A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (24 page)

And yet, despite all this, the whale steals it. We forget the allegorical point of the story (Babylon engulfing disobedient Israel), we don’t much care whether or not Nineveh was saved, or what happened to the regurgitated penitent; but we remember the whale. Giotto shows him chomping on Jonah’s thighs, with only the knees and the flailing feet to go. Brueghel, Michelangelo, Correggio, Rubens and Dali emblazoned the tale. In Gouda there is a stained-glass window of Jonah leaving the fish’s mouth like a foot-passenger stepping from the jaws of a car-ferry. Jonah (portrayed as everything from muscular faun to bearded elder) has an iconography whose pedigree and variety would make Noah envious.

What is it about Jonah’s escapade that transfixes us? Is it the moment of swallowing, the oscillation between danger and salvation, when we imagine ourselves miraculously rescued
from the peril of drowning only to be cast into the peril of being eaten alive? Is it the three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, that image of enclosure, smothering, live burial? (Once, taking the night train from London to Paris, I found myself in the locked sleeping compartment of a locked coach in a locked hold beneath the waterline on a cross-channel ferry; I didn’t think of Jonah at the time, but perhaps my panic was related to his. And is a more textbook fear involved: does the image of pulsing blubber set off some terror of being transported back to the womb?) Or are we most struck by the third element in the story, the deliverance, the proof that there is salvation and justice after our purgatorial incarceration? Like Jonah, we are all storm-tossed by the seas of life, undergo apparent death and certain burial, but then attain a blinding resurrection as the car-ferry doors swing open and we are delivered back into the light and into a recognition of God’s love. Is this why the myth swims through our memory?

Perhaps: or perhaps not at all. When the film
Jaws
came out, there were many attempts to explain its hold over the audience. Did it draw on some primal metaphor, some archetypal dream known the world over? Did it exploit the clashing elements of land and water, feeding on our anxiety at the concept of amphibianism? Did it relate in some way to the fact that millions of years ago our gill-bearing ancestors crawled out of the pond, and ever since we have been paralyzed by the thought of a return to it? The English novelist Kingsley Amis, considering the film and its possible interpretations, came to the following conclusion: ‘It’s about being bloody frightened of being eaten by a bloody great shark.’

At bottom, this is the grip which the story of Jonah and the whale still has on us: fear of being devoured by a large creature, fear of being chomped, slurped, gargled, washed down with a draught of salt water and a school of anchovies as a chaser; fear of being blinded, darkened, suffocated, drowned, hooded with blubber; fear of sensory deprivation, which we know drives people mad; fear of being dead. Our response is as vivid as that of every other death-dreading generation since the tale was first
invented by some sadistic mariner keen to terrify the new cabin-boy.

Of course, we recognize that the story can’t have any basis in truth. We are sophisticated people, and we can tell the difference between reality and myth. A whale might swallow a man, yes, we can allow that as plausible; but once inside he could not possibly live. For a start he would drown, or if he didn’t drown he would suffocate; and most probably he would have died of a heart attack when he felt the great mouth gape for him. No, it is impossible for a man to survive in a whale’s belly. We know how to distinguish myth from reality. We are sophisticated people.

On 25th August 1891, James Bartley, a thirty-five-year-old sailor on the
Star of the East
, was swallowed by a sperm whale off the Falkland Islands:

I remember very well from the moment that I fell from the boat and felt my feet strike some soft substance. I looked up and saw a big-ribbed canopy of light pink and white descending over me, and the next moment I felt myself drawn downward, feet first, and I realised that I was being swallowed by a whale. I was drawn lower and lower; a wall of flesh surrounded me and hemmed me in on every side, yet the pressure was not painful and the flesh easily gave way like soft india-rubber before my slightest movement.

Suddenly I found myself in a sack much larger than my body, but completely dark. I felt about me; and my hands came in contact with several fishes, some of which seemed to be still alive, for they squirmed in my fingers, and slipped back to my feet. Soon I felt a great pain in my head and my breathing became more and more difficult. At the same time I felt a terrible heat; it seemed to consume me, growing hotter and hotter. My eyes became coals of fire in my head, and I believed every moment that I was condemned to perish in the belly of a whale. It tormented me beyond all endurance, while at the same time the awful silence of the terrible prison weighed me down. I tried to rise, to move my arms and legs, to cry out. All action was now impossible, but
my brain seemed abnormally clear; and with a full comprehension of my awful fate, I finally lost all consciousness.

The whale was later killed and taken alongside the
Star of the East
, whose crewmen, unaware of the proximity of their lost comrade, spent the rest of the day and part of the night flensing their capture. The next morning they attached lifting tackle to the stomach and hauled it on deck. There seemed to be a light, spasmodic movement from within. The sailors, expecting a large fish or perhaps a shark, slit open the paunch and discovered James Bartley: unconscious, his face, neck and hands bleached white by the gastric fluids, but still alive. For two weeks he was in a delirous condition, then began to recover. In due course he was returned to normal health, except that the acids had removed all the pigmentation from his exposed skin. He remained an albino until the day he died.

M. de Parville, scientific editor of the
Journal des Débats
, examined the case in 1914 and concluded that the account given by captain and crew was ‘worthy of belief’. Modern scientists tell us that Bartley could not have survived more than a few minutes in the whale’s belly, let alone the half-day or more it took the unwitting sailors on the mother ship to release this modern Jonah. But do we believe modern scientists, none of whom has actually been inside a whale’s belly? Surely we can make compromise with professional scepticism by suggesting air pockets (do whales suffer from wind like everyone else?) or stomach juices whose efficacy was hindered by some cetacean ailment.

And if you are a scientist, or infected by gastric doubt, look at it this way. Many people (including me) believe the myth of Bartley, just as millions have believed the myth of Jonah. You may not credit it, but what has happened is that the story has been retold, adjusted, updated; it has shuffled nearer. For Jonah now read Bartley. And one day there will be a case, one which even you will believe, of a sailor lost in a whale’s mouth and recovered from its belly; maybe not after half a day, perhaps after only half an hour. And then people will believe the myth of
Bartley, which was begotten by the myth of Jonah. For the point is this: not that myth refers us back to some original event which has been fancifully transcribed as it passed through the collective memory; but that it refers us forward to something that will happen, that must happen. Myth will become reality, however sceptical we might be.

III

A
T
8
PM ON
Saturday, 13th May 1939, the liner
St Louis
left its home port of Hamburg. It was a cruise ship, and most of the 937 passengers booked on its transatlantic voyage carried visas confirming that they were ‘tourists, travelling for pleasure’. The words were an evasion, however, as was the purpose of their voyage. All but a few of them were Jews, refugees from a Nazi state which intended to dispossess, transport and exterminate them. Many, indeed, had already been dispossessed, since emigrants from Germany were permitted to take with them no more than a nominal ten Reichsmarks. This enforced poverty made them easier targets for propaganda: if they left with no more than their allowance, they could be portrayed as shabby
Untermenschen
scuttling away like rats; if they managed to outwit the system, then they were economic criminals fleeing with stolen goods. All this was normal.

The
St Louis
was flying the swastika flag, which was normal; its crew included half-a-dozen Gestapo agents, which was also normal. The shipping line had instructed the captain to lay in cheaper cuts of meat for this voyage, to remove luxury goods from the shops and free postcards from the public rooms; but the captain largely circumvented such orders, decreeing that this journey should resemble other cruises by the
St Louis
and be, as far as possible, normal. So when the Jews arrived on board from a mainland where they had been despised, systematically
humiliated and imprisoned, they discovered that although this ship was legally still part of Germany, flew the swastika and had large portraits of Hitler in its public rooms, the Germans with whom they had dealings were courteous, attentive and even obedient. This was abnormal.

None of these Jews – half of whom were women and children – had any intention of revisiting Germany in the near future. Nevertheless, in accordance with the regulations of the shipping company, they had all been obliged to buy return tickets. This payment, they were told, was designed to cover ‘unforeseen eventualities’. When the refugees landed in Havana, they would be given by the Hamburg-Amerika line a receipt for the unused part of the fare. The money itself had been lodged in a special account in Germany: if ever they returned there, they could collect it. Even Jews who had been released from concentration camps on strict condition that they leave the Fatherland immediately were obliged to pay for the round trip.

Along with their tickets the refugees had bought landing permits from the Cuban director of immigration, who had given a personal guarantee that they would face no difficulties entering his country. It was he who had classed them as ‘tourists, travelling for pleasure’; and in the course of the voyage some passengers, particularly the younger ones, were able to make the remarkable transition from despised
Untermensch
to pleasure-seeking tourist. Perhaps their escape from Germany felt as miraculous as that of Jonah from the whale. Every day there was food, drink and dancing. Despite a warning to crew members from the Gestapo cell about contravention of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour, sexual activity continued as normal on a cruise. Towards the end of the Atlantic crossing, the traditional costume ball took place. The band played Glenn Miller; Jews appeared as pirates, sailors and Hawaiian dancers. Some high-spirited girls came as harem women, with Arab dress made from bedsheets – a transformation which struck the more orthodox on board as unseemly.

On Saturday, 27th May, the
St Louis
anchored in Havana Harbour. At 4 am the klaxon for reveille sounded, and half an
hour later the breakfast gong. Small boats came out to the liner, some bearing vendors of coconuts and bananas, others containing friends and relatives who shouted up names to the rail. The ship was flying a quarantine flag, which was normal. The captain had to certify to the Port of Havana medical officer that no-one on board was ‘an idiot, or insane, or suffering from a loathsome or contagious disease’. When this had been done, immigration officers began to process the passengers, examining their papers and indicating whereabouts on the pier to expect their luggage. The first fifty refugees gathered at the top of the ladder, waiting for the boat to take them ashore.

Immigration, like emigration, is a process in which money is no less important than principles or laws, and often sounder than either of them. Money reassures the host country – or, in the case of Cuba, the transit country – that the new arrivals will not be a charge on the state. Money also serves to bribe the officials who have to take this decision. The Cuban director of immigration had made a great deal of money from previous boatloads of Jews; the President of Cuba had not made enough money from them. The President had therefore issued a decree on 6th May revoking the validity of tourist visas when the true purpose of travel was immigration. Did this decree apply to those on board the
St Louis
or not? The ship had sailed from Hamburg after the law had been promulgated; on the other hand, the landing permits had been issued earlier. It was a question on which much argument and money could be spent. The number of the presidential decree was 937, which the superstitious might have noticed was also the number of passengers on board when the
St Louis
left Europe.

A delay developed. Nineteen Cubans and Spaniards were allowed to disembark, plus three passengers with authentic visas; the remaining 900 or so Jews waited for news of the negotiations which involved, variously, the Cuban President, his director of immigration, the shipping line, the local relief committee, the ship’s captain and a lawyer flown in from the New York headquarters of the Joint Distribution Committee. These talks lasted several days. Factors to be considered were
money, pride, political ambition and Cuban public opinion. The captain of the
St Louis
, while distrustful of both local politicians and his own shipping line, was convinced at least of one thing: that if Cuba proved inaccessible, the United States, to which most of his passengers had the right of eventual entry, would surely accept them earlier than promised.

Some of the marooned passengers were less confident, and became unnerved by the uncertainties, the delay, the heat. They had spent so long reaching a place of safety, and were now so near. Friends and relatives continued to circle the liner in small boats; a fox terrier, sent on ahead from Germany, was rowed out each day and held up towards the rail and its distant owners. A passengers’ committee had been formed, to whom the shipping company gave free cabling facilities; appeals for intercession were despatched to influential people, including the wife of the Cuban president. It was during this time that two passengers attempted suicide, one with a syringe and tranquillizers, another by slashing his wrists and jumping into the sea; both survived. Thereafter, to prevent further suicide attempts, there were security patrols at night; the lifeboats were always ready, and the ship was lit up by floodlights. These measures reminded some Jews of the concentration camps they had recently left.