Beauchene knelt, opened the African’s coat and put the glasses in the inside pocket. He remained kneeling for a moment, with his head bent forward. His eyes didn’t know where to rest. He made a noise like a gasp, and that was all.
He stood up.
“I’ll have to find somebody to say something,” he told Michael. “I didn’t know him.” He went to the door and paused. “We’ve got to get ready. You coming?”
Michael nodded. “I am.”
They left the mess hall and the dead African on the floor and went back to the deck where the crew was waiting to be told.
Ten
Bucket Of Blood
By late afternoon the Wesshausers had been placed in a single stateroom with mattresses padding the walls. They tried to make a joke of it, something to do with a padded cell, but they knew exactly what was coming.
The crew had been fed steaks as tough as boot leather and energized with hot black coffee. Those who wanted or needed Benzedrine tablets got them from the doctor. The rest of the mattresses from the crews’ bunks were roped to the gunwales and allowed to hang down nearly to the waterline; it was thin insurance against the five-inch shells, but might prevent a hull breach. Crewmen stood watch along the deck and from the crow’s nests atop both masts. The rain fell intermittently, the sea foamed and swirled, and Sofia kept on her full-speed course to the land of Shakespeare. The Javelin made no appearance from the North Sea mists.
Michael Gallatin was standing near the bow, searching those mists with a pair of binoculars, when he heard her approaching. She stopped on the other side of a lifeboat that had unfortunately been punctured by fifteen slugs from Javelin’s machine gun.
“You shouldn’t be on deck,” he said, lowering his glasses.
“I needed to walk.”
“Keep walking, then. And get below as soon as you’re done.”
“You sound like you think you’re my father.”
“I’m amazed your father would let you out here. Don’t you know what’s likely to be happening any minute now?”
Marielle peered warily around the splintered lifeboat. She was wearing her buttoned-up overcoat with the collar upraised. Her blonde hair spilled out below a wine-red beret. She had her hands thrust into her pockets; though Sofia was rolling, Marielle had found her sea-legs.
“I know,” she said, and she let her eyes graze past him. “My father knows, too. He appreciates the effort, but he thinks we’ll be on our way to Germany before nightfall.”
“Not if I can help it.” He brought the binoculars back up and kept searching.
“My father doesn’t think anyone can help it,” she replied. “They’ve found us and they’re going to take us, and that’s that.”
Michael grunted. “I wouldn’t have thought your father was a quitter. Or you either, for that matter.”
“It’s not quitting. It’s being accepting of reality. That’s what my father says.”
“Whose reality? Hitler’s?” Michael let the question hang. He lowered the glasses again and turned his head so he could look directly into her aquamarine eyes. She pulled back just a little, but not by much. “Your father’s been very brave so far. He must be a brave man, to have risked his family. To have risked everything, really. Well, I’m not giving up and neither is the captain and crew of this ship. So why should he?”
“He doesn’t want anyone else to be hurt.”
“Someone’s going to be hurt, whether they take you off this ship or not. It’s the Nazi way.” He gave her a brief tight smile.
She studied him for a moment with a number of sidelong glances. “There’s something strange about you,” she decided. And amended the word: “Different, I mean.”
“Possibly so.” He wondered if she could sense the animal in his soul cage.
She stared out upon the sea. “I think,” she said, “you’re a gentleman pretending to be a roughneck.”
“That’s interesting.” Again he scanned the mists with his glasses. “I’ve always thought of myself as a roughneck pretending to be a gentleman.”
“You’re hiding something,” she said.
“Who isn’t?”
“What you’re hiding…isn’t like anyone else. It’s…” Marielle frowned. “Very deep,” she finished.
“Not so very deep,” Michael said, but he didn’t wish to say anything more.
She was silent for awhile. Michael suddenly wished she would go away, because he thought she could see more than she realized.
“Do you think I’m crippled?” she suddenly asked. “Is that why you told me the story about Vulcan? Because he was crippled, too?”
“I told you the story about Vulcan because I could see him working at his forge in the sky.”
“No,” she said, and abruptly she took a lurching step forward on her high shoe and the sixteen-year-old girl regarded him with the calm and knowing composure of a woman. “Herr Gallatin, I don’t ask anyone to feel sorry for me. I don’t want that, and I never have. I don’t really like being as I am. I don’t like the sound I make as I walk. I don’t like the attention it draws, because it’s always people feeling sorry for me. Either that, or laughing at me behind my back. But I can abide that, better than the other. I can’t stand looking into the faces of people and seeing what they’re thinking of me, that I’m a poor pitiful child who wears a heavy shoe and can never walk right and can never dance. But I never ask anyone to feel sorry for me, Herr Gallatin. And I saw that in your face the first time I looked at you. I see that in many faces aboard this ship. So, yes, I may be crippled and I may not wish to be around people very much, for just the reasons I’ve said, but…”
And here she hesitated, as if to draw up from her depths what she really had to say.
“Please,” she said, and in her eyes there gleamed the bright shine of tears, “do not cripple my dignity.”
He faced her directly. “I would never dream of such a thing,” he said. “I told you about Vulcan not because he was crippled, but because he knew pain. I think you know pain, Marielle. I think that’s what you hide, very deep. And I think you have to find a way to let it go, so you can forge a life.”
Her eyes were glassy. Her mouth twisted a bit. “What do you know of it?” she asked, in a bitter whisper.
How to answer such a question? he wondered. He realized she couldn’t see herself. She couldn’t see her potential for beauty, or for joy. She couldn’t see how lovely her eyes were, or how soft was her hair. She couldn’t see the German roses in her cheeks, or her own svelte slim body beneath the shapeless overcoat. She could only see the malformed leg and the heavy shoe that weighted her like an anchor to the earth. And of all the faces that held pity for her, no one held more pity than the face in the mirror.
A lookout shouted from the aft crow’s nest. Another shout replied, over on the starboard side.
The Javelin was coming. Michael had expected it from the port side. Even though he couldn’t see the warship, he realized from the crew’s warning shouts that it had crossed their stern and was probably even now swinging its guns toward the target.
Billy Bowers stood within calling distance. Michael said, “Billy! Come here! Get the girl below!”
Billy hurried over and, though Marielle recoiled in abject fear, he took her hand. “I won’t bite you!” he said. She resisted him and jerked free. She tried to stagger away, but she lost her balance and fell against the gunwale. “Damn it, girl! Hold still!” Billy told her, and then he scooped her up in his arms and nearly ran with her across the deck.