Josef was scared for Officer Padron, but he shared the passengers’ frustration. Why had Dr. Aber been able to take Renata and Evelyne off and none of the rest of them could go? It wasn’t fair! Josef clenched his fists and began to shake. Then he realized it wasn’t him that was doing the shaking. It was the metal deck of the ship.
The ship’s engines were rumbling to life for the first time since they had dropped anchor. Which could mean only one thing: The St. Louis was going home to Germany, and they were all going with it.
Without a word from anyone, the passengers rushed the top of the ladder as one.
Officer Padron drew his pistol, and Josef gasped.
“Paren!” the policeman cried. “Halt!” He swept the gun back and forth, and the other policemen drew their pistols and did the same. The angry passengers pulled back but didn’t run away. Josef’s heart was in his throat. Any second now the mob was going to attack the policemen, Josef knew it. They would rather die than be sent back to Germany. Back to Hitler.
The ship’s first officer and the purser arrived and threw themselves in between the guards and the angry crowd. They begged for everyone to remain calm, but no one listened. As the vibrations of the ship’s engines below grew louder and more insistent, more people rushed to the ladder to demand to be let off the ship. Josef was caught in the middle now. If the mob pushed forward into the guns of the policemen, Josef would have no choice but to push with them.
It was hot—well over a hundred degrees on deck already—and the temperature of the crowd was rising. Josef was a ball of sweat, and the close-packed mob only made things worse. The situation was just about to boil over when a small white man in a gray suit climbed up the ladder behind the policemen. It was Captain Schroeder! But Josef wondered why was he out of uniform. And why had he been off the ship?
For a moment the mob was so surprised it stopped surging forward. Captain Schroeder was surprised too. As soon as he saw the angry crowd and the guns drawn, he lost his temper. He yelled at the policemen to lower their weapons or he would order them off the ship, and at last they obeyed.
“Why have the engines started?” one of the passengers yelled.
“Tell us what’s happening!”
Captain Schroeder put his hands in the air and called for calm so that he could explain. He took off his hat and mopped his brow with his handkerchief. “I have just been to see President Brú, to appeal to him personally for you to be allowed to disembark,” the captain said. “But he would not see me.”
There were dark mutterings among the passengers, and Josef felt himself getting angrier. What was going on? Why had the Cubans promised the passengers they would let them in, only to turn them away now?
“Worse,” Captain Schroeder said, “the Cuban government has ordered us to leave the harbor by tomorrow morning.”
Leave by tomorrow? Josef thought. And go where? And what about his father? Would he be leaving with them?
Cries of anger came from the passengers, and Josef joined in. The first officer had disappeared briefly, but now returned with more sailors in case there was violence.
Josef wondered if he should bring his mother to hear this news, but he knew she was in their cabin, most likely in bed, crying. She blamed herself for her husband’s suicide attempt, and in the last two days she had become, in a way, as absent a parent as Josef’s father.
No, Josef was the one who needed to be here right now. For his mother and for Ruthie.
Captain Schroeder called for quiet again. “We are not going home. We will cruise the American coast and make appeals to President Roosevelt. If any of you have friends or family in the States, I beg you to ask them to exert what influence they can. No matter what, I assure you: I will do everything in my power to arrange a landing outside Germany. Hope must always remain. Now please, go back to your cabins. I must return to the bridge to make the ship ready for our departure.”
The crowd mobbed the captain as he tried to leave C-deck, the passengers pushing and shoving their way around Josef. Josef fought his way to the passenger who had translated for Officer Padron the other day and pulled him to where the policemen stood.
“What about my father?” Josef asked Officer Padron through the translator.
“I saw him in the hospital,” the policeman told Josef. “He’s not well enough to come to the ship.”
“Then can we go to him instead?” Josef asked.
The policeman looked pained. “I’m sorry, Little Man. You cannot leave the ship.”
“But the ship is leaving,” Josef said. He could feel the pulsing engines under his feet. “We can’t leave my father behind.”
“I wish from the bottom of my heart that you will land soon, Little Man,” Officer Padron said again. “I’m sorry. I’m just doing my job.”
Josef looked deep into Officer Padron’s eyes, searching for some sign of help, some hint of sympathy. Officer Padron just looked away.
Josef was still standing there in the hot Cuban sun when, right before lunch, the policemen left on a launch. Officer Padron still wouldn’t look at him. Once the little boat was clear, the MS St. Louis blew its horn, raised its anchor, and left Havana Harbor, destination unknown.
As he stood at the rail with the rest of the passengers saying a tearful good-bye to the only place that had ever promised them refuge, Josef said good-bye to his father as well. He took his shirt collar in both hands and ripped it along the seam, rending his garment as he’d done when Professor Weiler had been buried at sea.
Josef knew Papa was still alive, but it didn’t matter. His father was dead to his family. And so, Josef realized, was their dream of joining him in Cuba.
The night sky was so clear Isabel could see the Milky Way.
Her gaze was on the stars, but she wasn’t really looking at them. She wasn’t really looking at anything. Her eyes were blurry from tears. Next to her, Se?ora Castillo sobbed in her husband’s arms, her shoulders heaving. Like Isabel, she had been crying ever since Iván died. Se?or Castillo stared out over his wife’s head, his eyes vacant. Luis kicked out at the silent engine, rattling the bolts that held it down. He buried his face in his hands, and Amara hugged him tight.
Iván was dead. Isabel couldn’t grasp it. One minute he had been alive, talking to them, laughing with them, and the next he was dead. Lifeless. Like every other Cuban who had ever died trying to get to el norte by sea. But Iván wasn’t some nameless, faceless person. He was Iván. Her Iván. He was her friend.
And he was dead.
Isabel’s eyes drifted down to where Iván’s body lay, but she still didn’t look right at him. Couldn’t. Even though Papi had taken down the shirt he’d draped over Mami to shade her and laid it across Iván’s face, Isabel couldn’t bear to look.
She knew Iván’s face. His smile. She wanted to think of him that way.
Lito sang a low, sad song, and Isabel retreated into the arms of her mother and father. The three of them huddled together, as if what happened to Iván might happen to them too if they came too close to his body. But the real threat was the sinking boat and the sharks that still circled it, following the trail of bloody water that started at Isabel’s feet.