Against the Wind

  Raquel wore her coat like a cloak buttoned up to the neck. She had Michael wrapped inside the garment with her. The coat’s empty sleeves flapped in the wind like a scarecrow. Only Michael’s forehead and nose protruded at the collar.

  Raquel bent toward me. I thought she was adjusting her position, trying to ease her aching limbs. She hissed to get my attention.

  I leaned close.

  Her words felt warm on my ear but struck an icy dagger into my heart. “The boy is dead,” she said. “I’m sure of it. He has not moved in an hour, and he’s getting colder and colder.”

  Patsy’s eyelids drooped, and her mouth was slack.

  Then I turned toward Mariah. Her gaze bored into mine like blazing coals. Somehow she knew!

  “Yes, dear, the children are well. They’re coming along fine,” Mariah remarked to Patsy, more loudly than necessary. “Getting their strength back. You must do the same. Come on! Wiggle your fingers and toes for me. Just try, darlin’. Don’t give up.”

  Her words were directed at her sister, but their meaning was for Raquel. The shock of Michael’s death would sap the last life force from Patsy. Mariah’s pointed speech conveyed we had to act as if Michael was still living, for Patsy’s sake.

  I was too dumbfounded to react at once.

  It was eight-year-old Connor who raised high the banner of kindly deception. “Listen, Michael. Don’t you like that song? Want to hear another? Do you know this one, Elisa? We learned it in choir: Rozhinkes mit mandlen.”

  I swallowed hard, tasting bile and seawater, then made myself croak:

  “In dem beys hamikdash

  In a vinkl kheyder

  “In the Temple, in a corner of a chamber

  The widowed Daughter of Zion sits all alone.

  As she rocks her only son Yidele to sleep,

  She sings him a pretty lullaby.”

  “That’s it,” Connor encouraged. “Come on, James, Tomas. Sing with me.”

  “Go away,” James returned. “Leave me alone. I feel sick.”

  John dug an elbow into his brother’s side. “Connor’s right,” he warbled in a voice between man’s and child’s.

  And in a clear, bell-like tone, Peter, whom darkness had freed from the restraining hand of shyness, sang:

  “In this pretty lullaby, my child, there lie many prophecies.

  Some day you’ll be wandering in the wide world,

  Trading in raisins and almonds.

  And now sleep, Yidele, sleep.” 14

  So we rubbed and patted and encouraged and sang, in the hopes of preserving lives hanging by even more tenuous threads than our own. At least I still had a living child on my lap to cuddle and encourage.

  The sea continued to argue against our lullaby, insisting on their unvarying twelve-count pattern. At last I recognized the rhythm of the waves. It was a petenera—the form of flamenco never sung by gypsies in public because it foretells death.

  13 Traditional lullaby, “Golden Slumbers Kiss Your Eyes,” attributed to Renaissance Poet Thomas Dekker

  14 “Rozhinkes Mit Mandlen,” traditional Yiddish folk song

  17

  LIFEBOAT NUMBER 7

  NORTH ATLANTIC

  AUTUMN 1940

  The sky finally began to lighten. Pasty white faces were steeped in exhaustion. I saw the misted rings on James’s eyeglasses as he levered them up on his nose. A strand of droplets rimmed the fringe of Robert’s hood. I recognized where sky ended and ocean began. The dawn of the first morning after we had been torpedoed had arrived.

  The waves remained monstrous in size. Rain fell in sheets. Daylight encouraged our spirits, since it meant we had survived the night.

  It was only that and no more.

  On my lap, despite my continued efforts to revive Moira, her small life ebbed away.

  Raquel and the choirboys and I kept up the cheerful singing hour after hour. Our voices grew hoarse. Perhaps the men who occupied the back two-thirds of the lifeboat thought we were all crazy.

  Perhaps they guessed what we were trying to do for Patsy.

  Each time we paused, Mariah set us to our task again. Her features alternately conveyed pleading and demanding. She continued rubbing and encouraging her sister.

  “Must you make so much noise?” Podlaski objected from the stern of the boat.

  Officer Browne growled at him and he subsided.

  I gave the Polish diplomat an angry stare. Hadn’t he been rescued, hadn’t he been plucked from certain death off the overturned lifeboat? Where was his compassion?

  Podlaski’s thinning hair was plastered on both sides of his head. Patches of gray stubble blotted his unshaven cheeks. He sneezed and patted his coat pockets, hunting for an undamaged cigar. To my relief, he did not locate one.

  When we could not tolerate one more chorus, Connor responded by volunteering to sing “All the Pretty Little Horses.”

  “Hush you bye,

  Don’t you cry,

  Go to sleepy little baby.

  When you wake,

  You shall have,

  All the pretty little horses.”15

  Of course I knew Michael, and I feared Moira, would never awaken in this life. The horses they would have would be heavenly mounts ridden by angels.

  “Is Peter next to sing?” Robert asked.

  “N…not me. I d…don’t want a turn.”

  “Listen, Patsy, acushla,” Mariah said. “Don’t your babies love the singin’ altogether? Come on, love. Clap your hands with me.”

  Mariah struck her sister’s hands, one against the other.

  Robert, snug within his green jacket and hood, squirmed and asked, “Aunt Elisa, I’m hungry. When can we have something to eat?” His question frightened me. In the worry over Moira and Patsy I had forgotten that Robert was barely older than Michael, who had died.

  Oh, God, I pleaded. No more deaths. Give us the means to keep the rest alive.

  I posed Robert’s question to the officer.

  “Can’t risk ruining all the stores in this rain and high sea,” he said.

  “Isn’t there anything for the children?” I called back.

  There was a whispered consultation between Browne and Wilson. The sailor bent over the floorboards of the boat and rummaged around.

  I heard a metallic screech rise over the impulse of the waves without knowing its cause. Moments later a can of condensed milk was handed forward. A jagged hole had been punched in its top.

  “Go on, Elisa,” Mariah said, “give some to Moira first.”

  “Sure, Auntie Elisa. Little kids first,” Connor said cheerfully. This from one who had just turned eight!

  I touched the rim of the can to Moira’s mouth. “That’s it, honey. Little sips. That’s it. A little more. Then let’s give your brother a turn.” There was very little reaction from the child. Her lips jerked reflexively in a sucking motion, but when I splashed a teaspoonful into her mouth it dribbled out again.

  “Good girl,” I praised. “That’s it. Make your mama happy, sweetie. A little more. You can do it.”

  When I passed the can to Raquel she repeated the performance with Michael, though he was far past swallowing. “What a brave boy you are,” she said. “Now you, Patsy. You have some too.”

  “No.” The single syllable was the first sound I had heard Patsy utter in hours. But she could still hear us! Her eyelids flickered and she wagged the tip of one finger toward Robert. “Him next. He can have my share.”

  Robert shivered when the cold metal touched his lips, but he drank eagerly and asked if he might have another swallow.

  “Let him take another,” James said. “I don’t feel like eating anyway.”

  “Me either,” said Connor.

  I marveled at the courage and fortitude of these boys.

  And at that moment Moira gave the smallest shudder. It was no more than the vibration felt in a London flat when a tube train passes in its tunnel far beneath.

  Then she died, and I felt her go.

/>   “What shall we sing now, boys?” I asked, though my throat was so constricted I could barely breathe.

  “Let me, Aunt Elisa,” called a voice from behind Patsy.

  In a haunting, lyrical voice, Angelique offered up “Durme, Durme,” a Sephardic lullaby sung all around the Mediterranean, from Morocco to Turkey.

  “Durme, durme hijiko de madre…”

  Though her words were in Ladino I knew their meaning from concerts of Roma music I had played in Austria. It seemed a million years and a million miles ago.

  “Sleep, sleep, mother’s little one,

  Free from worry and grief.

  Listen, my joy, to your mother’s words,

  The words of Shema Yisrael.”

  When the chorus came around, Raquel’s rich, husky voice joined in:

  “Sleep, sleep,

  Mother’s little one,

  With the beauty of Shema Israel.”

  “Wow.” Connor sighed.

  “Shh,” John insisted. “Keep quiet.” He stared at Angelique intensely.

  And the surge of the ocean continued to count to twelve.

  All through the day the rain alternated with periods of wind. The waves stayed mountainous. One moment we were walled in by masses of dark green water; the next we rode up the face of a swell. From each peak I could see for miles, but there was nothing to view except the threatening battalions of brine, looming rank upon rank.

  Because of the driving spray there was no way to open the provisions stashed in the lifeboat. We were all hungry, but so miserably damp no one complained at the lack of food.

  “My feet still hurt,” Robert said.

  Raquel straightened up, balancing Michael’s weight within her coat. “I have an idea. Listen, children. Would you like to learn a gypsy dance?”

  “What, here?” Connor queried.

  “Why not?” Raquel returned. “It’s called the buleria. It means…a joke, but sometimes it’s a contest. Twelve beats and then repeat. Here’s the first pattern.” With her feet on the narrow strip of bench opposite she tapped a pattern that emphasized the third, sixth, eighth, tenth, and twelfth beats. “Can you do that?”

  “Sure,” Connor said. “Come on, Peter. No singin’. Just move your feet.”

  “I can do it, Aunt Elisa,” Robert agreed. “See?”

  It took some organizing before the chaos of many pairs of feet kept proper time.

  When a level of success had been achieved, Tomas inquired, “Why’d you say ‘the first pattern’?

  “Ah,” Raquel responded. “This is where it gets interesting. Boys, the rhythm we just learned is yours. Can you remember it?”

  “Sure,” John scoffed. “Easy. Listen.” And he demonstrated his mastery of the buleria.

  “The second pattern is for the girls. Angelique already knows it.”

  “Me too,” Simcha piped. “Me too.”

  “All right, Elisa and Mariah and Patsy. You too.” Raquel again performed a twelve-count tapping, this time emphasizing the third, seventh, eighth, tenth, and twelfth beats. “Try it. It’s harder than it seems.”

  It was hard to properly render the syncopated count. With Angelique and Raquel leading, we girls managed it. Patsy’s feet barely moved. She bobbed her chin in time to the tempo.

  “Here’s the best part,” Raquel said. “We do them both at once.”

  Chaos again! And then, “I say, that’s wonderful,” John exclaimed.

  We were warmed. Feeling returned to toes and calves.

  Soon the energy to keep up round after round of stamping subsided. Raquel and I continued the pretense of talking to and massaging Moira and Michael.

  Only Mariah kept up a level of intensity. “Patsy, don’t give up on me now! You hear me? There’ll be a fine big rescue boat along most any time now. Hot tea for you and warm milk for the babes.” Mariah patted her sister’s face and stroked her hair. She massaged her feet and held a cupped palm of rainwater to her lips.

  “A ship!” Connor said suddenly.

  “Where away, boy?” Browne demanded.

  “I saw it when we were on top of the wave. It’s that way,” he said, pointing.

  When the lifeboat crested the top of the breaker all of us peered ahead.

  “There’s nothing there,” Podlaski argued. “Stupid boy. Got excited over nothing.”

  “His eyes are better than yours,” Barrett argued. “Shouldn’t we try to row that direction?”

  “And when he’s proved wrong?”

  “Then what difference does it make? Here, give me an oar. At least I’ll be warmer than I am now.”

  At the next wave top Podlaski remarked scornfully. “See? I told you this was for nothing.”

  Browne was not so sure. “I thought…” He peered into the grayness.

  I turned to look. Was there something in that direction that was darker than the vapor hugging the sea? Was there a more solid quality to that one patch of mist?

  “Row!” the officer exclaimed. “Row like your lives depend on it!”

  The lascars bent their backs into their work.

  “Harder! Faster!” Podlaski exclaimed. “Can’t you do better than that?”

  “Are we rescued?” Robert asked me.

  I was afraid to hope. “Pray,” I said.

  Hours of aimless drifting were succeeded by minutes of fearsome activity. “Pull! Pull harder!” It seemed everyone was shouting at once.

  The reality of the phantom shape was revealed. It was some kind of cargo ship, smaller than Newcastle, with a single smokestack rising from its middle. As I watched, its outline changed from rectangle to inverted triangle as its bow swung toward us.

  “They’ve seen us,” Podlaski shouted. “What did I tell you? Keep coming! Keep coming!”

  The wind was blowing from the direction of the rescue ship toward us. I heard the thrum of its engines and the rattle of machinery.

  “Hello! We’re here! Here!” the boys cried.

  “Save your breath,” the officer said. “But if you have something to wave, now’s the time.”

  Instantly Number 7 became a float in the Lord Mayor’s Day Parade. Coats and hats and Connor’s pocket handkerchief erupted, festooning the boat in joyful anticipation.

  We drew closer together. The bulk of the ship loomed larger and larger. Pale oval shapes lining the railing far above the level of our view almost, but not quite, resolved into faces.

  Then I saw the oncoming form change from triangle to rectangle again. Next the ship showed us the bluff squareness of its stern and the words SS Festung—Hamburg.

  Then, despite all our efforts at rowing against the wind, the ship dwindled into the mist and disappeared.

  “What happened?”

  “How could they not see us?”

  “Why didn’t you pull harder?” This criticism was from Podlaski.

  “Aren’t we rescued, Aunt Elisa?”

  “They couldn’t have missed us,” the playwright said bitterly. “They left us here on purpose. Why?”

  “Nazis,” Browne said. “A sub-tender. A supply ship for the submarines. Stow the oars. That’s enough exercise for now.”

  A low keening cry from the bow of our refuge.

  “It’s all right, Aunt Mariah,” Connor said. “There’ll be another ship soon. You’ll see. We’ll be rescued soon.”

  Dully, Mariah corrected, “It’s Patsy. She’s dead.”

  The rain and low-hanging shroud of clouds did not relent until the early morning hours of our second day adrift. The seas continued piling up hills and digging valleys. Half of us were seasick. I think all of us were heartsick.

  Another dawn finally came. The clouds lifted off the water, but not off of our spirits. The endless parade of rolling swells finally subsided. It was time to think about living again.

  On the morning of our second day aboard Number 7 I took stock of our situation. We were entirely alone on the Atlantic. There were twenty-seven people crammed aboard the lifeboat built for a maximum of tw
enty-two: two British members of Newcastle’s complement, two male passengers, eight lascar crewmen, six boys, three girls, three women…and three dead bodies.

  There were so many issues we faced: Would we be rescued soon? If we weren’t immediately picked up, what could we do to rescue ourselves? In the crowded conditions, all of us suffered from cramps. Our hands and feet felt pickled. We were unable to get clear of the water sloshing around the bilges. Our fingers and toes stayed numb.

  Robert, the youngest of the boys, cried with the pain, though I rubbed and rubbed him. Peter was likewise suffering, but he bit his lip to bear it in silence. What could we do to relieve the aches?

  Yet none of these are the reason I teared up that morning.

  The biggest crisis was what to do with the bodies of Patsy and her two children.

  Raquel and I avoided looking at Mariah’s face. I feared for her life. She had invested so much hope, so much of her energy believing they would be rescued, that having them die anyway seemed to have utterly destroyed her. If we were picked up today, at least her loved ones could be taken back to Ireland for a proper burial.

  How long should we wait to even raise the issue?

  Mariah herself delivered us from our dilemma. Shaking her head, as if coming awake from a bad dream, she murmured, “Leastways I got them back for a little while, so I don’t have to wonder about their fate. Perhaps some of youse carry that heavy burden on your hearts right now.”

  I thought then of my evacuee girls. Had they made it off Newcastle before she went down? Had their lifeboat survived its launching? Were they safe? Had they already been rescued, or were they adrift somewhere even as we?

  Mariah continued, “Patsy loved the sea. She’s been talkin’ for years of leavin’ for America. This spot is as close to America as she’s goin’ to get in this life, so let her and her wee’uns be buried right here.”

  Her request awakened my memory. In my pocket was the copy of the Book of Common Prayer. In it was the burial service. I passed the book to Officer Browne.

  “I am the Resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

  With these words Harold Browne began the memorial. He brushed his graying moustache with his index finger and cleared his throat.