The Man Who Melted (25 page)

TWENTY-THREE

The twenty-six-foot collapsible with its high side-canvas floated low in the icy cold water.

It was almost like a picnic in the boat, for it was early, and the passengers were still excited by watching the listing
Titanic
. They passed around food and flasks while the crewmen quietly rowed them away from the great ship. It was a still night, only broken by the faraway sounds of ragtime being played by the ship's band. Everyone remarked how smooth the sea was, “like glass”; the oars hardly seemed to disturb its surface.

The
Titanic
was brilliantly lit, every porthole afire, even those parts that
were submerged, as if under glass. The bow was low in the water, and although it was not quite noticeable minute by minute, the ship was going fast.

Once again Joan begged the crewmen and passengers on the lifeboat to go back to the ship for Mantle. He was
supposed
to be under the protection of the ship's company, he had not signed a protection waiver…. Once again, they refused. She screamed and threatened, and then—helpless and frustrated and angry—she just stared at the
Titanic
, saw the tiny figures swarming near the rail, blinked back tears as a rocket exploded into searing white light, unmasking the dance of death on the decks.

She tried to find Mantle, searching for his thoughts; trying, somehow, against all hope, to pull him back, to save him, as she had done once before.

She called his name.

Surely he would need her now. He had to. But the
circuit fantome
seemed once again to be dead…unless, God forbid, Mantle was….

And then, for a harrowing instant, she saw him, felt him, heard him calling her. “Oh God,” she screamed, “he's drowning,” and she called back to Mantle, but the connection was dead, silent….

The others ignored her, as if she were raving. But a heavy woman who sat beside Joan wrapped her blanket around her, tried to console her. “I hope they're enjoying the view,” the woman said as she looked up at the huge airship floating silently above them. It could only be seen by its tiny running lights, which looked like red stars in the sky, and the occultation of stars as it passed overhead. It was the dirigible
Californie
, a nuclear-powered luxury liner.

“I'm sure they are,” Joan said quietly.

Then everyone gasped as the
Titanic'
s lights flickered and the bow dipped and the stern rose. The strains of the song “Autumn” seemed to float, evanescent, and all was quiet, as if this were all taking place under the dark, cold dome of a cathedral. Then there was a roar as the stern of the ship swung upward and the entrails of the ship broke loose: anchor chains, the huge engines and boilers, pianos, trunks, crystal. One of the huge, black funnels fell, smashing into the water amid sparks. But still the ship remained brilliantly lit.

Once, long ago, the sinking
Titanic
had been described as a finger pointing at the sky, but to Joan it was like an arm…Mantle's arm…reaching out of the sea.

The dark water slowly swallowed the ship; it lapped over her red and green running lights, and the noise of the ship breaking apart internally seemed to be reaching a crescendo, drowning out even those screaming passengers who had jumped into the freezing, twenty-eight-degree water.

Then the noise suddenly stopped and the ship simply slid into the sea, into its own eerie pool of light.

Joan screamed and tried to climb over the side of the boat, but the heavy woman sitting beside Joan, who was surprisingly quick, restrained her.

But all Joan could hear or feel was Mantle screaming inside her head.

TWENTY-FOUR

When Mantle made it back up to the boat deck, he found it partially submerged. Almost everyone had moved aft, climbing uphill as the bow dipped farther into the water.

The lifeboats were gone, as were the crew. He looked around, afraid now. Men and women were screaming, “I don't want to die,” while others clung together in small groups—some crying, others praying, while there were those who were very calm, enjoying the disaster. They stood by the rail, looking out toward the lifeboats or at the dirigible which floated above. Many had changed their clothes and looked resplendent in their early twentieth-century costumes. One man, dressed in pajama bottoms and a blue and gold smoking jacket, climbed over the rail and just stepped into the frigid water.

But there were a few men and women atop the officers' quarters. They were working hard, trying to launch collapsibles C and D, their only chances of getting safely away from the ship.

“Hey,” Mantle called to them, “do you need any help up there?” He knew that he was really going to die unless he did something.

He was ignored by those who were pushing one of the freed collapsibles off the port side of the roof. Someone shouted, “Damn!” The boat had landed upside down in the water.

“It's better than nothing,” shouted a woman, and she and her friends jumped after the boat.

Mantle shivered; he was not yet ready to leap into the frigid water, although he knew there wasn't much time left, and he had to get away from the ship before it went down. Everyone on or close to the ship would be sucked under. Perhaps it was his recurrent dream of Josiane floating in a pool of water as calm as this ocean that stopped him from jumping. He crossed to the starboard side where some other men were trying to push the boat “up” to the edge of the deck. The great ship was listing heavily to port.

This time, Mantle didn't ask. He just joined the work. No one complained. They were trying to slide the boat over the edge on planks. All these people looked to be in top physical shape—Mantle noticed that about half of them were women wearing the same warm coats as the men. This was a game to all of them, he suspected, and they were enjoying it. Each one was going to beat the odds, one way or another; the very thrill was to outwit fate, opt to die and yet survive.

But then the bridge was under water.

There was a terrible crashing, and Mantle slid along the floor as everything tilted. Impossibly, there was music coming from somewhere, an Episcopal hymn. He just then realized that the band had been playing ragtime all along.

Everyone was shouting, and Mantle saw more people than he thought possible to be left on the ship. People were jumping overboard. They ran before a great wave that washed along the deck as the stern of the ship swung upward.

“She's going down,” someone shouted as the icy water swept Mantle away. Mantle panicked and swam toward the crow's nest, which was not yet under water. Then he caught himself and tried to swim away from the ship, but it was too late. He felt himself being sucked back, pulled under. He was being sucked into the ventilator, which was in front of the forward funnel.

Down into sudden darkness….

He gasped, swallowed water, and felt the wire mesh, the air shaft grating that prevented him from being sucked under. He held his breath until he thought his lungs would burst; he called in his mind to Joan. Water was surging all around him, and then there was another explosion. Mantle felt warmth on his back as a blast of hot air pushed him upward. Then he broke out into the freezing air. He swam for his life, away from the ship, away from the crashing and thudding of glass and wood, away from the debris of deck
chairs, planking, and ropes; and especially away from the other people who were moaning, screaming at him, and trying to grab him as a buoy, trying to pull him down.

Still, he felt the suction pull of the ship, and he swam, even though his arms were numb and his head was aching as if it were about to break. Then the noise stopped, the crashing and even the shouting and howling, and Mantle knew that she was going down. He swam harder. In the distance were other lifeboats, for he could see lights flashing. But none of the boats would come in to rescue him; that he knew.

He heard voices nearby and saw a dark shape. For a moment it didn't register; then he realized that he was swimming toward an overturned lifeboat, the collapsible he had seen pushed into the water. Suddenly, someone grabbed him from below, and he felt himself being pulled down. It was Joan! he thought, pulling him under, and his mind seemed to open up as he screamed and fought and pushed himself away from whoever was drowning, who never reached the surface again.

There were almost thirty men and women standing stop the overturned boat. Mantle tried to climb aboard and someone shouted, “You'll sink us. We've too many already.”

“Find somewhere else.”

A woman tried to hit Mantle with an oar, just missing his head. Mantle swam around to the other side of the boat. He grabbed hold again, found someone's foot, and was kicked back into the water, which was freezing him, leaching away his will, drawing him down….

“Come on,” a man said, his voice gravelly. “Take my arm and I'll pull you up.”

“There's no
room
!” someone else said.

“There's enough room for one more.”

“No, there's not.”

A fight threatened, and the boat began to rock.

“We'll all be in the water if we don't stop this,” shouted the man who was holding Mantle afloat. Then he pulled Mantle aboard.

“But no more, he's the last one!”

Mantle stood with the others; there was barely enough room. Everyone had formed a double line now, facing the bow, and leaned in the opposite
direction of the swells. Slowly the boat inched away from the site where the ship had gone down, away from the people in the water—all begging for life, for one last chance. As he looked back to where the ship had been, Mantle thought of Pfeiffer and Faon. And desperately, he wanted to be with Joan, to have her take him in her arms.

A swimmer who was not wearing a life preserver came alongside the boat and called for help. Mantle hunkered down, took the man's hand, and said, “If you can survive the water, I'll keep you afloat.”

The man squinted his eyes, then closed them and nodded.

The cries for help could be easily heard across the water. In fact, the calls seemed magnified, as if meant to be heard clearly by everyone who was safe as a punishment for past sins.

“We're all deaders,” said a woman standing beside Mantle. “I'm sure no one's coming to get us before dawn, when they have to pick up survivors.”

“We'll be the last pickup, that's for sure—that's if they intend to pick us up at all.”

“Those in the water have to get their money's worth.”

“And since we opted for death….”

“I didn't,” Mantle said, almost to himself.

“Well, you've got it anyway.”

Mantle felt the man in the water lose his grip. He tried to pull the man up, but it was no use. Mantle was too weak.

There was nothing to do but let him go and watch him fall slowly downward.

“You must go back now,” Joan said to the crewman at the tiller. “The ship is gone, surely it's safe, surely—”

The heavy woman sitting beside Joan took her hand and squeezed it.

“We're staying right here,” said the crewman.

“He's going to die out there. We're his only chance.”

“He may be dead already, ma'am,” said another crewman rowing opposite her. “We can't take the chance, not yet, anyway, not with so many people still out in the water still—”

“You mean still alive!”

“That's right, ma'am. They'd overturn the boat, and we'd all end up dead. These people didn't pay for that now did they?”

“You've got to help him,” Joan mumbled, as if to herself.

“And the chances are that he's already dead, why—”

“Shut up,” said the woman beside Joan.

“He's alive,” Joan said. “He's got to be….”

“Well, I'm afraid that I'm for staying right where we are,” someone said. “I've had more than enough excitement for one night. I had no idea it was going to practically kill us.”

“It's a shame about your friend, honey,” the heavy woman said to Joan, “but he knew the conditions of this trip. We all took it for the element of chance—you too, I daresay.”

“Well, we're staying right here until we're picked up,” the man at the tiller insisted. “Those are my orders.”

“After all,” someone said to Joan, “it wouldn't be fair to those who are trying to beat the odds on their own, like the man you interviewed yesterday.”

“That's an idea…. Why don't you interview
us
?”

Sometime later, Joan heard Mantle call to her from the chill and silent darkness….

Mantle's teeth were chattering, and his hair had frozen to his scalp like a helmet. He watched the dirigible for a while, as did the others. He fought the numbness, the cushiony feeling of cold comfort, and forced himself to move his limbs as much as he could. It seemed colder yet. Certainly the sea was rougher than it had been; only the stars and the dirigible above seemed to be still.

The hours passed. If he could just last until dawn…

Mantle was numb, but no longer cold. As if from far away, he heard the splash of someone falling from the boat, which was very slowly sinking as air was lost from under the hull. At times, the water was up to Mantle's knees, yet he wasn't even shivering. Time distended, or contracted. He measured it by the splashing of his companions as they fell overboard. He heard himself
calling Joan, as if to say good-bye. To open the gate. To let her know that he did, indeed, love her.

And Joan flooded him with warmth and words and thoughts, and he jerked upright as first light seemed to be melting upon the choppy waves. He had her words inside him, keeping him awake and alive for hours.

His first thought, muddled by the cold, was that he was on land, for the sea was full of debris—cork, steamer chairs, boxes, pilasters, rugs, carved wood, clothes, and, of course, the bodies of those unfortunates who could not or would not survive—and the great icebergs and the smaller ones called growlers that looked like cliffs and mountainsides. The icebergs were sparkling and many-hued, all brilliant in the light, as if painted by some cheerless Gauguin of the north.

“There,” someone said—a woman's hoarse voice. “It's coming down, it's coming down!” The dirigible, looking like a huge white whale, seemed to be descending through its more natural element, water, rather than the thin, cold air. Its electric engines could not even be heard.

In the distance, Mantle could see the other lifeboats. Soon the airship would begin to rescue those in the boats, which were now tied together in a cluster. As Mantle's thoughts wandered and his eyes watered from the reflected morning sunlight, he saw a piece of carved oak bobbing up and down nearby, and noticed a familiar face in the debris that surrounded the lifeboat.

There, just below the surface, in her box, the lid open, eyes closed, floated Little Josiane.

She opened her eyes then and looked at Mantle, who screamed, lost his balance on the hull, and plunged headlong into the cold, dark water.