The view from the Staten Island Ferry

I had been planning all along to start this blog, as is my nature, with an appropriate intro and explanation of the intent. It probably won’t work out that way, because I experienced something this week that I thought would be perfect to document here.

I was taking the Staten Island Ferry back to the Isle of Staten on Wednesday. The 5:15, like I do so many days. I took my customary place on the second deck, on the Brooklyn side, where I usually stand by the rail, gazing at the water until we dock. I even stand there in the winter, when I have the whole outside deck practically to myself. Now that the weather’s warmer, I have to share it.

The ferry left Manhattan a little late that day. Sometimes we don’t pull away from Whitehall Terminal until 5:20. I went through my decompression ritual: Look up the East River at the tops of the bridges, to see if I can make them all out. Brooklyn, Manhattan and most days, the Williamsburg. Check out the FDR inclining to pass over the Seaport. Look over at the rush-hour traffic on the BQE, the multi-tiered highway along the edge of Brooklyn Heights.

As the boat turns west, I focus my attention on Governor’s Island, which is still a mystery to me. I know it was a military installation from some reading I’ve done about it, and as is evidenced by the unsophisticated, 1950s buildings that probably served as barracks. I play a game with myself as I pass the island in all seasons. I try to spot a sign of human life. It seems totally deserted, though well-maintained. The most I’ve seen is a pickup truck moving along the edge, or a couple of guys riding over from the old Manhattan terminal on a smaller ferry. Mostly the island is completely empty, with the brown water of the Upper New York Bay splashing up on the tarred bulkhead that lines its perimeter. I’ve been most everywhere in the city of New York, but never to Governor’s Island. I wonder if it was a bustling base during World War II, being so close to the draft center on Whitehall Street in lower Manhattan. As far as I can tell, Governor’s Island serves as an anchoring point for the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and as an obstacle in the bay, for both the ferries and water taxis and the Princess Cruise Liners, which I often see over the tops of the island’s trees, waiting for passengers to board over in Brooklyn.


The final and longest stretch of the ferry ride is when my mind starts to wander. As we approach the Verrazano, ever so slowly and steadily, I look back at Manhattan. I try to enjoy the winds that become cooler the closer we get to the Narrows. I look down at the water and across at the unremarkable structures in Brooklyn. Eventually my mind begins to churn on stories I haven’t written or records I haven’t recorded yet, or some other trivial concern that will undoubtedly plague me on several ferry rides home on typical weekdays. This week, those unidentified concerns were getting the best of me and I became non-specifically anxious. What was bothering me? I had no idea. It was probably the result of too much mental meandering, or that I had too strenuously tried to isolate myself from another passenger, whom I believed to be sharing my rail a little too closely.

The recorded announcement about the ferry docking shortly was playing as the boat began to slow. I looked down at the foamy water, which was swirling about in standing circles as the propellers struggled to overcome the momentum of our cruise. I couldn’t wait to get off the ferry that day and my feelings of anxiety increased even more. I turned to look behind me, as I often do, to find that many of the passengers that lined the benches on the outside deck had long since found a spot with less wind, or at least had left their seats to line up at the exits.

Last Wednesday, I noticed one of the few passengers that remained. She was older, maybe late 60s, but not much more. She was slightly heavyset, thought not exceedingly so. In short, she looked like anybody else on the Staten Island Ferry, going home after a day at work in New York. She wore a long skirt a simple “old lady” blouse. Over the tops of her walking shoes, her ankles were slightly swelled. Her hair was brown and would probably curl more if it were a little longer. She wore steel-framed glasses. As she gathered her belongings, an umbrella and a large bag, she turned and I caught a glimpse of the inside of her right forearm. It bore what looked at first like a bruise, blue-black. However, its edges were defined more sharply and never faded to yellowness. After a moment, I realized that I was observing a tattoo. A faded one. It was a holocaust tattoo. These were the ones that were used by the Nazis to identify the prisoners in concentration camps. I couldn’t make out the numbers. They had run into each other.

My heart skipped for second. I didn’t want to stare. I don’t think I’d ever seen a holocaust tattoo before. I’m not Jewish, nor do I know any Jews who lived in Europe in the 40s. I don’t know if any of my Jewish friends were close to a generation of family members murdered in the Holocaust. I’m sure there must be some, though I’ve never discussed the subject with any of them.

This woman appeared to be a living, breathing connection to that horrible event. This was as close to such a connection as I had ever been, and I felt fearful, in awe, and somewhat concerned, like I’d be if I encountered an injured stranger who I knew needed to be cared for delicately. This was a significant whirlwind of emotions, because up until the moment before, she was just another old woman on the ferry.

Though I’ve thought about the horror of the holocaust, and the evil and ignorance of which humans are capable, the closest I’ve ever come to the reality of that time in history was an odd afternoon in Queens, back in the 80s. For some reason, my grandfather showed us his bayonet, which he had stashed in a drawer in his bedroom. He had never talked about his time in Germany before my father was born, but that day he told my brother and me about how much time he spent playing the piano in Europe while the other soldiers got drunk, and how he and a group of soldiers had a hell of a time trying to muster up enough German to ask a family where in their house the bathroom was. I still remember the way my grandfather’s demeanor changed when he took out the bayonet in its long, dark gray, steel sheath. I never forgot the sound of metal on metal ringing as he bared the blade and held it up horizontally at eye level. It was almost a reverence he observed. His posture came across clearly to me as a warning of the seriousness of this object, and it never entered my mind to touch it.

Before I had processed all of my realizations about this old woman on the ferry, she’d gone. I felt the bump of the boat against the dock. I made for the exit myself, and tried to find the woman I had noticed outside. She was nowhere. She had disappeared into the mass of passengers crowding the stairwells and aisles. I started to speculate about her. What was her face like? Could I picture it? Did having survived such a terrible ordeal show in its lines? Was she joyful to be living in New York City in 2006? Is the tattoo a reminder every day of her life? She wasn’t that old. Was she a child when the tattoo was applied? Did she remember it at all? Was she separated from her mother, whom she never saw again? I’ve read that often women and children were put to death quickly, because they couldn’t be productive workers. How did this woman, who could have been no more than six years old at the time, escape? Did she make a bold escape? Or was that just Hollywood poisoning my imagination?

My anxiety had melted away in my distraction with this woman. I laughed at myself. What could make me anxious when a six-year-old girl could be abducted and sent to a camp because of her ethnicity? I have a job in New York and by the standards of war, ghettoes and concentration camps, I decidedly live in luxury and affluence. How silly that is that I allow anxiety to play any role in my life at all? We forget these things as we get wrapped up in our lives.

I was going home. I was getting off a boat on Staten Island. Never in my life have agents of my government “come for me.” I had never been taken from my home with the intention of being led to my execution. Most times, I’m concerned with my own obsessions, getting upset when people allow themselves to be controlled by run away consumerism. It’s never life and death. If it ever was during my lifetime, what kind of man would I have become?