Page 16 of The Girl with a Secret
Hannah joined her at the deck, resting her slender hands on the railing, her blond hair blowing in wisps about her face. “You would tell me if you had, wouldn’t you?” she asked quietly. “Even if it was bad news? I’d still want to know.”
“Yes, I would,” Rosa replied, although she wasn’t sure she was telling the truth. Looking at Hannah, her pale face, her slender body that was already starting to seem gaunt and strained with anxiety, she didn’t think her friend could withstand any further blows to her fragile hopes. “Where is Lotte?”
“With Rachel and Franz, in the gymnasium. Rachel insisted they all take some exercise. Heinrich went with them, as well, although only because I think his mother has been driven to distraction by him, now that she must care for Herr Weiss,since he is back on board.” Hannah blew out a breath. “He is lost without Sophie, poor little boy. How do you think she is?” Sophie had sent a telegram a few days ago, giving her address in Washington. Rosa wondered when she would be able to tell Sophieheraddress—and what country it would be in.
“She’s doing better than we are, at any rate,” she told Hannah. She’d meant to sound wry, but it came out bitter.
Hannah slid her a curious glance. “Do you resent her going?”
“No,” Rosa answered after a pause, her gaze on the sea. “I can’t make myself, although I want to, for some reason. But if I were in her position, I would have done the same thing. I know I would have.” She returned Hannah’s inquisitive glance with a questioning look of her own. “What about you?”
“I don’t, not anymore. I was angry, at the start, because…” Her lips trembled and she pressed them together. “Because it felt sounfair. My father…” Her voice trembled then too, and she had to draw a quick, steadying breath. “He was right there, Rosa. You saw him, in the boat, calling up to us. He had a room all ready for us in his apartment in Havana. He told me about the things he’d bought, the bed covers and the curtains…” Now Hannah’s voice cracked, and her shoulders shook as she pressed her hand to her mouth.
Rosa turned to put her arms around her. “Hush,Hase,” she murmured as she stroked her hair. The endearment, bunny, had fallen naturally from her lips. She felt oddly protective towards Hannah, even though she was only a few years younger than her. Perhaps it was because Hannah had to take care of Lotte; it was a great and terrible responsibility for such a young woman.
“What will happen to Lotte, if we are forced back to Germany?” Hannah wept. “I don’t mean just being Jewish… you know she has a stammer. And she walks with a limp. It’s a silly thing, just that one leg is a bit longer than the other, hardly noticeable, but someone came to our door before we leftand noted it. A nurse of some kind, from one of the Reich’s committees… they marked it down on some paper…why?”
“I don’t know why,” Rosa replied, although she suspected it could not be for any reason Hannah would welcome.
“It’s because she’s not a perfect littleAryan,” Hannah spat, pulling away from Rosa as she wiped her damp cheeks. “With golden hair and blue eyes and perfect, rounded limbs, everything just so. They can’t stand anyone who is remotely different, a little Jew with a shortened leg and a bit of a lisp!”
“But you’re only half-Jewish,” Rosa reminded her gently. “Surely that counts for something, especially when it is your mother who isn’t Jewish.” According to tradition, Rosa knew, Jewishness was considered to pass through the maternal line; Rabbinic law decreed that a person with a gentile mother was not actually Jewish.
“The Nazis don’t care so much about that,” Hannah replied. “We were Jewish enough to be kicked out of school, to be forbidden entry to shops and all the rest of it. You know how it was.”
Rosa kept silent, because the truth was, shedidn’tknow how it had been, not the way her friends had. Her father, and the Faustian bargain he had made with the Nazis who needed his medical help, had made sure of that.
“I’m sorry,” Rosa murmured, knowing the words were inadequate.
Hannah turned away, her face set into hard lines as she stared out at the endless ocean. “I’m scared,” she whispered. “And I don’t know what to do. I’d protect Lotte with my life,gladly, but what if I can’t?”
“Would you ever appeal to your mother for help?” Rosa asked, and Hannah let out a hard huff of scornful laughter.
“Mymother? Never.” Her voice rang out with firm, condemning conviction. “I’d rather die first than go crawling to someone who climbed into bed with a Nazi.”
Rosa willed her expression to stay bland as she kept her gaze on the ocean. She had, she knew, absolutely no reply to make to that.
On Friday, the mood on the ship plunged even deeper into despair when a member of crew was found hanging by a rope in his locker. Apparently, he’d been Jewish, although no one had known. The Gestapo firemen had become even bolder, as well; the day before, they’d gathered in the social hall and sung rousing Nazi songs for over an hour, their voices ringing through the room, while passengers had eyed them uneasily before making themselves scarce. This time, Captain Schroeder did not come thundering down to tell them to leave; he was nowhere to be seen.
They were four days off the coast of England, and there had been no news, no solution set forward, as the ship steamed steadily toward Hamburg. Rosa’s father had become like a man possessed. He was constantly trying to talk to the captain, or the other members of the passenger committee. He’d sent cables, although to whom Rosa had no idea, because the only connections her father had had—and he certainly didn’t have them anymore—were in Germany.
“There’s no point talking to the captain,” he told her in a flat voice as they walked along the deck on Saturday morning, the freezing wind off the ocean buffeting them. After the tropical climes of Cuba, the chilly, gray weather in the mid-Atlantic felt unforgivingly cold, even in June. “He doesn’t have any real power on this ship anymore.”
“What!” Rosa stared at him in alarm as she pulled her cardigan more closely about her. “What do you mean?” She’d been able to draw some small comfort from knowing Captain Schroeder was sympathetic to the plight of the Jewish passengers, when it seemed so many of the crew were not.
“He has to follow orders,” her father told her, “and the orders from his Hapag superiors are to return to Germany.” He paused to draw a shaky breath. “He’s been trying to arrange for other countries to take us—England or France. One of the French officials said that if theSt Louisreturns to Hamburg, we will all be taken to concentration camps, straight from the dock.”
Rosa stared at him in horror, one hand pressed to her middle. That terrible fear had been lurking in her mind like a dark shadow, yet she hadn’t truly believed it could happen. Now it seemed as if it could… itwould. “They wouldn’t…” she began feebly.
“Why wouldn’t they do such a thing, Rosa?” her father demanded, speaking to her as if she were a particularly slow-witted child. “They’d think they had every right. The world has rejected us… they’ve proved thatno onewants us, not just the Nazis. They’ll tell all the powers that be that they’ve taken care of us, gone out of their way to support us… by putting us in a camp. The Gestapo firemen have been telling that to passengers already—saying we’ll never be heard from again, the moment we set foot off this ship, in Germany. One of the wretches saw me and drew his finger across his throat, smirking all the while.”
Tears blurred her vision and she blinked rapidly to clear them, too angry to cry. “It’s not fair…” she whispered.
Her father let out a weary laugh. “No,” he agreed, and to her surprise, he put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close to him, so her cheek rested against the lapel of his jacket, and she breathed in his familiar scent of tobacco and cologne. She closed her eyes, and for a second, she felt like a small child once more,safe in her father’s arms. “It’s not fair,” he repeated quietly, his arm still around her. “But I intend to do something about it.”
Rosa peered up at him, feeling both hopeful and apprehensive. “What can you do?” she asked.
“I’m going right to the source,” her father replied. “Captain Schroeder has no good plan—the best he has come up with is to run the ship aground, somewhere in England, and have us wade to shore as refugees!” He shook his head, entirely disparaging of the idea.
