The Voyage: A Historical Novel set during the Holocaust, inspired by real events

by Roberta Kagan

  “I met a young lady last night after dinner.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, her name is Anna. She is quite lovely.”

  It had been so long since Alex had even thought of romance or love. Survival had been his only concern.

  “That’s very nice. I am happy for you...”

  “Maybe you should stay around after dinner tonight. There are many lovely ladies on board.”

  “I’ll see.”

  Alex found that he could not enjoy the food. It stuck in his throat, which seemed always to be as dry as sandpaper, regardless of how much water drank to hydrate himself. While Manny sat talking to Anna, he thought only of his parents and little sister...all had perished…all had been murdered. If only he’d been able to take little Esther with him. If only he could have done something, anything, to save her. Of course, he was not sure they were dead; he’d never seen their bodies, but he’d been told by others whose word he trusted that they were gone. His friend who’d been forced to shove the bodies into a mass grave had assured him as gently as possible that he would not see his family again.

  Lost in thought, Alex didn’t realize that Manny had left the table. He did not look up from his plate until Manny returned and stood before him speaking.

  “Alex, come and join us. This is Anna,” Manny said, Anna standing beside him. “We are going to sit up on deck and play cards. Would you like to play?”

  Alex looked at Manny, dazed. He could not think about playing cards. His memories would not let him go.

  “No, thank you. I think I will go to the ship’s library and get a book, if they will allow me to do so.”

  “Of course they will, that is what the books are for.”

  “Hello, Alex,” Anna said and smiled.

  Alex answered with a troubled nod. “Hello, Anna. Nice to meet you.”

  Her eyes fixed on his troubled face.

  “Nice to meet you, too. I would really like you to join us. It’s a beautiful day, and we will be sitting up on the deck. You can get a little sun?”

  Alex looked at her, so young, hopeful, and innocent. Although he was only twenty-two, he felt as if he were one hundred and twenty-two. He shook his head. “No, thank you…”

  “Please, come with us Alex. I hate to think of you sitting all alone in your room.” She smiled again, and something in her smile touched him in a remote corner of his soul, a place that he’d vowed to destroy, forcing it to wither and die long ago.

  “Very well, if you insist.” Alex tried to return her smile. The corners of his mouth turned, but anguish still haunted his eyes.

  The sun burned brightly in a turquoise sky as the three walked slowly along the hardwood deck. As Manny and Anna sat at a table with an umbrella, Alex walked to the edge of the rail and gazed out. White-knuckled, he gripped the wooden railing. Looking at the blue of the ocean mingling with the sky, he allowed himself to wonder if perhaps there might be a God after all. But how could God have allowed his family and other innocent people, women and children, to be massacred, slaughtered, without any good reason? His mother’s eyes, the color of peat moss, stared back at him from the water. He thought he could hear her voice, but could not make out her words. As he stood up, his feet unable to move, he felt the ship’s motion and with it began to think he might become ill. So many lost; so many dead. He wished he could cry, longed for the release it might bring. But the tears would not come; instead, vomit rose in his throat, and without a word to his companions, he rushed back to his stateroom.

  “Your friend is rather strange.” Anna shuffled the deck of cards several times, then laid them on the table and gazed at Manny.

  “He was a prisoner in Dachau. He must have seen some terrible things.”

  “How did he ever get out?”

  “I don’t know. I almost feel uncomfortable asking him, as if I might be prying into his private world.”

  “Maybe he needs someone to talk to. He seems so all alone and so lost.”

  “That he does.” Then Manny looked at her lovely face with his dancing eyes. “But we are here and it is a beautiful day, yes? And you, my dear, are far too beautiful to fret over something we have no control over. So...shall we play cards?”

  She nodded, but as she looked at the hand Manny dealt, her thoughts were consumed with Alex. The depth of Alex’s very essence, and the pain in his soul cried out to her. Who was this man, and why did she want so very much to save him? She, Anna, who had never given thought to saving anyone. She, who had been pampered and adored, an only child, given to a couple gifted with a baby late in life. Anna knew she had been sheltered. And she’d loved her life, loved her parents, and loved her home. Perhaps that was why she wanted to shelter Alex.

  They played cards for the better part of the early afternoon, until it was almost time for lunch.

  When Manny returned to the stateroom to find Alex curled up on the floor in the corner, he rushed to his friend and knelt beside him.

  “Alex, what is it? Are you ill?”

  “How can I eat all this fine food and enjoy the weather when so many people are in the camps, so many still suffer?”

  Manny put his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Listen to me. You torturing yourself is not the answer to helping the others. How does your pain make their suffering less?”

  “I don’t know, but I can’t forget them. If I forget them, they will have endured the torture and died in vain. Leave me please?”

  Manny nodded and went upstairs on the deck to take a walk.

  That night Alex did not go to the dining room. Instead, he remained in the cabin alone. He fell asleep on the floor, too guilty to enjoy the comfort of the soft bed.

  Manny and Anna danced after dinner. As they waltzed she looked up at him with genuine concern. “How is your roommate?”

  “Could be better, but then how can we know or understand what he has been through? Somehow, you and I were the lucky ones. We were spared. Neither of us was in a camp.”

  “Yes, and it makes me feel so guilty, as if I must help him. Do you feel that way too?”

  “Well, sort of ... Yes, but I cannot. He won’t let me.”

  “So what can we do?”

  “Nothing, my dear. There is nothing to be done for him. Let us talk about you. Tell me, so… what were your favorite subjects in school?”

  She laughed. “You sound like my Aunt Minnie instead of Manny.”

  He touched her face, and then he laughed too. “All right then, you can call me Aunt Minnie.”

  Chapter 5

  That night Alex woke startled and covered in sweat. Manny had insisted he sleep in his bed instead of on the hard floor. Quietly, so as not to awaken Manny, he got out of bed and walked up the stairs to sit outside on the open deck. The darkness settled like a blanket filled with silver stars. As he sat alone, Alex gazed up into the sky, and finally the tears he’d held back for so long came like a flood through a broken dam, and he wept. The smell of the musty urine-soaked hay he’d slept on in the camp still lingered in his nose, and regardless of how much he bathed, he could not wash it away. The faces of the friends he left behind, with their jutting cheekbones and emaciated bodies, haunted his every moment. Perhaps it would have been better if he had died, for in truth he could not live, not like this. Alex wrung his hands and looked down at the floor. He was so caught up in thought that he did not hear the footsteps as they approached him.

  “Alex?” Anna’s soft voice entered his tormented world.

  Alex turned his head to look up but he did not answer.

  “I couldn’t sleep. I needed some fresh air.” She smiled, pulling a chair next to his. “May I join you?”

  He nodded, hating himself for being unable to communicate, aware of how uncomfortable he made this girl feel. Yet, small talk was not within his power.

  “Manny likes you very much.”

  “Does he? He is a good person.”

  “Yes, very kind and light hearted.”

  Alex nodded.

&nbs
p; “Alex…” She hesitated until he met her eyes. “You were in Dachau?”

  “Yes.” He looked out across the water.

  “I am sure it must be hard for you to forget.”

  “I will never forget.” His voice sounded angrier than he meant for it to be. When he looked at her face, he suddenly felt ashamed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so abrupt. It’s just that I feel that by keeping the memory of my friends and loved ones in my heart …” His voice cracked with emotion he could not speak.

  “I understand. And I agree, you must never forget them. But I also feel that if you stop living, you will have done them a terrible injustice. Your life must have meaning. Somehow, Alex, you have been chosen to live. If you do something wonderful with your life it will be for all of those who were unable to fulfill their dreams.”

  This was the first time any words had penetrated Alex’s grief stricken mind. Perhaps she could be right.

  “I was a writer before all of this began, in another time, another lifetime.” His voice cracked as the words emerged, barely audible.

  “What did you write?”

  It felt as if a crab apple had lodged itself in his throat, and he swallowed hard. “Before things got really bad… I guess what I am saying is, before Kristallnacht, I wrote fiction, short stories...but then…” Alex looked out over the dark water and wondered how deep the water was. He wondered how it would feel to fall to the bottom of the ocean, his breath sucked from his lungs as he left the world behind.

  “Yes, go on, please.” Anna’s voice brought him back as she took his hand. It startled him to feel the warmth of her touch, and he pulled his hand away. He’d not felt human contact in so long. Then he turned from the ocean to meet her eyes.

  “I couldn’t help myself. I tried. I suppose I should have tried harder, but, I began to write anti-Nazi essays. They seemed to flow out of me without my control. And worse, I was compelled to allow them to be published…especially in the Jewish communities. Something made me want to shout a warning. To let the others know what I could see coming in the future.”

  “And so you became an enemy of the Reich?”

  “Yes. I was arrested. I expected to be. But what I did not expect was that they would arrest my family.” He looked away from her. “They took us to Dachau: my mother, my father, and my sister Esther, my sweet, innocent little sister. If I had known they would take them… If I had known what they would do to them...” Deep sobs broke from within him. The sound filled the silence on ship’s deck like the wail of a dying animal.

  Helpless, Anna sat beside Alex as he wept.

  “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to put all of this on you.” He stood to leave.

  “Don’t go, Alex. Please stay.” She stood, looking up into his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, but I must.” With his head bowed, he left the deck, leaving Anna alone.

  Chapter 6

  Anna walked to the railing and stood gazing up at the sky. Why had the Nazis done this? What had caused such hatred of her people? While Alex had been beside her, she had forgotten her own pain, but now it returned. Could Manny be right? Would her parents ever be able to escape? Would she see them again? As a child, she could never have imagined a life without her family. The future seemed so simple then. She would grow up, marry, have children, and live within the same community she’d grown up in. She would shop at the same markets and have her parents over at her house for Sabbath dinners. Her Mama and Papa would never be far away. She would have children and bring them to visit their grandparents. That had been the plan. Now, everything had changed. She traveled to an unknown place, to meet distant relatives she’d never seen, who would take her to a country she’d only heard about. She knew she would think about the safety of her parents constantly, and her life would always feel incomplete. Anna felt tears sting the back of her eyes. Alex’s loss broke her heart, but she, too, had been forced to give up so much.

  The clicking of high heel shoes against the hard wood floor of the deck startled her, and she turned to see a young glamorous blonde.

  “So, another one with insomnia?” the blonde laughed. “I couldn’t get to sleep.”

  Anna returned the smile, impressed by the well-dressed stranger in the dark burgundy cotton dress with the black belt and matching shoes.

  “Hello, my name is Elke, and you are?”

  “Anna.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise.”

  “So, this is an exciting trip, no?”

  “Not really, not for me,” Anna said.”I would much rather be at home.”

  “Oh, come now, we’re going to Cuba… It’s beautiful, I hear.”

  “I had to leave my family behind.”

  “Yes, I had to leave my mother, but I can tell you this. I won’t miss her.”

  Anna turned to look at her companion.

  Elke laughed. “I’m sorry to laugh, but you look so shocked. My mother and I have been at odds for years. She was kind enough to use me to get special favors from the Germans. I have the blonde hair and blue eyes that they like so much. And when I turned thirteen I developed into a woman… I guess I was the perfect bait.”

  “Use you? How?”

  Elke avoided the question. “You are young and naïve, my friend. Well, no matter. It all served me well in the end. Her Gestapo friend took pity on me and sent me here to this ship. I guess in their way they liked me. So, I am off to a new and exciting place.” She laughed again. “You look so stunned.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, perhaps as we become better friends I will explain it to you.” Elke winked at Anna.

  The two girls sat in silence for a few moments. Then Anna asked, almost in a whisper. “What do you think Cuba will be like?”

  “A sultry haven, far away from Germany and my mother.”

  It was nearly dawn before Anna went to her stateroom. As she dressed for breakfast, an overwhelming sadness came upon her like an outbreak of influenza. Her head and body ached. Even though she’d tried to convince herself that somehow, some way, she would see her family again, in her heart she felt she would not. Never before had she been so fatalistic, and here, blessed with an opportunity to leave Nazi Germany, a dream that most Jews would have given anything to be a part of, she could not shake her depression. You should be ashamed of yourself, Anna. Stop this self-pity. You must believe that your parents will find a way out. There will be another ship…something will happen to save them. They will meet you in America. You must believe.

  When Alex left Anna on the deck, he returned to his cabin where he sat on the floor, awake, thinking. He was damaged, and he felt that he would never recover. If he had been less outspoken, perhaps his family would be alive. This guilt haunted his every moment. As he sat watching the sun rise, Alex felt the ship come to a stop. The easy swaying motion ceased, and he knew that they had docked somewhere. His first instinct was that they had returned to Germany. It had been a trick all along. The Nazis had given them two days of peace only to return them to hell. Sweat beaded on his brow. His hands shook so badly that he could not steady them. Alex knew he must rise and awaken Manny. He stood up, his knees wobbling beneath him, and walked over to where Manny slept, unaware of what had happened.

  “Manny, get up,” Alex said, shaking Manny’s shoulder. “Get up, the ship has stopped moving.”

  Manny rolled over on to his back and looked at Alex, confused, still hazy with sleep.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Sit up. Do you feel it? We’ve stopped moving. I am afraid they have returned us to Germany. I think perhaps this has all been a trick, and now we are all going to concentration camps.”

  Manny sat up in bed. It took a few minutes for him to acclimate himself, but once he did, he realized that Alex was right. The ship had docked…somewhere.

  “What are we going to do?” Alex said, more to himself than to Manny. “There is no place to hide on this ship. They have us. We are their priso
ners.” He got up and began to pace the small room. “I would rather jump into the sea and drown than ever see another concentration camp. I can’t take the torture, not again…”

  “Alex, you are getting ahead of yourself. Now please, nobody is jumping in the water. Let me get some clothes on and I will go up and see why the ship has stopped. Perhaps we are having some trouble with the engine or something. All right? Don’t panic, give me a chance to see what is happening.”

  Alex sat on the floor while Manny dressed.

  Manny looked over at Alex. Could he be right? Could he have been right all along? Maybe they were back in Germany, and it had all been a cruel Nazi trick to bring those who were in hiding out into the open, where they could be caught and sent to camps. Oy, this was not good. But before he would allow himself to believe the worst, he would try to stay optimistic. That was always his way. Manny could find the good in the most terrible situations. And he would not abandon hope, not yet.

  “I’ll be right back. You stay here, and don’t do anything crazy. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll find out what is what.”

  Alex nodded as Manny left the cabin, closing the door.

  Manny walked up onto the deck. There were people everywhere…boarding the ship. He walked over to a crewmember who stood assisting the new passengers, with their luggage and room assignment.

  “Excuse me,” Manny said. “May I ask why we have stopped and who all of these people are?”

  “We are in Cherbourg, sir. We’ve come to pick up additional passengers. It should only be a few hours before we are on our way to Cuba. I am sorry for the delay.”

  “Thank you,” Manny said, breathing a sigh of relief as he heard a couple speaking in Yiddish with a French accent.

  As quickly, as he could Manny raced back to the cabin, to tell Alex. Alex was still sitting on the floor when Manny opened the door.