Page 9 of The Girl with a Secret
“You gave her more Luminal?” Rosa asked, unable to keep the note of accusation from her voice. Her father was a little too free with that bottle.
“She was agitated, Rosa, and I am a doctor. She needed a sedative.” His tone was tense rather than its usual expansively implacable.
Slowly, a sense of dread creeping over her like the mist over the harbor, Rosa closed the door behind her.
“Do you know something?” she asked quietly. “Why have we not been able to leave the ship?”
Her father shook his head, a twitchy sort of movement, as he blew out a stream of smoke.
“Father,please,” Rosa insisted, keeping her voice low for the sake of her mother, although she looked as if she wouldn’t wake even if the ship sounded its klaxon. “I know you talk to the captain,” she continued. “What’s going on? Why can’t we leave?”
“Nothing is going on,” her father burst out. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray in one vicious movement. “Nothing.”
“What does that mean exactly?” Rosa asked, folding her arms.
She didn’t like the wild look in her father’s eyes, the way his hands shook. He was a man who relished being in control, who delighted in seeming confident and at ease, in command of everything he saw. Yet right now he looked as if he’d been pushed to the brink, as if he were teetering on its razor-thin edge. It unnerved Rosa more than she cared to acknowledge. She might disdain her father’s cozying up to the Nazis, but in that moment, she realized she’d always liked feeling that he was in control.
“It means, Rosa,” he told her, and now his voice held an acid edge, “that we are most likely not going to be able to get off this ship today, tomorrow, orever. Cuba doesn’t want us. The Abwehr have been stirring up hatred against Jews in Havana for weeks now, in preparation for our arrival, and it looks as if all their fat, smug pigeons have come home to roost.”
The Abwehr again. That man Schiendick must be involved somehow, Rosa thought. Did it even matter, though? She knew there was nothing she could do about it.
“How do you know this?” she asked. “Did the captain say so?”
Her father shrugged impatiently. “More or less, yes. He was visited by an agent in Havana who came on board, not that he wants to say as much, but it was obvious by the agent’s oily manner. I saw him, and he wasn’t even hiding it.” He let out a heavy sigh. “He made it clear what the point of this voyage was, and itwasn’t, Rosa, to allow a thousand Jews to leave—and live—freely, as the captain or any of us might hope.”
Rosa swallowed hard. So, it had all been an exercise in propaganda? “But…” She licked her lips, started again. “What does it mean for all of us?”
“It means that the Nazis are doing whatever they can to keep us from getting off this ship. Not that the Abwehr even cares about that,” her father amended bitterly. “I’m sure the agent just wanted to pass on some information or some such. But it will certainly be a delight for the Reich if it can be shown thatno onewants the Jews, Cuba included.” He shook his head slowly. “Should we be surprised? Why do you think the Nazis let us go in the first place? It wasn’t out of the kindness of their hearts, that much is for certain.”
It was a question Rosa had asked Sophie earlier in the voyage, but in the face of her friend’s hopefulness, she realized now that she’d been content to let it remain unanswered. Ofcoursethe Nazis didn’t want the Jews to go merrily on their way and settle happily in Havana, to show the whole world how they could be successful somewhere else. It would be the very last thing they’d seek! What they wanted was just what her father had said—for the world to see howno onewelcomed the Jews… not Germany, not Cuba. Not anyone, anywhere.
“What will happen?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
“I have no idea.” Her father stood up, straightening the cuffs of his jacket. “But I can assure you, I will not take this lying down. We paid for our passage, as well as our visas, andwe deserve to be treated appropriately. If the captain cannot manage to get off this wretched ship, then maybe someone else can.” He’d adopted the pompous tone he usually reserved for people he wanted to impress. “I intend to speak to him about it immediately.” He nodded toward her mother, still asleep on the bed. “You can keep an eye on your mother, since you always seem so concerned about her.”
And with that cutting remark, he left the cabin, while Rosa sank onto a chair, burying her face in her hands.
What, she wondered despondently, was going to happen to them all now?
That evening, Rosa heard from a cheerful Rachel that nothing could happen until after Sunday, the Christian holiday of Pentecost.
“That’s what the immigration officials were saying—después de Pentecost!” She shook her head in smiling wonder. “I’d never heard of it before.”
“Nor I.” Rosa wanted to believe that was the only reason for the delay, wanted to believe it desperately… and yet she didn’t.
An hour before, her father had returned from his brief meeting with the captain fuming at the lack of information, the false promises.
“Something is clearly amiss,” he’d stated, caught between fury and fear. “The Gestapo firemen have been knocking on cabin doors, roughing people up. They broke a man’sribin tourist class.”
Rosa had thought of the crew member she’d seen earlier, his sneering, fleshy face, the furtive way he’d peered into the pen. No, she thought as she tried to smile at Rachel, she certainly didn’t believe that they would all be allowed to disembarkdespués de Pentecost.
The question that remained, and one she didn’t dare voice aloud, was—would they ever?
The days passed in sweltering, stultifying slowness. Some of the younger people seemed to view the delay as some sort of extended holiday, especially after First Officer Ostermeyer announced there would be no class distinctions, and tourist and first-class passengers could use all the same lounges and social areas, which they did with merry abandon—the first-class lounges now heaving with people, the swimming pool a seething mass of bare-skinned humanity.
The heat, the crowds, and the growing sense of tension left Rosa feeling tetchy and restless. She argued with Hannah about their future; Hannah insisted they would be let off the ship soon, and she absolutely did not want to hear anything to the contrary. Her father had waved at her and Lotte from a boat, and she’d been overjoyed. Rosa couldn’t bear to dampen her determined enthusiasm, and yet it was becoming harder and harder to stay silent. She felt the need to warn her friends, to prepare them, but it was abundantly clear that they did not appreciate such sentiments.
When Pentecost passed and nothing changed, the mood on the ship began to darken into deep despair. At one point, women rushed to a ladder, desperate to get off, and were pushed back by Gestapo, some of them badly injured, which only added to the sense of frightened futility. Rosa’s father was frantically sending cables, trying to trade on the connections it seemed he no longer had. Rosa had stopped asking him for news; it only made him furious that he didn’t have any. Her mother remained in a sedative-laced stupor, barely leaving the cabin. When, on Wednesday afternoon, Rosa beseeched her to take some air, she batted her away.
