TROPICAL SECRETS
TROPICAL SECRETS
HOLOCAUST REFUGEES IN CUBA
MARGARITA ENGLE
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Publishers since 1866
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10010
www.HenryHoltKids.com
Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Copyright © 2009 by Margarita Engle
All rights reserved.
Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Engle, Margarita.
Tropical secrets : Holocaust refugees in Cuba /
Margarita Engle.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Escaping from Nazi Germany to Cuba in 1939, a young Jewish refugee dreams of finding his parents again, befriends a local girl with painful secrets of her own, and discovers that the Nazi darkness is never far away.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8936-3 / ISBN-10: 0-8050-8936-5
1. Jews—Cuba—History—20th century—Juvenile fiction.
2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Juvenile fiction. {1. Novels in verse. 2. Jews—Cuba—Fiction. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Fiction.
4. Refugees—Fiction. 5. Cuba—History—1933–1959—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.5.E54Tr 2009 [Fic]—dc22 2008036782
First Edition—2009
Book designed by Meredith Pratt
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. ∞
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
To my parents
Martin and Eloísa Mondrus
No se puede tapar el sol con un dedo.
You can’t cover up the sun with one finger.
CUBAN FOLK SAYING
CONTENTS
June 1939
July 1939
December 1941
April 1942
Historical Note
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
TROPICAL SECRETS
JUNE 1939
DANIEL
Last year in Berlin,
on the Night of Crystal,
my grandfather was killed
while I held his hand.
The shattered glass
of a thousand windows
turned into the salty liquid
of tears.
How can hatred have
such a beautiful name?
Crystal should be clear,
but on that dark night
the glass of broken windows
did not glitter.
Nothing could be seen
through the haze
of pain.
DANIEL
My parents are musicians—
poor people, not rich.
They had only enough money
for one ticket to flee Germany,
where Jewish families like ours
are disappearing
during nights
of crushed glass.
My parents chose to save me
instead of saving themselves,
so now, here I am, alone
on a German ship
stranded in Havana Harbor,
halfway around
the huge world.
Thousands of other Jewish refugees
stand all around me
on the deck of the ship,
waiting for refuge.
DANIEL
First, the ship sailed
to New York,
and then Canada,
but we were turned away
at every harbor.
If Cuba does not
allow us to land,
will we be sent back
to Germany’s
shattered nights?
With blurry eyes
and an aching head,
I force myself to believe
that Cuba will help us
and that someday
I will find my parents
and we will be a family
once again.
PALOMA
One more ship
waits in the harbor,
one ship among so many,
all filled with sad strangers
waiting for permission to land
here in Cuba.
Our island must seem
like such a peaceful resting place
on the way to safety.
I stand in a crowd
on the docks, wondering why
all these ships
have been turned away
from the United States
and Canada.
DANIEL
One of the German sailors
sees me gazing
over the ship’s railing
at the sunny island
with its crowded docks
where strangers stand
gazing back at us.
The sailor calls me
an evil name—
then he spits in my face—
but I am too frightened
to wipe away
the thick, liquid hatred.
So I cling to the railing
in silence,
with spit on my forehead.
I am thirteen, a young man,
but today I feel
like a baby seagull
with a broken beak.
DANIEL
This tropical heat
is a weight in the sky
crushing my breath,
but I will not remove
my winter coat or my fur hat
or the itchy wool scarf
my mother knitted
or the gloves my father gave me
to keep my hands warm
so that we could all
play music together
someday, in the Golden Land
called New York.
If I remove
my warm clothes,
someone might steal them,
along with my fading
stubborn dream
of somehow reaching the city
where my parents promised
to find me
beside a glowing door
at the base of a statue
called Liberty,
in a city
with seasons of snow
just like home.
PALOMA
My father’s secrets
torment me.
Almost every evening
I hear him whispering plans
as he dines and drinks
with other officials,
the ones who decide
what will happen
to all the sad people
on their patient boats.
Last night
I heard my father say
that all these refugees
from faraway places
are making him rich.
I heard him bickering
with his friends
about the price they will charge
for permission to come ashore
and find refuge
in Cuba.
DANIEL
The only riches I have ever known
are the sounds of pianos, flutes, and violins,
so when the German sailors on this ship
keep telling me that I am rich
and that I should pay them
to stop spitting in my face,
I feel like laughing and crying
at the same time.
I have only a few coins
sewn into a secret place
inside my heavy, itchy coat,
but my parents war
ned me
that I will need
that little bit of money
no matter where I end up,
so I must let the sailors spit.
I keep telling myself
that if I ever reach New York
or any other safe place
I will look back on this day
of heat and humiliation
and none of it will matter
as long as I am free
to play music
and to believe
that I still have a family
somewhere.
PALOMA
When I overhear my father’s secrets,
I understand—
any ship turned away from Cuba
no safe place on earth.
Those ships will return
to Germany,
where all the refugees
will suddenly be homeless
and helpless
in their own homeland.
My father thinks it is funny,
a clever trick
the way he sells visas
to enter our small island nation
and then decides
whether the people
who buy the visas
will actually be allowed
to land.
DANIEL
Land!
Solid ground,
the firmness of earth
beneath my shoes,
even if it is just a filthy street
crowded with beggars
wearing strange costumes
and people
of all different colors
mixed up together,
as if God had poured out
a bunch of leftover paints
after making brown rocks
and beige sand. . . .
PALOMA
Drumming . . .
someone is drumming
on our front door. . . .
It’s the sound of a vendor
knocking at the door
and singing in Spanish
with his raspy Russian accent,
singing about cold, sweet ice cream,
vanilla in a chocolate shell,
like some sort of odd sea creature
from the far north.
Papá would be furious
if he knew that I am a friend
of the old man who sells ice cream
door to door.
Papá would be angry
not only because Davíd
is poor and foreign
but also because he is Jewish,
a refugee who came to Cuba
from the Ukraine
long ago.
I open the door
and greet Davíd.
I buy the cold treat quietly—
whispering is a skill I have learned
by watching my father
make his secret deals.
PALOMA
The next singing vendor
who comes along
is a Chinese man selling herbs
and red ribbons to ward off
the evil eye.
I buy one strand of protection
for each of my long black braids
and a third for the dovecote,
my castlelike tower
in our huge, forested garden—
the tower where I feed my winged friends,
wild doves who come and go as they please,
gentle friends, not captives in cages.
Even bright ribbons and cold ice cream
are not enough to make me feel
like an ordinary twelve-year-old girl.
I feel like a fairy-tale princess
cursed with deadly secrets
that must be kept silent.
DANIEL
Hundreds of refugees
crowd into the central courtyard—
an open patio at the heart
of an oddly shaped Cuban house.
I am not accustomed to buildings
with trees and flowers at the center
and a view of open sky
right in the middle of the house
where one would expect to find
a stone fireplace
and sturdy brick walls.
Brown-skinned Cubans
and a red-haired American Quaker woman
take turns trying to give me
new clothes made of cotton,
but I refuse to take off
my thick winter coat.
I find it almost impossible
to believe that I will ever
see my parents again,
but at the same time
I secretly remember
their dream
of being reunited
in a cold, glowing city.
I don’t see how I can survive
without that tiny sliver of hope,
my imaginary snow.
DANIEL
gives me one ice-cream bar
after another.
He says he had to flee Russia
long ago, just as I have fled Germany.
He tells me he understands how I feel—
I am certain that no one
could ever understand,
but he speaks Yiddish
so I shower him with questions.
He tells me his name is David
and that over the years
he has grown used to hearing his name
pronounced the Spanish way—Davíd,
with an accent on the second syllable,
like the sound of a musical burst
at the end.
I promise myself that I will never
let anyone change the rhythm
of my name.
DANIEL
Two days later, I am still wearing
my heavy coat.
The old ice-cream man tells me
that I will have to stay here in hot, sweaty
Hotel Cuba,
so I might as well remove
my uncomfortable clothing.
It takes me a while to figure out
that David is joking.
I am not really in a hotel
but in some sort of strange
makeshift shelter for refugees.
The ice cream is charity,
my melting breakfast
and messy dinner.
DANIEL
A girl with olive skin and green eyes
helps David pass out festive plates
of saffron-yellow rice
and soupy black beans.
The girl has wavy red ribbons
woven into her thick black braids.
She glances at me, and I glare back,
trying to tell her to leave me alone.
The meal is strange, but after two days
of ice cream, hot food tastes good
even in this sweltering
tropical weather.
My coat is folded up beside me.
I am finally wearing cotton clothing,
cool and comfortable,
a shirt and pants donated
by strangers.
What choice do I have?
I still cling to my dream
of a family reunion
in snowy New York,
but in the meantime, here I am
in the sweaty tropics,
struggling to breathe humid air
that feels as thick as the steam
from a pot of my mother’s
fragrant tea.
DANIEL
The girl asks me questions
in Spanish
while the ice-cream man translates
into Yiddish.
Back and forth we go,
passing words from one language
to another,
and none of them are my own
native tongue, Berlin’s familiar
German.
Still, I am grateful
that Jews in Europe
all share Yiddish,
the language of people
who have had to flee
from one land to another
more than once.
DAVID
I am glad that I have plenty
of ice cream and advice
to give away
because what else can I offer
to all these frightened people
who are just beginning to understand
what it means
to be a refugee
without a home?
DANIEL
David says that removing my coat
was the first step
and accepting strange food
was the second.
Now, he wants me to plunge
into the ocean.
Others are doing it—
all around me, refugees wade
into the island’s warm
turquoise sea.
David insists that I must learn
how to swim, if I want to cool off
on hot days.
He speaks to me with his hands dancing
and his voice musical, just like the islanders