Rachel watched Masha’s face. ‘Weren’t you afraid?’
‘I don’t think I was, because Rudi took it as a joke. He said they were civilians and he wasn’t afraid of any civilian. And I always felt so safe with him. I didn’t think anything could happen to us. We just carried on as usual. We didn’t try to hide anything. Rudi was very gallant. He always took my arm in public. He let everyone know that we were together, that he was proud of me.’
‘That was perhaps not very prudent of him.’
‘Perhaps not. But we were not in a mood to be prudent. We didn’t think we were doing anything wrong.’ Masha’s face changed. ‘And then one day the police came to our house and hammered on the door and ordered me to present myself at the station for questioning.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘I suppose I knew in that moment that it was all over, but I was too infatuated to accept it at first. I went down to the station with my head held high. They kept me waiting for hours, sitting on a hard chair. I could hear things happening in the cells below – beatings, men calling out for mercy. It was horrible. At last an officer came to see me. His head shaved almost to the crown, a black leather coat. You know the type.’
‘I know the type,’ Rachel said briefly.
‘He had a thick folder full of our movements, going back weeks. The Two Eggs had written down every single detail. He demanded to know if we had been to this place together, and that place, and the other place, on and on. I said I didn’t deny any of it. He asked if I were not Jewish. I said that of course I was. He asked why Rudi would associate with a Jewish girl when there were so many Aryan girls to be had. I laughed in his face and answered that if all Aryan girls were blonde and pretty, the way they were supposed to be, then I presumed Rudi would have chosen one of them.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Masha!’
‘Yes. I think I was a little hysterical by then. I was only seventeen, remember. And in those days, one didn’t really know what could happen.’
‘He could have smashed your face.’
‘He just stared at me, as though I were some kind of strange insect. Then he demanded to know if I was not ashamed to be destroying the career of so promising a young officer. I asked what he meant. He said that Rudi would be dishonourably discharged for going out with a Jewish girl, and would never be trusted with any kind of authority as long as he lived. As for marriage, that was out of the question. It would not be legal. If I did not leave Rudi, he would be finished. He would never serve the Reich. He would be disgraced, perhaps even imprisoned. Then this man lit a cigarette and told me to make my choice, there and then.’
Rachel didn’t take her eyes off Masha. ‘What did you do?’
‘I walked home and I told my mother not to let Rudi in the house again. From then on, whenever he called, they said I wasn’t home. I could hear my mother crying on the doorstep. Rudi wrote letters, but I didn’t answer them, though I read them all before I burned them. For a long time he would stand outside the house the whole weekend, looking up at my window. I would try not to look at him through the curtains, because I didn’t want him to know I was there. But I couldn’t resist. He was all I wanted to see. He was—’ there was a catch in her voice. ‘He was everything to me.’
Rachel touched her hand gently. ‘My poor Masha.’
‘And then one weekend he stopped coming. His friends told me that his boat had been sent on manoeuvres in the Atlantic and that he would be gone for several months. I don’t know if it was true or not. In any case, I never saw him again.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Masha wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘Isn’t that a very silly, pointless story?’
‘It’s a Berlin story.’
‘You know the Franz Lehar song? In the magic glimmer of the silver light, it was nothing but a dream of happiness.’
‘Perhaps you will come across him again one day.’
‘I don’t think that is very likely, do you? By now, of course, he has been called up to fight. Perhaps he will die. Perhaps his submarine has already been sunk by the British. He may be at the bottom of the ocean. Or in another girl’s arms. Who knows? He’s not mine any more and I shouldn’t care. The whole thing seems now like something I saw in the theatre, or in a dream. How much changed in Germany over the last three years, Rachel. Everything went dark as fast as night coming on a winter’s evening.’
‘Yes,’ Rachel said quietly, ‘it did.’
‘You are very sympathetic,’ Masha said. She put her hand almost timidly on her cousin’s and looked into her rather angular face. ‘I wish I’d known you better, earlier.’
Rachel looked down at the delicate hand that was laid over hers. Slowly, she covered it with her own. ‘I wish that, too.’
‘We should have been friends a long time ago.’
‘Well . . .’ Rachel didn’t continue. Despite much in common – youth, music, culture – the two girls had been kept apart by their families. Or rather, Masha knew that Rachel had been kept away from her, on account of the mysterious ‘danger’ that had never quite been explained. And though Rachel could certainly be sarcastic, Masha was very glad of her company now. She did not think she could have faced this momentous voyage alone.
They sat in silence for a while, each lost in her own thoughts. Then the sound of the dinner gong, being beaten by a steward along the corridor outside, roused them.
‘Come on,’ Rachel said, withdrawing her hand and patting her cousin’s shoulder, ‘let’s see what jokes the chefs have played on us tonight.’
Stravinsky had slept as he always did these days, fitfully and disturbed by dreams of death from which he awoke filled with a pervasive sense of dread. He stood at the washstand, fastening his bow tie with the aid of the mirror there. His fingers shook slightly. His own face stared back at him, pasty, reptilian. He was still a sick man, whatever lies the doctors told him.
The German boy was dressing, too. He had an unexpected gift for silence, the German boy. He hadn’t made a sound while Stravinsky slept. Perhaps they taught them that in the Hitler Youth: knowing when to keep your mouth shut. He’d been afraid that the boy would be a nuisance, but to the contrary, he was as unobtrusive as the best sort of servant; and like the best sort of servant, apparently eager to wait on Stravinsky hand and foot. Perhaps they taught them that, too, in the Hitler Youth. He had been brushing his own blazer carefully and now, without asking or being asked, he began to brush Stravinsky’s dinner jacket.
‘That’s very kind,’ Stravinsky said, watching the boy in the mirror, past his own haunted reflection. ‘You are a thoughtful boy.’
‘Do you have children of your own?’ the boy asked.
Stravinsky concentrated on his bow tie. ‘I had two sons and two daughters. One of my daughters is dead, now.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Ludmila.’
‘Was it a long time ago?’
‘A year ago.’
The boy considered. ‘Was she sick?’
‘We were all sick. My wife, my daughter and I.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He inspected Stravinsky’s dinner jacket minutely for specks of dust. ‘Did your wife die, too?’
‘Yes. My wife died, too. She died a few months after my daughter. Now I am alone.’
‘What did she die of?’
‘Enough questions, Thomas.’
The boy looked up quickly from his task. His eyes were a sharp, pale grey, his close-cropped hair white-blonde. Freckles were scattered across the long, fox-like nose. He was an absolute example of Aryan boyhood. ‘I ask too many questions,’ the boy said. ‘I was always told this. I apologise.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Stravinsky turned from the washstand. ‘You are very quiet while I sleep, for which I am grateful.’ The boy helped him on with his dinner jacket, straightening the sleeves and adjusting the lapels with his thin fingers. ‘How do I look?’
‘Sehr ausgezeichnet.’
Stravinsky fitted a cigarette into the little ebony holder and li
t it. The first lungful of smoke produced a racking bout of coughing. He tasted the salt in his mouth and spat dark clots of blood into the basin. The boy observed this but did not comment. ‘It was tuberculosis,’ he said at last, rinsing the crimson stains away. ‘We all had it. But you are safe. They say I am cured.’
‘I think you are dying.’
Stravinsky tried a second inhalation. ‘You are as silent as the grave for hours, Thomas, but when you do talk, you are damned direct.’ He coughed up more blood and spat into the basin. After a while, the coughing eased and he was able to endure the smoke in his lungs.
‘Have the doctors advised you to smoke?’ Thomas asked, frowning.
‘They’ve advised me very strongly not to smoke. But—’
‘But you don’t listen to them.’
‘I have a symphony to write.’
‘Do you need to smoke to write a symphony?’
‘It’s a symphony in C. The C stands for Cigarettes.’
‘Are you joking?’
‘Not at all.’ Stravinsky finished the cigarette and consulted his watch. ‘We mustn’t be late. We should go.’
‘I am ready.’
As they walked to Katharine’s cabin, Stravinsky had his hand on the boy’s shoulder for support. He felt weak and a little confused. The crowding of the ship was abominable. Everyone was in a fervour which would not abate, he supposed, until they had left France. Katharine was ready when they arrived, wearing a formal, dark-green gown which exposed her slim shoulders, of which she was rather proud.
‘How are your cabin-mates?’ Stravinsky asked her.
‘Ghastly,’ she said with a shudder. ‘They’re a pair of New Jersey widows who were caught by the war while spending their late husbands’ life policies on a European holiday. They intend to stay drunk until they reach New York.’
‘At least they have a plan.’
Katharine turned to the boy, barely disguising her repugnance. ‘I hope you are being considerate towards Monsieur Stravinsky, Thomas?’
‘He smoked a cigarette in the cabin and coughed up blood, at least a tablespoon.’
‘You are a little informer, Thomas,’ Stravinsky said.
‘Oh, Igor,’ Katharine said in dismay. ‘You promised you wouldn’t start again.’
‘Nonsense.’ Stravinsky waved her concern away petulantly.
‘He says he is writing a symphony in C,’ Thomas said. ‘He says the C stands for Cigarettes.’
‘Perhaps,’ Katharine said grimly, ‘it stands for Coffin.’
The Cabin Class dining room was an amazing confection of glittering Americana, as though Marie Antoinette had built a palace in Wyoming and had it decorated by the Comanche. High in the lofty ceiling, crystal chandeliers illuminated colourful murals depicting redskins hunting the mighty buffalo, or greeting the white man with gifts of pumpkins and corn. Braves on mustangs galloped across a prairie framed between heavy velvet curtains. Cowboys waved their Winchesters aloft among gilded rococo swags. A sea of snowy linen and gleaming silverware covered the three dozen tables below, each one of which seated six and had a softly glowing lamp as a centrepiece.
The Commodore’s table was set in the centre of the huge room, where everyone could see it and envy those invited to dine at it. Toscanini, in the place of honour beside Commodore Randall tonight, had put on his spectacles to peruse the menu. Commodore Randall, impeccable in his mess-jacket, leaned towards Toscanini like an amiable grampus. ‘I recommend the live boiled lobster, Mr Toscanini, followed by the Boston sole meunière.’
‘As a student at the conservatory in Parma,’ Toscanini replied in his heavy Italian accent, ‘I ate only boiled fish for three years. Since then, I eat nothing that comes from the sea.’
One of the other passengers, a plump woman from Topeka named Mrs Dabney, travelling with her largely silent husband, tugged at her immense pearls to draw attention to them. ‘How romantic that you rose from poverty to pre-eminence, maestro!’ she exclaimed.
‘Poverty is in no sense romantic, Signora,’ Toscanini retorted.
‘What about Rodolfo and Mimì in La bohème? That’s romantic, isn’t it?’
‘La bohème is an opera,’ Toscanini pointed out. ‘After dying of hunger, the performers get up and cash their cheques.’
Mrs Dabney laughed gaily. ‘Dear maestro, do you think Mussolini will bring Italy into this war?’
‘Mussolini is capable of any brutality. Only Britain can stop him.’
‘We had to pull the Brits out of the fire last time,’ said Dr Emmett Meese, a prominent New York surgeon. ‘Why do they keep starting wars if they can’t finish them? We should just let things take their course.’
‘And let fascism consume Europe?’
‘We have nothing to gain by getting our fingers burned.’
‘It’s not what you have to gain,’ Toscanini commented dryly, ‘it’s what we have to lose.’
‘It’s not our fight. I say America first and to hell with the rest.’
‘Mussolini offered to make me a senator,’ Toscanini said. ‘I told him, the emperor Caligula made his horse a senator, but I am only a donkey that you like to beat. Do you know why I hold my head like this, to one side? When I refused to play the Fascist Hymn at La Scala, Mussolini sent his men. They beat me in the street. They beat me to the ground with clubs. Ever since then, I live with the injuries. Sometimes I have to cancel engagements, because I cannot lift my arm. That is fascism.’
‘Have you heard Hitler’s latest?’ someone said. ‘He’s ordered the extermination of all mental defectives in Germany.’
‘The Führer gets a bad press,’ said Dr Emmett Meese, ‘but stopping these kinds of folks from breeding can only have a beneficial effect on the human family.’
‘It would certainly have had a beneficial effect on your family,’ Toscanini growled.
The surgeon polished his horn-rimmed glass earnestly. ‘I can’t say I disagree with him on the issue of the Jews, either. They’ve had it coming for a long time.’
‘The Jews are harmless, surely?’ Commodore Randall replied.
‘Not in my view. And this ship is already carrying far too many of them,’ Dr Meese said. ‘I believe that fully half our passengers are in that category. Everywhere you look there’s a hook nose or a crafty eye. Why should we be taking what Hitler doesn’t want?’
‘If Hitler doesn’t want Albert Einstein or Yehudi Menuhin,’ Randall said, ‘then I reckon we can have them.’
‘Our nation is bulging at the seams with riff-raff. There are hundreds of thousands of Mexican migrants roaming around the country. Not to mention the Negroes, the Italians, the Japanese and all the rest. We should pack them up and send them all home.’
‘I cannot eat,’ Toscanini said, pushing his chair back and getting to his feet. ‘I have no appetite.’
He strode along the deck, muttering to himself. He had no intention of going back to his cabin, which he was compelled to share with five imbeciles and their assorted imbecilities. Exhausted as he was, he could neither eat nor sleep. He would rather pace the ship. The surging energies he had been born with had never permitted him to be comfortable seated or recumbent. At the Conservatory, he had even detested the instrument assigned to him, the cello, because it had to be played seated. He had never been more happy than when he’d been able to exchange the cumbersome instrument (he’d pissed in the damned thing once) for a baton.
And now, between sleeplessness and hunger, every nerve in his body crackled. Carla had not appeared. Carla was nowhere. Le Havre was dark tonight, dark as the pit, all lights extinguished in a blackout to foil German bombers. Only the stars danced dimly in the black water of the harbour.
The endless night of human stupidity! The darkness of human folly, ignorance, madness! How small a light of wisdom shone and how easily it was extinguished by the beating of leathery wings.
He took off his hat and bowed his white head on to the railing, groaning loudly to himself in the darkness.
> In the Tourist Class dining room (low-ceilinged and plain) Igor Stravinsky studied the menu with a disgusted expression. The options were unappetising: vegetable soup or melon to start, fried flounder or stewed mutton to follow. There was only one sweet – rice pudding. The smells of these dishes, greasy and faintly rancid, percolated through the crowded dining room.
‘We have truly left France behind us,’ he remarked to Katharine ironically. The German boy sat silently beside them, his nose in a book, uninterested in food. The others at their table, who had the beaten look of refugees, discussed the menu anxiously in some foreign language.
‘Would you like to go ashore and find a restaurant?’ she suggested.
‘I’m too tired,’ he replied. ‘Besides, I have to learn to be frugal.’ He laid down the menu. ‘I have become a character in a cartoon.’
She winced. Stravinsky’s dire financial status – a perennial problem in his career – was reflected in his desperate sale of The Rite of Spring to Walt Disney, to be used in an animated film called Fantasia. ‘Don’t think of it like that.’
‘You mistake me,’ he said with a twisted smile. ‘I thank God every day for Walt Disney. Without his money, I should literally be destitute.’ He coughed and wiped a little smear of blood from his lips, inspecting his handkerchief with heavy-lidded eyes. ‘Everything decays. Life, art, the world. It’s the natural process of dissolution. One must accept it.’
A harried steward came to take their order. They all chose the mutton, since the pervading aroma of the fish was dubious, and declined the first course. That little crimson stain on Stravinsky’s handkerchief had not escaped Katharine. It frightened her that he’d started smoking again. His lungs were still ravaged. His wife Katya’s tuberculosis had devastated the Stravinskys, working its way through the family like a poison. It had taken the life of their daughter Ludmila last year. Katya herself had died in March. Stravinsky had spent six months in hospital, during which time his mother had died of the disease.
The Ocean Liner Page 4
