Yitzhak boarded ship in Hamburg, his ticket entitling him to third-class accommodations, better known as steerage. He could have bought a second-class ticket since he wasn’t without funds—his mother had handed him a small leather bag with many rubles when she had kissed him goodbye. But Yitzhak was unaware of the distinction between steerage and second-class and the man at the ticket office never inquired as to what kind of quarters he desired. Rather, he took one look at Yitzhak, filthy and frazzled after the long journey in the saddle and on foot, and assumed he was third-class material.
Yitzhak was without any possessions except for the clothes on his back, which were by this time in a ragged and deteriorated state. In contrast, his fellow passengers were loaded down with their treasures—bundles of pillows and down comforters, brass candlesticks, even samovars, and with changes of clothing packed in straw suitcases or stuffed into pillow cases. The Orthodox Jews—those men with long beards and broad-brimmed hats, the women bewigged or with scarves covering their heads—even toted sacks of whatever foods could last a few days so they wouldn’t have to eat the nonkosher food that was included in the price of the ticket. Yitzhak had had such a sack of provisions when he had started out on his journey—dried salami, a few loaves of hard bread, a hunk of cheese, even some salted herrings, onions and cucumbers—anything that his mother could throw into the sack quickly. Naturally, these supplies had been totally depleted long before he reached Hamburg.
The passengers were led to their quarters—wooden bunks one on top of the other, three bunks high. And there they were, in the belly of the ship—Jews and gentiles, Russians and Poles, Germans, Hungarians, Rumanians and Slavs of all kinds, thrown together as they never had been in life before. They were shown the buckets for their slops and instructed how to empty them—over the rail and never against the wind. (It would serve as a source of raw humor for the trip’s duration whenever someone forgot the latter admonition.) It would only occur to Yitzhak later in life, much later, that he and his fellow passengers constituted the very dregs of humanity assembled in the bowels of a seagoing torture chamber.
Lines were quickly drawn. The Jews huddled with Jews, the gentiles with gentiles, and within those boundaries: Germans with Germans, Russians with Russians, and so on, although most of the passengers spoke more than one language, a necessity of the times. Of course, those who traveled together as a family stayed together to share, if nothing else, their common misery.
Yitzhak lay awake that first night consumed by a variety of emotions. One part of him was very excited—it was the highest adventure to be on his own bound for the Golden Land of which he had heard all his life. But part of him was already homesick and he yearned for the sight of those he loved and had left in Slobodka. He thought of his mother in one of her pretty dresses lighting the Sabbath candles, of his father riding home in the receding sun, rushing into the house to kiss his mother, she with her face uplifted to receive the kiss. He thought of his cousin Dorie with her pale blond braids falling down her back, blushing as she set the table while he himself teased her affectionately about her casting sidelong glances at their cousin Joshua. He thought of how the fire leaped in the hearth and cast its golden glow on all of them as they sat down to eat—his Uncle Hershel, Asher, Dorie, his mother and father. Or perhaps it was some holiday meal and all the aunts and uncles were there with their children....
He couldn’t sleep. All around him were those special sounds of the night in the pitch-black hole—restless turnings; hacking, sneezing and coughing; retching and moaning; sighs and cries and whispers. Disturbed by these sounds in the long night Yitzhak decided to get up and go on deck. It was, after all, his first time on the seas and he wanted to breathe in the fresh clean air instead of the fetid odors of packed humanity at its least attractive level. He wanted to peer into the black waters where he’d be able perhaps to visualize the life that awaited him in America.
He put on his boots and tiptoed over to the doors, though it was unlikely that many slept. But the doors wouldn’t open! The patrons of the steerage class were actually locked in for the night! A great rage rose within him. He hurled himself against the doors again and again, first with his right shoulder and then with his left, alternating in a near-frenzy. He was Yitzhak Markoff, famed for his size and his strength, from a family famed for their strength and their courage. No one dared lock him in! But the doors were of iron, not wood, and while they groaned and even clanked from the assault of his bulk, they did not yield.
“Crazy man,” an old man complained from his hard bunk. “Don’t fight what’s clearly stronger than you. Go to sleep and let us other poor souls sleep.”
So Yitzhak lay down again and was subject to the strangest of sensations. For the first time in his seventeen years he wanted to bawl. He wanted to curl his body up into a ball and cry himself to sleep. But at the same time he knew he couldn’t do that. He was Yitzhak Markoff, a hero and a man, not a boy. Hadn’t he single-handedly killed the Governor-General? Hadn’t his father kissed him when he was bar mitzvah and bidden him to be the kind of man who would make his mother proud? And hadn’t his mother herself whispered to him that very same night: “Now that you are a man, the important thing is always to remember who you are and from whom you come”?
He had to remember that he came from Markoffs and that they were a strong breed and brave. They weren’t babies who whined and cried in the night. And his mother—not even a man—was known for her strength of character and fearless spirit. Even she wouldn’t have cried in the desolate and lonely night.
He comforted himself with visions of how life would be in America. How he would make his way and prosper. How he would do wonderful deeds. Maybe he’d even become famous for something, although he didn’t know what that would be. But he envisioned how when his mother and father and Dorie, and even Uncle Hershel and Asher, Gershon and Daniel, and maybe Uncle Abraham and Aunt Hannah and Uncle Shlomo and Aunt Miriam and all their children came to America, they would be overwhelmed with pride over what he had accomplished. They’d be as proud of him as his father and mother must have been over his feat of killing the Governor-General.
There was one thing that marred this picture. When he had left Slobodka his mother hadn’t said to him as she had said to his cousin Gershon: “Be the best kind of Jew, the best kind of man you can possibly be. More than that not even your mother could wish for.” But then he comforted himself: he had left in such a hurry there hadn’t been time for his mother to say much of anything except to wish him Godspeed. And her eyes had been wet as she kissed him goodbye, just as they had been wet with pride when she had kissed Gershon goodbye.
Finally he fell asleep, vowing to himself that’s what he would be—the kind of man who would make his mother proud. For that matter, the kind of man who would make his father proud too.
In the morning he felt much better. Breakfast was served at long wooden tables where everyone sat together. While only about half the passengers ate, there already being a prevalence of seasickness (although it was summer and the seas were fairly calm), he ate copious amounts of porridge and boiled potatoes, beans and buckwheat groats and drank huge amounts of tea to wash it all down. Then he bolted for the upper deck where the air was fresh and the sun was shining.
On deck, as below, those of a feather flocked together. He looked around for a congenial group to join and this didn’t necessarily mean his fellow Russian or Polish Jews but rather those of a similarity of personality and age, just as in Slobodka where he had been friends with Jews and gentiles alike so long as they enjoyed a good laugh and a good time. Almost immediately Yitzhak spotted a group of young men pitching coins, an activity he excelled in, and drifted over to watch them play. He quickly ascertained that the language they spoke was neither Russian nor Polish but it had a familiar flavor all the same. He deduced that it was German since he remembered his mother saying that the Yiddish language had evolved from the German.
Soon he was catching a word here and there even though the German accent was different from the Yiddish, and he was pleased with himelf. He was probably good at languages, he thought, just as his mother was. He also remembered his mother saying that in Germany the Jews often spoke German rather than Yiddish as they did in most countries where they lived. He reasoned that these fellows weren’t Jews—they wore no beards and not one of them had his head covered. Also, if they were Jews, at least a couple of them would have had their heads buried in a prayer book or would be trading opinions on this or that point since most Jews were likely to do this. In Slobodka, his father’s family, the Markoffs, were the only Jews noted as men who would rather fight than discuss. His own father had been one of those, he had been told, before he had married his mother.
At first the group ignored Yitzhak as boys will when they already have their own gang and have no need of an outsider. But when he reached into his pocket and took out a few kopecks (careful not to dip into his bag of rubles) and jingled them about, they looked at him and indicated he should toss one. After Yitzhak had won a few rounds and let them win a few, it looked as if they were getting on. They understood a few words he said, as he understood a few words they said. Soon they were even teaching him a few words of German. They said the word a few times and Yitzhak repeated it until he got it right. There was a great deal of laughing at Yitzhak’s expense but it was all of a good nature. By the time they were ready to go below for the noonday meal, they were all friends.
The midday meal consisted of potatoes and beans, just as at breakfast, but in addition there was rice and onions and dried herring—all items of food which were not bad, but not particularly appetizing either. But when great bowls of aromatic cabbage cooked with sausages were brought out and the Jews at the table turned up their noses, Yitzhak’s friends dug in with relish, while he looked on with an almost unbearable envy. Although he had been present on occasion when his peasant friends had partaken of pork, he had never been tempted to taste it before since he had lived in a house where the table groaned under all kinds of appetizing foods, with meat and fowl in plentiful supply. But now with the prospect of a diet consisting only of beans and onions and a little herring thrown in for the next couple of weeks at the very least, his mouth watered painfully.
Yitzhak’s friends urged him to have a sausage or two, their mouths full of now agonizingly appealing fleisch, but he resisted. While a Jew might under extraordinary circumstance be forgiven a little goyish fish or chicken, even a bit of beef, he’d surely burn in hell for eating pig. But by the time the evening meal was served, burning in hell in some impossible-to-conceive future seemed much preferable to suffering the tortures of denial in the present, and Yitzhak tasted of the forbidden food and found it delicious. So delicious that, after waiting a moment or two to see if he were going to be struck dead after all, he shamelessly gorged himself. At the same time he dismissed from his mind the image of his mother delicately frowning at his sinfulness. (He knew his father would most probably be more forgiving of this particular infraction of the Law.) As for the elderly Jews sitting at the table, he simply ignored their dire looks and loud sounds of disgust.
On the second day of the voyage the meals were not quite as bountiful as the day before, and Yitzhak learned a few more German words. He also played cards with his new friends, a pastime he hadn’t indulged in frequently before since he had preferred a more physical type of entertainment. As a result he lost all his loose kopecks and was forced to dip into his pouch of money several times until he had reduced the sum total by several rubles. Now he knew this was something his father would have frowned upon. He would have said something about a fool and his money being soon parted. Yitzhak was more ashamed of playing the fool than upset over the loss of the money. The money had less reality for him than being a fool did since he had never really needed money before. So concerned was he over this loss of face, he lay awake all that night thinking what he could do to remedy the situation. And the solution came to him.
The next day he challenged his German friends, one or all, to an arm wrestle, with side wagers. The first to accept the challenge was the fellow Yitzhak liked the most—Hans. It took him just one second to put Hans’s arm down. The rest of them were surprised but not astounded since Hans was the smallest of their group. The next one to take up his challenge was Franz, who was bigger than Hans. Yitzhak put his arm down almost as quickly. By the time he went through the bunch, each young man increasingly burlier and stronger than the one preceding, he had not only recouped his losses but was several marks richer. To his astonishment, he was also no longer just the friendly outsider but an admired pal, truly one of them.
The next day Yitzhak became more than just a pal; he achieved the status of something nearer to a hero, someone the boys were proud to call a friend. One of the passengers who had observed the hand wrestling was a hefty German Jew who had been to America before. He came up and congratulated Yitzhak on his prowess, felt his bicep and said, in a mixture of Yiddish and German so that everyone could understand, that in America Yitzhak could be a prize fighter, a boxer. The word “boxer” was not one any of the boys were familiar with. As for prize fighter, Yitzhak knew what a prize was and what the word fighting meant, as he knew what wrestling and brawling, kicking and shoving and punching meant, but the combination of the two? No.
The older man said he would show them what he meant. Taking the classic stance of the “boxer” he threw Yitzhak a right fist to the belly before Yitzhak even knew what he was up to. The blow knocked the wind out of him for a second, coming as it did as a surprise, but he quickly recovered, feeling he was made to look like an oaf. Also he knew a wise guy when he saw one, since they were not without them in Slobodka. They must have had wise guys in Germany too since Yitzhak’s chums looked at him expectantly, waiting to see how he was going to respond.
“Oh, you mean like this?” Yitzhak asked as he went into a crouch, at the same time imitating the fellow’s formal boxer stance. Before the words were out of his mouth and before the wise guy knew what hit him, Yitzhak threw him an uppercut to the jaw that laid him out unconscious.
Yitzhak’s friends went crazy with delight. There was nothing like seeing a wise guy bested, especially when the winner was one of your own. They poured a bucket of water over the wiseacre. When he came to, they hooted and jeered him, asking him if maybe he wanted to manage Yitzhak’s career as a prize fighter when they got to America.
That night the friends celebrated when Heinz pulled a bottle of schnapps from his sack. They all howled with pleasure and pounded Heinz on the back for his foresight in packing the bottle. They passed the schnapps back and forth among them until the bottle was empty and then they all sang. The songs were German ones but somehow Yitzhak managed to sing along, humming to fill in the gaps as all linked arms and swayed side to side, comrades one and all. The next day, still full of pride, the boys went among the passengers, challenging the lively ones either to arm wrestle with Yitzhak, or “prize fight.” But among all the miserable crew, they couldn’t find a single taker.
By the sixth or seventh day Yitzhak barely thought of the family back in Slobodka since he was having too good a time to be homesick. He was arm wrestling, playing cards, pitching coins, staging peeing contests which involved seeing whose stream could clear the deck rail. He and his friends even played leapfrog. At the same time that they were playing childish games they were flirting with all the girls, or at least those who weren’t under their parents’ watchful eyes or too refined to respond to the callow young men’s uncouth ways.
On the eighth day at sea Yitzhak shaved off his beard, using a dirty pane of glass as a mirror. To rationalize doing this, Yitzhak told himself that it was the only thing to do since it was next to impossible to wash in the steerage quarters and it was no secret that at least half the passengers were infested with lice. Even his mother, he felt, would have applauded his good common sense. Of course what he was doing in removing the blond beard, which distinguished all the Markoff men, was making himself look more like his companions since he felt that, with it, he stuck out like a sore thumb. He did leave a good-sized mustache, not in the way of moral compromise, but because without his beard, he looked so much younger. The mustache compensated for that; it gave him more dash.
Still, Yitzhak was not without some twinges of guilt. He couldn’t think of one Jew back in Slobodka who didn’t wear a beard as soon as he was man enough to grow one, if one didn’t count Moishe Grodnik who had lost all his hair due to a strange illness. But he consoled himself. He wasn’t the only Jew on ship who would land in America without this symbol of his Jewish manhood. As the days passed, more and more of the Jews emerged barefaced, just as more and more indulged in the forbidden pork. Perhaps this was due to the fact that the longer they were at sea, the more deplorable the food served became. As one Jew declaimed, “Is it any worse to eat pork than it is to eat maggots?”
It was a long journey. Maybe sixteen days, but Yitzhak lost count. Even as his fellow passengers sickened and a few even died, he was having too good a time to mark off the days. Still, he was neither blind nor deaf. At night particularly, the moaning and the groaning, the sighing and the weeping, like some chorus of lost souls, was enough to sadden the heart of the most hardened, especially when typhoid fever became a fellow traveler.
The day the ship sailed into harbor was a beautiful day. Not even the most miserable of the immigrants could deny this. They crowded the deck, even the ill, yearning for the sight of the famous Statue of Liberty with her torch held high. His mother had, on occasion, recited the lady’s plea, Yitzhak recalled: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free ...” He remembered how tears would fill his mother’s eyes as she repeated the words, just as tears now filled the eyes of many of the huddled masses on deck, sick as they were, and as tired and as poor.
But where was she? the passengers demanded of each other. Where was this Lady of Liberty they had all heard so much about? Weren’t they at Ellis Island, New York? Their eyes desperately searched the skyline. The Lady was nowhere to be seen. Was it possible that they weren’t in the United States of America after all? There were fresh outcries on deck as these troubled masses considered the frightening possibilities.
Hours later the passengers were informed that because of the typhoid fever in their midst, they weren’t going to be allowed on Ellis Island but were going to be detained there, on Staten Island, which at least was also New York, the United States of America.