A Sea Change

by Michael Arditti

  Even more painful signs of fraternisation awaited me on the lower deck, where I found Johanna deep in conversation with two sailors. I was torn between retreating to my cabin for the remainder of the voyage, never venturing further than the games room, where I would fetch spectacles and shawls for elderly ladies who heaped praise on the charming boy that they assumed me to be, and confronting Johanna like the angry and confused young man that I knew I had become. My dilemma was resolved when she beckoned me to join them, to the marked annoyance of her companions. Studiedly ignoring them, I asked Johanna if she needed help: a question which, for some reason, stuck her as hilarious. Nevertheless, she dispatched the sailors. ‘I want to be alone with my friend’, she declared, surprising me by her use of the word. Insisting that I had no wish to be censorious – and aware that it might not advance my cause – I warned her against any action, however inadvertent, that might lead the men on. Instead of deflecting the charge, she replied sadly that she had no choice. ‘It’s in my blood.’ The phrase was particularly chilling to ears attuned to the Nazi slur that Jewish women were all Delilahs out to sap the strength of Aryan men…. And before any of you, although I suspect that it will be Marcus at his most punctilious, accuse me of forgetting that Delilah was a Philistine not a Jew, let me say that she features in the Jewish Bible and, for the Nazis, that was damning enough.

  ‘What do you mean “in my blood”?’ I asked. Instead of answering, she leant towards me and softly – miraculously – kissed my cheek.

  ‘I wanted to kiss the spot where I’d seen you slapped.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, my joy in the kiss compromised by her pity.

  ‘I’d never forgive my mother if she treated me like that,’ she said, giving me the perfect opportunity to air my grievances. I explained how people had always envied me on account of my grandfather’s store, which they pictured as my private storehouse, whereas the reality was very different. She urged me to elaborate and, realising that for the first time I had someone in whom to confide, I provided edited – but authentic – highlights of my life-story. To my surprise, I found myself beginning with my father, a fact that I attributed to his recent return. I described how, in spite of all that my mother and grandfather had done for him, he had turned to drink and how it was his drunkenness at Luise’s conception that had impaired her brain. Then, using a word I could make sense of only in the cinema, I whispered to her what I had barely dared articulate even to myself: Luise had been the child of rape. To my amazement, she was neither shocked nor outraged, but listened calmly to everything I said before kissing me on the other cheek.

  ‘That’s not the one that was slapped,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ she replied.

  She reciprocated by telling me her life-story and, to my delight, I quickly discovered its affinities with my own. Johanna had never known her father. I bit my tongue before pronouncing it a blessing. Even her mother had barely known him, having met him in the restaurant where she worked and he ate occasional meals. Little by little, he became a regular customer, first of the restaurant and then of hers. I couldn’t work out whether Johanna meant tips at the table or something more sinister. According to her mother, who made excuses for everyone (which Johanna ascribed to dullness rather than decency), her father had never lied about his marriage or his three children, let alone his intention of leaving them for her. She had, however, been so enchanted by this cultured, sophisticated man, who treated her with rare respect, that she had accepted the status quo. That is until she found herself pregnant.

  ‘I was an accident. Those were her precise words. As if she’d been knocked down in the road.’

  ‘There are people who believe that the entire human race is an accident.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why mention it?’ To my relief, she did not dwell on my perversity but continued with her account. Her father paid all her expenses, both at birth and throughout childhood, but he never once visited her nor asked her mother for so much as a photograph. ‘I was something that he brought into the world as casually as a burp.’ Even so, she remained unperturbed until she went to kindergarten and found herself among children with the regular complement of parents. No longer satisfied with the simple fact of her father’s death, she pressed her mother for details and was rewarded with the heart-rending story of his plunge from a roof while attempting to rescue a stranded cat. She returned to school fired with her father’s heroism. Her classmates, however, were unconvinced and demanded evidence – medals, pictures, a grave – which she, in turn, required of her mother. The more she pressed, the more her mother prevaricated. Fear of what she might learn kept her from challenging her outright. Instead, she turned detective, sifting through cupboards and cases for clues. At every step, she drew a blank. Matters grew worse when her beloved grandmother died. It seemed doubly unfair that she should have only one, along with one set of cousins and uncles and aunts (she was less concerned about the single grandfather on account of her aversion to beards). Even a dead father must have had a family. She failed to understand why her mother refused to let her meet them.

  The truth became clear when the Nazis took power. Johanna’s mother was a Catholic with a special devotion to Mary, whose intercession was as great a hope to her as her purity was a reproach. But, whatever effect her daily candle-burning may have had on divine judgement, it had none on Hitler’s. Johanna’s father was a Jew and, in a vain – now fatal – stab at respectability, her mother had entered his name on the birth certificate. When the race laws were passed, Johanna found herself classed as a half-and-half, an in-between, a mischling (a word for which, I am glad to say, there is no English equivalent). ‘At first I thought my German half would save me,’ she said. ‘I pictured myself in a wheelchair, with all my Jewish blood drained into my legs but, since they didn’t work, it wouldn’t count. Then, I imagined them amputated, so that all that was left was German.’

  ‘A pretty useless German.’

  ‘But legitimate. But safe.’

  She began to be picked on at school by both pupils and staff. Since all the full Jewish girls had been expelled, her history teacher made her stand in front of the class to illustrate the Semitic physique, key aspects of which were large breasts and wide hips (I forced myself to look horrified). In consequence, she starved herself. The constant talk of ignorant Jews eroded her confidence, so she quit school and worked occasional shifts in her mother’s restaurant, where the incessant innuendoes of the male customers confirmed her opinion of her father’s lust and her mother’s shame.

  Her father had meanwhile fled from Germany, along with his wife and two of his sons, the third having been killed in a clash with the SA. They were living in Havana until they reached their place on the American quota list. With his world in ruins, her father developed a conscience – or so Johanna believed; in her mother’s view, he was finally able to reveal the love that for so long he had been compelled to hide. He expressed deep fears for Johanna’s safety and offered to pay for her passage with the money he had been unable to take out of Germany. Her mother, using a phrase borrowed from one of her romantic magazines, reluctantly agreed to give her up. Johanna, however, had no intention of crossing the ocean to live with a man she had never met, a woman who was bound to hate her and two half-brothers who would regard her as fair game. ‘One of them’s married,’ her mother assured her, prompting Johanna to laugh in her face. Despite her own misgivings, her parents were united in their insistence that she leave, their protracted correspondence making her departure the more pressing. They agreed that, if there were no alternative, her mother would accompany her. So, mollified by her mother’s greater sacrifice, Johanna boarded the ship.

  ‘That’s my story then. Tawdry eh?’

  ‘I’d call it tragic.’

  ‘You’re too romantic for your own good.’ Then, despite the mockery, she kissed me again, full on the lips. I was so taken aback that I had no idea what to feel or to expect. It
was a completely different order of kiss from any that I had known before: one that did not just say ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’ or ‘thank you’, but changed the entire way that my body responded. I even understood the women who, having been kissed by Hitler, declared that they would never wash again. Not that I had any desire to follow suit. On the contrary, I resolved to wash more often. I wanted to be clean for Johanna: I wanted to be so clean that she would kiss me again and again and again … until she shattered my reverie by saying ‘That’s what I meant. I can kiss anyone. It means nothing. It’s in my blood.’

  Her words, which were as obvious a smokescreen as my own ‘I didn’t want to go anyway’ when forbidden an outing, failed to dampen my spirits. That was left to Sophie, whose instinct for my whereabouts was as sharp on board ship as at home. Greeting Johanna with the curtest of nods and making no attempt at an introduction, she informed me that Luise was sleeping as soundly as she had been when she left her two hours before. Forced to improvise, which was never my forte, I suggested that she must have dropped off while waiting for us to return, but Sophie would not be placated. Instead, she launched into a wild denunciation of my selfishness, insisting that she was entitled to a private life and that I should be grateful for her consent to come with us – which was true, although my gratitude was lessened by the knowledge of the dangers she was leaving behind in Berlin. I told her that she was embarrassing me in front of my friend.

  ‘The trouble with you, Karl,’ she replied, ‘is that you’re always embarrassed, never ashamed.’

  ‘I don’t want you to be hurt.’

  ‘I’m nearly twice your age. I think I can look after myself.’

  ‘Men take advantage.’

  ‘Oh Karl!’ She laughed. ‘You’ve got your first girlfriend, so you’re suddenly an expert on relationships!’

  ‘I’m not his girlfriend,’ Johanna interjected crossly. I was terrified she might think that I had been discussing her behind her back.

  ‘Very wise,’ Sophie said.

  ‘We’re just friends,’ I said, eager to retrieve the situation. ‘We don’t have to give each other labels. And at least Johanna’s Jewish.’

  ‘Half-Jewish. I’ve never met my father,’ she explained to Sophie, who looked bemused.

  ‘Whereas the sailor’s Christian.’

  ‘So? Not all Christians are hostile. To think that is to think like a Nazi. True, there are some Party members on board, but Helmut … my friend –’ she explained for the benefit of Johanna but with a glare at me – ‘assured me that the Captain has taken a strong line against them. He’s stopped them singing their marching songs in any of the public rooms and disciplined the steward responsible for showing the Hitler newsreel. He insisted that we should be treated the same as any other passengers, in spite of the steward’s threats to complain to Berlin.’ She concluded by saying that most of the crew were even less interested in politics than their counterparts on land. They had come to sea to experience different cultures, relishing the combination of a fluid world and a fixed order. So it was time for me to stop looking at life in black and white.

  ‘And red?’ I asked, thinking of the third Nazi colour.

  ‘And red,’ she replied, giving me a hug. ‘Take no notice of me,’ she said to Johanna. ‘You’ll find no better boy anywhere than Karl. I love every scrap of him.’ She squeezed me so hard that there seemed to be several scraps fewer. ‘It’s just that sometimes he doesn’t think.’

  ‘You usually say I think too much.’

  ‘You think about yourself and you think about the state of the world, but you tend to forget about anyone in-between.’ Then, giving me a very different kiss to Johanna’s, she strode back up the stairs.

  No sooner were we alone than Johanna exclaimed how much she liked me, which gave me a giddy thrill, although I steadied myself by remembering that we had enjoyed no more than two brief meetings. I had read enough novels to be familiar with love at first sight but seen enough of life to be wary of second thoughts. Nevertheless, I was eager to respond to her declaration and edged my hand slowly along the rail; but, just as I was about to lunge, she turned to adjust her hair, leaving me to beat an impromptu tattoo on the wood. Trusting neither my words nor my body, I longed to give her a sure sign of affection and pictured the perfect gift concealed inside my shoe. I was certain that I could square it with my mother, since it wouldn’t be the first time I had worn a hole in my heel. Then I recalled her fear that we would be denied access to our American accounts and, even at my most intoxicated (a word that had lost all its shades of my father), I refused to jeopardise the family’s future. I resolved instead to build on our shared intimacies, remarking on the coincidence of our absent fathers. Johanna, however, regarded them as typical of their sex. As an alternative, I proposed my grandfather, for whom, despite our political differences, I felt total respect. She seized on the hint of dissension which, I explained, sprang from my growing despair at the lack of Jewish resistance to the Nazis. My rejection of a faith which favoured the scruples of age over the fire of youth was what lay behind my refusal to be bar mitzvah.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A ritual Jewish boys go through at thirteen.’

  ‘In church, we have the first communion.’

  ‘Girls too?’

  ‘Of course, girls too,’ she said sharply, as though I had cast a slur on both her piety and her sex.

  ‘And is it a sign to the community that you’ve become a woman?’

  ‘At the age of six? No, it’s all to do with Jesus. You’re old enough to share his body.’ I grimaced at the thought of eating someone’s flesh, which I knew was just a phrase, but that was bad enough. Moreover, I failed to see how Christians who put a cannibalistic act at the heart of their services could accuse us of a lust for blood. It seemed unfair, however, to lay that on Johanna, who straddled the two Testaments like the Apocrypha. So I simply explained that, for a Jew, being bar mitzvah was a sign that a boy had become a man and responsible for keeping the precepts of the Torah for himself.

  ‘A man at thirteen?’ Her incredulity diminished me and I felt like a character in an operetta who only came of age at forty-five. I described how my ban on being bar mitzvah had sparked the greatest family crisis since Luise’s birth, with both my mother and grandfather accusing me of falling for Nazi propaganda and feeling ashamed to be Jewish. I told her what I had told them … and what I’ve told you children already, but then it can never be repeated too often: that I was proud of being Jewish, but ashamed of my fellow Jews. Unlike my family, Johanna neither questioned the distinction nor accused me of spite. Instead, she asked why anyone should be proud to be Jewish. For once I needed no time to prepare my reply, since it came from the heart: that we were a people who had survived; a people who had borne witness; a people who had entered into a special covenant with God and been tested on behalf of humanity: a people whose tradition was so rich that it had been the seedbed of other religions yet maintained its own integrity.

  To my dismay, Johanna sounded unconvinced. She appropriated my words – methodically, not cruelly – to make a similar case for Christianity: that Jesus had instituted a new covenant; that he had been tested on behalf of humanity; that, through him, the old religion had been superseded. Then she said that, if God were testing the Jews, he must have found them wanting since their history was one of constant persecution. She refused to have any part of it, claiming that her Jewish blood was incidental. Her mother’s customer might as easily have been Moslem or Chinese. She hated the Jews and, even if she lived for a hundred years, she wanted nothing to do with them.

  ‘What about me?’ I asked, more hurt than I could say. ‘You’re talking to a Jew now.’

  ‘Given the passenger list, I don’t have much choice. But don’t expect us to stay friends once we reach Cuba. I intend to meet a plantation owner in a white suit. Or, better still, his son.’

  ‘You sound like your mother,’ I said, regretting the remark the moment it had passed my
lips.

  ‘That’s the nastiest thing anyone’s ever said to me.’ I stammered an apology, which she cut short. ‘And also the truest.’ Then, changing tack with dizzying speed, she asked if I knew how to dance.

  ‘No,’ I replied, afraid that she would want to waltz round the deck, thereby exposing another side to my clumsiness.

  ‘There’s a dance in the social hall next week,’ she said, leaving it unclear whether she were issuing me with an invitation or ruling out my attendance. ‘Now I must go to bed.’

  ‘May I see you again?’ I asked tentatively.

  ‘Since we’ll be packed together on this ship for the next ten days, you can’t very well avoid it.’

  ‘I meant by arrangement, not chance.’

  ‘Why not come to the lounge at tea-time tomorrow? I’ll introduce you to my mother. She’ll like you: you’re rich.’ Then, with an unexpected giggle, she kissed me on the mouth and vanished into the dark.

  Her rapid shifts of mood had left me stunned. I felt as though I had been tortured and caressed by turn – and sometimes at the same time. I stood in the breeze, trying to make sense of my feelings, when a stray thought of my grandfather stabbed me with guilt and sent me rushing back to the cabin. As I opened the door, I caught sight of the Rabbi standing at the foot of the bed. He was silent, but the echo of his prayers filled the room as intensely as the odour of his sweat. I felt as uneasy in his presence as a pacifist, however principled, beside a soldier on leave from the Front. I followed his gaze to the bed-head, where the Doctor was preparing an injection. My faith in my grandfather’s powers of recovery led me to suspect the Doctor’s motives. He was a German first and a doctor second, and perhaps even a Nazi before both. For all I knew, he might be allied with Schiendick in a plot to kill off the passengers, one by one, during the course of the voyage. Even I had to admit, however, that his concern appeared to be genuine as he elicited a promise that I should call him if there were any change in my grandfather’s condition during the night. He left, quickly followed by the Rabbi, whose blessing made me despair of my rusty Hebrew. I turned to Aunt Annette, who sat next to my grandfather, her face as crumpled as her clothes, slowly rubbing his hand. After struggling to register my presence, she roused herself to return to her cabin where my mother was already snatching some rest.