Against the Wind (13 page)

I was explaining this to my charges when there was a diffident tap at the door. A lascar in a pink turban bowed, introduced himself as Sanjay, and inquired if “the English misses and memsahib would like anything.”

Nan blurted out, “Like what? We didn’t have breakfast. Would there be any toast about, do you suppose?”

“Most certainly,” Sanjay agreed. “And perhaps tea, yes?”

The girls nodded. Tea and toast would be very agreeable.

Then Sanjay stunned us all by adding, “And a selection of fresh fruit, perhaps?”

“Fresh…,” Lindy began.

“Fruit?” Betsy concluded.

“Dear me, yes. The young misses would like oranges, or would perhaps bananas be more to your liking?”

“Both, please,” Nan returned, and Sanjay bowed his way out.

“Oranges!” Alice said. “I haven’t had an orange since last Christmas.”

“I love bananas,” Betsy said. “That is, if you do, Lindy.”

The wonders of shipboard life extended far beyond fresh fruit. At our first proper meal each table received a menu that offered chicken or fish, potatoes or rice, soup hot or cold, and a choice between pudding and seven flavors of ice cream for dessert.

“Is this real?” Alice wondered aloud, ladling a third teaspoon of sugar into her tea. “Back home Mum fixed me an egg two mornings a week. Tinned beef for supper…when she could get it.”

“Too right,” Connor said from the adjoining table of choirboys. “Watch this.” Taking a slice of soft bread he plastered it an inch thick with creamy yellow butter. “Real, too,” he mumbled around a mouth stuffed to overflowing.

When the meal ended with everyone, including me, replete, an officer climbed a small stage in the dining hall. “I’m Third Officer Browne,” he said, “welcoming you aboard. We’re very glad to have you. And now I’d like to ask some of our special passengers to favor us with a song. The quintet from the Westminster Choir. Please. Will you indulge us?”

It was impossible for The Four Apostles and Connor to refuse. “What are we going to do?” Tomas whispered to John. “I can hardly breathe.”

“Only one thing to do,” the leader of the pack returned.

At a gesture from John, Connor drew his tin whistle with a flourish and played a single, clear note. Then the quintet sang:

“Praise God from Whom all blessings flow.

Praise Him all creatures, here below.

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host.

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Amen!”
⁸

There was a round of applause from the other CORB children and the chaperones. Even Miss Pike looked pleased.

In all the wonder there was only a single jarring note.

The last order of business at lunch was for each child and adult to be handed a life vest and instructed in how to put it on. Instructions complete, the children were also informed they must not remove the safety device until told to do so…probably three days’ sail, when
Newcastle
was well beyond the reach of the U-boat menace.

“Sleep in them,” Browne ordered sternly. “No exceptions.”

Later, as the girls and I tried to walk off the effects of the overwhelming meal, we saw how far-reaching was the concern.

“Look,” Lindy said.

Robert Snow—Robin Hood—still wore his forest-green cloak, but over it was buckled a forest-green life vest.

For thus says the Lord: “He who touches you (O Zion) touches the apple of My eye.”
Z
ECHARIAH
2:8,
PARAPHRASED

VIENNA, AUSTRIA
CHRISTMAS EVE, 1937

It was late afternoon before I boarded the streetcar heading for the Jewish Quarter. In the market squares the booths were empty, the proprietors gone home to their families or back to snug, secure villages like Kitzbühel. How I wish I were there right now, and Papa safely there with me.

It is the notion that I can somehow help him, rescue him, that drives me. I remember the time I saw Dachau’s walls and imagined the helpless prisoners confined there…never knowing that one of them is my father!

Darkness fell early this close to the darkest night of the year. It was already enveloping me as I carried Rudy’s violin. I stepped from the streetcar and headed off down a narrow lane toward Leah’s apartment overlooking the Judenplatz.

In a few windows flickering Hanukkah candles told me of the bravery of those who live within. Fresh paint splotched on exterior walls must be covering Nazi threats and filth.

When I turned the corner and faced a synagogue, I saw that even tonight of all nights there is no peace on earth, no goodwill toward men.
Christ Killers!
is painted on the bricks, together with slogans and menacing promises. A large crimson-painted swastika floated in the twilight above the words
Jews! Your blood will again run in these streets!

A statue of the Jewish playwright Ephraim Lessing has been vandalized. The marble fingers were hacked off, and the groin slashed with red paint.
Race defilers will be castrated!

Like Rudy!
I wavered in place. Putting my hand to the wall to steady myself, it came away wet with paint, as if with gore.

I stood too long trying to collect myself, and the delay almost got me killed.

From many directions at once came shouting waves of Nazi fanatics. “Jews out of Austria,” they bellowed. “Kill the Christ killers,” they yelled. Windows were smashed. Screams of terror and pain filled the night.

Then they grabbed me. I saw a rock thrown through Leah’s window; then all I could see were boots and angry faces and waving clubs and menacing torches.

“Teach them a lesson,” a thin-lipped attacker suggested. “Let these Jews know what it’s like to have their women violated.”

Hands clutched at my clothing, ripped off my shoes, seized the precious violin case. More hands tore my cap from my head.

“Stop,” someone yelled. “Blond. She’s Aryan.”

Someone pushed through the lusting mob, throwing men aside and yanking them away from me.

It was Otto Wattenbarger, the farm boy from our skiing holidays in Kitzbühel. Otto was wearing a Nazi armband. He returned the violin to me. He offered to help me, to protect me. He urged me to stay with him and I would be safe. I shuddered at his touch and refused.

“Don’t come here again,” he said. “Ever.”

By now police sirens were blaring. Otto dropped the armband on the street and walked to a waiting trolley.

I had not known I was crying, nor that I was bleeding from the back of my head, until another streetcar driver asked if I was all right.

I thought of Otto Wattenbarger and his brother, Franz—how what had come upon us was tearing families, cities, the whole world apart. I remembered the place where Franz had shown me that two snowflakes, identical in every way, could fall mere inches apart. Yet one would melt to flow south into light and warmth while the other would join the black uniforms, the marching rivers of the north.

The division of families and hearts is that clear…and that permanent.

⁸
“Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow,” doxology by Thomas Ken, 1674, also the last verse of a longer hymn, “Awake, My Soul, and with the Sun”

11

LIVERPOOL HARBOR
AUTUMN 1940

A
s we lined the rail of the SS
Newcastle,
Lindy was tucked close against my right elbow and Betsy even closer to her cousin’s side. Beyond Betsy was Angelique, Lindy’s new sister of the soul. On my left were Nan, Alice, and Margaret.

There were no tears now. It came to me that the children were excited about this adventure. Grief at parting seemed all left behind with the parents and the siblings who were too old or too young to make the journey.

It had rained overnight, and now the air of the Irish Sea was sun-drenched. Everything from the domes and towers of the Liverpool harbor, to the horde of ships clustering to become Outbound Convoy 217, glowed like burnished copper.

Lindy, notebook in hand, scribbled images. She pointed to an adjacent freighter weighing anchor a half mile away. “Do you see how sharp its outline seems?” she asked. “It’s like it was painted by an artist with a palette knife. Things sometimes look like that on a bright morning after a rain, don’t they?”

“Bright and shining,” Betsy contributed.

“You’re right,” I acknowledged. “And I know another kind of artist. Authors paint with words, and Lindy, the paper is your canvas.”

Lindy did not argue but instead offered a parallel thought. “And orchestras paint with music, don’t they, Elisa?”

I felt the sun on my smiling, uptilted cheeks. “When it all comes together, yes. But don’t try to tell that to a conductor when half the horn section is hungover and the percussion section missed the train.”

The girls laughed, and Lindy jotted something into her notebook.

As
Newcastle
moved off toward the northwest, the convoy’s core of a dozen freighters and ocean liners was ringed by four British navy vessels. These long, low, and lean ships looked dangerous, like animated harpoons, as they quested forward and back at twice
Newcastle
’s speed. One ahead, one behind, and one on either side, they flanked us.

It was reassuring.

Choirboy John pointed toward the nearest one and said to Angelique, “Destroyers. Here to protect us.”

“How best to describe them?” Lindy wondered aloud. “They look and move like greyhounds.”

“Greyhounds,” Betsy said, nodding.

“That’s good,” I agreed. “But more threatening. Wolves?”

Cedric Barrett, the playwright, also stood at the rail, but his face was pallid and he was not smiling. Still, he tried to contribute to the discussion. “The subs are the wolves. The destroyers are our…” He put one hand over his mouth and the other to his stomach. We heard a muffled “Pardon me,” as he stumbled into
Newcastle
’s interior.

“I think he was going to say ‘sheepdogs,’” Lindy ventured. “You know, maybe Mister Barrett will write about us when he gets to Hollywood. Heroic British youth escape from bombing to adventure on the high seas. What do you think?”

“I think Mister Barrett doesn’t think much of the high seas,” Nan observed.

“He’ll be better soon,” I offered. “But if our adventure is merely about how well they feed us, there may not be much to write about.”

As the destroyers shuttled back and forth, encouraging the laggards, we sailed up the east coast of the Isle of Man. I overheard Lindy say to Angelique, “You’ve had it quite rough, getting here. Much rougher than me. Tell me about it.”

Angel spoke and Lindy’s pencil traced her notebook with the artistry of words.

AT SEA
NORTH ATLANTIC
AUTUMN 1940

My music class for the CORB agency consisted mostly of singing. First lesson on my curriculum was folk songs from different nations representing the nations of the passengers on board. Raquel sang a gypsy tune with her girls. The choirboys were called to the front to teach the tunes and lyrics of American folk songs. Connor played his Irish whistle and I, my violin. I was awkward and stiff with the folk melodies. The surprise of the day came when Mariah asked to try out my “fiddle” and, for the first time, revealed that she was an accomplished Celtic fiddle player.

To my delight, Mariah fiddled while Patsy clapped and taught us all to sing “Whiskey in the Jar,” an Irish rebel’s song.

Miss Pike, wide-eyed and ashen, entered the gym and listened long enough to hear fifty happy children belt out, “There’s whiskey in the jar-o!”

Charging to my side, she hissed that my allotted music hour had passed and was over. “And further, such dubious ballads are not what we at CORB expected from a concert violinist. I will speak to you later about this shocking display.”

With admiration for Mariah’s unknown talent, I returned my violin to its case and turned the class over to a recreation specialist on staff of the
Newcastle.

The afternoon wind was crisp, stinging my cheeks as I walked briskly around the promenade deck with Raquel and Mariah. Lindy, Betsy, and Angel followed after us like impatient puppies. Simcha and Yael remained behind with the organized children’s activities in the gymnasium. Patsy peeled off with her two little ones to nap before supper.