The next morning, the ship docked at a pier in Antwerp, Belgium. Negotiations between Captain Schroeder and the four countries still took time, and it was a full day later when, under the grim portrait of Adolf Hitler, Josef and his family joined the other passengers in the social hall again to find out where they would be going.
Representatives from the four countries sat at a long table at the front of the hall, arguing over which passengers each would take. Every country wanted only the passengers with the best chances of getting accepted by America, so they could ship the refugees back out as quickly as possible.
Josef hoped they would get England, because it was the farthest away from Nazi Germany, safe across the English Channel. But when everything was settled, he and his family were assigned to France. They would be among the third group to disembark—after the Jewish refugees going to Belgium and the Netherlands were delivered, but before the last group sailed for Great Britain.
The first group left that afternoon.
Josef watched with most of the other passengers as the refugees going to Belgium disembarked. Josef didn’t want to go to Belgium, but he was jealous nonetheless. Like everybody else, he was ready to get off this ship.
“Think of it—we traveled ten thousand miles on board the St. Louis,” one of the men leaving for Belgium told the other passengers as he stepped onto the gangplank, “only to end up three hundred miles from where we started!”
The line got a laugh, but a sad one. Josef was all too aware of the long shadow cast by Nazi Germany, and so was everyone else. Still, as long as the Nazis stayed in Germany, they would all be safe. Wouldn’t they?
The next day, 181 passengers disembarked in the city of Rotterdam, even though Holland wouldn’t let the St. Louis dock at their pier, just like in Havana. The refugees were taken into town by another ship and escorted by police boats.
As they sailed on to France, Josef wandered the decks. The ship had a strange, empty feeling to it. Half the passengers were gone. The morning they arrived in Boulogne, France, the 288 passengers who were traveling on to England gathered on C-deck to say farewell to Josef and the others who were disembarking.
“We’re due into England tomorrow,” Josef heard one of them say. “June twenty-first. That’s exactly forty days and forty nights in a boat. Now, where have I heard that story before?”
Josef smiled, remembering the story of Noah from the Torah. But he felt less like Noah and more like Moses, wandering in the desert for forty years before reaching the Promised Land. Was that France? The Promised Land, at last? Josef could only pray it was. He picked up his suitcase in one hand, took Ruthie’s hand with his other, and led her and their mother down the ramp into Boulogne.
“You see?” Mama said. “I told you somebody would think of something. Now, stay close, and don’t lose your coats.”
At the bottom of the ramp, Josef watched as one of the other passengers got down on his hands and knees and kissed the ground. If he hadn’t had his hands full, Josef might have done the same thing.
The secretary general of the French Refugee Assistance Committee officially welcomed them to France, and the porters on the docks moved quickly to carry the passengers’ luggage for them, refusing any and all tips offered.
Maybe this was the Promised Land after all.
Josef and his mother and sister spent the night in a hotel in Boulogne, and then they were taken by train to Le Mans, where they were put up in a cheap lodging house. Days passed, and life went on. Josef’s mother got work doing other people’s laundry. Ruthie went to kindergarten at last, and Josef went to school for the first time in months—but because he couldn’t speak French they put him in the first grade. Thirteen years old—a man!—and they put him in a classroom with seven-year-olds! It was humiliating. Josef promised himself he would learn to speak French over the summer, or die trying.
He never got the chance. Two months later, Germany invaded Poland, touching off a new world war.
Eight months after that, Germany invaded France, and Josef and his mother and sister were on the run again.
Isabel’s mother cried out. “It’s coming— it’s coming!”
Isabel didn’t know if she meant the baby, or the Coast Guard ship.
Or both.
“Paddle!” Amara cried.
Isabel paddled harder. She could see the shore, could see the beach umbrellas folded up for the night but still stuck in the sand. Strings of lights. Palm trees. More music—a salsa now. It was all so close!
But so was the Coast Guard ship. It bore down on them, its red light flashing, its powerful motor thrumming, water sluicing from its bow.
Isabel’s heart hammered. It was going to catch them. They weren’t going to make it!
Lito froze. “It’s happening again,” he said.
“What? What do you mean?” Isabel asked, panting.
“When I was a young man, I was a policeman,” Lito said, his eyes wild. “There was a ship—a ship full of Jews, from Europe. And we sent them back. I sent them back! Sent them back to die when we could so easily have taken them in! It was all politics, but they were people. Real people. I met them. I knew them by name.”
“I don’t understand,” Isabel said. What did her grandfather’s story have to do with anything?
“Paddle!” Isabel’s father cried. The Coast Guard boat was almost on top of them.
“Don’t you see?” Lito said. “The Jewish people on the ship were seeking asylum, just like us. They needed a place to hide from Hitler. From the Nazis. Ma?ana, we told them. We’ll let you in ma?ana. But we never did.” Lito was crying now, distraught. “We sent them back to Europe and Hitler and the Holocaust. Back to their deaths. How many of them died because we turned them away? Because I was just doing my job?”
Isabel didn’t know what ship her grandfather was talking about, but she knew about the Holocaust from school. The millions of European Jews who had been murdered by the Nazis. And now her grandfather was saying that a ship full of Jewish refugees had come to Cuba when he was a young man? That he had helped to send them away?
Ma?ana. Suddenly, Isabel understood why her grandfather had been whispering that word over and over again for days. Why it haunted him.
When would the Jews be let into Cuba? Ma?ana.
When would their boat reach America? Ma?ana.
Ma?ana had never come for the Jewish people on that ship, Isabel realized. Would ma?ana never come for Isabel and her family either?
A calm came over Lito, as though he’d come to some sort of understanding, some decision. “I see it now, Chabela. All of it. The past, the present, the future. All my life, I kept waiting for things to get better. For the bright promise of ma?ana. But a funny thing happened while I was waiting for the world to change, Chabela: It didn’t. Because I didn’t change it. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice. Take care of your mother and baby brother for me.”
“Lito, what are you—?”
“Don’t stop rowing for shore!” Isabel’s grandfather yelled to everyone else. He kissed Isabel on the cheek, surprising her, and then stood and jumped into the ocean.
“Lito!” Isabel cried. “Lito!”