The German Girl (21 page)

We were told through the loudspeakers to have our documents ready. They were going to check the validity of our landing permits, together with other visas.

Walter arrived at a run. As soon as he got his breath back, he exploded:

“They’re demanding a bond of five hundred Cuban pesos per passenger as a guarantee,” he said, repeating what he had overheard from his parents.

“How much is that?” I asked.

“About five hundred American dollars. That’s impossible.” Leo always had a head for figures.

We had spent what little cash we had left in Germany buying valuable objects we could resell in Cuba.

“This is such a dreadful circus,” said a lady in a white sun hat next to us. “Dreadful,” she insisted, as though hoping somebody would hear and react.

There had to be a solution. The captain would not allow them to send us back. He was on our side; he wasn’t an Ogre.

I peered at the long waterfront avenue and somehow could not imagine myself ever setting foot on it with Leo and my family.

T
here are moments when it is better to accept it’s all over, that there’s nothing more to be done. Give up and abandon hope: surrender. That’s how I felt by then. I didn’t believe in miracles. This had happened to us because we insisted on changing a destiny that was already written. We didn’t have any rights, we couldn’t reinvent history. We were condemned to be deceived from the moment we came into the world.

If Leo stays on this ship, so will I. If Papa stays, so will Mama.

Until then, they had only allowed two Cubans and four Spaniards to leave the ship. We’d never seen them on the trip across the Atlantic. They kept to themselves, never speaking to anyone.

If the process of checking our documents continued at that rate, and they let another six people disembark each time, we would have been there more than three months. By then, the swaying of the ship would have finished me off completely.

Through the porthole, Havana looked hazy, small, unreachable, like an old postcard left behind by some visiting tourist. But I kept the glass closed because I didn’t want to hear the shouts from the relatives swarming around the
St. Louis
in decrepit wooden launches that a wave could capsize. Surnames and first names flew from the decks of our huge liner anchored in the harbor to the frail, hesitant craft below. Köppel, Karliner, Edelstein, Ball, Richter, Velmann, Münz, Leyser, Jordan, Wachtel, Goldbaum, Siegel. Everyone was searching for someone, but nobody found anybody. I didn’t want to hear any more names, but they kept coming back. Neither Leo nor I had anyone to shout our names. Nobody was coming to save us.

On the waterfront avenue, I could see cars speeding along as though nothing were happening: to them, this was just another ship with foreigners on it, who for some reason or other were insisting on settling on an island where work was scarce and the sun destroyed all willpower.

Someone knocked at our door. As always, I shivered: perhaps they had come for Papa. The Ogres were everywhere, even on this island that my mind still could not accept as being part of our future.

Mr. and Mrs. Moser had come to see us. I said hello, and Mrs. Moser, who was bathed in sweat, hugged me. I could see they were on the verge of bursting into tears. Mr. Moser looked haggard, as if he hadn’t slept in days.

“He prefers to die,” Mrs. Moser explained passionately. “He wants to throw himself into the sea. But what about us? What would happen to my three children? We have no home, no money, no country.”

My parents listened to them calmly. Mama stood up and steered Mr. Moser toward a chair, where he bent forward and hid his head in his hands out of shame. Mama felt great pity for this man: not so much for what he was suffering but because she could see that he and his wife believed that the powerful Rosenthals could help them somehow.

“I can’t leave him on his own,” Mrs. Moser continued. “He wants to cut his veins, throw himself into the sea, hang himself in our cabin . . .”

Apparently she had caught him in all his attempts at a premature
good-bye. It seemed written on his forehead: it could be today or tomorrow, but it would happen.

I thought that Mr. Moser might not actually want to commit suicide, though he was gambling with his destiny. If somebody wants to kill himself, he does. It’s easy, if you really mean to do it. You leap into the void or slash your wrists while the others are asleep.

“Even though our hands are tied,” Papa began, trying to calm down the anguished Mosers, “we’ll find a solution.”

In a split second, he had become the professor again: the one who could convince, who held the truth in his hands. Mr. Moser raised his head, dried his tears, and concentrated as hard as he could on the person they all saw as the most influential passenger on the
St. Louis.
Only he could alter the fate of the more than nine hundred passengers. He and the captain.

“We ought to write to the presidents of Cuba, the United States, and Canada, on behalf of the women and children on board,” Papa continued.

Mr. and Mrs. Moser smiled timidly, and their faces lit up slowly: they could glimpse their salvation and, for the first time in many days, felt there might be a reason for carrying on.

I thought they had all lost their wits. By then, no one on board seemed in his or her right mind. What difference would a letter make? The presidents wouldn’t give a damn about where we ended up. No one wanted to take on our problems. No one wanted Germany as an enemy. What sense would it make to allow all these impure people into their countries, those paradises of harmony and well-being?

Our first big mistake had been to set sail from Hamburg. During all the days of the crossing, we had been living on nothing more than pathetic illusions. I didn’t believe in fantasies or in an unreal world. That’s why I always loathed my macabre dolls, so unresponsive and always staring at me, demanding to know why I didn’t want to play with them when they were so splendid, so perfect and blond, so highly prized.

Mr. Moser’s lifetime savings had vanished in the purchase of the landing permits for Cuba and in the passages for himself and his family
on the
St. Louis
, and yet now he seemed to recover his faith just from listening to Papa. This encouraged him to launch into a description of his own particular drama, as though they were the only outcasts on board.

“We lost everything. My brother is waiting for us in Havana, where he’s bought a house. If they send us back, we wouldn’t have anywhere to go. What’s going to happen to our three children? If we write to the Cuban president, I’m sure his heart will soften.”

Hearing him sound so hopeful, his wife must have thought that the danger had passed. That the father of her children would no longer want to take a life that had once been so prized. They would all go back to their cabin, where she would make their beds. Tonight she could sleep soundly; she had even begun to breathe more calmly.

But that family’s destiny was already written: from the moment I saw Mr. Moser leave our cabin, head down and happy, I knew what was going to happen. I lay on my bed and closed my eyes. My head began to spin endlessly, not allowing me to sleep.

First of all, Mrs. Moser would put the children to bed, sing them a lullaby, tuck them in, and give them good-night kisses. Moved by the sight of them, she would enjoy the soft breathing of these innocents, and then withdraw to rest alongside the man she had always trusted and with whom she had chosen to make a family. The man for whom she’d left her village, abandoning her parents, brothers, and sisters to take on an unknown name. She would fall asleep next to him, just as in the prosperous times.

While his family was sleeping, Mr. Moser would creep out of bed. He would go to the bathroom, look for the silver-plated razor with the leather handle bearing the insignia of the
St. Louis,
and sever his arteries with a determined stroke. First he’d feel a searing pain, but soon panic would drive out all feeling. He’d collapse to the floor, and the blood would seep slowly from his twitching body, so slowly it would allow him to see one last time, from the cold bathroom tile, how the people he had most loved in his life were sleeping soundly.

As he convulsed, his still-warm blood would start to gush out. Even though he was still conscious, his sight would grow dim, and his heartbeats would become gradually fainter. Finally he would lie still. His blood would start to dry, turning from red to black. The liquid would solidify.

At dawn, Mrs. Moser would wake up and realize her husband was not beside her. She’d touch the cold sheets that no longer bore any trace of her beloved’s warmth, and then notice that the bathroom door was ajar. She’d walk slowly toward it, terrified of what she might find. Filled with foreboding, her breathing would become quicker, more urgent. She’d want to cry out, but be unable to. Coming to a halt in the doorway, she’d see the confused image of a scene she had avoided thinking about in the previous days, weeks, possibly even months. She’d close her eyes, take a deep breath, and start crying silently.

At the sight of her husband’s body curled up on the bathroom floor in a fetal position, she’d kneel down to embrace him, even knowing that he no longer felt anything, that he was no longer there. A desperate cry and inconsolable weeping. The first one to join her would be her youngest daughter, aged four, clutching a white teddy bear. Then her six-year-old boy. Her eldest daughter, ten, would try to lead her brother and sister away to spare them from a sight that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Soon afterward, someone came to inform Papa. Neither showed any emotion: they were too preoccupied with their own anguish.

I stayed in bed. I couldn’t stop thinking about Mrs. Moser when she found her husband’s body. I hoped her children would never forget this day. They had to remember who was to blame.

Someone would have to pay.

“W
e’re going to set fire to the ship today,” Leo whispered in my ear almost as soon as we left my cabin and ran up on deck.

In less than ten minutes we had been up and down ladders, visited the engine room, rushed from first to third class. I had no idea what we were after.

“If they don’t let us land, we’ll set fire to it.”

There’ll be no need for that, Leo. It’s so hot here that the heat is burning the ship’s rails and the wooden decking. It’s impossible to stay outside. The sun is another enemy.

Leo told me that, up to now, Cuba had accepted less than thirty passengers—the ones who had landing permits issued by its state department—but rejected those signed by the director-general of immigration, Manuel Benítez. He was the scoundrel who, together with his military mentor and ally Batista, had pocketed all our money. The “Benítez” had already lost its validity while we were crossing the Atlantic. Or possibly much earlier than that.

Now that military chief, the real power on the island, was in his luxury residence surrounded by his family and his escort while recuperating in bed from a cold and did not dare show his face.

His personal physician forbade him to answer the telephone, not wanting him disturbed by such trivial matters as the lives of more than nine hundred passengers!

When Mama bought the Benítez for Papa, she purchased two more for us, thinking the visas she already had might lose their validity. But we also had our US visas and were on the waiting list for entry there. I didn’t know what more they could expect from us.

“It’s possible everything will be sorted out
mañana
.” Leo pronounced the word in his deep, ridiculous Spanish accent.
Mañana
—the only word, apart from
gracias
, that he could say in the language spoken on the island—was to be the last day of negotiations.

“
Mañana,
” he said again, as if those three syllables had some other meaning and could convey hope.

Papa’s passport had been stamped with a big
R
: for
return
or
rejected
or
repudiated
. They had done the same with the passports of Leo and Mr. Martin; Walter, Kurt, and their family; and Ines. Nobody would be saved. We were nothing more than a pack of undesirables, ready to be thrown into the sea or sent back to the Ogres’ hell.

No one cared that we’d spent our life savings on purchasing those documents. Now a heartless president had dared to sign a decree declaring them null and void.

Leo thought that if we could set fire to the ship, they were bound to take account of us. The committee that Papa was chairman of had lost its powers of persuasion or negotiation, if it ever had any. The captain didn’t know how he could face the passengers, who had put their trust in him. From the very first day, the most powerful man on board had led us to believe we would disembark—that there would be no problems when we got to the wretched port of Havana.

Two weeks wasted. We, the ridiculously gullible ones, had believed the Ogres when they authorized us to leave after handing over our businesses,
our homes, our fortunes. How on earth could we have been so stupid as to trust them? It had all been planned in advance, even before Mama bought the landing permits for Cuba written in Spanish. They knew it from the moment we sailed from Hamburg; the band playing us off was another farce. It was obvious now why we were forced to have return tickets: they wanted us to cover the costs of the journey back.