of whatever he could gather about the child’s background, with the injunction that Marshall be informed of it at an early age. It had been written in the garden of the Dominican Sisters of Marseilles. Levy had gotten Marshall to Toulon, and found that the French refused to part with him except through official channels. The sisters had agreed to send Marshall to America as soon as they could. They were somewhat taken with Levy, and he paid them. Marshall was shuttled onto a great liner with his basket crib and envelopes. What passed for his birth certificate was signed Paul Levy, LieutenantCommander, U.S.N.
The Mayor of Marseilles was a passenger on the Egalité, and so it was greeted by an armada of fire boats and police launches blowing their whistles. The New York Fire Department Negro Band rode along on top of a big fire boat. They played jazz, and the conductor was swinging his arms and pounding his feet, saying, “Okay, my man, c’mon, c’mon, get them feets movin.” The Mayor stood on a high deck surveying the city. Tall needle-pointed buildings minding the sky’s business in gray and green solitude would have been impressive, but on this hot day in August with jazz music and a dozen white water plumes, even the Mayor caught his breath. What impressed him most was neither the jazz-echoing cliffs in Manhattan, nor the high-wire heavenly bridges, nor the ceremony, but the staggering amount of traffic in the harbor. Manhattan’s everyday was like the greatest of armadas, the choicest dramas of history, a million intensities. Giant ferries methodically plowed their ways crossing paths in all directions. Coastal tankers, lines of barges, freighters, launches, scows, tugs, river boats, sailing craft, yachts, and naval vessels headed up and down the roadlike junctions of the rivers. Faces were intent in the morning sun. Battalions lined the foredecks of the Staten Island Ferry, waiting to stream forth upon the Battery. On the wharves, goods and trucks were weaving in and out of each other. He could see various sports being played in wire cages atop tall buildings, trees growing in parks. There had been a great pier fire the night be
fore, and one whole shore in Weehawken was smouldering rubble, white steam, and mist rising still in the excited air. But to the Mayors surprise, barges and crews were beginning to clear it away, something which in Europe might have taken several years. The band leader was dancing as his fire boat pounded along, and he was saying to the rhythm of the music, “Cmon, c’mon, get them feets movin’, my man.”
On a deck of wide windows Marshall and other babies rested in their baskets, Marshall having been named by an American naval officer who was that day to take up his post on a destroyer and head into the Atlantic off the Carolinas, his face struck by the August North American sea breeze which he loved to breathe coming off the coasts of his country. Marshall stretched himself in rubbery contortions, his little fingers spreading and slightly buckling. He breathed a deep breath and lay back as was his constant wont, fully in need of a protector, the seven pounds of his human life as fragile as a gossamer, being carted in various baskets around the world uncomplaining except that on the Atlantic he had been exposed to a breeze and, as would be the pattern in later years, he had come down with a difficult pneumonia. He had high fever half from disease and half as his only means of insistence that he be taken into a human family.
When the ship docked alongside a great dark shed with shafts of dusty light structuring its interior like the cross-angled girders on the bridges, the musicians were still playing. The Mayor of New York was trying to make a speech, but the music drowned him out. His deputy turned to the pier boss and said: “For chrissake, will you tell them niggers to stop playing.” A few minutes later the pier boss returned to report that, as the deputy could hear, they had refused. “Refused! What are they crazy?” Not only had they refused but they played louder and faster. They were civil servants and they had rights. The pier boss thought they had gone mad, but they played and played and played. Finally, the fire boat moved out into the river and amidst fading strains of music the assembled crowd watched the band transported to serenade the remains of the fire in Weehawken. The deputy said: “Those bastards are mad, aren’t they? Just mad. Who knows what they’ll do next.”