by John Jakes
Pauli didn’t want to interfere. Compared to the blond brothers, he was a runt. Yet others on deck—what few there were—deliberately looked away. Pauli found himself hurrying forward, his hands sweaty despite the cool sea air.
“—generally don’t like kosher meat, but a starving man can’t be choosy,” Pauli heard the blond lout say. He sounded like a Bavarian. “Come on, Jüdin, don’t be stuck up. I’m a good sort. Franz is the name. This is my brother Heinrich. The Messer boys.”
The other sister, finally terrorized into action, began to wave her arms and jabber in her own language. The second brother was less jocular. “Shut up with that yid talk.”
“It’s Polish, Heine,” Franz said. “At least I think so.” Pauli danced around to the right of Franz, raising the Kodak while concealing most of it with his hands; he didn’t want them to see it was broken.
“Here, what are you doing, you little shit?” Heinrich shouted.
“Taking your snapshot, for the captain.”
The Messer brothers eyed the camera with surprise and even worry. “Is that one of those picture-boxes?”
“Yes, and it’ll show the captain that you bothered these girls.” The bluff was insane; steerage passengers never saw the captain. But these two Bavarians were stupid.
“Recognize his accent?” Heinrich asked his brother. “He’s one of those snotty Berliners.” Berliners looked down on most Bavarians, considering them peasants with lazy dispositions produced by the southern climate.
“He’s an interfering little turd, too. Excuse us, girls, be right back.” Franz Messer pivoted around and reached for Pauli with huge pink hands. Pauli saw dirt under every nail. He knew that the price of helping the sisters would be a beating, at best—
“That will be all, gentlemen.” The stern voice sounded like a soldier’s. Pauli sagged with relief as old Valter stepped from behind him.
Valter wagged his wooden box under Franz’s nose. “If you can leave off bullying women and boys smaller than yourself, I’ll accommodate your itch to fight. Then we’ll get the steward to lock you up for the rest of the voyage.”
With murderous eyes the Messers appraised the old man. They noticed a few other passengers watching, then spied Herr Blechman standing by a hatch with his arms folded. Franz yanked his brother’s arm. “Come on, Heine, we’ll square this later.” He glowered at Pauli. “You especially, prick.”
He stormed off, his brother following.
The two young women leaped on Pauli, hugging him and jabbering incomprehensibly in Polish.
Old Valter was able to translate. “These young ladies are the Wolinski sisters. Here is Mira Wolinski—” The object of Messer’s attention, the prettier one, curtsied nervously. “And here is Renata. They both want to thank you heartily.”
Again he listened to the excited girls. “Their mother Slova Wolinski will want to thank you, but unfortunately she’s ill and lying in her bunk. Also, their brother will want to tender his thanks. They are all on their way to America from the vicinity of Lodz, Poland.”
“Well, I’m glad I could help,” Pauli said.
But he knew that by interfering, he had guaranteed that he’d have to look over his shoulder for the rest of the voyage. The Messers were that kind, no doubt of it.
Still, the encounter had a happy side. Pauli escaped the bondage of loneliness and made the acquaintance of the boy with the concertina, Herschel Wolinski.
From the moment they met they were a triumvirate: Pauli, the Polish boy who was one year younger, and the former doorman who sat with them with an amused expression, translating their breathless exchanges.
“I love America. I’ve never seen it, but I love it,” Herschel declared. It was two days after the incident with the Messers, a flawless sunny morning with a mild northerly breeze. “You don’t know how long and hard we’ve planned and schemed to make this trip. It’s hard for poor people in Poland, harder still for Jews.”
“Are you persecuted?” Pauli asked.
Herschel’s first answer was a casual shrug. “We’re used to it. Ten thousand years or more, you get used to it, that’s what the rabbi always says.” Herschel seemed to have a sunny disposition, augmented by great energy. He was always pointing, darting his bright blue eyes here and there, jumping and fidgeting as if he couldn’t contain all of life’s joys and excitements. The mere sight of him brought a smile; his brushy black hair seemed to grow six different ways at once.
Pauli was fascinated with all the Wolinskis because he’d never known any Jews intimately. Of course he didn’t see much of Slova, the mother, because she had been sick from the bad air and rotten food ever since leaving Hamburg. “She cries day and night.” Herschel sighed. “She says we were the worst of fools to leave without papers, and walk to Hamburg.”
“You walked all the way?”
“We walked with over a dozen others. There are thousands doing it, in Poland and in Russia. America’s wonderful. They know.”
Herschel picked up his concertina and began a lively march tune. Valter leaned against the rail, his silver mane tossing in the wind. He packed a curved pipe during his translations.
“This is an American song, from their great war,” Herschel said. “I had a cousin in America for a while. A watchmaker in a village called Buffalo.” He pronounced it Boffla. “He visited us in ’87, the year before he died. He taught me the song. The soldiers sang it when they freed the colored slaves in the war; it’s called ‘Marching Through Georgia.’ ” He pronounced it Marzhin Throw Zhor-zh-ia. Pauli listened to the music, inhaled the salt air, savored the ship’s rise and fall, soothing now. He liked all of it.
When Herschel finished the song, he asked, “Were you sorry to leave Germany?”
“Not very. I still love my fatherland, but I didn’t have a real home. I’m eager to get to America.”
Herschel eyed the cerulean sky. “Me too.”
“Things will be better there.”
“Definitely,” Herschel said. He began to play a sad little theme, a lullaby perhaps. “I made this up.”
“It’s very pretty.”
Another shrug. “I make up tunes all the time. Someday, when there’s less to think about, I’d like to write them down.” He played more softly. “You were talking about America. You’ll have to work there, all of us will.”
“Of course.”
“Nothing wrong with a hotel career,” old Valter said, pipe smoke streaming from between his lips as he spoke.
“On the curbstone, maybe, but not back where I was,” Pauli responded. “I’ll find something interesting—” On an impulse, he showed the broken camera. “Something new and scientific, perhaps. Like taking photographs.”
“Can you earn any money doing that?” Herschel asked.
Pauli blinked. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I don’t know what I’ll do,” Herschel said, “but whatever it is, it will be very exciting. I want to become American in every respect. That will include taking a new name.”
“I’ve thought the same thing. My uncle did it; he was born Josef Kroner but now he’s Joseph Crown. Here, I’ll show you.” He laid the camera aside, pulled up his shirt and unbuttoned the canvas money belt. He unfolded the letter with the embossed gold crown.
Herschel touched the embossing in a way that was almost reverent. “Your uncle must be rich.”
“Pretty rich, yes.”
The fire in Herschel’s eyes seemed to burn out suddenly. “So you’ve a sponsor in America.”
“Ein Bürge, yes. Uncle Joseph. He soldiered in that war you talked about. He helped free the colored people. Maybe he even sang your marching song.”
Herschel said, “We don’t have a sponsor. They say it’s helpful when the authorities question you. Mama said we should stay home because we didn’t have one. I argued till she changed her mind. Now she’s wishing she hadn’t.”
Over the soft crash of bow waves, old Valter sucked noisily on his pipe and touched Pauli’s sleeve.
“I’d put that letter away. No, don’t look around.”
“What’s wrong?” Pauli whispered.
“That damned steward’s watching. I’m afraid he spied the money belt.”
Pauli fastened the last button and yanked his shirt down. “Oh, he’s known about it since Hamburg.”
“Yes, but he’s cozying up to someone else and I think they’re chatting about it.”
“Who is it?”
“Franz, isn’t that his name?”
Pauli stiffened but didn’t move. Herschel watched for nearly a minute, gazing into the sun directly behind Pauli’s shoulder. Finally he relaxed. “All right, they’ve gone. Let’s talk about America some more.”
6
Herschel
THEY HAD BEEN AT sea five days already. the crossing was scheduled for eight to ten, depending on conditions on the ocean. Herschel’s new friend told him many things about America. Pauli seemed to know a lot about the country, including its cowboys and Indians. Talking of them, he liked to fire his finger like a pistol. “Bang, bang!” Soon he and Herschel were exchanging volleys and laughing uproariously, to the annoyance of some other passengers. A spate of fine weather set in. You could hardly move on the crowded steerage deck. Herschel took his concertina into the sunshine. He played tunes from home for Pauli. Soon old Valter laid aside his pipe, planted his fists on his hips, and began to dance. Quite agilely for a grandfather, in fact. Others joined him. Finely dressed men and women came to the railing above them to watch, comment, and clap.
Herschel played joyously. Music danced in his soul. Unfortunately so did a powerful dissatisfaction with things as they were. Which was why, young as he was, he’d been the one who pushed and wheedled and finally persuaded his confused mother and pliable older sisters that America was their best, most logical hope.
Back in the dim days of childhood (Herschel now considering himself at the age of fourteen almost grown up), he listened to his inner voice of discontent, which convinced him that to prosper—even to survive—he must escape the grimy confinement of the shtetl.
The shtetl was located not far to the southwest of the city of Lodz. Like similar settlements of the Jews, it was a poor, overcrowded place, the small wooden houses arranged in complete disorder along twisted muddy lanes.
In the market square, Herschel’s late father had maintained his booth, one among many. He was a sad man with round shoulders, missing whatever elusive quality it took to conquer the world. But he knew carpets, which he obtained from Lodz. Since not that many carpets were sold in a year, he also hung cheap work shirts on a rope at the rear of the booth; they sold well. Some of Herschel’s earliest memories were of his father haggling with a customer, amid stalls and booths selling everything from onions and potatoes to fish and raw meat dripping blood on smelly butcher blocks. Herschel had come to hate the squalor around him. He didn’t want to spend his life hawking carpets or herring or boots or veal chops.
There were other forces working on him too. When Herschel was six, Papa wrapped him in a prayer shawl and led him to his first day of religious school. The melamed who would instruct him picked him up and set him on a bench like some statue on display. Then the teacher pronounced a formal blessing on the new student of Torah. He emphasized the wondrous benefits that would develop as the boy learned the mitzvot, the commandments, all six hundred thirteen of them, which a devout Jew had to observe. Herschel was appalled. Six hundred and thirteen rules? Never!
But he might have surrendered to that sort of future had it not been for his father’s untimely death, and a visit to Warsaw made by the entire family in the winter six months before that happened.
They went to Warsaw against Slova’s objections, to visit Uncle Moritz, the black sheep brother of Herschel’s father. As a young man Uncle Moritz had run away from another shtetl to become, of all things, an actor. He had apprenticed with one of Europe’s most famous troupes, the players of the Duke of Sachsen-Meiningen. Slova Wolinski cried that it was a godless occupation. Indeed, Uncle Moritz had converted to Christianity to increase his chances in the profession. Now a practicing Catholic with fourteen children, he was a tragedian of great repute. Herschel’s mind was forever imprinted with the sight of Uncle Moritz, his face blacked, strutting and declaiming under old-fashioned calcium lights as Othello the Moor.
After the performance Uncle Moritz welcomed the Wolinskis backstage, a fascinating and exotic place of shadows and half-dressed women who smelled of powder and laughed a lot. Uncle Moritz took them all home to his stout goyische wife and rowdy children in their eleven-room flat, and it was there that Herschel had a chance to speak to his distinguished relative about going to America.
“I’d say it’s a good idea, do it,” Uncle Moritz advised, picking up the boy and setting him on his knee. “You won’t fully understand why it’s good until you’re older, but I’ll tell you this much now. There is a disease in Poland, and all of Europe. I might say an epidemic. ‘The Jew is to blame.’ Are shares on the bourse plunging? The Jews manipulated them. Is our army defeated? The Jews sold our secrets. The Jew did this, the Jew did that, the Jew did the other reprehensible thing. Why? I know a few reasons. The Jew is visible, the Jew is clever and resourceful, the Jew is often highly successful—even if he has to kiss the Pope’s ring in the process,” he added with a wink. “Therefore it’s a convenient disease. If you intend to remain a Jew, flee from it. Surely they don’t have the disease in America.” That was the moment Herschel made up his mind.
Easier said than done, though.
Herschel began his campaign with Slova right after Papa fell down dead in his booth, blood gushing from his mouth onto a stack of new carpets. Probably Herschel would have failed to persuade his mother, had he not enlisted Mira and Renata, and also written Uncle Moritz, who sent them just enough money to allow them to make the journey in order to escape Asiatic cholera. There had been outbreaks in Europe before, and Uncle Moritz warned that it had again invaded Russia from a mysterious place called Afghanistan. The epidemic had already swept from Kiev to Moscow, and when the summer came on—cholera being most prevalent in the hot months—Uncle Moritz predicted that it would march west. It killed swiftly. You sit down to your soup a healthy person and you’re dead by dessert, Uncle Moritz wrote. Go! Immediately! Only my career and numerous responsibilities prevent me from joining you.
Herschel trudged to Lodz and there endured long waits in drafty hallways, harassment by bureaucratic clerks, and a night’s sleep under sheets of newspaper in a rat-infested alley, all for the purpose of obtaining the necessary travel papers. Finally he got them. The family set out with eighteen other people from the district, all having agreed to band together for safety and companionship as fusgeyer. They trudged in sunshine or rain, along parched roads, or roads that had turned to mire, fighting fatigue, vermin, hunger, icy river crossings, clouds of blowing dust, even a hailstorm and a pack of wild dogs on separate occasions.
When they neared the frontier with East Prussia, a farmer warned them of military patrols, something entirely unexpected. Because of the epidemic, Prussia had sealed its borders.
For two days they debated the impasse among themselves, sinking deep into despondency. Herschel was one of only three who argued for hanging on—hoping for a miracle.
It came in the persons of two smugglers who turned up at their camp. For an outrageous fee per head, the smugglers offered to guide them over the border. They knew routes around the various guard stations on both sides. The shipping companies weren’t too scrupulous about an immigrant’s history so long as he got to Bremen or Hamburg and could pay the passage, they were assured.
That night, with a full moon in the sky, the smugglers led them to a ford in a fast-flowing stream, then warned them: “This is by far the easiest place, but there is a Polish guard post on the road just up there. The Polish army is cooperating with the Prussians because the disease endangers everyone. So be silent.”
Moments later, just as
the smugglers were hurrying them into the cold rushing water, they heard someone approaching on a fast horse from the direction of the Polish border post.
“Hurry, Mama,” Herschel cried, knee deep in water and fully visible under the huge moon. He clasped Slova’s elbow to assist her and urge her on. She staggered, lurched sideways, then fell into the water before Herschel could catch her.
“Halt there,” came a cry from the unseen horseman. A loud crack followed; the bullet fractured the moonlit water into thousands of quicksilver droplets. Dripping and floundering, Slova Wolinski burst into tears. Others exclaimed or screamed for mercy. And Herschel, small and frail though he was, found that fear had pumped him full of unbelievable strength: he grasped his mother under the arms and pulled her up, then he pushed her to the far bank while bullets continued to bite the silver water. All of the emigrants crossed over without a single mishap.
Soaked and shaken, they huddled under the moon. There was no further pursuit by the horseman. With the aid of the smugglers they crept on through a deep wood, thus avoiding the first guard booth on the German side.
Soon the smugglers left them to make their own way. It was as hard as before; perhaps harder, because they were exhausted by fear and privation.
Reaching Hamburg days later didn’t end the family’s travail. You had to be on watch constantly in the company’s quarantine barracks and on the piers. Herschel was warned of crooked ticket agents, baggage men, licentious doctors who attempted to force themselves on young girls they were examining. He stayed so close to Mira and Renata that it annoyed them, but he never saw anyone even remotely menacing, save for one burly baggage man who spoke Yiddish and threatened to punch Herschel when he refused the man’s offer of help.
So now the ordeal of Europe was behind them, leaving only the ordeal of entrance to America. Herschel listened alertly in steerage and heard many conversations about the perils of the reception depot in New York Harbor. The authorities could be capricious, turning you back because they were tired or didn’t like the tilt of your cap. Then there were the medical examiners, all reputed to have supernaturally keen eyes for spying out the slightest illness or deformity. The legendary “eye man” was dreaded most. The condition for which he inspected was something called trachoma, evidently common.