Back on home ground, I gulped the air which, however humid, felt Alpine in contrast to that on the crew deck, before stepping outside to find a crowd of passengers lining the rail. Even those with no friends or relatives to greet them welcomed the distraction of the Cuban boats. I spotted Joel and Viktor talking to two unfamiliar men in their mid-twenties. As I moved towards them, I saw that Joel had relinquished his crutches, only for Viktor to take his place on the injury list. One look at his bandaged face told me what must have happened; even so, I felt that I owed it to him to ask. He explained that he had been lying on his bed reading a favourite passage from War and Peace – something to do with a bear, which sounded unlikely – when the firemen burst in, ripping the book not just from his hands but from its binding. Furious, he lashed out, which gave them the perfect excuse to retaliate. His mother, horrified by Havana’s affinity to Cologne, called the Doctor, who stitched his wounds and begged them to let the matter drop. He claimed that the Gestapo behaviour sickened the rest of the crew, but that there was nothing any of them – the Captain included – could do. The best hope for all concerned was that we should be allowed to disembark as soon as possible.
The Doctor’s advice was scorned by Joel and his friends, who talked of forming an undercover resistance cell. Despite my disgust at the further instance of the firemen’s cruelty and my reluctance to be considered a coward, I was too conscious of my recent failure to wish to play any part. Meanwhile, my thoughts were turning to Sendel. With his cropped hair and unsavoury appearance, he offered a constant provocation to Schiendick. Viktor’s cuts would be mere scratches compared to the ones that had been inflicted on him. Knowing better than to expect thanks, I decided to seek him out. So, after locating the number on the passenger list, I went down to his cabin, half-fearing to find him unconscious on the floor. The response to my knock reassured me, and I entered to discover him lying on his bed in a room that was in even greater disarray than my own. He seemed neither worried about the mess nor surprised by my visit, making no attempt to stand up or to invite me to sit down. My fears about his injuries proved to be sound, but he dismissed my suggestion that he should see the Doctor. ‘I’ll survive,’ he said. ‘I’ve done so for thousands of years.’ I was disturbed enough by the disorder in the room without dealing with that inside his head. I volunteered to help him tidy up, but he ignored me, declaring in familiar vein: ‘It’s God I blame. When he branded me like this, it was to prevent anyone taking revenge on me. And never let it be said that the God of our fathers doesn’t keep his word. He stopped them killing me – oh yes – but he’s allowed them to mock me and beat me and torture me ever since. No Grand Inquisitor, no Cossack commander, no Nazi guard is as pitiless as the Lord our God.’
The respite brought by the opening door proved to be temporary when, on turning towards it, I found myself facing my father. His entrance left me aghast. I realised that, as single passengers, both he and Sendel were obliged to share a cabin; what I hadn’t expected was that it would be with each other. My father’s immediate concern was practical and I stationed myself at the sink, washing out the flannel with which he cleaned Sendel’s wounds. That done, he helped him off the bed and, having established that he could walk, insisted that we left him to rest. As we made our way up to the lounge, I tried to shrug off the image of Sendel’s arm hanging around his neck. The thought of their proximity disturbed me. The worst I had gathered of his roommate was that he snored. For all his faults, my father deserved more than to be trapped with Sendel. So, in my most matter-of-fact voice, I asked if he would like my grandfather’s bed. He stared at me in amazement. Embarrassed, I explained that it made sense since his cabin was so airless, with neither a bathroom nor a window. He pressed me so hard for another reason that I wondered whether he truly wanted to move. So I said that it would please Mother. She had been hit hard by my grandfather’s death and it would mean so much to her to see us together.
‘And what would it mean to you?’ he asked.
‘Probably a lot of inconvenience,’ I replied crossly. ‘I just don’t like to think of you stuck in such a poky space.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘I accept.’
He promised to make it clear to Sendel that there was nothing personal behind the move, describing his roommate as a brilliant scholar who spent most of his time reading, which surprised me since he’d struck me as a man who was interested in nobody’s ideas but his own. He barely looked up when I returned after tea to help my father with his bags. We declined to summon the stewards, who were already grumbling at having to bring in all the luggage that had been prematurely placed on deck. As I struggled up the stairs, I began to regret my generosity … a regret that grew substantially once we reached the cabin, where my father took up far more space than my grandfather, who had been unobtrusive even before falling ill. At least he unpacked only one case since he subscribed to the general view that, when the government offices reopened in the morning, the deadlock would be quickly resolved.
A few words from the Professor over dinner put paid to such hopes. He quoted the director of the Jewish relief agency on political allegiances in Cuba being less clear-cut than they were in Germany. For all the rumoured rivalries between Göring, Goebbels and von Ribbentrop, they pursued the same goal, as we knew to our cost. Their opposite numbers here were forever at each other’s throats. Our landing permits had been signed by Manuel Benitez who, despite being Director General of Immigration, did not possess the necessary authority and was simply feathering his own nest. My affronted interjection that no bird would behave so despicably was dismissed as an irrelevance by my mother. Meanwhile, the Professor explained that Benitez was an associate of the most powerful man on the island, Fulgencio Batista, the army chief of staff. President Bru had imposed the strict restrictions on immigration both to expose Benitez’s chicanery and to force a showdown with Batista. The St Louis had been caught in the crossfire.
While it came as a relief to realise that Goebbels’ arm did not stretch across the Atlantic and that we were simply pawns in a Cuban power-struggle, it did nothing to alleviate our plight. The Professor’s only advice was that people should give him, or other members of the Passenger Committee, the names of any influential friends in America to whom they might appeal for help (my mother reeled off a list as though she were suggesting sponsors for a charity gala). He proposed that, in the meantime, we enjoy the prospect of a few extra days aboard a luxury liner at no extra charge. His attempt at levity failed to convince his wife, who moaned about the sweltering heat, the sluggish service, the uninspired menu and, most bitterly, the news that, after complaints from the ‘cheaper passengers’, the Purser had decided to remove all demarcation between the classes. I was delighted by the thought that Johanna and I would at last be able to meet on equal footing. The Professor’s wife, however, declared that it was unfair to those people who had paid more, directing her remarks at my father, whose upgrading she had never been able to accept. Her husband suggested that it was a valuable gesture of solidarity, but she refused to be appeased. ‘In the past six years, we’ve been stripped of everything: position; home; job. We’ve become fourth-class citizens. We’re finally given a scrap of status, and now even that’s being taken away from us.’
‘We know who we are,’ her husband said, ‘isn’t that all that matters?’
‘Maybe to Eskimos,’ she replied, pushing away her plate.
Whitsun passed, removing any notion that our quarantine was religious, along with all hope of an early escape. But, while the St Louis remained becalmed, more and more boats were sailing towards us, some filled with film crews and journalists, who yelled out their intimate questions as casually as if they were asking about the weather. Information was the ship’s most precious currency and I was richly supplied, thanks to the Professor’s reports from the passenger committee and Sophie’s from Helmut. The former’s optimism about the experienced Jewish negotiators flying down from New York contrasted with the latter’s gloom
about the ever more rigid line being taken by Havana. A constant concern was the welfare of the children, in whose ranks I was delighted to discover that I was no longer even nominally placed. Luise’s two friends posed a particular problem. Their father arrived every morning, but their guardian, considering the experience too disturbing for them, refused to parade them at the rail. Moreover, she grew increasingly tense, regularly reminding people that she had no connection to the girls but had simply been approached at the Hamburg docks by a heavily perfumed woman ‘dripping with diamonds and smothered in furs’ (a description to which she gave an increasingly sinister emphasis), who had begged her to look after them on the voyage. She had been happy to help, but that had been in the expectation that she would hand them over without trouble. She had never anticipated this. Sophie, who alone seemed to relish the delay for the added time it gave her with Helmut, offered to shoulder some of the burden and, to my astonishment, my mother followed suit.
‘But you don’t like children,’ I blurted out. Her shocked expression showed that I had touched a nerve as sensitive as her art.
‘Whatever do you mean? I love children!’ While I pondered the distinction between love and like, she added: ‘The only time I didn’t like them was when I was one myself. Of course I like them. Why else do you think I had you?’
‘For Grandfather’s sake. To try and make up for his losing Uncle Karl. So that there would be someone to take over the store.’ I confronted her with a mixture of my own deductions and Aunt Annette’s disclosures.
‘My dear Karl, do you really imagine that’s how people behave? Would you do something so important – the most important thing in your life – just to please me?’
My first thought was that I would if I believed that it would make her value me, but I knew better than to say so.
‘We forget,’ she continued gently, ‘with your seeming so grown-up, that you’re still so young.’ My own recollection was all too clear, as her words stung me like a nursery slap.
The strain was affecting the passengers in different ways. Some remained resolutely cheerful, displaying an almost Aryan contempt for ‘the natives’, insisting that the problem would be solved as soon as Hapag dispensed the requisite bribes. Others issued Jeremiads, declaring such exclusion to be the inevitable fate of the Jews. The Rabbi held a daily service in the social hall, for which the portrait of the Führer was no longer taken down but simply concealed behind a curtain like a cruel parody of the ark. I refused to join in the prayers, which to me smacked of defeatism, placing my trust in human diplomacy rather than divine intervention. In addition to which, there was a larger principle at stake. Children of Israel was not meant to be taken literally. We would never gain respect – our own or other people’s – if we ran snivelling to God at the first sign of trouble. It was time that we learnt to stand up for ourselves.
Although the class distinctions had been removed, people tended to keep to the parts of the ship that they knew, and the Professor’s wife’s fear of being swamped by the hoi polloi was not realised. My own fear that my father would turn our cabin into a confessional proved to be equally groundless. When I returned from my late-night walks with Johanna, he was already asleep. Moreover, he never woke up in the morning until he heard me busy in the bathroom. On our first day together, he spotted me unpacking my binoculars. I explained their purpose.
‘Still birds?’ he asked, in a voice more suited to ‘Still teddy bears?’
‘Why not?’ I replied, saddened by how little he knew of my life. He asked if I remembered how, at the age of four, I had climbed up to the attic of our country house and out through a skylight to the roof because I wanted to touch the birds. One of the maids spotted me crawling along a gutter and a frantic crowd gathered below. He, meanwhile, dashed up the stairs and scrambled out to save me. ‘Did that really happen?’ I asked. ‘I’ve always thought it was a dream.’
‘I rescued you,’ he said.
‘Well you needn’t worry now,’ I said in an effort to lighten the mood, ‘I can take care of myself.’
‘I rescued you,’ he repeated and, to my dismay, his eyes once again filled with tears.
While I deplored such displays of mawkishness, I could well understand the desire to play the hero. My own consolation in our predicament was the chance to devise a spectacular plan to defy the authorities and save Johanna, which the many news crews present could then flash to an admiring public around the world. In company with Joel and Viktor, I weighed up the various options, from disguising ourselves as members of the crew, whose shore leave had been restored at Schiendick’s insistence, to squeezing through a porthole. Joel worried that his ankle would be too weak to survive the fall and Viktor that the sea would be too shallow. My own fears concerned the floodlights that were switched on at night to deter any such attempt. They not only thwarted our escape but put paid to all other clandestine activities. With both of our cabins out of bounds, Johanna and I had relied on the darkness to provide us with moments of privacy. Those were now lost. Scared of attracting disapproval, she would barely allow me a goodnight kiss, let alone my hard-won blouse privileges. To crown my frustration, when I returned prematurely to my cabin, the light streaming through the curtains deprived me of sleep. ‘It’s just like being in the camp,’ Sendel said cheerily, when I made my weary way back outside.
The next morning Johanna and I agreed to take charge of Luise and her friends, ostensibly to give Sophie a rest but, secretly, to experiment with the parental role. We were playing a game of whist (in Luise’s case, I played while she held the cards), when a middle-aged man sped past, gibbering and gesticulating. Shocked by the blood dripping from his arms, I left Johanna with the children, a neglect of the parental role for which I had all too clear a precedent, and joined the crowd in hot pursuit. In spite of his bulk, the man outstripped us all, the pain in his wrists deadening him to the knocks and bruises that the rest of us strove to avoid. He reached the stern and, with a defiant glance back, leapt over the rail. The sequence was as predictable as a cartoon. A wild shriek from out of nowhere was followed by a garbled shout and a loud blast on the ship’s whistle. I ran to the side and stared down at the sea, where the man was thrashing about in a murky pool of his own blood. A sailor, with a rare lack of deference, pushed me aside and threw down a rope, which the man resolutely ignored. Then, in a gesture I shall never forget, he raised his arms above his head and, with his right hand, plucked the severed veins from his left wrist, like a pathologist examining his own corpse. A nearby police launch swung round and headed towards him but, in the meantime, a sailor on the bridge had kicked off his shoes and dived to the rescue. The passengers lining the rail gave him a smattering of applause, but the man himself thrust him away so violently that (returning to the cartoon) it looked as though they were continuing a fight which had begun on board. The sailor’s face and shirt were soaked in the man’s blood, but he gradually pacified him, until even the cries of ‘Murderers!’ were reduced to a plaintive moan. Both men were then hauled into the launch, which spirited them away across the harbour, leaving a red stain on the water as if it were infested with sharks.
The incident laid bare the depth of misery on board. The St Louis held over nine hundred passengers, which meant over nine hundred reasons for leaving Germany, nine hundred hopes of starting a new life in America and nine hundred fears of returning to Europe. At a rough count, I was acquainted with about thirty of them. I now added one more. The would-be suicide’s name was Loewe, and he was travelling with his wife and two daughters. According to Viktor, who sat at an adjoining table in the dining room, the family kept to itself, staying just on the right side of courtesy. Nevertheless, there was no shortage of people claiming friendship with them. Some maintained that Herr Loewe had been hounded by the Nazi firemen, whose patrol that afternoon was unusually restrained, others that he had been deranged by the expropriation of his business. Whatever his story, it galvanised the interest of the journalists, two of whom even mana
ged to insinuate themselves on board. It struck me as doubly cruel that, while our friends and relatives were stuck gazing up at us as though we were the horses on the Brandenburg Gate, the journalists bribed their way on to a police launch and, by flashing bogus cards at the officials, convinced them that they had come to investigate the incident. In a sense, of course, they had, except that their investigation consisted of harassing Frau Loewe and her children. They were frustrated by a group of passengers, whose warning to the Captain prompted the immediate expulsion of the intruders. This in turn fuelled fears in some quarters that the Captain was trying to conceal our plight from the world.
Meanwhile, the hero of the hour, one Heinrich Meier, returned from hospital in Havana to receive the substantial sum that had been collected in his honour (evidence that ours had not been the only family to evade the currency restrictions). Meier brought the welcome news that Herr Loewe would pull through, but the Captain refused to be complacent, ordering that the lifeboats be lowered to anticipate any similar bid. Moreover, he asked the Passenger Committee to form a suicide watch to augment the crew’s night patrols, as though we were facing a second Masada. I immediately volunteered my services, only for my mother to declare me too young. I considered appealing to my father and exploiting the dual authority that had been the salvation of so many of my friends, but decided that the price would be too high. So I sulked which, according to my mother, proved her point.
A Sea Change Page 20