The cabin boy pretends to understand. He doesn’t ask any questions, but rather looks at Kubis expectantly, as though awaiting instructions. Silence, when coming from a child, is usually interpreted by adults as understanding. Or, at worst, fear. It is a trick he has used every day since coming to work aboard the Hindenburg. He watches and listens and inevitably gets the answers he’s looking for without ever having to ask.
Kubis points at the basket. “There’s a brush and a rag and a tin of wax at the bottom. You will shine those shoes and you will do a damn good job. Understand?”
The boy doesn’t trust his voice enough to say more than the minimum. “Yes.”
Werner has worked on board the Hindenburg for seven months and never once has he been asked to perform this task. When Heinrich Kubis hired him last year this was not listed among his job duties. And yet here he is, pulled from a sound sleep and given the chief steward’s work to do. If he were a man he would punch Kubis right in his knobby Adam’s apple. But he’s little more than a boy, so he blinks back tears instead.
Kubis is gone without so much as a word of further instruction. Not that Werner needs it, of course. He has been shining shoes for his father since he was three years old. He looks at the basket. It is brimming—probably ten pairs—and he slumps to the carpeted steps, defeated. His feet are cold, and, the longer he sits there, so is his rear end. The Franz men are not known for having a well-padded posterior, and he is no exception.
Werner winds the pocket watch and sets it on the step next to him. The gentle ticking is a comfort, and the tarnished face reminds him of his grandfather. It is neither gold nor silver but rich and heavy pewter, a family heirloom given to Werner by his father the night before his first voyage on the Hindenburg. The glass is scratched and clouded, but the numbers are clear and dark, written in the Roman style. He looks at the time and cringes.
Receiving the watch was a rite of passage, an acknowledgment that he had begun the journey toward manhood. It has traditionally passed from father to oldest son, but his brother insisted that Werner had earned the right to the watch when he gained his position on the Hindenburg. So they had gathered in the tiny apartment—his parents, grandfather, and brother—and eaten an elaborate meal they could not afford. His father presented the watch to him with great pomp and circumstance—and no small amount of pride—while his mother played Eddie Rosner on the record player, the trumpet vibrant and celebratory to mark the occasion. Werner has carried the watch with him on every flight since and set it beside him every time he feels lost or lonely or afraid. The watch gives him courage. He draws from it now.
Each pair of shoes has a paper tab tied to the laces indicating the deck and room number. Werner hasn’t been given specific instructions, but he would guess it falls to him to return the shoes once they have been shined. He’d rather throw them in the trash and go back to bed than touch a single one of them. The first night of any voyage is always the hardest—so much excitement and adrenaline and so many things that need adjustment—and he feels the exhaustion most acutely in his shins. It’s an odd place, granted, but he has been on his feet all day; he is still growing, and all of the strain in his body has settled into that one stretch of bone. When he makes such complaints to his mother she laughs and says he is afflicted with a galloping pain. “Today your wrist, tomorrow your leg,” she says, but she always brings him warm milk with sugar and vanilla and rubs his back until his eyes are heavy and his muscles have relaxed. Werner is usually so caught up in this grand adventure—the travel and the work—that he does not miss his family. But he has such an acute longing to be back home with them at this moment that he has to compose himself by wiping tears and snot on the sleeve of his pajamas.
Werner looks at the watch and thinks of his father, sick and bedridden in their shabby one-bedroom flat in Frankfurt, a man who would give anything to be able to work, and reprimands himself for acting like a child. So what if the task costs him an hour or two of sleep? He’s making a wage and he can help his family. His mother and father are sleeping all the better tonight because of this job. Werner shakes his head, growls a bit to clear his mind, then gets to work. Best to get the task over with.