The Other Half of Life (11 page)

It was a foggy night, and Thomas couldn't even see the
water around the ship, let alone a single star in the sky. The wind was strong and he tightened his overcoat around him.

When Priska came on deck, all his practiced words disappeared.

“Where did you go after the picture?” she asked, coming up beside him. “I was waiting for you.”

Either she had no idea that he had seen her with Manfred, or she didn't understand what was so wrong with talking to him in the first place.

He said in a clipped tone, “I went out the other way, that's all.”

“I waited for you. Vati and Marianne had gone to check on Mutti.”

The ship's foghorn blew, and moments later another ship answered far away.

Thomas didn't reply, and Priska said, “Did you like the picture?”

Thomas wouldn't look directly at her as he spoke. “I found it hard to pay attention after the newsreel.”

“It wasn't my favorite,” Priska continued. “But I did love it when Max knocked out Hawkins in the end, didn't you?”

Thomas offered a barely perceptible shrug.

“Is something wrong?” Priska asked.

Thomas didn't know why he wasn't telling her how he really felt, how upset he was that he had seen her with Manfred. Except maybe it was because that would show her that he cared for her. And perhaps deep down he
wished he could be as carefree as she, as blind to everything going on around them.

“Well, if you're not going to talk to me, I'm not going to keep standing here,” Priska snapped. “I could get in trouble with my parents if they knew I was sneaking out to meet you.”

Her voice was as close to angry as he had ever heard it, and it sent ripples of surprise through Thomas's body. Before he could say anything else, she turned and, with a toss of her curly hair, walked away.
To meet you
. She had said that she snuck out to meet him.

Thomas waited a few moments and then went after her. He was all alone on this voyage, and in the world for that matter, and Priska wanted to be his friend—perhaps even more than a friend. He would be stupid to let her go so easily.

He was reaching for the handle to the door to the stairwell when she pushed it back open. It hit him squarely in the nose. “Ow!”

“Shh!” She grabbed his arm, pulling him inside the passage and down the first few stairs. “Quick.”

He followed her, putting one hand to his nose to feel for blood, but it was dry. She stopped a few steps shy of the landing. Voices echoed up the stairwell.

“They can't just decide to make a new law now,” someone was saying.

Thomas recognized the voice of
Ortsgruppenleiter
Holz: “Cuba can do whatever they want.”

“They can just decide the landing permits are worth nothing and not let them in? Just like that? What are we supposed to do with them?”

Holz said, “We'll drag them back if we have to.”

Thomas thought of his own landing permit. His mother had danced him around the kitchen the day she'd secured it. It was one thing to have the money to afford your escape from Germany, and another thing to find a place to escape to. But to Thomas the permit had always seemed like just a piece of paper, and he had never put much faith in paper.

The men's voices faded as they walked away, leaving Priska and Thomas alone on the stairs.

“Are you okay?” She reached out to touch his face. Instinctively he pulled away and then wished he hadn't. He imagined that her hands would have felt cool on his skin.

“It's not bleeding,” Priska said.

Thomas touched his nose again. “I think it's fine.”

Priska inhaled sharply. “What if they don't let us in? They wouldn't send us back, would they? My family … we can't go back.”

It was the first time he'd ever heard Priska worry or even acknowledge that things might not work out.

“No one wants to go back,” Thomas said, although at
the beginning of the voyage he'd wanted nothing else. But he didn't want to go home as much anymore. Perhaps it had taken being with a ship full of other unwanted souls, each with his or her own painful story, to realize getting out was vital. Or perhaps it was because of Priska.

“Wait until Vati hears—”

Thomas cut her off. “Don't tell him. Not yet. We don't really know anything, and if the whole ship gets talking, then the crew will be more careful about what they say and we won't be able to learn anything more.”

“Vati won't tell anyone,” Priska assured him.

“Still, it's better not to. Until we know more.”

He wanted this to be theirs alone. He wanted them to be like his parents: united in a single cause.

Priska nodded. “All right.” She paused and then said, “Why were you being so mean before?”

“I'm sorry,” Thomas said. “But you shouldn't be so careless with someone like Manfred.”

Priska made a face. “Careless? I was just being nice.”

“You shouldn't even speak to him.”

Priska rolled her eyes. “What am I supposed to do? Just walk away? That would be rude.” She sighed and a funny look came over her face. “Are you jealous?”

“No,” Thomas said. “Why would I be jealous?”

Priska shrugged. “No matter what you're feeling, you shouldn't have gotten so mad at me. Friends are supposed to be nice to each other.”

“Friends have arguments, though,” Thomas pointed out.

Priska shook her head. “I hate arguments.”

“So you'll just go through life with no arguments?”

“If I can help it.”

Thomas laughed. If anyone could go through life without a single argument, he felt sure it would be Priska. As much as he still wanted to be mad at her, he was finding it hard.

“So what next?” she asked. “What about the new law?”

“We keep listening,” Thomas said. “Right now that's all we can do.”

His voice sounded confident to his own ears, but inside doubts lingered—what if they really weren't allowed in? He also didn't understand why the
Ortsgruppenleiter
would be so cavalier about having to bring them all back. Since he was a Party official, wasn't it his job to make sure Germany had nine hundred fewer Jews?

T
homas was not very good at sitting idle, which was how most of the passengers seemed to spend their days. They strolled the deck, read, talked, ate, and played casual games.

Thomas joined Priska, Günther, and the others as they swam in the pool, tried out the mechanical horse in the gymnasium, rode the elevator, and played shuffleboard and Ping-Pong. Whenever he could, Thomas watched people play chess or played himself. That was when time passed most quickly for him, as well as when he was with Priska. As the Affeldts' “cousin,” he was allowed to dine in first class with them as he pleased, and he did so regularly. Priska had also invited him to the Shabbos prayer service on Saturday. At first he had been uncomfortable about going. He didn't know the first thing about Shabbos, since his parents had never been practicing Jews. He felt certain
he'd make a blunder. And in fact he did—he was late to meet Priska because he'd gone to the social hall, which was where he had heard services took place. After waiting for ten minutes, shifting from foot to foot in his dinner jacket and homburg hat, he had asked a woman if she had seen the Affeldt family.

“Are they Orthodox?”

When Thomas furrowed his brow, she added, “This is the Orthodox minyan. Reform is in the dance hall, Conservative in the gymnasium.”

So there were three different levels of faith, Thomas contemplated as he hurried to the dance hall. He had certainly seen the Hasidic men in Berlin, in what Thomas thought was their funny dress and hairstyles, and there were a few people in similar dress aboard the ship. But for some reason it had never occurred to him that people went to different services. He knew that every Jew wasn't strictly religious, but he hadn't known that there was an organized structure.

When he arrived at the door to the dance hall, Priska was not waiting outside. He was now fifteen minutes late and the service was about to start. Either she had given up on him and gone inside, or her family was Conservative. He peeked in and was able to pick out her curly head in one of the back rows. He tiptoed in and sat down next to her. Both she and Marianne were wearing the frilly white dresses he'd first seen them in.

“Where have you been?” Priska whispered to him. She glanced at his head and added, “Oh, good, I meant to tell you to wear a hat.”

Thomas surveyed the room and saw that the heads of all the men were covered by either a skullcap or a hat.

“I went to the social hall,” he admitted sheepishly.

“You thought we were Orthodox?” she said, stifling a giggle.

“No,” he stumbled. “I just didn't really know ….”

A man at the front of the room began chanting in what Thomas guessed must be Hebrew. Thomas listened to the rise and fall of his voice—he was surprised to find it soothing even though he had no idea what the words meant. It distracted him in a way that he had hoped the pictures would. He felt an ease he hadn't felt in quite a while. It was the ease he had felt back in Berlin when the apartment was filled with his parents' friends, the hum of their voices. It came from being surrounded by people who shared the same beliefs.

Now the man and a few members of the congregation were preparing to read from what looked like a long piece of parchment wound around two wooden arms.

“That's a tiny Torah,” Priska whispered. “Rabbi Zweigen thal brought it aboard in his suitcase. We're lucky to even have a Torah with us on the ship.”

Thomas felt proud he knew what the Torah was. He had never actually seen one before, but he had heard about the
Jewish holy book being taken from synagogues and burned during
Reichskristallnacht
. He had heard that each Torah was written by hand and therefore could never be replaced, and that some were hundreds of years old.

After the reading, the man lifted the Torah, wrapped in a velvet cover, and walked around the dance hall with it. When it passed by the row of seats in front of them, Jürgen leaned over and kissed it. When it was their turn, Thomas imitated Priska, who just touched it with her fingertips.

After the Torah was returned to the front of the room, another man, who Thomas assumed must be the rabbi, stood up. Behind him a white sheet had been draped over the large portrait of Hitler. Thomas was glad Hitler wasn't staring down at them, but he wished the portrait had been removed altogether.

The rabbi began, “The celebrated Zionist pioneer Ahad Ha'am, may his memory be blessed, once said that more than the people of Israel have kept Shabbos, Shabbos has kept the people of Israel. As Reform Jews, we no longer consider ourselves bound by the commandments to keep Shabbos as in biblical or Talmudic times—we use electricity, we write, we cook, and sometimes we continue our work. So of what use to us are the words of Ahad Ha'am?”

Thomas looked over at Priska. Her hands were folded in her lap and her eyes were on the rabbi.

“We all know that Shabbos is meant to be a taste of
the world to come, a time to pause and reflect, to be together with loved ones, to be as free of worldly cares as we choose to be, and to commemorate God's rest after the creation of the world. Yet the situation faced by many of us at home has made such a carefree approach intolerable, if not impossible.”

Thomas found himself sitting up straighter as the rabbi continued, “Our task on this ship is to remember the blessing as we have celebrated it in the past, and to use the Shabbos of the present as a reminder of the freedom awaiting us in Cuba. We must maintain our hope. This is what this day represents—a beacon of hope in a lost world. When we observe Shabbos, we say that no matter what is happening in the world, the people of Israel will hold fast to their hope.”

Some of the women nearby were brushing tears from their eyes. Professor Affeldt took Frau Affeldt's hand. Thomas expected her to share a knowing glance with her husband, confirming the new hope they had for their family. But instead she stiffened.

“And what of our Orthodox and Conservative brethren, also here on this ship? They must find themselves in a predicament—how to observe Shabbos on a moving ship, when using transportation is forbidden to them on this day. Are we to be relieved that our Reform approach permits us uncomplicated Shabbos observance and food consumption? No, my friends, we must not fall into the trap of disunity with our fellow Jews. For in the Talmud we learn that there
is nothing that can stand before the duty of saving a life, except the prohibition of murder, idolatry, and incest. Anything is permitted for the purpose of preserving life, even if it means violating Shabbos or eating
treif
. To save a life—
pikuach nefesh
—is the highest principle in Judaism. I only hope our well-learned Orthodox and Conservative friends take this to heart because you all know as well as I that this ship is a giant lifeboat, carrying us all to freedom.”

The rabbi paused. The congregation was silent too. Thomas was glad the rabbi felt the same way he did about the voyage—that while it was fun to enjoy the luxuries of the ship and try to forget about what they had left behind, the true nature of their trip would always be with them.