The Other Half of Life (2 page)

Thomas walked to the porthole. He tried the handle but
it was locked tight. Thomas figured this low on the ship, he'd better get accustomed to the stale air.

Herr Kleist turned to Thomas, his face solemn again. He wagged his finger at him. “You will not be putting me in danger with your sharp tongue. Do you know what I've lived through? Have you had to scrub the streets with a toothbrush?”

Thomas thought about telling Herr Kleist what he
had
lived through. Something, in his opinion, much worse than scrubbing streets.

“I've gotten you aboard,” Herr Kleist added. “Now you're on your own.”

Thomas thought of his mother—how Herr Kleist had promised her he'd watch out for him. But promises meant nothing these days. Thomas didn't answer. He walked away. Alone was just fine with him.

T
he first thing Thomas wanted to see was the upper deck. It took him a while to find his way through the ship's maze of rooms, passages, and stairwells. He walked by the gymnasium, the nursery, the beauty salon, and the shipboard store. It was like a regular town, only on the water. He peered in the windows of the store at the arrangements of postcards, cigars, toys, and clothing. A woman was touching the fabric of a dress and Thomas heard her ask the clerk, “Where is this wool from? It seems heavy for worsted wool.” She soon introduced herself to the clerk, her chin held high: “My name is Blanka Rosen. I used to have the premier design shop in all of Prague.” Thomas shook his head and kept walking. All of them used to be something else. All of them used to have more than they had now—a home, a family, a profession, a life. But none of it mattered anymore, and Thomas didn't see why
people insisted on clinging to the past. Memories of what used to be only brought more pain.

Thomas had just set foot on the deck when a man in uniform stepped in front of him.

“Erste Klasse
?”

“Macht es einen Unterschied?”
Thomas asked.

The man stood at least a foot over Thomas. He had a big head too, with what Thomas noticed were strangely small ears, as if they had been forgotten at birth and carelessly put on later. He wore a different uniform than the steward who had shown them to the cabin. His uniform was the green jacket, green trousers, and black boots of a Nazi officer. Thomas wondered if he was an officer of the ship or of the Nazi Party.

“The upper deck is only for first-class passengers.”

Thomas felt the sting of insult just the same way he had when he had been turned away at school for being a Jew. On that day he had arrived at school to find a gathering of his fellow classmates, all Jewish, outside the door.

“We're not allowed in school anymore,” one of them informed him. “No Jews. They said go home.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Thomas had said. The others had lingered, as if hoping to find out it was all a mistake. Burying his hurt inside of himself, Thomas had been the first to turn and leave.

It didn't matter that the first-class passengers who were allowed on the upper deck were also Jewish—it nevertheless
made him flush with anger. He still hated any rules that separated people into categories.

“Kurt, he can come in.”

The man who had spoken was the same young steward who had shown Thomas and Herr Kleist to the cabin.

“But, Manfred, he's tourist-class,” Kurt said.

“Captain's orders. Living quarters and dining rooms are to stay separate, but otherwise everyone is free to come and go as they like.”

Kurt's lips curled. “I guess they
are
all Jews.”

Thomas took a step forward. “So I can go?”

“Of course,” Manfred said, showing the way with an outstretched hand.

Thomas did a lap of the deck. He had imagined it would be mostly open space, but it was surprisingly cluttered with deck chairs, lifeboats, ventilation shafts, pipes, and crates of equipment. Thomas heard music coming from the other side of the ship. He turned a corner to see a full band playing. He shook his head—the band made it seem like a joyous departure when in truth they were all escaping by the skin of their teeth. Thomas went to the railing, which was chest-high. He looked down at crew members on the quayside taking care of last-minute details of baggage and supplies. There seemed to be quite a lot being loaded aboard, but Thomas couldn't understand why. Jews were allowed to take very few possessions out of the country. When his neighbors had left a year earlier, the German
travel agency had helped them put their furniture and china into storage with the assurance it would all be sent along later. The neighbors had since written to Thomas's mother to say none of it had ever arrived.

Passengers trickled onto the deck until no room was left along the railing. The crew below uncoiled the hawsers, thick as Thomas's waist, from the bollards. The ship began to move as tugboats pulled it into the harbor. The band stopped and everyone waited in expectant silence. The ship's engine coughed up diesel fumes, and Thomas breathed through his mouth to avoid the smell.

Next to Thomas a woman turned her face into her husband's chest and wept. “It's not home anymore,” her husband tried to reassure her. “There's nothing to miss.”

Other people clapped and cheered. One couple danced. Thomas felt the urge to yell out to his mother, even though she was likely long gone. In his mind he saw the apartment: the leather furniture, the spot by the window where the sun streamed through in the afternoon and where he liked to sit and read. He closed his eyes and felt the ship moving. He wanted to go back—he wanted to jump overboard and swim ashore. He put his hand in his pocket to find the pawn. Feeling its edges calmed him.

Around him people made comments in voices loud enough to be heard by many:

“We're safe.”

“They're rid of us.”

“Not
all
of us.”

A man with a woolen scarf wrapped dramatically around his neck pronounced, “
Let us plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident: may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will—it's only action that can make a man.”

Thomas recognized the quotation from
Faust
. His parents had an extensive collection of Goethe's works, and Thomas had read the books even when he didn't have to for school. He especially liked Goethe's dramas, because each time he read a play he understood it in a different way. There were so many layers to the language, plot, and characters. Just as with chess, there was always something new to discover that hadn't been there the time before.

The ship lurched out of the harbor, picking up speed. The diesel smell faded, but the vibration of the engine grew so that Thomas could feel it under his feet through the wooden deck. The wind picked up, blowing women's skirts and men's hats. Thomas stared at the water below him and the land, which still seemed very close.

Then, in what seemed like only an instant, the shoreline was gone and black water surrounded them. Thomas felt a wave of claustrophobia and steadied himself on the railing. Once it passed, he turned from the railing and noticed two girls in frilly white dresses. Their parents stood nearby; the father was the man in the scarf who had quoted from
Faust
. The mother wore a showy party dress unlike any
Thomas had ever seen his own mother wear. It made Thomas sad to see the parents standing close together, the girls giggling. They were all together. They were happy. Thomas looked back to sea. It had only been a matter of minutes and yet now Germany was gone. The apartment was gone. His mother was gone. How had they gotten so far away so fast?

The steward Thomas now knew as Manfred walked by, and the elder of the girls stopped him. “Excuse me, could you tell us where the pool is?”

Thomas studied Manfred more closely. He could only be a few years older than Thomas himself: eighteen, nineteen at most. The one fault Thomas could find in his looks was a protruding Adam's apple. He also noticed that his hands seemed to tremble ever so slightly.

“Looking for an evening swim, are you?” Manfred said.

The girls giggled again. “No, but maybe tomorrow.”

“The pool isn't up yet. It'll be on A Deck, filled once we get to the Gulf Stream. You wouldn't want to swim in this freezing water.”

“Thank you,” the older girl said. She grabbed her sister's hand. “This is going to be such fun!”

Thomas shook his head as the girls beamed at each other. “You make it sound like we're on holiday.” He hadn't meant to say those words aloud, and now the older girl had turned and was staring at him.

“Well, it's almost like a holiday. We're celebrating.”

“Celebrating what?”

“Getting out, of course.”

Thomas huffed. “You actually think this”—he glanced up at the swastika flag flapping in the wind—“is getting out?”

“Two weeks' time and we'll be in Cuba. Then we're headed to America. We've already applied for visas. We have an uncle there.”

“That's nice for you,” Thomas said.

“Where are you and your family eventually going?”

“It's just me.”

The girl touched her curly hair. “You're traveling alone?”

“Yes.” Thomas thought he might have to suffer through her pitying looks, but instead came an invitation: “You should have dinner with us, then.”

Before he could say no, she pulled her father's hand. “Vati, this young man is traveling alone. Can we invite him to dine with us?”

The man with the scarf turned. Streaks of gray in his dark hair gave him a striking appearance.

Thomas might have been too outspoken at times but he wasn't raised without manners. He extended his hand to the man. “Thomas Werkmann.”

“Nice to meet you. I'm Professor Affeldt.” He motioned to his wife, who was still looking out over the railing. “That is my wife and these are my daughters, Priska and Marianne.”

The girls had the same round faces and corkscrew curls, although Priska, the older one, had shorter hair.

“Of course you'll eat with us,” Professor Affeldt added.

“That isn't necessary,” Thomas replied.

“Are you first-class?”

Thomas shook his head and tried to look appropriately disappointed, since he already knew tourist-class wasn't allowed in the first-class dining room.

“Do you have a dinner jacket?”

“Yes, but—”

“Good. It shouldn't be a problem. We'll say you're a cousin. There are so many families here … in fact, aren't we all family now, in a way?”

The girls nodded. Priska smiled and elbowed her sister. “See, I told you we'd make lots of new friends, Marianne.”

Thomas opened his mouth, but he couldn't think of any excuse to get himself out of dining with them. For the night anyway, he was stuck.

H
ow Thomas wished his mother were there to fuss over his clothes now! Was his tie straight? Did his jacket fit? His mother had insisted he pack his father's dinner jacket. She had combed through his father's clothes and picked out several items for Thomas to bring with him. To him it hadn't felt right—it had felt like admitting his father wasn't coming back, something Thomas wasn't ready to do.

“You never know when you might be invited to dine first-class,” his mother had said. And she had been right.

Thomas expected the sleeves of the jacket to be too long and the shoulders to be too wide. His father had been of medium build, but nevertheless he had always seemed big to Thomas. Now he realized that they were close to the same size. This knowledge filled him with a pang of
regret—he was bound to grow a few more inches, which meant he would soon be taller than his father.

“Where do you think you're going, all dressed up?” Herr Kleist said as he woke from a snooze to find Thomas examining himself in the shaving mirror above the washbasin.

“That's not your concern, remember,” Thomas replied. He had made up his mind to have as little to do with Herr Kleist as he could, but he was beginning to think that it would be hard, considering they shared such a small space. He hoped his other two roommates would be at least a bit of a buffer. Before going on deck to look out as the ship departed, he had met them briefly: Oskar and Elias Gold-schmid were brothers, university students from Stuttgart.