Chapter 29

The sailors on the USS Leviathan didn’t see any more action after their close call with the U-boat. Once arrived at Scapa Flow, they installed more mines, patrolled for subs, and unloaded artillery from American merchant ships. Often they were assisted by ten-and twelve-year-old boys, war having claimed all the island’s men. Sam imagined Dev chafing that girls weren’t allowed to pitch in too. The work would have been less tedious if she’d been working alongside them, although her slang might have driven some of his shipmates batty. Boredom notwithstanding, many sailors were grateful to have escaped battle. Others, Sam and Tomasio included, were disappointed. The entire crew followed the war’s progress on the wireless, confident the Americans and Brits would win, but the C.O. hammered them to keep up their guard until it was over. The desperate Germans could still mount an attack at any time.

Safe aboard ship, and often lolling in port, the men had time to think of home and write letters. They had to be short, however, because stationery was scarce, and they couldn’t include anything that might reveal their location or manoeuvres in case the mail was intercepted. To throw off the enemy, the sailors were given picture postcards from far-off places to write on.

“Why write home when you can’t tell your folks where you’ve pulled into port?” one sailor said. “What does it matter?” a second asked, “when the Germans inflate how many destroyers they’ve sunk, so our families think we’re dead anyway?” “That’s why we write, to prove we’re not,” answered a third. “I write to remind my girl back there that I’m here, even if I can’t tell her where ‘here’ is,” said a fourth. Those with pictures of girls taped inside their lockers agreed.

“I want to remind the girls here that I’m here,” Tomasio said to loud laughter. The third week in port, he’d gotten Sam to remind them too. It wasn’t Paris, but Scapa Flow’s lasses were happy to boost the morale of the American sailors. Now that he was no longer Shmuel, Sam found it easier to join the others for a pint at the pub or an hour with a barmaid. He’d thought losing his virginity would either visit a plague of guilt upon him or be another big step in shaking free of his father. It was neither. Instead, like many of his shipmates, a night on the town was just one more routine job in carrying out the war. Only Tomasio continued to take delight in each new conquest, and Sam often went along for the simple pleasure of seeing his friend’s joy.

Sam didn’t want to lie again about why he didn’t write home, so he put pen to paper, then buried the letters and postcards in his duffle. At first he thought of writing to the parents he’d invented, then Dev or Bernie, both of whom were easy to talk to. He settled on his Onkel Gershon. They’d never been close, but from afar he felt a kinship that was missing in New York. Each had become a leader in a community far from home. Though his father and uncle were sworn enemies, Sam wondered if his own accomplishment would please his father. True, Avram had envisioned him heading a group of scholars, not a fighting force. But he was using his God-given talents, like Bazalel and Oholiab in Exodus, who applied the skills and knowledge invested in them by the Almighty to build a portable tabernacle for the Jews in the desert.

“Dear Onkel Gershon,” the first unsent letter began, “I bet you’re surprised to hear from me. My whereabouts are secret, but I can say that I’m well and doing something more useful than reading Talmud. You also studied as a boy, but gave it up to become a businessman. Were you motivated by money or a higher purpose? Perhaps you simply wanted to fit in as an American. I too fit in, but to do so, I’ve given up more of my past. I don’t know if this is a step forward or backward, or a sideways detour. Nor am I sure where I’m going, but I know I was right to leave. My father would disapprove. Perhaps this is one matter on which he and you would agree.”

Later, Sam wrote: “People who seem different on the surface can be similar at heart. My friend Tomasio is Catholic, outgoing, and funny. He is eager to sin but easy to forgive. Dev, also my opposite, would find him a kindred spirit. Yet he and I also have much in common, both of us poor and shaped by faith and family, in my case a demanding father, in his case, a strict Father.”

As the war wound down, Sam used the letters to ponder his future. “The ocean voyage here was disconcerting, yet being landlocked is equally unsettling. I remember the time you and Tante Yetta took Zipporah, Ruchel, Dev, and me to the beach at Coney Island. When you said I was the only one of us four children to have crossed that expanse of water, it opened up in me a sense of possibility. Where I am now, the snug harbour is the opposite of the open sea. How can I keep my life intimate and real, yet pursue that vague and enormous promise?”

***

The pace of life onshore picked up when British soldiers serving in France and southern Europe began coming home in 1918. Sam and his shipmates were rapt listening to the infantrymen’s stories of sleeping with rats in flooded trenches and cowering beneath booming cannons, at once envious of their exploits and thankful to have been spared the horrors. Bragging soon turned to panic, however, as the transport ships ferrying the soldiers north also carried the Spanish flu.

The first wave, in winter, spread rapidly among the old and young, but a second wave, attacking that spring and summer, hit the soldiers themselves. The pandemic was more than the U.S. Navy could keep up with, confronting the medical corps with a choice between sending its limited team of doctors down the Atlantic coast, keeping them in Great Britain, or returning them to the overwhelmed bases back in America. Not that treatment could help many victims. Tens of thousands of troops, more than the number who died in battle, succumbed to the dreaded virus. They literally choked on their own bodily fluids as blood, thick as jelly, oozed into their lungs.

Sam was among the first to get sick. He felt a shivery twinge at breakfast, and his hand shook recording the medical supplies being unloaded that morning. By lunch, his skin had turned a vivid purple and the spots on his cheeks were the same mahogany colour as his aunt and uncle’s dining room table. The hospital was filled with soldiers wounded in the war, so medics, wearing gas masks, carried Sam to the schoolhouse which had been converted into a makeshift clinic.

Tomasio started to follow the stretcher. The bigger of the two medics pushed him back.

“Sorry sailor. Your pal’s going into quarantine. And you’re going back to the ship to wash the inside of your nose with soap and water. Now, tonight, and again in the morning.”

“My snot already passed inspection.” Tomasio waited for a laugh, but when the medic just turned away, he swung him back around. “Nothing personal, but I’m going with my friend.” The smaller medic shrugged and tossed him a flimsy muslin mask. “It’s your funeral, sailor.”

Sam was deposited on a cot. In less than half an hour, forty other beds were taken. Blood spurted from the nose of the soldier next to him and sprayed the opposite wall. The lone nurse on duty ducked. Not long after, the dead man’s uniform was added to the pile of sputum-and blood-soaked clothes in the corner, waiting to be burned if and when there was a break. His body was loaded on a stretcher and whisked onto one of the lorries bound for mass graves. A minute later, stretcher bearers dumped a new soldier on the empty cot. There wasn’t time to strip and change the bedding, but neither was there much point. He’d probably be dead by morning too.

Sam lay on his side staring at Tomasio’s anxious eyes peering at him above the mask. He missed seeing his friend’s smile. Sam felt a cough erupt from deep inside his chest. He tried to cover his mouth, but was too weak to move his arm. All he could do was look at his hand on the filthy sheet, its oxygen-deprived skin the same cyanide blue as a once-proud sailor’s uniform.

The nurse gently wiped Sam’s face and held out a glass of water. Sam lapped up a few drops, feeling like the scraggly cats Rivka occasionally brought home when their apartment was overrun with mice. Tomasio dipped a clean rag into the glass, squeezed water onto Sam’s brow, and then dripped some between his trembling lips. The nurse nodded at him with gratitude.

Tomasio winked and asked her a question, but his words were muffled underneath the layers of muslin. He ripped off the mask. “Can I buy you a hot toddy after your shift is done?”

Her stunned looked was either because Tomasio had exposed himself to a torrent of germs or because an invitation to drink in a sea of death was horrific. Then the nurse touched his arm and admitted the distraction would be welcomed. She’d meet him at the chalkboard in an hour.

Sam managed a weak smile. He was heartened his friend hadn’t lost his ability to charm.

“Not to tarnish my reputation,” Tomasio said, covering Sam with his own jacket, “but nurses wouldn’t look at the likes of us while there were officers and doctors around. It’s just now when admirals are spitting up their innards and the only physicians around are old farts called out of retirement, that they’ll give a lowly ensign a chance. Any healthy body looks good to them.”

“You need to stay healthy,” Sam rasped. He’d made up his mind to stay overseas while he figured out what to do next, but Tomasio was at the top of the list to ship home. “Take it from a scholar. It would be stupid of you to get sick now.”

“I don’t leave Scapa Flow until you leave the hospital, I mean this schoolhouse. A good scholar like you ought to graduate in no time.” Tomasio wagged his finger. “That’s an order!”

Sam tried to salute but he couldn’t lift his hand higher than his chin. It fell back on the stained bedclothes as a stretcher unloaded another man into the cot next to him. It was Mikovski.

Tomasio put his mask back on. “Time for my date,” he said, and left.

A thick stream of blood leaked from Mikovski’s mouth onto his pillow. He turned away from the reddish-brown puddle, toward Sam, and croaked, “Lord?”

Sam braced himself for abuse, but Mikovski closed his eyes and shuddered. His skin was bluer than Sam’s. The priestly words of Deuteronomy came to him. “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” Sam waited to feel a sense of righteousness at Mikovski’s sentence. All he felt was pity.

***

Early the next morning, a fit of wet coughing woke Mikovski out of a sleep so deep that Sam wondered if he’d died during the night. Sam was already awake, staring at the wet gray dawn backlighting the streaked windows. He rolled on his side and whispered, “You lived to see another day.” Then he pointed toward the pile of dead men’s uniforms, still waiting to be taken outside and burned. Mikovski wouldn’t or couldn’t turn to look. He stared at the ceiling. “You too, Sam.” Startled at being called by his first name, Sam waited for Mikovski to say more, but the lieutenant had dropped off again.

Shortly after Mikovski awoke, Tomasio was brought in and given the cot on the other side of Sam. His cheeks were blotchy, but still faintly pink. Propping himself on an elbow to look past Sam, he said to the lieutenant, “Getting crowded here in the schoolhouse. We need someone to flunk out.”

Mikovski looked ready to speak, but was short of breath. For the first time in two days, Sam wasn’t, but he couldn’t bring himself to laugh at his friend’s joke. To make amends, he asked how his date had gone last night. To his surprise, Tomasio failed to brag about his conquest. “Greta’s a good girl,” he said.

Over the next few days, Sam’s colour returned and his breathing grew easier. Tomasio, not as sick to begin with, also got stronger, although they both tired easily and slept most of the day. Mikovski drifted in and out of consciousness. Greta took his pulse every couple of hours and said a short prayer of thanks when it appeared she wouldn’t lose another patient.

“Damn, he’s still alive,” Tomasio muttered each time she left, no longer expecting Sam to respond. Soon, however, even that snide remark turned into a claim of victory for them all. Their morale was boosted further when Greta brought news of the surrender and marvelled how lucky they were to survive the flu. “It’s the darnedest thing,” she said, “how it kills the youngest and strongest. Doctors say it’s because people our age haven’t built up immunity like older folks.”

So why, Sam wondered, had he and Tomasio come through, while Mikovski was still touch and go. Tomasio said they’d grown up in more squalor and developed more resistance, but Sam sensed Mikovski had suffered worse and pushed harder to get out. The struggle had turned him mean. He might not be so bad one-on-one, but he had to prove himself in front of a crowd. At first he’d picked on Sam for his weakness, but later, when Sam became a leader, he had to take him down even more. Mikovski hated Tomasio simply because he made people laugh, a power the lieutenant would never have, no matter how far up in rank he climbed.

Greta, buoyed by their survival, slowly began to relax too, and let Tomasio cajole her into raiding the officers’ food stores to double his rations. He coveted Oxo, a beefy drink supplement, said to fortify the immune system. Tomasio shared half the cubes with Sam, but once Mikovski slowly recovered his appetite, Sam slipped them to the lieutenant. Tomasio was flabbergasted.

“After what that S.O.B. did to you? I thought turning the other cheek was a Christian virtue. Is this some Jewish thing too?” Sam couldn’t explain it. Mikovski hardly qualified as one of the widows or orphans Torah commanded Jews to look after. It was easier to say he himself wasn’t hungry. Tomasio said that in that case, he’d keep the extra rations himself. Nevertheless, he continued leaving one Oxo cube per meal in Sam’s cup, keeping silent when it disappeared.

On her own initiative, Greta also brought them treacle and vinegar, a foul concoction the Brits swore by. “Not even Hamble Weir would call this vile drink good for you,” Tomasio said. Sam wondered if the seaman, shuttling U.S. destroyers and transports across the Atlantic, had managed to escape the Spanish flu. He hoped the royal sailor hadn’t gone phut.

“Never could figure out why Weir was assigned to the Leviathan.” Mikovski swung his legs over the side of his cot and stood up for the first time since arriving. “Guy didn’t know his ass from his elbow. American discipline, not British intelligence, guided us through those mine fields.” He kicked the bedpan out of his way and walked shakily to the bathroom. Tomasio raised his middle finger behind the lieutenant’s back, but Sam smiled. Mikovski’s rant was a sure sign he was getting better. Sam needed his nastiness to goad him on. The more Mikovski’s natural animosity was restored, the more confident Sam felt that he himself would return to normal too.

Sam and Tomasio’s own short trips to and from the john lengthened into walks around the schoolhouse. Tomasio visited those who had passed the crisis point, but Sam found himself drawn to the bedsides of those least likely to make it. Every day the pile of soiled uniforms grew higher, as delirious men were brought in and dead bodies borne out. Staff doused the clothes in alcohol to sterilize them until someone would have time to take the lot outside and burn them. It wouldn’t take much to set the soaked blues and khakis aflame once they got around to it.

“Mary, Mother of God, help me.” A red-haired soldier’s head flopped from the edge of the bed back onto his pillow. For a second, Sam thought it was Ryan, his and Tomasio’s buddy from boot camp, but a mole on the boy’s left cheek, barely darker than his eggplant mottled skin, told him it was a stranger. Sam took the young soldier’s hand.

“Grant me absolution, Father.”

Sam stammered. “I’m not ...”

“Tell me what I done wasn’t so bad.”

“You did what you had to, son. God understands and forgives you.” Sam’s words could have come from any religion, but they satisfied the boy. His narrow chest caved in with relief. Sam cradled him until he fell asleep. By dinnertime, another young soldier occupied the bed.

“How do you do it?” Tomasio asked. “I don’t have the strength to look the dying in the eye, let alone hold them in my arms.”

Sam had no answer to that question either. He didn’t know if he believed the words he said but for the sake of those he comforted, he tried to speak them with conviction.

“Damned flu is worse than the Germans,” Tomasio went on. “At least Fritz justifies what he does in the name of some cause. The flu doesn’t take sides. It just kills whoever is in its path.”

“My priest calls it a punishment from God,” Greta said, “a rebuke for our sins.” Tomasio snorted that such talk was claptrap, but Sam wasn’t so sure. Who but the Almighty had that kind of power? The flu was like one of the plagues God visited on the Egyptians, not to free the Jews so much as to prove that He alone could whip any rival gods. When Sam seemed to side with Greta, Tomasio turned on the charm. Praising her earlier success with food rations, he begged her to sneak in cigarettes. “Drawing in the smoke will help to strengthen our lungs,” he claimed.

“Hogwash!” the nurse declared, her good will restored after Tomasio’s heresy, but she agreed to smuggle in a pack of fags if they didn’t smoke them when the doctors did their rounds. Sam made a mental note to pass along the word “fag” to Dev. He’d stopped collecting words for her when he got sick. Doing so again was another sign that his body and mind were recovering, but Sam couldn’t go home until his soul had healed too. He didn’t know when, if ever, that would happen.

He asked Tomasio for a couple of cigarettes. Tomasio started to hand them over, before eyeing him suspiciously. “Wait. You don’t smoke. You planning to give these to Mikovski too?”

Sam grabbed them before Tomasio could cram them back in the pack.

“Do you know how fucking precious these are?” Tomasio looked at Sam with disgust. “I bet he doesn’t even thank you for them.” Sam pocketed the cigarettes. He was counting on an ornery Mikovski to accept them as his due. The last thing he wanted from him was gratitude.

Later, when the doctors were gone and the men gathered near the disinfected clothes to smoke, Tomasio tried to take the cigarettes away from Mikovski. He glowered at the lieutenant. “I get them, I distribute them, and lower ranks get their fags first. You’ll get yours if there are any left over.”

“Like hell,” said Mikovski. He blew out his match, tossed it over Tomasio’s shoulder, and attempted to take a draw, but his lungs didn’t have the strength. Nor apparently had they recovered enough to fully blow out the match. It flared up and landed on the alcohol-soaked uniforms, which exploded in a fiery ball. The force of the blast knocked Tomasio on his face.

After the explosion, the schoolhouse was eerily quiet. A second later, those whose lungs were strong enough shouted; those who were too weak banged on cots, trays, or anything else metallic in a call to be saved. A siren wailed outside as Greta rushed in. First she stomped on the fire, then she poured bedpans of water on it, but the flames were too high and spreading too fast.

Tomasio’s face turn bluer than when he’d had the flu. Sam, afraid his friend would be overcome by smoke inhalation, stepped forward to drag him away, but someone on the floor behind him clawed his ankles and pulled him in the opposite direction. Sam wrenched his body around and saw that it was Mikovski, his grasp strong despite his weakened state. “Let go,” Sam snarled, trying to shake him off. Fire had made Mikovski want to kill himself on the ship but on land it made him determined to survive. Why didn’t he get up and run outside on his own steam?

As Sam stood immobilized, Greta began herding any men who could stand toward the door. The rush of bodies was what finally freed Sam’s feet. He got swept up in the crowd, and Mikovski, his hold unwavering, was pulled along with him. Not until the lieutenant’s body had been dragged several yards on the cold ground did he finally release his grip on Sam’s ankles.

Sam panted with fear and rage. He pulled back his foot to kick Mikovski but almost lost his balance. Once he was steady again, he pivoted around toward the schoolhouse. The bedridden were being carried out on mattresses and stretchers. Sam looked at each face as he raced back to the burning building, but Tomasio wasn’t among them. Sam was a yard from the door when the schoolhouse collapsed. Flames shot skyward the way blood had shot from the sick men’s lungs.

He saw and heard more death that night than he had fighting the war, yet Sam could not bring himself to say Kaddish. It was a strange prayer, recited for the dead, yet the word death did not appear in it. Instead, the ancient Aramaic text exalted God’s name and asked the Holy One to grant peace in our lifetime. How could Sam praise God for a life that was barely lived?

Two days later, Sam was discharged from one of the cottages that served as a temporary infirmary. The sun was white hot and thin pillars of smoke floated up from the ground where the school had stood. Everything was flat except for a black mound in a far corner of the yard. Sam walked slowly toward it. It was the molten mass of what had once been the school bell. He took off his ID tag and clanged it against the unyielding lump of metal, tolling the death of his friend.