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Josef tried to hang on to the chair, but his father was still strong enough to yank it out of his hands. Papa stacked it on the tower of furniture he’d already piled up against the door.
“We can’t let them back in!” Papa cried. “They’ll come for us again and take us away!”
It had taken Josef and his mother a night and a day to put their cabin back together after Otto Schiendick and his goons had torn the place up. But in the span of fifteen minutes his father had undone it all again, snatching up anything that wasn’t nailed down and stacking it against the door.
Ruthie crouched in the corner, crying and hugging Bitsy. Josef’s mother had sewed the stuffed bunny back together first thing, before Ruthie had seen it headless.
“Aaron. Aaron!” Josef’s mother said now. “You have to calm down!
You’re scaring your daughter!”
He was scaring Josef too. Josef stared at his father. This skeleton, this crazed ghost, this wasn’t his father. The Nazis had taken his father away
and replaced him with a madman.
“You don’t understand,” Josef’s father said. “You can’t know what they did to people. What they’ll do to us!”
Papa threw an open suitcase on the pile, spilling clothes all over the room. When he’d put everything he could on the barricade, he crawled under the desk at the back of the room like a child playing hide-and-seek.
Mama looked frightened as she tried to figure out what to do. “Ruthie,” she said at last, “put your swimsuit on and go to the pool.”
“I don’t want to go swimming,” Ruthie said, still crying in the corner. “Do as I say,” Mama said.
Ruthie pulled herself away from the wall and picked through the clothes on the floor for her swimsuit.
“Josef,” Mama said, low enough for just him to hear her, “I’m going to go to the ship’s doctor for a sleeping draught for your father. Something to calm him. I’ll take Ruthie to the pool, but I need you to stay here and watch your father.”
Papa was still curled into a ball under the desk, rocking and muttering to himself. The idea of being here alone with him filled Josef with dread.
“But if the doctor knows he’s unwell, they might not let us into Cuba,” Josef whispered, desperate to find some reason to keep his mother with him.
“I’ll tell the doctor I’m anxious and haven’t been sleeping,” Mama said. “I’ll tell him the draught is for me.”
Josef’s mother helped Ruthie finish putting her swimsuit on, and together they were able to pull the haphazard pile of furniture far enough away from the door to open it. Josef’s father, who’d been so set on building the barricade just minutes before, was so lost in his own mind he didn’t even notice.
Josef didn’t know what to do with himself, so he started to put the room back together. Papa stayed quiet and still under the desk. Josef hoped he had gone to sleep. Mama came back within minutes, and Josef felt an immense sense of relief—until he saw the dull, panicked look Mama wore, and he got scared all over again. She stumbled as she entered the cabin like she couldn’t remember how to walk, and Josef hurried to help her to one of the beds.
“Mama, what is it? What’s wrong?” Josef asked.
“I—I told the doctor the sleeping draught was for me,” she said, her words slow, “and he made me—he made me take it right there.”
“You drank it?” Josef said.
His mother’s eyelids fluttered. “I had to,” she said. “After I told him— after I told him … Couldn’t let him know Aaron was really the one who … ”
Mama’s eyelids closed, and she swayed.
Josef panicked. She couldn’t go to sleep. Not now. How was he supposed to take care of his father? He couldn’t do this alone!
“Mama! Don’t go to sleep!”
Her eyes jerked open again, but they had lost their focus.
“Your sister,” she said. “Don’t forget … your sister … she’s at the pool
… ”
Her eyes flickered closed again, and she rolled back onto the bed.
“No. No no no no no,” Josef said. He tried patting his mother on the cheeks to wake her up, but she was out cold.
Josef got up and paced the room, trying to think. With his mother asleep, he had to watch his father every second. Josef glanced at him under the desk. Papa was quiet now, but the slightest thing could set him off. Josef couldn’t go for help anyway. If anyone knew his father was unwell, he’d be
barred from entering Cuba. But Josef also had to go get Ruthie at some point, and make sure she got dinner and was put to bed.
Suddenly, Josef was the man of the family—the only adult in the family
—whether he wanted to be or not.
“Have you ever seen a man drown?” Papa asked in a whisper, and Josef jumped. Josef wasn’t sure if Papa was talking to him, or just talking, but he was afraid to answer, afraid to break the quiet spell his father was under.
His father kept talking.
“After the evening roll call, they would choose someone to drown. One every night. They would tie his ankles together and his hands behind his back and tie a gag around his mouth, and then they would hang him upside down, with his head in a barrel. Like a fish. Like a big fish on the pier, hanging upside down by its tail. Then they would fill the barrel with water. Slowly. So they could enjoy the panic. So they could laugh. And then the water would rise high enough to cover his nose, and he would breathe in water because there was nothing else he could do. He would breathe in water like a fish. Only he wasn’t a fish. He was a man. He would thrash around and breathe water until he drowned. Drowned upside down.”
Josef’s breathing stilled. He caught himself hugging Ruthie’s stuffed bunny tight.
“Every night they did it, and we all had to stand and watch,” his father whispered. “We had to stand and watch, and we couldn’t say a word, couldn’t move a muscle, or we would be next.”
Tears rolled down Josef’s cheeks. He thought about how he’d treated his father at the Cuban doctor’s examination. How he’d made his father believe he was back in that place, where he’d seen so many awful things.
“I can’t go back there,” his father whispered. “Can’t go back.”
His father closed his eyes and put his head between his knees, and soon he was asleep. Josef sat with his sleeping parents until the cabin started to get dark and he couldn’t put off finding Ruthie any longer. He would just have to be as quick as he could.
Josef left the cabin and found his sister splashing around in the pool with the other kids. Josef asked a steward to bring their dinners to their cabin tonight, and as he led Ruthie back he congratulated himself on surviving his first day as an adult.
Until he opened the door and his father was gone.
Josef dropped Ruthie’s hand and got down on his hands and knees to search under the beds, but his father wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the cabin at all.
“No. No!” Josef cried. He shook his mother, begged her to wake up, but the sleeping draught was too powerful. Josef spun in the room, trying to figure out what to do.
He snatched up Bitsy and put the little stuffed bunny into Ruthie’s arms. “Stay here,” he told Ruthie. “Stay here with Mama, and don’t leave the
cabin. Understand? I’ve got to go find Papa.”
Josef ran out the door and into the passageway. But where to now? Where would his father go? Papa hadn’t left the cabin the whole trip, and now he had decided to leave?
Josef heard a commotion, and he sprinted up the stairs to A-deck. Up ahead, a man was helping a woman to her feet, and both of them were looking angrily over their shoulders, the direction Papa must have run.
And that’s when Josef remembered: His father had left the cabin before.
To watch them bury Professor Weiler at sea.
Somewhere up ahead, a woman screamed, and Josef took off at a run. He felt as though he was outside himself, like he existed outside his own
skin, and he watched himself slam into the rail and look over the side. Someone yelled, “Man overboard!” and the ship’s siren shrieked. Josef’s father had jumped into the sea.
