Waiting in Antwerp The city of Antwerp was our last stop and from here we were to take the boat to America. Again we bedded down in a rooming house run by a Jewish lady. Again we walked great distances, since mother had to get further formalities checked. It seemed those requirements were endless. I was tired and unhappy and since I couldn't take it out on mother, used my baby sister as the goat, every time she started to cry, I would pinch her, which produced louder crying. My little sister had all symptoms of being a rickety child. Her little bones were so thin and fragile, as if they might break.
One afternoon, mother took us down to the port and pointed out some of the boats in the harbor. The very biggest one, we were sure, was going to be ours. Then she bought for each of us a little cup full of a delicious, white, cold, sugary substance which you licked with your tongue. It was called sachamarosh. This was our introduction to ice cream.
Antwerp looked like the biggest city in all the world, though of course America must be bigger. There were many, many soldiers milling around and many were carrying guns. The people in our rooming house were uneasy. They kept asking each other, “Will there be a war?” To reassure themselves, they added, “But we would have heard about it. Only yesterday, the Kaiser promised that there wouldn't be a war. And he is a man of his word.” Mother would go out early to buy a Yiddish paper and read the news out loud.
Our boat wasn't due to arrive in port for another five days but mother was getting panicky. One day she came back and I could tell she had been crying: The boat we were to sail on had cancelled its run! Then she told us that a woman in one of the agencies had said to her, “If you had made arrangements to leave a week earlier, you would have been on the way to America.” A week earlier, but that was Shabuoth! Suddenly she became dejected and cried out, “Gottenu, farvos stofst du mir?” (My God, why do you punish me?) And she covered her head with her hands, trying to keep back her tears so as not to frighten us.
We had the choice of waiting for the next boat, whenever that might be, or go back home. Mother made the rounds from one company to another. None would guarantee the sailing date of the next boat to America. She covered all the welfare agencies, standing in line for hours in order to speak to someone. But no one would promise anything. Mother asked our boat company to refund the money for our tickets but the answer was “no”. The responsibility was in America, that's where the tickets were purchased. We got nothing.
The man who was to have been my “father” came to say goodbye. Mother kept lamenting, “What will happen to us? What will become of us?” When he was about to leave he came over to me. “See, you don't have to call me father any more, so let us shake hands.” I felt ashamed. I knew I hadn't acted nicely and timidly shook hands with him. We never saw him again.
We had now been in the city of Antwerp ten days. What was the point of staying on any longer? True, it was our only chance of getting another boat. But what boat? No one knew of any that was scheduled to leave, and our money was dwindling.
Editor's Notes: goat: certainly: scapegoat. See the Subject Index for more about newspapers and emigration routes.
