together on August 3, Manny and I, on the Aquitania bound for Southampton, Antwerp, and Bremen. The skies were sunny as we passed through the Narrows and into the open sea, but then the sun faded, the skies turned gray, and it began to rain, a drizzle, a steady downpour, and finally a gale.
On the second day the sea began to mount, the water tilting outside the porthole, tossing and tilting beyond the deck rail, the ship bucking and rolling, and you planted your feet wide and rolled with it. When you stood at the bow, you could see the ship rear up in the driving rain, catch like a held breath, and crash back into the trough of the sea. One by one, most of our fellow passengers disappeared into their staterooms, and for a while I beheld their discomfort with amusement, but then on the third evening, I sat with Manny at dinner in the near-empty dining room watching the floor-length drapes swing and sway at the large picture window, sway and swing like a giant pendulum, sway and tilt, tilt and slide, and my whole inner self began swinging with them, and I fled to my stateroom and stayed there moaning and retching until we reached Southampton.
I thought I was going to die. I was too sick even to imagine myself laid out in my coffin, my hair slicked back, a handkerchief in my breast pocket and my waxen hand resting on my stomach. And in a way I did die on that voyage, at least to the life I had led in New York. I could never go back to it. And not just to the life, to myself. As it seems to me now, the person I was had died and I was only beginning to discover the person I was going to be.
Manny, of course, made the trip without a qualm. He stayed abroad on two stable feet the whole time, shaking hands and making friends with the few people who remained upright: a politician from South London, a banker from Hamburg, a pickpocket from Marseilles. When they left the boat Manny had their names, their addresses, and their affection, and he would hold on to them ever after.
We stayed aboard ship at Southampton. A year earlier, when Manny first went to Europe, he had gone ashore and been detained by the British as an enemy agent, which I suppose in a way he was, and so we decided not to take any risks and stayed aboard ship until we reached Bremen a day or so later. From Bremen, we took the train to Berlin, rolling through the lush low countryside, where the harvest was just beginning to come in, and we tried to look as if we really belonged there.
In those days, Berlin was the gateway to Russia. None of the other western countries maintained diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, but the Germans had won the war on the Eastern front, so why shouldnât they go on dealing with their vanquished enemy. Lenin had not only sued for peace, he had relinquished all the neighboring territories Russia had absorbed over three centuries from Estonia to the Ukraine. When the Germans were themselves defeated by the Western powers, the Russians got them all back again. The Germans embraced pacifism and socialist idealism, leaving the U.S. and Britain to undertake those military misadventures at Murmansk and Vladivostok that were supposed to turn back the tide of history.
Before we went on to Moscow, we spent two or three days exploring Berlin, that most beautiful and corrupt of capitals. Manny saw to it we took in the Eldorado, the cityâs most glamorous and notorious nightclub. A dim cavernous establishment, Eldorado had a telephone on every table, and you dialed someone who attracted you at one of the other tables and arranged your pleasures for the evening. The prospects were little more than childrenâyoung girls and a smattering of boysâschooled in satisfying the most jaded tastes in Europe. Another night I called the tune, and we visited the nightclubs and cabarets where newcomers like Brecht, Eisler, and Hilda Wangel were laying the ground for a new kind of theatre. And then, our flesh and spirit sated, we went to the
On the second day the sea began to mount, the water tilting outside the porthole, tossing and tilting beyond the deck rail, the ship bucking and rolling, and you planted your feet wide and rolled with it. When you stood at the bow, you could see the ship rear up in the driving rain, catch like a held breath, and crash back into the trough of the sea. One by one, most of our fellow passengers disappeared into their staterooms, and for a while I beheld their discomfort with amusement, but then on the third evening, I sat with Manny at dinner in the near-empty dining room watching the floor-length drapes swing and sway at the large picture window, sway and swing like a giant pendulum, sway and tilt, tilt and slide, and my whole inner self began swinging with them, and I fled to my stateroom and stayed there moaning and retching until we reached Southampton.
I thought I was going to die. I was too sick even to imagine myself laid out in my coffin, my hair slicked back, a handkerchief in my breast pocket and my waxen hand resting on my stomach. And in a way I did die on that voyage, at least to the life I had led in New York. I could never go back to it. And not just to the life, to myself. As it seems to me now, the person I was had died and I was only beginning to discover the person I was going to be.
Manny, of course, made the trip without a qualm. He stayed abroad on two stable feet the whole time, shaking hands and making friends with the few people who remained upright: a politician from South London, a banker from Hamburg, a pickpocket from Marseilles. When they left the boat Manny had their names, their addresses, and their affection, and he would hold on to them ever after.
We stayed aboard ship at Southampton. A year earlier, when Manny first went to Europe, he had gone ashore and been detained by the British as an enemy agent, which I suppose in a way he was, and so we decided not to take any risks and stayed aboard ship until we reached Bremen a day or so later. From Bremen, we took the train to Berlin, rolling through the lush low countryside, where the harvest was just beginning to come in, and we tried to look as if we really belonged there.
In those days, Berlin was the gateway to Russia. None of the other western countries maintained diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, but the Germans had won the war on the Eastern front, so why shouldnât they go on dealing with their vanquished enemy. Lenin had not only sued for peace, he had relinquished all the neighboring territories Russia had absorbed over three centuries from Estonia to the Ukraine. When the Germans were themselves defeated by the Western powers, the Russians got them all back again. The Germans embraced pacifism and socialist idealism, leaving the U.S. and Britain to undertake those military misadventures at Murmansk and Vladivostok that were supposed to turn back the tide of history.
Before we went on to Moscow, we spent two or three days exploring Berlin, that most beautiful and corrupt of capitals. Manny saw to it we took in the Eldorado, the cityâs most glamorous and notorious nightclub. A dim cavernous establishment, Eldorado had a telephone on every table, and you dialed someone who attracted you at one of the other tables and arranged your pleasures for the evening. The prospects were little more than childrenâyoung girls and a smattering of boysâschooled in satisfying the most jaded tastes in Europe. Another night I called the tune, and we visited the nightclubs and cabarets where newcomers like Brecht, Eisler, and Hilda Wangel were laying the ground for a new kind of theatre. And then, our flesh and spirit sated, we went to the
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