Page 3 of The Girl with a Secret
“I doubt there’s anything happening there now,” Rosa replied, cringing at how prim she sounded. Her father often brought this out in her; his expansiveness, for whatever reason, made her shrink.
As a child, she’d adored being in the radiant beam of his gaze, but now, older and wiser, she tried to avoid it. Yet she’d still gone out to stroll with him, she reflected with a flicker of bitterness, and left her mother alone and asleep. Maybe she hadn’t changed as much as she wished she had.
“Well, why don’t we see,” her father replied easily, rolling right over any objections as Rosa knew he would. “I was hoping to meet some of the crew, maybe even the captain. He was impressive back there in the shed, with that weaselly photographer, wasn’t he? I heard he was a man of some reputation, although he didn’t fight in the war.”
Her father was very proud of his four years of war service, in North Africa rather than Europe. From the photographs she’d seen, he seemed to have spent a good deal of time in souks and cafés, smiling broadly and sipping mint tea. Although she supposed that wasn’t really fair; he’d come out of the conflict with an Iron Cross, first class.
“Very well,” she replied, and they headed away from the social hall towards the nightclub Tanzplatz, on C deck. Rosa took in the wood-paneled walls, the chandeliers and crystal and gold lighting fixtures, the thick carpet under her feet. Yes, it was a nice ship, nicer than any she’d been on, at any rate, since she’d never been on a cruise liner before. Her parents had cruised both the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, but they’d left her behind both times with a nanny.
Still, while Rosa was impressed by the ship’s amenities, she hadn’t actually been expecting this voyage to beentertaining, as her father had remarked, but rather simply a way to get from point A to point B—Germany to Cuba. Treachery and shame to freedom and hope.
She didn’t particularly want it to be anything else. She’d had enough of parties and dances, of glittering social occasions that teetered on the edge of danger, disaster, even death itself. How many times, while entertaining her father’s guests, had her heart lurched, her breathing become staccato with fear, even as she’d laughed and chatted and drank? Then the moment would, invariably, pass, like a thundercloud moving over the Wannsee, ruffling and darkening its waters, smoothing them out again… until the next storm.
No, she wanted to leave that all behind in Germany—and start a new life. A simpler, quieter one, in Cuba or America. She glanced at her father, his head thrown back, whistling as he walked, or, rather, strutted, and she wondered if that would ever even be possible.
As they approached the nightclub, the sound of piano music, accompanied by raucous voices, could be heard. It only took Rosa a few seconds to realize what they were singing—the odiousHorst Wesselsong, the Nazis’ angry, unofficial anthem.
“Comrades shot by the red and reaction, March in spirit with us and our ranks!”
It had to be members of the crew singing, and surely on purpose, as all the first-class passengers had to pass the nightclub to get to their berths.
“Let’s go back,” Rosa said quickly, grabbing her father’s arm and already starting to turn, desperate to get away from those awful voices. It brought back too many painful memories—the crash and bang of the piano keys, the men singing lustily, a jeering note to their voices. It was just like before, only this time she didn’t have to stay there and listen to it.
“No.” Her father shook off her hand, threw back his shoulders. “I’m not going to meekly creep away. We paid for our fare on this ship, and we damned well won’t be serenaded with these Nazi songs!”
And yet he’d listened to that very song in his own sitting room, Rosa recalled sickly. He’d smiled faintly all the while, as if it was all a wonderful joke, and one that he was in on, rather than the painful butt of. How could he be hypocritical enough to protest now? And yet she knew he could, because it was surely safer to do so here than it had been in his own home, with SS Obersturmführer Eichmann at the piano, a smirk on his face, eyebrows slightly raised, as if he were daring Fritz Herzelfeld, eminent physician, a friend to Nazis and yet a Jew, to say so much as a word.
Her father hadn’t, but it seemed he would now.
Rosa watched, apprehensive, as he threw open the door, filling the space with his presence, his shoulders brushing the doorframe, his chest puffed out. “What is the meaning of this?” he boomed, as the singing suddenly stopped, and with a last bang of the keys, the piano fell silent.
“And who the hell areyou, you jumped-up Jew?” a man sneered. He had the rough, gravelly voice of the working class, with a Berliner’s accent, far below her own family’s station.
“Who areyou,” her father replied stiffly, “playing such a song, in such a place as this?”
Rosa winced as she heard the scrape of a chair, the sound of a heavyset man lumbering to his feet. She saw her father stiffen, his hands clenching into fists at his sides before he deliberately unclenched them.
“You’re going to protest against your Führer’s favorite song, hey?” the man jeered. “Maybe you should sing it with us, you dirty Jew. Do you know the words? I bet you do. And if you don’t, I’ll teach them to you…”
Footsteps, coming closer. Rosa stood, poised on the balls of her feet, tension thrumming through her, ready to run. Her father, standing completely still, didn’t so much as blink. Was he frightened, or just angry? She knew what she was—terrified. She didn’t want a dangerous and painful scene, right at the beginning of their new start, their second chance. She didn’t want her father to force one.
The moment seemed to spin on forever, until an irate voice suddenly crashed over them.
“Whatis the meaning of this?”
Rosa whirled around to see the ship’s captain marching down the corridor, looking even more furious than he had back at the shed, when he’d chased the photographer away. His blue eyes snapped with icy fire, his short form bristling with fury.
“I had quite the same thought,” her father replied with dignified asperity, throwing his shoulders back as he stepped back to let the captain into the nightclub. “It is an outrage, to hear such music at a time like this.”
The captain barely glanced at him as he stormed into the room; Rosa doubted he’d heard a word her father had said.
“Stop this at once!” the captain demanded of the men who had been singing. “At once! I will not have this musicplaying while these people board my ship. Back to your posts, immediately.”
“That will sort them out,” Rosa’s father remarked in approval, straightening the cuffs of his jacket.
The captain continued to berate the crewmen, and Rosa had a prickling, urgent desire to escape.
“Father, let’s go somewhere else,” she implored in a low voice. “It will be dinner soon. Maybe we should go back to the cabin, check on Mother before we change for dinner.”
