The German Girl (39 page)

I descend Paseo, counting every step I still have to take to reach the Malecón. I discover new buildings, overgrown gardens, the roots of leafy trees that refuse to stay beneath the asphalt.

Anna is no longer with me, and that hurts. I try my best to look at the faded houses and the children hurtling down Paseo on their bikes, but I find it impossible. All I can see is her, even if I know she wasn’t born to live on this island where I am condemned to die, as Mother used to say. In the end, I’m comforted by that idea.

A day like today, after I have celebrated my birthday, I find it hard to understand how I have survived everyone in my family. Leo, who drew our fate in maps made of water and mud in the alleyways of Berlin. Julian, a vain hope that from the start was destined to vanish into nothingness.

I have no wish to return to the past. Time to end it all: even pain has its expiration date. I live in the present, yes, the here and now, whatever can give me another breath, even if it is the last. The goal is in sight, and I feel I have a voice. I exist, even if now I am no more than the ghost of what I once was.

It seems as if everything I am wearing is smothering me. The pearls pull me down toward the ground like a deadweight. My dress is a suit of armor that prevents me from breathing. My shoes cling to the sidewalk as if unwilling to take another step. The faint rouge I’ve dabbed on to show myself I am still alive is no more than a childish weapon in this battle to live in the present.

My memory is dense—so dense that the good-byes are lost in forgetfulness.

I can reconstruct every last detail of the dress Mother was wearing when she boarded the
St. Louis
seventy-five years ago, but I cannot recall what I did before I said good-bye to Anna. Did I close my bedroom door? I’ve no idea if I left the lights on, if I said good-bye to Catalina, if Anna accepted our pearl. I at least know I’m wearing rouge. Yes, my face has some life in it. Or at least the semblance of it.

The only thing I’m interested in is today. Yesterday and tomorrow are for other people, not for an old woman who has reached the age of eighty-seven. Anna, you are in charge of the remaining traces of a family that should never have survived. That’s why I passed on those photos and the pearl.

Yes, the moment has arrived, and I’m here for you.

Can you hear me, Leo?
I’m carrying my little brown bag. In it are the keys, my compact, the lipstick, the threadbare lace handkerchief Papa brought me from Bruges on one of his trips. And your gift, Leo, the last one, the one I have waited until today to open: the small indigo box you put in my hand before I was torn from you. We didn’t have the chance to say good-bye, not like Anna and Diego did. I was never able to give you the promised kiss.

I still have a voice, I tell myself again, to convince myself, but the rouge on my cheeks separates me from you, from my childhood. Yet I know that every step I take brings me closer to you.

At last, I see the horizon. I lean against the wall that protects the city from the sea, eaten away by the years and the salt spray.

“I’m eighty-seven,” I say out loud, surprising a loving couple sitting on the Malecón wall. They respond, but I can’t hear what they say. I’ve grown accustomed to living in a constant murmur. As time goes by, I understand less and less what other people are saying. I no longer even try to make out phrases or learn new words. At my age, what would be the point?

I continue walking until I come to the tunnel linking Vedado with Miramar. I find it hard to breathe; I feel cold and start to tremble, but
that doesn’t mean I’m afraid. My heartbeats are fading, and my breathing is failing.

Here among the rocks by the ruins of an abandoned restaurant, I collapse onto an iron chair that was once silver. I sit and watch the waves break on the reefs, far beyond the port. I’ve reached the age we promised we would share together.
Remember, Leo?

“I am the only survivor of my family, but I am not prostrate in bed like the Adlers,” I say, to convince myself that this wait was worth it. “No need for more thought. I’m ready.”

I have kept all my promises, and it comforts me to know that Anna is the best thing that could have happened to us, the Rosenthals. So many lost generations . . .

I search carefully in my bag for the indigo box you gave me when we were separated on that chaotic deck of the
St. Louis
. I kept my promise, Leo. I can’t help but smile, even as I realize that during all those years of solitude in the city my parents condemned me to, you were always with me.

The moment has come to stain my hands with indigo. With all the strength I have left, I grip the small box you gave me seventy-five years ago while my father was pleading with me to forget my cursed name.

It’s time for me to say good-bye to the island. The small, faded box has been my amulet right up to today. Eighty-seven years old.
We’ve made it, Leo
.

I muster what little energy I have left to devote to you. This is our moment, the one for which we have waited so long.
Thank you, Leo, for this gift, but I can’t open it on my own. I need you here with me.

I close my eyes and feel you drawing close. You, too, are eighty-seven, Leo, and you walk slowly. Don’t rush. I’ve waited for you so long that one minute more will not change our destiny. I breathe in deeply, and you come to me with all the intensity you used to convey in those childhood years of ours in Berlin, when we were playing at being adults.

You are close. I can feel you. You are here.

You take me by the hand, and I stand up to embrace you, something we never dared to do back then. You are trembling, and I lean against
you so that you can gradually pass me your warmth. This is no moment for tears: this is our dream.

You are taller and stronger than me. Your skin looks even darker now that your curls are white, as white as my poor tresses. And your eyelashes? They still arrive before you do . . .

You waited seventy-five years to reappear, because you knew for certain I would be here, on the seashore, as the sun goes down, so that together we can unearth the treasure I guarded for you.

I’m dreaming, I know that. But it’s my dream, and I can do as I like with it.

Together we open the box very slowly. Here it is, intact: your mother’s diamond ring. Look how it glitters in the sunlight, Leo. And beside it, I can’t believe my eyes: a small piece of yellowing glass.

My heart looks for strength where there isn’t any and beats a little more rapidly. I must hang on.

I close my eyes and finally understand: it’s the last cyanide capsule my father bought before we embarked on the
St. Louis
. The third capsule, the only one left.
You kept it for me, Leo!

I regret—and it is one of the few occasions in my life that I have done so—I regret accusing you of betraying me, thinking that you and Herr Martin had stolen the capsules meant for me and my parents. I understand now: you had no way of knowing how many other islands would be closed to you. All the islands in the world hidden behind silence. And as we know, in wars, silence is a time bomb.

It was inevitable that you should keep them. It was written in all our destinies.

The old, priceless capsule you kept for me is out-of-date now. It cannot cause me instant brain death or paralyze my heart. But I no longer need it. I waited this long because I gave you my word: I kept the promise I made to the boy with the long eyelashes. It’s time to be on my way, to let myself depart.

I see you closer to me than ever, Leo, and I’m so happy, I tremble. Yet I can’t help feeling guilty, because my parents are absent from my
final thoughts. Because in all truth, it is you and Anna who are my hope and light, whereas Max and Alma are an intrinsic part of my tragedy.

I don’t want to feel guilty. Lightness is essential from the moment you have made up your mind to leave.

Sunset is all the more intense when it’s the last one. The breeze takes on a different dimension. My body is still too heavy, so I concentrate on the waves, the awful smell of sea spray that always made Mother feel nauseous, the noisy youngsters going through the tunnel, and the music blaring from passing cars. And, of course, all the time I can feel the humid, irritating heat of the tropics that I’ve had to put up with until today.

I lose all sense of time. I let my mind drift away, and just as I feel my heart is about to give out, you slip the diamond ring onto my finger. I raise the capsule to my lips—the last thing you touched with your still-warm hands—as if at last I were kissing you. In that instant, we are together in my parents’ luminous cabin on the
St. Louis.

The tulips, Leo, soon the tulips will be in bloom, I whisper in your ear as I gaze at you—can you hear me? With your eyes tight shut and those long, long eyelashes that always arrive before you.

You are twenty now, and a handsome young man. I am also twenty, an age neither of us was able to enjoy. I bring my face up to your still-warm one and at last give you the kiss I promised for the day we met again on our imaginary island. We are still holding hands, closer than ever, and I see you next to me, at the top of the mast, the closest point to the sky on the magnificent
St. Louis
. The weight I have been carrying since we were torn apart drops away, and I acquire the lightness I need to let myself leave.

We start to fly over the long Malecón seawall, look down on the avenue from up on high. For the first time, Havana belongs to us. Crossing the bay, we settle by the silent Castillo del Morro and gaze back at the city, which looks like an old postcard left by a passing tourist.

We are twelve again, and nobody can separate us. The day is not
ending, Leo, it is about to dawn. Havana is still in darkness, dimly lit by the amber glow of the streetlamps. All we can make out are a few buildings in the midst of all the palms.

Then we hear the deafening blast from the ship’s siren.

We are in the same spot on the deck from where we first caught sight of the city. At an age when we could not understand why nobody wanted us. But now everything is silent. No one is pleading; there are no desperate voices shouting names into the empty air. Once again, my parents insist on separating me from you, dragging me against my will to a tiny stretch of land between two continents.

And I don’t cry out, I don’t shed tears, nor do I beg them to let me stay beside you, Leo, on the
St. Louis
, the only place where we were free and happy. I take mother’s delicate, smooth hand and, without a backward glance, allow them to launch me into the abyss.

And this time, I can say to you
Shalom
.

At eight in the evening of Saturday, May 13, 1939, the transatlantic liner
St. Louis
of the Hamburg-Amerika Linie (HAPAG) set sail from the port of Hamburg bound for Havana, Cuba. The ship was carrying 900 passengers, the vast majority of them German-Jewish refugees, and 231 crew. Two days later, another 37 passengers boarded at the port of Cherbourg.

The refugees had landing permits issued by Manuel Benítez, the director of the Cuban Department of Immigration and provided by the HAPAG company, which had offices in Havana. Cuba was to be a transit point, as the travelers already had visas to enter the United States. They were meant to stay in Cuba while they waited their turn: a stay that could last between one month and several years.

A week before the ship set sail from Hamburg, Cuba’s president, Federico Laredo Brú, published Decree 937 (so called because of the
total number of passengers aboard the
St. Louis
) invalidating the landing permits Benítez had signed. Only the documents issued by the secretary of state and labor of Cuba would be accepted. The refugees had paid 150 US dollars for each permit, and passages on the
St. Louis
cost between 600 and 800 reichsmarks. When they left, Germany had demanded that every refugee buy return tickets, and permitted them to take with them only 10 reichsmarks per person.

The ship arrived in the port of Havana at four in the morning on May 27, 1939. The Cuban authorities would not allow it to dock in the area corresponding to the HAPAG company, and so it was forced to anchor in Havana Bay.

Some of the passengers had relatives waiting for them in Havana, many of whom rented boats to go out to the ship, but they were not allowed on deck.

Only four Cubans and two non-Jewish Spaniards were authorized to disembark, together with twenty-two refugees who had obtained landing permits from the Cuban state department prior to the ones issued by Benítez, who was supported by the army chief, Fulgencio Batista.

On June 1, lawyer Lawrence Berenson, a representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, met with President Laredo Brú in Havana but was unable to reach an agreement to enable the passengers to land.

The negotiations continued, and the next development was that the Cuban president demanded from Berenson a surety of 500 US dollars per passenger before they could disembark. Representatives of various Jewish organizations, as well as members of the US embassy in Cuba, held unsuccessful talks with Laredo Brú. They also tried to contact Batista, only to be told by his personal physician that the general had caught a cold on the same day that the
St. Louis
arrived in Cuba, that he had to rest, and could not even come to the telephone.