By the late afternoon, most of the Manhattan’s foreign passengers had been processed and had returned to the ship. But Thomas had not reappeared. Masha, by now in a state of acute anxiety over the boy’s fate, prevailed on Stravinsky to make an enquiry about his cabin-mate. They went together to the front desks, where crowds of anxious passengers, speaking a variety of languages, were being held in check. At last, they were seen by an immigration officer in a black uniform. He led them to his office, which stank of cigars and sweat, where he faced them across a desk crowded with passports of every colour.
‘Thomas König is being detained until his status is clarified,’ the man told them.
‘What is wrong with his status?’ Stravinsky asked.
Clearly weary and overworked, the officer was impatient. ‘Are you a relative?’
‘He has shared my cabin from Le Havre, and I feel the moral obligation to act as his guardian.’
‘Your moral obligations don’t have any legal force here.’
‘At least tell us what the problem is.’
‘Monsieur Stravinsky is a very celebrated composer,’ Masha put in.
‘I know who Mr Stravinsky is.’ The officer, who was an older man named Captain O’Leary, sighed and wiped his nicotine-stained moustache. He opened a folder and took out a passport. ‘We believe the boy is attempting to enter the country illegally.’
Stravinsky fixed his glasses on his beaky nose to look at the passport closely. He flipped through the pages. ‘I can see nothing wrong with it. It seems fully legal.’
‘The passport is legal, but it’s not his passport.’
Masha gasped in dismay. ‘But – but he’s Thomas König. Look at the photograph!’
‘The photograph is the problem,’ O’Leary said dryly. ‘The boy in the photograph looks similar, but he’s older. We often see passport photographs that look younger. One that looks older is a problem – unless the passport holder has worked out how to make time run backwards. According to the birthdate in the passport, he would be eighteen years old. But he looks a couple of years younger. There are other details that make us suspicious, too. In our line of work, you get an instinct.’
‘What do you intend to do?’
‘We don’t know who he is, but we’re going to find out,’ the officer said grimly. ‘We’ll ask the German consulate to start an enquiry to find out if the passport was stolen.’
‘I cannot believe that Thomas would be party to a theft,’ Stravinsky said.
‘We’re not concerned with any crimes committed in the countries of origin, Mr Stravinsky. That doesn’t interest us here on Ellis Island. We’re concerned with an attempt to enter this country unlawfully. If the kid’s papers aren’t on the level, this is as close as he’s ever going to get to the United States.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that he’ll be shipped straight back to where he came from. If the Germans ask for him to be deported, they’ll pay his fare. If not, Uncle Sam will foot the bill.’
Masha was trembling with anxiety, but Stravinsky remained calm and polite. ‘May we speak to young Thomas? There is probably a misunderstanding at the bottom of all this which can be cleared up with a few gentle words.’
‘He’ll be in the holding cells already by now,’ O’Leary said, looking at his fob watch.
‘I would take it as a very great personal favour if you would let me see my young friend for a few moments,’ Stravinsky said quietly. ‘You said you intend to find out who he is. Well, I may be able to get that information far more easily than any interrogation will.’
The officer snapped his fob watch shut and glanced at Stravinsky with heavy-lidded eyes. ‘We’ve processed over a thousand people today. And we’re about to shut the building. But you may have a point. You can see him for five minutes.’
Thomas looked very small in the holding cell, which was also occupied by three adult men, including a heavily tattooed Finnish stowaway and two Central Europeans who wore tickets announcing that they had infectious diseases.
He looked up as the visitors came in; and then he and Masha burst simultaneously into tears. ‘Thomas, Thomas,’ she choked, ‘what’s all this?’
The boy seemed unable to answer. Stravinsky spoke quietly. ‘Thomas is not who he says he is, Masha. His family were Lutherans who objected to Nazi thuggery. For this they were sent to a camp. Thomas’s mother managed to help him escape, using a borrowed passport. He has been sailing, so to speak, under a false flag.’
‘Oh, Thomas!’ Masha knelt beside him and took him in her arms, hugging him tightly. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘I couldn’t,’ he said, his face buried in Masha’s soft hair.
‘What went wrong, Thomas?’ Stravinsky asked.
‘They asked me to take off my shirt,’ he replied in a low voice. ‘They said I was not muscular enough to be eighteen.’
‘What did you reply?’
‘I said I had been sick.’ He raised his head. He was ashen-faced and trembling. ‘But they didn’t believe me. They looked at the photograph with a magnifying glass, and measured my face with a ruler. They said the picture was of another person. And I am a little taller than it says in the passport.’
‘I don’t think it will do any good to cling to the lie any longer,’ Stravinsky said quietly. ‘We have to tell the truth and face what comes.’
Thomas nodded. ‘I’m ready. I will go back to Germany.’
‘Let’s see about that. Be strong, Thomas,’ Stravinsky said. ‘Come, Masha. We need to see Captain O’Leary again.’
‘I knew,’ Masha said breathlessly to Stravinsky as they climbed the stairs, ‘I knew he was no Hitler Youth. He is too good for that.’
Sitting in Captain O’Leary’s office, five minutes later, Stravinsky lit a cigarette. The immigration officer puffed on a cigar. The two men were reflective in their clouds of smoke.
‘What seems to have upset the boy most,’ Stravinsky said at last, ‘was that he saw his mother arrested and led to the van by Gestapo men. He was at an upper window in the house next door, you see, watching everything. She could have looked up at him, but she didn’t. This haunts him. I think it will haunt him to his dying day. Now. I invite you to consider the state of mind of a mother who does not look at her child one last time. She has prepared for this day. Dreaded it, but prepared for it. Her husband and his brother have embarked on a course of action, based on conscience, which will inevitably lead to all their deaths. But she believes in her heart that her child, her only son, should not be destroyed because of that. So she has prepared. You follow?’
O’Leary nodded, examining the coal of his cigar.
‘As they lead her to her death, she knows that her son is watching. But she does not look up at him. She knows that if she does, she may break down. The child may break down and cry out to her. And all will be lost. So she keeps her eyes on the ground so as not to betray his hiding place. It must have cost her a lot not to look at her child one last time. Don’t you think?’
O’Leary swung in his swivel chair and busied himself with some papers. ‘I guess so,’ he said gruffly.
‘His mother has taken his true identity with her to her grave. Her parting gift to him is a theft. A theft that has saved his life. I’ve thought about this a lot. It’s an interesting notion.’
‘I guess it is.’
‘Now I invite you to consider another mother, a widow who has also lost her son. Perhaps because she needs the money, or perhaps out of pity, she gives her son’s passport to her neighbour. It is, at the very least, an action which saves a life. But what happens if you make your enquiry with the German consulate, Captain O’Leary? A message is sent to Berlin. The Gestapo are alerted. They make an arrest. An interrogation, with all the usual refinements. Trial and certain death for Frau König. The boy she saved is sent back to Germany, where he too faces imprisonment and death. Has any of this added to the sum total of human happiness? Or has it simply added to the burden of grief which already weighs this world down too heavily?’