Child of All Nations

by Michael Hofmann

  My father didn’t get sick, but he didn’t want to eat either. He was really odd altogether, more than I’ve ever known him to be. On the fifth day, he suddenly couldn’t stand to be on the ship any more. He didn’t want to speak to anyone, he hated all the people. He hated the dining room with the beautiful flowers on the tables, and the naked ladies in their evening dresses. He didn’t want to lie down on a deckchair or play deck quoits, even though on the ship all the adults were running and leaping about like children who weren’t even as old as me.

  He didn’t even want to go to the cinema with me, so I went once by myself. It was jolly boring, I can tell you, watching adults kissing the whole time. Later, I met some sailors who spoke English, but unfortunately they didn’t always have time for me.

  Once or twice, I secretly climbed down to the third-class section. There I met three children from Berlin, who were emigrating to America with their parents for good. They were pretty sad, and didn’t talk much. One time an older boy said to me: ‘You’re not a proper emigrant, you’re not even Jewish, you’re luxury emigrants.’

  One evening I stood on the middle deck all alone, and thought of my mother. I so badly wanted to send her some lovely food. On the ship you got everything for nothing. I could have ordered fifty roast beefs and chickens and strawberries and secretly packed everything up and sent it off. But how? Just make up a parcel, write the address and toss it into the sea? Would that ever get there? But telegrams do.

  Stormy waves came as high as the deck, and the spray wet my feet. If you’re in the middle of the ocean, the sky gets to be as tight as a cheese cloche. You can’t see nearly as far as you’d like to.

  My father was almost always lying silently and grumpily on the bed in his cabin. Sometimes he would be up in the smoking saloon, drinking whiskey, which cost extra. Apart from that we had nothing to worry about all the time we were on the ship; we had never known such ease. My mother would certainly have been happy there.

  For the whole crossing, my father was grumpy. He didn’t want to be bothered with me. One time an Englishwoman wanted me to play bridge with her, but I didn’t know how, and I didn’t feel like learning either. Then she said I ought to cheer my father up, so that he didn’t drink so much whiskey and rum. But if you do that, you can really put someone on edge who doesn’t want to be cheered up.

  I don’t like playing cards, I prefer dice. Sometimes I played dice with the ship’s doctor, who didn’t have anything better to do, because the passengers could be seasick without his help, and there weren’t any other sicknesses going.

  I didn’t know any more whether we’d been sailing for a hundred days or just a week. I couldn’t imagine ever arriving anywhere. In some mysterious way, the ship even managed to print a newspaper, and I read in it that it was May, when my mother has her birthday.

  It’s not unusual for my mother and me to not know what month we’re in, because the seasons are different in all the countries. When we left Nice, it was summer – and a day later it was rain and winter and Amsterdam.

  We don’t have any other ways of clinging on to the time either. Sometimes we just find out by chance that it’s Sunday or Christmas or All Souls. Once we nearly mistook Easter for Whitsun. We often lose track of how long we’ve been gone from Germany, and what year it is. One day we’ll forget our birthdays, and then we won’t know how old we are.

  Often we have no idea how long we’ve spent in a place. There’s only one unpleasant way of finding out, which is via the hotel bill. Then it always turns out we’ve been there much longer than we thought.

  On the ship there was no time at all, and we were all alone in the world. Only once, in fog, we heard the tooting of another ship, and we tooted back.

  One day the air felt hot and clammy, and the stewardess told me we were crossing the Golf Stream. I’ve seen lots of golf courses, especially in England, where the whole country consists of little else. So I would have loved to see a Golf Stream, especially because it made the air and the ship so hot. But I couldn’t see it anywhere, and I didn’t feel like asking anyone either, because they mostly just laughed. Not that they managed to explain it to me either. You really have to find out for yourself how everything in the world is arranged. I’ve managed to find out quite a lot of things already.

  All at once, the sea got very busy. Other ships came sailing towards us from miles away, seagulls fluttered up, and three times big fishes jumped right out of the water. My father cheered up a bit, the passengers were almost cured of their seasickness and laughed excitedly. Suddenly the dining room was full of people I’d never seen before, and the deck as well. What was with them all?

  My father went downstairs with me to eat. The music was livelier, the conversation more animated. Lots of people who hadn’t spoken to each other before quickly made friends, and then forgot each other again. I had known them all along anyway. My father laughed when I told him about that, and ate a capon, and said: ‘Tomorrow we’ll be in New York.’ In the evening he wanted to go for a walk with me all over the whole ship, from the topmost deck down to the very lowest.

  Everyone was talking about packing, and I packed my father’s suitcase, just as I had learned to do from my mother. I didn’t need to pack my own case, because I’d never unpacked it. I’d kept the same dress on all through. It was a bit dirty. Also I hadn’t combed my hair much, and I hadn’t put on a nightie to go to bed, and sometimes I hadn’t said my prayers. I hadn’t had to wash either.

  One night I had to cry because I thought of my mother. I wrote to her for forgiveness, and promised I would have a bath for a whole hour to make up. I did, too. Sometimes I liked it very much on the ship.

  The next morning, my father was friends with practically everyone on board. We stood on deck and saw cheerful green hills with red houses; the sea got narrower till it was like navigating in a river. We saw a big monument in the water, called something like Freedom Statue, but really it was just of a fat jolly-looking woman. Houses like big toyboxes came nearer, and a little boat made fast to our ship and unloaded some men with briefcases that were half detectives, half officials. Men like that are always a pain because their job is checking up on people and passports.

  We landed in Hoboken, which is a sort of outskirt of New York. We distributed our money to the stewards and the musicians till we didn’t have any left for ourselves. The barman brought my father a big glass of sherry down to his cabin, where he was sitting with a whole lot of newspapermen. My father’s American publishers had let them know we were coming.

  They were sitting on our cases and on our beds, but it wasn’t truly my bed. I had slept alone all the way across. Never in my life did I have to sleep on my own for so long, and I told the newspaper people, because they wanted to hear what we had to say, and my father doesn’t like talking so much in the morning. He doesn’t like being asked things at any time really.

  It was hard to understand what the men were saying. They didn’t speak English like in England; they chewed the words in their mouths and didn’t let them out properly because they kept grinning through their teeth. But before long I could understand them all right. They had very friendly eyes, and they were terribly nice really, and I’m sure they would have played with me too, if they didn’t have to ask my father so many questions.

  Of course I was cautious, though, because I knew from the newspapers that plenty of children are stolen in America, especially rich children. That’s why I told them to put in their newspapers that my father is completely broke, and we’ve got absolutely no money at all. My father was furious about that, because no one was meant to know, but I had to be mindful of the danger. I was pleased that the journalists wrote down what I told them.

  ‘How do you like America?’ they asked. I said straight away that I liked it fine, because I felt really pleased that we’d finally arrived. The American buildings and seagulls had looked very nice too from the ship.

  My father growled something in English that no one understood. They
fired lots and lots of questions at him. In the end he got impatient, and started to glower at them. I’m familiar with that; it means it’s time to leave him in peace. Now he wanted to finally set eyes on America and a hotel room. He couldn’t get any more sherry either, because we had absolutely no money.

  ‘What’s your favourite book?’ the men asked him.

  ‘A cheque book.’

  ‘What’s your favourite sport?’

  ‘Running amok,’ said my father, and at that he really did run away.

  In our last few days in Europe we had talked about America all the time and looked at photos of it, but in fact I thought it looked completely different from the way we’d pictured it. Europe is actually much more American, because things there are much more hectic.

  When the customs official unpacked our suitcases in Hoboken, he found a book of my father’s, and being a keen reader, he settled down on the floor and started reading it. My father gave him the book, because we didn’t want to wait for him to finish it.

  That evening I went to a Communist meeting, where I got lost.

  My father’s friends hadn’t met us off the boat, so, without any money, we had to drive to a hotel near Broadway, which is my favourite street in the world. That’s because, right on Broadway itself, there’s an enormous building that has hundreds of pinball machines; you can play with one for just one cent. You can let balls roll down so that they set off little electric lamps or illuminated scenes. And outside in the window there are loads of little tortoises, with red- and blue- and green-lacquered shells and flowers painted on them.

  It never occurred to me that you can produce such magnificence with tortoises, and apparently it doesn’t do them any harm either. I wrote to tell my mother about it right away, because my tortoises had stayed behind with her, but she’s not to dye them; I want to do it myself when I go back. Because my poor mother isn’t now coming to join us in America, as she had to sell her ticket to live off the money.

  Well, on my very first evening, I got lost in a Communist meeting, but it wasn’t so bad, and later I got to know my way around New York better than in most other cities. We were staying in a very large and interesting hotel with a swimming pool and a drugstore in the basement – a drugstore is a shop where you can sit and drink all kinds of iced drinks and at the very same time buy all sorts of stuff. Our room had a radio in it and a refrigerator and a buzzing air-conditioner.

  My father was on the telephone for hours, and at the end of that he practically collapsed. First, the operator wouldn’t understand the number he wanted, and later on the people themselves didn’t understand him. He had made ten appointments, and he wasn’t sure where or when any of them was supposed to be. America was too bewildering for him.

  He fell asleep in his clothes on the bed, I fell asleep in the chair – it was pretty hot. We were both woken up by a fat friendly man unpacking suitcases and setting up lights. He was a photographer, and he was supposed to take pictures of us for a magazine.

  Those hideous bright lamps were the reason it was discovered that I hadn’t really washed for a long time. We had a bathroom handy, and I was packed off there right away. I would rather have gone downstairs to the swimming pool. The dirt wasn’t really my fault; it was mainly because at the end of our time on the boat I’d made friends with a couple of stokers.

  My father was able to order some whiskey to our room, and then he got talking to the photographer. They didn’t really understand what each other was saying, but they got on really well together even so. They would each take a sip of whiskey at the same moment, and smile at each other. When one of them stopped speaking, the other would begin. Finally the photographer agreed to telephone for my father. He straightened out one appointment, and said lots of things very fast.

  I had to write everything down, and later I was told I had written it down all wrong. My father went out and met people, but they weren’t the ones he was supposed to try and meet. Among others he met a German waiter who helped him rent an old car, and in a French restaurant he almost married the cook.

  I already understood from Herr Krabbe that in America I would have to watch my father like a hawk, to make sure he doesn’t suddenly get married, because in America you can get married just like that, and if a man was in a hurry he could easily get married five times in a single day, or even more. Even though it’s so easy, it’s illegal, and in fact it’s severely punishable. It seems to me it would be better if illegal things were difficult, especially for foreigners who aren’t sure what’s permitted and what isn’t.

  In Italy we met a man who had to pay a two hundred lire fine for kissing a famous girl on the street. After that I was always afraid when my grandmother wanted to kiss me in public somewhere. It made her cross, and she called me standoffish, but two hundred lire was a lot of money for us just then.

  The car my father rented in America was almost the end for us, because he drove it beautifully but always in some unlawful way.

  On that first evening, my father had no use for me. But I didn’t feel like sleeping, so I was left in the hands of the photographer. My father preferred me not to be left on my own, because he had heard that a gangster had been shot in the room above us. Probably it was one who had been stealing children. But I wasn’t scared any more, not since I’d seen America and the Americans for myself.

  The photographer had to take pictures of a Communist meeting, and he took me with him. First he went looking through my suitcase for an intact pair of socks. When he couldn’t find any, I was allowed to take off my holey ones and not wear any. That’s what I prefer anyway. Men are always much nicer and more sensible about these things than women anyway. I prefer their company too; old ladies I always find are particularly dangerous to children.

  In America I met women who wanted me to look like Shirley Temple, and always have clean fingernails. But it’s not possible for me to look as nice as little girls in films. And my nails get dirty absolutely by themselves. I really don’t get them like that on purpose or because I’m naughty.

  Before we went out, I unpacked my father’s suits and hung them up in the wardrobe because that’s what my mother always does. The photographer helped me, and it was he who found the three mutton chops and the piece of liver that I’d completely forgotten about.

  I had collected the mutton chops and the liver on the ship, and secretly packed them in the suitcase so that I could send them to my mother later from New York. Both of those things are particular favourites of hers. But the meat didn’t look so nice any more, and it didn’t smell at all nice either. The photographer threw the whole lot out of the window. It was just as well too, I think. My father’s favourite pale trousers had a stain, but thank God it was over the b*m. It’s always other people who see stains like that, you never see them yourself, and so there’s really no need for you to feel annoyed or ashamed.

  The photographer went down in the lift with me, rushing through thousands of storeys – America’s so nice like that. Perhaps the mutton chops hadn’t yet hit the ground, that’s how high up we were staying.

  Before the meeting we stopped at a stand where I sat on a high stool in front of a bar, and drank fresh pineapple juice, and ate as much coloured ice as I wanted. I could have done that on the ship as well, but unfortunately I didn’t get to hear about it till it was too late.

  Then we drove in a car to Central Park. Central Park is amazing and very big, you’re allowed to run on the grass and feed little grey squirrels. But that evening the squirrels were already tucked up in bed in their tall dark trees. I watched the buildings rise like giant castles into the sky, which was deep dark blue behind a veil of hot pink light. So much light was bubbling up out of the skyscrapers that I felt like picking up an empty mineral water bottle and filling it up with the frothy light to give my mother in Amsterdam later.

  The Communist meeting was in a hall that was as big as a hundred theatres put together. Sometimes it was boring, and sometimes as rowdy as Carnival. Streamer
s were thrown, people sat in smoke and dust. There were Negroes there as well, I even got to sit next to one. He gave me a stick of chewing gum.

  A stage was covered with flags, flags soared up into the smoky air. Sometimes a man got to speak, sometimes a woman – their voices came shouting through big funnels. People clapped and shouted, photographers scuttled this way and that, and sometimes there were flashes of brilliant white light.

  Once I was allowed to go outside with the photographer and eat hot dogs at a bar and drink a cup of coffee, then after that I got tired. I went out to get some air. There were lots of policemen standing around.

  I went for a walk, and because it was dark I suddenly lost my bearings. I spent a long time looking for the Communist meeting, and then I looked for our hotel, and I couldn’t find that either. I was so tired I forgot to take the chewing gum out of my mouth. I think chewing was making me even more tired.

  I didn’t cry, and I wasn’t afraid either. Sometimes I had the feeling I was still on the ship, which was rocking and stamping under me. The air smelled of the sea. It was a warm May evening. I wanted to think of gardens with lilac and go to sleep in them, only you don’t get lilac flowering by the sea.

  My mother always wanted to see the lilac in her birthday month of May. She told me about little red villages that were buried under white and purple flowering lilac bushes. Every individual bloom kissed you with its scent, and numbed you and made you good and made you want to kiss other people. Pink hawthorn bushes surrounded the villages like cheerful red and green bungalow roofs. The meadows had soft green hair garlanded with golden buttercups. Glittering streams whispered the secrets of the meadows, and the air was so mild it turned the whole night into a downy bed. So my mother told me. Now when will I see it?