I wondered if I should say goodbye to my father – or, more accurately, if I should want to say goodbye to him. The silence of the last eight years was about to become permanent. Since he hadn’t deigned to make the journey from Breslau to Berlin, he was hardly likely to travel to Havana. Sometimes I worried that the reason for his absence was that he had been arrested and, instead of the weeks endured by my grandfather, he had spent years in prison. Then, with the same ambivalence I had felt at my classics master’s recovery from a stroke, I reflected on his talent for disappearing. At other times, I imagined that he was leading an underground cell and preparing to fire a bullet into the Führer’s flinty heart. On the eve of his execution (his own death being a key part of the picture), he would write a long letter to his family, begging us to forgive him, explaining that he had sacrificed our happiness for the sake of our fellow Jews. Then, with tears welling in my eyes, I dismissed the thought in favour of the probability that he himself had left the country some years earlier, along with the children he had fathered in a bid to forget us.
I warned myself not to waste my goodbyes. Yet my deep sense of loss demanded a focus. I decided therefore to take my leave of places and, on successive afternoons, my colouring the perfect camouflage, strolled unmolested through Berlin: to the Brandenburg Gate and the Tiergarten; to the Universum cinema, where in recent years the posters had been my closest contact with the films; to the Deutsches Theater where, as a small boy, I had been enchanted by the spectacles of Max Reinhardt, and the Kunstlertheater where, only slightly older, I had sat through Winterreise with that same sense of smugness and discomfort as when puffing on one of Grandfather’s cigars. I took the tram to the Hertha BSC stadium, where I had spent long afternoons with my friends at a time when our only enemies had been on the opposing team. I walked about the city which had become less of a landscape than a second skin, and wondered if I would ever return. Finally, I reached my favourite street, Unter den Linden, only to find that it belied its name, since all the trees had been chopped down to make room for the endless parades. I knew then that I could leave without regrets.
There was one goodbye that I could not shirk and, the day before our departure, Wilfrid drove me, along with my mother, grandfather and Luise, to the cemetery at Weisensee. While synagogues and shops had been desecrated and destroyed, it had survived intact: an anomaly which, even at fifteen, I attributed less to the Nazis’ sense of respect than to their belief that a necropolis constituted a perfect home for the Jews. Nevertheless, I was grateful that my mother and grandfather were spared the sight of further graffiti as they took a final farewell of their mother and brother and wife and son. Both were interred in the family mausoleum: a black marble replica of the Parthenon, which had terrified me on my first visit and to which I had never become reconciled. The sole virtue of our enforced emigration was that I would not have to take my place among the bones of my ancestors. Yet, as I clutched Luise’s hand and watched Grandfather painfully bending to place two stones at the side of the tomb, I was filled with rage at the thought that we would be unable to bury him among his family. He looked so frail that I feared that his own death might be imminent, and I swore to myself that, no matter the cost, I would bring his body back from America like Joseph bringing Jacob back from Egypt.
I was roused from my reverie by my mother who, having left her own stones, nudged me to lead Luise up to leave ours. I set mine down, pausing to note that they were the roundest and smoothest in the line, and tried in vain to feel a connection to the two dead people whom I had never met and yet who had exerted such an influence on my life. Luise, however, refused to give hers up, banging them together like cymbals, which prompted my mother to stride up and prise them off her. While she was dragged screaming down the path, Grandfather directed my gaze towards the countless rows of white stone markers that commemorated the soldiers killed in the War. I expected another lecture on the valiant Jews who had died for Germany but, instead, he dismissed them in a single word: ‘Fools!’ Then, looking back towards his son, he added ‘And he knew.’
Wilfrid drove us home and took his final leave, since it was Ernst Sengler, Thomas’s son, who was to drive us to Hamburg. Ernst had joined the SS, a fact that caused his father the same mild embarrassment as if he’d shopped at a rival store. Ernst was himself embarrassed by his loyalty to my grandfather, who had paid to put him through university, where, ironically, he had first been exposed to Nazi ideas. With the same sophistry that would later permit the government to class as ‘honorary Aryans’ the Japanese, a nation of far more exotic appearance than the most Semitic-looking Jew, Ernst exempted our family from Hitler’s strongest charges. He warned his father that we might face trouble on our journey to Hamburg – a so-called ‘spontaneous’ protest against rich Jews who were spiriting their money away from the Reich. He therefore offered both his services and his insignia, and, with a heavy heart, Grandfather accepted. In part because the car was so cramped but, in the main, I think, to distance himself from Ernst, he sat in the back with Mother, Aunt Annette and Luise, while I squeezed into the front with Sophie. Our hopes of tranquillity were dashed by Ernst, who kept up a constant stream of chat or, rather, propaganda. After describing our voyage as a pleasure cruise, he explained why, as aliens, we were unable to feel genuine sadness on leaving Germany. He even tried to reason with us, giving us a final chance to acknowledge the genius of the Führer, like an Inquisitor thrusting a cross at a burning heretic.
Then, realising that there would be no last-minute conversion, he assured us that we would be happier in America since it was populated largely by Jews.
‘That’s not true,’ I protested.
‘Apart from Negroes. In any case, America’s a vast country … a continent. There’s room for different races. Germany’s small. We’re all muddled up. Why did the Roman Empire fall?’
‘Barbarian attacks,’ I replied, looking round for support.
‘Interbreeding,’ he insisted. ‘The Romans coupled with their slaves and diluted their blood. National Socialism will protect the Fatherland from a similar fate. Never again will Germany be a mongrel nation.’
‘Mongrels are stronger than pedigree dogs,’ Sophie interjected. ‘They live longer too.’
‘Do you want us to have an accident?’ he asked crossly. ‘You’re taking my mind off the road.’
I envied the passengers in the back who had no distraction but Luise’s whimpering, although I was afraid that her constant demands for food, drink and lavatories would confirm Ernst in his view of Jewish inferiority, especially when our reluctance to risk an inn obliged her to relieve herself in a field. I roundly rejected my mother’s suggestion that I should do likewise, until the pressure of a bursting bladder combined with Ernst’s own lack of inhibition to change my mind. The rest of the journey passed without incident, apart from Ernst’s paean of praise to the newly opened autobahn and his insistence that we echo the picture-book Aryan family on the billboard who, glazed with appreciation, declared that ‘Our beloved Führer gave us this.’
We reached Hamburg shortly before nightfall to find the streets decked in bunting. For an instant we feared that the beloved Führer was preparing to pay a visit but, to our relief, found that the city was celebrating seven hundred and fifty years of its foundation. ‘Surely, there must be some mistake?’ Sophie said. ‘Do you mean that Hamburg had a history before the Nazis?’ Ernst took such offence at her tone that he refused to say another word, driving us straight to the hotel where, with a curt salute, he left us. We entered the lobby, of which Grandfather had many happy memories, but it was clear that circumstances had changed. No sooner had we proffered our names than the desk clerk drew our attention to a notice stating that ‘Guests of the Jewish persuasion should not eat in the dining room but in the first floor lounge.’ His suggestion that they were catering to our dietary needs rather than their own prejudice fooled no one. Further humiliation followed when it was revealed that our booking requests had been ignored
and I had to sleep in a child’s cot in a room with Luise and Sophie, the prospect of which gave me an unexpected, inexplicable thrill.
‘I promise I don’t mind,’ I said, hoping to impress my mother with my cooperation.
‘I don’t care whether you mind or not,’ she said. ‘I’m thinking of Sophie.’ I was searching for a suitably damning reply when my grandfather, who from the moment of our arrival had kept his eyes fixed on the revolving door (which Luise had finally been dissuaded from using as a roundabout), shot me a look of warning. Then, turning to the clerk, he accepted the room keys with a humiliating profusion of thanks.
I anticipated a thrilling night in which Sophie and I would lie awake, confiding all our most intimate hopes and fears, but, in a mortifying repeat of New Year’s Eve, I fell asleep the moment that my head hit the pillow. I woke to find Sophie, fully dressed, attempting to rouse a resistant Luise. A chambermaid brought breakfast to our room – a snub that was actually a blessing – but, the moment that she handed me my tray, my mother strode in and, dismissing all talk of special occasions, insisted that I ate it at the desk. I was surprised at how smart she looked. Her hair was wound in an elaborate bun and, in defiance of the law, she wore a diamond ring and a string of pearls. Setting aside our travelling clothes, she insisted that Luise and I made a similar effort, determined that we should leave the country like people of distinction, not vagabonds. Her words galvanised Sophie, who hurried to her suitcase for a change of blouse (I felt honour-bound to concentrate on my herring). When we assembled downstairs an hour later, it was clear that Grandfather and Aunt Annette had been inspired to a similar elegance, so much so that we might have been the Krupps setting off for their yacht.
At the docks we were ushered into a huge shed that was even more chaotic than the emigration office. I was seized by a sudden panic and longed to go home and lie low until the country wearied of Hitler. Then I remembered Ernst’s warning that, in the forthcoming war, the German people would ensure that the Jews had no chance to profit from the blood of its heroes, and I knew that there was no turning back. I tried to shut out the terror by focusing on my family. My grandfather and mother ignored their own instructions for us all to stick together, the one seeking out porters to fetch our advance baggage and the other finding suitable candidates for her patronage in an elderly couple cowed by the crowd. Luise started to whine and Sophie promptly proposed a game of Spot the Colour, although their usual reds and blues and greens were subsumed in the swirl of greys and browns. Only Aunt Annette paid attention to me, and I took her hand, doubly grateful for the pretence that I was the one protecting her. After an enforced wait, we trudged through the embarkation channel where an inspector with an alarmingly familiar moustache insisted on examining every one of our cases. When a porter bent to put the first on the table, he ordered him to leave it to my grandfather, who could barely lift it from the floor. Leaping to his aid, I grabbed the case and flung it in front of the Inspector, who punished my defiance by the thoroughness of his search. I winced as he pawed my mother’s most intimate clothing and raged as he tore the spines off her sketch books. Then, as he rummaged through the coats, all other emotions gave way to the dread that he would discover the jewels. But, after years of silence, God answered my prayers, and the Inspector passed the case. My relief, however, was short-lived for the next one that he opened contained my stamps. He leafed through the albums with unwonted care, no doubt picturing such gaps in his son’s collection as the Bavaria Number One and Red Mercury, before declaring them forfeit as items of value to the Reich. My vehement protests drew no response, other than the horrified glances of people nearby who were submitting to a similar outrage.
‘Karl please,’ my grandfather said. ‘We’ll buy you more albums – bigger ones.’
‘How?’ the official asked. ‘With your ten Reichsmarks? Or are you trying to smuggle funds out of the country?’ He gestured to his confederates to frisk us.
‘No, sir,’ my grandfather said quickly. ‘Not a pfennig. I meant that, in America, I’ll find work. I’ll earn money to buy more albums.’
‘Oh yes,’ the man spat. ‘You Jews make money everywhere. Well go and cheat the Americans instead of us.’ He smiled triumphantly and slipped the albums into a crate. He then proceeded to do the same with my binoculars, veterans of five years of field trips, dashing my hopes of spotting any rare birds on the voyage. Finally, he came to my collection of eggs, lifting out the trays with a sinister smile. He scoffed at my claim that their sole value was sentimental, refusing to believe ‘that a Jew would collect anything he couldn’t sell,’ and then slowly, very slowly, smashed each one in turn. I watched dumbstruck as he gave way to a wanton violence that would have shamed any woodland predator. He stopped only when Luise started to clap, delighted that a grown-up was playing the game that she played every morning with her boiled egg: her boiled hen’s egg; her common or garden, one-million-eaten-every-breakfast egg: not a brambling’s egg; a nuthatch’s egg; a dunnock’s egg; a chaffinch’s egg; a hawfinch’s egg; two linnets’ eggs; a siskin’s egg; a peregrine’s egg; a goldcrest’s egg; a goshawk’s egg; and a cuckoo’s egg that I’d mistaken for a meadow-pipit’s, until Herr Weisel, my Nature Studies teacher, set me straight. My mother struggled to silence Luise, terrified that the brute might suppose she was laughing at him and smash her head with equal insouciance. He, however, drew back, conscious of having held his night-time self up to the light. ‘You’re correct,’ he said, ‘they have no value. There’s nothing concealed inside.’ Then, with a wave of his hand, he dismissed us, bored of the game or perhaps of the players, anxious to pit his strength against the fresh contingent waiting in line.
Aunt Annette led me swiftly through the shed. I was shaking so much that I could scarcely maintain my balance: I was as speechless as if he had crushed my tongue along with the shells: I felt as though Kristallnacht had been replayed in my own suitcase. Escape, however, was at hand for, after a final check of our passports, we were ejected unceremoniously on to the quay. All my feelings of despair disappeared at my first sighting of the St Louis. As I craned my neck to take it in – from the vast expanse of hull, through the panoply of decks and lifeboats, to the glow of the red and white chimneys – I told myself that this was the shape of salvation. My musings were interrupted by my grandfather, who whisked us towards the ship, as though terrified of a last-minute hitch. At the accommodation ladder we were greeted by a group of young officers while, to one side, a line of sailors, as spruce as an operetta chorus, stood with their hands behind their backs. Then, in a final taste of the life we were leaving behind, and a timely reminder of why we were right to leave it, the porters dumped our cases at our feet. An officer immediately instructed a trio of sailors to carry them aboard. My mother, mistrusting their motives, grabbed the first one by the arm.
‘Where are you taking them?’ she cried.
‘To your cabin, madam,’ he replied, perplexed. She backed away, her face a heartbreaking mixture of gratitude and shame. Meanwhile, further down the quay, the company band began to play as if we were regular passengers. My grandfather stopped to listen. A young officer, misconstruing, offered him his arm, which sent him into a paroxysm of weeping. The officer looked bewildered, but Aunt Annette moved to reassure him. Then, wiping his eyes, my grandfather turned to me.
‘The Count of Luxembourg waltz,’ he said. ‘It was your grandmother’s favourite. Franz Lehár often came to play for us before the War. Do you suppose they realise that he was a J too?’
I could place neither the name nor the reference, but I knew that it wasn’t an appropriate moment to ask for clues. So I smiled brightly, which seemed to set my grandfather’s mind at rest, and followed him on to the ship. Yet, far from racing up the accommodation ladder like the heroes whose flights I had cheered on the screen, I staggered forward as though my shoes were filled with lead. Once on deck, my euphoria was replaced by apprehension. Although we had escaped from German soil, we were still on German territo
ry, as was shown by the swastika flag flying from the mast. At any moment, a party of officials might march on board and confiscate our papers. My fears were evidently shared by my fellow passengers. Of the nine hundred or so due to travel, only a handful dared to stroll about in the open, the rest preferring to lock themselves in their cabins until we were safely at sea. But, when I saw the sailors sagging under the weight of our cases, I wondered whether I were being overly gloomy and the absentees were simply eager to unpack.
The sailors were so solicitous that we suspected them of mockery. ‘He called me sir,’ my grandfather kept repeating, shocked by the return to his former self. It was a reversal of everything that, for six long years, we had been taught was the natural order. Now we were the ones who risked rudeness with our guarded replies to their genial chat. The courtesy with which they led us down the labyrinth of corridors, pointing out the various public rooms, was itself such a surprise that I failed to take note of the names.
Further confusion awaited me when they showed us to our cabins and I found that I was to share one with my grandfather. While prepared to concede that, under the circumstances, no other arrangement was practical, I dreaded the enforced intimacy. Grandfather was a person who commanded respect, in the main because of his age and manner, but in part because of his clothes. Even at the height of summer, he never appeared without a collar and tie. Now I risked seeing him in his underwear – or worse. An adolescent revulsion to his ageing flesh mingled with a fear of acknowledging his frailty. I had a further cause for unease, one that I’m loath to admit to you, who, I suspect, view my body with the same disgust that I did his (I am starting to draw a wry consolation from the prospect that this chronicle may go unread). Ever since my abortive bar mitzvah, my mother had persisted in describing – and treating – me as a boy, and in regarding my principled refusal to compromise as a wilful refusal to grow up. The allocation of the cabins was the first indication that she considered me to be a man. I was convinced that this new status was a response not to a practical need but to a change in me, yet I was at a loss to determine what it was. The only visible change had been to my genitals and I kept that well hidden – from my mother most of all. I was scared that, now we were sharing a cabin, my grandfather would chance on me undressed and, with an unfailing instinct, see not only that I had hit puberty but that I was actively exploring its effects.
A Sea Change Page 4