A Sea Change

by Michael Arditti

  ‘It’s part of our heritage,’ I said. ‘We’ve always had to celebrate in adversity.’

  ‘Not everything can be a celebration,’ she replied.

  ‘It can in America. Remember I told you that I wanted to be an ornithologist? I might also become a gangster.’

  ‘You?’ Her laugh was affectionate but wounding.

  ‘Like Bugsy Siegel. His real name was Benjamin Siegelbaum. Then you can be my moll.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘That’s a woman with blond hair and bright eyes, who smokes cigarettes in a holder and speaks through the corners of her mouth.’

  ‘I can’t wait.’

  ‘She sits on his knee and then, when he has to meet an associate or shoot someone, he shrugs her off, giving her a slap on the bottom.’

  ‘A slap?’

  ‘It’s quite friendly and she usually wears a bead dress, so it can’t hurt.’

  ‘You’d better not try slapping me.’

  ‘Oh I won’t. That wouldn’t be till we’re much older. This is what I want to do now.’

  I took her in my arms. She laid down her torch and nuzzled my neck. Time dissolved into kisses. The air was alive with movement. I felt grateful that we had met, not in Berlin, but here in the face of infinity. Love encompassed us at every point. We could redraw the map … remake the world. Finally she broke away and picked up the torch, which she brandished like a dagger.

  ‘This moll is going to bed.’

  Her delicate scent was wafted away on the breeze. I stared out to sea and thrilled to the boundless possibilities. Suddenly, I was struck by a surge of weariness, as violent as the water was calm. I headed back to the cabin, allowing my fingers to linger over every surface, whether rope or canvas or wood. I saw that other couples had also been touched by romance, although their connections were at once more immediate and less permanent than ours. I shrank from the sight of Joel, recognisable only by his crutches, pressed to the ample bosom of a lady whose grey hair had not been assumed for the night. I was as shocked by their difference in age as a Nazi by a difference in race. Doubly grateful for Johanna’s youthful beauty, I sought to escape behind a lifeboat, but the undulating tarpaulin left me in little doubt as to the activity taking place underneath. I was sickened that people should be so in thrall to their baser natures. The sight of my recently sprouted hair had merely strengthened my resolve to exercise restraint. Besides, all that filthiness was quite unnecessary when there were such exquisite pleasures to be found in a kiss.

  ‘You look mighty satisfied with yourself.’

  I swivelled in surprise. I could just make out Sendel in the shadows, but I failed to see how he could make out the expression on my face. Determined not to let him lower my spirits, I addressed him as an ordinary passenger.

  ‘You missed a wonderful ball.’

  ‘Who’d dance with me?’

  Refusing to lie, I said simply that the most unlikely people had taken to the floor. He replied, with infuriating portentousness, that they might as well enjoy it while they could for they would soon have to change their tune. He claimed to have been talking to two of the Gestapo firemen and, when I expressed incredulity, explained that, while strong men were secure in their power, weak men needed to be bolstered by fear. The particular fear which they were exploiting was that the boat would not be permitted to dock in Havana. The Cubans had passed a law restricting immigration shortly before the St Louis left Hamburg, and the Captain was worried that we would be forced to turn back.

  The music that had provided such an apt accompaniment to my conversation with Johanna took on a mocking tone. I clung to the hope that Sendel, true to form, was playing on my anxieties. I insisted that the Captain would never have confided in the firemen, whom everyone knew had been imposed on the ship against his will.

  ‘You stupid boy!’ He spat out the words with a fury that betrayed his alter ego. ‘They have spies in the radio room. They overhear every wire that the Captain receives.’

  ‘But, if Hapag knew about this law before we sailed, why didn’t they say?’

  ‘They wanted money. The Cubans wanted money. And we were so desperate to escape that we closed our eyes. Meanwhile, Goebbels has been hard at work, ordering his agents in Cuba to stir up anti-Semitism and force the government’s hand.’

  ‘There are Nazi agents in Cuba?’

  ‘No, of course not! The island’s entirely peopled by brilliantined troubadours strumming mandolins and dusky maidens rolling cigars on their thighs…. There are Nazis everywhere. Everywhere!’ His voice dissolved in pain.

  ‘I may be stupid, but I always thought that Goebbels wanted us out of Germany.’

  ‘So he does. But this way he shows why he wants us out: this way he shows that other countries don’t want us in. He doesn’t just punish the Jews, he embarrasses the world.’

  Suddenly I felt like a stowaway. My ticket was valid for a different voyage. I asked whether we would have to go back to Germany.

  ‘I shall never go back.’

  ‘But if we can’t dock –’

  ‘I tell you, I’ll never go back! I was only let out of the camp on condition that I left the country forever.’ He rounded on me as though I were one of the guards. ‘You think you’ve suffered because you were banned from cinemas and your parents weren’t allowed to drive their cars.’

  ‘We were made to give up our dogs.’ The image of Winnetou and Shatterhand flooded my memory and tears welled in my eyes.

  ‘Your dogs? Oh I’m sorry. Almost like members of the family, were they?’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘I was treated like a dog! Worse. I was dragged off to Buchenwald to be blackmailed, starved and abused. I saw prisoners being given impossible tasks, only to be beaten for failing to carry them out. I saw them searching for puddles in which to clean themselves and forced to sleep in their own filth. I watched as row upon row of us had our heads shaved so that even our bodies became uniforms.’ His rage was so intense and indiscriminate that I felt compelled to assert my own link to the suffering.

  ‘Yes, row upon row. And my grandfather was one of them.’

  ‘I know,’ he replied with relish. ‘That was the one thing that sustained me: that all the rich Jews, all the respectable Jews, all the Jews who believed that, by looking down on the likes of me, they would be safe from the Nazis; they were locked up there too and they were the ones who cracked, not me. So no, wherever else I go, it won’t be Germany.’ He burst out laughing as he walked away. ‘Night night, little prince. Sleep well!’

  The injunction lost its irony the moment that my head hit the pillow and Sendel’s image was replaced by Johanna’s. In my dreams, I displayed all the dexterity that had eluded me on deck, as I raced her to the top of a New York skyscraper without using the lift. At breakfast I discovered that our attachment had become a subject of gossip. My father even cracked a joke, asking if I were carrying a torch for Liberty. My mother laughed as though it were a line from Molnar, which jolted me out of my own concerns into a consideration of my parents’ relationship. Her smiles and his solicitude were as eloquent as their carefully coordinated costumes at the ball. They put me in mind of a pair of amnesiacs who fell in love in hospital, unaware that they had known each other before. Try as I might, I was unable to decide how much it was simply a shipboard intimacy that would dissolve on disembarkation and how much a genuine threat.

  I spent a magical morning with Johanna, poring over the attractions of the city where we were to dock the following day. The whole world seemed to be filled with a newfound sensuousness, right down to the pages of the guidebook. She giggled as I read out an extract – in suitably silky tones – that would never have passed the Nazi censor: Havana is like a woman in love. Eager to give pleasure, she will be anything you want her to be – exciting or peaceful, gay or quiet, brilliant or tranquil. What is your fancy? She is only anxious to anticipate your desires, to charm you with her beauty. Go prepared to enjoy yourself an
d you will leave, loving her as deeply as any native son. Johanna deemed the passage silly, claiming to admire writers who described what things were, not what they were like. So I slyly asked her to describe how it felt to be a woman in love. ‘How should I know?’ she replied, which she modified at the sight of my despondent face to ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’ Curbing my attempts to do just that on the grounds that there were people watching, she lay back in her deckchair while I ran through the ship’s repertoire of fruit cocktails and outlined the yet more exotic delights of panal, pina fria, tamarindo and horchata, that were promised as soon as we reached land. The guidebook was as helpful to the playful lover as to the thirsty traveller, and I informed her that, while it is quite proper for a lady to go into the cafés of the better class adjoining Central Park after concerts or during theatre intermissions, under no circumstances should she appear by herself either in the streets or a public place after the early part of the evening. I pronounced this to be proof that she would need me more than ever if she were not to spend her nights at home, making lace and small talk with her mother. Behind my levity, however, lurked the question that I had asked about my parents: how far would things change when we disembarked?

  The prospect of an answer drew closer after lunch, when we stood together on deck and caught our first glimpse of America.

  ‘So many trees,’ she said, gazing at the verdant seaboard. ‘In films, it’s all mansions and skyscrapers. I never expected so many trees.’

  ‘If we could just swim ashore!’ I said. ‘Jump overboard and forget about Cuba and quotas.’

  ‘I will if you will,’ she said and, for a moment, I was ready to accept the challenge. Gone was the timorous boy oppressed by a tyrannical world. With Johanna at my side, I was a match for anything. I could step out on the beach in nothing but my dripping clothes and, in a few years … months … weeks, I would have made my fortune. I would buy up woodlands and swamps to turn into bird sanctuaries. I would be a byword for philanthropy. I might even run for President. But, just as I was rehearsing my Inauguration speech (full of tributes to my beloved First Lady), reality intervened in the shape of my fellow passengers, cheering the sight of the promised land at the end of our latter-day exodus.

  As we sailed down the Florida coast, people with stronger eyesight – and imaginations – than mine identified various landmarks. The greatest roars were reserved for Miami, whose skyline glistened in the sunlight like an Alpine range. Our euphoria spread to the crew, who dashed about clearing the decks in anticipation of our departure. The rows of chairs were soon replaced by suitcases, which passengers, as restless as a crowd outside the Hertha BSC stadium, dragged alongside the accommodation ladder. My own packing could no longer be delayed and I regretted the vehemence with which I had told my mother that I was old enough to see to it myself. I took my leave of Johanna and returned to the cabin, where I made desultory progress, unnerved by the constant reminder of my grandfather’s absence in the cases neatly stacked behind the door.

  Dinner was served early to allow for our dawn arrival. For all her insistence that she had had no time to work up an appetite, the Professor’s wife made a valiant effort. She explained that she’d spent the afternoon cabling news of our approach to friends in Cuba. ‘They’ll find out soon enough,’ her husband said, although relief at the chance to disband his committee tempered even his sharpest retort. The rescheduling of the meal enabled Luise to join us, yet, far from relishing the treat, she was jittery and badly behaved. My mother claimed that it was excitement, but I worried that she might possess some instinct for danger denied to the rest of us, like a sparrow chattering before rain. She turned on Aunt Annette when she tucked in her napkin, flicked crumbs at the Banker’s wife, who gamely played dead, and clung to the sauceboat as if it were her favourite doll. Sophie, meanwhile, was so lost in thought that she might have been sitting at another table. I realised with a jolt that, whatever the effect of our landing on my relationship with Johanna, its effect on hers with Helmut was plain. Their choice would be between a few delirious days each year when his ship was in port and a lifetime of for-the-best forgetting.

  The after-dinner sun was disconcerting and neither Johanna nor I chose to linger over our valedictory stroll. I returned to the cabin, changed into my pyjamas and prayed. Unlike my former school-friends, for whom the topic had become as taboo as circumcision, I found the concept of prayer more problematic than the practice. If God were omniscient, he knew what I had to say before I said it, so I was wasting both his time and my breath. On the other hand, I trusted that he would appreciate my effort. Struggling to keep my thoughts as lucid as possible, I ran over the key events of the voyage: my grandfather’s death; my father’s return; my love for Johanna; even, to my surprise, my clashes with Sendel; and asked for his help in resolving them all. The silence was huge but eloquent and I slipped into bed with a sense of reassurance, falling straight to sleep, to be woken before dawn by a blast on the ship’s whistle.

  Rushing to the window, I gazed out on a scene of unrelieved blackness. Gradually my eyes adjusted to the subtleties of tone: the thin blackness of the air and the dull blackness of the sea which gave way to the dense blackness of the cliffs (a conjecture which the beam of a lighthouse confirmed). Neglecting to wash, in celebration rather than mourning, I threw on my clothes and hurried outside, jostling the crowd to gain a place at the rail. I found myself squeezed between Joel and Viktor, who informed us with chalky pedantry that the castle on the cliff was known as El Morro and had been hewn straight from the rock. A bid to secure a better vantage-point sent us scurrying to starboard (Joel propelling himself on his crutches like a cricket), to the fury of an elderly couple with a manifestly limited experience of delinquency. There we saw a longer, lower castle, identified by Viktor as La Pinta, which looked increasingly impressive in the breaking dawn. Eager to cause no further offence, we walked soberly to the prow, where we made out the narrow entrance of the harbour and, in the distance, illuminated only by the occasional headlight, the shadowy promise of Havana.

  We gazed in silence at the town that would offer us refuge. I was seized with regret, firstly, that I had not spent more of my time on board learning Spanish and, secondly, that I was making such a furtive entrance in a boatload of exiles. I feared too that our welcome had been soured by Goebbels’ agents, although I comforted myself that the source of that information was Sendel who, in the absence of any flesh-and-blood victim, had tried to murder my hopes. At the bell, both Joel and Viktor ostentatiously raised their wrists to reveal identical watches which, in order to use up their shipboard marks, they had bought from an enterprising steward. They urged me to do the same, but I insisted that a second watch would be of no more value to me than the money, which I had, in any case, decided to give to Helmut. Agreeing that it was time for breakfast, while disagreeing as to whether that time were 5.33 or 5.34, they raced me to the dining-room. Feeling far too excited to eat but aware that I needed to keep up my strength for the day ahead, I took my place among the bleary-eyed company and blithely informed the waiter that I would have everything. My mother started to object, but my father overruled her with a plea for tolerance (and a wink at me). The waiter returned, so laden with dishes that I felt like an entrant in a pie-eating contest at a fair. Honour-bound to eat, I took no part in the conversation, which was brought to a halt by a resounding thud. I was at a loss to understand why we had dropped anchor outside the harbour and yearned to join the passengers who had rushed unceremoniously from the room but, this time, my mother’s injunction held fast. The Professor announced that the ship must be too big to navigate the harbour entrance.

  ‘Quite the opposite,’ I declared, borrowing Viktor’s statistics, ‘the harbour has sea-room for a thousand ships.’ The Professor glowered at me as if I had elbowed my way into a lifeboat, trampling women and children underfoot.

  ‘Perhaps the ship’s papers aren’t in order?’ the Banker suggested.

  ‘Or ma
ybe it’s ours that are the problem?’ my father said.

  ‘How can that be, Georg?’ my mother asked, with satisfying sharpness. ‘We have our vaccination certificates, together with transit visas signed by the Director of Immigration himself.’

  Even my mother, however, shared the general desire to be out on deck to see what was happening. I was grateful for the chance to abandon the meal with no loss of face, other than a sly gibe about my eyes being bigger than my stomach from the person least qualified to make it. Offering to take charge of Luise, whom I had neglected for too long, I proceeded to the prow. The early morning light gave definition to what had hitherto been a blur: the two silver-grey fortresses on either side of the harbour, the Cuban flag flying breezily from El Morro, and the city itself: a dazzle of pink and white and yellow plastered walls; of red and gold roofs; of the sheer trunks of coconut trees, crowned by clown-like tufts of leaves; with the great dome of the Cathedral rising at its heart.

  By coincidence it was Saturday, and the Rabbi announced that he would be holding a service in the nightclub (the choice of room bore the signature of Schiendick) although, to judge by the teeming deck, I feared that he would be hard-pushed to obtain a minyan. The cynic in me, never far away when faced with my coreligionists, presumed that the need for prayer was less pressing now that we had reached land. The arrival of a launch sent a stampede to starboard, in time to witness a resplendently uniformed official climb to the top of the accommodation ladder, where he was greeted by the ship’s doctor and nurse. Their presence was explained by a loudspeaker request for all passengers to assemble in the social hall for a medical inspection. Far from being a minister sent to welcome us on behalf of the government (my mother’s suggestion betraying a naivety that was either charming or culpable according to taste), the man was the Port Authority doctor who, refusing to accept the Captain’s assurance of our good health, was insisting on a general examination.