Child of the Journey (44 page)

If that was all, was it enough? Would he ever understand why the German people needed to suck at the breast of the beast of riot, the beast that was the manifestation of their guilt?

Nothing, he told himself again, happens for no reason. In some lifetime, if not this one, then another, he would learn the meaning of all that had passed...of the dybbuk, and the voices, the cruelties and the joys.

"Put your hands on my head," Lucius Goldman said to him, in a voice filled with fear. "Bless me before I die. Speak my name among the angels."

"I'll be sure to do that," Sol replied, though he wanted to suggest that no self-respecting angel would enter the
Sogne's
hold.
 

As Sol reached for Goldman, the door was flung open. Sturmbannführer Otto Hempel, standing in the doorway, smacked his billy club against his palm. "Deckside! On the double! Move, you swine!"

Sol watched his fellow prisoners squeeze toward the door, all but the one next to him.

"Bless me by name,
shakkid,"
his friend said urgently.

Shakkid?
I am no teacher, Sol thought, let alone a great one. I have too much learning yet to do.

Goldman gripped Sol's arm. "Tell the angels the farmer from Juterbourg planted well, even though this is what he reaped!"

"The Nazis did not bring us all this way to kill us."

"Ha! Isn't that what life is all about? The child learning to walk so he can reach the grave? You go along. I will stay here."

"You will not!" Sol said under his breath, taking Goldman's arm and pulling him to his feet.

Unresisting as a child, Lucius Goldman allowed himself to be led up the ladder's thirty-nine steps. Together they emerged, tottering, from the ladder well and joined the Jews who were struggling to form ranks on the steaming deck, Misha among them. Seeing him, alive if not well, Sol said a quick prayer of thanks and dispelled the image of the boy jumping overboard.

"You're all going into the boats!" Hempel shouted. "You would be rowing if we thought you wouldn't row in circles."

Shading his eyes, Sol squinted toward an orange sunrise broken by low clouds. Looking down at the glassy aquamarine sea, he watched a sea-cow bob a welcome to the newest Jewish exodus. After the dark of the hold, he was surprised and pleased at how clearly he could see the mammal. It played in the corridor of his vision, cavorting around as if the
Sogne
were its bathtub toy.

He saw hills beyond, lush with greenery, seated beneath a plume of smoke. But something felt wrong.

Pushing away encroaching panic, he focussed on the shore. Gnarled roots lay curled like giant sleeping snakes. He could see them clearly. Too clearly. As if centered in a telescope lens.

He could see nothing else. What little had been left of his peripheral vision the last time he was in the light was gone.

"Move!" Hempel pushed him. "Think we have all day? You're to get in the lead boat with that Rathenau bitch." Raising his voice, he said, "Eight Jews in the lead boat. You other swine into the dinghies, and count yourselves lucky you don't have to swim with the sharks. Welcome to your home sweet home!"

Hempel kicked Solomon in the small of the back. Sol stumbled and went down, fighting to suck air into his lungs. He was vaguely aware of Hempel nudging him with a boot toe and of hands helping him to his feet.

"I'm all right." Sol shoved away the hands that reached to help him. "Look after yourselves."

He found his way onto the Jacob's ladder, took two hurried steps down the ropes, and stopped. Dangling, unable to move up and afraid to look down, he thought of Erich hanging in the sewer.

"Have a problem, Jew?" Kapo Pleshdimer's voice floated up from below. "Afraid of heights? Jump and I'll catch you."

Clutching the rope-ladder with both hands, Sol lowered himself.

"Do you hold your seasons dear, Solomon Freund? Is this your season of madness?"

He missed his footing, sprawled headlong into the lifeboat assigned as a tender to carry them ashore...

And looked up he see Miriam's face, ghastly pale in the center of his tunnel vision. He crawled painfully toward her.

"So much as breathe hard, Jew, and I'll see to it the dogs tear out your throat." Pleshdimer grinned amiably and, stepping over Solomon, settled himself on the seat. Leaning down until he was close enough for Sol to smell his rancid breath, the Kapo opened his mouth and clicked a fingernail against his upper and lower front teeth. "What flesh the dogs don't rip away, I will."

Sol brought his feet up beneath himself and lay still. Miriam turned toward the sea, her back toward Bruqah, who was massaging the back of her neck with long brown fingers. "I don't know what I would do without you," she said to him. "Thank you, my friend."

He rose and, stepping across, lifted Sol's elbow. "Lady Miri says--come."

"I want him right where he is." Pleshdimer pushed the man away and spat in Miriam's direction, then jabbed Sol with a foot.

Bruqah steadied himself. "Herr Oberst Germantownman say--"

The Kapo drew himself aside and allowed Solomon to be helped to his feet and led forward. "Go to hell!"

"No--go to Hell-
ville!"
Bruqah laughed heartily and slapped his thigh as if at a private joke. Leaning close to Sol, he whispered, "Hell-ville Britishman town--northwest side of Ma'gascar, on Nosy Bé!"

"Wherever it is, I wish you'd go there and stop babbling," one of the sailors said. He picked up his oar and patted Sol on the butt as if the Jew were a recalcitrant child.

Pleshdimer and the other sailors roared with laughter. "Come on, come on, let's go!" The Kapo motioned like an orchestra leader.

The boat pulled through the water. Swaying, Bruqah helped Sol onto the seat next to Miriam and placed himself at their feet.
 

"Shana Tova,
Solomon," Miriam said. "Happy New Year." She looked down at the brown man. "Again I have reason to thank you, Bruqah."

"Help me, Bruqah! I don't want to die!"

That phrase again! Involuntarily, as when he had been a child in the sewer, Sol clamped his hands over his ears. "Help me, Bruqah," he whispered. Tentatively, as if touching her would restore his sense of reality, he placed his hand on Miriam's blanket-wrapped shoulder.
 

"Shana Tova?
Is it really--"

"A few more days."

"Are you well?" He avoided the traditional, hopeful response of
Next year in Jerusalem.
Trembling, he wiped a trickle of sweat from her temple.
 

She put her hand to her face where Solomon had touched it. "If it weren't for the baby, I'd be dead. We'd both be dead."

"What?"

"There is hope for us," she said. "Erich is determined to turn Nose Mangabéy into a settlement...a homeland." She lowered her head. "No matter what happens, we must stay alive. For the sake of our child."

"Our
child?"

"Biologically? God knows. But you are my husband in His sight. This is our child."

Solomon sat in silence as the boat moved shoreward. He watched the saddle of hills loom larger and higher, and was almost grateful that his head ached with so many questions; it relieved his physical pain. Could the child really be his? What was his connection with this man Bruqah? And what of the island ahead? Was survival possible there? For him, Miriam, the child, the other Jews?

"Antongil Bay," Bruqah said, letting a hand dangle in the water. "More fish here than rays in the sun! Good shark, too."

He stared thoughtfully across the water. When at last he looked at Sol, his eyes were glazed, their expression hard. "Nosy Mangabéy not a good place, I think. Full of the dead."

Solomon looked up at the approaching jungle. The strengthening sun was burning off the mists; they rose from the interior like smoke from the nostrils of dragons, curling from roots and branches and tall, pale, skeletal tree trunks. The closer the boat drew to the wall of greenery, the louder came screeching and cawing from the jungle. Fruit bats hung from branches like dark linen, as undisturbed by the gulls and paradise flycatchers that wheeled in and out of the mists as they were by the approaching humans.

The boat scraped to a halt against the rocky shore. Miriam put her head briefly on Sol's shoulder, and Bruqah leaned forward, shielding them both with his body.

"During the storm, after Erich found out that I knew you were alive, he...he beat me." She was crying softly, her arms around Sol's neck in open defiance of what Pleshdimer or anyone else might do. "We came so close to a life together, you and I."

"We will find it yet." Sol turned to the Malagasy. "Help her, Bruqah," he said, paraphrasing the words from his vision.

"Yes. And you," Bruqah said. "I will help you, too."

Nosy Mangabéy

September 1939

S
itting on the damp sand, Sol watched the lifeboats and launches travel back and forth from the
Altmark
to shore. Some brought only men; others carried equipment and supplies loaded by Jews, crew members, and the freighter's cranes. Knowing the German military, there was doubtless some order about the landing, but to Sol it seemed chaotic. He wondered cynically if Abwehr manuals contained explicit instructions for hacking a path through a rain forest.

One of the first boats brought Hempel, who strode from the water with the wolfhound and Misha in tow, and his truncheon firmly in hand. Erich brought up the rear, stepping from his boat with the air of a conquistador, head uplifted and eyes surveying the surrounding jungle as if he half expected natives to come rushing out and throw themselves at his feet with offerings of gold. Behind him, two Jews carried Taurus, strapped on a hospital stretcher.

"We're going to have to cut a path to the top of the hill," Erich announced. He looked at Hempel. "Bruqah is to be given a machete. After you've supplied your men, give the Jews the rest of the machetes."

"The Jews?" Hempel asked. "Is that wise?"

"Are you questioning my decision?" Erich's voice was dangerously quiet. "Take one squad and lead the way. Use Bruqah to guide you," he went on, having apparently decided to drop the matter of Hempel's subordination. "Freund, stay with them and take care of the woman. Pleshdimer, you and Taurus bring up the rear." He raised his voice. "We are going up that hill." He pointed toward the jungle. "There will be no relaxation of discipline. For the sake of every Jewish life here, I will say this once, and once only. You are to use the machetes for creating a path. Look as if you see them as weapons, make one movement that smells of an attempt to escape, and we will shoot half of you Jews and let the dogs finish the rest. Now move it!"

Without so much as a glance at Miriam or Solomon, he turned his back to them and waited to be obeyed. Hempel, obviously furious, strode toward the ridge of trees, his ever-present companions trotting behind.

Bruqah watched without comment or movement.

"Do you not fear them?" Sol asked.

"Pah!" Bruqah spat onto the wet earth.

"Does anything frighten you?"

Bruqah threw his head back and laughed uproariously. "You ask questions like a small child." He helped Miriam to her feet. "What Bruqah fears you cannot understand. Not yet."

"Tell me."

"Bruqah only fears things of man and not of man," he said softly, all trace of laughter gone. "Come, Solly."

Sol caught himself smiling. No one had called him that since he left his mother in Amsterdam. Seeing his smile, Miriam returned it with one of her own. He saw a glimpse of the young girl he had once known and felt a transient stab of hope as they entered the jungle.

Sunlight gave way to the dark and dankness of the rain forest. Sol's physical discomfort was increased tenfold by his inability to see more than a couple of meters ahead. A high-pitched chittering spoke of living creatures disturbed by the human intruders, and around him, pinpoints of lights flickered on and off, as if the forest were peopled by a million glowworms. Were it not for the water that hung in the air and covered him with a film of sweat, and the mold and moss that enveloped everything like a possessive lover, he might have been in the Black Forest.

Abruptly, the chittering stopped. A raucous sawing began, then a series of deafening squeals which rose to a crescendo and shook the bamboo and ferns into responding. Leaves rustled and dripped and snapped back, ignoring his swinging machete. When he looked behind him, the forest seemed to have regenerated. He could hear the others, Jews and soldiers alike, fighting their way through the heavy undergrowth. The air was hot, damp, and heavy.

Ha-haai! Ha-haai!

Soft and shrill and mournful, the cry echoed through the forest, its sound so chilling it made Solomon's teeth ache.

He lifted his machete. Behind him, he heard the unnerving, metallic snaps of safeties being flicked off as, again and again, the sound came, piercing through the branches overhead.

A guard, panicked by the unfamiliar sound, opened fire.

Ha-haai! Ha-haai!