by Bodie Thoene
Men stepped back to let him through. He sensed their envious eyes on him and was somehow ashamed that it was so easy for him to approach the flag. Was it this easy for my grandparents? he wondered. Had they simply paid their fare from the old country and stepped into the light of Liberty’s upraised flame?
The marine on duty in the guardhouse focused on him. It was easy to tell Murphy was American. He did not look afraid or hopeless or hopeful.
“You got business inside?” The marine was already unlocking the gate.
For a moment Murphy imagined the crowd storming the gate. They did not. “Yes.” Murphy flashed his American passport as a dozen ragged men stood craning just for a glimpse of it.
Murphy slipped through the narrow opening in the gate. It clanged shut behind him. An authoritative clang, Murphy thought as he hurried up the stone steps of the old mansion. The kind of noise that means no monkey business. Keys jangled. The gate was secured again.
***
The consul in charge of the visa process was not only harried and officious, but rude. He glared at the requests presented by Murphy as if they were obscene messages scribbled to annoy him. Thick glasses made the man’s pale blue eyes seem large and bulging. Maybe he had been reading through too many applications, Murphy reasoned. The guy’s eyeballs were about to drop out onto his desk.
“Your applications will be considered in turn—”
“But my wife and I are leaving for the States, and since you will need verification that my father-in-law can indeed support himself before you grant the visas—”
“All in turn!” The little fellow moved a stack of applications from one side of his desk to the other. “There are thirty-five thousand Jewish and Austrian refugees wandering around out there. Every one of them wants to go to America! Every last one of them.”
“I know all about that.” Murphy smiled sympathetically, although he would have preferred shouting back at the man. There was something unsettling about the fact that the fate of thousands rested in a pile of papers on the blotter of a fellow who seemed near a nervous breakdown. “This is really rough on you, isn’t it?”
The clerk sat back with a loud sigh. “You can’t imagine. There are at least six hundred thousand people still in Austria who fall into the category of subhuman. Did you hear? Did you? Two hundred suicides a day in Vienna alone. They are rolling carts through the street to gather the Jewish dead. Like a plague. Save Hitler the trouble. And now we consuls have orders to screen every applicant—every one—for the possibility that they might come to the States and become dependent on public aid. Not only that—” he mopped his brow—“they practically have to be independently wealthy because they cannot come in here and tell us they have a job lined up in America. The law states that they can’t work, because that would be taking American jobs.”
Murphy slipped a folded fifty-dollar bill across the consul’s desk. He lifted a finger to reveal the denomination. “My father-in-law can verify all of it. A hefty bank account. No plans to take American jobs. Two sons of school age.” Murphy smiled conspiratorially as the man caught sight of the bill.
The bulging eyes extended farther from their sockets. “Good heavens, no! Put that away!” he hissed. “That could cost me my job. A fellow was just sacked in Vienna for the same thing!” Again he mopped his brow and shifted the applications. “The matter will be resolved in time.” He raised his voice so that any bystanders would hear his official tone. “President Roosevelt has called for a major conference of thirty-three nations to discuss the issue of the refugees. Such matters will be settled in Evian. A great humanitarian, our President Roosevelt! All these . . . people . . . will be discussed in Evian! Until then you will just have to take your turn like everyone else, Mr. Murphy. That is only fair!”
Murphy had not expected a political speech. He sniffed and put the fifty back in his pocket. It was important to remain calm in spite of the fact he wanted to grab this guy by his collar and shake his teeth out. “Things are heating up here, friend,” Murphy tried to reason. “Theo Linder has already escaped from Germany, then Austria. What happens if Prague caves in?”
“I suppose he will have to go elsewhere, and then it will no longer be my problem, will it?” Snippy. Effeminate.
Murphy swallowed hard. He took a deep, calming breath. He would take this up with normal people in New York. He placed the papers on the top of the stack. The man quickly moved them to the bottom.
“A conference about refugees, huh?” Murphy strained to be polite. “In Evian? A good idea. Probably take a load off your mind.” Murphy stood abruptly and towered over the little man’s thinning hair. “You know,” he added, “maybe you ought to take a little vacation. Rest your eyes. A man could go bald with this kind of pressure.”
The clerk looked as if he might cry. “Oh dear me, yes,” he panted. “So many decisions. Thank God for President Roosevelt. Thirty-three countries! The Evian Conference—that should relieve a little pressure on us Americans, I should say.” He patted his hair protectively and then raised his head to call, “Next? Who’s next?”
***
It was Timmons on the line from Paris. The connection was tenuous at best and Murphy covered one ear with his hand as he strained to hear.
“Talk louder Timmons. Timmons? Can you speak up?” Murphy was shouting into the receiver but was still uncertain if Timmons could hear him.
“Murphy? Hey, Murph, did you—”
“Louder!” Murphy shouted, but increased volume did not seem to make the conversation any more coherent.
“Murph, when you asked me and Johnson to investigate the possibility that the Kronenberger boys had relatives somewhere, we ended up here in Paris. Rumor has it that the boys have a great-aunt.” There was definite excitement in Timmon’s voice, and Murphy hoped their efforts had paid off for the children.
“I said—” Suddenly the dreadful crackle on the line disappeared and Timmons was shouting quite distinctly into Murphy’s ear. “I said, the old lady is dead! Died last month of influenza.”
“You mean the aunt?” Murphy was still shouting.
“Yeah. Gee, Murph, you don’t have to yell. Yeah, the aunt. The aunt of Kronenberger’s wife. The old dame croaked. From the sound of the French authorities she didn’t have two sous to rub together, either. No relatives besides her and the kids. ‘Course the Frogs don’t know about the boys, or they’d be after them to pay the old lady’s debts.”
“That’s it, then,” Murphy said quietly as the weight of disappointment flooded him.
“And that ain’t all. They’re selling her stuff at an auction to pay for medical bills and burial. Johnson managed to buy an old photo album off one of the gendarmes at the warehouse. There’s plenty of news clippings from Germany. All the scoop on the whole Kronenberger affair. You think the kid might want it?”
“Someday . . . maybe.”
“You want us to send it? Or what?”
“Sure.” Murphy decided at once that he would not mention the death of the old woman to Charles. It would serve no useful purpose; the child had been through enough loss already. “Send it to the London INS office. I’ll get it there.”
“Yeah.” Timmons sounded thoughtful, even subdued for Timmons. “So what now, Murphy? What are you gonna do with the kid?”
“Get him to the States. There’s a doctor there who can put him back together.” He laughed bitterly. “And get this. The doc is Jewish. From Germany. He could have fixed the kid all along, except that the Nazis didn’t want Jewish doctors in Germany to work on a kid they decided was unworthy. Nuts. Senseless, you know, Timmons?”
The telephone faded in and out again, obscuring Timmon’s response. “I should have stayed a sports writer . . . ” was all that Murphy could make of his reply; then the line crackled and hummed and went dead.
***
Sixty-eight miles from the mocking, jeering crowds on the docks of Hamburg, the Elbe River emptied the listing freighter into the North Sea. Flocks of
seagulls circled overhead; their cries seemed to echo the curses of the Hitler Youth: “Die! Die! Die!”
The thrumming ship’s engine beat like a defiant heart long after the last reluctant gull wheeled around to ride a tail wind back to the shores of Germany.
Steady swells took up the rhythm, catching the bow of the freighter like a cold fist and throwing it back onto the water with an impact that made every pilgrim long for the land he had just left. What could they do to us that would be worse than this? The euphoria of leaving and the grief for those left behind combined with an unrelenting nausea to which every passenger yielded. Those on the decks were thought to be lucky. Groups who had fought for some dim interior shelter now regretted that they had not settled for the cold wind and salt mist and a rusty rail to retch over. Rusted portholes were pried open in hopes of catching some breath of fresh air below decks. The pounding engines were answered with groans.
Only three hours from the shores of Nazi Germany, the cloud of despair deepened. Can dying be any more terrible than this? No one among the passengers was spared. The plague of seasickness had come upon the House of Israel, and even the most resolute and energetic were stricken. These were a people unaccustomed to the sea, after all. These were teachers and bank clerks and shopkeepers and housewives and grocers. Most had never been on the water aside from a Saturday ride in a rowboat on the Aussen-Alster. This was no ship, it seemed, but a rolling, lurching, never-ending carnival ride! What could Hitler do to us that would be worse?
Perhaps nothing. Perhaps that was why they had been allowed to sail—to save the Nazis the trouble of disposing of the remains. Were the oceans not already dotted with a thousand ships like this one? Legal and illegal, refugee ships bobbed out across the waters from the Reich in search of a homeland. Coffin ships, the newspapers called them. Dozens had sunk, simply disappeared with their unfortunate cargo. “The drowning of unwanted cats,” Himmler was heard to remark. “Into a sack, and toss them to the fishes. Quick and easy, if you ask me.”
***
Like the cone of an enormous bullhorn, the ventilation shaft extended up through the pipe like a barricade, and within that circle Maria and Klaus Holbein huddled with their five children.
Klaus, a tall, Lincolnesque figure of a man, had stumbled from the tiny compound to the rail numerous times. His stomach was quite empty by now, but the sound of his own sickness seemed to trigger an epidemic of retching among the children.
Maria, so pale beneath her dark complexion that she looked green, sat with her back against the cool, vibrating vent shaft. Three small tousled heads lay in her lap. The faces of her children were ashen; mouths gulped the salt air and dark eyes stared dully at the bow of the ship as it rose and fell on the seas.
“How much longer, Mama?” young Trudy moaned. Trudy was nearly eight. She had already asked the question a dozen times, and her entreaties sparked a babble from the three children who lay next to her.
Some spark of impatience found its way to Maria’s mind. She had told Trudy. “We have only just left. It could be days!” She drew her breath in with difficulty as she tried to find an answer that would satisfy her. “I . . . told . . . you—” She could say no more. The anger subsided and she let her head fall back with a clunk against the metal.
Five children moaned in unison and then fell silent. Maria’s hand rested on Gretchen’s head. Katrina leaned against her mother’s arm. Maria felt as though she could not move even if she wanted to. She let her gaze drift dizzily to where Klaus leaned over the rail and inhaled deeply. There were twenty other travelers between him and the vent pipe. He would have trouble getting back to their space without stepping on them.
“Mama? How long?”
Maria did not try to answer. She did not really know the answer. How long will we be sick? How long will the ship rock like this? How long until we get off? How long to our destination? Maria herself had asked those questions a thousand times. No one had any answers.
“We are . . . safe now,” she managed. “Away from Germany.”
If they had not been so terribly ill, that thought would have sent up a cheer from the company. Instead it brought more moans. Klaus straightened himself and exhaled, letting his cheeks puff out with some relief. He swayed with the freighter as he looked back over the minefield of passengers and belongings between him and his family. With a slight, almost imperceptible shrug, he turned back toward the rail and ran a long, bony hand over his face. Maria understood the gesture. It was difficult enough to contemplate walking a few paces, let alone to think beyond this moment. One more question rose up: Did we make a mistake to leave? To that question Maria silently moved her lips, Nein!
The hair on Klaus’s head stood up in dark, wiry strands. His large ears protruded from his head, and for an instant Maria imagined the stiff breeze would snag the ears of her beloved and blow him off the deck.
The image made her anxious. There were no life jackets to toss into the dark seas. Only half a dozen lifeboats. If he was swept away, how would she manage the children?
“Klaus?” she called feebly. He did not hear her. “Klaus?” she called again, wanting to pull him into the security of their little compound beneath the ventilation shaft.
“I’ll get him, Mama.” Trudy raised her head and struggled to sit up.
Trudy was a good girl, a helpful child, even if she did ask too many questions.
Maria put her hand on Trudy’s forehead and pressed her back. “No. No. Let it be. Your father has many things to think about. He needs a little peace.” He needs to be alone. She did not say the last words out loud because there certainly was no way for anyone to be alone on this vessel.
Klaus turned again. His deep brown eyes met Maria’s weary gaze. He almost smiled, and she read his thoughts as he shrugged sheepishly. So, here we are! This is what we spent so many months longing for and praying for! Look, Maria! The sea voyage we always wanted!
Maria raised an eyebrow and answered with a half smile. Klaus looked down at his feet and began his slow, precarious walk back through the prostrate bodies to his family. Maria saw the humor in this as well. Klaus liked her sense of humor. Even in the most dreadful circumstances, Maria had always managed that smile.
“Pardon me. Bitte. Bitte. Ah, pardon, Frau . . . ” Klaus stepped over his suitcase into the circle of safety. There was still no place to put his feet without stepping on a sprawled child. In invitation, Maria tugged the limp figure of little Katrina into her arms.
“They seem to have settled a bit.” She patted the empty square of deck and Klaus awkwardly folded his body downward to sit beside her.
“This will pass,” he said with a nod.
“Of course it will,” Maria answered. “Everything in our stomachs has passed already. What is left? Besides, the baby—”
Klaus exhaled with the same sigh that puffed out his cheeks—a nervous habit, one he adopted when he was not quite certain. “This is the worst of it. You’ll see. By tomorrow the children will not even notice the swells.”
“At least no one is thinking of food now, eh, Klaus?”
He patted her cheek. “Or anything else, my beauty.” He winked, then tucked a wisp of Maria’s brown hair back beneath the navy blue shawl she wore. “All appetites have grown pale, I fear.”
She smiled weakly into the gentle face of her husband. Ten years of marriage had produced five bright, happy children. Neighbors commented on the regularity with which Maria Holbein had delivered baby girls. It had become a joke among the other professors at the University of Hamburg, where Klaus had taught chemistry until 1935: “Klaus Holbein and Maria—what chemistry between them, ja?”
Somewhere along the line Jewish babies had ceased to be a laughing matter. Jewish chemistry professors had become something to despise. One thing had led to another, and finally to this tiny fragment of iron tossing about on the North Sea. Klaus was thirty-seven, Maria just thirty-five.
“The appetite will return—” Maria touched his cheek�
�“when we have found a harbor.”
Klaus raised his chin slightly and looked away as if to sniff the air for land. “A port. Yes.” He gazed down at his now sleeping children. “Stuffed into this leaking bottle, we have become God’s message to the conscience of the world, Maria. Floating, bobbing along. And will they stoop to pluck us from the waves, I wonder?” The amusement faded from his eyes and deep sadness settled in.
Maria did not answer him. A little hand reached up and tugged on the sleeve of his tweed overcoat. It was Katrina, looking up from Maria’s lap. Her eyes were clearer now, but still pained with a tummy that would not be still. Klaus leaned down to kiss his daughter on the forehead. “What is it, Katrina?”
“Papa?” the child asked, her brown eyes eager, “will you tell us again about Noah? About Noah and his family in the ark?”
Now other eyes opened and looked toward the lean, gangly man who was father, protector, provider, and storyteller.
“Yes, Papa.”
“Tell us, please, again!”
Maria cleared her throat and raised her eyebrow again. Amused. The gesture that Klaus loved. “Yes, Husband,” Maria added her voice. “Noah and the ark. All the animals at sea. What a mess that must have been! But leave out the same details God has left out of the story, will you? There is much, I now realize, that God did not tell about.”
9
Aboard the Ark
It was hours after nightfall before the ocean swells finally collapsed beneath a curtain of thick fog. Klaus and Maria sat with their backs against the vent shaft as the five children used their parents’ laps and legs for pillows.
The steady drone of the aged engines still pulsed from the foghorn. “Like the mating call of Noah’s elephant,” Klaus whispered with a weary smile.
Earlier Klaus had draped a large blanket over the shaft to make a sort of shelter for them. The cold ocean mist penetrated the makeshift tent easily, causing the family to huddle against one another for warmth.
