Munich Signature (29 page)

In the corner the music reminded him of Vienna and Leah. Charles wanted to show Bubbe Rosenfelt Leah’s cello. Then she would know that he really did know about cellos even if he did not know how to read the menu card.

***

The sea of the gray Atlantic had risen again and the swells that slapped the hull of the
Darien
were taking a toll on the passengers.

First Mate Tucker organized a battalion of adolescent boys headed by Aaron who swabbed the decks and washed the breakfast tins. Those passengers who could manage the climb had struggled up to the misty air of the top deck in order to breathe deeply and regain control of their churning stomachs.

For Tucker, so many passengers languishing on the deck meant an opportunity for an English lesson. Bandy-legged and rubber-faced, he strolled cheerfully among them asking in his cockney accent, “An’ ’ow are y’ tod’y?”

Broken English replied to his query, “Am I feelink fine, dank hue.” Then another helping of porridge would be served over the rail to the fishes of the Atlantic.

Maria leaned heavily on the arm of Klaus as they staggered along the pitching deck. Trudy, Katrina, Louise, Gretchen, and Ada-Maria followed like ducklings in close order.

“Mama is sick,” Gretchen explained to Ada-Maria. “See how white she looks.”

“Papa also is white,” Ada-Marie observed.

“It is the porridge,” Louise said. “Like glue.”

“I ate glue once.” Ada-Maria put her hand on her stomach at the memory. “But I didn’t get so white as Mama.”

“That is because you did not eat it for breakfast,” Katrina said. “If you eat glue for breakfast it makes you white.”

Now Trudy, the eldest, spoke with authority. “It is not the porridge that makes everyone so sick. It is the waves. Lurching. Lurching. Lurching.”

“Is that why we have no Torah school today? Is the rabbi from Nuremberg also sick?” Gretchen asked.

“Everyone is sick,” Louise replied. “Except us. And I do not feel so good right now myself.”

Ada-Marie spotted Tucker strolling toward their little procession. “He’s not sick either.”

Tucker waved broadly. He seemed not to notice that Maria was ill. “An’ ’ow is Muvver Goose an’ all the li’l geese tod’y?” he asked brightly.

They answered with one voice. “We are very fine, thank you, First Mite Tucker.” Then Maria, Louise, and Trudy paused to lean over the rail. After a moment Klaus joined them to jettison his breakfast into the waters.

“Why don’t you get sick, First Mite?” Ada-Marie asked.

“Because I lives ’ere. An’ I’m used ter it, see? Y’ll get used ter it, too.” Tucker answered without sympathy.

“Please, God,” Klaus gasped, “may we not be here that long!”

As if in ominous answer to that half-hearted prayer, the good ship
Darien
shuddered and died in the water. The thrumming of her engine stopped until only the splashing of waves against her hull was heard.

Tucker cursed, then scrambled toward the hold as the voice of Captain Burton shouted “All hands!” over the loudspeaker.

Two other crew members sprinted for the hatch.

“What can it mean?” Maria whispered.

The ship drifted to port as a swell caught her. “We are not moving forward,” Klaus said, still sick.

“Does this mean we will have to stay here a long time, Papa?” Gretchen looked miserable. She sank down to sit on the deck as other passengers clustered in small worried groups to speculate on what might be wrong.

Once again the stern voice of Captain Burton crackled over the speakers. “We have lost a steam line to the engine. A minor repair. We will be delayed an hour at most. Make the best of it.”

***

One hour passed, then two. Still the engine of the little freighter did not spark to life. The heavy silence was augmented by the fog that closed in around the ship. Thoughts were lost in the lapping of water against the hull.

Shimon heard urgent whispering in the corridor.

“He can’t be moved.”

“Cap’n says ever’body up on deck. Even the sick feller ’ere.”

“But he can’t be moved. There is more danger to him up on deck. The dampness—”

“Look, Doc, all I can tells y’ is tha’ we’re dead in the water in the middle of the shipping lanes. Smack in the center. We’re pickin’ up the radio of somethin’ big.”

“Then, can it not help us?”

“Help us? She can’t even ’ear us! Somethin’ ’as gone amiss with the transmitter, an’ Cap’n says if she should ram us, we got more chance of survivors comin’ out of the water if we’re all up top.”

“Some are so ill they cannot walk.”

“Then we’ll ’ave ter carry ’em. Includin’ this big bloke, ’alf dead though ’e may be.”

“Lifeboats. Life vests. Have we enough?”

“This ain’ no cruise ship. She’s a freighter, an’ as such she’s got enough of such items fer a freighter’s crew.”

There was a long silence as the meaning of the seaman’s words penetrated Dr. Freund’s stunned consciousness. A tiny, decrepit tramp steamer adrift in the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic. Radio transmitter too weak to send a distress signal but strong enough to hear messages of a large ship close by.

“Send me four strong fellows to carry the patient up,” the doctor finally complied. “Although it will make no difference to him if we are rammed. He would be just as well off here below as in the icy water.”

“Cap’n’s orders” came the reply. “Ever’body on deck.”

Shimon did not speak as four husky young men carried him up into the thick mist shrouding the open deck. At the instructions of Dr. Freund, they placed his stretcher beneath a tarp tent. All was silent except for the murmured prayers of the rabbi of Nuremberg. Family groups huddled together, clinging to one another as they stared out into the slate curtain that surrounded the
Darien
.

Shimon recognized the five little girls who had brought him the lilies. He could not remember their names. He tried to concentrate, tried to remember their names as he watched them cling to the skirt of their pregnant mother and lift hands up to their tall, gaunt father. Was there ever such pain on a man’s face? The father of those children closed his eyes in tight-lipped agony at his own helplessness. He looked first at one child and then another. Whom to save? He could not save them all if the ship were rammed.

Shimon groaned with that man’s agony. Five little girls. A wife. Shimon had only his own life to give up. What must it be like to wonder whom to save?

The rabbi now felt silent. The
Darien
moaned, metal creaking a protest as the water pushed her from one trough to the next. There was no human voice except that of the frantic, cursing seamen who worked below on the recalcitrant engine. Dull silence. Hearts racing. Breath that mingled with the fog.

Then one head raised as if to sniff the air. Another and another turned to face the starboard side of the ship. In the distance the faint rush of water could be heard, and behind that the low thrumming of an engine.

Now everyone heard it. Straight away to the starboard. Yes. They could hear the engines of the great ship.
Rushhhh. Rushhhh
. So swift to destruction. Right on course. Unheeding of the heartbeats, unaware of the father who had decided they would all simply die together. He could not choose. He
would
not choose among his precious little ones.

The rabbi began to pray again. Other voices joined him. Like the sound of the wind through the trees, the great ship swept toward them through the fog.

18

The Closed Curtain

Leah intertwined her fingers in the mane of the little Haflinger mare she rode. The trail loomed up the face of the mountain in a series of tortuous switchbacks. Hooves clattered and scrambled against the rocks, sending showers of pebbles and gravel sliding away from the narrow path to plummet down the thousand-foot wall.

“Stand in your stirrups,” Franz Wattenbarger called back to her. “Put your weight over the mare’s shoulders.”

Leah obeyed immediately, as she had done whenever the handsome young Tyrolean man had issued some command throughout the long, arduous journey from the farmhouse. Now the house was a mere matchbox beneath them. In the last mile they had ridden above the tree line until the high valley where the farm nestled was a neat patchwork of newly cultivated field in the center of a carpet of green forest. One hundred yards beyond the trail, a waterfall gushed over the boulders and tumbled down into the abyss until it finally emerged as a thin ribbon of peaceful blue bordering the Wattenbarger farm. In the previous weeks, Leah had sat quietly beside that stream while young Louis had whooped and run in the wide fields.

Even though they were still within the boundaries of Austria, Leah had felt safe on the farm. Safe from the Nazis. Safe behind a tall green curtain of peace that surrounded the home of the Wattenbarger family. As the other refugees had been taken from the haven one by one, Leah had not felt an urgency to escape. She and Louis were the last of the little company to leave. If it had not been for the immense danger her presence brought to the kind family, she would have begged to stay. The words and prayers of dear Marta had brought her comfort and courage. She had found faith to trust that somehow God held Shimon firmly in His hand.

“I won’t know how to pray without you to show me,” she had whispered in her tearful farewell to Marta.

“Just talk to the Lord, child.” Marta had embraced her and led her quickly to the side of the little horse. “And remember, it is written: ‘Whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.’” Then Marta had pulled out a well-worn Bible from the pocket of her apron and tucked it into Leah’s fleece-lined coat.

“But I cannot ride a horse,” Leah had protested feebly.

At that, Marta had patted her cheek. “Sit quietly, Leah. She knows the path. She has traveled it a hundred times, and she will not slip.”

As Leah glanced fearfully back toward the valley from the dizzying height, she clung to Marta’s reassurances. She prayed. She had not been so frightened since the night Otto had taken them out of Vienna.

Five-year-old Louis, tied securely to a large, shaggy horse, was totally unafraid as Franz led him up the trail. Twice the child had nodded off to sleep, and Franz turned to Leah with the explanation. “It’s the altitude. Lack of air makes the little ones sleepy. Every child I have guided out of here has dozed off. I learned early to tie them onto the saddle. Almost lost the first one. He fell off—lucky it was a wide spot in the trail!”

Leah was sore and exhausted, but not the least bit drowsy. She was not tied onto the saddle, and the thought of nodding off and tumbling from her mount kept her wide awake. Inches from the hooves of the sure-footed horse, the world disappeared. Leah kept her eyes plastered to the rump of the horse ahead of her. She imagined the Herrgottseck of the farmhouse. She could almost smell the fresh-baked roggenbrot
on the cold alpine wind. She could feel the warmth of the fire and visualize Karl and Marta as they bowed their heads over supper and prayed for the safety of the travelers as they had done for each expedition that Franz had led to freedom over the weeks.

Leah could not help but wish she was back at the table with the old couple. How much longer would they have to ride before they reached the first hut and Franz would turn them over to the capable hands of yet another guide who would lead them farther toward the border?

“How much longer, Franz?” The question escaped Leah’s lips the instant she thought it.

In reply, he pointed to a jagged outcropping two hundred feet above them where the sunlight struck the rock with a blinding light. The trail led up and around the rocky point and disappeared into a snow band. “The summit,” Franz said with a jerk of his head. “There is a lake at the top where we will rest the horses and stretch. From there you can just see the hut. It is down a bit. Another mile.”

The thought of a short rest beside an alpine lake caused Leah to want to kick the horse and urge her to hurry up the dangerous slope. As if reading her mind, the lead horse strained forward and quickened his pace as he clambered up the path. Leah’s mount followed, crowding its nose against the rump of the gelding that carried Louis. The horses, too, seemed in a hurry to rest.

***

A bank of clouds rolled through a mountain pass far below the little band of travelers. Leah looked downward at the small square of green in the valley that marked the peaceful farm. One last look. A final farewell. There had been so many of those farewells, and she could not help but wonder, as the clouds covered the valley floor, if she would ever again see her beloved Austria. It was as if God had closed a curtain, blocking that last nostalgic view from her. Now the world was the treeless, boulder-strewn mountain peaks above and tall, ever-changing pillars of clouds below. The rush of the wind blended with the roar of tumbling waters escaping from the cold grip of a glacier. Her breath and that of the horse drifted up on the cold air in a steamy vapor as they topped the rise and emerged at the summit.

There was no hint of green here, but a rocky shore led gently down to a small lake. Years of glaciers had deposited rocks and boulders everywhere. The horses picked their way carefully toward the water’s edge.

At first glance, Leah noticed that the water was almost milky in color. The lake seemed to be a mere shallow depression on the stone slab. As they neared the water, however, she could see that her first impression had been wrong. The bottom of the lake dropped off to an unmeasurable depth, to burst out from the face of the mountain in gushing waterfalls and mere trickles that scarred the granite cliff.

Franz dismounted and then, as if to prove some unspoken theory, he picked up a stone and heaved it toward the center of the lake. It landed with a heavy
plop
and Leah watched it descend until it finally disappeared into the black depths.