They didn’t believe it at first, when the locals told them the sea was infested with great whites. But then they saw the headlines in the paper—SHARK ATTACK, DEATH TOLL RISES—and began spotting shadows beneath the water’s surface from the bow of the Alsina, long and gray like submarines. On the beach, sharp, heart-shaped teeth washed up by the dozens, pricking the soles of their feet if they weren’t careful where they stepped.
“Me, too. Shall we tempt the fate, as the Americans say?” Addy smiles, thinking of the night, two and a half years ago, that he’d learned the expression. He’d been at a cabaret in Montmartre, and had taken a seat beside a saxophonist who turned out to be from Harlem. Willie. Addy remembers the conversation well. He’d told Willie that his father had lived for a short stint in the States—an adventure that has always intrigued Addy to no end—and had peppered poor Willie with endless questions about life in New York. Hours later, to Addy’s great amusement, Willie offered up a few of his distinctly American idioms, which Addy scribbled in his notebook. Tempt fate, break a leg, and close but no cigar were among his favorites.
Eliska laughs, shakes her head. “‘Tempt the fate’? Did you get that one right?” she asks. Addy is obsessed with his American sayings and is reluctant to admit to butchering them on occasion.
“Probably not. But what do you say, shall we?”
“I will if you will,” Eliska says, narrowing her eyes at him as if daring him to accept the offer.
Addy shakes his head, marveling at the ease with which Eliska is able to laugh off danger. Aside from complaining about the heat, she hasn’t seemed fazed by their two month detour in Dakar. He turns to her, blowing playfully into the blonde hair over her ear and studying her scalp as his mother used to study the skin of the chickens at the market in Radom. “You look just right,” he says, cupping his hand into the shape of a c. “It’s supper time. I bet the sharks are hungry.” He clamps down on Eliska’s knee.
“Netvor!” Eliska shrieks, slapping his hand away.
Addy catches her hand. “Netvor! This is new.”
“Tu es un netvor,” she says. “Un monstre! Tu comprends?” They speak French together, but Eliska has been teaching Addy a dozen or so Czech words a day.
“Monstre?” Addy banters. “That was nothing, Bebette!” He wraps his arms around her, biting her ear as they roll backward, their heads landing softly on the sand.
They’d discovered the beach two weeks before. The fresh air and seclusion are heavenly. The others from the ship aren’t brave enough to venture so far off on their own, and the locals don’t seem to have much interest in the beach. “What with their dark skin and all, why would they?” Eliska once quipped, prompting Addy to ask her if she’d ever seen a black person before. Like many of the others aboard the Alsina, until she set foot in Dakar, she hadn’t. Most of the Alsina’s European refugees refused, in fact, to converse with the West Africans, a behavior Addy found absurd. Racism, after all—the very root of Nazi ideology—was the reason most of them had fled Europe.
“Why wouldn’t I want to get know the Africans?” he’d asked, when Eliska questioned why he thought it necessary to mingle with the locals. “We’re no better than them. And besides,” he’d added, “the people are everything—they’re how you come to know a place.” Since they arrived, he’d befriended several of the shopkeepers who manned the stores lining the harbor, even bartered with one—a photo of Judy Garland torn from a magazine left by a passenger in the Alsina’s first-class lounge for a colorful string bracelet that Addy had tied around Eliska’s wrist.
Addy checks his watch, stands, and pulls Eliska to her feet.
“It’s time already?” Eliska pouts.
“Oui, ma cherie.”
They carry their shoes as they make their way back down the beach in the direction from which they’d come.
“I hate leaving this place.” Eliska sighs.
“I know. But we can’t afford to be late.” They’d talked a sentry into giving special permission to disembark the Alsina between noon and six in the evening. If they broke curfew, the privilege would be revoked.
“How is Madame Lowbeer today?” Addy asks as they walk.
Eliska chuckles. “La Grande Dame! She’s . . . how do you say it . . . a bourru. A curmudgeon.”
In the past month, Eliska’s mother has made it quite clear that there is nothing acceptable about Addy courting her daughter. It hasn’t anything to do with the fact that he’s Jewish, Eliska assures him—the Lowbeers are Jewish, too, after all—it’s that he’s a Pole, and in Magdaléna’s mind, her Swiss boarding school–educated and bright-futured daughter is far too good for a Pole. Addy is determined to win over Madame Lowbeer, though, and has gone out of his way to treat with her nothing but the utmost respect and deference.
“Don’t worry about my mother,” Eliska sniffs. “She doesn’t like anyone. She’ll come around. Just give it some time. The circumstances are a bit . . . étrange, wouldn’t you say?”
“I suppose,” Addy says, although he’s never met a soul who didn’t like him.
They walk slowly, enjoying the open space around them, chatting about music and films and favorite foods. Eliska reminisces about growing up in Czechoslovakia, about her best friend, Lorena, from the international school in Geneva, about her summers in Provence; Addy talks about his favorite cafés in Paris, his dream to visit New York City and the jazz clubs in Harlem, to hear some of the greats in person. It feels good to converse like this, in a way that they might have before their worlds were turned upside down.
“What do you miss the most about life before the war?” Eliska asks, looking up at him as they walk.
Addy doesn’t hesitate. “Chocolate! The dark kind, from Switzerland,” he beams. The Alsina had depleted its supply of chocolate weeks ago. Eliska laughs.
“And you?” Addy asks. “What do you miss the most?”
“I miss my friend Lorena. I could tell her anything. I suppose I still do in my letters, but it’s not the same in writing.”