The Keeper of the Walls Page 38

  It was actually strange, but she felt more and more Jewish, hearing the stories of those who had escaped death at the hands of the Nazis; and less and less a Catholic, even in those moments when, alone, she lay in bed and thought about God.

  On March 15, Hitler’s army moved into Prague, and the invasion of Czechoslovakia was on. On the eighteenth, the Führer confiscated all the Jewish money in the banks of Prague. That same day, a Viennese couple came to the Ritz, to see Maryse. Their name was Schwarz, and they had been no more than vague acquaintances. They came with some small paintings that, obviously, could have been worth no more than a hundred francs each. Maryse gave them money for their hotel, and waited, her lips parted, for them to tell her something . . . anything at all concerning Wolf.

  But Herr Schwarz merely shook his head, and bit his lower lip. “We hear so little,” he told her, his voice low and trembling. “Sometimes, a tidbit. A man told me that your husband was alive, that he and his mother had been hidden somewhere by a Viennese goy—an aristocrat.”

  “Hans? Count von Bertelmann? Was it him?”

  Embarrassed at the fire of hope, so naked and glowing, in Maryse’s eyes, Schwarz raised his hands palms up, helplessly. “I can’t say. But the old lady—iƒ it’s your mother-in-law—isn’t well, and isn’t fit to travel. Yet the longer they stay . . .” His sentence hung in midair, ominously sinking in. Maryse nodded, her face numb, her heart knocking wildly inside her.

  “And the old man? Herr Isaac Steiner? You didn’t speak of him.”

  “There was no old man, from the small snatch of news that reached my ears. But of course, I can’t be certain of the accuracy of what I’ve told you.”

  Maryse reached into her small alligator bag, and withdrew a checkbook. Silently, she wrote out a check, handed it to Schwarz. If what he’d said was true, then it was likely that Hans von Bertelmann had saved Wolf and Mina. But what of Papa? she thought, the tears coming at last in a rebellious spurt. Where could he be now?

  “There are still good gentiles in the Reich,” she said, thinking of the tall, fair poet who had shared his university days with her husband.

  After that, she began to live somewhat more easily, believing that Wolf lived, breathed, existed somewhere: it didn’t matter where. When news came that two hundred fifty Czech officers had committed suicide, and that twelve thousand Jews of Prague had been sent to concentration camps, she almost didn’t pay attention. But she wept at the fate of the children who would be reared as slaves to the great German Reich.

  The night of March 29, Édouard Daladier spoke to the French people. He announced that he would not give a single acre of French land, nor one right over it, to the Italians, and he commended the Moslems of Tunisia for upholding their religion and their civilization. He said that France was strong, and united, that she would do all for peace, but that if the need came, she would rise in one movement to defend her rights and her freedom.

  On the night of April 2, the sound of a bugle, and a broadcast on the radio brought the news, at eleven fifteen, that the Spanish war had ended. And on April 5, in Versailles, Parliament reelected Albert Lebrun President of the French Republic. But on Good Friday, Mussolini invaded Albania. That month, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, sent a message to Hitler and Mussolini, demanding that they cease their invasion of independent peoples, and begging them to promise not to touch thirty-one independent nations, and to begin at once to speak of disarmament and the resumption of international trade. Hitler reacted with anger, and Italy was silent. But the British started a register of volunteers twenty and twenty-one years of age, which yielded three hundred ten thousand soldiers-to-be; and, in Chateau-Thierry, in France, a general mobilization was set in motion.

  Finally, after thirteen days of tension, Hitler answered Roosevelt. He had announced that only on the twenty-eighth would he make his reply. The world stood on tenterhooks, but for some reason, not the French. In fact, when Lily and Nicky tried to hear the speech on the radio, they discovered it had not even been broadcast. But in the evening, the newspapers were full of his good intentions. He said he wanted peace, the liberty of states, and that he wished to open talks with Great Britain. General amazement met his words. Maybe, then, there wouldn’t have to be a war. And Lily was thankful, thinking with sudden anguish of her almost fifteen-year-old son: in three years, he would be called up to defend his country. It was better that this country not have to be defended, like that of the Steiners.

  Relaxation was short lived. On May 22, the Axis pact was formally consolidated. The French newspapers spoke of “Italy’s subordination to Germany.” Nicky took his mother’s hand, his dark eyes troubled. And then he said in a strangely adult voice: “This time there is no going back. Eventually, he’ll have to be stopped. And it’s better that it happen soon. This war, Mama, isn’t going to be ‘civilized,’ like the last one when you were a girl.”

  It’s you who should be in America, my strong, brave young son, she thought. It’s you, my Nicky, who needs to be protected, in a country that will not go to war again to save her European allies. And she wondered once more, as she had so many times, why her husband had left her, why life had turned against him—and why he’d never said good-bye.

  “Why Cuba?” Mina Steiner implored, her brown eyes filled with fear. “It’s so far away, and we know no one there—and Isaac, when he gets out, won’t know where to find us!”

  Wolf was very tired. Since the Night of Broken Crystal, he had lost twenty pounds. His mother, however, had completely wasted away. All his life, he’d watched her, plump, rosy, bursting with liveliness, full of opinions and of joie de vivre. Her round face ringed with auburn curls had soothed away, by its mere presence, hundreds of youthful hurts. Now she weighed one hundred pounds, and her cheekbones jutted out below huge, bloodshot eyes that were afraid, all the time afraid.

  And for good reason, Wolf thought. He stood on the lower deck of the medium-sized German ship Saint Louis, watching the infinity of ocean spread before him, and he blessed the memory of his friend Hans. Slowly, Wolf closed his eyes, allowing himself to remember the days spent like rats in that damp cellar, and his mother’s recurring illness. Hans had somehow managed to sneak a doctor—a real doctor, with medicines—down to visit her. At length she’d started to improve, but every day, every hour, it seemed, she’d wailed for Isaac, branding that cherished name into his brain like molten iron. Because he’d known, after a few months, that it was useless to hope. Either his father had already died at Dachau, or he would soon do so. Isaac was frail, a gentle man; and Wolf knew the Nazis well enough to understand that they would have no mercy.

  But he couldn’t voice his opinion to his mother. He had to keep her alive until they were reunited with Maryse and Nanni. After that, his little daughter would give her a new reason for living. Wolf wondered now, with an acute anguish, when he would see his loved ones again. There was no way of communicating with them. Hans had tried, through the underground, to send news, but he hadn’t been at all confident that it would reach Maryse in Paris.

  Finally, then, Mina had felt well enough to travel. But the only hope of immediate refuge that Hans had been able to arrange for them had been on this old ship, bound for Cuba. Nine hundred eighteen Jews were aboard, because the Cuban authorities had granted them permission to land. Their visas were legal; Wolf remembered with horror how they had been forced to cross into Germany, to board this ship in Hamburg. Most of the other emigrants were German Jews. But Hans had planned well, and the trip from Vienna had gone smoothly enough. And now, they were on their way to freedom.

  “To me, Cuba sounds like the Garden of Eden,” he said, smiling, putting an arm around his mother.

  They’d been sailing for weeks, it seemed. Wolf tried to count the number of days, spent crowded in the hold, or sometimes, for rare moments like these, pushed against the railing on the deck, smelling the sea. Three weeks. It had to be three weeks now. He hadn’t had a bath in at least that long, and
his beard was straggly, unkempt. But this morning, he’d heard the rumor that they were going to land, and so he’d brought his mother out, to watch. “Some say Cuba is a beautiful island,” he said. “And the Jews there are rich, and respected.”

  They remained there, leaving only to retrieve some food. It was incredible to think that they would really be landing . . . without fear of the Nazis. In the afternoon, the vague outline of the island had appeared, and the hundreds of emigrants, many of whom had sold their last possession to be able to make this trip to freedom, crowded each other to catch a glimpse of their future refuge. Toward dusk they had finally entered the port, and set anchor. The captain had gone on land to prepare for the unloading of his passengers.

  “It’s very strange,” a small, bald man next to him murmured to Wolf. “Usually the disembarkation is very speedy. But our captain seems to have been gone for hours.”

  “This is a different world,” Wolf smiled back. “Everything is mañana.”

  But he couldn’t help feeling a pinprick of apprehension. Holding his mother close to him, he prayed to God for a safe landing, and gave himself up to destiny.

  When at last the captain returned, his face, as he turned to his passengers, was dark, troubled. “There’s been a coup d’état,” he announced in German. His voice rang clear through, although a mumbling noise had risen up from the hold. “And so we’ve got unexpected problems. The consuls who signed your visas are no longer consuls. And so the governor of the island has refused to take you.”

  Wolf shut his ears against the cries, and held his mother close to him. Was this possible? A panic was pushing through the ranks around him, and he could literally smell the fear on the breaths of those who were screaming it out. After some hours, the captain returned to port, and the old Jewish men began to pray aloud, in unison. Wolf joined in, his voice tied in a knot.

  That night, it was almost impossible to sleep. Wolf could hear murmurs all around him, voicing speculation back and forth in the large hold. The next day, the captain returned to port for another discussion with the authorities. Rumors went around that the Jews of Cuba, as well as prominent Americans such as Mrs. Gould and her New York Coordination Committee, and even President Roosevelt, had sent ardent pleas to the governor of Cuba on behalf of the emigrants. But the governor sent the captain back with another staunch refusal.

  Slowly, shock passed into horror as the captain narrated the situation. Wolf was aware of a sudden hush, and of all the minds that thought in unison, We are alone. He recalled that when he’d gone to temple as a child, he’d sometimes felt, in his own veins, the empathetic presence of others, all thinking alike, all holding hands with their minds. It had given him goosebumps to sense such a strong human bond. He’d supposed, later, that Catholics who came to the Vatican to listen to the Pope probably felt the same, joint awe. So it wasn’t just being a Jew. But now, at forty-six, a practicing, licensed psychiatrist, he had to recognize that fear, more than awe, could bind people to one another. The nine hundred eighteen refugees all felt the same fear, and it had reduced them to animals, smelling death. Even his mother had the appearance of a wild animal at bay, her nostrils slightly quivering, her eyes vacant, her body hunched together in instinctive self-protection.

  Suddenly there was a terrible cry, and he saw a woman gesticulating. There was a commotion at the back, and, like all others, Wolf strove to press forward, to catch what was happening. “It’s Chaim!” the woman was screaming, tearing at her hair, pointing to the huge double doors on the other side of the hold. “Didn’t anybody see him? He’s slashed his wrists! He’s out on deck!”

  Wolf reacted within seconds. “Let me through!” he cried, loudly, pushing through the crowded room. “I’m a doctor! For God’s sake! Aren’t there any other doctors in here? A man’s tried to kill himself!” Around him, he could barely make out the hushed faces, the stunned eyes, and one man said: “So what? We’re all going to die.” But they did try to make room for him, and when he reached the double doors, he felt a man tugging at his sleeve, trying to catch up with him.

  “I’m a doctor, too,” he said. “Where is this Chaim?”

  Disheveled and perspiring, Wolf and the other ran on deck, their hearts palpitating. And then, against the railing, they saw him. To Wolf’s amazement, it was the small bald man who had stood beside him the day before, waiting for the return of the captain. Wolf held up a hand, cried: “Wait! Chaim! What’s the good of all this? You can’t admit defeat, like a coward. We’re coming to treat your cuts.”

  But the small man was shaking his head, in a rhythmic, hysterical fashion. His eyes were streaming tears. Blood was dripping onto his trousers from his wrists. And all at once, he bolted around, and with what was left of his strength, hoisted himself over the railing, and with a great yell, threw himself overboard. “My God,” Wolf said. “He’s gone mad.”

  “He just doesn’t want to live. Maybe we’re the ones that are mad.”

  In unison, Wolf and his companion had begun to discard their shoes and their excess clothing. By now, the deck was full, the captain holding the screaming woman, people peering into the water where Chaim had landed, like a popped balloon. Wolf and the other doctor jumped over the railing, and threw themselves after him, one landing on each side. Within minutes they were holding him up, trying to stop the wounds with their shirttails, while the captain was lowering a lifeboat into the water.

  And then it was over. Chaim was being taken ashore, on a gurney, bandages over his wrists, and the captain was attempting to explain to the frantic woman that later, perhaps, she and her children might be allowed to visit him in the hospital. But this privilege was never granted. The port authorities, aggravated at the notion that one man had succeeded, in spite of their edict, to gain access to Cuban soil, sent back the message that no one else, not even the grieving family of the wounded man, would be accepted ashore. The faces of the nine hundred seventeen remaining Jews on board registered the news with a strange, silent resignation. They’d stopped expecting to be treated with compassion by those who were on the outside. They were no more to Cuban eyes than a shipload of caged animals, whom nobody wanted to take care of.

  “All my life I thought God loved me,’ Mina whispered, awed. “But perhaps now I believe He hates us all.”

  “It isn’t God who hates us, Mama. It’s men. Human beings.” He felt a deep chill after his earlier exploits, and a slight fever. Never had the future appeared so uncertain. How right he’d been, to have sent Maryse and Nanni to France when he had done so! He would never have forgiven himself if they’d been with him, sharing this terrifying uncertainty.

  At length the ship lifted anchor. Men and women wept openly. The captain had at least been able to obtain from the Cubans a replenishment of food and water. “We’re going to the United States,” somebody said. There seemed to be a new surge of hope, and he allowed himself to go with it, thinking of Eliane and David, his parents-in-law. They’d been the smartest of all, leaving Europe entirely behind them.

  By now their ship, the Saint Louis, had become famous. When it crossed to the United States, and set anchor, the captain wasn’t allowed off the ship without official escorts. Hopes ran high once more. The Americans, always so fair, would surely be able to admit so few of them, under a thousand. President Roosevelt would never turn them away. The Jews were being closely watched, so that no one would get the idea of jumping off to gain illegal access to the country. But surely, Mrs. Gould and her group would force her cohorts to open their doors, and their hearts, to these unfortunates fleeing from the Nazis.

  After a while, the captain came back to the Saint Louis with bad news. Roosevelt had declared that their near-thousand exceeded the quota for German immigrants. Exhausted, at his wits’ end, the captain announced that since no place wanted them, he had no choice but to turn around and return to Hamburg.

  Then the tall man came to Wolf, and held out his pen. “There are over a hundred of us who have already signed,” he sa
id, his cultured voice smooth and low. “If we are to be thrown back to the Nazis, we shall commit suicide upon arrival. But we refuse to be sent back to Hell. Better death, than Dachau.”

  Wolf waited one-half minute, scrutinizing the writing on the paper. Certainly, they were right. And yet . . . Maryse. If he agreed to end his life, he would be agreeing never to see his wife and daughter again. While he was thinking, he saw his mother’s delicate hand jut out, take the pen from the tall man’s fingers, and begin to write. “Mama, no,” he cried, wrenching it from her hand.

  “Your mother’s right: what choice have we?” the man murmured. But Wolf turned away, his eyes suddenly filling up with tears.

  The captain, before setting off, went back on land, and made a public declaration of his intentions, and of the suicide pact that had been signed, finally, by two hundred of his passengers. He made a valiant plea, heard over the broadcasts of many nations. And on the twelfth of June, France announced its permission to land the ship in Cherbourg. The Netherlands would accept two hundred Jews, Belgium one hundred fifty, and France and Great Britain the rest.

  The Joint Distribution Committee had given fourteen million francs, or five hundred pounds sterling per head, to help the various governments to make room for the nine hundred seventeen. But Wolf didn’t forget that his mother had signed the suicide pact, her fingers firm and unwavering.