Hufnagel, too, felt the thrill of excitement. To return with at least one major prize might redeem his career.
He and Todt went up on to the bridge. U-113 was now making full speed to intersect with the target vessel. She surged through the swells as though eager for the appointment. The night was foggy and very dark, with no moon. They were heading closer to the enemy coast with every minute that passed.
‘We’ll reach her at about 05:00 hours,’ Todt said. ‘My intention is to get this done in darkness and be gone before the British can respond.’
‘I agree.’
Todt hugged himself against the intense cold. ‘Make no mistake, Hufnagel. This is our chance.’
Hufnagel nodded but said nothing.
SS Manhattan
Manhattan’s kitchens, stimulated by the fresh cooks who had joined at Cobh, provided a gala dinner for everyone aboard, complete with Irish crabs and lobsters and crates of Irish stout. After dinner, fortified by the alcohol, the passengers arranged an impromptu entertainment in the Smoking Room.
Hoffman’s Midget Marvels started the proceedings with a scene from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The prettiest one, whom Teddy Kennedy admired, played a sleepy Snow White in a very short slip and a paper crown. The other seven played the Dwarfs. They sang ‘Whistle While You Work’ in husky voices, wearing beards made of cotton wool, and took turns to kiss Snow White, lifting her slip to peer under it and share what they found with the onlookers. Their antics and bawdy remarks caused much hilarity among an audience wanting to blow off some steam.
Thomas König, viewing this performance with acute discomfort, found himself wondering whether the World’s Fair was going to be the sober, scientific symposium that he had imagined. This mockery of things he held sacred was giving him an intimation of America as a land of brash vulgarity and crude sexuality, very different from the chaste German romanticism he had been brought up with.
He watched, bemused, as Miss Elizabeth Taylor clambered on to the stage and sang ‘Some Day my Prince Will Come’, with her violet eyes raised heavenward, to loud applause. Her proud mother announced to everyone that she had performed in front of the King and Queen of England, information which seemed to surprise young Elizabeth herself.
Mrs Dabney then launched into a recitation of When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, Walt Whitman’s elegy for Abraham Lincoln, which people around Thomas murmured was very apt for the time and place, though it went on somewhat long, and was perhaps imperfectly remembered here and there.
Thomas leaned over to Masha and whispered, ‘Won’t you play something, Fräulein Morgenstern?’
‘It’s been months since I touched a piano,’ she replied. ‘I’m so out of practice.’
‘You cannot be worse than this,’ Thomas pointed out, as Mrs Dabney groped for her next lines.
She giggled. ‘That’s true.’
‘Won’t you play?’ He blushed. Rachel had scorned to attend the entertainment, and he felt bold in her absence. ‘For me. I have never heard you play.’
She smiled. ‘Very well, if it will please you. For you, Thomas.’
Masha went to the piano and sat to a scattering of applause. After a moment’s reflection, she began to play Träumerei by Schumann. An absolute silence fell as the wistful, touching melody drifted through the room. Masha played without flaw, and with a delicacy of touch that made several people in the audience begin crying.
Among those who wept was Thomas, who felt with every note – as perhaps others did – that his tarnished dreams were being brightened again, that his hurts were being healed, that his dying hopes were being rekindled. He had kept the handkerchief she had given him like a precious relic. He pressed it to his mouth now, inhaling the faint scent that still clung to it. It was Masha’s particular scent: vanilla and apricots, it seemed to him at times; at other times, something darker, aloes and musk.
Masha finished to rapturous clapping, and took her seat next to Thomas again.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered.
She saw his wet cheeks. ‘I didn’t mean to make you sad,’ she said.
‘I’m not sad. It was very beautiful.’
Katharine Wolff, perhaps not wanting to be outdone, followed Masha at the piano, and played a medley of national anthems, the French, the British, the American and a fourth which caused some puzzlement until it was revealed to be the Irish national anthem, otherwise known as ‘A Soldier’s Song’.
There was more applause as Miss Fanny Ward looked in on the proceedings, glassy-eyed in a magnificent gold lamé gown with a cascading, beaded headdress in the style of ancient Heliopolis. But she declined to perform, other than to smile lopsidedly at everyone around her. And the two great musicians on board, Stravinsky and Toscanini, both kept out of the way.
The highlight of the evening was provided by a mysterious, svelte and exquisite woman, hitherto unnoticed by anybody on board, who appeared in a grass skirt and a coconut brassiere, accompanying herself on the ukulele while she sang ‘My Little Grass Shack in Kealakekua’ in a sultry contralto, getting all the Hawaiian words right and shaking her hips in the most provocative way.
It was whispered excitedly that this must surely be the Mexican actress Dolores del Río, who it was assumed must have been keeping to her stateroom to avoid the press of admirers. But astonishingly, at the end of her song the sultry lady pulled off her wig and revealed herself to be none other than Mr Nightingale, the senior steward, who in addition to all his other talents, was seen to have very good legs. He used them to make a sensational exit, hula-ing around the room, swishing his skirt and leaving a section of the audience open-mouthed and another section stamping and wolf-whistling.
It took some time to restore order after this. Members of the ship’s crew, watching from the wings, were especially vociferous in their appreciation. One was heard to say it was ‘Naughty Nightie’s best ever’.
The Reverend Ezekiel Perkins of the Nordic Tabernacle now got on to the stage and announced that he felt it incumbent upon him to offer a little lecture on ‘Improving the Health of the Next Generation’. This apparently involved the sterilising of Negroes, Jews, Mexicans and abnormal individuals such as Mr Nightingale and Hoffman’s Midget Marvels, to prevent them from contaminating the nascent American race.
Masha became agitated at this flood of urbanely expressed hatred, and rose to leave. Thomas walked her to the exit. Several of the audience followed suit, either because they were also offended by the Reverend Perkins’ address, or because it was not as short as he had promised.
At the door, Thomas touched Masha’s hand. ‘Thank you again for tonight.’ He gazed into her face, feeling that he was more deeply in love than ever. ‘I will never forget it.’
Masha laughed, disengaging her hand from his. ‘In Yiddish we call that sort of music schmaltz. Dripping with sentiment, you know? But it’s a sweet piece. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Goodnight, Thomas.’
She slipped away. Thomas leaned against the wall dreamily as the Smoking Room emptied and the stewards cleared up and turned off the lights.
U-113