Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [110]
“I am not beautiful. How would they know I was a foreigner with no family?”
“How did they know you lived in New Haven? Or that you were going to Hamburg? One thing is certain: they have money. Enough to investigate people.”
Unexpectedly, she rested her head on his shoulder. “At least we’re safe on this ship. I can feel it. I wish we never had to reach Europe.”
Younger had made inquiries with the ship’s bursar, from whom he learned that he’d been the last one to buy tickets. Colette, it seemed, was right. The ship was safe; no one had followed them aboard. “We don’t have to get off when the ship gets to Bremen,” he suggested. “We could stay on for the return voyage. At New York, we could stay on again. Go back and forth forever.”
“Don’t say anything else,” she answered, closing her eyes. “I’m going to dream about that.”
He looked at her lovely face: “Yes, if I were running a white slavery ring, you’d be at the top of my list.”
Later that morning, Younger emptied onto the deck the contents of a large sack he’d brought along with his luggage. There was a baseball, a bat, a jumble of wooden pegs and metal plates, and assembly instructions. A half-hour later, he had constructed a batting tee—a freestanding pedestal for holding a baseball in place, about waist high, so that a batter can practice his swings at it. Younger then fashioned a bag of netting around the baseball, tying off this bag with a long cord of rope borrowed from a seaman. The other end of the rope Younger secured to a winch. He then set the bagged ball atop the tee and gave Luc a lesson in hitting. After each swing, they retrieved the baseball, soaking, by reeling in the rope.
Soon a good number of male passengers wanted a go, doffing their hats and undressing to their shirtsleeves to take their cracks. Naturally, the handful of other boys on the voyage were eager to try as well. Younger made them ask permission first from Luc, who solemnly granted it, and who for the rest of the journey thereby became an indispensable member of the little gang of boys, despite his muteness.
Of all the men and boys who had a go at the batter’s tee that day, Younger hit the most towering drives. But the next morning several of the ship’s seamen joined in. One of these was a muscular swab who had played for the Brooklyn Robins during the war and who, taking his shirt off altogether, packed so Ruthian a wallop into his first swing that the rope was not long enough. The netting broke; the ball was lost. Younger tried several substitutes—an orange, a globe of wood cut by the ship’s carpenter, a golf ball lent to them by another passenger—but there’s nothing quite like a baseball, and that was the end of that.
As the days of oceangoing passed one to the next, Younger found he couldn’t make any further headway with Colette. His relations with her were intimate enough, but only in a friendly way. She was affectionate, but distant. And she became more so as they drew nearer to Europe. Sometimes he would catch her staring out to sea into a future he couldn’t penetrate. Or was it a past—a memory of falling in love with a devout, ailing soldier in Paris, to whom she had given her heart, and whom she hadn’t seen for more than two years?
“You’re his hero, you know,” she said to him one day, coming out of such a reverie.
“Whose?”
“Luc’s.”
“Am I?” said Younger. “Who’s yours?”
“I have two: Madame Curie and my father. I’m lucky that way. The Germans killed my father when he was still a hero to me—fearless, strong, noble in every way. Even the Germans couldn’t take that from me. But Luc barely remembers him. I used to try to remind him about Mother and Father—tell him stories of Father’s strength and bravery. But he wouldn’t listen. He isn’t even curious. That’s what he really needs—a father.”
“And you’re doing your best to find him one?”
She didn’t answer.
“Do you really think he loves you?” Younger went on. “Heinrich, I mean.”
“Hans.”
“Heinrich hasn’t written you a single letter in two years. That doesn