The older man had a beard of patriarchal cut and snowy whiteness and immensely long, dirty fingernails. The youth could not have been more than fifteen. The smashed and buckled fibre suitcase had a few dirty clothes lolling from it. Both bodies wore small metal identification discs on the forearm, though whether of Nazi provenance or not he could not tell. Isaac puffed grimly at his pipe as he consulted them. “Father and son,” he said under his breath, sitting back on his haunches and looking at them. “Father and son.” Behind him surged the racket of the axes busy upon the second crate. They had been lying as if asleep, entangled in a travesty of sleep, their arms round one another; now, in the relaxation of death, their attitude suggested a helpless and yet somehow triumphant surrender. Sincerely moved, Isaac got up, shaking himself like a dog, and waddled aft for a drink of water. Then he took up an axe and joined his crew in their assault on the second crate which they had already half demolished.
Judith heard them coming, but as if from a very long way off. The crate itself echoed like a gigantic sounding-board to the boom of their implements, so that she imagined something like the distant stampede of a horde of elephants whose foot-falls shook the world. Each axe-blow seemed to land in the centre of her brain, deafening, beheading her. Her mouth she kept pressed to a perforation in the wood which enabled her to drink in air with long, laboured inspirations. Somewhere in the straw beneath her she could hear the voice of the religious fanatic muttering away — like the sound of a bumble-bee trapped in a spider’s web, now faint and distant, now gathering strength again. Outside the confines of this blind world the racket was infernal. But now, gradually, extraordinary strips of blinding sunlight and blue sky appeared, tearing at her eyeballs. It was as if she were an entombed queen hearing the picks and shovels of the archaeologists approaching her. Voices called and she tried to answer, but her lips and throat had swollen — or so it seemed. The hot and rank odour of straw scorched her lungs. A groping hand touched her shoulder and she shrank away with pain, for her body was a mass of bruises. The daylight was pain, the pain blindness; she shrank from her rescuers.
Then with a splintering bang the walls of this stuffy universe gave way and drew back; sweet air rushed in. The blue sky pierced her like a spear. She shut her eyes fast against it and felt herself scooped up and carried, to be laid down somewhere on a hard deck among voices, the lapping of water, and the smell of hot machinery. No, it was beyond belief, she must be dead! But a rough calloused hand raised her head, a hairy face brushed her body and a voice said soberly: “Well, this one’s alive all right.” Alive! The voice itself sounded so incongruous that she wanted to laugh, but in her weakness all she could manage was a tree-frog’s croak and a few thin tears squeezed from under long lashes. The air, the light, were enticing, but still she could not bear to open her eyes.
“Well I’ll be damned.”
“They had no right…
“We’re not a hospital-ship.” Nadeb’s voice rose to a plaintive squeak. But they were busy about some other frantic business, tearing at straw and pulling at strips of crackling wood. She was left for a moment in the oasis of her own thoughts, wheeling and scattering like notes of dust in sunlight. Then she gave a gasp, for someone had emptied a bucket of salt water over her head. The shock seemed to start up her fever again; she began to tremble once more, her teeth to chatter in her head. Isaac mopped her face with a clean handkerchief, swearing softly under his breath. She heard him give an order: “Something warm to drink from the galley.” They stayed like this for a long moment, like a tableau of exhaustion — the old man was breathing as hard as she was. “Hurry up, there!” he cried.
Meanwhile her fellow-stowaway had been disinterred from the crate which smelled like a carnivore’s cage, and disposed upon the grubby deck. He too was alive, but he presented a strange picture to their startled sight. His long bony body was topped by a fierce hawk’s head dressed in a tangle of greasy ringlets falling to his shoulders. His pale blue eyes had the glare of delirium in them and his lips moved incessantly. He still had his voice, though it had been worn down in long patches to a mere whisper. It was not easy to say whether they had a case of extreme fatigue to deal with, or one of insanity. His eyes roved madly here and there, as if searching for something. From an occasional passage of croaks and whispers, they gathered that the subject-matter of his impassioned monologue was religious; he was reciting holy texts. He drank thirstily, slobbering water all over himself, and then suddenly took fright, drawing himself away from his rescuers, sliding along the deck on his long yellow palms like a seal. He found a thwart and pressed his back against it in terror, shouting “Keep away,” and extending a long bony finger at them. They watched him with an exhausted and mutinous curiosity. He stayed thus for a long moment with yellow teeth bared. Then, as suddenly, he joined his hands upon his soiled and tattered waistcoat and in a small, plaintive voice, like a sick child, added: “I am Melchior.” And at once fell into a deep sleep.
At the sound of his voice the girl opened her eyes on the trembling sky; a chain of images floated incoherently across her mind, evoked by the voice and the terror in it. They scorched her mind. She saw, but very indistinctly, Isaac leaning over her with a cup of tea — only he was wearing a Nazi uniform and his eyes were glaring as fiercely as her own. She raised an imploring hand and turned her head away. The shadows of men fell on the deck, she counted them. They were men in uniform and their footsteps on the hollow decks of the “Zion” sounded like the tramp of feet in jackboots.
“Ah!” she said in a desolate ringing voice full of resignation, “So you are taking me back.”
“Yes.” Isaac’s homely voice sounded like the rasping of a professional storm-trooper. “Back.”
They had already rigged up a bunk in the evil-smelling forecastle and she allowed herself to be carried down to it, speechless with fatigue. The hot drink was delicious and she would gladly have drunk more of it, but she fell asleep on the second mouthful. As for her companion, they did not move him, but put some blankets over his sleeping form with a pillow for his head. This done, the crew sat down in exhausted attitudes all over the ship and swore with surprise at being saddled with such unusual passengers; without a word of warning, too! They scratched their heads, gazing at Isaac.
He, for his part, was thinking in terms of extra rations and the hundred and one hazards they still had to face. The possessions of the refugees lay about the deck and he started to gather them: a smashed fibre suitcase, again with its entrails extruding like a squashed bug, a small haversack with the end of a cracked mirror sticking out of the side. That must belong to the girl. He carried it down to her and watched her sleeping for a moment in the uncomfortable bunk. From time to time she was shaken by a sudden gust of short breathing, like a child after crying itself to sleep. Her features were well formed; her forehead was high and white and her closed eyes framed by broad serene lashes. But she was filthy. Her hair had been cut off in a clumsy series of rats’ tails and all down one side of her neck ran the livid line of some skin infection. She smelt of the concentration camp.
Isaac shook his head and went on deck again, calling out “Engine room!” in his hardest tones, recalling everyone to their senses again. There would be time, he told himself, to smash up the other crates and dispose their contents in the hold once they were on their way. But he must not ignore the exacting timetable which alone might give them an even chance of breaking the night blockade.
“Zion” snorted and shook and lifted her bows towards the outer sea, which was already taking on the gold and peacock tones of evening. “About five hours,” said Isaac, looking at his watch. Their landfall that night would be another deserted harbour off the long spit of Famagusta in Cyprus. Somewhere out there on the opalescent horizon, the ships of the blockade cruised, restless as greyhounds. A faint evening sea-breeze, damp with the promise of mist, was slowly rising from the east. He took it on his cheek with satisfaction as he consulted a compass bearing. It was beautiful, it was calm — as deceptively calm, perhaps, as the two figures which lay side by side on the prow: the dead man and his son. Isaac went forward and sat by them for a while with Nadeb, gazing at their stillness and pallor as he loaded another pipe. They looked, he thought, as if they were listening for something. He was possessed by a great calm, a great resignation as he felt the slow swell of the sea under “Zion’s” keel. The sun was sinking into a deserted horizon. A couple of gulls hovered over them with curiosity, crying shrilly. He turned to Nadeb. “What do you know about burial at sea?”