I fear that I have let my memories run away with me. I can hear Edward spit out his trademark ‘Gross!’, turning the very word into a gobbet of disgust. I shall stand accused of conduct unbecoming to a grandfather. One of the many things, however, that I learnt on the St Louis – as you may too, depending on the age at which you read this account – is that no one is merely a grandfather. Besides, you need have no fears of a repetition. The mood the next day was far less conducive to romance. We awoke to find that the ship was travelling as slowly as if it were approaching port although we were still in the middle of the ocean. I felt an instinctive dread, which was confirmed at breakfast when the Professor reported on his early-morning meeting with the Captain. You know the English expression ‘Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched’? Well, all I can hear is the German ‘One should not praise the day before the evening.’ Suddenly a language for which I have no love – quite the opposite – is flooding my brain. It seemed that our negotiators in Cuba had been over-confident. There were considerable problems in housing us on the Isle of Pines. The Captain was waiting for a telegram of clarification. Until then, he was marking time.
My stomach, which had survived all the turbulence of the voyage, rebelled, and I rushed from the table. Hope had been dangled before me, only to be snatched away like a coin on a schoolboy’s string. I longed for the Captain to peel the photographs from our passports and send them in a box to the Cuban president – not nine hundred names but nine hundred faces: Johanna’s face; Luise’s; Joel’s; Aunt Annette’s; even the Professor’s wife’s; young faces; old faces; strong faces; weak faces; faces lined with care and faces bright with courage; faces like those of the elderly couple who had set up camp on deck, perched on their cases. I watched while, first the Purser, and then a delegation of passengers, failed to move them. I applauded their intransigence and, to my surprise, even found myself wishing for a boatload of photographers to capture it, but the only witnesses were the passing gulls. I gazed out to sea and into a haze that seemed to extend across the horizon to cover our wider prospects. In normal circumstances I would have welcomed any distraction, but the sight of Sendel increased my unease. I assumed my sunniest smile as a defence against the cynicism with which I knew that he would engulf me. True to form, his first words rang with contempt for all the passengers who had fallen for the promise of the Isle of Pines.
‘You never know,’ I replied airily, ‘there’s still hope. Besides, if the Cubans won’t have us, the Americans will.’
‘The Americans hate us. Have you never heard of the Ku Klux Klan?’
‘Are they Indians?’
‘Hardly! Think of Hitler and Goebbels in cowls.’
‘What about the Statue of Liberty?’ I recited the familiar inscription, which I had endowed with talismanic power.
‘The Statue of Liberty is on an island off the coast of New York. New York is an island off the coast of America. You might as well take what happens on Rugen as typical of Germany.’
My image of America was framed in the monochrome of Hollywood where, even in Chicago, the wickedest city in the world, the cause of good ultimately triumphed. I assured him that, for all their prevarication, the Americans would do what was right.
‘What about the Church? In Germany, the priests reviled us from their pulpits to congregations of hundreds. In America, they revile us across the airwaves to audiences of millions. The wireless operators on the ship even picked up a broadcast, as a friendly fireman couldn’t wait to tell me. The preacher was talking about the St Louis and how letting us in would destroy the nation’s purity.’ I was appalled by the notion of my body, to which I had finally become reconciled, as a source of infection. It was as though the St Louis were not a twentieth century cruise liner but a nineteenth century quarantine ship. I failed to understand how such a young country could bear such ancient grudges and asked Sendel if in America, as in Europe, they blamed us for the death of Jesus.
‘Yes of course they do. And so they should.’
‘What about the Romans? They were the ones who ordered it.’
‘You coward!’ he replied, startling me by his vehemence. ‘Why refuse to take credit for the most glorious moment in our history – perhaps the only glorious moment in our history?’ I had no great love for Jesus, nevertheless – and even without considering its consequences – I saw that the execution of one false Messiah paled beside the achievements of Moses and Joshua and Solomon. ‘Take it from me: I was there.’ I braced myself for another outburst of madness. ‘When God condemned me to walk the earth forever, you don’t suppose that he gave me a special dispensation for the thirty-odd years that his son was here or sent me to some far-flung city in Persia or Asia Minor? No, I was right there in Jerusalem when the Nazarene arrived on his final journey. I was then known as Ahasuerus.’
I felt sure that I had heard the name before and struggled to remember where.
‘I was studying law at the Temple, where my father worked as a moneychanger. He was there on the day that the Nazarene and his followers burst in and sparked off a riot. I expect you can fill in the rest.’
I shook my head. I was familiar with only the broad outlines of the Christian story, having disregarded the details.
‘You should know your enemies,’ Sendel added emphatically. ‘They certainly know you.’ He went on to explain: ‘The Nazarene showed up in the temple forecourt and complained that it had been turned into a bazaar. Then he went berserk, knocking over stalls, breaking scales, scattering money and freeing livestock. What he failed to acknowledge – and his apologists to mention – was that this wasn’t some kind of sharp practice but a requirement of religious law. The Roman coin, that coin stamped with Caesar’s head which he’d made the subject of one of his more asinine aphorisms, was held to be impure and couldn’t be used in the Temple. So anyone wishing to pay his Passover tax or buy an animal or a bird for sacrifice –’ (I shuddered) ‘– was obliged to go through my father and his friends. But the Nazarene chose to ignore this as he ran amok, smashing his abacus and table and flinging his entire reserve of cash into the drain, which was running with blood from the altar. My father came home that night, his hands and robe stained crimson, clasping the few coins he’d managed to salvage. He was a small trader: he worked to the narrowest of margins (and those too were strictly regulated). His livelihood lay in ruins, along with his self-respect. He, who had always believed that he was fulfilling an honourable, almost a sacred, function – yes, that in his own way, he stood as an intermediary between man and God, now heard himself condemned as a parasite. Even when, less than a week later, the Nazarene was tried and convicted, my father’s spirits didn’t lift. I begged him to join me when I set off at dawn to make sure of a decent place on the road to Calvary, but he was too crushed even to rejoice in the death of an adversary. So I stood there for both of us, pushing my way to the front of the crowd and, when the Nazarene staggered past, so crippled by his cross that even the hardest hearts were moved to pity, I jumped out and spat in his face: a revenge so sweet that it was worth the lash from the centurion’s whip – which left this mark on my forehead.’
‘I thought that God had given you that mark after you killed Abel,’ I said, colluding in one delusion to escape the other.
‘True, but it has to be renewed every generation.’
‘Ahasuerus, of course. Now I remember who you were … are … were. The Wandering Jew. They made a film of the story a couple of years ago. It’s the one time I was glad to be banned from the cinema.’
‘Yes, condemned to wander the earth forever for spitting in the Nazarene’s face. A pretty superfluous punishment in my case. Or was it an instance of poor communication between father and son? Never mind. If I can stand up to them, I can stand up to anyone. I won’t be sent back to Germany. Some of us have come up with a plan.’
My interest was instantly aroused. For all my doubts about his identity, there could be none about the seriousness of our predicament. The my
stery of whether he had lived for thousands of years or for forty was an irrelevance if he had devised a scheme that would save us. So I offered him my support, long before I knew what it might entail, countering his charge that I was a mere boy and thus incapable of either keeping his secret or assisting his cause, with a range of precedents from David and Daniel to Alexander the Great, although I was unsure how far he was won over by my arguments and how far by a desire to expose my naivety. I was under no illusions that, whatever his relationship to Cain, his threat to kill me should I breathe a word of what he said was not an idle one. He went on to explain that he and a group of passengers had resolved to take over the ship and force it to sail to a port in South America or Africa. With the advantage of surprise as well as weight of numbers, they would easily overpower the crew. When I asked whether any of the crew would be hurt, he flashed me a look of contempt, as though the question confirmed all his misgivings about my commitment. Then, telling me that I would be summoned when needed, he further underlined the need for secrecy with a throat-slitting gesture straight out of the world of Klaus Stortebeker.
I didn’t so much break my word as stretch it when, in the cabin that night, during one of my increasingly cordial conversations with my father, I asked about both the ethics and efficacy of mutiny. I put forward Sendel’s plan as though it were my own, but he refused to grant it a scrap of paternal indulgence, claiming that any such action would be futile, laying the perpetrators open to charges of piracy and so deterring even a friendly country from taking us in. He asked suspiciously if the plan existed. ‘Of course not,’ I replied. ‘I just made it up to see if you’d have the guts to take action. And, surprise surprise, you don’t.’ With a savagery that came more easily in the dark, I unleashed my abiding resentment, claiming that it was because of men like him who let the world walk all over them, that I had refused to be bar mitzvah. ‘You gave in to my grandfather. You gave in to the drink. And you’re giving in again now. I thought you might have changed. I thought you might have turned into someone I could respect, but no! I’m ashamed to have you as my father.’ His silence validated my indictment, and I covered my head with the pillow lest a half-stifled sob should make any claim on my sympathies.
I lay awake for hours and when sleep finally came, it brought no relief for, tunnelling into the Reichschancellery, I found myself bursting through the floor in the middle of a private meeting between Hitler, Himmler and Göring. Having caught the guards off duty and the politicians off guard, I raised my gun to shoot them, but my father crawled through the hole behind me and grabbed me by the legs. I managed to kick him off and shoot the three men in turn, but my triumph turned to horror when, as they fell, each one tore off a mask to reveal his true identity. Himmler was Helmut, Göring the Purser, and Hitler the Captain. I tried to force the masks back over their faces, only to be thwarted by the torrent of blood – far more than the regulation five litres. Blood pumped from their bodies and all over mine, until the room ran as crimson as the Temple drains. I looked up and there was Sendel, thickly bearded and robed like a biblical prophet, lifting up a limp old man whom I took to be his father. Meanwhile the blood had risen almost to the ceiling. I was floundering in it, gulping for air. I knew that unless someone came to the rescue, I would drown … and suddenly, I heard my father shouting. The blood seeped away and, although my legs were still flailing, they were flailing in my sheets. I awoke with a start to find that I had kicked most of my bedding to the floor. My father was shouting in his sleep. His speech was as fractured as the words on a Torah scroll. Nevertheless, he had saved me from myself.
My hope next morning that he might ascribe my attack to his own bad dream was confounded by the sadness in his eyes. There was little relief elsewhere. The Professor’s grim face cast a pall over breakfast. When pressed, he disclosed that he had received information of grave importance which he had not yet divulged even to his wife, who gazed at him with a mixture of pride and reproach. He had therefore called a meeting of all the passengers for eleven o’clock. At the appointed hour the loudspeakers duly summoned us to the social hall, where we found the Professor and his committee already on the platform. I contrived to bump into Johanna at the door and her tender squeeze assured me that some things, at least, remained constant. We took our seats, only to hear the Professor announce that, negotiations with Cuba and the Dominican Republic having broken down and President Roosevelt remaining deaf to international pleas, we were sailing back to Europe.
It was news that could have come as a surprise to no one, but its confirmation caused pandemonium. Moans, screams, shouts, calls on God and cries of ‘Traitors!’ broke out across the hall. Children, too young to know what was happening, exploited the general freedom to caterwaul. Christina burst into tears and I passed her my handkerchief. A row of young men backed up each other’s demands that we should take control of the ship, declaring dramatically that a return to Germany would mean certain death. The Professor appealed for calm, insisting that the journey would last several days, leaving time for our friends around the world to make representations to sympathetic governments. He added that the Passenger Committee would pass on all helpful suggestions but it would not countenance anarchy. This, in turn, prompted cries of ‘Stooges!’, which might have carried more weight had they not come from some of the more assiduous members of the suicide watch.
We left the hall and made our way to the dining room, where the decline in our fortunes was immediately apparent. The elegantly embossed cards had been replaced by mimeographed menus and the rich variety of dishes been reduced to a blunt either … or. Our waiter informed us apologetically that there was a tight control on food since insufficient supplies had been taken on in Havana. Aunt Annette, with rare asperity, claimed that Hapag was simply cutting its losses on the extended voyage. After lunch, I took Luise to join Johanna on the boat deck where, the obdurate elderly couple having collapsed from exhaustion, their suitcases stood as forlornly as a jilted bride’s trousseau. We had only walked a few paces before we came face to face with Schiendick and his firemen, who swept across the deck in close formation, laughing derisively at the passengers who scattered in their wake. They greeted everyone, whether rebellious young men or timid old ladies who had never so much as let their dogs loose in the park, with the same message: that by the end of the week, they would be locked up in a camp. Their warning to us was even more stark. Catching sight of Luise, Schiendick sneered that she would be sent to a special clinic where imbeciles were put out of their misery. A loud wail showed that she had caught his tone if not his meaning and so, leaving Johanna to comfort her, I squared up to Schiendick and threatened to report him to the Captain. He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck (had it not been so public, I felt sure that he would have snapped it) and repeated his claim that the Captain was now a spent force and that he – Schiendick – ran the ship. Then he strode off with a parting blow that left me sprawling and humiliated at Johanna’s feet.
Schiendick showed his strength again later in the day with an order forbidding any further fraternisation between passengers and crew. The signature on the notice was the Purser’s, but the hand behind it was Schiendick’s. According to Sophie, whom I found staring at the board as though at the date of her own execution, the Purser had raised objections but Schiendick insisted that such matters fell within his remit as Party Representative and that any complaints should be addressed to Berlin. The Purser who, like many of his fellow officers, was anxious to protect the Captain from any additional charge of being a Jew-lover, backed down. Sophie had learnt of the decision in a rapid meeting with Helmut, who was now one of its principal victims. She dismissed my suggestion that this must be why he had failed to turn up for the dance, explaining that he had been embarrassed by the black eye he’d sustained after tripping over a cable, an excuse that was even less convincing than when I’d employed it after being set on by the Hitler Youth at school. I asked how they were going to meet and she said that for the moment they wouldn’
t try since, following his ‘accident’ (the only consolation for which, according to one of Helmut’s friends was that three Gestapo firemen had tripped over the same cable), Helmut was under constant surveillance. That same friend, one of the deck stewards, had offered to carry letters between them. Theirs would be a long-distance love affair conducted close at hand.
I gave Sophie a hug in which sympathy for her plight mingled with relief at my own good fortune. Before meeting Johanna, I might have assessed a romance by the obstacles that it had had to overcome. Now I knew better and gave thanks that we stood on the same side of the religious divide. When, however, I tried to express my gratitude by clasping her hand as we sat drinking coffee after dinner, Johanna tetchily shook me off. I had felt her to be on edge ever since our encounter with Schiendick and yet, when I urged her to ignore his threats, she replied that she was simply feeling ill (‘Even prisoners are allowed to have headaches!’). Claiming that men (me) had no idea what women suffered, she jumped up and stalked out. I was nonplussed, both by the charge and her volatility. We were all facing the same dangers, although she was at an advantage since, should the St Louis sink and the passengers have to cram into lifeboats, it would be ‘women and children first’. My bitterness was compounded by the coffee, which I had only ordered black in order to impress her. So, once I was sure that she wouldn’t be returning to apologise, I abandoned it and made a desultory tour of the ship. In the social hall, the band played a quickstep for two lonely couples. On the sports deck, a portly man chased his stomach around the track. On the promenade deck, a family gazed at the night sky as if to identify which of the stars was to blame for our fate.
A Sea Change Page 24