The Ocean Liner

by Marius Gabriel

  ‘Where are you going, Arturo?’

  He was brought up short. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You’ve arrived.’

  ‘You see me, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I see you.’

  ‘You can’t imagine the journey I’ve had,’ Carla said crossly. ‘The whole of Europe has gone mad. Including you, I think.’ She rapped the trolley sharply with her umbrella. ‘Get these things back on board. Don’t you know the ship is about to leave?’

  ‘Of course I know that,’ he snapped.

  She took his arm as the porter heaved the laden trolley around, and began to trundle back up the ramp. ‘Why aren’t you wearing the scarf I gave you, that cashmere one?’

  He clutched his throat. ‘I put it on this morning. I think I may have dropped it somewhere.’

  ‘You’re becoming impossibly forgetful,’ Carla said severely. ‘It was expensive. Really, you are hopeless without me.’

  ‘Without you,’ he growled, ‘life was a lot quieter.’

  After his visit to the engine room, Thomas had been unable to stop talking about the sights he had seen. They had made an immense impression on him. Words poured out of him: so many degrees Fahrenheit, so many pounds per square inch, so much boiler horsepower, he remembered all the figures precisely.

  He, Thomas and Katharine had gone up to the games deck, the highest part of the ship. It was crowded with passengers, but they found a place at the railing. Two tugs had arrived alongside the Manhattan. As they nosed her away from the wharf, pouring black smoke, the great liner seemed to give a shudder all along her steel body.

  Down on the quayside, a band was playing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, but the thumping of the anthem was barely audible over the cheering of the multitude. At least, it was presumably cheering; at times, it sounded like wailing. Streamers and confetti poured from the ship, snaking down on to the crowds below, a final, tenuous link with Europe that was soon broken.

  The tugs nudged Manhattan into the channel, leaving behind her empty berth, where mats of coloured streamers floated in the oily, grey water. The liner moved steadily away from shore. The sound of the band grew distant. Already, there was a new perspective. The buildings of Le Havre appeared smaller, a toy town for children. The security of the harbour gave way to a prospect of the open sea, dark blue and mottled with the sunlight that streamed through the patchy cloud cover.

  The tugs fell away on either side. Again, Manhattan shuddered, more deeply this time. Her gears had engaged. She uttered another long blast on her hooter to indicate that she was making way under her own steam. The tugs responded, and so did every other vessel nearby. Thomas clapped his hands over his ears to shut out the huge sound. Stravinsky patted him on the shoulder, and then stared at the receding shapes of France. The ship felt different now, purposeful. She steamed steadily out of the harbour towards the open sea.

  The crowds that lined the digue nord at the mouth of the harbour were densely packed, but largely silent. As the ship passed them, Stravinsky noticed a few waving hands and fluttering handkerchiefs, but by and large, the last Frenchmen he saw simply stood passively, watching the ship sail away.

  The English Channel

  The radio transcript was delivered to Commodore Randall as he dined in Tourist Class, which it was his habit to do two or three times on each voyage. Unlike some captains, he was not above joining the hundred-dollar passengers now and then, and conferring upon them the reflection of his glory.

  They were having a rough crossing of the Channel. Plates slid across the tables as Manhattan rolled. Half the tables in the dining room were empty. Commodore Randall’s dinner companions included the Russian composer Stravinsky and his companion, Miss Wolff, who had both been staring at their plates during his anecdotes, showing little of the sympathy or excitement one might have expected from highly sensitive persons.

  Randall paused in his narrative as the steward put the slip of paper into his hand, and studied the message. The first line was enough to make Randall swiftly fold it again and put it into his jacket pocket. He glared at the fool who didn’t know better than to bring such messages into dining rooms, but the man was already hurrying away. He would make sure someone had a word with him later.

  ‘And so it was,’ he continued, steadying his wayward plate, ‘that the story, which began so badly, had a happy ending.’

  The German boy with the swastika on his lapel, who had been the only listener hanging eagerly on the captain’s words, spoke anxiously in his guttural English. ‘But you have not said what happened next. Was nobody drowned?’

  ‘We didn’t lose a single soul,’ Commodore Randall replied. ‘It was all in a day’s work for me and my crew, but for some reason the newspapers got a hold of the story, and imagine my surprise, on returning to New York, to be given a ticker-tape parade.’

  ‘What is this, please?’

  Randall smiled indulgently at the pale youth. ‘I and my crew were driven in an open car down Broadway, from the Battery to City Hall. We were showered with confetti and streamers all the way.’ Randall was already pushing back his chair preparatory to leaving the table. ‘But I must excuse myself. We’ll be in Southampton by morning. I bid you good night, ladies and gentlemen.’

  With a snappy salute, he left the dining room, nothing loth to forego the rest of his dinner, a hash of beef which, between the fat and the gristle, required careful navigation. He would fill the empty place inside him later. For now, he was more concerned to examine the transcript he had been handed.

  He read it on the bridge, watched by a group of officers who already knew the contents. It consisted of a series of Marconigrams. The first read:

  SOS FROM BRITISH CARGO SHIP ROBERT RECORDE POSN 54 22 N 1705. TORPEDOED BY GERMAN SUBMARINE. 23 CREW SOME STILL ABOARD. SINKING. URGENT.

  The position given was in the Western Approaches, along the route which Manhattan herself would shortly be traversing. The second Marconigram, sent an hour later, read:

  M.V. PEARL PRINCESS. DISTANCE FROM YOU 30. STEERING FULL STEAM AHEAD TO YOUR ASSISTANCE.

  The third was also from the Pearl Princess, and had been sent to the British Admiralty some six hours later:

  REACHED LAST POSITION OF ROBERT RECORDE. OIL SLICK AND WRECKAGE FOUND. NO SIGN VESSEL OR LIFEBOATS. CONTINUING SEARCH.

  Randall folded the paper and looked up at his officers. ‘Anything since?’

  ‘Nothing, Commodore.’

  ‘Well, gentlemen. We know what we’re up against. We’ll be setting special watches. I’ll order a lifeboat drill as soon as we leave the British Isles.’

  ‘Will we be plotting an evasive course, sir?’

  ‘No.’

  The first officer cleared his throat. ‘The British Admiralty advised—’

  ‘I’m fully aware of the advice of the British Admiralty,’ Commodore Randall growled, turning a cold eye on the man. ‘It applies to British shipping. We are a United States vessel.’

  ‘Yes, Commodore.’

  There was a silence. The Admiralty announcement had been sent from London on the first day of the war, advising all shipping to travel at speed in a zigzag pattern to avoid submarine attacks. Randall’s officers watched him, waiting.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded, glaring back at them. ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘Sir,’ the navigator began, ‘we’re going to be carrying fifteen hundred passengers on this trip. The Athenia—’

  ‘The Athenia was making full steam, showing no lights, and plotting a zigzag course. Am I wrong in what I say?’

  ‘No, Commodore.’

  ‘And she was still torpedoed?’

  The men all took an automatic step to maintain their balance as Manhattan rolled in a trough. ‘Yes, Commodore.’

  ‘There you have it. A fatal decision by the British skipper. A darkened ship, jinking constantly, making full speed. What would arouse greater suspicion in a U-boat captain? The German assumed Athenia was a troopship or an armed merchant cruiser. He acted accordingly.’


  The officers shuffled, but nobody made a reply.

  ‘Running and hiding is not the answer. Creeping along is not the answer. Remember Farragut at Mobile Bay, gentlemen. Damn the torpedoes. Safety lies in boldness. I may go so far as to say that glory lies in boldness. I will plot the same passage that I have sailed all my life. We will show lights at night. We are Americans, and I’ll be damned if we will skulk like curs. The world knows that it tangles with the United States at its cost.’

  The reference to Farragut at the Battle of Mobile Bay had not had a reassuring effect on the ship’s officers, and when Commodore Randall had left the bridge to complete his dinner in his cabin, there was a muttered confabulation among them. While not quite old enough to have served in that glorious engagement, Commodore Randall was now in his sixties, and as one of them remarked, ‘The old man has survived so many adventures that now he believes he is immortal.’

  The Morgenstern cousins had not attended the evening meal. They had stayed in their cabin for most of the day. Masha had cried so much that she could hardly see to pack.

  Rachel took her arm. ‘Enough nonsense with the suitcase, please.’

  ‘Why don’t you cry?’

  ‘They couldn’t make me cry at kindergarten. They couldn’t make me cry at school. They couldn’t make me cry at the conservatory. I will not let them make me cry now.’

  ‘But our parents,’ Masha said. ‘Oh my God, poor Mama and Papa. To think of them cold and alone in some terrible place. We should never have left them.’ She returned blindly to folding things into the valise.

  ‘There is nothing you can do, Masha,’ Rachel said flatly. ‘We knew this would happen. That is why they made such a great effort to get us out. It’s hateful to think of squandering that sacrifice.’

  ‘I’m going back to join them.’

  ‘To be sent to a camp?’

  ‘They’re old and weak. I can at least take care of them, wherever they are.’

  ‘Do you imagine they will be happy to see you come back?’

  Masha swept the things off her side table into the valise. ‘I don’t want to be the last.’

  ‘Think of it as being the first,’ Rachel replied.

  ‘Do you realise that our family name will die out?’ Masha asked, taking clothes off the hangers in the closet.

  Rachel reached in her bedside drawer for the little bottle of smelling salts. ‘My dear, our family name died out a hundred and fifty years ago. Nobody even remembers what it was. They chose to call us after the morning star in the hopes that it would stop the Gentiles from persecuting us, but it only made us easier for them to find.’ She waved the vial under Masha’s nose. Masha’s head jerked involuntarily as the fumes of sal volatile struck her sinuses. She reeled back from the suitcase she had been packing. ‘It was a long struggle,’ Rachel went on, ‘and now it is over. There will be no Jews left in Germany.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Masha begged in a broken voice. ‘That stuff stinks. Put it away.’

  Rachel closed the lid of the suitcase. She put an arm around her cousin’s soft shoulders. ‘When we reach New York we’ll get information about them. And if the information is not good, we’ll have a kaddish sung for them. But you will not get off the boat at Southampton.’

  ‘You cannot stop me.’

  ‘I will have you locked in the hold, if necessary.’

  Masha peered at her blearily. ‘Don’t you have feelings?’

  ‘I have feelings,’ Rachel said quietly. ‘I have feelings inside, without displays or fuss.’

  Masha wept in silence for a while, her head on Rachel’s shoulder. At last she said, ‘You’re different from me. You’re brave. It takes a special kind of person to want to live when everyone you love has vanished. I am not such a person. I will get off the boat at Southampton. The British authorities must send me back to Germany. You take the rubies, go to America on your own. I don’t want to live with this burden any more.’

  ‘The burden of life, you mean.’

  ‘Yes, I mean the burden of life. This life. We grew up like those fish in glass bowls. We knew that terrible things were happening just beyond the glass, but we looked inward.’

  ‘And now the bowl has broken.’

  ‘Yes. But the bowl was our life. I can’t survive outside it.’ She sat up. ‘Let me pack my suitcase, Rachel. Don’t stop me.’

  ‘Very well,’ Rachel said after a pause. ‘If that is what you really want. I’m going to dinner.’

  Stravinsky looked up from his plate as the young woman took the empty seat at their table. She was a German Jewess of the blonde type, it seemed, very pale, and with a set expression on her face.

  ‘I may as well say from the start that I’m not an admirer of your music, Monsieur Stravinsky.’ She spoke good French with little accent. ‘But my cousin is. She’s the one who attempted to speak to you the other night, here, at dinner. You remember?’

  Stravinsky glanced at Katharine, who was frowning, then back at the Jewess. ‘I am at a loss, Fräulein.’

  ‘She is very pretty, with brown hair. She wore a red leather coat.’

  ‘Perhaps I recall such a person,’ Stravinsky said dubiously. ‘What of her?’

  ‘Her name is Masha. She is in our cabin now, packing her suitcase. She intends to disembark at Southampton.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘But we are on our way to New York. Our families sacrificed everything so that we could leave Germany. We have heard that all those who remain of our families – both hers and mine – have been sent to Silesia.’ Stravinsky saw her eyes land on the swastika that gleamed in Thomas’s buttonhole. ‘Now Masha says she is going back to Germany to perish with them. She won’t listen to me.’

  ‘What is it particularly about my music that you do not like?’

  The young woman’s eyes flashed. ‘I am not here to talk about your music. I am here to talk about my cousin. Don’t you hear me? She intends to disembark tomorrow and go back to her death in Germany.’

  Katharine leaned forward. ‘What is it you expect Monsieur Stravinsky to do?’

  ‘Talk to her. Persuade her out of this suicidal course of action.’

  Stravinsky rested his cheek wearily on his fist. ‘And what makes you think I might have the slightest influence on your cousin?’

  ‘She is a passionate admirer of your music. So much so that when she listened to your Rite of Spring, she felt her heart leap out of her chest. She became speechless in your presence. She’ll listen to you if to nobody else on this ship.’

  ‘Young woman, if I have no desire to continue my own life, I can hardly persuade a stranger to cling to hers.’

  ‘You’re old, and it’s fit you should feel that way. She’s a child. There is not much time. We will be in Southampton in a few hours.’ The young woman rose abruptly. ‘Her name is Masha Morgenstern, and she is in Cabin 321.’

  She hurried away from the table without looking back.

  ‘The melodramas of youth,’ Katharine remarked dryly. ‘Extraordinary.’

  Stravinsky pushed away the congealing bowl of stew, which he had barely touched. ‘You don’t believe this tale?’

  ‘I find it, as I say, theatrical.’

  ‘You don’t think I should follow it up?’

  ‘I think you should go to bed. You look exhausted. Don’t get involved in these histrionics.’

  Stravinsky turned to Thomas. ‘And what do you think, Thomas?’

  Thomas was staring after Rachel. ‘It’s true that her friend came to our table, but couldn’t speak. The two of them usually sit over there.’ He turned and pointed to an empty table across the room.

  ‘Ah. You’ve noticed them. Why? Because they are pretty?’

  ‘I notice everyone,’ Thomas said, the sharp ridges of his cheekbones colouring.

  ‘You hear this?’ Stravinsky said to Katharine. ‘Two sparrows are sold for a farthing, but one does not fall without Thomas noticing.’

  ‘You’re not thinking of g
oing to these young women? It is certain to be a trap of some kind.’

  ‘I’m not so much afraid of that,’ he replied, dabbing his pendulous lips with his napkin and pushing away from the table, ‘but I don’t think I can be of any use in their present predicament. You are right, chérie. Let’s go to our beds.’

  Rachel heard the tap at the door, and hurried to open it. She was bitterly disappointed to find that the caller was not Stravinsky, but the German boy who had been sitting beside him.

  ‘What do you want?’ she demanded curtly.

  He was blushing hotly. ‘I have – I have—’

  ‘Did Stravinsky send you?’

  He shook his head dumbly, staggering a little as the ship rolled.

  ‘Then why have you come sniffing around here?’

  ‘I have something to show the other Fräulein.’

  ‘You can have nothing to say that she would be interested in,’ Rachel retorted. She indicated the swastika on his jacket. ‘Take that hideous thing off.’

  ‘I made a promise to always wear it.’

  ‘To the Führer?’

  ‘To my mother.’

  ‘Your mother is a good Nazi, it seems.’

  Masha came to peer over Rachel’s shoulder with swollen eyes. ‘Who is it? Oh, it’s Monsieur Stravinsky’s little friend. Why are you here?’

  The boy, acutely shy, swallowed, the knot of his Adam’s apple jumping in his lean throat. ‘I would like – like to show you something.’

  Masha glanced interrogatively at Rachel, who shook her head. ‘Well, I suppose you should come in, then.’

  Rachel glared at Masha. ‘The boy is a Hitler spy. I don’t want him in our cabin.’

  ‘He is a child,’ Masha said wearily. ‘What harm can he do?’

  ‘You know what harm these people can do,’ Rachel retorted. But against her wishes, Masha admitted the boy.

  ‘What is it you want to show me?’ Masha asked.

  ‘Here.’ He took something from under his arm.