My second memory was from when I was five and went with Papa to the university. I hid under the desk in the gigantic hall where he was giving a lecture to a hundred or more students who listened spellbound as the most intelligent man in the world unraveled the secrets of the human body. Papa’s voice sounded as if he were conducting a religious ritual or reciting the Torah from memory. He repeated the word femur several times, pointing to gigantic limbs displayed in a diagram on the wall, and I resolved that as soon as my parents allowed me to have a dog, I would call him Femur.
My third memory was from my fifth birthday, when my parents promised me that one day we would go on a world cruise on a luxury liner. For many nights after that, on the map beside my bed, I began to plot our route to all the faraway countries, feeling I was the luckiest girl in the world.
These were the only three things I seemed able to recall. And sadly, one of them had to do with Eva, whom I would never see again. The erasing process was already beginning. My new book of memories was blank.
Leo and I were standing at the starboard rail of the ship, watching as passengers waved to their relatives below. The people on land peered up at us not as though we were being saved but as though we were headed for some dire, inconceivable fate.
Leo and I moved away from the crowd and fixed our gaze instead on the river Elbe, which would carry us to the North Sea and from there far away from the land of the Ogres. It was high time we were leaving that port stinking of oil and fish; I didn’t want my eyes to register anything further about it. I closed them tight, clinging to Leo so as not to feel the rolling of this enormous iron monster. I thought I was going to be seasick.
The captain was watching us from the bridge, pacing back and forth with his hands behind his back. Despite his ridiculous moustache and small stature, he was an imposing figure. He motioned for us to come up and join him. Leo was even more excited than I was; he tugged at my hand for us to run. Our adventure had begun.
From the bridge, the port looked tiny. The smell of rusty iron and the ship’s rocking motion made me feel queasy again. Realizing this, the captain spoke directly to me with that gruff voice of his that seemed so much at odds with his small body:
“The ship will stabilize in a few minutes, and then you won’t even see water move in a glass. Won’t you introduce me to your friend, Hannah?”
Leo was bursting with pride. Previously, he had wanted to be a pilot, but now I thought that he would probably prefer to be a ship’s captain. He rushed anxiously toward the controls, but the captain warned him, “You’re welcome in here, but you mustn’t touch anything that might endanger the two hundred thirty-one crew members and the eight hundred ninety-nine passengers we have on board. I’m responsible for the lives of each and every one of them.”
Leo wanted to know exactly when we’d arrive and how fast this ship weighing more than 16,000 tons and 575 feet long could travel.
“What would happen if someone falls overboard?” Leo asked breathlessly. “Which port will we arrive at first? What other countries are we going to visit? What if somebody falls ill?”
“Our first port of call will be Cherbourg, where we’ll pick up another thirty-eight passengers.”
These were too many questions all at once—the captain wasn’t smiling—but Leo and I had the same sensation: this man was powerful and knew a lot. And something more: he wanted to be our friend.
“Now go down to the dining room,” he ordered us. “They’ve already begun to serve the last meal of the day.”
I took the lead, and Leo followed me to the first-class dining room. When he hesitated at the door, it was my turn to take him by the arm.
“They’ll throw me out of here, Hannah!”
As I opened the huge door decorated with symmetrical mirrors, leaves, and flowers, we were dazzled by the light from inside: polished wood and huge teardrop chandeliers sparkling like diamonds. Leo couldn’t believe his eyes. We were in a floating palace in the middle of the sea.
A friendly steward dressed in white like a naval officer pointed out our seats, and I saw Mama waving at us from the main table as if acknowledging her admirers.
Like a perfect gentleman, Papa stood up ceremoniously and held out his hand to Leo, who took it timidly and made a slight bow to Mama.
“You need to eat properly. It’s going to be a long crossing.” The Goddess was back, her words silken and clear.
I didn’t know how she had found the time to change and redo her makeup. The simple sleeveless pink cotton dress made her look like a schoolgirl. She had changed her pearl earrings for a pair of diamonds that glittered whenever she moved her head. Papa was still wearing his gray flannel suit and bow tie.
At one end of the room a big table was overflowing with all kinds of bread, salmon, black caviar, thinly cut slices of meat, and vegetables of various colors. This was the “light buffet” the St. Louis offered as we steamed out of Hamburg.
The steward served Mama her favorite champagne. Leo and I got warm milk, to help us sleep.
Papa began to thrust his chest out again, and his face looked as though he was once more at ease in his environment. Four men left the tables where their families were seated and came up to greet him, calling him Professor Rosenthal. He rose to his feet and courteously extended his hand to them. He embraced the last one, clapping him on the back, and said something no one else could hear. The men also greeted Mama, but without coming close. She smiled back from her Viennese chair, a glass full of bubbles in her right hand.
It was quite hot. Mama took out a handkerchief and dabbed at her face to prevent the perspiration from ruining her makeup. Two members of the crew drew back the red velvet curtains to open some windows. The breeze from the deck relieved the close atmosphere and dissipated the odor of smoked fish and meat, which was beginning to make me nauseous.
The steward came to ask Leo if he would like anything more, calling him “sir.” I didn’t know what alarmed my friend more: being called “sir” or having someone approach him in such a manner. Leo didn’t answer, and so the steward continued around the table taking everyone’s orders. It was obvious that Leo was not used to being treated well, especially by someone from the “pure race.”
“Can you believe it?” he whispered, so close to my ear I thought he was going to kiss me. “The Ogres are serving us!”
He began to chuckle, raising his glass of warm milk to make a toast.
“Here’s to you, Countess Hannah! This is going to be a long and wonderful trip!”
I laughed out loud in a way that made Mama smile.
“Yes, Leo, drink up your warm milk, it’ll do you good,” I replied with the voice of a fussy old countess.
At the next table, four young men raised their glasses high as well. Papa smiled at them and nodded slightly, taking part in their toast from a distance. Leo and I looked on, trying not to giggle.
“We’re going to have such fun tomorrow!” he whispered gleefully, downing his milk in one long gulp.
13 MAY 1939
TWO OTHER SHIPS EN ROUTE HAVANA, ENGLISH ORDUÑA AND FRENCH FLANDRE WITH SIMILAR PASSENGERS. IMPERATIVE MAKE FULL SPEED AHEAD. CONFIRMED, WHATEVER HAPPENS, YOUR PASSENGERS WILL LAND. NO CAUSE FOR ALARM.
Cable from the Hamburg-Amerika Line
Monday, 15 May
I felt lost. When I woke up, I heard the notes of a violin playing the intermezzo from one of the operas Papa used to listen to in the evening at home. I was in the middle of a dream. We were back in Berlin. The Ogres were nothing more than a nightmare created by my troubled mind.
I saw myself lying at my father’s feet next to the gramophone. He was stroking my head, ruffling my hair, while he told me about the opera heroine Thaïs, a courtesan and priestess in powerful Alexandria, Egypt, whom they wanted to strip of her possessions and force to renounce the gods she had always worshipped. They obliged her to cross the desert to pay for her sins.
I opened my eyes and saw I was in my cabin. The doors to Papa’s ro
om were open, and I could see the gramophone. He was reading in bed, listening to “Méditation,” from Thaïs, just like in the good old days. The orchestra blocked out the rest of the world.
They would send us back to Berlin because we had brought the gramophone! I was sure it had been on the list of our apartment possessions we had been forced to draw up. Who on earth had thought of such a stupid idea as bringing it with us? Mama would never forgive Papa. She would start to cry and blame me as well, insisting we should all vanish. Perhaps she’d try to poison me with that terrible capsule Papa made her buy from Leo’s father.
But Mama strode into my cabin looking livelier than ever. If the gramophone did not bother her, if she didn’t think we’d be sent back because Papa adored music so irresponsibly, that meant we were safe.
She looked radiant and even more elegant. Having to shake off the lethargy of the past four months in order to track down our permits and comb the dusty streets of a Berlin packed with Ogres marching in sickly unison had done wonders for her. She was wearing long, loose trousers in ivory gabardine, a blue cotton blouse with matching turban, a scarf tied around her neck, and a pair of dark tortoiseshell glasses to protect her from the sun on deck. A broad golden bracelet glittered on her left forearm, and her dazzling wedding ring was back on her right hand.
The Goddess in all her splendor.
“You can go wherever you like, except to the engine room,” Mama said to me. “That’s dangerous. Be off and have fun, Hannah. Your father will stay here reading. It’s a beautiful day.”
She left the cabin as if she owned the ship, eager to breathe fresh air for the first time in many months.
We were still in Europe. I suddenly heard the noises of another port. I was longing to be out on the high seas, and was irritated by the seagulls swooping around us, the smell of fish and dried blood mixed with rust and the grease from the engines, as well as the blare of ships approaching and leaving the dock.
Out on deck, I saw Mama near the rail. She was being served tea while she stared down at the port of Cherbourg, France, carefully observing the thirty-eight passengers coming on board. Apparently she did not recognize any of them, for she moved away to one of the deck chairs on the starboard side of the ship.
I didn’t think she was going to make friends with any of the other women in first class. She watched as they passed by and greeted them in a friendly enough manner but then readjusted her dark glasses and ignored all those elegant women who might wish to sit beside her. She was enjoying being alone. Spending all those months in confinement with the shutters drawn and never going out to see her friends had made her antisocial.
I knew the sea air would suit Mama. She seemed free, and could wear all her best outfits, show off her jewels, have someone always at her beck and call. But she seemed hesitant about going back into the ballroom. When she had opened the door the previous evening, she had seen a red-white-and-black flag on the back wall. She had grimaced with disgust in a way only I noticed, and left without a word. She went straight to talk to the captain. Nobody knew what she said, but the fact was that by morning the flag had disappeared. The first thing she did even before breakfast was to go to the ballroom to see whether the captain had kept his word.
“As long as we’re at sea, he will look after us,” she said later. “He’s a true gentleman.”
The ship began shuddering, and there was another blast on the horn. Now we really were under way.
Behind her dark glasses, Mama smiled peacefully in a way I had never seen before.
Leo came up behind me and covered my eyes. His hands were moist. I joined in the game and asked if he was Papa.
Laughing out loud, he tugged at my arm as hard as he could. He ruled the roost in first class. He came and went on our deck as if he were its lord and master. He was no longer afraid that someone would send him back to his father’s tourist-class cabin. His place was here with me. The captain and all the stewards knew this.
I loved seeing Leo dressed smartly. His brown jacket with big buttons and breast pockets made him look older, but his short trousers and long stockings gave away his age.
He stepped back so that I could give my opinion, spreading his arms as if to ask what I thought of his transatlantic attire, and nervously awaited my verdict. I looked him up and down without a word. I was making him suffer, and he grew desperate.
“Aren’t you going to tell me how I look?”
“Like a perfect count,” I mocked him, and he guffawed.
“And you are the only countess on board, Hannah,” he replied before dashing over to the side to start his tour of first class.
If anybody was leaning against the rail, he apologized and waited for the person to make way for him; he would not allow any modification to the route he had planned for his close study of the ship where we were going to spend the next fortnight.
I followed along like his faithful consort. This was the first time I had ever seen him happy.
15 MAY 1939
CUT SHORT STAY IN CHERBOURG. MUST LEAVE SOONEST ALL SPEED. TENSE SITUATION IN HAVANA.
Cable from the Hamburg-Amerika Line
Wednesday, 17 May
“I’ve been here hours,” said Leo, leaning back against one of the iron columns on the terrace.
“Look, I’ve brought you a cookie. I was supposed to keep it until bedtime.”
“To the engine room!”
“What? That’s the only place I’ve been told not to go to, Leo!”
Several couples were strolling along the promenade deck, finding out where things were. There was a beauty salon, a small shop selling souvenirs from the ship, postcards, and silk scarves. I didn’t think anybody would want to waste the ten reichsmarks we’d been allowed to take out of Germany on any of that.
We went down six levels and then along a lengthy corridor that ended at a heavy iron door. When Leo opened it, the noise was deafening, and the smell of burnt grease made me feel queasy. If I had leaned against the wall I could have ruined my blue-and-white-striped dress. I didn’t want to upset Mama.
Leo was peering curiously at the complicated machinery that propelled the giant we were sailing on. If it had been up to him, he would have spent hours watching the pistons moving to and fro with their precise, unchanging rhythm. But all at once, he abandoned his observation post.
“Let’s go back up with the others!” he shouted to me, his voice swallowed up by the noise of the engines. He set off at a run.
He had already made several friends on the St. Louis. It was as if he’d been on board for months. We climbed up to the fourth deck, where there was a group of boys waiting impatiently for us—or, rather, for Leo.
A tall boy with a silly-looking face stood up as Leo approached. He was wearing a tilted cap, and his cheeks were ruddy from the cold air.
“Edmund, you’ll catch a cold,” shouted his mother, who was wrapped in a thick brown blanket under one of the deck awnings.
Edmund paid her no attention, beyond stamping the floor like a baby about to have a tantrum.
There were two other boys as well. They were brothers, the younger one informed me, introducing himself as Walter and his older brother as Kurt, who ignored me. They both wore hats and jackets that looked enormous on them, as did their shoes and their stockings hanging loose round their ankles. I guessed their parents had bought them clothes for the journey several sizes too large so that they would last many months in Cuba, and probably wherever they were headed after that.
“So you’re the famous Hannah, the ‘German girl,’ ” said Walter slyly. I realized he was the same age as me or possibly a little bit older.
I pretended not to have heard him. Leo tried to break the ice by launching into a description of the ship: its funnel, the bridge, the mast, which was the tallest part of the ship, the difference between port and starboard. He spoke of the captain as if he were a close friend who consulted him every night about the decisions he’d have to make and then carry out first thin
g the next morning.
I knew someone was bound to mention “the German Girl” sooner or later. That wretched front cover of Das Deutsche Mädel was going to pursue me all my life. Yes, I was the German girl: So what? I felt like telling him, I might be very German, but I’m as undesirable as you.
“Did you know there’s a swimming pool on board?” said Kurt, constantly trying to keep his hat out of his eyes. “When we’re in the mid-Atlantic it’ll be less cold, and they’ll open it. Did you bring your bathing suits?”
The silly-looking boy suggested we go play on the promenade deck, but Leo didn’t listen to him. We were merely there as followers of the most popular passenger on the St. Louis. He was the one in control; the one who gave the orders. All that was missing was the white peaked cap with the black visor that the captain wore. And so we all ignored Walter’s suggestion.
In fact, all we did was rush about from one spot to the next, but that was enough for Leo to master the whole ship’s layout. He had already memorized the labyrinths leading to the cabins, the ballrooms, the gym, and the captain’s control rooms, where the crew got together to play cards and smoke. Leo came and went as he liked in the most unimaginable places. And nobody stopped him.
The children had grouped themselves according to age. The youngest remained under supervision. The girls would not have dreamed of mixing with the boys, and must have looked on me strangely, I thought, because I belonged to Leo’s gang. Walter, the clumsier of the brothers—since we’d met, he had fallen, lost his hat, and gotten left behind so often that we were on the verge of abandoning him—bumped into one of the snooty girls pretending to be adolescents.
The German Girl Page 12
