‘You obviously missed me. I suppose you need the sound of another person’s breathing to be able to sleep.’
‘You’re not indispensable, you know.’
‘I never said that I was.’
The next three days were tense with negotiations. The Professor had little to report and it became increasingly hard to convince myself that his ‘I’ll tell you the moment anything changes’ meant ‘Don’t raise your hopes too soon.’ Meanwhile the Captain had run out of delaying tactics. He confided in the Passenger Committee that Hapag had ordered him to sail back to Hamburg with all haste, since the St Louis was booked for a pleasure cruise to New York. The strain began to take its toll. We lived on our own nerves and got on one another’s. Johanna and I had no privacy as the Purser failed to repeat his offer (I wondered whether he had been offended by the blood), leaving us reduced to furtive kisses. On Wednesday morning, after a night in which my father’s snoring had been so heavy that even Hamburg began to have its charms, I went up to breakfast to find the Professor’s face wreathed in smiles. This time he did say, ‘Don’t raise your hopes too soon,’ or rather, ‘We’ve been let down too often before,’ but his expression contradicted his words. In the early hours he had received a telegram from Morris Troper, the chief negotiator on the Joint Distribution Committee, declaring that arrangements for our resettlement were almost complete. He was simply waiting for confirmation. I was so excited that I couldn’t eat a mouthful and, for once, my mother made no attempt to force me. I rushed off to break the news to Johanna but arrived to find that the rest of the Passenger Committee had also elected to put faith before discretion, and a heady mood of anticipation had spread through the ship. At eleven o’clock an announcement summoned us to the social hall, where we found the Committee assembled on the platform, together with the Captain who, having witnessed our misfortunes for so long, evidently wanted to share in the good news.
The news could not have been better. After an initial offer by the Belgians to take in two hundred passengers, the British, French and Dutch had followed suit. Our ordeal was finally at an end. The Professor read out the telegram in a voice that banished forever any notion of academic dryness. He was met with an equally heartfelt response, as people cheered, sobbed, clung to each other and heaped praise on the Almighty. Some, such as Christina, did all four. The Professor recovered himself sufficiently to express his thanks to the Captain who, to my surprise, did not reply but simply waved in acknowledgement of the applause. Ignoring all our rules, I showered kisses on Johanna, before shaking hands with Viktor and Joel. Then, as one, we threw aside all adult reserve and fell into a Hydra-headed embrace. Weaving through a forest of hugs and handshakes, I made for my family group, where I twirled Aunt Annette, kissed my mother and father and lifted a bubblingly baffled Luise into the air. Only Sophie remained detached from the general euphoria, managing no more than a watery smile.
Unable to contain my excitement, I bounded up the stairs and tore around the deck as if it were an Olympic track. Sweat stung my eyes and a stitch pierced my side but I ran on in recognition of our freedom. It would be freedom to take exams and stand in queues and pay tolls and taxes, as much as to walk in woods and attend concerts and keep dogs, but I welcomed it all gladly since it was the freedom to be human: to enjoy an ordinary life. I would swap my Seabirds of the World for Native Birds of Northern Europe. I would finish school and go to university and marry Johanna and have children and grandchildren (so you see, you – or, rather, the idea of you – were already a part of my plan). I would sail through life in accordance with the Rabbi’s bar mitzvah speech, as breezily as I circled the deck and, when the end came, I would lie down as happily as I was doing now, exhilarated by my exertion, with a broad grin on my face.
Carnival spirit enveloped the ship and, that night, an impromptu celebration took place in the hall at which a succession of passengers performed their party pieces. The chemist revealed unsuspected talents as a magician, while to Johanna’s horror, her mother exposed generous amounts of flesh as his assistant. Luise’s two friends were thrilled by the coins plucked from their ears, although Luise herself was ruffled by his request to pick a card from the pack. She grew fractious, refusing to hand it back, and Sophie, seizing the chance to escape, took her off to bed, thereby missing a man who played the flute, a boy who played the spoons, an elderly couple who sang a duet from Madam Butterfly and, most poignantly, a former Deutsches Theater actor who declaimed Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy, which the Nazis had banned from any Jewish production of the play. An amateur comedian’s quip that in the Third Reich, the quickest way from Hamburg to Antwerp was via Havana raised gusts of laughter, which reached gale force when his companion read out a claim from Hapag’s promotional brochure that ‘With our friendly staff and exceptional facilities, the St Louis has everything to ensure that you enjoy the voyage of a lifetime.’ One member of staff clearly belied the epithet. Schiendick’s face was flinty as he patrolled the back of the hall, eager to ensure that nothing might be said or done to dishonour the man whose portrait loured over proceedings. He could not have been encouraged by the sight of Sendel, a most unexpected participant, making his way on to the dais. He stood blinking in the spotlight, his scar more pronounced than ever, and without a word of preamble launched into a joke about an SS officer who, having arrested a Jew, offered to let him go if he could tell which of his eyes was the glass one.
‘The left, sir,’ the Jew instantly replied.
‘How did you guess?’ the Officer asked.
‘It looks more human.’
At the punch-line, he glowered at the audience as though daring us to laugh and seemed gratified when we resisted. It was as if to die on stage fed some perversity in his nature or even, should the Cain story be true, as if it were the only death he would ever know. Either way he cast a pall over the evening which was lifted, first, by the Banker and his wife in an awesomely athletic demonstration of the tango and, then, by Aunt Annette, who built on her car journey recitals to give a heart-warming rendition of The Merry Widow waltz.
The following morning, as we woke to find ourselves moored off the coast of Belgium, our Atlantic detour seemed even more futile. At ten o’clock a launch pulled up alongside the ship and virtually the entire complement of passengers joined the Professor and his committee in welcoming Herr Troper aboard. At the forefront were Luise and her two friends, whom the Professor had appointed to do the honours. The sisters greeted Troper with a sing-song chant, thanking him for all his efforts on our behalf and regretting that they had no flowers to give him. They then led Luise forward with a substitute offering, a pineapple from Havana, which she wordlessly dropped into his hands. I was not alone in holding my breath as they drew back with a curtsey, but for once Luise’s coordination proved to be perfect and her one lapse was the desire to lead her own applause. The ceremony was completed by the Captain, who stepped forward and officially welcomed Troper and his team to the St Louis. He assured them that all the ship’s facilities were at their disposal, before returning to the bridge to pilot the ship up the Schelde estuary to Antwerp.
Troper and his team settled into the Social Hall, along with representatives of the four host nations. While accepting that there was no simpler way to arrange the dispersal of nine hundred refugees, I felt deeply uneasy to be once again standing in line and entrusting my future to bureaucrats. The process exposed the limits of the four governments’ generosity, since each was anxious to secure passengers at the top of the American quota list and hence with the least likelihood of remaining in Europe. Troper’s sole guarantee was to keep families together. I was tortured by the prospect of separation from Johanna, since Christina had applied to follow the chemist to Rotterdam, and I prayed that hers would be one of the requests to be refused. I begged my mother to consider the attractions of Holland, rhapsodising over Rembrandt and tulips and cheese, but she wouldn’t be moved. I accused her of deliberately setting out to destroy my life although,
in retrospect (a perspective that will become increasingly central to the narrative), she saved it. When we finally reached Troper, she insisted on our going to England, where she would obtain essential medical treatment for her daughter (whose corroborative fit might to some eyes have appeared calculated) and find a home with her sister and brother-in-law, whom she cited with such authority that I almost believed in them myself. Her request was granted, but there were doubts over Aunt Annette and Sophie, whose positions had never seemed so nebulous. Sophie professed indifference, but an expression of panic tore across Aunt Annette’s face. It was as though her worst fears of dying alone and unloved were being realised. I was never so proud of my mother as when she declared that Aunt Annette was her father’s common-law wife and Sophie her own adopted daughter: they were our family in all but name. She added that she would rather go to another country than allow us to be split up (a warning look made me bite back my suggestion of Holland). Her determination won through and we were allotted six visas. As we left the room, I shot a triumphant glance at the portrait of Hitler, confident that he would never again take control of my fate.
At five o’clock, Troper read out a list of the 214 passengers offered refuge in Belgium, among whom were Joel and Viktor and Sendel. His voice was so mournful that he seemed to be reciting a litany of the dead. No, I refuse to follow suit and will simply record that my envy of their leaving first turned out to be tragically misplaced…. The departing families were served an early dinner, which Joel and Viktor both raced through in order to spend their last hour aboard with Johanna and me. We occupied it in making plans for the future which, if we were to be believed, would consist entirely of reunions. In the absence of addresses, we agreed to send letters care of a local synagogue, Viktor’s alternative suggestion of the German embassy meeting a barrage of ‘no’s. Then he and Joel were brusquely called away by their parents, who feared that the slightest delay might lead to the forfeit of their landing cards.
I attempted to comfort Johanna, whose grief at the departure of two people towards whom I had supposed her apathetic, set a disturbing precedent for our own separation. The sight of Sendel queuing at the accommodation ladder, carrying a suitcase so small and battered that it looked like a theatrical prop, distracted me and I ran up, eager to give him a final chance to admit that his life – or rather, lives – story had been a fiction: a tall tale to mock my gullibility. He, however, simply laughed and rubbed his forehead, an innocent gesture to anyone but me. Then, without a word of farewell or the slightest acknowledgement of what we had shared during the voyage, he walked off the ship. Despite the affront, I felt a pang of concern, picturing him in five years’ time, tramping fields and sleeping under hedgerows or locked in an asylum along with the latter-day Napoleons and Jesus Christs. Then I wondered whether he might, after all, have been telling the truth and I should, instead, be picturing him in five hundred years’ time. The thought was so alarming that I swept it aside. As he walked down the steps, I shouted a defiant ‘God speed!’, and I know that he must have heard since he visibly stiffened, although he refused to turn back.
Meanwhile, I steeled myself for a more painful departure. The next morning a steamer would take Johanna and a group of two hundred passengers to Rotterdam. We both knew that the evening would have to stand for the many we would miss until we were together again. In spite of our promises to meet at New Year (the Jewish New Year in September since the Christian one was impossibly far away), neither of us knew whether our parents, whom we saw as the sole obstacles to our happiness, would allow us to make the trip. The most I could exact from my mother was an open invitation for Johanna and Christina to visit as soon as we found a house. We arranged a last after-dinner rendezvous on deck, but the bustle and lights of the port were less conducive to romance than the open sea and the stars. After a kiss had been greeted by wolf whistles from two stevedores on a passing tug, we went inside. This time I had secured the room, considering Joel’s raillery a small price to pay for the key to his former cabin. The ribald note propped on the pillow, in place of the Purser’s wrapped chocolates, set the tone for a night that was in every respect a shadow of the first. It may be that we were too weighed down by expectations or simply that, whatever the circumstances, we would have been doomed to disappointment. My feelings for her were as intense as ever yet, after making love, I was conscious not just of our impending separation but our intrinsic separateness, and I slept on my side rather than in her arms.
I was jolted awake by the Purser who, betraying no emotion, announced that it was seven o’clock and the passengers for Holland had already disembarked. ‘Your mother’s frantic,’ he told Johanna, ‘She’s searched every nook and cranny, starting with this young gentleman’s cabin.’ He paused for effect. ‘Your parents are afraid you might both have jumped ship. Fortunately, I remembered the one key that wasn’t returned yesterday and put two and two together. If I were you, I’d hurry up and set their minds at rest.’ Anxious to oblige while still preserving our modesty, we promised that we would be ready in five minutes. He left us to leap out of bed, throw on our clothes and splash water on our faces, before racing out on deck to find Christina in a huddle with my parents, Sophie, the Chemist and a group of concerned passengers. It was clear that the Purser was not alone in his calculations and, as I’d predicted, several of those who had greeted me so warmly on Saturday treated me coldly now that they saw the way in which my manhood was being expressed. There was no time for recriminations, however, as the steamer was waiting for Johanna. ‘Why didn’t you say you were slipping out early?’ Christina asked her pointedly. ‘I woke up to find you gone.’ She didn’t address a single word to me but gave me a haughty sniff as though to signify that her faith in my background and breeding had been sorely misplaced. Then she and the Chemist bundled Johanna down the accommodation ladder, leaving us no chance of a final wave, let alone a kiss.
I watched helplessly as the steamer pulled out of the harbour, its speed in stark contrast to the stately pace to which we had grown accustomed on the St Louis. I ran to the prow to prolong the view but, within minutes, all that remained was a plume of smoke. I walked back to the cabin aching with loneliness. This was my segregated swimming class times a thousand. Johanna was gone: three short words that opened up a compendium of despair. Six weeks before, I had been unaware of her existence; now her existence was indispensable to my own.
I tried to bury the pain in the routine of packing. To my relief, I had no visitors apart from my father, who announced that my mother had sent him to teach me the facts of life. Cringing, I assured him that there was no need, at which he grinned and said that he expected he would soon be taking lessons from me. Seeing my distress, however, he apologised and left me alone until lunch, when my torment increased. From the moment I reached the table, I was kept in no doubt of my disgrace. My mother addressed me in the hurt tones she adopted when convinced that leaving me to my conscience was a far more effective punishment than anything she might devise. The Professor made a studied reference to the lax behaviour of modern youth. Only Aunt Annette, who knew what it was to love without licence, showed any sympathy by giving me a surreptitious squeeze. Then, as the waiters served the pudding, the Captain’s steward appeared and asked me to accompany him to the bridge. As I edged through the dining room, certain that every lowered eye was following me as intently as if I had been picked up by the Gestapo, I feared that the Purser must have informed the Captain of my conduct and, with Johanna being under age, I would be taken back to Germany and tried for immorality or, worse, with her being a mischling, for some breach of the race laws. So I was greatly relieved by the Captain’s smiling announcement that he wanted to say goodbye. Having taken on fuel and supplies in Antwerp, the St Louis was to sail that evening for New York to pick up the passengers for a Caribbean cruise.
‘I’d prefer a few days break but at least, like this, we don’t have to return to Hamburg.’
‘Where are you heading?’ I asked.
‘Not Cuba?’
‘No.’
‘Are all the crew going with you?’
‘Most. Not all the stewards. There’s one in particular I shan’t be sorry to leave behind. He says he has business in Berlin, which is no doubt true, although I shudder to think what it entails. Nor will we be taking the six firemen who were foisted on us. Apparently,’ he added dryly, ‘the risk of arson has receded.’
‘It should make for a more agreeable voyage.’
‘And, I trust, a less eventful one. In all my years at sea, I’ve never known a group of passengers to affect me so much.’
‘I’m sorry for all the trouble we’ve caused you.’
‘You shouldn’t be. Quite the opposite. You’ve taught me so much as well. Now I’m almost forgetting. The reason I asked you up here wasn’t for an inquest, but to give you a present. I’m afraid that I went to your bar mitzvah empty-handed.’
‘I’m just so grateful you came. You’ve no idea how much it meant to me.’
‘I hope that these will mean something too.’ He handed me his binoculars. ‘I’d like you to have them. That is if you still have room in your trunk.’ I gazed at the robust and elegant binoculars, easily the equals of the ones that had been stolen in Hamburg. For all that I craved them, I knew that I had to refuse or else he would have no way to identify the birds that he saw in the Caribbean. He insisted, however, that I take them or risk causing him grave offence. His kindness only made the memory of our attack on the bridge the more painful, and I asked if he felt that I deserved them after such a betrayal. He replied that what I had done had been reckless and stupid but understandable. Honour did not always survive in a dishonourable world. ‘Yours has,’ I said. He then let me into a secret: he had been ready to act recklessly himself. Rather than sail the ship back to Germany, he had resolved to run it aground off Beachy Head and force the British to take us in. It went against all his training but, sometimes, humanity counted for more. I took the binoculars from their case, covering my tears by testing their strength. I felt that he was the most valiant man I would ever meet, and sixty years of an extensive and varied acquaintance have done nothing to persuade me otherwise. I wanted to hug him but knew that, if nothing else, his size precluded such presumption. So I held out my hand and he clasped it, man to man. Then after advising me to visit Lundy Island, a bird sanctuary off the south-west coast of England, he led me off the bridge.
A Sea Change Page 28