'I did not mean to anger you.'
'My dear! You did not anger me; I simply unloaded on you some of my worry and frustration - and I should not have done so. I'm sorry. But I do have real problems and they are not solved by telling me that my memory is at fault. If it were my memory, saying so would solve nothing., my problems would still be there. But I should not have snapped at you. - Margrethe, you are all I have ... in a strange and sometimes frightening world. I'm sorry.'
She slid down off my bunk. 'Nothing to be sorry about, dear Alec. But there is no point in further discussion tonight. Tomorrow - Tomorrow we will test that thumbprint carefully, in bright sunlight. Then you will see, and it could have an immediate effect on your memory.
'Or it could have an immediate effect on your stubbornness, best of girls.'
She smiled. 'We will see. Tomorrow. Now I think I must go to bed. We have reached the point where we are each repeating the same arguments... and upsetting each other. I don't want that, Alec. That is not good.'
She turned and headed for the door, not even offering herself for a goodnight kiss.
Margrethe!'
'Yes, Alec?'
'Come back and kiss me.'
'Should I, Alec? You, a married man.'
'Uh - Well, for heaven's sake, a kiss isn't the same as adultery.'
She shook her head sadly. 'There are kisses and kisses, Alec. I would not kiss the way we have kissed unless I was happily willing to go on from there and make love. To me that would be a happy and innocent thing....ut to you it would be adultery. You pointed out what the Christ said to the woman taken in adultery. I have not sinned... and I will not cause you to sin.' Again she turned to leave.
'Margrethe!'
'Yes, Alec?.
'You asked me if I intended ever again to ask you to come back later. I ask you now. Tonight. Will you come back later?'
'Sin, Alec. For you it. would be sin... and that would make it sin for me, knowing how you feel about it.'
'"Sin." I'm not sure what sin is... I do know I need you... and I think you need me.'
'Goodnight, Alec.' She left quickly.
After a long while I brushed my teeth and washed my face, then decided that another shower might help. I took it lukewarm and it seemed to calm me a little. But when I went to bed, I lay awake, doing something I call thinking but probably is not.
I reviewed in my mind all the many major mistakes I have made in my life, one after another, dusting them off and bringing them up sharp in my head, right to the silly, awkward, inept, self-righteous, asinine fool I had made of myself tonight, and, in so doing, how I had wounded and humiliated the best and sweetest woman I have ever known.
I 'can keep myself uselessly occupied with selfflagellation for an entire night when my latest attack of foot-in-mouth disease is severe. This current one bid fair to keep me staring at the ceiling for days.
Some long time later, after midnight and more, I was awakened by the sound of a key in the door. I fumbled for the bunk light switch, found it just as she dropped her robe and got into bed with me. I switched off the light.
She was warm and smooth and trembling and crying. I held her gently and tried to soothe her. She did not speak and neither did I. There had been too many words earlier and most of them had been mine. Now was a time simply to cuddle and hold and speak without words.
At last her trembling slowed, then stopped. Her breathing became even. Then she sighed and said very softly, 'I could not stay away.'
'Margrethe. I love you.'
'Oh! I love you so much it hurts in my heart.'
I think we were both asleep when the collision happened. I had not intended to sleep but for the first time since the fire walk I was relaxed and untroubled; I dropped off.
First came this incredible jar that almost knocked us out of my bunk, then a grinding, crunching noise at earsplitting level. I got the bunk light on - and the skin of the ship at the foot of the bunk was bending inward.
The general alarm sounded, adding to the already deafening noise. The steel side of the ship buckled, then ruptured as something dirty white and cold pushed into the hole. As the light went out.
I got out of that bunk any which way, dragging Margrethe with me. The ship rolled heavily to port, causing us to slide down into the angle of the deck and the inboard bulkhead. I slammed against the door-handle, grabbed at it, and hung on with my right hand while I held Margrethe to me with my left arm. The ship rolled back to starboard, and wind and water poured in through the hole - we heard it and felt it, could not see it. The ship recovered, then rolled again to starboard - and I lost my grip on the door handle.
I have to reconstruct what happened next - pitch dark, mind you, and a bedlam of sound. We were falling - I never let go of her - and then we were in water.
Apparently when the ship rolled back to starboard, we were tossed out through the hole. But that is, just reconstruction; all I actually know is that we fell, together, into water, went down rather deep.
We came up and I had Margrethe under my left arm, almost in a proper lifesaver carry. j grabbed a look as I gulped air, then we went under again. The ship was right alongside us and moving. There was cold wind and rumbling noise; something high and dark was on the side away from the ship. But it was the ship that scared me - or rather its propeller, its screw. Stateroom CI09 was far forward - but if I didn't get us well away from the ship almost at once, Margrethe and I were going to be chewed into hamburger by the screw. I hung onto her and stroked hard away from the ship, kicking strongly - and exulted as I felt us getting away from the hazard of the ship... and banged my head something brutal against blackness.
Chapter 8
So they took up Jonah, and cast him
forth into the sea: and the sea ceased
from her raging.
Jonah 1: 15
I WAS comfortable and did not want to wake up. But a slight throb in my head was annoying me and, willy-nilly, I did wake. I shook my head to get rid of that throb and got a snootful of water. I snorted it out.
'Alec?' Her voice was nearby.
I was on my back in blood-warm water, salt water by the taste, with blackness all around me - about as near to a return to the womb as can be accomplished this side of death. Or was this death? 'Margrethe?'
'Oh! Oh, Alec, I am so relieved! You have been asleep a long time. How do you feel?'
I checked around, counted this and that, twitched that and this, found that I. was floating on my back between Margrethe's limbs, she being also on her back with my head in her hands, in one of the standard Red-Cross life-saving positions. She was using slow frog kicks, not so much moving us as keeping us afloat. 'I'm all right. I think. How about you?'
'I'm just fine, dearest! - now that you're awake.'
'What happened?'
'You bumped your head against the berg.'
'Berg
'The ice mountain. Iceberg.'
(Iceberg? I tried to remember what had happened.) 'What iceberg?'
'The one that wrecked the ship.'
Some of it came tumbling back, but it still did not make an understandable picture. A giant crash as if the ship had hit a reef, then we were dumped into water. A struggle to get clear - I did bump my head. 'Margrethe, we're in the tropics, as far south as Hawaii. How can there be icebergs?'
'I don't know, Alec.'
'But-' I started to say 'impossible,' then decided that, from me, that word was silly. 'This water is too warm for icebergs. Look, you can quit working so hard; in salt water I float as easily as Ivory soap.'