Refiner's Fire (9 page)

Levy too had been calculating. He thought that in less than fifteen minutes he could make it just by resisting with his deck force and keeping the enemy out of the wheelhouse and the engine room. His men were so positioned and drilled. He heard the echo of his own speaking machine: “Captain Keslake, you will have your way. Congratulations on guessing my plan. But I need at least three minutes to inform my men in their several languages of this new order, since we had not thought to practice it in English.”

“Two minutes,” said Keslake, to which Levy replied, “Very well.”

The interpreters spoke slowly to fill up the two minutes. They were only two and a half miles from the coast and could see the white beaches, and individual trees at the tops of ridges. Before the interpreters had calmly and elegantly elongated the new instructions, the marines were pouring onto the
Lindos Transit.
There was nothing to stop them except hand-to-hand fighting—no catapults, no steam, no threat of capsizing, no wire fences, and Levy did not use the Molotov cocktails for fear of a great slaughter.

The real battle had begun, with Keslake informing his marines that they had five minutes to win or their ship would run aground. They fought like madmen, but the Jews responded in kind. Many were badly injured and lay bleeding on the deck. Some were knocked over the side, after which
Stanford
lowered some boats. Using clubs and shields, fighting on the deck of a ship steaming over a blue sea toward an Asian coast, the men felt as if they were in another time. But then in fear of running aground or losing his prey, or both, Keslake told his marine major to use any force necessary to reach the bridge and stop the ship. A squadron of marines with submachine guns fired into the massed defenders to clear a corridor to the bridge ladder. The Jews fell, their glossy yellow wicker shields rolling away from them over the deck and into the sea. There were gasps and cries. Sweating under their pan helmets, the marines winced at what they had to do. The coast was a mile and a half away, the beaches empty and white.

T
HE LOWER
decks of the
Lindos Transit
were silent except for the confused speaking of the wounded and dying. On wooden tiers of plank bunks, the old men, women, and children could not see the blue sky or the beaches ahead. Instead, it was hot and close and lanterns swayed back and forth as if the ship were simply delivering freight to a tranquil island in the South Seas. They heard automatic weapons fire and the occasional exchanges over the loudspeakers. For them it was not an unusual position or occurrence—to be huddled in a dark low place while the world outside fought and built-up things were leveled.

Europe was in ruins; two thirds of the Jews had been slaughtered; the rest dispersed, broken, and separated. And yet the remaining Jews could play music, write words, build, make children. Their insides were destroyed, but messages came to them from all about. Clocks ticked, light rays were refracted, fires burned, the sea rose. Nature persisted like a metronome, saying, Keep on, keep on, keep on. And one by one, piece by piece, the strong ticking was joined by hearts revived, by instruments of warmth and creation. The silence vanished and natural laws which had withstood all assaults appeared once again as ultimate guides, as they had been in the beginning and will always be—lines along which shattering can make itself whole. As they watched the lantern in its pendulum motion, light emanating from it, they did not know that they were slowly being healed.

In the long and difficult night before the siege, perhaps because of the tension, or her diet, or God knows why, Katrina had begun to feel the first labor pains. What she did was not surprising, especially in view of her years in camps and in hiding. She sought the emptiest part of the ship, where the lower deck met the slant of the bow, and she crawled into a rope locker which smelled of pitch and pine. It was dark and hot, but comfortable on the canvas and hemp, and isolated. She was alone, as if she had her own room again. The water against the bow reminded her of Russia and the rain on the slate roof. The smell of pine was like her house, and the pitch like the railroad tracks and new ties which had held down golden hinterlands. She wanted to have the baby, to nurse it, to sleep, to be in peace. She was also somewhat ashamed. It was as if she wanted to be the first to see the child, to make certain that she could love it. At the peak of the siege her pains came thick and fast, and the child was born in darkness onto the heavy ropes and canvas. There was silence until she opened the locker door a crack and the cooler air made the baby cry. It was a raw unbelievable scream laden with emotion and energy, and it shocked her because it was so new and so powerful. Where did he find such strength? she asked herself, and then she wept.

Before the marines had arrived on the bridge and taken Levy prisoner, he had given two commands. The first was that the engine room was to be bolted shut from the inside and that the motor men were to keep up full speed until the ship ran aground, no matter what they heard from the bridge. The second was that the rudder cables be cut so that the ship could travel only in a straight line. An English lieutenant rushed to the engine room telegraph and signaled full stop. He then took the wheel, which was limp and turned too easily to have been connected to a ships rudder. Levy had a wide grin. They were a mile or less from the beach, where Palmach trucks were waiting and the British Army was nowhere in sight. For fear of running aground,
Shackleton
had disengaged but was still alongside, hanging back a few hundred yards. Only fifteen marines remained on board, and would be overpowered by the Palmach. Levy glanced at the wheel turning free.

Two children who had been playing below decks oblivious to the terror above, reported to their mother that they had heard a baby crying. At first she refused their entreaties but then followed them to the rope locker. They hung on her skirts as she cautiously opened the door, fearing that a rat might spring out. There was Katrina, holding her child too tightly for its own good. The woman realized that to save the infant she had to get it immediately into the light and air, wash it, cover it, and bring it to a doctor. The baby was so tiny and so feeble that she feared for its life. But Katrina became hysterical and would not let go, so the woman slapped her hard across her face and pulled the baby away. Katrina sank back on the ropes. The light coming through the hatch was a blur of colors because of the water in her eyes. The woman rushed off with the baby, intending to return for Katrina. Katrina was silent, for she had not understood.

The Lieutenant used Levy's microphone and informed Keslake that the rudder cables had been severed and the engine room would not respond. They were three quarters of a mile from the coast and between shifting uncharted bars. Keslake picked up his binoculars and glanced at the beach. He could see the faces and caps of the Palmach, but not one British soldier. Risking a great deal, he ordered full speed ahead and took the helm himself. His officers were numb with their own beating hearts. Feeling the surge of speed he had summoned, Keslake eased his ship about and pointed his lancelike prow at the bows of the
Lindos Transit.
The Palmach was rowing out in surfboats and rafts.
Shackleton
hesitated as at the top of a wave, and Keslake rammed her fiercely against the port bow of the
Lindos Transit,
opening a huge gash and knocking the ship to the side. He then veered off and made for open water. He had done what he could in the face of stubborn opposition. His day was over.

The bow of the
Lindos Transit
began to go under, and by the time the ship was several hundred yards from shore it dug into the sand and stopped its momentum with a great release of steam. The Palmach came aboard and began the evacuation. They had to leave half a hundred behind because the British had been sighted driving at great speed down the sea road from Haifa. Those abandoned included the two doctors, the wounded, the newborn infant, and Levy. They were seized and put in detention.

The two vigilant children rode away with their mother on the back of a farm truck. They pulled at her and said, “What about the mommy on the ship? Where is she?” The mother hushed them.

That day Keslake lost his passion for the chase and for arms as well. Twenty-six died. Many more were captured. Some fell into the sea and drowned. About 350 immigrants had at last escaped the acrid soil of Europe, and they rode shaken but singing in old trucks under the sweet trees and warm air of a place where there were farms and endless orange groves full of green, fragrant, waxy leaves. Paul Levy became a Jew. Katrina Perlé died alone. And her son, Marshall Pearl, was born.

M
ARSHALL WAS
not yet two months old when he arrived in New York Harbor aboard a French ship, the
Égalité.
A visa and “passport” were attached to his basket crib. No one would make off with them, since the photographs were of a prune-faced infant. Also in the packet was a letter addressed to Marshall's future parents, whoever they would be. It was sealed with red wax upon which were stamped a three-cornered hat, a duck, a crucifix, and a ring of blurred Latin. Inside was Paul Levy's narrative of whatever he could gather about the child's background, with the injunction that Marshall be informed of it at an early age. It had been written in the garden of the Dominican Sisters of Marseilles. Levy had gotten Marshall to Toulon, and found that the French refused to part with him except through official channels. The sisters had agreed to send Marshall to America as soon as they could. They were somewhat taken with Levy, and he paid them. Marshall was shuttled onto a great liner with his basket crib and envelopes. What passed for his birth certificate was signed
Paul Levy, LieutenantCommander, U.S.N.

The Mayor of Marseilles was a passenger on the
Egalité,
and so it was greeted by an armada of fire boats and police launches blowing their whistles. The New York Fire Department Negro Band rode along on top of a big fire boat. They played jazz, and the conductor was swinging his arms and pounding his feet, saying, “Okay, my man, c'mon, c'mon, get them feets movin.” The Mayor stood on a high deck surveying the city. Tall needle-pointed buildings minding the sky's business in gray and green solitude would have been impressive, but on this hot day in August with jazz music and a dozen white water plumes, even the Mayor caught his breath. What impressed him most was neither the jazz-echoing cliffs in Manhattan, nor the high-wire heavenly bridges, nor the ceremony, but the staggering amount of traffic in the harbor. Manhattan's everyday was like the greatest of armadas, the choicest dramas of history, a million intensities. Giant ferries methodically plowed their ways crossing paths in all directions. Coastal tankers, lines of barges, freighters, launches, scows, tugs, river boats, sailing craft, yachts, and naval vessels headed up and down the roadlike junctions of the rivers. Faces were intent in the morning sun. Battalions lined the foredecks of the Staten Island Ferry, waiting to stream forth upon the Battery. On the wharves, goods and trucks were weaving in and out of each other. He could see various sports being played in wire cages atop tall buildings, trees growing in parks. There had been a great pier fire the night before, and one whole shore in Weehawken was smouldering rubble, white steam, and mist rising still in the excited air. But to the Mayors surprise, barges and crews were beginning to clear it away, something which in Europe might have taken several years. The band leader was dancing as his fire boat pounded along, and he was saying to the rhythm of the music, “Cmon, c'mon, get them feets movin', my man.”

On a deck of wide windows Marshall and other babies rested in their baskets, Marshall having been named by an American naval officer who was that day to take up his post on a destroyer and head into the Atlantic off the Carolinas, his face struck by the August North American sea breeze which he loved to breathe coming off the coasts of his country. Marshall stretched himself in rubbery contortions, his little fingers spreading and slightly buckling. He breathed a deep breath and lay back as was his constant wont, fully in need of a protector, the seven pounds of his human life as fragile as a gossamer, being carted in various baskets around the world uncomplaining except that on the Atlantic he had been exposed to a breeze and, as would be the pattern in later years, he had come down with a difficult pneumonia. He had high fever half from disease and half as his only means of insistence that he be taken into a human family.

When the ship docked alongside a great dark shed with shafts of dusty light structuring its interior like the cross-angled girders on the bridges, the musicians were still playing. The Mayor of New York was trying to make a speech, but the music drowned him out. His deputy turned to the pier boss and said: “For chrissake, will you tell them niggers to stop playing.” A few minutes later the pier boss returned to report that, as the deputy could hear, they had refused. “Refused! What are they crazy?” Not only had they refused but they played louder and faster. They were civil servants and they had rights. The pier boss thought they had gone mad, but they played and played and played. Finally, the fire boat moved out into the river and amidst fading strains of music the assembled crowd watched the band transported to serenade the remains of the fire in Weehawken. The deputy said: “Those bastards are mad, aren't they? Just mad. Who knows what they'll do next.”

Marshall was taken to the Foundling Hospital, another place run by nuns, who, seeing the cross stamped in red wax, were curious and impressed. As Sister Bernadine, the head of the adoption selection section, surveyed the infant she thought how strange a name, how weak and feeble a child, was he sick, and what of the (here she misinterpreted) Papal Seal on his dossier? All these questions formed in her mind to tell her that she knew just the parents for him. Mr. Livingston was coming down from Eagle Bay in a few days. His name was Livingston, but he was a Jew married to a Catholic woman who could not have children.