‘Fourteen years and five months. I know exactly,’ she replied.
‘Christina,’ he said, in a belated acknowledgement of her mother. ‘You defy the calendar.’ His lips brushed her cheek. ‘You put us all to shame.’ I read the entire history of their relationship in their respective flattery and simpering. Johanna stared at them as fascinated as if she had unearthed a cache of wedding photographs. My presence could no longer be ignored and he threw me a questioning glance. Christina introduced us and he gave me a curt nod.
‘We have no time,’ he said to Johanna. ‘We’ll have to get to know one another in Havana.’
‘We’re not allowed to leave the ship,’ she replied. ‘We sail first thing in the morning.’
‘Not necessarily,’ he said, causing my heart to miss a beat.
‘How did you manage to come on board?’ Johanna asked, voicing the question on all our lips.
‘Does it matter?’ he replied and then, sensing that it did, explained. ‘I’ve been here two years. I know – I make it my business to know – a lot of influential people. I’m not like the rest of them, marking time in cafés till their quota numbers come up. I oil wheels. I always have.’
‘That must make you very greasy,’ I said, insolence sneaking up on me unawares. He laughed coldly, before turning back to Johanna.
‘You know, of course, that what’s kept you out is your entry permits. They were issued by the Director of Immigration – an incompetent oaf called Benitez.’ It came as no surprise that he objected to the man’s inefficiency rather than to his corruption. ‘Through my connections at the Foreign Ministry, I’ve managed to obtain two valid visas, one for you and one for your mother.’ Christina’s face flooded with relief and she kissed his hand, which might as well have been his foot given her effusion of servility. ‘Now we have very little time. You must gather your things and come with me.’
I was stunned, both by Johanna’s change of fortune and our imminent separation. My head rang with all the words I had left unsaid. My lips stung with all the kisses we had still to share. I began to understand why people killed themselves for love.
‘What about everyone else?’ Johanna’s question surprised me since she had always regarded the other passengers as irritants. I presumed that she was playing for time while she adjusted to the idea of departure.
‘They’re not my concern,’ her father replied. ‘You are. You’re my daughter.’
‘How do you know?’ she asked, retreating into melodrama. ‘My mother might have been lying to extort money.’
‘Oh Johanna,’ Christina said, shame suffusing her cheeks.
‘Don’t do this to yourself,’ her father said. ‘Don’t do this to me.’
‘You want to make amends for the last fourteen years? Why now?’
‘We only have a few minutes before the launch leaves.’
‘Why now?’
‘Two words: Adolf Hitler. Will they do?’
‘I’m a part of this ship … these people.’ I tried to look worthy of her declaration. ‘I can’t abandon them.’
‘But they don’t want you. They refuse to accept you. You’re your mother’s daughter.’
‘It’s in my blood.’
‘You’re young, so you think that persecution is romantic. But the truth is that it’s vile and degrading. I’m giving you a chance to escape.’
‘A month ago, I would have said “yes”. I wouldn’t have looked back if the ship had been sinking. But now I know who these people are. I’ve shared their lives. I’ve seen their courage … their decency.’
Her father looked suspicious, as though abstract virtues had no place in his world. ‘Who is this young man?’ he asked. ‘Why is he here?’
‘We’re in love,’ she replied, turning our secret vows into an established fact.
‘Oh darling, how wonderful,’ Christina said, the romance fleetingly overruling the danger.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! How old are you, my boy? Twelve? Thirteen?’ I was determined to prove myself old enough to ignore the insult.
‘Fifteen.’
‘Fifteen, really?’ He sounded as astonished as if I had declared myself eligible to serve as Chancellor rather than to love his daughter. ‘If you multiply the years by seven to get a dog’s age, then you should divide them by three to get an adolescent’s. You’re children! Still wet behind the ears.’
‘We’re in love,’ I said, eager to speak the words in my turn.
‘You think you’re in love. There’s a difference. You met on board. Am I right?’
‘So what?’ I said.
‘Like sea-sickness, it’ll vanish as soon as you’re back on land.’
‘You’ve no right to speak like that to Karl,’ Johanna said. ‘You of all people!’
‘You say you love my daughter,’ he challenged me. ‘Very well then, prove it. Tell her to come with me. Help me to save her life.’
I hesitated. While the whole weight of my boyhood reading pushed me to make a romantic sacrifice, my need for her redressed the balance. Nobility was no longer as powerful as desire. ‘I shall respect Johanna’s decision,’ I said, ‘whatever it may be.’
Further discussion was prevented by the entrance of the Purser, too flustered to wait for an answer to his knock. ‘The launch is preparing to leave, sir. You have exactly two minutes. Shall I send a steward for the cases?’
‘Please, Officer,’ he replied. ‘Ten more minutes. Five!’
‘The Cubans are starting to get jittery. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself stuck on board.’
‘That’s right, Pappi,’ Johanna said. ‘If you really want to make it up to me, sail back with us. You’ll have plenty of time to get to know me then. I’m sure they can squeeze you in.’
‘I’ll try and stall them for a few minutes, but I can’t promise,’ the Purser said, hurrying out.
‘Johanna, darling, we must go with your father. We’ve come all this way.’ Christina spoke as though her greatest concern were the wasted journey.
‘You’ve done so much for me, Mother.’ She turned to her father. ‘You’ve no idea how hard she’s worked.’ She took her mother’s hand. ‘You deserve a rest.’ At that moment I knew that my fate was sealed. Johanna’s obligation to her mother would offset both her hostility to her father and her love for me.
‘That’s right,’ her father said. ‘I’ve spent a fortune. You wouldn’t believe how much these visas cost me! If my wife (may she rest in peace) had found out –’
‘You mean your wife’s dead?’ Johanna asked.
‘The heat. She was very delicate.’
‘Did you know this?’ Johanna asked her mother, whose crestfallen face made an answer redundant. ‘I see.’ She turned to her father. ‘So you only wrote to us once she was safely out of the way.’
‘That had nothing to do with it.’
‘What about her postscript to your letter?’
‘A technicality.’
‘You have sons too, don’t you? My big brothers.’ She spat out the words with chilling contempt.
‘That’s right. The eldest, Daniel (may he rest in peace), was murdered by the Brownshirts, but Otto and Johannes are both in America. It’s easier for the young to slip through the net. They’ve done so well. A credit to their old father.’
‘So they’re not here either? How convenient! You lose one family and you bring in another … and not only a family but a cook-housekeeper to slave for you and a pretty girl to keep all those influential friends amused.’
‘You’re the only ones I’m thinking of. Don’t you realise what’ll happen if you’re sent back home?’
‘Who says we’re going back home?’
The Purser gave him no time to answer, entering this time without even the pretence of a knock. ‘You must come at once, sir, madam. The launch is about to leave.’
‘Johanna please!’ her mother beseeched.
‘Johanna please!’ her father ordered. ‘Hate me if you will, but save you
rself. I’ve done you a great injury, but I swear I’ll make it up to you. If you go back to Germany, I’ll never have the chance.’
‘Sir, please. There’s no time.’
‘Christina … young man … you, Officer, you know what’s in store for them, tell her! Make her see sense.’
‘Goodbye Father,’ Johanna said, holding our her hand. ‘A pleasure to have made your acquaintance after all these years.’
Her father pushed away her hand and held her in an embrace so tight that I gasped. Then he dashed out, followed by the Purser, leaving the cabin as airless as a compression chamber. Christina slumped on the bed. Johanna gave her a hug. ‘Don’t worry, Mother. You’ve always said that the Jews were clever. They’re bound to find a way out.’
Christina summoned a thin smile and asked us to leave her to rest. I found her quiet stoicism deeply affecting. As I accompanied Johanna down the corridor, I was struck by the reversal of roles. In the romances I read so avidly, it was the knight who made sacrifices for his lady, but she had renounced her chance to escape in order to stay with me. For all her horror at her father’s duplicity and respect for her fellow passengers, I knew it was love that had governed her decision. Gratitude gave way to alarm that I would never live up to it. As though to reassure me, she evoked a biblical precedent. ‘It was hearing how Ruth chose to remain with her Jewish mother-in-law rather than return to her own people, that inspired me. “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”’ She spoke with such sincerity that the familiar words sounded fresh. We went back out on deck, where we were barred from approaching within two metres of the rail by the suicide patrol, who responded to Johanna’s challenge by threatening to escort her to her cabin. It was as though, in their misery, they believed that a show of officiousness would somehow secure their reprieve.
Despair stalked the ship, tightening its grip on everyone but me. I saw the pain etched on faces all around and I felt nothing, not even guilt at my own elation. It was as though I existed in two dimensions at once: real time and Johanna time…. I wonder if any of you can identify with that. Marcus, I realise with a pang, is as old now as I was then, but age may not be a valid criterion in a culture that equates maturity with cynicism. Even the love songs sound like amplified grunts. I, however, was blessed with a newfound eloquence. After years of supposing myself to be a misfit, I had discovered my place in the world. What’s more, I understood my mother’s clemency to my father. If my love were any measure of hers, it was worth braving everything – including her son’s censure – to try to recapture it. I swore then and there that I would never betray Johanna and sealed it with a goodnight kiss so lingering that it looked set to become good morning, until she gently smiled and slipped away.
I awoke the next day to a faint vibration which threatened to lull me back to sleep, until I realised with a jolt that the ship’s engines had been started up again. Throwing on my clothes, I ran out on to the desolate deck. Groups of passengers scrutinised each other as though searching for scapegoats, the bad Jews responsible for their exclusion. Making my way to the rail, now released from its night-time restrictions, I watched the flotilla of small craft drop away. Only a handful of boats remained, bearing our most stalwart supporters, no longer shouting encouragement but standing as still as the crowds at President Hindenburg’s funeral. Among them was the father of Luise’s two friends, his head bowed, too crushed even to look up at the ship. He failed to respond when Sophie, seizing the last chance for a family reunion, brought the girls to the rail and called out his name. Undeterred, she stooped at their sides and pointed him out. Her persistence – assisted by the lack of competition – paid off.
‘Is it the man with the white hat?’ the younger one asked.
‘Yes, that’s right. Well done!’ Sophie hugged her.
‘Why is he crying?’
‘What? Don’t be silly. He isn’t crying. Not at all.’
‘He is too,’ the older one insisted.
‘He’s wiping the salt – that is the spray – from his eyes. Come on, time for breakfast.’ Her own eyes were equally raw as she led the girls away. Meanwhile twenty metres below, their father finally looked up, too late to see his week-long vigil reap its meagre reward.
I followed them to the dining room where the Professor’s absence held out hope of a last-minute amnesty, which was dashed an hour later by a loudspeaker announcement requesting us all to assemble in the social hall. As we filed in to learn our fate, I found myself alongside Viktor and Joel. Moments later, ten men walked in and sat down on the dais. Five were immediately recognisable as the Passenger Committee, two were Cubans in their now-loathsome uniforms, and the other three introduced themselves as Milton Goldsmith, the representative of the Joint Distribution Committee in Cuba, Lawrence Berenson, his colleague from New York, and Robert Hoffman, the Hapag agent in Havana. There was no sign of the Captain or any of his officers.
‘Too busy,’ I said to Joel.
‘Too cowardly,’ he replied with contempt.
Herr Goldsmith begged us not to lose heart, promising that people across the globe were working ceaselessly on our behalf, an assertion underlined by Herr Berenson’s unshaven face and crumpled clothing. The Professor reported the Captain’s intention of heading for Florida in the belief that the Americans would waive the quota restrictions and permit us to stay. The Cuban police chief, sweating profusely, apologised for his government’s actions and trusted that we would soon dock at a more accommodating port. Hoffman expressed regrets on behalf of Hapag, although his sly smirk made it clear that he failed to share them. Then, without further ado, the five officials left the dais and walked straight off the ship. We trailed out transfixed, as if Havana were Hamelin. Their departure was followed by the last contingent of policemen, who descended the accommodation ladder into a waiting launch. To my surprise I found myself sorry to see them go.
Finally, at eleven o’clock, after a long blast on the whistle, the St Louis began to move. A low moan echoed across the deck in an expression of universal despondency. Clusters of passengers clung to one another in tears, irrespective of age or sex. As the shore receded, I was struck by the irony that it was Helmut at the helm: Helmut who, with a sudden twist, could drive the ship aground and, alone, achieve the result that had eluded a team of negotiators … but I knew his sense of duty to be as unswerving as his hand. I took a final look at Havana as at a stage set that was soon to be dismantled – the illusion permanently destroyed – before turning to the boats that had accompanied us from the harbour, sticking to us like burrs or, in the case of the journalists, like tick birds determined to suck the last drops of blood from our sores. One by one they fell away, leaving only the Hapag launch bobbing in our wake. When it too turned back, each of its three passengers took his leave in his own way: Goldsmith clasped his hands together as if in prayer; Berenson raised his fist in defiance; Hoffman thrust out his arm in a Nazi salute.
Our hopes receded along with Havana. People avoided each other’s gaze for fear of seeing the reflection of their own pain. Wan smiles replaced conversation. I felt doubly downcast since Johanna was playing nursemaid to her mother who had taken to her bed, as distressed by her daughter’s perversity as by the ship’s departure. At least Joel and Viktor, whom I found playing a desultory game of deck quoits, spared me their usual quips about ‘young love’. Declining to take part – thinking up ways to pass the time only made me more aware of how heavily it hung on me – I returned to my cabin and an unsatisfactory encounter with Rob Roy. The print wearied my eyes and, even after three or four readings, the description of Frank Osbaldistone’s quest failed to engage me. I was perplexed by the fact that the closer I drew to the hero in age, the harder I found it to identify with him. Burying my head in the fusty pillow (a Hapag directive having reduced the supply of fresh linen), I sought to banish all thought, until an ill-suppressed cough announced the arrival of my father, who perched on m
y bed and lowered his hand to my shoulder, only to divert it at the last minute towards a nonexistent fly.
After eight years, his efforts at consolation were rusty. First he informed me that he had been almost twenty before he went abroad, as though to suggest that I should regard the voyage itself as a privilege. Then he declared that the Americans were bound to let us in since, in such a large country, ‘nine hundred Jews would be a drop in the ocean.’ I gazed out of the window in dismay. ‘They could give us a piece of the Arizona desert and we’d make it as green as a prairie.’ Refusing to be cheered, I voiced my overriding fear that we would be forced to return to Germany, only to discover that we had nowhere to live. Our house would have been expropriated by some Nazi grandee to whom such theft was a patriotic duty, and we would be obliged to take lodgings in the slums of the Alexanderplatz among people like Sendel. My father insisted that my fears were groundless. ‘Hitler may talk of a thousand-year Reich, but the man himself is mortal. Remember Hirsch’s first law of political gravity: whatever rises must fall.’
‘That’s all very well, but what happens then? Hitler’s bad enough but he might be succeeded by a mass murderer like Ivan the Terrible or Attila the Hun.’
‘Impossible. This is the twentieth century. The world has moved on.’
For all the lamentable ignorance of history among the young (and the not so young), you must have picked up enough to know that your great-grandfather’s faith was seriously misplaced. I don’t write this to bolster your sense of superiority (Leila’s equation of human progress with the use of deodorants was disturbing enough) but to point out how different our perspective was then. What’s more, although I remained unconvinced by his arguments, my father both surprised and moved me by declaring that, despite the many dreadful things that the Nazis had done, he couldn’t hate them because they had brought us back together, giving him the chance to make amends.
‘I’ve told you already,’ I said, embarrassed by his intensity. ‘It’s Luise you have to make it up to. She’s the one you’ve hurt.’
A Sea Change Page 22