The Fugu Plan

by Marvin Tokayer

  Cheya scarcely noticed the dark night rushing past. Staring at her husband, she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out so overwhelmed was she with concern about him. He had never been a strong man - neither bodily nor in his mind. From the first time the matchmaker had pointed him out, she had known she would be the stronger of the two. Yet she had never felt cause to complain. Getzel was a good man. He had always cared about her and doted on Dovid. He was an even-tempered, hard-working husband, a fine, competent human being. But what had happened to that man? What crucial aspect of him had been left behind in Moscow? Bad enough had been the shock of that September night, the nightmare of having been forcibly driven from their home. And now this. Getzel moved with the dull eyes, the exhausted gestures, the plodding movements of a man totally defeated.

  Poor, unhappy Getzel. Whatever had happened to him back in Moscow? Clearly someone had beaten him up. But who and why? He looked so small and hurt, like a trapped animal sitting across from her, lost in his big overcoat. She wanted to take him in her arms and make all the problems and sadness go away. But he was a husband, not a child. He was a man. She needed him to be her man, to help her with whatever God had in store for them - and who knew what that was? Cheya was frightened to feel so alone. She was even more frightened at the thought that Getzel might disappear entirely - either that he might wander off again and never return or that his mind might simply stop functioning altogether.

  "Take off your coat, Getzel. It's warm enough in here," she said quietly.

  His shaking head stilled as he looked over to her. Such terror, such pain in those brown eyes! She rose and began helping him out of the mass of cloth, gently brushing his hair away from his eyes in passing. He winced as her fingers touched the spot that had hit the sidewalk hardest.

  "Ahhh, Getzel'le, what have they done to you?" she whispered in anguish. Forgetting that they were in a public place with dozens of eyes watching them, she put her arms around his shoulders and held him against her heart.

  "God, make him well," she prayed silently. "I am frightened of the Russians. About the Japanese, I don't even know. Our son needs him. I need him. Oh, God, I can't do this all alone."

  For more than a week the great Trans-Siberian train moved eastward - through the Ural Mountains and out onto the vast, rimless plain of Siberia; it passed through Chelyabinsk and Omsk, crossed the great Yenisei River at Krasnoyarsk and made a long stop at the city of Irkutsk, capital of eastern Siberia. After seven days and three thousand miles, it skirted the edge of Lake Baikal, running along a narrow ledge blasted forty years before out of the lake's legendary vertical rock banks. And after eleven days, give or take a little, it plunged into Vladivostok - Russia's largest Pacific port. The very existence of the Trans-Siberian Railway was a feat of inestimable engineering determination. Its route was the finest way of taking the measure of Russia's scenic magnificence.

  But to the Polish-Jewish refugees who cared not a bit for engineering feats or scenic grandeur, the trip was an extended practice in anxiety and anticipation. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, to prevent the Russians from marching onto the train, culling them out from among the other passengers and taking them off to be shot. There was no basis for hope that they would not be pulled off the train at any of the Siberian stops and marched to a labor camp, there to spend the brief remainder of their lives. With every mile that passed, the refugees were going deeper and deeper into enemy territory. Wanting to go west to America, they were going east into Russia. It seemed monumentally stupid, now that they were sitting on the train. But now that they were there, there was less than ever that they could do to control their destiny.

  Life on the train was not uncomfortable. There was heat in the car and a constant supply of hot water for tea, from a samovar in the corner, even a courteous porter to pour it. The car was clean - in the beginning, at least - and the seats were upholstered. After the excitement of being underway passed off, though, the journey provided only one alternative to worry - boredom. People chatted and dozed, smoked and ate, sparingly, from the black bread and cheese and salami and, possibly, a spoonful of the chicken fat they had brought with them. Mix it with hot water and you had a reasonable chicken soup. But the anxiety never dissipated. Every time the train slowed, hearts began to beat faster. And after they crossed the Urals into Siberia itself, there was a terrifying portent. From time to time, they could never figure out why, the porters would come through the cars, courteously but firmly pulling down the blinds over the windows, leaving them to sit in the half-darkness and wonder what horrors were taking place outside that they were forbidden to see.

  Omsk passed, and Krasnoyarsk and even Irkutsk - that city synonomous with exile and deportation - and all were still on board who wanted to be. Is it possible, the refugees began to mutter among themselves, that we are really going to get out? They were in Asia already. There had been no mistaking the dark yellow faces and slanted eyes of the Chinese crowd at Irkutsk. Would even the unpredictable Russians carry people four thousand miles in order to kill them?

  Just before Vladivostok, the train pulled into a small station in the autonomous region of Birobidzhan. Standing at the door of the car, Dovid (the only refugee child aboard the train and excruciatingly bored) was amazed to see people that looked like Jews.

  "Hello, you up there!" one of the men on the platform said in accented but informal, authentic Yiddish.

  Taken aback at hearing his own language so far from home, Dovid said nothing.

  "What's the matter," the farmer shouted good-naturedly. "Can't one Jew speak to another?"

  "What are Jews doing here?" Dovid called back.

  "Don't you know? This is Birobidzhan! This is 'our state' in the Union of Soviet Socialist States!"

  The man laughed, though he didn't seem to be enjoying the joke much. "Never mind, ask your father. He can tell you about it."

  Dovid thought of his father who scarcely said anything anymore, who only sat and stared at nothing, occasionally shaking his head back and forth. He would ask the Amshenover rebbe, if ever he saw him again. Or perhaps his mother who was then coming over to see who he was talking to.

  "Where are you going to, boychik? " the man asked, nodding a polite greeting to Cheya.

  "To Vladivostok and to Japan and then to America," Dovid replied, "im yirzeh ha-Shem," he added.

  The Jewish farmer looked long and silently up at the young boy. Then sadly, shaking his head, he said to Cheya, "No one aboard here will ever leave the Soviet Union alive." As if saddened by the thought, the man turned away. Dovid pressed up against his mother, chilled to the bone by the words.

  If they had been the only ones to hear such a thing, they might have kept the terror to themselves. But other Birobidzhan Jews had whispered similar things to a few of the refugees who had gotten off the train to purchase food at the station kiosk. The fear in their hearts blossomed as never before. Those outside had not been just Russians - they were Jews. And they weren't merely Jews, but Russian Jews. Who would know, who could possibly know, better than they what the Soviet government did with Jews?

  Cheya sank back into the corner of her seat. Ever since Irkutsk, she hadn't been able to help thinking maybe, just maybe, they might reach Japan; and from Japan, of course, change boats for America. But it wouldn't happen; and God was punishing her, all of them, for even secretly beginning to think it might.

  The afternoon sun swung round to the side as the train turned south for the final leg into Vladivostok. The few religious Jews aboard stood facing the sun, facing toward Jerusalem, and prayed. The rest, like Dovid, sat quite still, silent and miserable, no longer looking forward to the moment of arrival.

  The train pulled slowly into the Vladivostok station and, with a tremendous exhalation of steam, announced it was home. The refugees who disembarked showed no such exuberance. Stiff and tired from eleven days of confinement, they had no idea what to expect or how to cope with it when it came. Unlike Moscow no one seemed to be here to gre
et them. They stood in a group on the cold platform, forty-five ragamuffins in a sea of knapsacks and old suitcases. One of the station officials approached and said something in Russian, but they could merely frown and shrug their shoulders. The official, apparently unconcerned, had just turned away when a young man with the Intourist insignia on his hat came rushing up.

  "I beg your pardon that I am late," he said, trying to catch his breath. "It took longer than I had thought. . . . Are you ready to go?"

  The refugees stood, looking at him. No one but a Jew would speak Yiddish like that. But what would a Jew be doing working for the government here?

  "What's the matter?" the young man said. "Come now, we can't stand here in the cold. We must go to the hotel!"

  A hotel! Not a boat? They were supposed to take a boat from here for Japan. Was this the plan, the trick - a trick covered over by sending a Jew to lead them on? Though they were not beyond caring, they were far beyond coping. The refugees picked up their baggage and followed their leader outside.

  The direct cold, after so long in the heated railroad cars, almost took their breath away and was in no way thwarted by their thin winter coats. For several blocks they trudged along snowy sidewalks until they arrived at a hotel. Vladivostock was not Moscow: no golden chandeliers, no elevators, no telephones. But also no barbed wire and no soldiers with dogs.

  "How long will we be here?" one of the refugees asked the Intourist official.

  "Regrettably, probably three or four days at least," he said. "The harbor is completely blocked with ice - it's been a terrible problem this winter. Probably three or four days till the icebreakers can smash through."

  "Will we be getting our tickets for the boat?" the refugee asked timidly.

  The Intourist man stared at him for a moment. "You will get your tickets just before you are allowed on board the boat, and that is all," he said. "What's the matter with you? What are you so worried about? The ice will melt, you know. The ship will come in. You will leave. Believe me!"

  Believe him? Or believe the Jews in Birobidzhan? Who knew? As again and again in the past, who could do anything about it anyway?

  For three days, the refugees waited, cold and hungry and, in some ways, in a worse state psychologically than they had been before - now half believing they really could get away from Russia, but still half fearing to let their hopes reach too high.

  Yet as they waited, another train was making the trans-Siberian journey, bringing another group of refugees to Vladivostok. On the third day, Dovid and his mother were sitting in the narrow hotel lobby when they spotted a familiar figure walking toward the front door.

  "Rebbe!"

  The old man from Amshenov turned at the sound of the word. "So far, so good, no?" he said, not remembering their names but recognizing them from Vilna. He smiled and continued on his way. The rebbe was not beyond feeling pleased with himself for having recommended what so far seemed to have been exactly the right course of action. It more than made up for the fact that he had been having stomach trouble ever since he had left Vilna.

  Dovid was delighted to have seen the old man. If the rebbe was here, how could they not get away?

  The next morning, the temperature rose and the icebreakers began clearing a way through the harbor. In less than a day, the now seventy-one-strong group of refugees filed into the one rough unheated cabin of the Japanese freighter Harbin Maru. The Soviet Union was behind them.

  7

  THE AIR OF THE TINY CABIN was close and heavy with the fetid odor of too many bodies having gone unwashed for too long. For nearly two days the overcrowded tramp freighter had been bucking and pitching through the Sea of Japan, groping through the winter mists toward the tiny Japanese port of Tsuruga. After the relative luxury of the rail journey to Vladivostok, the seventy-one passengers found themselves in steerage squalor. This ship - like the few that had preceded it and the dozens that would follow - had not been built for human cargo. The tiny box of a cabin, the decks, the holds, the entire boat, reeked of coal dust and the half-cured furs which it customarily carried. There was one washbasin, one toilet and, except for three or four small kerosene stoves, no heat against the bitter wind.

  The Amshenover rebbe had not slept well since leaving Vilna. Awake now, before dawn, he rose carefully and, carrying his blanket, stepped over half a dozen sleeping bodies on his way to the door. The cold was intense, but the air on the windward deck was fresh and clean. He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and watched as the stars were lost, one by one, to the gradual graying of day. He was thankful there were no clouds: rain would only make worse whatever was to come.

  With the end so near - surely they would land today - the responsibility he had accepted seemed overwhelming. His mind had traveled repeatedly over the possibilities of the future. Could he be taking these people to something somehow even worse than the horrors of the Europe they had left behind? For all his words of encouragement, what did he know? He could advise that going to Japan was a positive step. He could say it would be easier to get to America from Japan. He could tell his people that the Japanese were kind, that they were trustworthy, that whatever happened, Jews would be safer in Japan than in the Europe that soon was to be. But what did he know? The rebbe was acutely aware, as he stared from the deck out over the dark water, that he was directing people on the basis of intuition, not knowledge. It was a very Hasidic trait. But if he was wrong. ... If he was wrong, they were all in trouble. But they would all have been in trouble anyway. Better to die trying to live than to die not trying at all.

  The sun, just now clearing the horizon on his left, lifted his spirits. Straight ahead was a dark band that was too long to be anything but the coast of Japan. Mesmerized by the actuality of it, the rebbe watched, totally engrossed, as the darkness was replaced by the green of pine-covered hills. Was this not the most beautiful sight he would ever see - this clear, calm, solitary dawn over Japan? Trembling, he whispered a prayer that was at once a thanksgiving and a plea - let this gentle beauty be a true reflection of what Japan holds in store for us.

  He hurried inside to awaken the others.

  "It's beautiful! It's so green, for February! It is so bright under the sun, and so fresh. . . ."

  After two days at sea, any land would have looked good. With seventy-one people crowding the rail, the ship tipped slightly, but few were aware of it. As they steamed effortlessly toward it, the town of Tsuruga appeared like a beige splotch at the water's edge. With equal measures of hope and dread, they had waited in great anticipation of this moment. Now, for a short while, anxiety subsided as excitement was caught and passed on.

  "How tiny it is. . . . So lonely, with no neighbors but the mountains. . . . But how clean and bright it looks, like a flower!"

  "Where are the people? How can there be a town with no people?" "Only wait, we are still too far away. . . . Look! Those little dots are people!"

  "If the dots are people, those little boxes must be houses. I thought they were chicken coops!"

  As the town grew in size and detail, the voices grew quiet. Who had even heard of Japan before the past few months? Throughout the voyage, wild conjectures had filled the void of real knowledge. Now, that knowledge - good or bad - would be theirs.

  Moishe Katznelson stood just behind his sister, his thin arms encircling her on the ship's railing. Leaning as far out toward the water as he could without crushing her, he examined the approaching town in detail. As everyone kept saying, it was as beautiful as a flower. But it wasn't Jewish. Non-Jewish places, he knew, were lumped categorically by the Talmud under the heading of "places of idolatry." Idolaters didn't know God or His ways of justice. Idolaters - like the Polish peasants who would sometimes run riot through the market at home - were famous for their cruelty. Perhaps all this was just a cruel trick - from the kindness of the Japanese consul through the patience of this ship captain. If it was a trick, they were all doomed. Even if it wasn't, he himself might never set foot on that beckoning shore
. The unthinkable had happened: Moishe had lost his visa.

  It had happened in Vladivostok. In the confusion, it had disappeared, simply disappeared. The one thing standing between himself and destruction had fallen out of his passport and disappeared. When he realized it, he had become a wild man, dashing back to all the places he had been, searching every nook and cranny of the dormitory-style room he had been assigned to. He combed through wastebaskets, questioned the other refugees, prayed to God that it would reappear. But all to no avail: the magic paper with the two-line Curacao visa and the bright red Japanese transit visa was gone from his passport. He had thought, first, of asking the help of the Amshenover rebbe again. But he couldn't, simply couldn't admit to that wonderful old man what a stupid dolt he was. The otherwise pleasant city of Vladivostok became a nightmare.

  Yet even in despair, Moishe found a sense of determination that he had never experienced before: he would get on that ship. Moishe did not in the least understand where that solid kernel of determination had come from. But at fourteen, without parents, with his sister to protect, Moishe had had to mature quickly. The lost visa was a problem; but it was his problem, not the rebbe's, and he would be the one to make it right, no matter what it took. He was ashamed even to confess it to Sophie. Common sense, however, finally overcame bravado: he did consult with the Japanese consul in Vladivostok. There had been difficulty with the language, of course, but once the consul was able to apprehend Moishe's problem, he had not been unsympathetic. "For my part," he had said, "if you have a ticket for the ship, I will not insist that you have the visa. But I cannot guarantee that the immigration officials in Japan will actually permit you to enter."

  As the ship drew closer to shore, Moishe studied the layout of the town, visually experimenting with a variety of escape routes. As he had known he would board the Harbin Maru, one way or another, he would enter Japan.