‘Shireen!’
Was it the way I uttered her name? She gave a start and then pushed me away as she gave me a suspicious look.
‘You are leaving.’
‘Yes, but differently.’
‘How can one leave “differently”?’
‘I am leaving with you.’
CHAPTER 48
Cherbourg. 10 April, 1912
The English Channel stretched as far as the eye could see, its surface flecked with silver. By my side was Shireen. We had the Manuscript in our luggage. We were surrounded by an unlikely crowd, completely oriental.
So much has been said of the shining celebrities who set sail on the Titanic that we have almost forgotten those for whom these sea giants were built: the migrants, those millions of men, women and children no country would agree to feed any more and who dreamt of America. The steamboat had to make a lot of pick-ups: the English and Scandinavians from Southampton, the Irish from Queenstown and at Cherbourg those who came from further away, Greeks, Syrians, Armenians from Anatolia, Jews from Salonika or Bessarabia, Croats, Serbs and Persians. It was these Orientals that I was able to watch at the harbour station, clustered around their pathetic luggage, in a hurry to be somewhere else and in a state of anguish from time to time, suddenly looking for a lost form, a child who was too agile, or an unmanageable bundle which had rolled under a bench. On everyone’s face there was written adventure, bitterness or defiance. They all felt that it was a privilege, the moment they arrived in the West, to be taking part in the maiden voyage of the most powerful, the most modern and most dependable steamboat ever dreamed up by man.
My own feelings were hardly different. Having been married three weeks earlier in Paris, I put back my departure with the sole aim of offering my companion a wedding trip worthy of the oriental splendour in which she had lived. It was not a vain whim. For a long time, Shireen had seemed reticent about the idea of living in the United States and, had it not been for the fact that she was so disheartened by Persia’s failed reawakening, she would never have agreed to follow me. My ambition was to build up around her a world which was yet more magical than the one she had had to leave.
The Titanic served my purposes marvellously. It seemed to have been conceived by men who were eager to enjoy, in this floating palace, the most sumptuous pleasures of terra firma as well as some of the joys of the Orient: a Turkish bath just as indolent as those of Constantinople or Cairo; verandahs dotted with palm-trees; and in the gymnasium, between the bar and the pommel horse there was an electric camel, which, when you pressed the magic button, instilled in the rider the feeling of a jumpy ride in the desert.
However, as we explored the Titanic, we were not just trying to search out the exotic. We also managed to give ourselves over to wholly European pleasures, such as eating oysters, followed by a sauté de poulet à la lyonnaise, the speciality of Monsieur Proctor the chef, washed down by a Cos-d’Estournel 1887, as we listened to the orchestra dressed in blue tuxedos playing the Tales of Hoffman, the Geisha or the Grand Moghul by Luder.
Those moments were even more precious to Shireen and me since we had had to keep up pretences throughout our long romance in Persia. Ample and promising as my Princess’s apartments had been at Tabriz, Zarganda or Teheran, I suffered constantly from the feeling that our love was restricted within their walls, with its only witness engraved mirrors and servants with fleeting glances. Now we could take simple pleasure in being seen together, a man and a woman arm in arm, taken in by the same strange looks. We avoided going back to our cabin until late at night, even though I had chosen one of the most spacious on board.
Our final delight was the evening promenade. When we finished dinner, we would go and find an officer, always the same one, who would lead us to a safe from which we would take out the manuscript and carry it carefully on a tour across bridges and down corridors. Seated in rattan armchairs in the Parisian Cafe we would read some quatrains at random, then, taking the lift, we would go up to the walkway where, without having to worry too much as to whether we could be seen, we would exchange a passionate kiss in the open air. Late in the night we would take the manuscript to our room where it spent the night before being placed back in the safe, in the morning, with the help of the same officer. It was a ritual which enchanted Shireen. So much so that I made it a duty for myself to retain every detail in order to reproduce it exactly the next day.
That is how, on the fourth evening, I had opened the manuscript at the page where Khayyam in his day had written:
You ask what is this life so frail, so vain.
’Tis long to tell, yet will I make it plain;
’Tis but a breath blown from the vasty deeps,
And then blown back to those same deeps again!
The reference to the ocean amused me: I wanted to read it again, more slowly, but Shireen interrupted me:
‘Please don’t!’
She seemed to be suffocating; I looked at her worriedly.
‘I know that rubai by heart,’ she said in a faint voice, ‘and I suddenly had the impression that I was hearing it for the first time. It is as if …’
She would not explain, however, and got her breath back before stating in a light and serene tone of voice:
‘I wish that we had already arrived.’
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘If there is a ship in the world on which one can travel without fear, it is this one. As Captain Smith said, God Himself could not sink this ship!’
If I had thought to reassure her with those words and my happy tone, it was in fact the opposite which I effected. She clutched my arm, murmuring:
‘Never say that again! Never!’
‘Why are you getting so worked up? You know very well that it was only a joke.’
‘Where I come from even an atheist would not dare use such a phrase.’
She was trembling. I could not understand why she was reacting so violently. I suggested that we go back to the cabin and had to support her so that she would not stumble on the way.
The next day she seemed to be herself again. In order to occupy her mind, I took her off to discover the wonders of the ship. I even mounted the jerky electric camel, at the risk of putting up with the laughs of Henry Sleeper Harper, the editor of the eponymous weekly, who stayed for a moment in our company, offered us tea and told us about his trips in the Orient, before introducing to us, most ceremoniously, his Pekinese dog which he thought acceptable to call Sun Yat Sen, in ambiguous homage to the emancipator of China. However nothing managed to cheer Shireen up.
That evening, at dinner, she was taciturn; she seemed to have become weak. I thought it best not to go on our ritual promenade and left the manuscript in the safe. We went back to our cabin to go to bed. She immediately fell into a disturbed sleep. I, on the other hand, was worried about her, and unused as I was to sleeping so early I spent a good part of the night watching her.
Why should I lie? When the ship hit the iceberg I was not aware of anything. It was after the collision, when I was told at exactly what moment it had taken place, that I thought I could remember having heard a noise like a sheet being torn in a nearby cabin shortly before midnight. Nothing else. I do not remember feeling any impact and managed to doze off, only to wake up with a start when someone rapped on the door, shouting a phrase which I could not make out. I looked at my watch. It was ten to one. I put on my dressing gown and opened the door. The corridor was empty, but from afar I could hear loud conversation, something unusual for so late at night. Without actually being worried, I decided to go and see what was happening, of course making no move to wake Shireen.