The Voyage of Their Life

by Diane Armstrong

  The woman, who was her aunt, spent most of her time in bed, mourning for her husband who had recently died. Ginette was to discover much later that as he lay dying, her uncle had told his wife that he wanted to claim his niece from the Roddiers before they adopted her. It must have been out of a sense of duty that her aunt had brought her to Paris because, as Ginette soon discovered, it was not out of compassion. Feeling as unwanted as Cinderella, one afternoon she crept into her aunt’s room at the top of the stairs. Her aunt advanced towards her from the darkened room with a look that sent chills down Ginette’s spine, grabbed her shoulder and pushed her out with such force that she tumbled down the stairs. As she lay sobbing at the foot of the stairs, she stared at a piece of tooth that had broken off in the fall.

  Ginette believed that she was Catholic until the day her aunt caught her kneeling beside her bed and pulled her to her feet. ‘Get up off your knees and stop that nonsense!’ she snapped. ‘You’re Jewish!’ The words vibrated through Ginette’s body like an electric charge. It couldn’t be true. How could she be Jewish? She had prayed to Jesus in the lovely rose-scented chapel at the convent with the nuns and the other girls, and had sat beside her foster-parents in church on Sundays. She’d heard about the Jews. They were the ones who had crucified Our Lord, the priest said. The children at school chanted ditties about Jews because they didn’t like them. Her aunt had to be lying. But her kind cousin, whom she trusted, told her that it was true.

  Unable to cope with her misery and confusion, Ginette had tantrums and screaming fits. Her aunt’s scathing comments and strict punishments only made things worse, and an impasse developed in which the little girl waged war whichever way she could. Finally her aunt said that she was not prepared to put up with her bad behaviour any longer. As she was too naughty to stay in Paris, she was to go and live with another aunt in America. Australia was never mentioned.

  Ginette became distraught as her departure approached. Although her aunt had forbidden her to contact or even mention her foster-parents, she never stopped hoping that one day they would be reunited. Sometimes she would slip down to the Metro and wait on the platform in an agony of anticipation, hoping that the doors would open and her beloved foster-father would emerge and whisk her off. But now she was being sent far away and would never see them again. Ginette’s screams, pleas and promises fell on deaf ears. The beautiful outfits her foster-father had bought from the boutiques in the Rue de Rivoli were packed up. Her aunt dressed her in her white rabbit fur coat and matching bonnet and put her on the train to Marseilles, where she was to board a ship. She was nine years old.

  And now the rabbit fur coat, along with all her other clothes, had gone. After the shower, when she had bent down to pull out her suitcase and put on a clean dress, it wasn’t there. She and Topka looked in vain under all the bunks. Everyone said there were thieves on board, and while they had been in the washroom, someone must have sneaked into the cabin and stolen her suitcase. Now she had nothing to wear. Tears ran down her cheeks. Topka sat down beside her and hugged her thin shoulders. ‘Don’t cry,’ she consoled the child. ‘I’ll find something of Bella’s to fit you and then we’ll go down for dinner. Maybe they’ll have chocolate pudding again tonight.’

  Ever since the rotten carcasses had been jettisoned, lunch and dinner on the Derna had consisted mostly of spaghetti served in tomato sauce. ‘Today for a change we’ve got tomato sauce and spaghetti,’ the wags used to joke. For central Europeans not used to pasta, this menu was unpalatable and indigestible. Helle’s little sister Maret became so desperate for variety that once she sprinkled sugar on the tomato sauce.

  My father, who was always philosophical, said that a vegetarian menu was healthier anyway, while my mother, who like most Europeans found the gamey smell of lamb unpleasant, didn’t miss the meat, but she couldn’t digest the pasta. To add to her problems, I was a terrible eater. The smell of melting paint that permeated the ship took away my appetite, the sour taste of pickled vegetables made me feel sick, parmesan cheese reminded me of vomit, and I had to be coaxed to eat anything.

  Of course the absence of meat didn’t bother the observant Jews who had avoided it because it wasn’t kosher. One of them was Leon Wise, a French orphan like Ginette. Although the last time he had seen his parents was eight years before, when they’d put him on a train to the safety of a children’s home in France’s unoccupied Vichy zone, he steadfastly maintained the dietary customs that he had learned at home. At fourteen Leon was the youngest in his cabin, but also the most fastidious. He kept his blanket tucked in, his sheets smooth and his clothes neatly folded, and was irritated by the sloppy habits of his cabin-mates. ‘You’ve trodden on my blanket again and left dirty marks on it,’ he would complain to André Wayne, whose bunk was above his. ‘Can’t you use the ladder?’

  ‘That kid’s nagging again,’ André would groan. Abie Goldberg, who had one of the upper bunks in their cabin, also irritated his cabin-mates by hanging his suits in front of the porthole—which blocked the limited flow of air, they kept telling him.

  Leon was a quiet, resolute boy who tried to work things out for himself, but a worrying situation had arisen on board. Several times while he walked along the narrow companionways, his path had been blocked by a flabby Greek seaman with receding hair and a fat face who stood sickeningly close and tried to kiss him. Although Leon couldn’t understand what he was saying, the ingratiating smile and insinuating tone made his stomach churn. Being thin and wiry, Leon always managed to duck and run away. Although he lived in dread of these encounters, it wasn’t something he felt he could discuss with his companions, not even his older brother Henri.

  The ship was rolling more than usual when Leon finished tidying his bunk and ran out of the cabin to join his friends. Suddenly his way was barred. The old seaman was advancing towards him and before Leon had time to turn and run, he pushed him against the wall. Hardly able to see past the burly fellow, Leon tried to escape but the man started fumbling with his belt, bent his flabby face towards his and reached out his large hand to fondle him. With a sudden surge of strength, Leon broke away and sped down the stairs, his heart hammering in his ears.

  He made straight for the barber’s salon. Vincent Buignez was a twenty-seven-year-old Marseillais, one of the few people on board with whom Leon could speak French. The tall young barber had the sympathetic nature and easy flow of conversation that went with his profession, and the boy felt at ease with him. A pretty young woman who was having her fair hair rolled in curlers smiled up at him, and he recognised her from the purser’s office where she worked. The penetrating smell of peroxide hit his nostrils as he flung himself into a chair, panting.

  ‘Qu’est-ce qu’il y a, mon petit?’ asked the barber, putting down the curling tongs when he saw that the boy was white and gulping air.

  Leon didn’t need to say very much for the barber to grasp the situation. ‘Vieux salaud!’ he spat in the imagined direction of the molester. ‘He’ll come after me again, I know it,’ Leon said.

  A hard look replaced the barber’s usually affable expression. ‘Don’t worry, he won’t bother you again. Leave it to me. Just tell me what he looks like.’

  A few days later, Vincent sent a message for Leon to come down to the salon. He froze when he saw his stalker sitting in the barber’s chair but Vincent turned to him with a surreptitious wink. ‘Is this the man you told me about?’ he asked in a loud voice dripping with menace. When Leon nodded, the barber began to sharpen his razor very slowly on the leather strop without saying a word. He was still sharpening it when he put his face very close to that of his client.

  ‘See that boy?’ he murmured. ‘See this razor? If I ever hear you’ve touched him again, I’ll cut your balls off!’ While a bead of perspiration broke out on the man’s domed forehead, Vincent turned to Leon and said loudly, ‘If this bastard ever bothers you again, you just come and tell me, okay?’ Leon left the salon feeling more light-hearted than he’d felt in weeks. He ran up the
stairs two at a time until he reached the deck where his friends were singing folk songs.

  I heard the sound of young people laughing and singing while I stood beside my father as he lit a cigarette, inhaled and pointed to the sea. ‘This is the Indian Ocean,’ he said, and I could tell from his tone that he found this quite exciting. To me it looked no different from any other water we had sailed on, but the concept of oceans intrigued me. How did they know where one sea ended and another began? Was there a sign in the water, a mark of some kind? And all the waves that flurried the surface of the ocean as far as I could see, where did they begin and where did they end? Was it over there, on that straight line dividing the sea from the sky? My father shook his head. ‘It isn’t really a line at all, it’s an illusion,’ he explained. ‘You always see it in the distance but you can never reach it.’

  I stared at the vast sea that had no beginning and no ending, and grappled with this perplexing idea. If each of those little waves was part of the ocean and each ocean was connected with every other ocean, and there was no dividing line between the sea and the sky, it was really all one thing. I looked down at the waves that slapped the side of the ship, one at a time. Did they know that they were part of a huge ocean, identical to every other wave, or did they think they were unique? My father smiled indulgently at my questions and hastened inside to play bridge with Dr Ament and Mr Potok while I went back to my knitting. By now I had used up all the skeins I’d brought with me. Since my resources were so limited, I had to begin unravelling what I had knitted and use the wool again. Perhaps this time I would drop fewer stitches or at least make the gaps less obvious.

  As I sat next to my mother and Zofia Frant and rewound the wool, I caught a few words of their conversation, although from their lowered voices and the occasional glances they cast in my direction, they obviously didn’t want me to overhear. Mrs Frant was a tall, stately woman with crinkled reddish hair and a slightly worried expression in her short-sighted eyes. People often came to her for advice because she was forceful, kind and down-to-earth. ‘We found another couple skylarking in the lifeboats last night,’ she was telling my mother, and they launched into a discussion of the problems of chaperoning young people eager to make up for lost time. Their youth had been taken away from them along with everything else they’d ever had—freedom, security, parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, schooling, home. And now that life was momentarily carefree, and they had no parents watching them like the other teenagers on board, nature had reasserted itself. Mrs Frant didn’t begrudge them their romances but she was keenly aware of the responsibility of being a chaperone to sixty-one lively youngsters.

  Seeing little Ginette run past, she chuckled, recalling what the child had said at dinner the previous night. ‘You know why the waiter is so nice to me? Because he thinks I’m your daughter!’ She was touched because she knew that behind this spontaneous comment was the yearning to be part of a loving family. She and her husband had become very attached to the affectionate little girl who often cuddled up to them.

  Zofia Frant and my mother had a great deal in common. Both had come from assimilated Jewish families in Poland, were married to professional men and had one daughter. They spent much of their time discussing their plans for Australia although neither of them knew much about it. Before leaving Paris the Frants had searched for any books they could find but had only found stories about convicts, houses built on stilts and Aborigines.

  ‘It was my destiny to come to Australia,’ Zofia said in her low, well-modulated voice. ‘Back in 1935 my father had filled out the application form. He told my mother that the ground was starting to burn under their feet in Poland and that they should leave as soon as possible. Unfortunately my mother wouldn’t listen.’

  The Frants were heading for Sydney because foreign doctors only had to study for three years there instead of five in Melbourne. Unlike Zofia, my mother didn’t know how my father would earn his living. At forty-seven he thought he was too old to study dentistry again, especially in a foreign language. Someone in Paris had told him that buttons were needed in Australia, so he had bought a second-hand button-making machine and planned to go into business. Discussing this with Zofia, my mother raised her straight eyebrows so high that her brow furrowed, and her grimace showed clearly what she thought of that idea. ‘Henek is a wonderful dentist but he has no business sense whatsoever. He’s too straightforward.’

  Another subject that preoccupied them was their daughters. Like me, Christine had survived the Holocaust in Poland by posing as a Catholic, but while I had stayed with my parents the whole time, she had been separated from hers. When the children interned in the Warsaw Ghetto were about to be deported and killed, Christine was smuggled out. She spent the rest of the war with her devoted Polish nanny who risked her life by taking care of her and pretending she was her illegitimate daughter.

  Not long after the Frants had arranged for Christine to be smuggled out, they were pushed into cattle waggons bound for the Treblinka extermination camp. Knowing the fate that awaited them, they had made a pact to commit suicide rather than be pushed into a gas chamber, and Dr Frant had hidden a phial of morphine and a syringe in his pocket. As the cattle truck rumbled towards its destination, he was about to inject his wife when one of their fellow passengers shouted that he had managed to file through an iron grille that barred the small opening. With feverish help from the other occupants, the grille was pulled out and one by one they jumped out of the speeding train; Zofia first, then her husband. Dazed and bleeding, they stumbled through the fields until they came to a village. The priest who opened the door to their timid knock refused to let them in or even to give them a glass of water. Afraid of being discovered by the villagers and turned over to the Germans, they hid in the forest for days until the partisans found them.

  Zofia looked over at Christine, a smiling eleven year old with pink cheeks and thick dark plaits, playing rummy with Topka’s youngest sister, and confided to my mother that she was worried about her daughter. After all the traumas and upheavals she had suffered, how would she adjust to life in a new country? My mother’s reply was characteristically positive. ‘I’m sure she’ll be all right. Children adjust more quickly than you think.’ Perhaps she was thinking about me as I cast on stitches quietly beside her, mistaking my docile demeanour for adjustment.

  Every evening Dr Frant would make the rounds with his torch. Its beams swept into the shadowy nooks and crannies of the ship as he lifted up the lifeboat covers, usually accompanied by Topka. He only had to rest his piercing gaze on her for a moment and call ‘Topka!’ and she would drop whatever she was doing and come running. At first this peremptory manner and the penetrating gaze that seemed to bore into her skull had scared her, but it didn’t take long to realise that underneath his gruffness he was very kind.

  Dr Frant’s hated torch became the subject of plots among the orphans, who resented this invasion of privacy. One night the torch disappeared mysteriously, never to be seen again. Despite intensive questioning, the culprit was never found.

  The orphans were not the only ones who embraced in secluded corners of the ship. Married couples also searched for places where they could release the pent-up sexual frustration that resulted from the segregated sleeping arrangements. Some of the men smuggled wives into their cabins during the day, but privacy eluded them whenever the other occupants returned unexpectedly for a jacket or a book. Although some couples modestly curtained the bunk off with a sheet, the creaking and murmuring gave them away, much to the merriment of the teenage boys. ‘Look, there they go again!’ André Wayne would laugh, pointing in the direction of the swaying bunk. Desperate to find a private place, some couples chose the washroom in the vain hope that late at night it would be deserted. Elsie Pataky, who was pregnant, frequently used the bathroom at night and would walk in to find a couple in transports of lusty delight in the bath. Mothers wanting to use the bath late at night to rinse out dirty clothes were sometimes astonish
ed to discover that it was otherwise occupied.

  Elsie didn’t need to spend much time washing clothes because all she had was the white blouse and navy pleated skirt she wore every day. Her sandals had already fallen apart and she’d had to toss them away and go barefoot. She had been even further advanced in pregnancy than Halina Kalowski when the voyage began, but because of the privations she had suffered while waiting for a passage, she only weighed forty-seven kilos, so no one suspected that she was six months pregnant. As the weeks passed, she accommodated her expanding belly by unpicking the pleats one by one.

  On a ship full of people who had crossed many borders and led complex lives, Elsie’s ethnic background was more unusual than most. Born in Poland to an English mother who had been brought up in India during the days of the Raj, Elsie had grown up in Romania where most of her mother’s family lived. From her intensely patriotic and monarchist mother, she inherited her love of King and Empire. When faced with the need to leave Europe, she knew that the only countries she would consider migrating to were those coloured on the map in the comforting pink of the British Empire.

  When the war ended, Elsie had found herself alone in Romania. By then her mother had died of typhoid, and most of her relatives, who had British passports, had been repatriated to India and England. Having been adopted by her Romanian stepfather, she had lost her British citizenship and was stranded. With the Communists in power, food scarce, and Russian soldiers prowling around in search of women, she didn’t feel safe and didn’t know what to do. In desperation she even thought of marrying someone in India by proxy so that she could emigrate, but when she fell in love with Ignac all her problems were over.