The Keeper of the Walls (49 page)

“To me, Cuba sounds like the Garden of Eden,” he said, smiling, putting an arm around his mother.

They'd been sailing for weeks, it seemed. Wolf tried to count the number of days, spent crowded in the hold, or sometimes, for rare moments like these, pushed against the railing on the deck, smelling the sea. Three weeks. It had to be three weeks now. He hadn't had a bath in at least that long, and his beard was straggly, unkempt. But this morning, he'd heard the rumor that they were going to land, and so he'd brought his mother out, to watch. “Some say Cuba is a beautiful island,” he said. “And the Jews there are rich, and respected.”

They remained there, leaving only to retrieve some food. It was incredible to think that they would really be landing . . . without fear of the Nazis. In the afternoon, the vague outline of the island had appeared, and the hundreds of emigrants, many of whom had sold their last possession to be able to make this trip to freedom, crowded each other to catch a glimpse of their future refuge. Toward dusk they had finally entered the port, and set anchor. The captain had gone on land to prepare for the unloading of his passengers.

“It's very strange,” a small, bald man next to him murmured to Wolf. “Usually the disembarkation is very speedy. But our captain seems to have been gone for hours.”

“This is a different world,” Wolf smiled back. “Everything is
mañana.
”

But he couldn't help feeling a pinprick of apprehension. Holding his mother close to him, he prayed to God for a safe landing, and gave himself up to destiny.

When at last the captain returned, his face, as he turned to his passengers, was dark, troubled. “There's been a coup d'état,” he announced in German. His voice rang clear through, although a mumbling noise had risen up from the hold. “And so we've got unexpected problems. The consuls who signed your visas are no longer consuls. And so the governor of the island has refused to take you.”

Wolf shut his ears against the cries, and held his mother close to him. Was this possible? A panic was pushing through the ranks around him, and he could literally smell the fear on the breaths of those who were screaming it out. After some hours, the captain returned to port, and the old Jewish men began to pray aloud, in unison. Wolf joined in, his voice tied in a knot.

That night, it was almost impossible to sleep. Wolf could hear murmurs all around him, voicing speculation back and forth in the large hold. The next day, the captain returned to port for another discussion with the authorities. Rumors went around that the Jews of Cuba, as well as prominent Americans such as Mrs. Gould and her New York Coordination Committee, and even President Roosevelt, had sent ardent pleas to the governor of Cuba on behalf of the emigrants. But the governor sent the captain back with another staunch refusal.

Slowly, shock passed into horror as the captain narrated the situation. Wolf was aware of a sudden hush, and of all the minds that thought in unison, We are alone. He recalled that when he'd gone to temple as a child, he'd sometimes felt, in his own veins, the empathetic presence of others, all thinking alike, all holding hands with their minds. It had given him goosebumps to sense such a strong human bond. He'd supposed, later, that Catholics who came to the Vatican to listen to the Pope probably felt the same, joint awe. So it wasn't just being a Jew. But now, at forty-six, a practicing, licensed psychiatrist, he had to recognize that fear, more than awe, could bind people to one another. The nine hundred eighteen refugees all felt the same fear, and it had reduced them to animals, smelling death. Even his mother had the appearance of a wild animal at bay, her nostrils slightly quivering, her eyes vacant, her body hunched together in instinctive self-protection.

Suddenly there was a terrible cry, and he saw a woman gesticulating. There was a commotion at the back, and, like all others, Wolf strove to press forward, to catch what was happening. “It's Chaim!” the woman was screaming, tearing at her hair, pointing to the huge double doors on the other side of the hold. “Didn't anybody see him? He's slashed his wrists! He's out on deck!”

Wolf reacted within seconds. “Let me through!” he cried, loudly, pushing through the crowded room. “I'm a doctor! For God's sake! Aren't there any other doctors in here? A man's tried to kill himself!” Around him, he could barely make out the hushed faces, the stunned eyes, and one man said: “So what? We're all going to die.” But they did try to make room for him, and when he reached the double doors, he felt a man tugging at his sleeve, trying to catch up with him.

“I'm a doctor, too,” he said. “Where is this Chaim?”

Disheveled and perspiring, Wolf and the other ran on deck, their hearts palpitating. And then, against the railing, they saw him. To Wolf's amazement, it was the small bald man who had stood beside him the day before, waiting for the return of the captain. Wolf held up a hand, cried: “Wait! Chaim! What's the good of all this? You can't admit defeat, like a coward. We're coming to treat your cuts.”

But the small man was shaking his head, in a rhythmic, hysterical fashion. His eyes were streaming tears. Blood was dripping onto his trousers from his wrists. And all at once, he bolted around, and with what was left of his strength, hoisted himself over the railing, and with a great yell, threw himself overboard. “My God,” Wolf said. “He's gone mad.”

“He just doesn't want to live. Maybe we're the ones that are mad.”

In unison, Wolf and his companion had begun to discard their shoes and their excess clothing. By now, the deck was full, the captain holding the screaming woman, people peering into the water where Chaim had landed, like a popped balloon. Wolf and the other doctor jumped over the railing, and threw themselves after him, one landing on each side. Within minutes they were holding him up, trying to stop the wounds with their shirttails, while the captain was lowering a lifeboat into the water.

And then it was over. Chaim was being taken ashore, on a gurney, bandages over his wrists, and the captain was attempting to explain to the frantic woman that later, perhaps, she and her children might be allowed to visit him in the hospital. But this privilege was never granted. The port authorities, aggravated at the notion that one man had succeeded, in spite of their edict, to gain access to Cuban soil, sent back the message that no one else, not even the grieving family of the wounded man, would be accepted ashore. The faces of the nine hundred seventeen remaining Jews on board registered the news with a strange, silent resignation. They'd stopped expecting to be treated with compassion by those who were on the outside. They were no more to Cuban eyes than a shipload of caged animals, whom nobody wanted to take care of.

“All my life I thought God loved me,' Mina whispered, awed. “But perhaps now I believe He hates us all.”

“It isn't God who hates us, Mama. It's men. Human beings.” He felt a deep chill after his earlier exploits, and a slight fever. Never had the future appeared so uncertain. How right he'd been, to have sent Maryse and Nanni to France when he had done so! He would never have forgiven himself if they'd been with him, sharing this terrifying uncertainty.

At length the ship lifted anchor. Men and women wept openly. The captain had at least been able to obtain from the Cubans a replenishment of food and water. “We're going to the United States,” somebody said. There seemed to be a new surge of hope, and he allowed himself to go with it, thinking of Eliane and David, his parents-in-law. They'd been the smartest of all, leaving Europe entirely behind them.

By now their ship, the
Saint Louis,
had become famous. When it crossed to the United States, and set anchor, the captain wasn't allowed off the ship without official escorts. Hopes ran high once more. The Americans, always so fair, would surely be able to admit so few of them, under a thousand. President Roosevelt would never turn them away. The Jews were being closely watched, so that no one would get the idea of jumping off to gain illegal access to the country. But surely, Mrs. Gould and her group would force her cohorts to open their doors, and their hearts, to these unfortunates fleeing from the Nazis.

After a while, the captain came back to the
Saint Louis
with bad news. Roosevelt had declared that their near-thousand exceeded the quota for German immigrants. Exhausted, at his wits' end, the captain announced that since no place wanted them, he had no choice but to turn around and return to Hamburg.

Then the tall man came to Wolf, and held out his pen. “There are over a hundred of us who have already signed,” he said, his cultured voice smooth and low. “If we are to be thrown back to the Nazis, we shall commit suicide upon arrival. But we refuse to be sent back to Hell. Better death, than Dachau.”

Wolf waited one-half minute, scrutinizing the writing on the paper. Certainly, they were right. And yet . . . Maryse. If he agreed to end his life, he would be agreeing never to see his wife and daughter again. While he was thinking, he saw his mother's delicate hand jut out, take the pen from the tall man's fingers, and begin to write. “Mama, no,” he cried, wrenching it from her hand.

“Your mother's right: what choice have we?” the man murmured. But Wolf turned away, his eyes suddenly filling up with tears.

The captain, before setting off, went back on land, and made a public declaration of his intentions, and of the suicide pact that had been signed, finally, by two hundred of his passengers. He made a valiant plea, heard over the broadcasts of many nations. And on the twelfth of June, France announced its permission to land the ship in Cherbourg. The Netherlands would accept two hundred Jews, Belgium one hundred fifty, and France and Great Britain the rest.

The Joint Distribution Committee had given fourteen million francs, or five hundred pounds sterling per head, to help the various governments to make room for the nine hundred seventeen. But Wolf didn't forget that his mother had signed the suicide pact, her fingers firm and unwavering.

“God sent trials and misfortunes to Job, His disciple. But in the end He showed him that He hadn't deserted him. We have to have faith, Mama,” he said, his voice tight.

The old woman was silent, but he knew she didn't believe him. The past few months had been too trying for her, and she was on the verge of forgetting her God. Wolf said, urgently: “Mama. For Papa's sake, you must have hope! Every day, you must force your heart to feel the hope, even if it's so tenuous you can hardly sense it inside you.”

“For Papa's sake?” she repeated, meeting his eyes for the first time. And he had to step back, her eyes were so cold. “Papa's dead, Wolfgang. This is what I feel in my heart, instead of your hope. He's dead, and we can't even sit shiva for him.”

And she turned away from him, her shoulders contracting in spasms of silent sobs.

In the nighttime, he held her, his compassion so great that his insides felt twisted. For as much as he'd adored his father, Isaac had been Mina's life. He understood then why she had signed the pact. He still had Maryse, and Nanni; but for her, the core of her being was gone.

W
hile the fate
of the nine hundred seventeen Jews on the
Saint Louis
had been widely discussed, and the entire world had listened to the progress of their story, Maryse still had no idea that her husband and mother-in-law were among them. That summer, Claire had decided not to go to the Riviera. Instead, for a bracing change of climate, she elected the small Normandy community of Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, in the Department of Calvados. She and Lily selected a spacious villa with many bedrooms, anticipating that friends from Paris would want to come for weekends. Nicky had already invited Pierre Rublon, and Sudarskaya had expressed the wistful desire to come for a part of the summer. Her little marble eyes had shined so brightly that no one had had the heart to refuse her.

One afternoon, Lily and Kira went to the Ritz to have tea with Claire and Maryse, and when they arrived, they found the young woman in the midst of her packing, opened cartons strewn all over the sitting room of her suite, unheeded while she sat, hands folded in her lap, tears streaking her cheeks. Next to her, dapper and smart, stood, of all people, Mark MacDonald. I should have known I'd most likely run into him here, one day, Lily thought at once, conscious of his presence like a small dart into her chest. Her discomfort was such that at first, her friend's distraught attitude didn't even register. Claire was standing behind Maryse, her hands on the young woman's shoulders, and it was she who said: “Mark received word that Wolf and Frau Steiner are going to land at Cherbourg. They've been ... on that ship that returned from Cuba.”

Maryse lifted her eyes to Lily, and held her hands out to her friend. Lily ran to her, and they embraced. “He's safe,” Maryse whispered, tears falling on Lily's hair. “Thank God, thank God.”