Chapter 12

He was on a moving object, his head was splitting with pain, and the world was uneasy about him; he felt clammy and cold and he knew in a moment he would have to vomit. He rolled onto his side, slowly opened his eyes, and then felt a surge of relief. It was only a nightmare, and he had had plenty of those before. He was back in Belsen on one of the narrow plank tiers, in the same semidarkness with the same smell of feces and urine and unwashed bodies, only this time Belsen was swaying from side to side. An earthquake, maybe, or possibly the camp was being bombed, although he could not hear the blasts of the explosions nor the roaring of the planes dipping down as they had at Celle. Still, being bombed in silence would not be inconsistent in a dream. But could it really be a dream when the pain and the nausea were so real? He turned his head and felt relief again; it really was a nightmare and he was really back in Belsen in it, for Pincus the pharmacist was sitting beside him, smiling at him. He closed his eyes, willing himself to waken from the terrible dream, wondering what happened when you vomited in a dream.

He discovered quite soon, for the camp and the barrack rolled once more and he found himself with his head hanging over the edge of the bunk, retching uncontrollably, his head pounding. The typhus was back, or the nightmare of it. Pincus was holding a basin for him; his other hand was pressed tightly against Grossman’s forehead. Grossman wondered where Pincus had gotten the basin; usually they used an old can if they were lucky enough to have anything at all.

The spasm passed and he lay back weak, breathing raggedly, fighting the continuing nausea, staring up at the wooden tier over him, listening to the eerie creaking of the ship’s timbers, remembering. This was no dream! He was on that damned ship! They had shanghaied him, taken him against his will. Oh, the bastards, the miserable bastards! This was their thanks for his having repaired their engine for them, for getting them started. He should never have done it. Oh, the miserable ungrateful Jew bastards!

The little light from the narrow companionway was blocked, and Brodsky came down the steps and walked over to stand beside his bunk, bracing himself against the rolling of the ship, looking down at him with concern.

“How do you feel?”

Grossman turned his head away. Brodsky turned to Pincus; Pincus shrugged.

“How should he feel? He’s seasick, he’s got a lump the size of I don’t know what back of his ear—like a goose egg—he didn’t want to come and here he is. How does he feel? That’s how he feels, I imagine.” He tipped his head toward the makeshift medicine cabinet he had rigged up on one side of the bunks. “When he can hold them down I’ll give him a couple aspirin; it’s about all we got for what he’s got.”

He got up to empty the basin; Brodsky took his place.

“Ben—”

Grossman glared. “Go to hell!”

“I had no choice, Ben. You were lying in the road, unconscious. They would have put you in a camp.”

“I’d rather be in a camp! A thousand times!”

“Except they wouldn’t put you in a camp right away,” Brodsky said quietly. “First they would have beaten you half to death. Here they had four nice prisoners, almost sure to get some lire from the British for them, and a minute later all they have is you, and both of them dumped on their ass and looking foolish. You think they would have given you the keys to the city? They would have beaten the shit out of you, and then handed you over to the British. I had to try to save you.”

“You call this saving me?”

“Yes, I call it saving you. The British would have made you tell all you knew about this ship and the people on it.”

“I would have told them!”

“I know. And I had to save you from doing that, too.” Brodsky reached into a pocket, bringing out a small cardboard folder. “Anyway, at least you have some papers, now. It’s a passport. A legitimate Venezuelan passport made out for Benjamin Grossman, citizen of Caracas. They handed them out in Genoa to everyone; Ben-Levi had spares, he just finished yours. They’ll want it back once you’re settled in Palestine, for others who will want to try and get in, but in the meantime you finally have papers.”

“You know what you can do with your shitty papers!”

Brodsky shrugged and got to his feet as Pincus returned.

“He’ll live,” he said dryly. “Whatever his temperature is, his temper is right back to normal.”

It was two o’clock in the afternoon of their third day at sea, forty-two hours since they had hurriedly cast off from the Nervi port and chugged their way out of the small harbor. In that time they had sighted only an occasional fishing vessel similar to their own, but they were all aware there was a good chance the British might eventually notice the failure of the Naomi to return to port, in which case word would undoubtedly go out and sea patrols would be looking for them. Although they did not know it, they had much to thank the old lady at the safe-house for; the British had already discounted the Naomi as the ship they were searching for. That small fishing trawler could never hold hundreds of people; that they were sure of. If they searched for the Naomi, it would be for humanitarian reasons, only.

There was a conference called in the small deckhouse, attended by Wolf, Davi Ben-Levi, Brodsky, and the ship’s captain, an Italian Jew named Bernardo Cellotti, who had been interned in Dachau and who was the only one familiar with ships as well as with Italian waters. Cellotti had been studying the charts and listening to the weather reports on the ship’s radio. Now he pointed to the chart.

“We’re here. We’ve been lucky so far, staying as far from the shore as we have. Now we have to go in, between Stromboli and the toe of Italy. We also have to put in someplace for fuel and water. Our best bet would be either Reggio or Messina. Or better yet, Catania, farther south.”

Brodsky frowned.

“You mean, go through the Messina Straits? I thought the plan originally was to refuel at Palermo and then go around Sicily. I know it’s longer, but the straits? They’re always rough, aren’t they?”

“They’re rough,” Cellotti admitted. “They’re also unpredictable. They’re the original Scilla and Charybdis that Homer speaks of in the Odyssey. The rock and the whirlpool. And the weather could also be better. But still, going through the straits will save us over four hundred miles. That’s forty hours or more in this vessel, almost as much as we’ve sailed since Nervi. And the straits are only twenty miles of bad water at the most.”

“Like the captain said to reassure the old lady in the storm,” Wolf said, “‘We’re only a half mile from land, lady—straight down!’”

“Will this so-called ship take it?” Brodsky asked.

Cellotti shrugged. “I think so. It’s a better vessel than it looks. If it makes anyone feel better, the chances are the British patrols won’t be expecting a boat like the Naomi to even try the straits, certainly not in bad weather.”

There were several minutes of silence. Then Wolf piped up.

“Well? I vote we try the straits. If we can save forty hours, I’m willing to take the chance. Besides, regardless of what Cellotti says, I’m not sure this tub could last an extra forty hours, even in a calm sea.”

“We have over two hundred people on board, many of them women and children,” Brodsky said slowly. “We’d be risking their lives, too. Maybe we ought to put it to all of them.”

“Then we’d be risking a panic,” Ben-Levi said firmly. “No. It’s our decision.”

“And with two hundred Jews, we’d get four hundred opinions,” Wolf said positively. “We’re supposed to be a committee; let’s act like a committee. I vote in favor of trying the straits.”

“I also,” Cellotti said.

“I think it’s worth the risk,” Ben-Levi said.

They looked at Brodsky. He shrugged. “I suppose so.” He changed the subject. “By the way, how is the engine running?”

Cellotti reached over and rapped on wood. “Thank God, so far so good.”

“And how is our temperamental Ben Grossman?”

“He just sits on deck during the day and then goes down to his bunk at night, not talking to anyone. And not offering to help in anything, either. He just sits and stares.”

“Well,” Wolf said, “I just hope he’s seeing the other side of the straits.”

They passed between San Vincenzo, on the island of Stromboli, and Tropea, on the mainland, just as the sun was setting, with the faint lights pinpointing the heights of Calabria flickering uncertainly in the growing dusk. Wolf was in the deckhouse with Cellotti, spelling him at the wheel while the Italian studied the charts for the area. On deck, Ben-Levi and Brodsky had organized the men in the party putting up safety lines, carrying everything portable down to the cabin below, which was already crowded almost beyond endurance. The portholes had been left open to the last minute; people tried to crowd as close to them as possible, hoping for a breath of air.

Below Tropea they saw the lights of Nicotera and Rosarno on their left, sharper now as they came closer to the shore and as the darkness increased. A breeze had suddenly sprung up, gaining in strength as they approached the straits; clouds cut off the little moon there was. There was the smell of rain in the increasing wind. Then the lights of Gioia Tauro could be seen farther along the beach, and a final cluster of lights beyond.

“Palmi,” Cellotti said, and took the wheel from Wolf, gripping it tightly. “We’re almost there. Get everyone below. Anyone on deck in about ten minutes could be lost. Make sure the companionway is battened down, or someone could drown down below. Portholes to be closed and locked; no fires under any condition. The children should be tied in their bunks, if possible.”

“And anyone wants to pray, no objection—right?” Wolf said, and went out to carry out the orders.

Ben-Levi came into the deckhouse, looking worried. The entrance to the straits could be seen now, marked by the light on the Punta del Faro, the extreme northern tip of the Sicilian coast. The wind had increased in velocity, rushing through the canyon of the straits, making conversation difficult in the small deckhouse. A light rain had begun to fall, glazing over the windows before the steersman’s wheel. Cellotti looked over his shoulder as he handled the wheel.

“Everything all right below?”

“So far. I hope they stay that way.”

“We all hope.”

“Bernardo—”

Cellotti looked at him. “Yes?”

“Maybe we ought to turn back. At least wait until the weather improves …”

“Too late now,” Cellotti said, and gripped the wheel with all his strength. Above them the rock of Scilla loomed, even blacker than the night, and then the ship leaped as it struck the whirlpool. The nose dipped and came up, shuddering, streaming water across the deck, sweeping up over the wheelhouse, making visibility impossible. The ship bucked violently, tearing the wheel from Cellotti’s grip, spinning wildly. He tried to brake it, reaching for the spokes only to have his arms and hands beaten aside cruelly, battered. There was a sickening pause as the ship foundered, its screw out of the water; then Cellotti had the wheel again and was fighting it back into position. Ben-Levi came to his help; slowly the ship responded to its rudder. Water poured over the bucking ship, trying to press it under the crushing waves, washing down in torrents over the glass of the windows. With a curse Cellotti looked around for a prod and, finding none, reached across the wheel and punched his fist through the glass.

Ben-Levi stared at him as if he had gone mad. “What are you doing?”

Cellotti withdrew a bleeding fist, screaming above the shriek of the wind and the crashing of the waters. “I’ve got to see something or we’ll be on the rocks!”

The water poured in. Cellotti stood there, his feet braced, soaked to the skin, shutting his eyes tightly whenever he saw the sea sweep over the bow and up to the deckhouse, opening them instantly once the water had drenched him and sucked back, to stare anxiously for some light, some marker, some rearing buoy, anything that would give him some idea of his position in the churning channel. Ben-Levi put his mouth close to Cellotti’s ear, shouting.

“We ought to radio for help!”

“No good! No time!”

Behind them, miraculously, the diesel engine maintained its steady growl, sturdily pushing and pulling the pistons, moving the ship’s screw, revolving the generator, pumping electricity into the storage batteries, its sound lost in the greater volume of the storm.

Below, all was shambles. The first shattering blow the ship had taken flung everything loose across the crowded cabin, piling debris against the bodies of those who had thought themselves secure. People were torn from stanchions, dragged free from their grips on the fixed tables and chairs. The small room stank with the smell of vomit; the screaming of the wind was matched by the moans and cries of terror of the people in the airless cabin. The hatch covering the companionway had come loose and each lurch of the bucking ship sent a flood of water rushing down the narrow steps; in the bilges the pumps worked valiantly, but each new torrent added water in the cabin, increasing the almost animal fear of those trapped there.

The small unlit stove broke loose from its moorings and skidded across the cabin deck like a battering ram, to crush the tables and benches fixed to the floor planks. Brodsky attempted to grab the stove, but it took him with it as if it had a life of its own, smashing him against the ship’s planking, then retreating in a spray of water for another ramming attempt on the ship’s side.

In his bunk Grossman held on tightly, knowing his suspicions had more than been fulfilled. The idiots were going to sink the ship! He braced himself as best he could against the tier above him, wedging his pillow and blanket about his head to protect it from being smashed in the constant shaking of the tortured ship. He knew it was pointless; they had to sink. Damn, damn! He had warned them about this bastard ship, hadn’t he? God, how could this be happening to him? After all his planning, after all his suffering, was this to be the end? Drowning with a bunch of stinking Jews? They, at least, had little to live for; they were lucky to have made it this far. Most of them should have died in the gas chambers, or in the ghettos. And even now, what could they look forward to? A life of back-breaking toil in a wilderness, slaves to their own idiotic ideals, digging their holes and planting their barren crops with a shovel in one hand and a gun in the other! But he had everything to live for! Money! Freedom! Future! The patent unfairness of it all brought tears of frustration to his eyes.

The ship lurched dangerously, corkscrewing in the convoluted waters, digging its nose into the ocean as if seeking to hide under the tormented surface and find some degree of calm and peace at last; only to change its mind and ram itself upward as if in panic, fighting for air. Children were screaming now in total terror, hysterical. Grossman buried his head in his cocoon of blankets, and waited for the rush of water that would end it once and for all, and then felt himself being shaken roughly. He peered out of his nest to find Brodsky, white-faced, yelling over the roar of the sea.

“Ben! Get down! We need help!”

“Help? You brought this on yourself, on all of us!”

“The stove loosened some of the side planking! We need to brace it before it lets go and we all drown! Come on!”

“You’re wasting your time,” Grossman said, and as he said it he knew that it was so, that they were all really going to drown, and that it really made little difference. One could struggle so long, endure just so much, and then one had to concede. “You know we’re all going to drown, don’t you?”

But Brodsky was through arguing. He reached in and dragged Grossman bodily from his cocoon, propelling him ruthlessly to the end of the small cabin, gripping his arm painfully. Men had managed to comer the plunging stove and had lashed it into obedience against a stanchion, where it fought its bounds with each pitch of the ship. Other men were trying their best to maintain their balance as they pressed a plank against the side of the ship where water was beginning to trickle from between two fitted planks. Max added his strength to the weight of the others, motioning for Grossman to join in. The ship rolled beneath the straining men; they slid and fell into the water washing around them, and then struggled upward to press on the plank again.

Grossman raised his voice.

“Idiots! That’s not the way! All of you together don’t weigh as much as the pressure from the sea, for God’s sake! You have to use leverage!”

He jerked a flashlight from Brodsky’s belt and flashed it over the deck above, fighting for balance as he did so. There! There was a crossbeam he could use. If only he had a jack of some sort, but of course a shit ship like this wouldn’t have anything that useful! He found himself grinning as he contemplated the problem. Drown! Not likely! One man using proper leverage could do the work of hundreds, of thousands. Good old Archimedes! Give me a place to stand, he said, and I will move the world.…

“Here,” Grossman said roughly, “give me that plank! Find me a couple more. And get some blankets.”

Men stared at him a moment and then hurried to carry out his orders. Grossman stuffed the blankets against the seeping spot, placed a plank over the blankets, took the second plank offered, and angled it against the upright board, tilting it against the crossbrace. He then took a third timber offered him and wedged it to act as a pry.

“There! One man putting his weight on this will do more good than all you idiots trying to push against the ocean. If you take turns, changing every five or ten minutes, you should be able to contain that leak.”

A man had already taken his place at the pry and was leaning against it, forcing the plank and the blankets tightly against the ship’s curved side. Grossman went to the leak and studied it. The water had reduced itself to a small, unsteady ooze. If the ship didn’t founder from some other reason, Grossman thought, at least it won’t from that leak. God, what idiots! Trying to push back the sea! King Canute, were you Jewish by any chance?

He flashed his flashlight about the room. The sea seemed to have abated somewhat, the water running down the companionway was nowhere near the deluge it had been minutes before. The bilge pumps seemed to be winning the battle against the torrents; the water in the cabin had gone down, and with it the whimpering of the frightened people. Grossman raised his voice.

“All right!” he said to the wondering faces staring at him. “The worst is over. We’re not going to sink. Let’s start cleaning up in here.”

The lashing sea had eased and then given way to calm waters almost as if some unseen barrier had passed, or as if in apology for the roughness of their previous passage. They chugged into a night full of moonlight, with both sides of the narrow strait clearly visible. While those below worked to clear up the debris and move the stove back into place, and while Pincus and his first-aid kit worked on the cut and the bruised, there was another meeting in the deckhouse. This time Grossman attended. Ben-Levi took the wheel while Cellotti pointed to his charts. By unspoken consent nobody mentioned the passage through the straits.

“Catania,” Cellotti said. “It’s probably the only place this side of the island that has a small dry dock where we can fix the ship’s planking. We obviously must repair it before we get out into the sea again.”

“I don’t like it.” Ben-Levi was speaking over his shoulder, his eyes fixed on the buoys through the channel. “Maybe the British don’t expect a ship like the Naomi to attempt these waters, but they still have patrols in this area, as well as informers, I’m sure. Catania is too big to put into without a good chance the British will hear about it. After all, two hundred people, many of them women and children, climbing out of a small fishing boat? They’d know in an instant what we were and where we’re heading. We’d all end up behind barbed wire in Cyprus.”

Cellotti frowned. “We still have to repair the damage.”

“I know,” Ben-Levi said unhappily. “I didn’t say we shouldn’t do it. I just said I don’t like it.”

Grossman had been looking at the chart. He looked up from it, curious.

“What’s the tide around here?”

“It varies with the time of year, of course,” Cellotti said. “I’ve got the tables here.” He reached into a drawer, bringing out a thick book, opening it and running through the pages. “It’s fairly high, I know, not as high now as in the spring, but high. It’s supposed to be the main reason for the whirlpool effect in the straits. Why?”

Grossman pointed to the detailed map of Sicily.

“We could bring the ship in, almost run it aground, at some beach nowhere near a town or village. It looks as if there’s a lot of deserted area around here. We could bring it in at high tide, anchor it to shore, and wait for the tide to run out.”

“How do you know she’d tip the right way?” Brodsky asked.

“We use the davit pulleys to make sure she tips the way we want. Then we replace the damaged planking and let the tide float her again.”

“Cellotti nodded. “It’s a good idea if we can do the job between tides …”

“We’ll have to.”

“Then let’s do it!”

Oddly enough for Jews, they didn’t even take a vote on it.

They repaired the Naomi on a Saturday, on a shingle beach in a deserted cove wall beyond Aciriale, under Grossman’s direction, despite the objection of the more religious Jews who felt that labor on the Sabbath should be avoided. These even refused to watch, but marched off over the hills to stare out at the rolling countryside and act, unconsciously, as lookouts against unwanted intrusion. And the following day the Naomi was refueled in Augusta, the water tanks filled and additional food purchased and stored aboard. And once they sailed, Wolf brought out the guns that had been hidden in the bilges, wrapped in oiled silk, cleaned them until they polished, and mounted them in a makeshift gun rack set on the wall of the wheelhouse, proud of his work.

There was a holiday mood on board once they cleared Augusta harbor and were out of sight of land. They had come almost four hundred miles without being discovered by the British, and while the closer they came to Palestine the greater the danger, there was always the hope that as long as they maintained their appearance as an innocent fishing vessel, they might continue the deception successfully.

As if to compensate for the rough waters in the straits, the sea turned beautifully calm. When no ship was in sight, which was most of the time, since Cellotti took advantage of the charts to avoid popular sea lanes, the passengers took turns on deck, spelling each other every few hours day and night, luxuriating in the warm fresh sea breeze and the restful motion as the ship chugged its way through the small waves. When a ship was sighted only the men dressed as fishermen occupied the deck and the deckhouse; once the danger had passed the children would swarm back on deck, hanging over the bow despite the warning cries of mothers, or draped over the rail, staring down into the depths of the sea as if searching for some meaning to their odyssey in the green-blue dimness there. The trawls had been stowed, since they slowed the speed of the ship, but many of the men fished from the deck using makeshift poles, shouting with delight on the rare occasions when they caught something.

Ben Grossman’s position on the ship had changed. From being a pariah, albeit a self-imposed pariah, he had become a person to be considered in the daily functioning of the ship. As they sailed from the Italian waters into the Aegean Sea, he pointed out that it was possible the British might believe the missing Naomi had gone to the bottom, and it would not do to be reported five hundred miles from Nervi; the following day, rigged on ship’s cradles, he helped change the name to the Ruth. In the hot Aegean winds he had shown the men on board how to install simple air scoops made of cardboard, so that the ventilation in the cabin was immeasurably improved. He had rigged up a small air hose to act as a blower on the stove, pushing the fumes up the jerry-rigged chimney and out of the cabin. And every day he checked out the diesel, making sure its efficiency remained high, watched the generator and the air compressor, and made sure the batteries had plenty of water.

Nor did he mind. It was evident to him that he could not leave the ship before they reached Palestine, but he did have a valid passport, albeit a forged one, and once ashore it would only be a matter of time before he would manage to leave the country and get to Switzerland, because if Brodsky or any of the others thought he had forgotten his resolution, they were crazy. He would need more than the fifty dollars he carried, but they said everyone in Palestine was armed, and an armed man could arrange money. And of course they expected him to forfeit his passport once they were on Palestinian soil, but what they expected and what they got were two different things.

It felt good to be planning again, using the time to stare out to sea as they chugged their way east, laying out a plan in all the detail he had always enjoyed. Banks had money; he would locate a bank and study its operation. And leaving the country should be no great problem in a place where the pressure was on people trying to get in. There were undoubtedly ships for commerce, and if worse came to worse he could always try to ship on as a seaman. Or as a ship’s engineer; after his experience on the Ruth—he should be able to handle such a job with ease. A pity Switzerland didn’t have a seaport.

And so they chugged on, all eyes constantly straining to the east, as if they could see their destination across all the hundreds of miles, through the dark and mist and the sea fogs they encountered. Palestine! Each had his own dream, his own picture of the future.