by Mark Tiro
“But they’re Jews! Why are you sending them away? This is our home,” I half cursed. “This! Here!” I pointed to the ground where we were standing now, then added for emphasis, “Only here!”
“Of course they are,” he answered in a calming voice I could tell he’d practiced often. “And so are we. But they still have to go back.”
“Not on that ship they can’t,” I shot back. “One patch of rough seas and it will sink straight to the bottom. There’s not enough food to last, to make it to…”
I grew quiet. I didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
“By the time it heads back to sea in the morning, that ship will be more sea worthy than anything floating back in… “
He let his voice trail off, refusing to finish the thought. Then he added, “And with plenty of provisions, food, fuel, medicine, too. That ship will be able to make it to where it’s meant to. Which, by the way,” he asked, looking hopefully to me, “Do you know?”
“No, I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t. Well, probably, anywhere safe that ship can make it to—that’s her destination. Or at least, I suppose…”
“I see.”
“But look around at all these people. They’re parents with babies, old people, refugees. They’re survivors—the ones who’ve escaped. Why not let them stay here?”
He stood silent again, just looking at me as I sat. I got even more mad at that, and lashed out at him.
“It’s the British, isn’t it? The British! Those bastards are forcing you to turn the ship back. I knew it! But I don’t get it—why are you helping them? Why are Jews helping send other Jews back to Europe to die? You must know how bad things are in Europe for Jews? Why would you do such a thing?”
He looked like he’d been kicked in the stomach. He pulled the other white plastic beach chair over and sat down next to me. Then he took a long, deep breath. I could see he was struggling… like he was struggling to hold back tears.
Then he looked at me and answered.
“I do know, and I’m sorry.”
“Then why are you doing it? Why are you feeding and clothing everyone, if your only intention is to then round them all up and herd them back on to that ship? If you’re just going to send them all back somewhere in the Mediterranean—what’s the point? Don’t you know that everyone from that ship will almost certainly die?”
My words were more accusation than question.
He answered anyway.
“I know,” he said with a long sigh. “We all know. But being ‘almost certain that everyone will die’ is not the same as being ‘completely certain’. And so we always hold out the hope that this time, the outcome will be… different.”
4
Four
“Hope?” I roared. “Why are Jews sending Jews back to die? ‘Hope’ isn’t good enough.”
“You’d be surprised. But then again, you’re still young. The hope goes a long way, as I’m sure you’ll find out when you get older.”
I was not impressed, but I think I was too angry by now to even answer. He went right on talking, and so I sat there silently now, listening. Anyway, there was something soothing in his voice, something familiar. As he talked I relaxed and started to see.
“We tried,” he started. “Believe me, we tried everything to avoid this. And if there was any other choice—anything else we could do other than sending this ship and everyone on it back to almost certain death—we would.”
“What could be worse than almost certain death, then?”
“Certain death,” he said, in the same calm and oddly-reassuring voice. “You see, anyone from that ship who stays here will die. Absolutely. Certainly—and in agonizing pain.”
“How do you know this? How on earth could anyone possibly know the future?”
“The future? I don’t know the future. No. For me—it is the past I’m talking about. This is not the first time this ship has… arrived.”
I froze, shocked. He went on.
“And in the past, over and over—we have tried. And then, over and over, we tried again, until it became painfully obvious to us that everyone on that ship is better off going back—however small their chances of survival may be—rather than staying here and dying an excruciatingly certain death.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow. What do you mean…” He was being decent, and so I went to call him by his name. That’s when I realized I didn’t know his name.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Can you start by telling me who are you? And also, what you’re doing here?”
“That’s fair,” he said, extending a hand to mine. “I am Moshe. Moshe Ben Zev. I am a psychologist by training, and in my profession, as well.”
“Ben Zev? That’s Hebrew for son of wolf, no? That’s my father’s name—the Yiddish version, not the Hebrew one, that is.”
“They must call you ‘Wolfson’ then?”
“Why, yes,” I stammered. “How’d you know? I mean, well—of course, it’s obvious. Wolfson/son of Wolf, right? But that’s only my Hebrew name for synagogue… In the civil society, it doesn’t really work like that where I’m from….”
“There is no civil society where you’re from,” he said coldly.
The smile drained from his face, but it lasted just an instant. Then he let up and the smile returned to his face. “But it does work like that here, fortunately,” he went on. “Quite a few people swapped their Yiddish names for Hebrew ones, once they made it here after the war…”
“After the war? Tell me about the war…”
“I can’t,” he said, cutting me off. “I’m sorry I mentioned it. There are certain things the army will not let me talk about.”
“Okay then, what do you mean by—psychologist? Do you mean like from Vienna? Like Freud?”
“Why yes, like Freud,” he answered, grinning widely now. “But I suppose my training and profession has very little to do with the reason I was called up to reserve duty here tonight.”
“Well, then why are you here?”
“My father died in the Six-Day War, just before I was born. My mother had a hard time after that, and so I grew up almost entirely in my grandparents’ home. Amongst themselves at home, they spoke Yiddish. I picked up a fair amount. Then later, when my grandma got dementia, she lost her Hebrew completely. From that point on—until she died, I had no choice but to speak only Yiddish at home.”
“I’m sorry about your grandma.”
“Thank you,” he went on. “So you see, after ten years of higher education and hundreds of published academic papers—tonight, I am but a simple translator here.” He looked around at the soldiers and passengers speaking with animated hand motions. Then he turned back to me, saying, “And so far, it looks like they’re getting by just fine without my translation services tonight. So please, go on.”
“Okay, then. If you don’t mind, I have some questions for you.”
I didn’t like that he was changing the subject. I was sorry about his grandmother, but there was a boatload full of people out there who were about to be loaded back onto that boat and out to sea—to their ‘almost certain’ deaths. The last thing I wanted was to let myself be drawn into this little small talk of his.
“Why?” I asked, pointing around me to the entire operation. “Why go through all this? Why send the ship back at all? Surely, it would be easier to take everyone in, no? And anyway—what do you mean by ‘certain death’ for everyone, if the ship doesn’t go back?”
“Like I started to tell you, we tried what you’re saying. Many times. We tried taking everyone in. You don’t think we don’t know what horrors are waiting for them back in Europe, if that ship is forced to go back?”
“Then why send it back at all?”
“The first time, we didn’t know what was happening. We scrambled the navy and the army too. Which has turned out to be a very good thing.”
“A good thing? Why’s that?”
“Let me come back to that, if it’s okay with you.”
“Of course. I mean, it’s not like I have a choice, right?”
“We always have a choice, even when—as our saying goes—‘there’s no choice.’”
“I see.”
“So anyway, as I was saying, the first time, we didn’t know what was happening. All that we knew was that there was a ship, broadcasting a distress signal on a channel that hadn’t been used since… since… well, since before the war.”
“The Great War?”
“The one after that. Kind of the second great war, only once it was done, no one ever wanted to use the word ‘great’ and ‘war’ together again. So we just called it the Second World War.”
“Oh.”
“And so, the first time this ship showed up, we had to scramble to keep it under wraps. We closed the beach as quickly as we could. We used the cover story that terrorists had come in from the sea trying to kill tourists on the boardwalk. We cordoned off the whole area—turned it into a closed military zone.”
“Just like now?”
“Not really. Now—it’s more like when a car in a race comes in for a pit stop. Fill up the gas, give the driver some water… maybe change out the tires. And then, send it back out for more laps. But it was different then, at the beginning. It was different a whole bunch of times. That is, until we learned it was always the same.”
“What was?”
“We took everyone in, just like you would with refugees. We have places we can bring people in these situations… in emergencies like this. There’s always extra room—and out of the public eye, too—on army bases to handle situations like this. And in a lot of ways, bringing everyone to an army base at first seemed to make the most sense. In one place, there are beds, mess halls to make vast quantities of food, medical facilities—everything you’d need to get help to people quickly, while giving them a chance to adjust, out of the public eye…. And of course, in our country—we have a lot of army bases.”
I looked around this makeshift ‘base’, amazed at the sheer volume of activity taking place everywhere I looked. “I’m sure of it,” I answered. “And so what happened that first night, when you brought everyone to your army base?”
“That night, nothing. It’s what happened the next morning, when the sun rose…”
“I’m assuming by what you told me before that all the passengers died?”
“Died? Yes, of course. Everyone died. It was how they died, however, that was so utterly horrifying. You see, something about the way they had arrived was not… normal. Not stable. And the next morning, it closed.”
“What closed?”
“Imagine what it would be like, getting sucked into a black hole, stretched first, and then enveloped into nothingness by the overwhelming gravity. That is how it started.”
“What’s a black hole?”
“Best not to think about for now. When you go to university, you’ll learn all about them. Anyway, it all ended in a horrifying implosion into some kind of atomic nothingness. It took all of these survivors. The horror… No… their suffering—it was agonizing. And once that was done, there was some sort of shock wave. The entire area of the base where everyone, all the passengers, had been located imploded. And just like that, everyone was vaporized… and disappeared.”
My jaw dropped open. I couldn’t say anything.
“Not too long after that,” he went on, “we got word on the radio. It was the navy base where their ship had been taken. The same thing had happened there, to the ship. Just like with all the passengers, the ship too had imploded. And like the passengers, it had also disappeared into nothingness. By then, there were eighteen navy sailors onboard, inspecting the ship. And they were all vaporized—imploded and disappeared too, right along with it.”
5
Five
“So, you said this happened more than once?”
“Yes, many times.”
“And?”
“And of course, even after that first experience, we continued to take them all in. Of course we did, right. Who wouldn’t? Anyway, at that time, we still didn’t understand what was going on here. Understanding came… later. Anyway, the second time, we again took them to an army base—more remote this time, as we were trying to learn lessons and draw conclusions from what happened the first time. But we were still flying blind, and it ended the same way. Everyone died. The same terrible, torturous death. Again.”
“I’m sorry. And the same thing happened with the ship, too?”
“Well, we didn’t let anyone on it the second time, so none of our soldiers were lost. Small miracles, right?”
“And the ship itself?”
“It vaporized and imploded again—into the same nothingness as the first time. But something else happened, too. Something… different.”
“What’s that? What happened?”
“Remember how I told you we had scrambled the army and navy that first time—that it was a good thing?”
“Yes, and you told me you’d tell me why later.”
“The submarines you saw earlier—have you stopped to think why we have submarines here?”
“I didn’t give it much thought, I mean I guess like everything else, for security reasons, no?”
“In this country, everything’s for security reasons,” he said wryly. “But seriously—security, from a ship that is barely sea-worthy? And diverting two subs? The fishes were in more danger from that ship sinking than we were. But thankfully, someone thought to have the subs around. Just in case.”
“Just in case?”
“Sailors were hooking up the ship, to tow it away from here, to a navy base—we didn’t know it was stable until morning before it imploded and vaporized, and so we were in a hurry to get it away from prying eyes in the city here. Anyway, just as they started to tow the ship out to sea, one of the submarines noticed something unusual.”
“What?”
“The subs, they weren’t alone anymore. Something else had… come through. The same way the ship had come through.”
“Another ship?”
“A submarine. A submarine that did not belong here.”
“What, you mean like a Russian submarine, or something?”
“It was a Nazi submarine. Whatever had allowed that ship and all those people to come through, across time—it was still open. And a Nazi sub had just come through it.”
“What happened?”
“Well, we sank it of course. And quickly. I mean, fifty years of technology should count for something, right? Still, no one liked the idea of Nazis coming across time. Our history, and our neighborhood now—it’s hard enough. The dead, however, need to stay buried. Even though our navy was able to handle the threat easily enough, it was a stunning psychological shock. For those who knew about it, at least.”
“You?”
“I am a psychologist, remember? They called me up quickly for reserve duty for that one—and not for my translation skills. And me personally? The idea of it sent chills down my spine.”
“So, has anyone been able to figure out what… I mean—how—this is possible?”
“Yes. The next morning, actually. A lot of the general staff was unnerved by what had happened. Even Nazis in fifty year old U-Boats can still be the source of nightmares for us. And so of course, we had other subs patrolling the area. All through the night and into the next morning. Until sunrise, the next morning.”
“Why sunrise?”
“Because that’s when we figured out what it was—what it must have been that had made this possible. And because that is when one of the submarines we had patrolling the area found itself in the same, unfortunate place where the ship had first appeared. And that’s when it closed.”
“What closed?”
“The opening, the wormhole—whatever it was connecting that time to now. The sun rose the next morning, and it closed. And it swallowed up our submarine with it.”
“You mean imploded it? Everyone died, just like the passengers?”
“No
. No one died, at least not at that time.”
“What, then?”
“Our sub, with all its crew, and all its… modern technology—it went through the portal, the wormhole, whatever—it went back. It went through, and then it simply disappeared. Into the past…”
“How do you know it didn’t just vaporize, or implode—like you said happened with the ship and the passengers?”
“Because we train our crews very well. Once they’d realized what had happened, the commander knew that the one thing that he could never let happen was to let the… weapons—the very modern weapons—his sub was carrying fall into the hands of the Nazis. At some point, the sub was able to make contact with an underground Yishuv leader who would later become part of the first government once the state was formed. It helps to know who will get into the history books in the future, no? Anyway, it was decided that the crew would scuttle the entire sub in a trench as far out as they could make it. That was the only way it was thought that the weapons—could remain secure. At a certain depth—well below that which the sub itself would be crushed by the pressure, the weapons themselves would detonate. The idea was that no one back then knew what an underwater test looked like. The world had never seen one before. And so, the thought was that it would pass as an underwater earthquake, or some other natural phenomenon. Once the state was formed, and the technology to go down into the trenches advanced enough, an expedition was sent out to confirm.”
“And the crew? Did they… die?”
“All of them, yes. They protected our future with their lives. And they remain there, yes—the final piece of the silver platter that gave us all this.”
I opened my mouth to talk, but I never got the chance.
The only warning was the faint humming sound, and for me, almost too faint to hear over the…
The sudden shout of the soldier.
It was no warning at all. The psychologist leapt across the table and tackled me to the ground.
The chair I’d been sitting in and the table as well, both came crashing down on top of us.
