‘Sir,’ the navigator began, ‘we’re going to be carrying fifteen hundred passengers on this trip. The Athenia—’
‘The Athenia was making full steam, showing no lights, and plotting a zigzag course. Am I wrong in what I say?’
‘No, Commodore.’
‘And she was still torpedoed?’
The men all took an automatic step to maintain their balance as Manhattan rolled in a trough. ‘Yes, Commodore.’
‘There you have it. A fatal decision by the British skipper. A darkened ship, jinking constantly, making full speed. What would arouse greater suspicion in a U-boat captain? The German assumed Athenia was a troopship or an armed merchant cruiser. He acted accordingly.’
The officers shuffled, but nobody made a reply.
‘Running and hiding is not the answer. Creeping along is not the answer. Remember Farragut at Mobile Bay, gentlemen. Damn the torpedoes. Safety lies in boldness. I may go so far as to say that glory lies in boldness. I will plot the same passage that I have sailed all my life. We will show lights at night. We are Americans, and I’ll be damned if we will skulk like curs. The world knows that it tangles with the United States at its cost.’
The reference to Farragut at the Battle of Mobile Bay had not had a reassuring effect on the ship’s officers, and when Commodore Randall had left the bridge to complete his dinner in his cabin, there was a muttered confabulation among them. While not quite old enough to have served in that glorious engagement, Commodore Randall was now in his sixties, and as one of them remarked, ‘The old man has survived so many adventures that now he believes he is immortal.’
The Morgenstern cousins had not attended the evening meal. They had stayed in their cabin for most of the day. Masha had cried so much that she could hardly see to pack.
Rachel took her arm. ‘Enough nonsense with the suitcase, please.’
‘Why don’t you cry?’
‘They couldn’t make me cry at kindergarten. They couldn’t make me cry at school. They couldn’t make me cry at the conservatory. I will not let them make me cry now.’
‘But our parents,’ Masha said. ‘Oh my God, poor Mama and Papa. To think of them cold and alone in some terrible place. We should never have left them.’ She returned blindly to folding things into the valise.
‘There is nothing you can do, Masha,’ Rachel said flatly. ‘We knew this would happen. That is why they made such a great effort to get us out. It’s hateful to think of squandering that sacrifice.’
‘I’m going back to join them.’
‘To be sent to a camp?’
‘They’re old and weak. I can at least take care of them, wherever they are.’
‘Do you imagine they will be happy to see you come back?’
Masha swept the things off her side table into the valise. ‘I don’t want to be the last.’
‘Think of it as being the first,’ Rachel replied.
‘Do you realise that our family name will die out?’ Masha asked, taking clothes off the hangers in the closet.
Rachel reached in her bedside drawer for the little bottle of smelling salts. ‘My dear, our family name died out a hundred and fifty years ago. Nobody even remembers what it was. They chose to call us after the morning star in the hopes that it would stop the Gentiles from persecuting us, but it only made us easier for them to find.’ She waved the vial under Masha’s nose. Masha’s head jerked involuntarily as the fumes of sal volatile struck her sinuses. She reeled back from the suitcase she had been packing. ‘It was a long struggle,’ Rachel went on, ‘and now it is over. There will be no Jews left in Germany.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Masha begged in a broken voice. ‘That stuff stinks. Put it away.’
Rachel closed the lid of the suitcase. She put an arm around her cousin’s soft shoulders. ‘When we reach New York we’ll get information about them. And if the information is not good, we’ll have a kaddish sung for them. But you will not get off the boat at Southampton.’
‘You cannot stop me.’
‘I will have you locked in the hold, if necessary.’
Masha peered at her blearily. ‘Don’t you have feelings?’
‘I have feelings,’ Rachel said quietly. ‘I have feelings inside, without displays or fuss.’
Masha wept in silence for a while, her head on Rachel’s shoulder. At last she said, ‘You’re different from me. You’re brave. It takes a special kind of person to want to live when everyone you love has vanished. I am not such a person. I will get off the boat at Southampton. The British authorities must send me back to Germany. You take the rubies, go to America on your own. I don’t want to live with this burden any more.’
‘The burden of life, you mean.’
‘Yes, I mean the burden of life. This life. We grew up like those fish in glass bowls. We knew that terrible things were happening just beyond the glass, but we looked inward.’
‘And now the bowl has broken.’
‘Yes. But the bowl was our life. I can’t survive outside it.’ She sat up. ‘Let me pack my suitcase, Rachel. Don’t stop me.’
‘Very well,’ Rachel said after a pause. ‘If that is what you really want. I’m going to dinner.’
Stravinsky looked up from his plate as the young woman took the empty seat at their table. She was a German Jewess of the blonde type, it seemed, very pale, and with a set expression on her face.
‘I may as well say from the start that I’m not an admirer of your music, Monsieur Stravinsky.’ She spoke good French with little accent. ‘But my cousin is. She’s the one who attempted to speak to you the other night, here, at dinner. You remember?’
Stravinsky glanced at Katharine, who was frowning, then back at the Jewess. ‘I am at a loss, Fräulein.’
‘She is very pretty, with brown hair. She wore a red leather coat.’
‘Perhaps I recall such a person,’ Stravinsky said dubiously. ‘What of her?’
‘Her name is Masha. She is in our cabin now, packing her suitcase. She intends to disembark at Southampton.’
‘Indeed.’
‘But we are on our way to New York. Our families sacrificed everything so that we could leave Germany. We have heard that all those who remain of our families – both hers and mine – have been sent to Silesia.’ Stravinsky saw her eyes land on the swastika that gleamed in Thomas’s buttonhole. ‘Now Masha says she is going back to Germany to perish with them. She won’t listen to me.’
‘What is it particularly about my music that you do not like?’
The young woman’s eyes flashed. ‘I am not here to talk about your music. I am here to talk about my cousin. Don’t you hear me? She intends to disembark tomorrow and go back to her death in Germany.’
Katharine leaned forward. ‘What is it you expect Monsieur Stravinsky to do?’
‘Talk to her. Persuade her out of this suicidal course of action.’
Stravinsky rested his cheek wearily on his fist. ‘And what makes you think I might have the slightest influence on your cousin?’
‘She is a passionate admirer of your music. So much so that when she listened to your Rite of Spring, she felt her heart leap out of her chest. She became speechless in your presence. She’ll listen to you if to nobody else on this ship.’
‘Young woman, if I have no desire to continue my own life, I can hardly persuade a stranger to cling to hers.’
‘You’re old, and it’s fit you should feel that way. She’s a child. There is not much time. We will be in Southampton in a few hours.’ The young woman rose abruptly. ‘Her name is Masha Morgenstern, and she is in Cabin 321.’