The Other Half of Life

by Kim Ablon Whitney

The men shared a laugh. They reminded Thomas of the mismatched tea set his mother owned. The man playing black was mostly bald yet had a thick beard. The man playing white was clean-shaven and had a head of thick white hair. Both looked to be well into their sixties.

  Thomas looked up from the board while White figured out his next move. The Nazi officer with the cane was going by the window. Thomas still couldn't imagine why a man with a cane would be assigned to a ship. His father used to tell him that the most important part of resistance work, as of chess, was to trust your intuition. Your intuition would tell you when to be careful. One time his father had canceled a mission at the last minute because he felt that the man who would deliver the report was not trustworthy. When his mother had asked his father why he suspected the man, he had only shaken his head and said, “I don't feel right about him.”

  Now Thomas's intuition told him something wasn't right about this man. Why use a cane if his limp was so minor in the first place? A boy in their building back home had always been feigning one injury or another: holding his arm to his chest and claiming to have broken it, limping and saying he'd turned his ankle. No matter how hard he tried, none of his injuries ever looked real.

  The man shuffled out of sight and Thomas turned his attention back to the board.

  The man playing white glanced at Thomas. “Jürgen thinks his queen is the only piece worth moving.”

  Jürgen took his queen and moved it forward. “I don't have the patience for pawns.” He smiled at Thomas before cocking his head at the man playing white. “Wilhelm, you really ought to use your queen more. Minor pieces are much too serious for coffeehouse chess. Leave the slow, methodical play for the tournament players and let's have some action.”

  Wilhelm shook his head at Jürgen and made a knight move. “You've created too many weaknesses. These knight outposts are going to haunt you pretty soon.”

  Wilhelm winked at Thomas and then extended his hand. “I'm Wilhelm Oppenheimer, and this patzer is Jürgen Hirshberg.”

  “Thomas Werkmann.”

  “So you play?” Wilhelm said.

  “Yes,” Thomas said.

  Other people ambled in and out of the smoking room, snacking on the sandwiches laid out on the sideboard. In one corner of the room a man smoked a pipe and perused the shipboard newspaper, which offered only snippets of world news but was better than nothing. Three other men played cards, wagering on the outcome. Above them a sign read: BEWARE OF CARDSHARPS. Thomas chuckled as he read it. Cardsharps might have made plenty of money scheming innocent players on other voyages but not on this one. The only benefit of having no money in the first place was that you had none to lose. Thomas had been allowed to purchase up to 230 reichsmarks in shipboard money, but anything not spent upon arrival in Havana would be forfeited.

  At one point Jürgen's wife came in to tell him he'd forgotten to take his medicine. “I knew I'd find you up here,” she chided, dropping two pills into his hand.

  Immersed in chess, Thomas lost track of time. Following the complications of the game, he almost forgot he was on board a ship at all.

  The men in the smoking room took notice when Manfred entered. Just the sight of him, after seeing the newspaper clippings with Priska a few nights before, made Thomas's stomach turn. Manfred could pretend to be nice, but Thomas knew how he and the other crew members really felt about Jews.

  “Having a good game?” Manfred asked, stopping next to Thomas.

  “Yes, thank you,” Wilhelm replied in a polite, clipped voice.

  “Always, sir,” added Jürgen, barely meeting Manfred's glance.

  Thomas checked the table nearby where the three men were playing cards. One man folded, then the next. The third swept the coins from the table, but no one shuffled or dealt for the next game. Thomas waited for Manfred to either do something or leave, but he did neither. “This is one of my favorite games,” Manfred said to Thomas. “Much better than shuffleboard.”

  Surely he considered himself an expert at chess too, Thomas thought. Thomas felt a twinge of satisfaction in knowing that in all likelihood he was a much better player than Manfred.

  Wilhelm and Jürgen continued their game, but Thomas could tell they were distracted by Manfred. Twice Jürgen made a poor move, cursing himself under his breath. And Wilhelm didn't comment on Jürgen's mistakes. The pace of the game quickened, each player making rapid moves, as if they didn't want to be seen thinking. Jürgen kept glancing up at Manfred and then turning his eyes quickly back to the board. Jürgen was very near being mated. Thomas could see a way out, though. Jürgen wouldn't be able to win, but he could almost force a stalemate. The combination, which involved a queen sacrifice, wouldn't be easy to find but it was there. Thomas closed his eyes and imagined the move Jürgen needed to make next. He tried to will him to do it. But he opened his eyes to see Jürgen reaching for the wrong piece. Wilhelm announced politely, “Checkmate.”

  “Good game,” Jürgen said, collecting all the pieces. He extended his hand to his friend.

  “It was,” Manfred said. “Very fairly played by both sides.”

  “Are you surprised?” Thomas asked.

  Wilhelm and Jürgen turned to look at Thomas, eyes wide, as if he'd just declared out loud his hatred for Hitler. Thomas knew his heart should have been pounding, his hands clammy. For the second time in a matter of days, he'd spoken back to a Nazi. But he felt calm and fearless.

  “By what?” Manfred replied.

  “That Jews play fairly. That we aren't all savage criminals,” he continued, using the exact words from Der Stürmer.

  The room was silent. The cardplayers stared straight ahead. The man reading the paper stood up and slipped out the door.

  “All I meant was that White was dignified in victory and Black was equally dignified in defeat.” Manfred paused. “Let me ask you this … had you been playing black, would you have moved differently?”

  Thomas jumped at the chance to show Manfred how much he knew about chess. “Instead of moving his bishop, Black should have played queen takes pawn, check, king to rook one, forced, then queen to rook seven, check. Black has to take, and then it's stalemate because the rook pins the bishop.” Thomas finished his pronouncement and stared at Manfred.

  “I see you know more about chess than shuffleboard,” Manfred said, smiling in a way Thomas thought seemed pleased. That wasn't what he wanted at all. He wanted to put Manfred in his place.

  “Guten Tag,” Manfred said, finally leaving.

  It took a few moments for the room to come back to life. Conversations resumed, a man stuffed a pipe, another shuffled the cards.

  “Well, well,” Wilhelm said, fixing his eyes on Thomas. “You've got a smart mouth, in addition to a talent at chess.”

  Thomas remembered how Herr Kleist had scolded him that first day they boarded the ship. He didn't care about disgruntling a sour old man like Herr Kleist, but he liked Wilhelm and Jürgen. “I'm sorry. It's only that—”

  Wilhelm cut him off. “No apologies. But do be careful. We all want to make it to Cuba, no matter what it takes.”

  “Of course,” Thomas said.

  His face felt flushed. He said a polite good-bye and walked out onto the deck. He went to the railing and looked out at the sea. What was down there beneath the boat that he couldn't see? A whole world of fish and sharks and ocean life. He wondered why so many people were willing to put up with the Nazis. Why didn't they fight back? His father had fought back, but only in a calculated way. With secret reports and information. But few dared really fight.

  “We need to live to fight,” his father had told him time and time again. “Not fight to live.”

  He understood what his father meant—don't sacrifice long-term goals for short-term desires. It was a theory that was important in chess too. You couldn't just consider your next move; you had to consider the move after that and the move after that. Grand masters were said to be able to think ten moves ahead. Sometimes sacrificing a piece early on would prove w
orthwhile five moves later. But real life was different from chess, and sometimes Thomas didn't understand how people could just let certain things happen. Like what had happened to his father. How no one—his father, his mother, the people on the street, he himself —had done anything. Was that living to fight, or giving up and dying?

  Thomas was still in his own thoughts when Günther ran by. “Thomas! Come on!” He waved to Thomas to join him.

  And just like that Thomas was out of his gloomy introspection and running around the deck to the starboard side of the ship. Günther's pockets were bulging, and near the bow something popped out and fell to the floor. Thomas picked it up. It was a bar of soap. From the flowery smell, Thomas guessed it was from the lavatory on the upper deck.

  He furrowed his brow. “What's this for?”

  “You'll see. We were bored—a case of cabin fever. Just come on!”

  Priska and Ingrid waited outside the door to the library.

  “What took you so long?” Priska said to Günther.

  Günther answered by pulling more bars of soap out of his pockets and giving them to her.

  “I've got the water,” Priska said, holding up a glass.

  Günther dunked a bar of soap in the water. Priska took it from him and slathered it on the door handle.

  “What are you doing?” Thomas asked, but Priska put a finger to her lips and shushed him.

  “Someone's coming,” Ingrid said.

  Priska finished soaping the handle and they retreated, hiding behind a nearby lifeboat. Thomas was surprised at how eager she was to pull off the prank. He had never guessed she'd be such a daredevil. It reminded him of the few stories his mother used to tell of her own childhood. She had also been mischievous, angering her parents to no end, ripping her fancy dresses climbing trees.

  Frau Rosen came up to the library door. Today she wore a chic, slim-fitting navy dress over her attractive figure.

  Frau Rosen's hand slipped on the doorknob and she wasn't able to turn it.

  The group peeked out from behind the lifeboat.

  “Mein lieber Gott, was ist das?” Frau Rosen griped, trying again. She shifted the book she carried to under her arm and grabbed the handle, only to have her hand slip again. She grabbed hold once more and yanked. Some of the soapy water must have puddled on the floor because her high-heel sandals slipped and she fell straight onto her backside, cursing. Her dress flew up. Thomas couldn't help but stare, letting his eyes wander from her varnished red toenails to her upper thigh.

  Priska was the first to giggle. The giggling was contagious and promptly turned into full-fledged laughter. Thomas wasn't sure if he was laughing from the prank or from his own discomfort with how he couldn't keep his eyes from Frau Rosen's legs.

  Frau Rosen scrambled to her feet and headed for the lifeboat. At Priska's lead, they all ran down the stairs. The sound of their feet on the metal slats echoed against the walls. They spilled out onto the tourist-class deck and stood in a cluster, trying to catch their breath between fits of laughter.

  “She fell straight on her Hintern !” Ingrid said.

  Priska held her hand to her mouth as she laughed. Then, stifling her laughter, she said, “I hope she wasn't hurt.”

  “She was fine,” Ingrid said.

  Günther whispered to Thomas, his eyes wide, “Did you see her dress come up?”

  Thomas nodded.

  “Nice legs,” Günther said.

  Thomas felt Priska's eyes on him, and he sensed she had heard what Günther said.

  Priska stood up and walked away from them. Before Thomas could follow and ask her whether she was angry at them, he saw the Nazi officer with the cane approaching. He was scowling and his cane thudded against the deck with each step he took. Thomas rushed forward, hoping to get between him and Priska, but he was too late.

  “Do you think this is funny?” the officer demanded of Priska. “Playing tricks?”

  Priska hesitated. “A little funny, sehr geehrter Herr.”

  “As Ortsgruppenleiter of this ship, I would like to remind you that while you may feel you have been given a certain freedom, until you are on Cuban soil you are still a subject of the Reich and are therefore accountable to the laws of the Reich and its leader, Adolf Hitler.” He wagged a finger in her face. “You are Jews and will be treated as such. Jews do not play tricks.”

  In Berlin there was an Ortsgruppenleiter in charge of their neighborhood. He enforced the rules and curfews and reported any infractions. Thomas was surprised that the Reich had assigned such a high-ranking Party officer to just one ship. Up close to him now, Thomas noticed he wore a Party badge similar to Manfred's, only the swastika was ringed in not just red but a thick band of gold. Thomas had seen the same badges at home. His father had explained that they were given to the first 100,000 members of the Nazi Party, to reward their loyalty.

  With narrowed eyes, the Ortsgruppenleiter made sure to stare into the faces of each and every one of them before he clomped away. They walked to the railing, not yet talking. Thomas felt shaky from everything that had happened: the prank, seeing Frau Rosen's legs, being reprimanded by the Ortsgruppenleiter.

  After a few moments Priska let a laugh escape. She lowered her voice and mimicked, “Do you think this is funny? Playing tricks?”

  Günther replied in falsetto, “A little funny, sehr geehrter Herr.” Returning to his own voice, he said to Priska, “I liked how you addressed him, very polite.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “And as for you two …” She turned from Günther to Thomas, pointing her finger at them. “I saw you looking at Frau Rosen's legs when her dress came up.”

  Thomas glanced at Günther, who shrugged.

  “Don't pretend you weren't.”

  “It was hard not to,” Günther admitted.

  “I think she's beautiful too,” Priska said.

  Thomas wanted to tell Priska that he thought she was much more beautiful than Frau Rosen, but he didn't have the nerve, especially in front of Günther and the others.

  “She's so cosmopolitan,” Priska added. “Did you know she used to make the ball gowns for the wealthiest women in Prague? All the clothes she wears are her own design.”

  Thomas smiled, marveling at Priska.

  “Did either of you have a girl back home?” Priska asked. Though she had asked them both, Thomas felt her eyes on him.

  “Me?” he said. “No.”

  “There were a few but it feels so long ago now,” Günther said casually.

  Thomas wasn't sure whether he believed him. Günther asked Priska the question Thomas was eager to know the answer to: “And what about you?”

  Priska shook her head. “There was an older boy who lived in our building. He always said he would marry me when I grew up. But then a few years ago he stopped saying that. In fact, he wouldn't even wave to me anymore or say hello if he saw me in the street.”

  “Because you are a Jew,” Thomas said.

  Priska nodded a little sadly. “Everything changes so quickly. I didn't really notice that much at first. Marianne and I went to a Jewish school, so we didn't have to leave school like I've heard some others had to. It was Reichskristallnacht when I really began to understand. The windows of every Jewish store in our town were smashed. All the goods stolen. After that my father said we had to get out. No more waiting for things to blow over.”

  Günther said, “They took my father that night. They broke down our door, ransacked our apartment, and took my father away—just like that. I thought I'd never see him again.”

  “What has your father told you about being in a Konzentrationslager?” Thomas asked.

  At first Günther didn't answer and Thomas worried he'd asked something too private, overstepped boundaries. But he desperately wanted to know what the Konzentrationslager was like. They heard rumors all the time but it was impossible to know what was really true.

  “They made them work, building something—my father wasn't sure what it even was. They had to carry he
avy bags of cement up endless stairs. They were given practically no food and no water, and they were starving and getting sick. My father said it was as if the Nazis were hoping they would die.”

  They were quiet for a few moments. Thomas wondered if they were waiting for him to say something about his own father. But he didn't want to, and finally Priska said, “Well, enough gloominess. We're the lucky ones. We made it out. Come on, let's go play skittles.”

  “Good idea,” Günther said.

  “I don't think I'll come,” Thomas said as images of his father bowed down under a bag of cement trampled through his mind.

  “Why not?” Priska asked.

  Thomas shrugged.

  She shook her head and grabbed him by the hand. “You've been taken prisoner. Let's go.”

  Thomas managed a halfhearted smile and he went with them. But especially after what they had just shared with him, Priska's careless words reverberated in his head. You've been taken prisoner. Nothing was innocent anymore, not even a casual, joking remark.

  Chapter Seven

  Thomas returned to the smoking room often, hoping to find Wilhelm or Jürgen or others playing chess. One day he came in the midafternoon—the time when most people took tea or rested in a deck chair— and the smoking room was near empty. Thomas sat at a table, twiddling his lone pawn through his fingers and imagining it marching down an open board.

  “Looking for an opponent?”

  Thomas glanced up to see Manfred. “No, just a game to watch.”

  “How about you and I play?” Manfred asked.

  “No thank you,” Thomas said immediately.

  Manfred frowned. “Do you have other plans?”

  “Well, I …” Thomas looked around the room. An older man was slumped back asleep in his chair, his mouth gaping open.

  “You want to play. I can tell.” Manfred leaned closer and said, “What will the other passengers think of you playing one of us?”

  Thomas glanced at the swastika on his armband. He knew Manfred meant others would judge him for playing a Nazi, not just a crew member.

  “We're all on this ship together … might as well make the most of it.”