Chapter 26

“No credentials, no admittance.” A Navy guard blocked Gershon’s access to the Calvin Austin’s gangway with a rifle. Gershon explained his mission but the young man stood firm and repeated those four words. In his haste, Gershon had come without a plan or official piece of paper, only a wad of money in his pocket. This could be difficult. Boston was more Irish than Tammany Hall.

Looking for an edge, Gershon remembered that two years ago Morty Richter had married an Irish Catholic woman whose brother was a police detective in Boston. As with Hymie, the shul was scandalized, but in this case, when the woman converted, Gershon had intervened to allow the wedding to take place in the sanctuary. Calling in the debt, he phoned the man now, praying that he was on better terms with his brother-in-law than Gershon was with Avram.

“Morty, I need a favour to get past some red tape.”

Morty was indeed friendly with his wife’s brother, but hesitant to ask him for help.

Gershon sighed, hearing Morty’s unspoken request for yet another favour from him. If the matter were less urgent, he would have hung up. “What would convince you?”

“Well, the wife is in the family way again ...”

“You need a bigger apartment?”

“With an icebox? A window in the bedroom would be nice too.”

“I know just the place. I’ll see to it as soon as I get back to New York. Meanwhile, you’ll call your brother-in-law in Boston today? I’m running out of time.”

It was almost a week before Mr. Richter reached his wife’s brother and the detective met Gershon at the ship. He spent his days pacing the docks and sheltered overnight on empty fishing boats. By the time the Calvin Austin’s captain led him down a series of ladders to a small office overflowing with maps and nautical gear, Gershon was seasick. His stomach lurched with every swell of the harbour. He was used to standing on solid ground, in command of his own territory.

The captain was brisk but discouraging. “The war’s taken millions of lives. Even those wearing ID’s with their real names are buried where they fall, in unmarked graves, or else they simply go down with their ships. How on earth do you expect me to trace your nephew?”

“He’s been gone two months. I thought he might still be here at boot camp.”

The captain relented. “When did you say he enlisted?” He checked the log of recruits who arrived the week Shmuel went missing. “Sorry,” he said. “That batch shipped out at dawn today.”

“Where?” Gershon would pay whatever it cost to hitch a ride on the merchant marine vessel that his nephew’s destroyer was accompanying across the Atlantic.

“England, Scotland, Spain, Algiers.” The captain shrugged and stood up. “Even if I knew, security doesn’t allow me to tell you.”

***

The train disgorged Gershon at Grand Central Station late that night. He stared at the terminal’s four-sided clock, its opal faces surrounded by a marble and glass pagoda, and watched the hands rotate past midnight, to one o’clock, then four in the morning. Each chime rang dully in his head. At last, he descended to the IRT platform beneath the grand edifice to return to the grimy Lower East Side. Lulled by the rocking of the subway, he awoke with a jolt at his stop, but instead of getting off, he rode to the end of the line, exiting at Coney Island just as the sun was coming up.

He walked along the deserted boardwalk, past the carousel horses poised mid-gallop until spring. He recalled that long-ago summer night in the cocoon Yetta created on the fire escape, his mouth filled with the sweet memory of watermelon. Life tasted sour now. It was better when they were down yet hopeful, finding small pleasures while laughing at bigger indignities. Jews had been in that position for millennia. Gershon was wrong to think he could escape his people’s fate.

His search for Shmuel had reached a dead end. Perhaps Avram was justified in sitting shiva for the boy after all, but that made his brother-in-law a loser. Gershon turned back and hurried to the subway. The day he arrived in America, his wife had reminded him that in the Torah, good news came after a good meal. Gershon was hungry. Yetta would feed him.