CHAPTER 37

THE SHIP 1949

The sudden and massive exodus of refugees, this time from Shanghai, is a reminder of our previous emigration. We’ve seen hundreds of them bundling themselves and their belongings together and preparing for final departure. Things are changing rapidly and the face of Hongkew is different once more. Shops are being taken over by the Chinese. Final dispersal sales are common, and many people are hustling around trying to pick up bargains and collecting treasures they have purchased.

A bristle of excitement floods through the Hongkew laneways these days. Soon we’ll leave Shanghai behind, a ten-year sojourn that extended much longer than we had expected, believing that it would be just a short stopover on the way to somewhere else. The ships in the harbour are destined for various ports of call – Israel, Australia, the United States, South America, and for us, Canada. We are heading for a place whose soil has been untouched by the war. We are still refugees and will arrive on those foreign shores as outsiders, but our hope is for the next generation, that they might live peacefully in a hospitable homeland where they can feel accepted. Poldi, Vivi, and I are sailing aboard the American vessel SS General Meicks.

Like the others, we are sorting through our belongings. What should we take and what should we leave behind? Now we have more things to gather together, including many items of Chinese origin, reflections of our changing understanding and feelings towards the country that has been our home and haven for the past decade. We have learned something of the ancient civilization of the Chinese and have come to appreciate their artistry. Our first impressions of this land had been of a coarse people, uncivilized by European standards, but we have come to respect their ancient culture and customs.

Into our trunks go starched tablecloths, and matching napkins, embroidered by hand with tiny red, pink, and blue flowers with trailing green vines, stitched with care and perfect detail onto ivory linen. These will replace some of the things stolen by the Nazis. The Canadian government has allowed us to bring household items in duty-free as we are to be landed immigrants. We reason that we will be able to use these things ourselves but if we need cash in a hurry, we will have something to sell or barter. This is the method we have successfully used before, so we take as much of the Oriental handicrafts as possible, including hand-carved wooden cabinets, finely worked pure silver figurines, and ashtrays embedded with Chinese silver coins. So many thoughts race through my mind as I carefully fold our Japanese kimonos, hand-painted on heavy silk, and ornately embroidered obis sewn with threads of silver and gold among the brightly coloured patterns. What, I wonder, am I preparing for this time? Will we truly find a home? Among all the Oriental treasures we have accumulated are still the few pieces salvaged from Vienna and never unpacked. At the bottom of the case, I uncover the petit point rolls and the heavy woollen sweaters packed away in pungent mothballs. Finally, there are my skis and poles, never removed from this trunk and now preparing to journey somewhere new.

I glare threateningly at Poldi when he sees me repack these things. I can see he believes it’s foolish to drag these useless items across the other half of the world but he doesn’t dare complain. After all, he has his books, his own bits of strange nostalgia that tie him to his birthplace in Poland, school books from the courses in engineering he was not permitted to complete. He also has saved his father’s books, memories of the relationship of admiration and love and of the precious lives that were senselessly destroyed. And there are new books, ones about China he has purchased here to learn about the land we have inhabited and are now leaving behind. Then there are his Hebrew books of prayer and learning, still preserved and treasured, and finally English-language books to prepare us for our next destination. I, with my Austrian skis, and he with his cartons of heavy books – what a pair of fools we must seem!

Three boarding passes have been issued, but all the forms clearly state that pregnant women beyond the first few months are not allowed on ship and will be turned back at the ramp. I am nine months along, a state difficult to conceal, but we can’t wait for a better departure date or until the baby is delivered. We have to go. It is January 1949 when we prepare to start off on the voyage. I am wearing a wide flared coat, my hands hidden in a huge fur muff to try to conceal my swollen belly. Poldi carries Vivian, who is dressed in her red coat and hood. We board the ship filled with many other European Jews who are leaving Shanghai. A nervous electricity runs through the refugees. They are laughing loudly and speaking in a mixture of European languages, German, Russian, Polish, Hungarian. We all face uncertainty but a new spirit of freedom is in the air. Around me I note the hopeful expressions of fellow passengers although, like us, lines of pain are embedded deeply into their faces. We are alive but our lives have not been easy.

We wave to our family still standing on the dock, shouting farewells and promises for a reunion in Canada. As the ship slices into the massive ocean, parting the waters before us, we look back for the last time at the misted harbour with its strange water dwellers, unchanged from when we first arrived. The sights and smells have become familiar, but we were never a part of this land, and now that we are finally leaving forever, we are glad to see the outline of the shore diminish until it is out of sight.

Leaving behind the suffocating heaviness of air that always hangs over the vastly overpopulated city of Shanghai, we can breathe freely again. In our cabin, Poldi and I watch Vivian sleeping in her crib and turn towards one another in a long embrace. We clutch each other tightly without a word, our hearts beating in unison, our thoughts as one. Finally, Poldi says, “Do you trust me now? Do you believe that we will be all right after everything we’ve endured? You have to believe now. I love you, Nini, with all my heart.”

“And I love you, but I’m still afraid, Poldi. I’m still terrified of the new world, arriving with nothing, and then there will be four of us, God willing. Even now, every time the baby moves inside me, my heart leaps with worry for the obstacles still ahead. I can’t let go of my fears.”

The ship rises and falls in heaving spasms through the dark waves. When the labour pains begin, my body convulses with the same fervour as the ocean’s rolling fury. When the ache becomes unbearable and I beg for relief, Poldi searches in vain for the ship’s doctor. I am shrieking for help as the throbbing intensifies. My anxiety mingles with the wrenching pressure from without and within. I imagine my body being ripped apart.

We have docked in Guam harbour, a strategic American naval base in the Pacific. Our child will be an American, I think, and will have something we have been denied, a nationality of which he can be proud, a country to call home and freedom to grow up in peace. The doctor finally is located but he has drunk himself into a stupor. His watery eyes are sunk into a red swollen face that registers only bewilderment and anger. The heavy odour of stale whiskey hangs in the air as he weaves unsteadily into the room. Accompanying him is the ship’s captain, a bulky man who rages and storms, ranting that the child just emerging into the world is a castaway. We must placate them both, offering a bribe we cannot afford. We beg for their understanding and commend their compassion, dreading that somehow they will detain the baby and not allow it to disembark.

My labour is a torturous agony, dragging on for hours of sweat-drenched pain. The doctor, meanwhile, is trying to revive himself with cups of black coffee. His shaking hands betray his addiction and incompetence. Poldi has told me so often that I am strong and that I can surmount any obstacle, but I want to give up. I feel unable to gather the necessary fortitude.

“Push,” the doctor shouts, “push, for all you’re worth! You had enough nerve to come on board this ship ready to pop and now, for God’s sake, push it out!”

Finally the baby’s first wails ring in my ears, pulling me back from semiconscious exhaustion. The child is a boy, healthy and strong, whose voice proclaims his right to exist in an unjust world that does not welcome him easily, a Jewish child to replace one of the many thousands that were killed. His screams are defiant, protesting the cold space into which he has been thrust, demanding to be heard, echoing the cries of so many other innocents that did not survive. This child will live. The captain signs the birth certificate and fills in the name that he has chosen, “Bion,” a strange name of Greek origin. We decide we will keep the name as a reminder of the circumstances and upheaval that marked his entry into a very imperfect world.

The secret is hardly kept for long. When I have recuperated sufficiently, I go on deck with the baby and he is the centre of a great deal of excitement. Everyone seems to know about the ordeal I endured and the circumstances of the birth. Many on board have tried to cheer us and have offered their congratulations. Vivi is amazed to find that she now has a little brother and wants to hug him and play with him, just as she does with her doll. When we dock in Honolulu, Poldi takes her ashore with him and I stay behind with Bion.

When they return she is full of eager excitement. “Look, Mommy, what Daddy bought for me.” Vivi shows me her new Hawaiian doll dressed in a grass skirt. “Her name is ‘Aloha’ because that’s what everyone says here.”

“She’s beautiful, Vivi,” I say with a smile. “Come, give me a kiss.”

We have begun speaking English to Vivian although we still speak German between us. In this way we hope that she won’t have an accent or feel strange when she is growing up and that things will be better for her and Bion. Maybe we can shield them from the alienation we have experienced. The ship remains in the port for only a day and then sets off again for the rest of the journey to the mainland.

“Mommy,” Vivi says to me one day as I’m nursing the baby, “the water is soapy and we have to drink ‘boy’ water.”

I look at Poldi quizzically. He’s smiling at the child’s confusion.

“That’s right, Poupie,” he says, “all the ocean water has foam like bath water and we can only drink boiled water to kill the germs.”

She nods her head in serious agreement with her father’s explanation. “Boy water, Daddy, not girl water, right?”

“Right.” Already she seems a child of the new world, with no memory of what has gone before, only the delight in discovery and observation. I am grateful she can amuse us like this, that she doesn’t bear the fearfulness and wariness we see in the faces of many adults on the ship.

As we approach the harbour in San Francisco, we are awed by the sight of the Golden Gate Bridge. We troop down the ship’s ramp, now with two children in arms. We have to have all our documents inspected, then go to a hotel where we plan to stay for a few days. Poldi sets out to find a mohel, a Jewish doctor who specializes in ritual circumcisions, so that Bion can have a bris. We are dazzled by our surroundings, the steeply sloping hills of the city where cable cars rumble up and down. When I look out at the seemingly infinite panorama of the Pacific, I marvel that we have spent so long in the land beyond the horizon.

Finally we are ready for another journey and board the train to start the long ride across the United States, into Canada, and then to our new home in Toronto.

Ships and trains, ships and trains, and a world of sea and land for us to cross since we left Vienna. The journey has seemed endless and fatigue numbs our limbs. The train steams night and day across the terrain, mountains changing to prairies and flat land stretching for seamless, boundless acres covered in snowy drifts and mounds of white. The air is clean and the water is pure. As we travel across the vast land mass, we hear about the Great Lakes, five wide bodies of fresh water, drinking water to last forever. The Canadians we encounter speak with pride about their open spaces and untapped natural resources.

Thick evergreen forests whiz by the windows and we smell only the pure scent of unspoiled Nature. It seems to me that I have searched for a place like this forever. Snow has been a big part of my fondest childhood memories, an essential ingredient in any place that could really feel like home. The subtropical heat of Shanghai is a world away now, and all the years of hardship seem to be slipping behind us with each mile that we travel. We have discovered another homeland, a place like my vision of the Garden of Eden, a frosty white-coated Paradise.