Munich Signature by Bodie Thoene, Brock Thoene Read Free Book Online Page A

indignation.
    “Enough talk, already!” Her faded blue eyes blazed angrily. “The Nazis have not made it half as hard to leave as you make it to go. How long is this waiting list of yours?”
    “A year.” He continued to stare at the cane. Perhaps this mad old woman would decide to use it on him.
    Mrs. Rosenfelt’s eyes narrowed. She smiled shyly and reached out to touch the clerk’s threadbare suit. “You look like a fellow who could use a new suit of clothes. Perhaps shoes, also? Or an automobile?”
    His eyes widened and he drew back from her. “Bribes won’t do you any good. It’s been tried. I’m telling you, the list is the list. That’s the only way.”
    “Then you are a fool.” She leaned forward. “Two weeks we have before the papers expire.”
    “You can go back to America anytime.”
    “ Oy! So now you think I would leave them?”
    “Work on this back in the States. Send for them.”
    “Two weeks the Nazis have given. No more. They will not renew their travel documents.” Her gnarled hand was clenched in a fist. “Your kind I have seen a thousand times. Money is a language you understand. This is a language I can speak, nu ? List or no list, we must leave Germany within fourteen days. We will leave, and you will be a rich man for having helped us.”
    The clerk stared sullenly at the stubborn old woman in front of him. She was making it impossible. Yes, the lists were full, but perhaps there was another way. There was the freighter. But there was a waiting list for that as well. A share for him and a share for Captain Burton. No one needed a visa to get on a freighter like the SS Darien .
    “Maybe there is a way.”
    “I thought so. Nothing but a lot of shtuss you are giving me. Always there is a way.”
    “There is a ship leaving Hamburg Tuesday morning. Maybe I can get your family a place on it.”
    “I thought you could. And where is this boat going?”
    Now the clerk smiled. “Away from Germany, Mrs. Rosenfelt.”
    “That’s it? Away? So, away to where? ”
    “Just away . For you that should be good enough. You can go ahead to the States and work on their papers in the meantime. Day after tomorrow the ship leaves, and they are safe.”
    How could it be that a ship could leave Germany without a destination? The old woman nodded once and frowned with the realization that the quota of every nation was filled to capacity with the names of hopeful, desperate Jews. And so such a ship would become its own nation, an island of refuge until a port could be found.
    Slowly Bubbe Rosenfelt raised her pince-nez to her nose. This was not what she had bargained for, yet it was better than nothing at all. “And how much will this cruise around the world cost? I am listening. How much to save the lives of my family?”
    ***
     
    The doctor was Czech, Charles knew, but now the kind man spoke to him in heavily accented German. “Never was there a little boy so lucky as you, Charles.” The broad face hovered over him like a bright full moon. The doctor looked like the man in the moon, Charles thought, but he could not tell him that. Charles could not communicate well at all since Louis had gone. Now that he was feeling better, Charles thought how very much he would like to see his brother and share his secret that the man in the moon had swooped down to help him through this latest illness.
    The doctor squinted as he took Charles’s pulse. “Strong. Yes, yes. You are feeling better now?”
    Charles nodded. He was much better now than he had been that first dreadful night they had arrived in Prague. His ears had become infected, and for days he had endured searing pain. There were, in fact, days which were only a blur in his memory. Images of Elisa and the tall American, John Murphy, floated through his mind. Charles liked the American who was always telling him tales about America and children who lived there. He liked Herr Theo, who also had been ill; and he liked Anna, who sat and read to him by