The Reverend Ezekiel Perkins offered several of his short lectures on a variety of important subjects, including the threat of masculine women, the lies of anthropology, the evil of psychoanalysis, the menace of Negro blood, getting right with God, fighting Bolshevism, strengthening the Mann Act, abolishing dance halls, censoring the cinema, and the foundations of the Republic. There were bigots and Nazis in America too, Rachel saw.
Other than these lectures, the passengers passed the time on the overcrowded ship by playing shuffleboard, quoits or deck tennis in the few free places that were available. The gymnasiums were among the rooms that had been given over to the additional passengers, so a brisk walk around the deck was also a choice made by many, though this involved weaving a circuitous path to avoid others on the same exercise, as Rachel did.
And so the ship, containing as many people as a small town, and at least as much diversity, sailed on towards New York.
HMS Tisiphone
Rudi Hufnagel and the other survivors of U-113 had now spent two days on HMS Tisiphone. Lieutenant-Commander Cottrell was eager to get them off his submarine. He was already back on his patrol, and the five captured enemy sailors to be fed, berthed and watched were causing him a headache. There was also the question of Hufnagel’s health, which was deteriorating rapidly. The left shoulder was very swollen. He had not stopped losing blood from the injury to his right forearm, and was growing very weak. The petty officer who had tried to stitch him up was unable to stop the flow.
‘To tell you the truth,’ he said to his skipper, ‘I think I’ve done more harm than good.’
‘You’re not a doctor, Terry,’ Cottrell said consolingly. ‘But I don’t want him to die on us. And Warspite’s let us down.’
The rendezvous with HMS Warspite, the destroyer which was meant to pick up the Germans, hadn’t come off; she had been diverted on urgent business elsewhere. There was, however, a second destroyer about to pass within range of Tisiphone. She was HMS Amphitrite, and as luck would have it, she was equipped with an operating theatre and had a surgeon on board. There was only one drawback, which Cottrell explained to Hufnagel.
‘She’s in a convoy, bound for New York. Thanks to the endeavours of chaps like you, merchant ships aren’t crossing the Atlantic on their own any more. The doctor on board will fix you up, but you’re going to be at sea for quite a while longer. Probably several weeks.’
Hufnagel gave Cottrell a hollow smile. ‘That may be preferable to a prisoner-of-war camp on land.’
‘It’s certainly preferable to you dying on my submarine and having to be tipped overboard. You could think of it as a rest cure. So, no objections?’
‘None.’
‘Right. I’ll radio her captain and see if he’ll take you on.’
The captain of the Amphitrite was not delighted by the request to take on prisoners, one of whom needed urgent surgery. However, Cottrell pressed the issue, describing Hufnagel’s part in preventing the Manhattan from being torpedoed, a gallant act in the course of which he had received his wound. Also, the young Navy surgeon on board Amphitrite said he didn’t mind getting a little practice. It might even help, he said, to sort out his station and get everything streamlined, ready for real action.
Accordingly, HMS Amphitrite made a brief diversion to intersect with Tisiphone the next day. In a high wind and rough seas, Hufnagel and the others were transferred to the destroyer. A line was rigged between the two vessels. Amphitrite had no breeches buoy, so they used a bosun’s chair to run the Germans across, one by one. The last to go was Hufnagel, with his legs dangling through the canvas harness around his groin. He found the experience only slightly preferable to being shot.
Nor was the welcome on the destroyer a warm one. In contrast to the comradely, even chummy atmosphere on the submarine, the crew of the destroyer greeted the Germans coldly, as enemies. The uninjured members of the crew were sent straight to secure quarters. Two burly able seamen marched Hufnagel to the sickbay, stolidly oblivious to his gasps of pain. The young surgeon inspected him with a keen eye.
‘This Jerry’s half-dead,’ he said with the satisfaction of a man accepting a challenge, as though Hufnagel couldn’t understand him. ‘Let’s get to work.’
While the doctor prepared Hufnagel for surgery, Amphitrite put on a spurt of speed to catch up with the rest of the convoy; and in this way, Rudi Hufnagel found himself in the wake of Manhattan, on his way to New York.
Ellis Island
Thomas, Masha and Rachel had all made their way up to the Observation Deck to get their first sight of New York. To each of the three of them, Berlin had been a great city. But New York, glimpsed indistinctly across the bay, half-shrouded in the early morning mist, was already immeasurably greater. The forest of towers and spires rose up to the sky in tints of gold and grey, with violet shadows. The tops of the highest buildings, some of which they knew the names of already, reached above the clouds.
‘What beautiful buildings!’ Masha exclaimed. ‘I can almost hear the roar of traffic from here.’
Shortly after passing the Statue of Liberty, the Manhattan stopped at Ellis Island, where immigration officers boarded the ship.
All the foreigners – a majority of the passengers – were called on to present their passports and visas for inspection. Long lines of refugees formed on the deck, filtering slowly down the gangplank to the immigrant station, watched by those lucky enough to be United States citizens. Among the latter group were Dr Meese and the Reverend Ezekiel Perkins. The Reverend Perkins took the occasion to deliver some thoughts on the spectacle below him.
‘And is our nation ready to discard the costly lessons it learned, and once again open its gates to the refuse of Europe?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Look at this trash, most of them with little more than five dollars in their pockets, most unable to speak a word of the English language.’ He raised a plump forefinger. ‘You will say they are fugitives from tyrannical governments. But when has Europe not had its tyrannical governments? Is that justification for letting them flood our country at the rate of a thousand a day, bringing with them crime, disease, drug addiction and who knows what else?’
As the Reverend Perkins continued apostrophising, the aliens filtered slowly down the gangways towards the immigration station. The addition of incongruous Moorish domes had done little to soften its high red-brick walls, or its prison-like appearance. Once inside, they found themselves in a great, vaulted space where, like human cattle, they were separated into lines and processed at counters. For most, the process was tedious, but accomplished in due course. For a few, it ended unexpectedly.
Almost the first to fall by the wayside was Thomas König. No sooner had he presented himself at a counter with his travel documents when two officers took him off and led him up the stairs, where he vanished.
Masha was one of the few people who noticed this, and she clutched Stravinsky’s sleeve.
‘Did you see that they arrested Thomas?’ she said urgently.
‘I don’t think they arrested him. They probably just want to check his papers.’
Masha, who was something of an expert on what an arrest looked like, shook her head. ‘They arrested him. Something is wrong.’