Two Princes and a Queen

by Shmuel David

  About fifteen minutes before the end of the lesson, we all started yelling, “Sto-ry time, sto-ry time.” Then Mr. Kommer put his bag on the table and took out the book that had fascinated us all for the past week. He’d decided to add interest to our geometry lessons by reading us chapters from Treasure Island in a German translation. We were all enthralled by Mr. Kommer’s voice. After all, every one of us could identify with Jim Hawkins, sailing off into unknown adventures with the aid of a map and in the company of dangerous men. The hair-raising adventures he endured with the cruel pirates reminded us a little of our own great adventure, here on the Danube. But in our case, the map was leading us not to Treasure Island, but to Israel, and we’d learned to survive in this cruel world with ropes and rods from Dvoriansky, that eternal boy scout.

  ***

  It’s been two weeks since I’d last met with Inge in private. She didn’t come to meet me on the bridge or on our regular bench in the floating isolation ward. During classes we took together, I would sneak glances at her, but she never looked back. Maybe she was trying to show me there was nothing between us. But today, she finally looked at me and I saw that something had changed in her eyes.

  That very same evening, in spite of the fierce cold, I went up to the bridge as usual. I looked up at the sky. The moon was bright, and I thought of the way Inge had looked at me that morning. A few minutes later, footsteps came from the steep staircase leading to the bridge. And while I was still trying to guess who it could possibly be, she appeared beside me.

  “Good evening, Hanne,” she said, still keeping a distance, as if unsure whether to approach.

  “Inge. What a surprise. I’ve missed you so much.”

  “Me too. I suddenly felt tortured by the thought that I’m forcing myself to stay away from you, my closest kindred spirit here,” she said.

  “I never really understood why you chose to do so in the first place.”

  “Never mind,” Inge drew closer to me. “The main thing is that we’re together now,” she said and took my cold hand in her warm one. “It’s warm, isn’t it? I kept it deep in the pocket of my coat. Would you like to?” And she placed my hand inside the pocket of her warm coat.

  “Look at the huge moon hanging in the sky. Only the moon can see us now,” I said.

  “Right. And I already know a few stars,” she said, pointing at the Big Dipper.

  Then, putting her head on my shoulder, she sang a well-known German ballad about a hunter who mistakenly shoots an arrow at his beloved. We stayed close to each other for a long time, and I could feel the warmth of her body through our coats.

  The next day, we sat together on our usual bench in the isolation ward. My head was still spinning from all the verses we had learned in Mr. Goldman’s Bible lesson yesterday.

  “What seest thou? And I said, I see a seething pot; and the face thereof is toward the north. Then the LORD said unto me, Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.”

  I read and the strange alien words jostled in my head, refusing to come together in meaningful sentences, just like those far-off days, a lifetime away, when Menahem, the teacher, had taught me to read the parashah for my bar mitzvah.

  Now Inge decided she could explain the final chapter we’d learned with Mr. Goldman, especially the part about the “seething pot.”

  “Look at my face,” she said, and suddenly made an angry face, straining her neck until her cheeks turned all red. “I’m seething.” Then she puffed up both her cheeks and whistled like a boiling kettle.

  The atmosphere on board the three boats was very depressing. Not much excitement from the day Naftali had “dropped the bomb” as Father jokingly called it. At first people’s moods really improved. They smiled at each other, and some laughter was finally heard on the boats. But later on, when the anticipated message didn’t arrive, the laughter died. Mr. Goldman, who went out of his way, at first, to compare Bata with the prophet standing at the city gates, went back to being irritable and angry. Even Mr. Dvoriansky, who was always so optimistic and taught us some of the folk songs of Israel, had lost his enthusiasm.

  The turnaround came during the last days of February. We were informed that the plan would be implemented in four weeks’ time and we should begin our preparations. Mother told us a lot of canned food had been ordered for the long voyage, as well as warm clothes for the long stay on the river. People began to get busy with preparations. Many sat on deck, writing their families in Israel to expect them sometime at the beginning of April.

  But one day, I heard Father whispering to Mother again.

  “Something strange is going on here. Shechter spoke to me again today.”

  “What’s happened, Emil?” Mother asked with concern.

  “They’ve changed the plans again. This doesn’t feel right.”

  “Are they postponing the trip?”

  “No, they’re not postponing it, but there’s no train involved now. They want us to sail all the way to Sulina in the Danube Delta.”

  “What’s wrong with that? You had me scared for a minute.”

  “You don’t understand. All it means is that there isn’t any real plan,” he raised his voice now. “It’s all just bobe-mayse—stories and lies.”

  “I don’t care,” she said quietly. “So long as we finally get out of here, I don’t care how.”

  ***

  The days go by. With each passing day, we see more and more chunks of ice floating on the thawing river. At night, I’m no longer freezing when wrapping myself up in three blankets. The road by the river is more slippery now with a mixture of snow and mud.

  Inge and I walked hand in hand on our way to part from old Petrović. We haven’t visited him as much in the last few days, because we’ve been busy preparing for imminent departure, but after Father told me we’d be leaving in just a few days, I decided to take Inge for one last visit with the net mender. The trees had long shed their coats of snow but were still barren, not a single bud blooming on their branches.

  We approached the buildings that served as areas for repairing fishing boats and saw boats set on concrete blocks and fishermen busy repairing or painting them. Next to the netting-shed wall lay the never-ending pile of nets, and next to that, we saw Petrović’s hunched figure. He sat there as usual, the small glass of black coffee, with its unique aroma, beside him. When we got closer, he leaned over his little primus stove.

  “Oh, welcome, my young couple,” he greeted us warmly. “I’ve just finished making a fresh pot of coffee. Will you drink with me?”

  “Gladly,” I answered. “I can’t drink coffee anywhere else. I don’t think what they serve in the boat kitchen could actually be called coffee.”

  “So how are you, my friends?” he asked while stirring the water. “They tell me you’ll be leaving soon.”

  “That’s what they told us, and that’s why we’re here. We’ve come to say goodbye,” I said. “This might be our last coffee together.”

  “Whoa, not so fast!” he held the handle of the coffee pot and, with a quick and skillful movement, drew it out of the fire.

  “A minute more, and the coffee would have boiled over and clogged my primus. I’ve had it ever since my fishing days. That’ll be forty-four years now.”

  “I’ve learned quite a few good things from you. The first—how to drink coffee,” I sat down and placed the small glass under the coffee pot’s spout.

  “Hold on, what about the lady? Ladies are always first,” he said, pouring a glass for Inge.

  “What else have you learned from me?” he asked with curiosity, while slowly pouring boiling coffee into my glass.

  “I learned how to mend holes in nets and how to write crossword puzzles,” I said, slowly sipping the coffee, just as he’d taught me. “And you still haven’t told me where you learned all the things you know…”

/>   “You think all the knowledge in the world comes from schools or universities, and that only the right sort of people can learn, those who live in luxury houses and get a higher education, but that’s not exactly how it works.”

  “I don’t think that at all,” I was a little insulted. “And don’t forget, I’m young and still haven’t seen much in my short life.”

  “So maybe in a few years’ time, when you’re a professor at some university and live in a fine, large house, you’ll remember old Petrović and his stories and how he taught himself everything he knew.”

  “First off, I’m not going to be a professor. I’m going to be a farmer and work the fields of the Jezreel Valley.”

  That was the name of the valley I’d heard about from Mr. Goldman a few days before, when he’d read a letter from his son who lives in Israel.

  “Good, good! Just don’t regret not making the right choice many years from now,” he said and turned his eyes to Inge. “Even though you’ve already made one right choice. I’ll give you credit for that.”

  “I’m going to be a hospital nurse, perhaps even work in the operating theater,” said Inge.

  “That’ll suit you just fine,” he said. “You love helping people and have the hands of an angel. I saw how quickly you learned to mend nets.”

  “And what about me?” I asked, insulted. “Don’t I have good hands?”

  “Hanne, you have a bright future ahead of you. I can see that you have a unique way of thinking. We all have our different qualities. Here’s another example of something you won’t learn at university. It’s called intuition,” he said, and added, “Just promise me you’ll forget about farming. It’s definitely not for you.”

  “A few days from now, we won’t be here, and we wanted to come and thank you,” Inge tried to change the course of the conversation and return to our reason for coming.

  “You see? A practical girl. You philosophize and she goes straight to the point,” he said, collecting the empty coffee glasses from us.

  “Listen, Petrović, we don’t take your kindness to us for granted. I don’t have as many heart-to-hearts with my own father.”

  “Well, when I was younger, I never used to speak with my children like that. I certainly didn’t have heart-to-hearts with them.” He sighed from the bottom of his heart. “Now my daughter is in Sarajevo, married to a Muslim and the mother of six children. I hardly ever see her. My son was killed in the Great War. He was an artillery officer.”

  “It’s our gain, then, that we’ve met you now, when you have so much life experience and can see things differently,” I said.

  “That’s one of life’s tragedies. When we’re young, we don’t see life as we ought to. We’re too busy living it. Perhaps it’s best that way. A time to live life and a time to speak about it,” he summed up, lighting a cigarette. “You’ve told me what you’re going to do over there, but I don’t really understand why there, of all the places in the world. After all, the Jews don’t have their own country there,” he said while blowing smoke rings into the cold air separating us.

  “There’s a danger that this whole war will reach us here too. And there, in the land of our forefathers, that’s where we belong,” Inge shared her enthusiasm with him. “In the covenant, God promised Abraham that his descendants would inherit the land of Israel, and just like the kingdom of the kings, David and Saul, it may still be established in our own time. This is the return of a people to their own country.”

  I felt a bit embarrassed by her decisive words, as if the covenant was a contract signed just a few years ago. Even old Petrović looked at her with incomprehension and took a long drag from his cigarette.

  “The problem is, we don’t have visas to immigrate to Israel. Even though it’s the only place in the world where Jews can actually feel safe,” I said. “The British won’t let us in.”

  Meanwhile, it was growing late, and beyond the hills, the winter sun began to set.

  “We need to get back to the boat before it gets dark,” said Inge. She rose and offered him her hand in parting. Petrović took her hand in his and said, “I wish you all the best there in the land of Israel. You deserve a place where you can live peacefully, without persecution. I say the same to the gypsies, but they don’t have a country of their own waiting for them.”

  “You’re a wonderful man…” I tried to find more words, but couldn’t and felt my throat tightening till I was speechless. I just stood there and shook his hand in parting.

  We quietly made our way back down the snowy, muddy trail, careful not to slip.

  Just before we said goodbye, Inge said, “Petrović is a wise man. It’s a shame he has to stay here.”

  “If everything could have stayed as it was before Hitler, we would also have stayed here. We had a good life here before all this evil.”

  “Don’t start with that again, Hanne!” she scolded me. “I’ve already told you we Jews belong in the Promised Land, no matter what happens here.”

  Just before dark, Mr. Fredl’s trumpet was heard. “An important message,” murmured the voices in the gathering crowd. We all went down to the pier, and Mr. Bata told us excitedly that we all had to be ready to sail as soon as tonight. He still couldn’t tell us the exact time, but the plan was for us to sail to Prahovo, and from there, take a train to a port on the Adriatic shore, where our ship was waiting.

  It was a long and feverish night. At first, everyone was in a great mood. Nobody even thought of going to sleep. From the deck of the Kraljica Marija came the sound of people singing “Hatikvah,” and they were quickly joined by the passengers of the Tzar Nikolai. Others simply walked about idly, busy only with packing and rechecking their belongings. Mother checked the contents of our backpacks and suitcases. She took out my torn sweater, turned it this way and that and said, “Is this how you want to arrive in Israel—with a torn sweater?”

  She opened her suitcase and took out her sewing kit. She sat in the light of the flashlight fixed to the chimney, spread the sweater on her knees, and began to mend the torn sleeve. Father sat on the bench playing solitaire with a deck of cards on his knees. He always does that when he needs to pass the time while waiting for something. The hours passed, and people began to move about restlessly, waiting for something to happen, for the engines to start, for a message, or the visit of an important personality. This time, we were all waiting for the Geneva emissary, Mr. Averbuch.

  “Nothing will come of it again, just you wait and see,” said Pauli, trying to ruin what little hope remained.

  Father, who was still a little optimistic, answered him angrily. “It’s hard enough for us as it is. Do you think it’s so easy to get the money for a ship? I trust Mr. Averbuch in Geneva knows exactly what he’s doing.”

  ***

  Around midnight, we heard a woman screaming in the lower cabins, “Dear God, I can’t take it anymore!”

  Mother immediately recognized Mimi, Mr. Fredl’s wife.

  Yesterday, before they fell asleep, Mother had whispered to father, “Mimi will give birth in a day or two. I’m really worried. She has no idea what to do. She has no one to guide her. I at least had my mother to guide me through my first birth.”

  “Judging by the amount of time you spend with her, you’re like a mother to her,” Father remarked.

  “My heart goes out to her. I know how hard it is, and here, of all places.”

  Mother ran toward the cries of pain that gradually intensified. I tried to follow her, because we were all awake anyway, but Father grabbed my arm and stopped me.

  “We should let the women handle this, Hanne.”

  We stayed there in anticipation, hoping everything would turn out all right. For a while, we even forgot about the fact that we were waiting for the boats to start moving, but the engines remained silent. Suddenly, the air was torn with a long scream, replaced by the wail of a baby,
then silence. Cries of happiness were heard from below. “Mazel tov! Mazel tov!” After that, it was quiet again and we returned to waiting. Sometime later, Mother appeared, blood stains on her sleeves and a happy smile on her face, as if she herself had just given birth.

  “You’ll never know what it feels like,” said Mother, beaming with happiness. “Mimi cried for joy when I placed the baby in her arms.”

  “Well, and what will they call her?” I asked.

  “They haven’t decided yet. But some clown has already suggested they call her Karlitza Maria.”

  ***

  Hesitant sunbeams broke through the soft blanket of clouds hanging above the river. People began to realize the great hopes we had all shared at the beginning of the evening were once more about to prove false. Some completely lost patience and began to speak out against Mr. Averbuch, who still hadn’t arrived.

  It was around eight in the morning when Mr. Averbuch’s car finally arrived, and he was immediately taken to Naftali Bata. When the new father, Mr. Fredl, sounded the trumpet, it sounded more like a sad tune than a fanfare, almost a wail admitting defeat. They told us an announcement would be made at noon.

  Warm sunbeams accompanied people who began to descend from the three boats around one that afternoon, in the direction of our usual gathering spot on the pier. Their heads were lowered, and disappointment was written all over their faces. Mr. Averbuch got up on the large rock; he was accompanied by Naftali Bata, who tried to silence the agitated crowd. He raised his hands, and then lowered them with a sharp motion requesting silence.

  “Shame on you!” someone suddenly called out.