The Star of Istanbul (11 page)

I was crazy. Why was I knocking? I tried Selene's door and it was locked.

This was good. She wouldn't rush out in these circumstances and then lock her door behind her. She was inside.

“Selene!” I cried. And again: “Selene!” I backed away to kick the door in. It would be up the incline and I struggled to secure my footing—the opposite corridor wall was too far away to brace ­myself—and I planted my foot on the floor as best I could, straining into the rubberized tiles, and I kicked hard just below the door lock.

A little give. But it was still locked. I kicked again and stumbled forward. The cries went on from the deck. The electric lights flickered and went out. And stayed out. The generator was dead. My throat clamped shut.

I couldn't see the door. It was before me but I needed to aim well to kick this thing open. But around a corner about fifty feet aft was the door to the promenade. Its porthole spilled a little light that seeped just far enough into the corridor that it let my eyes begin to adjust.

I set myself once more and kicked, and I set and kicked again and the door popped open and instantly banged back shut. But the lock was breached. I stepped forward and pushed through into Selene's suite.

I flinched at the light.

The door slammed behind me.

The portholes were lace-curtained but unshuttered, letting the day pour in.

Shadows flashed there at the windows. A jumble of sharp voices and moaning. Clanking of chains. I made them blur away from me.

I turned.

The sofa. The chair. The whole parlor. Empty. Selene was gone.

But there was one more room.

I stepped quickly across the floor and into the bedroom.

And I saw her.

She was lying on her back on the farther of the two foot-to-foot beds. She was dressed in shirtwaist and skirt and flat shoes. Her hands were crossed on her chest. She was very still.

I thought of goddamn Juliet and plunged forward, sat down beside her.

She stirred.

I put my hands behind her shoulders and pulled her up, pulled her against my chest. She was warm. She was moving. I put my mouth against her ear. “Selene,” I said.

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 well: 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.

I was off the curve once more and I turned my face to Selene.

She was gone.

I pushed away from the wall, scrambled upright.

I looked up the incline of the Boat Deck.

Bodies jumbled there, black-uniformed crewmen pulling at people in the nearest lifeboat, dragging them out—and this was why I could not let myself see too much—and therefore think too much—I was immobilized now trying to understand the incongruity of the crew unloading the unlaunched lifeboat—but they were acting on orders based on the desperate reality that the rivet heads and flanges down the side of the hull would rip the boat open in its dragging descent, even as these men no doubt proclaimed the lie—since there was no official Cunard alternative—that the ship was unsinkable.

I had to stop trying to figure things out with my head. I was losing any sense of what to
do
. I had to trust my body simply to act now.

And I found my body sparking with undirected energy to find Selene.

She was not visible.

And then she was.

I saw her white shirtwaist and dark skirt against the sky, emerging at the portside railing from beyond the wide, upright column of the Bridge Wing. She was moving up the deck, slowly, looking out to sea, as if she were taking some fresh air after lunch.

I knew a way.

I scrambled up the deck toward Selene. She did not move as I came near, and I stepped to the railing beside her. She seemed not even to notice.

We clung to the rail and watched the wide, bright, sun-flecked sea together for a few moments, as if the deck was deserted and I was ready to offer her a cigarette and later we might even work up to a kiss.

Then I slipped my arm around her waist.

And to my relief, she laid her head against the point of my shoulder.

I angled my head toward hers.

In spite of our appearance at the rail and my sharp focus on her, I was fully aware of the welter all around us. I bent to her, brought my mouth close to her ear so I could speak loudly enough to be heard but still sound tender, like an actor wooing an actress and projecting the performance to the back of the mezzanine. “Selene.”

She lifted her head away from my shoulder.

“I want to hold you close to me once again,” I said.

She lifted her chin just a bit.

“In this lifetime,” I said.

She nodded.

She turned her face and looked up into my eyes.

We could delay no longer.

I took her hand.

“We have to go over,” I said, flipping my head a little toward the top of the ship.

And we turned and we cut across the deck to the stairway and we were going up and the stairs were empty—groups in panic follow the obvious paths, stack up at exit doors, refuse to act against their conditioned response—and we were climbing fast and we emerged onto the rubber-matted flooring outside the wheelhouse. The windows were a few steps forward of us and I couldn't see inside and I was glad for that, glad to miss an image of the quiet chaos in there. We turned aft.

And a junior officer stepped from the bridge doorway, directly into our path. He lifted a meatpacker's hand, giving us his palm.

We stopped. Though I didn't want to do it because I was afraid Selene would run again, I knew I had to let go of her hand.

I gave it a squeeze and released it.

“Forbidden,” he shouted. “Go back.”

A pistol was wedged into his belt on his right hip. He was under orders to protect the bridge with deadly force.

“We're just going through,” I said.

His palm was coming down and it was angling toward his hip.

I took a quick step forward as his hand neared the pistol and my right fist was closed tight already and I stepped once more, planted my leading foot, my left foot, out ahead, and I stopped and he grasped the pistol and I set myself and the barrel was coming free and I drove my fist forward—an overhand right—shifting my sight to his face, seeing only his deep-clefted chin, and I was pivoting my whole body from the hips and pushing off on my back foot and driving through and I caught him square in a boxer's sweet aiming spot, right on the point of his chin, and there was a crack that I could hear above the siren roar and there was the clean, hard yielding and the release and the flying away. He landed hard and bounced and settled, and the rube's jaw was glass: his head lolled to the side and his eyes rolled back and closed.