37

Josef continued to spend the first days on board largely alone, compelled to look out at a dull winter sea from a lower side deck or the porthole of his cabin. He had tried to return to the upper deck where he’d spent that afternoon before the departure but it was closed to all but first-class passengers. The exclusion was a disappointment because he wanted to meet the girl again. She had told him her name was Magda von Trier, and, in his mind’s eye, he constantly reconstructed the picture of her face saying she hoped to see him again during the voyage.

It was beginning to look unlikely. Only Schmidt was actually traveling first class. On the train to Venice, he had revealed his first class ticket, waving it proudly like a flag, loudly delighted in the fact that the expedition’s benefactors had justly mandated that he travel with the status befitting the führer of a German expedition. Josef had listened to the team member nearest him mutter to another how his family could easily have afforded for him to travel first class but that he had decided against it to avoid upsetting Schmidt and risk being excluded from such a jaunt. The other had just nodded in sly agreement.

Whatever the reasons, the remainder of the team was booked into second class, but Josef could find little fault in that. It was as luxurious as anything he had ever experienced. He even had a cabin to himself. It was comfortable, quiet, and filled with the new clothing and equipment he had been given before leaving Wewelsburg. Although Schäfer was going to supply him with the additional materials needed once he arrived at the mountain, Pfeiffer had seen that Josef was issued with the best mountain clothing available to take with him. His new, reversible, grey-white winter camouflage jacket and trousers were the latest SS issue. Insulated and windproof, they were better than anything Josef had ever used before. His goggles, crampons, gaiters, gloves, sweaters, woolen undergarments, and boots were also totally new. The only old equipment that now remained to him was his field cap and his ice axe. When Josef got bored, he would lock himself in his cabin and try it all on for size. Feeling the anticipation of the climb ahead, the mountain would rear up before him until his conscience reminded him of the price of his new wardrobe and he guiltily put it all away again.

By his bunk, he stacked the books, maps, and notes on Everest that Waibel had given to him to continue his preparations during the voyage. On top, in pride of place, was a copy of George Finch’s Der Kampf um den Everest. Whenever he read the Englishman’s firsthand recollection of the 1922 British Everest expedition, oddly first published in German, the rare voice of its experience made Josef’s heart beat faster. He studied its recollections endlessly, imagining their climb, experiencing its difficulties, and worrying at how much the man believed in the necessity of using additional oxygen high on Everest. He already knew that the equipment Schäfer was sending to meet him at the mountain was not going to include oxygen cylinders. “If, by my count, four different Englishmen have been able to get to within three hundred meters of the summit without it, then one good German can do even better,” had been Pfeiffer’s only reply when Josef raised the matter. He hoped he was right.

The specter of the climb that Finch conjured also pushed Josef to continue his fitness regime in the ship’s otherwise empty gymnasium. Using dumbbells and medicine balls, he worked his body as long and as hard as he could to keep the condition that his winter stay at Wewelsburg had provided. With every exercise he would tell himself, It’s just another climb. He said it so much he almost believed it, letting his thoughts be consumed all over again by the task ahead, forgetting, for a while, all else, even the girl with the camera.

On the third day of the voyage, a knock on Josef’s cabin door interrupted his afternoon reading.

Waiting at the door, a white-jacketed steward handed in a note that read:

The sun is now shining enough for even you to escape the cold. Come and join me on the top deck. The steward will bring you. MvT.

The invitation gave Josef a jolt of excitement that sent him rushing for his hat and jacket without any thought for the consequences, mountain books instantly abandoned.

Joining Magda on the top sundeck, they took tea together. The conversation was light and pleasant, but also wary. Intent on avoiding too many personal details, Magda focused their attention, and her ever-present camera, on the moments of brilliance that only a sea voyage can provide: thin shafts of sunlight piercing the clouds and spearing distant circles of sea, the surprise of silver fish flicking out unexpected wings and launching themselves from the top of waves, the mystery of distant white islands that served as brief, anonymous reminders of land.

Josef looked at the things she pointed out and, in each, saw a new world denied. In return he re-created for her some of the incredible things he had seen in his old world of the mountains until, the tea long finished, he said he should leave even if he wanted to stay.

Magda walked him back to the second-class level, saying nothing until she said softly, “Let’s do this again tomorrow.”

The next time they met, their conversation was faster, more eager, fueled by the break in their company. Magda spoke more personally, describing her interests in photography and ballet, but primarily of her love for the medicine she had studied at Leipzig University.

While Josef was listening to her describe becoming a junior doctor, she suddenly diverted his attention to the very end of the deck. There, an overweight man in undersized white exercise gear was doing loud, exaggerated calisthenics as he looked out to sea.

“I didn’t know Hermann Göring was on board,” Magda said to Josef in a deliberately wry fashion while they both watched the grunting, bobbing man. The sight was comical, the fat buttocks threatening to overwhelm the seams of the white shorts every time the preposterous man bent or squatted. Magda said nothing more but lifted her Leica toward the appalling sight, raising her eyebrows at Josef as, with mock horror, she feigned taking a photograph. Suppressing giggles that threatened to turn into tear-streaming laughter, Josef realized that it was the first time he had laughed since being captured five months before. There was a time when he used to laugh a lot.

However, Josef’s amusement ceased the instant the man finished his elaborate exercise regime and turned to leave. With genuine horror, he saw that it was Schmidt. Knowing full well he was playing with fire by merely being there on the first-class deck, let alone sitting next to a beautiful girl, Josef instantly tilted his head forward to hide behind the brim of his hat. His disappearing act spurred Magda to gently poke him in the ribs as the professor strutted past. Each touch was like an electric shock but still Josef kept his face down.

Only when the deck door had slammed shut, did he risk looking up once more. Magda poked him again and made a little snorting noise like a piglet. This time Josef laughed until the tears ran off the end of his chin and that she did photograph.

Finally able to pull himself together, Josef said without a word of a lie, “You’re dangerous.”

“You sound like my parents,” Magda said seriously, before asking with her smile renewed, “Now tell me, Josef, am I to assume from your behavior that you know that fine example of German physical perfection?”

He looked back at Magda and, with all the credibility he could muster, recited his rehearsed reasons for being there with Schmidt’s expedition.

It was not the truth, and the more he spoke, the more he wanted to tell it to her.