And her hands fell upon my back, pressed me against her.
We held each other and we did not speak and I grew stupid once again. I figured it was me she’d been waiting for, figured she’d been lying here waiting in the midst of mortal chaos because she needed me to arrive before she could think to be saved.
But she was simply clinging to me.
“We need to go now,” I said.
She pulled away a little and looked me in the eyes, her face half in dark shadow, half in the light from the porthole, that half flickering with the shadows of the chaos outside.
“It’s too much for me,” she said.
“I’ll help you,” I said.
She shook her head faintly, and I could see her mouth make a thin, asymmetrical smile, an ironic smile, and though it was a leap, I didn’t think I was stupid about this: I felt pretty sure that what was “too much” for her was more than just finding a way to save herself from drowning; she was choosing whether or not to live, whether lying back down on this bed and dying was the only way for her to refuse to work for the Germans.
What did they have on her?
An irony was dawning on me as welclass="underline" to talk her into escaping with me would be to preserve her for the Germans’ plan.
I embraced the irony. I said, “You have so much to live for.”
She put her hand on my chest. It wasn’t clear to me if it was a gesture of connection or a gentle Go away.
“Let’s do this together,” I said.
Her ironic smile again.
Voices outside the window.
She turned her face sharply in that direction.
I was locked in to Selene and I’d missed the words out there. A woman’s voice. Something about a child. I knew how little time we all had now, before the Lusitania went down. I was pretty sure the lifeboats were mostly useless. The children could not be saved.
“I can save you,” I said to Selene.
She looked back to me as sharply as if I’d cried out from beyond the porthole. The irony was gone from her face.
She believed me. I wasn’t sure I believed myself. But we’d try this together.
“Okay,” she said.
We both leapt up from the bed.
“Life jackets,” I said and I was ahead of her, striding into the parlor and to the tall wardrobe in the forward corner. I opened it and the upper shelf was jammed tight with two G. M. Boddy life jackets. They would not yield to a moderate grasp. I yanked them hard and they tumbled out.
I knew the design from a steamer in the Gulf. They were full of kapok in a strong drill casing, and if you put it on right, you’d float for days no matter what the seas. I worked quickly at the three knots to open one and Selene watched and she started on the knots on a second jacket before I’d finished. She was committed to this. Good.
We slipped them on, one big Falstaffian pad on our chest, five others around and behind us, one of them high between our shoulder blades to keep our heads above water no matter what. We tied each other in.
I took her hand and we went through the door and into the darkness of the corridor.
We turned right, toward the portal onto the Boat Deck.
It was our nearest way out. And it was worth taking a moment to see if the portside was indeed impossible: if my fear was wrong, then we’d be mad to contend with the upswell of bodies from belowdecks in the starboard exit doors.
We staggered along for a few steps, finding where to center ourselves in our bodies, balancing low in the legs, and we turned into the short portal corridor. My hand and Selene’s hand found each other without a thought driving them, without a glance from either of us. We held tight and moved to the portal.
I turned the handle and heaved the door open and we stepped out. A few yards aft, a lifeboat filled the deck, pressed against the wall. Battlefields had taught me to see and not to see splashes of blood and bodies splayed and crushed and others laid out writhing, and I looked back to Selene. She was seeing clearly what I did not. Her vast dark eyes were looking beyond me and they were wide with the carnage and with a thought I could read: it was better for her just to go back to her cabin and lie down and cross her arms on her chest.
And so she was letting go of my hand and she was recoiling backward toward the door and I knew from the rushing and crying around me and the angle of the deck beneath our feet and the lifeboats pinned against our hull that we should get away from the portside, and I reached out and grabbed her at the wrist before she could vanish and I dragged her forward and I cried “Look only at me” and I pulled her behind me for my first step forward and another — we would head for the starboard side, but not by the exit doors — and then I didn’t have to pull, and her wrist in my trailing hand twisted, but only so her own hand could grasp me in return, and she was with me, our hands holding at the wrists and I pushed hard through the narrow spaces between bodies, staggering at times as the angle to starboard tried to throw us down, but the angle forward helped us rush and we hugged the deck wall using it when we could, bracing our passage with our free hands or even at times with our feet, Selene slipping now sideways, and we got her up, clambering at each other with our hands, and we made our way forward, and in my functioning consciousness were only her hand and mine and the series of physical objectives I would set, one by one, to focus our rush. The Bridge Wing first, floating before us, and we stumble-rushed along and it neared and we swerved out from a staircase to the bridge and now we were passing beneath the wing and immediately ahead was the curving turn of the deck wall at the forward crossover passageway, and I knew we had to take that carefully, we dared not lose our footing in the turn, for there would be nothing on the other side to stop our tumble and I didn’t know the state of things down that slope, and so I pulled us up sharply, in the shadow of the Bridge Wing.
I turned us and we pressed back there against the wall. Just to my right the corner began its curve forward. Selene intertwined her fingers in mine and squeezed tight. Briefly. And then her hand went slack.
I turned my face to her. Selene Bourgani’s famous profile was before me, her head laid back as if she’d returned to her cabin bed. Her eyes were shut.
“Don’t give up,” I said. I could barely hear myself.
I realized there was a great din all around me of voices and chains and steam and footfalls and distress whistle and groaning hull metal and sobs and I blocked it all out once more and I leaned nearer to Selene and I cried out loudly, “Selene!”
Her face turned to me and her eyes opened.
“Stay with me,” I cried.
She stared at me blankly for a long moment. I was afraid she was losing her will. I thought to shake her, even to slap her across the cheek. This mood would kill her. Would kill us both.
But she stirred. She nodded to me: Yes.
“I need to check,” I cried, motioning over my shoulder to the corner of the deck wall. “Then we move.”
She nodded again.
I let go of her hand and turned and laid my chest against the wall and I worked my way left, carefully, along the curve, feeling the pull grow stronger on me, feeling it in my chest, and I pressed harder into the wall, stretched my neck to the left, waiting to see what I needed to see, hoping the sight would come before I was grabbed off my feet and thrown forward.
And then I could see, and I strained my legs to stop.
I stopped.
This is what I saw: the deck fell sharply toward the water, and beyond the foremast the water was foaming in a sharp, slashing angle across the forecastle, with starboard railing and capstans and hatches and windlass already vanished utterly beneath the sea and, with them, the far end of the passageway to the starboard side.
I pulled away, pressed my back against the deck wall, edged around the curve, thrashing in my head to visualize a way out for us, with the portside promenade a death trap and the forward passage to the starboard promenade blocked and the inside starboard portals clogged with chaos.