The Ocean Liner

Le Havre

Up on the bridge, the captain of the Manhattan, Commodore Albert Randall, was thinking about the Athenia, a thirteen-thousand-tonner of the White Star Line, built in Glasgow, with all the latest navigation equipment, torpedoed at night in the Western Approaches on the first day of the war.

He, who had himself been torpedoed by a German submarine in the last war, and had barely escaped with his life, could imagine the scene all too well. The screams of terror, the surge of water into the engine room, the inevitable slide into the depths. And then the chaos in the lifeboats, some sucked into the Athenia’s own churning propellers, others capsizing in the heavy seas. Passengers crushed against the hull, drowned in the icy water, freezing to death in their flimsy nightgowns. The brave crew sacrificing their own lives for those who’d bought hundred-dollar tickets.

It was, if nothing else, an indication of how this war was going to go. No quarter asked or given.

A large, bluff man with a determined chin, Commodore Randall had seen his share of maritime disasters and had played a gallant role in many of them. He’d saved the 274 passengers of the Powhatan in 1920. Then there had been the schooner Reine de Mers in 1922, foundering amid mountainous seas off Newfoundland; and the Coast Guard cutter blown out to sea in a gale in 1924 off Nantucket. The crews of both those vessels owed their lives to him. And there had been a dozen rescues since.

As a result of these actions, he had been given the soubriquet ‘Rescue’ Randall. He was proud of the fact that his name was known to thousands and was seldom mentioned in the press without the word heroic attached to it. Though cultivating a reputation for modesty, he relished his fame and he knew how to capitalise on it. He liked being – like Manhattan herself – an emblem of American derring-do and enterprise in a world which he felt was sliding into darkness.

However, he didn’t want any dramatics on this trip. Especially not since it was his last crossing, with a well-earned retirement at the end of it. And especially not with the distinguished passenger list he would be carrying. He had been applying his mind to avoiding the fate of the Athenia. There would be an unmistakable message to port and starboard. He stood at the window, solid as a polar bear, and looked down with satisfaction at the hoardings which had been erected on either side of the Manhattan’s hull.

Arturo Toscanini stood on the quayside, leaning on his cane among the bustle of stevedores and longshoremen, looking up at the great bulk of the Manhattan, which towered above him like a cliff face. She was the largest ship ever built in the United States, over seven hundred feet long. On each side was a hoarding painted with American flags and the legend:

The idea, Toscanini presumed, was that this message, visible across miles of ocean, would deter German submarines from torpedoing the ship, as they had done with the unfortunate Athenia. He was not so certain that any such compunction would hinder the Nazis. Thinking back over his long and bruising battle with Mussolini, much of it fought in the sacred precincts of La Scala, he could not recall a single occasion when mercy had been shown – or conscience, or compassion, or generosity of spirit.

His dearest friends had been driven into exile, had thrown themselves out of windows, had endured arrest and torture. He himself had been beaten in the street by Mussolini’s thugs. He had seen his country sink into a welter of brutality and bombast. Longing for Italy as he was, he could no longer go home without risking his life.

It would be ironic if he were to meet his fate at the hands of a U-boat crew. In May of 1915, he had been booked on the Lusitania, but had cut short his schedule at the Met and chugged home early on an old Italian steamer. He’d arrived in Italy to hear that the swift and glittering Lusitania had been sunk by a German submarine, with the loss of twelve hundred lives. Someone else had died in his cabin.

‘Good morning, maestro!’

A dapper man, he tipped his fedora to the group of excited women who had recognised him. Doing so revealed that although the famous, curled-up moustaches were still dark, his hair was now white and sparse. He was used to being recognised. His portrait had been put up in every shop window. He had been hailed as the age’s greatest conductor. Complete strangers greeted him, though sometimes (overexcitedly) as ‘Mr Wagner’ or ‘Mr Beethoven.’

Toscanini pulled his fob watch out of his waistcoat pocket and consulted it. It was past noon. He hurried up the gangplank, back on to the Manhattan, where he made his way to the ship’s radio telegraph office. It was crowded with passengers frantic for news of wives, husbands, children, lovers. The postmaster spotted Toscanini’s diminutive figure behind the wall of customers at the counter. He waved the conductor over and leaned down to murmur through the gap under the glass window.

‘Very sorry, Mr Toscanini. There’s nothing for you today.’

‘Sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘Thank you.’ Toscanini tipped his hat, hiding his dismay. He felt faint as he pushed his way out through the throng. Where was she? Why had she not sent word?

Outside the telegraph office he pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his brow. He ached for Carla’s steadying hand on his arm.

Communications with Lucerne were wretched now. They had stayed far too long in Kastanienbaum, lulled by the autumn beauty of the lake, shutting their ears to the rumble of mobilising and approaching conflict. War had surprised them.

He’d rushed on ahead to secure their passage on the Manhattan; Carla was due to have followed, but days had passed and he had heard nothing from her. He did not even know if she had left Switzerland. For all he knew, she was still in Kastanienbaum, closer to Munich than to Paris.

Ancient creatures they were now, he and Carla, married forty-two years. Like two old trees, bent by storms and beaten by suns, that leaned on one another for support. She had told him to leave without her if she did not make it to Le Havre. But he could not leave France without her. If Carla did not arrive in time, he would renounce their cabin and wait for her. And who knew when the next passenger ship would sail for America? Perhaps Manhattan was the last.

He stared out across the harbour. Le Havre was a gracious city, extending around the bay in pleasant sunshine. What would be left of it when the Germans had done with it, he wondered? Short-sighted as he was, he could see that the port was busy, crowded with ships of all sizes, loading and unloading, the black hulls streaked with rust. The banks of cranes swung to and fro against the pale blue sky. There was a frenetic haste to everything these days, a scramble, a stampede.

Toscanini noticed two of the ship’s officers standing at either end of the deck, scanning the skies with binoculars. They were keeping watch for German warplanes, he realised, which might appear at any moment, spewing bullets and bombs. He felt sick. Grasping his cane, he stumbled down the companionway.

In their cabin that evening, Masha and Rachel Morgenstern were exchanging confidences as they prepared for dinner. There was much about one another that they did not as yet know, but they wanted very much to be friends, intimate with each other.

‘Have you ever been in love?’ Masha asked Rachel shyly.

‘I can see from your face that you have, my dear cousin.’

Disconcerted, Masha turned her back quickly on Rachel. ‘Can you fasten my hooks?’

Rachel smiled to herself ironically as she obliged her cousin. ‘Who is it? Some nice, serious young man selected by Rabbi Moskovitz?’

‘Not exactly.’

Rachel could see the skin at the back of Masha’s neck flushing pink among the soft curls. ‘Not exactly? What, exactly? Don’t keep me in suspense.’

When Masha turned, the flush had spread all across her pretty face. ‘It’s not much of a story.’

‘I am breathless with anticipation,’ Rachel replied. ‘I must know everything.’

Masha sat on the bunk, laughing awkwardly. ‘You’ll be very disappointed then, because it all came to nothing. I’m too ashamed to even tell you.’

‘Do you want me to resort to Gestapo methods?’

Masha clasped her hands in her lap. ‘Well, then. When I was seventeen, I had a beau.’

‘I knew it! Proceed.’

‘He was a young man called Rudi Hufnagel. He was in the Navy, in the Ubootwaffe. He came to see me every weekend in Berlin.’

Rachel raised her eyebrows. ‘A Gentile?’

‘An Aryan.’

‘What did your parents say?’

‘At first they were all against it. But Rudi was so polite, so charming – and so glamorous in his uniform! He had been all over the world, even to America. I think they fell in love with him quite as deeply as I did.’

‘He must indeed have been a seductive fellow,’ Rachel said dryly.

‘Oh, no, you have the wrong idea completely. He was absolutely honourable.’

‘He didn’t take you to bed?’

‘How can you ask me such a thing?’ Masha demanded indignantly.

‘Well, it has been known,’ Rachel said, ‘from time to time in human history.’

‘That was not the case with us!’

‘Not even a stolen kiss?’

Masha’s stiff expression softened. ‘Of course there were kisses.’

‘And cuddles?’

‘And cuddles,’ Masha conceded.

Rachel sat next to her younger cousin. ‘Now we’re getting to it. How far did you go?’

‘Really, Rachel, you ask the most dreadful questions!’

‘Oh, come on. You can tell me. I’m not the rabbi.’

Masha’s face was flushed, her eyes shining. Rachel thought she had seldom seen a prettier young woman. ‘There was one evening…’

‘Yes?’

‘Rudi got us a box at the opera,’ Masha said softly. ‘Just the two of us, in the dark, hidden by the velvet curtain, and the music so lovely. And—’

‘And?’

Her voice was almost inaudible. ‘He put his hands—’

‘Where did he put his hands?’ Rachel enquired, eagerly leaning forward.

‘He put his hands everywhere,’ Masha whispered.

‘Good boy,’ Rachel said, half-closing her eyes as though inhaling some fine perfume. ‘Did he know what he was doing?’

‘Of course.’

‘Those Navy men are always reliable.’

‘Oh, Rachel, it was divine!’ Masha exclaimed. Her reticence had gone completely. ‘I’ve never known such feelings!’

‘Better than listening to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring?’

‘Quite, quite different,’ she said firmly. ‘He took me to heaven.’

‘So it didn’t feel like the electric chair?’

‘If you laugh at me, I shan’t say another word.’

‘Forgive me. I know I am on sacred ground.’ Rachel was smiling, but tenderly. ‘However, you can’t tell me that after such a divine night at the opera you never repeated the experiment?’

‘Perhaps once or twice,’ Masha admitted, lowering her eyes. ‘You must understand that I fancied myself very much in love.’

‘It sounds like more than just fancy,’ Rachel said gently.

‘The difficulty was in finding places,’ Masha confided.

‘It always is. But you managed?’

‘We went out together every weekend, to the Zoo or to the Ku-Damm, sometimes to concerts or plays. If we got the chance, we would kiss and hold each other and—’

‘And do what lovers do.’

‘Yes. When my friends saw me on his arm I felt I would burst with pride. The Navy dress uniform is very smart, you know. Dark blue, with gold buttons—’

‘Very uncomfortable at the wrong moment, I’m sure.’

‘—the gold silk eagle on the breast, the braid on the cuffs—’

‘Never mind the uniform. Stick with what was inside.’

‘We told each other we would get married when he got his Captain’s sword.’

‘Despite the race laws?’

‘Despite everything. The race laws weren’t being strictly enforced yet. It was 1936. Rudi was sure we would get permission to marry because he was a submarine officer. We were floating on champagne. Two silly fools with stars in our eyes.’

‘What happened?’

‘It was silly, at first. We started to notice that there were two men always following us around the town. Not just once or twice, but everywhere we went. Rudi was amused. He called them the Two Eggs because they were so alike. He liked to mock them, pretending to make their life easier by saying in a loud voice, “Come on, Masha, let’s go and have a cocktail at the Kempinski.” Or, “Let’s go and see the new American picture at the Universum.” And then, sure enough, we would find them there when we arrived. He thought it was funny.’

Rachel watched Masha’s face. ‘Weren’t you afraid?’

‘I don’t think I was, because Rudi took it as a joke. He said they were civilians and he wasn’t afraid of any civilian. And I always felt so safe with him. I didn’t think anything could happen to us. We just carried on as usual. We didn’t try to hide anything. Rudi was very gallant. He always took my arm in public. He let everyone know that we were together, that he was proud of me.’

‘That was perhaps not very prudent of him.’

‘Perhaps not. But we were not in a mood to be prudent. We didn’t think we were doing anything wrong.’ Masha’s face changed. ‘And then one day the police came to our house and hammered on the door and ordered me to present myself at the station for questioning.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘I suppose I knew in that moment that it was all over, but I was too infatuated to accept it at first. I went down to the station with my head held high. They kept me waiting for hours, sitting on a hard chair. I could hear things happening in the cells below – beatings, men calling out for mercy. It was horrible. At last an officer came to see me. His head shaved almost to the crown, a black leather coat. You know the type.’

‘I know the type,’ Rachel said briefly.

‘He had a thick folder full of our movements, going back weeks. The Two Eggs had written down every single detail. He demanded to know if we had been to this place together, and that place, and the other place, on and on. I said I didn’t deny any of it. He asked if I were not Jewish. I said that of course I was. He asked why Rudi would associate with a Jewish girl when there were so many Aryan girls to be had. I laughed in his face and answered that if all Aryan girls were blonde and pretty, the way they were supposed to be, then I presumed Rudi would have chosen one of them.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Masha!’

‘Yes. I think I was a little hysterical by then. I was only seventeen, remember. And in those days, one didn’t really know what could happen.’

‘He could have smashed your face.’

‘He just stared at me, as though I were some kind of strange insect. Then he demanded to know if I was not ashamed to be destroying the career of so promising a young officer. I asked what he meant. He said that Rudi would be dishonourably discharged for going out with a Jewish girl, and would never be trusted with any kind of authority as long as he lived. As for marriage, that was out of the question. It would not be legal. If I did not leave Rudi, he would be finished. He would never serve the Reich. He would be disgraced, perhaps even imprisoned. Then this man lit a cigarette and told me to make my choice, there and then.’

Rachel didn’t take her eyes off Masha. ‘What did you do?’

‘I walked home and I told my mother not to let Rudi in the house again. From then on, whenever he called, they said I wasn’t home. I could hear my mother crying on the doorstep. Rudi wrote letters, but I didn’t answer them, though I read them all before I burned them. For a long time he would stand outside the house the whole weekend, looking up at my window. I would try not to look at him through the curtains, because I didn’t want him to know I was there. But I couldn’t resist. He was all I wanted to see. He was—’ there was a catch in her voice. ‘He was everything to me.’

Rachel touched her hand gently. ‘My poor Masha.’

‘And then one weekend he stopped coming. His friends told me that his boat had been sent on manoeuvres in the Atlantic and that he would be gone for several months. I don’t know if it was true or not. In any case, I never saw him again.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Masha wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘Isn’t that a very silly, pointless story?’

‘It’s a Berlin story.’

‘You know the Franz Lehar song? In the magic glimmer of the silver light, it was nothing but a dream of happiness.’

‘Perhaps you will come across him again one day.’

‘I don’t think that is very likely, do you? By now, of course, he has been called up to fight. Perhaps he will die. Perhaps his submarine has already been sunk by the British. He may be at the bottom of the ocean. Or in another girl’s arms. Who knows? He’s not mine any more and I shouldn’t care. The whole thing seems now like something I saw in the theatre, or in a dream. How much changed in Germany over the last three years, Rachel. Everything went dark as fast as night coming on a winter’s evening.’

‘Yes,’ Rachel said quietly, ‘it did.’

‘You are very sympathetic,’ Masha said. She put her hand almost timidly on her cousin’s and looked into her rather angular face. ‘I wish I’d known you better, earlier.’

Rachel looked down at the delicate hand that was laid over hers. Slowly, she covered it with her own. ‘I wish that, too.’

‘We should have been friends a long time ago.’

‘Well…’ Rachel didn’t continue. Despite much in common – youth, music, culture – the two girls had been kept apart by their families. Or rather, Masha knew that Rachel had been kept away from her, on account of the mysterious ‘danger’ that had never quite been explained. And though Rachel could certainly be sarcastic, Masha was very glad of her company now. She did not think she could have faced this momentous voyage alone.

They sat in silence for a while, each lost in her own thoughts. Then the sound of the dinner gong, being beaten by a steward along the corridor outside, roused them.

‘Come on,’ Rachel said, withdrawing her hand and patting her cousin’s shoulder, ‘let’s see what jokes the chefs have played on us tonight.’

Stravinsky had slept as he always did these days, fitfully and disturbed by dreams of death from which he awoke filled with a pervasive sense of dread. He stood at the washstand, fastening his bow tie with the aid of the mirror there. His fingers shook slightly. His own face stared back at him, pasty, reptilian. He was still a sick man, whatever lies the doctors told him.

The German boy was dressing, too. He had an unexpected gift for silence, the German boy. He hadn’t made a sound while Stravinsky slept. Perhaps they taught them that in the Hitler Youth: knowing when to keep your mouth shut. He’d been afraid that the boy would be a nuisance, but to the contrary, he was as unobtrusive as the best sort of servant; and like the best sort of servant, apparently eager to wait on Stravinsky hand and foot. Perhaps they taught them that, too, in the Hitler Youth. He had been brushing his own blazer carefully and now, without asking or being asked, he began to brush Stravinsky’s dinner jacket.

‘That’s very kind,’ Stravinsky said, watching the boy in the mirror, past his own haunted reflection. ‘You are a thoughtful boy.’

‘Do you have children of your own?’ the boy asked.

Stravinsky concentrated on his bow tie. ‘I had two sons and two daughters. One of my daughters is dead, now.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Ludmila.’

‘Was it a long time ago?’

‘A year ago.’

The boy considered. ‘Was she sick?’

‘We were all sick. My wife, my daughter and I.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He inspected Stravinsky’s dinner jacket minutely for specks of dust. ‘Did your wife die, too?’

‘Yes. My wife died, too. She died a few months after my daughter. Now I am alone.’

‘What did she die of?’

‘Enough questions, Thomas.’

The boy looked up quickly from his task. His eyes were a sharp, pale grey, his close-cropped hair white-blonde. Freckles were scattered across the long, fox-like nose. He was an absolute example of Aryan boyhood. ‘I ask too many questions,’ the boy said. ‘I was always told this. I apologise.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Stravinsky turned from the washstand. ‘You are very quiet while I sleep, for which I am grateful.’ The boy helped him on with his dinner jacket, straightening the sleeves and adjusting the lapels with his thin fingers. ‘How do I look?’

‘Sehr ausgezeichnet.’

Stravinsky fitted a cigarette into the little ebony holder and lit it. The first lungful of smoke produced a racking bout of coughing. He tasted the salt in his mouth and spat dark clots of blood into the basin. The boy observed this but did not comment. ‘It was tuberculosis,’ he said at last, rinsing the crimson stains away. ‘We all had it. But you are safe. They say I am cured.’

‘I think you are dying.’

Stravinsky tried a second inhalation. ‘You are as silent as the grave for hours, Thomas, but when you do talk, you are damned direct.’ He coughed up more blood and spat into the basin. After a while, the coughing eased and he was able to endure the smoke in his lungs.

‘Have the doctors advised you to smoke?’ Thomas asked, frowning.

‘They’ve advised me very strongly not to smoke. But—’

‘But you don’t listen to them.’

‘I have a symphony to write.’

‘Do you need to smoke to write a symphony?’

‘It’s a symphony in C. The C stands for Cigarettes.’

‘Are you joking?’

‘Not at all.’ Stravinsky finished the cigarette and consulted his watch. ‘We mustn’t be late. We should go.’

‘I am ready.’

As they walked to Katharine’s cabin, Stravinsky had his hand on the boy’s shoulder for support. He felt weak and a little confused. The crowding of the ship was abominable. Everyone was in a fervour which would not abate, he supposed, until they had left France. Katharine was ready when they arrived, wearing a formal, dark-green gown which exposed her slim shoulders, of which she was rather proud.

‘How are your cabin-mates?’ Stravinsky asked her.

‘Ghastly,’ she said with a shudder. ‘They’re a pair of New Jersey widows who were caught by the war while spending their late husbands’ life policies on a European holiday. They intend to stay drunk until they reach New York.’

‘At least they have a plan.’

Katharine turned to the boy, barely disguising her repugnance. ‘I hope you are being considerate towards Monsieur Stravinsky, Thomas?’

‘He smoked a cigarette in the cabin and coughed up blood, at least a tablespoon.’

‘You are a little informer, Thomas,’ Stravinsky said.

‘Oh, Igor,’ Katharine said in dismay. ‘You promised you wouldn’t start again.’

‘Nonsense.’ Stravinsky waved her concern away petulantly.

‘He says he is writing a symphony in C,’ Thomas said. ‘He says the C stands for Cigarettes.’

‘Perhaps,’ Katharine said grimly, ‘it stands for Coffin.’

The Cabin Class dining room was an amazing confection of glittering Americana, as though Marie Antoinette had built a palace in Wyoming and had it decorated by the Comanche. High in the lofty ceiling, crystal chandeliers illuminated colourful murals depicting redskins hunting the mighty buffalo, or greeting the white man with gifts of pumpkins and corn. Braves on mustangs galloped across a prairie framed between heavy velvet curtains. Cowboys waved their Winchesters aloft among gilded rococo swags. A sea of snowy linen and gleaming silverware covered the three dozen tables below, each one of which seated six and had a softly glowing lamp as a centrepiece.

The Commodore’s table was set in the centre of the huge room, where everyone could see it and envy those invited to dine at it. Toscanini, in the place of honour beside Commodore Randall tonight, had put on his spectacles to peruse the menu. Commodore Randall, impeccable in his mess-jacket, leaned towards Toscanini like an amiable grampus. ‘I recommend the live boiled lobster, Mr Toscanini, followed by the Boston sole meunière.’

‘As a student at the conservatory in Parma,’ Toscanini replied in his heavy Italian accent, ‘I ate only boiled fish for three years. Since then, I eat nothing that comes from the sea.’

One of the other passengers, a plump woman from Topeka named Mrs Dabney, travelling with her largely silent husband, tugged at her immense pearls to draw attention to them. ‘How romantic that you rose from poverty to pre-eminence, maestro!’ she exclaimed.

‘Poverty is in no sense romantic, Signora,’ Toscanini retorted.

‘What about Rodolfo and Mimì in La bohème? That’s romantic, isn’t it?’

‘La bohème is an opera,’ Toscanini pointed out. ‘After dying of hunger, the performers get up and cash their cheques.’

Mrs Dabney laughed gaily. ‘Dear maestro, do you think Mussolini will bring Italy into this war?’

‘Mussolini is capable of any brutality. Only Britain can stop him.’

‘We had to pull the Brits out of the fire last time,’ said Dr Emmett Meese, a prominent New York surgeon. ‘Why do they keep starting wars if they can’t finish them? We should just let things take their course.’

‘And let fascism consume Europe?’

‘We have nothing to gain by getting our fingers burned.’

‘It’s not what you have to gain,’ Toscanini commented dryly, ‘it’s what we have to lose.’

‘It’s not our fight. I say America first and to hell with the rest.’

‘Mussolini offered to make me a senator,’ Toscanini said. ‘I told him, the emperor Caligula made his horse a senator, but I am only a donkey that you like to beat. Do you know why I hold my head like this, to one side? When I refused to play the Fascist Hymn at La Scala, Mussolini sent his men. They beat me in the street. They beat me to the ground with clubs. Ever since then, I live with the injuries. Sometimes I have to cancel engagements, because I cannot lift my arm. That is fascism.’

‘Have you heard Hitler’s latest?’ someone said. ‘He’s ordered the extermination of all mental defectives in Germany.’

‘The Führer gets a bad press,’ said Dr Emmett Meese, ‘but stopping these kinds of folks from breeding can only have a beneficial effect on the human family.’

‘It would certainly have had a beneficial effect on your family,’ Toscanini growled.

The surgeon polished his horn-rimmed glass earnestly. ‘I can’t say I disagree with him on the issue of the Jews, either. They’ve had it coming for a long time.’

‘The Jews are harmless, surely?’ Commodore Randall replied.

‘Not in my view. And this ship is already carrying far too many of them,’ Dr Meese said. ‘I believe that fully half our passengers are in that category. Everywhere you look there’s a hook nose or a crafty eye. Why should we be taking what Hitler doesn’t want?’

‘If Hitler doesn’t want Albert Einstein or Yehudi Menuhin,’ Randall said, ‘then I reckon we can have them.’

‘Our nation is bulging at the seams with riff-raff. There are hundreds of thousands of Mexican migrants roaming around the country. Not to mention the Negroes, the Italians, the Japanese and all the rest. We should pack them up and send them all home.’

‘I cannot eat,’ Toscanini said, pushing his chair back and getting to his feet. ‘I have no appetite.’

He strode along the deck, muttering to himself. He had no intention of going back to his cabin, which he was compelled to share with five imbeciles and their assorted imbecilities. Exhausted as he was, he could neither eat nor sleep. He would rather pace the ship. The surging energies he had been born with had never permitted him to be comfortable seated or recumbent. At the Conservatory, he had even detested the instrument assigned to him, the cello, because it had to be played seated. He had never been more happy than when he’d been able to exchange the cumbersome instrument (he’d pissed in the damned thing once) for a baton.

And now, between sleeplessness and hunger, every nerve in his body crackled. Carla had not appeared. Carla was nowhere. Le Havre was dark tonight, dark as the pit, all lights extinguished in a blackout to foil German bombers. Only the stars danced dimly in the black water of the harbour.

The endless night of human stupidity! The darkness of human folly, ignorance, madness! How small a light of wisdom shone and how easily it was extinguished by the beating of leathery wings.

He took off his hat and bowed his white head on to the railing, groaning loudly to himself in the darkness.

In the Tourist Class dining room (low-ceilinged and plain) Igor Stravinsky studied the menu with a disgusted expression. The options were unappetising: vegetable soup or melon to start, fried flounder or stewed mutton to follow. There was only one sweet – rice pudding. The smells of these dishes, greasy and faintly rancid, percolated through the crowded dining room.

‘We have truly left France behind us,’ he remarked to Katharine ironically. The German boy sat silently beside them, his nose in a book, uninterested in food. The others at their table, who had the beaten look of refugees, discussed the menu anxiously in some foreign language.

‘Would you like to go ashore and find a restaurant?’ she suggested.

‘I’m too tired,’ he replied. ‘Besides, I have to learn to be frugal.’ He laid down the menu. ‘I have become a character in a cartoon.’

She winced. Stravinsky’s dire financial status – a perennial problem in his career – was reflected in his desperate sale of The Rite of Spring to Walt Disney, to be used in an animated film called Fantasia. ‘Don’t think of it like that.’

‘You mistake me,’ he said with a twisted smile. ‘I thank God every day for Walt Disney. Without his money, I should literally be destitute.’ He coughed and wiped a little smear of blood from his lips, inspecting his handkerchief with heavy-lidded eyes. ‘Everything decays. Life, art, the world. It’s the natural process of dissolution. One must accept it.’

A harried steward came to take their order. They all chose the mutton, since the pervading aroma of the fish was dubious, and declined the first course. That little crimson stain on Stravinsky’s handkerchief had not escaped Katharine. It frightened her that he’d started smoking again. His lungs were still ravaged. His wife Katya’s tuberculosis had devastated the Stravinskys, working its way through the family like a poison. It had taken the life of their daughter Ludmila last year. Katya herself had died in March. Stravinsky had spent six months in hospital, during which time his mother had died of the disease.

It had been a terrible five years, years of personal, professional and financial loss. After his first struggles, then his explosive successes in music and ballet, moving to Paris had seemed like the culmination of Stravinsky’s career. Instead, it had proved the graveyard of his hopes. Exhausted and broken-hearted, the daring young composer, once thought of as the most advanced talent in modern music, had sunk into a middle age of illness and failure. Darkness hung around him, almost visible.

Katharine knew how bitter he felt about the sale of The Rite of Spring to Disney. It had been the music which, more than any other piece, had made his name and had exemplified the innovative brilliance of his genius. He saw it as a public humiliation. He had been brought low and forced to sell out to the arch-purveyor of American vulgarity. Not even the enthusiasm of Walt Disney himself – who was said to have danced around the gramophone when the music was played in his office – could make up for the shame he felt.

‘You haven’t seen any of Disney’s films,’ she ventured, trying to comfort him. ‘They’re charming, you know. Pinocchio was very good. And they say that Fantasia will be the most original one yet. Think of it as a new medium. You’ve always been at the forefront of culture.’

‘It’s amusing, really. The role that was commissioned by Diaghilev and danced by Nijinsky will now be performed by a caricature mouse in red knickerbockers.’

‘Oh, Igor.’ Katharine laid her hand on his.

Thomas König looked up from his book. ‘Do you mean Mickey Mouse?’

‘Yes,’ Stravinsky said, ‘I mean Mickey Mouse.’

The boy looked impressed. ‘Mickey is very famous.’

Stravinsky made a wry face. ‘I am glad to hear it. What’s that you’re reading?’

Thomas brightened. He held up the publication. It was a colourful guidebook entitled The New York World’s Fair, The World of Tomorrow. ‘They have a huge golden robot who can walk and talk.’

‘Yes?’

‘He can even smoke cigarettes.’

‘That is undeniably progress,’ Stravinsky said, looking at the picture Thomas was showing him.

‘His name is Elektro. He can count and do sums. He’s full of diodes and triodes and electromagnetic cells.’

‘I suppose you know all about those things,’ Katharine asked, her eyes on the gleaming swastika fixed in the boy’s lapel. ‘Diodes and triodes and so forth.’

‘A diode has only two terminals and it regulates current in one direction only, whereas a triode has three terminals – anode, cathode and grid. It’s used for amplification. It’s what allows Elektro to speak.’

‘What else do they have at this fair of yours?’ Stravinsky asked.

A little flush of pleasure touched Thomas’s angular cheekbones. ‘They have the Trylon and the Perisphere.’

‘Indeed. And what are they?’

The boy showed them the photograph of a gigantic white sphere and an equally dazzling needle which towered above it. ‘The Perisphere is eighteen storeys tall. The Trylon is sixty storeys tall. You can see them both from five miles away.’

Stravinsky gazed somewhat wistfully at the glowing geometric structures. ‘And this is the world of tomorrow?’

‘Oh, yes, sir.’

‘They look like the deserted monuments in the paintings of de Chirico or Salvador Dali. Who lives in them?’

‘The Democracity is inside the Perisphere. It’s the city of the future, where everyone is perfectly happy.’

‘No doubt your Führer will want a full report,’ Katharine said dryly.

The arrival of the mutton stew interrupted the conversation. Katharine found the German boy hard to stomach, but at least he seemed to distract Igor a little. Perhaps Igor was reminded of his own children.

Across the dining room, Masha and Rachel Morgenstern were also observing Stravinsky. They had chosen the fried flounder, which was proving to have been a mistake.

‘I’m terribly excited that Stravinsky’s on board,’ Masha said. ‘I can’t deny that. And I shall do my best to engage him in at least one conversation before we reach New York, so I can tell my grandchildren. I shall get his autograph, too. There!’

‘Good luck. He looks as though he could hardly lift a pencil.’

‘He’s so exotic,’ Masha murmured, fascinated by the composer’s weary face and drooping eyelids. ‘So Russian.’

‘I should say he’s just a funny little man with a funny little moustache,’ Rachel replied. ‘Not unlike our beloved Führer.’

‘Hush!’ Masha replied automatically.

‘You needn’t hush me. Nobody loves the Führer more than I do.’

‘People could be listening.’ Masha was finding it hard to shake off her terror at any disrespectful reference to Hitler. ‘Be prudent, Rachel, for God’s sake.’

‘This fish is a more immediate threat than the Gestapo.’ Rachel pushed her plate away. ‘I think my piece was bad.’

‘Mine was all right.’

‘I’m going to be sick.’

‘You’re not.’

‘I am. I can feel it.’

‘But there’s the rice pudding to come.’

‘I need air. I have to go out.’ Rachel rose and Masha had no choice but to follow her. Their route out of the dining room took them past Stravinsky’s table. As they approached, Stravinsky raised his head slowly and Masha met his eyes. She could not stop herself from speaking.

‘Oh, Monsieur Stravinsky,’ she blurted out, ‘I saw your Rite of Spring in 1934.’ Everybody at the table looked up. Wanting to express the excitement she had felt, she could only stammer, ‘It was – it was—’

Stravinsky stared at her dully, waiting. Rachel was pulling urgently at her arm. With everything unsaid, she allowed herself to be dragged away.

Outside, she lamented, ‘Oh, I felt such a fool. I couldn’t think of anything to say.’ But Rachel was running up the companionway, her hand clamped over her mouth. Masha followed. When she reached the Tourist Class promenade deck, Rachel was leaning over the rail, retching. Masha went to offer what succour she could. The fish had not been nice, but Rachel had been prone to these vomiting fits ever since they’d left Bremen. She had brought up almost every meal. Masha suspected it was her way of expressing her grief and stress. She put her arm around her cousin’s shoulders consolingly.

It was very dark. There were no lights to be seen either on the ship or the land, other than the searchlight which occasionally reached out from the harbourmaster’s building across the vessels moored in the harbour. One of these sabre-strokes of brilliance swept across the Manhattan now. Masha looked up in its glare and saw, on the Lido deck above, an old man looking down on them. She gasped. The curling moustaches, the strong, passionate features, the white hair tossed by the wind: despite the wildness of the expression, there could be no doubt about it.

‘It’s Toscanini!’ she exclaimed. ‘Look, Rachel. It’s Toscanini.’

Rachel looked up, but the darkness had rushed in already. She spat and wiped her mouth with her handkerchief. ‘This penchant for seeing famous musicians amounts to a mania, my dear Masha. There’s probably some deep psychological cause for it.’

‘He was there. And he looked half-mad.’

‘Tell Professor Freud all about it.’

‘And now I’ve missed the rice pudding,’ Masha mourned. She was still hungry, but as usual after vomiting, Rachel was restless and wanting distraction.

‘Let’s go to the bar and have a beer. Perhaps you’ll see Mozart there.’