Job: A Comedy of Justice (10 page)

I felt a mixture of exasperation at her and of pride in what she thought of me—but more exasperation than pride. “Confound it, dear, I have
not
lost my memory. I am not Alec Graham; I am Alexander Hergensheimer, and that’s been my name all my life and my memory is sharp. Want to know the name of my second-grade teacher? Miss Andrews. Or how I happened to have my first airship ride when I was twelve? For I do indeed come from a world in which airships ply every ocean and even over the North Pole, and Germany is a monarchy and the North American Union has enjoyed a century of peace and prosperity and this ship we are in tonight would be considered so out of date and so miserably equipped and slow that no one would sail in it. I asked for help; I did not ask for a psychiatric opinion. If you think I’m crazy, say so…and we’ll drop the subject.”

“I did not mean to anger you.”

“My dear! You did not anger me; I simply unloaded on you some of my worry and frustration—and I should not have done so. I’m sorry. But I do have real problems and they are not solved by telling me that my memory is at fault. If it were my memory, saying so would solve nothing; my problems would still be there. But I should not have snapped at you. Margrethe, you are all I have…in a strange and sometimes frightening world. I’m sorry.”

She slid down off my bunk. “Nothing to be sorry about, dear Alec. But there is no point in further discussion tonight. Tomorrow—Tomorrow we will test that thumbprint carefully, in bright sunlight. Then you will see, and it could have an immediate effect on your memory.”

“Or it could have an immediate effect on your stubbornness, best of girls.”

She smiled. “We will see. Tomorrow. Now I think I must go to bed. We have reached the point where we are each repeating the same arguments…and upsetting each other. I don’t want that, Alec. That is not good.”

She turned and headed for the door, not even offering herself for a goodnight kiss.

“Margrethe!”

“Yes, Alec?”

“Come back and kiss me.”

“Should I, Alec? You, a married man.”

“Uh—Well, for heaven’s sake, a kiss isn’t the same as adultery.”

She shook her head sadly. “There are kisses and kisses, Alec. I would not kiss the way we have kissed unless I was happily willing to go on from there and make love. To me that would be a happy and innocent thing…but to you it would be adultery. You pointed out what the Christ said to the woman taken in adultery. I have not sinned…and I will not cause you to sin.” Again she turned to leave.

“Margrethe!”

“Yes, Alec?”

“You asked me if I intended ever again to ask you to come back later. I ask you now. Tonight. Will you come back later?”

“Sin, Alec. For you it would be sin…and that would make it sin for me, knowing how you feel about it.”

“‘Sin.’ I’m not sure what sin is. I do know I need you…and I think you need me.”

“Goodnight, Alec.” She left quickly.

After a long while I brushed my teeth and washed my face, then decided that another shower might help. I took it lukewarm and it seemed to calm me a little. But when I went to bed, I lay awake, doing something I call thinking but probably is not.

I reviewed in my mind all the many major mistakes I have made in my life, one after another, dusting them off and bringing them up sharp in my head, right to the silly, awkward, inept, self-righteous, asinine fool I had made of myself tonight, and, in so doing, how I had wounded and humiliated the best and sweetest woman I have ever known.

I can keep myself uselessly occupied with self-flagellation for an entire night when my latest attack of foot-in-mouth disease is severe. This current one bid fair to keep me staring at the ceiling for days.

Some long time later, after midnight and more, I was awakened by the sound of a key in the door. I fumbled for the bunk light switch, found it just as she dropped her robe and got into bed with me. I switched off the light.

She was warm and smooth and trembling and crying. I held her gently and tried to soothe her. She did not speak and neither did I. There had been too many words earlier and most of them had been mine. Now was a time simply to cuddle and hold and speak without words.

At last her trembling slowed, then stopped. Her breathing became even. Then she sighed and said very softly, “I could not stay away.”

“Margrethe. I love you.”

“Oh! I love you so much it hurts in my heart.”

I think we were both asleep when the collision happened. I had not intended to sleep but for the first time since the fire walk I was relaxed and untroubled; I dropped off.

First came this incredible jar that almost knocked us out of my bunk, then a grinding, crunching noise at earsplitting level. I got the bunk light on—and the skin of the ship at the foot of the bunk was bending inward.

The general alarm sounded, adding to the already deafening noise. The steel side of the ship buckled, then ruptured as something dirty white and cold pushed into the hole. As the light went out.

I got out of that bunk any which way, dragging Margrethe with me. The ship rolled heavily to port, causing us to slide down into the angle of the deck and the inboard bulkhead. I slammed against the door handle, grabbed at it, and hung on with my right hand while I held Margrethe to me with my left arm. The ship rolled back to starboard, and wind and water poured in through the hole—we heard it and felt it, could not see it. The ship recovered, then rolled again to starboard—and I lost my grip on the door handle.

I have to reconstruct what happened next—pitch dark, mind you, and a bedlam of sound. We were falling—I never let go of her—and then we were in water.

Apparently when the ship rolled back to starboard, we were tossed out through the hole. But that is just reconstruction; all I actually know is that we fell, together, into water, went down rather deep.

We came up and I had Margrethe under my left arm, almost in a proper lifesaver carry. I grabbed a look as I gulped air, then we went under again. The ship was right alongside us and moving. There was cold wind and rumbling noise; something high and dark was on the side away from the ship. But it was the ship that scared me—or rather its propeller, its screw. Stateroom C109 was far forward—but if I didn’t get us well away from the ship almost at once, Margrethe and I were going to be chewed into hamburger by the screw. I hung onto her and stroked hard away from the ship, kicking strongly—and exulted as I felt us getting away from the hazard of the ship…and banged my head something brutal against blackness.

I was comfortable and did not want to wake up. But a slight throb in my head was annoying me and, willy-nilly, I did wake. I shook my head to get rid of that throb and got a snootful of water. I snorted it out.

“Alec?” Her voice was nearby.

I was on my back in blood-warm water, salt water by the taste, with blackness all around me—about as near to a return to the womb as can be accomplished this side of death. Or was this death? “Margrethe?”

“Oh! Oh, Alec, I am so relieved! You have been asleep a long time. How do you feel?”

I checked around, counted this and that, twitched that and this, found that I was floating on my back between Margrethe’s limbs, she being also on her back with my head in her hands, in one of the standard Red-Cross lifesaving positions. She was using slow frog kicks, not so much moving us as keeping us afloat. “I’m all right. I think. How about you?”

“I’m just fine, dearest!—now that you’re awake.”

“What happened?”

“You bumped your head against the berg.”

“Berg?”

“The ice mountain. Iceberg.”

(Iceberg? I tried to remember what had happened.) “What iceberg?”

“The one that wrecked the ship.”

Some of it came tumbling back, but it still did not make an understandable picture. A giant crash as if the ship had hit a reef, then we were dumped into water. A struggle to get clear—I did bump my head. “Margrethe, we’re in the tropics, as far south as Hawaii. How can there be icebergs?”

“I don’t know, Alec.”

“But—” I started to say “impossible,” then decided that, from me, that word was silly. “This water is too warm for icebergs. Look, you can quit working so hard; in salt water I float as easily as Ivory soap.”

“All right. But do let me hold you. I almost lost you once in this darkness; I’m frightened that it might happen again. When we fell in, the water was cold. Now it’s warm; so we must not be near the berg.”

“Hang onto me, sure; I don’t want to lose you, either.” Yes, the water had been cold when we fell into it; I remembered. Or cold compared with a nice warm cuddle in bed. And a cold wind. “What happened to the iceberg?”

“Alec, I don’t know. We fell into the water together. You grabbed me and got us away from the ship; I’m sure that saved us. But it was dark as December night and blowing hard and in the blackness you ran your head into the ice.

“That is when I almost lost you. It knocked you out, dear, and you let go of me. I went under and gulped water and came up and spat it out and couldn’t find you.

“Alec, I have never been so frightened in all my life. You weren’t anywhere. I couldn’t see you; I reached out, all sides, and could not touch you; I called out, you did not answer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I should not have panicked. But I thought you had drowned. Or were drowning and I was not stopping it. But in paddling around my hand struck you, and then I grabbed you and everything was all right—until you didn’t answer. But I checked and found that your heart was steady and strong, so everything was all right after all, and I took you in the back carry so that I could hold your face out of water. After a long time you woke up—and now everything is truly all right.”

“You didn’t panic; I’d be dead if you had. Not many people could do what you did.”

“Oh, it’s not so uncommon; I was a guard at a beach north of København two summers—on Fridays I gave lessons. Lots of boys and girls learned.”

“Keeping your head in a crunch and doing it in pitch darkness isn’t learned from lessons; don’t be so modest. What about the ship? And the iceberg?”

“Alec, again I don’t know. By the time I found you and made sure that you were all right and then got you into towing position—by the time I had time to look around, it was like this. Nothing. Just blackness.”

“I wonder if she sank? That was one big wallop she took! No explosion? You didn’t hear anything?”

“I didn’t hear an explosion. Just wind and the collision sounds you must have heard, then some shouts after we were in the water. If she sank, I did not see it, but—Alec, for the past half hour, about, I’ve been swimming with my head pushed against a pillow or a pad or a mattress. Does that mean the ship sank? Flotsam in the water?”

“Not necessarily but it’s not encouraging. Why have you been keeping your head against it?”

“Because we may need it. If it is one of the deck cushions or sunbathing mats from the pool, then it’s stuffed with kapok and is an emergency lifesaver.”

“That’s what I meant. If it’s a flotation cushion, why are you just keeping your head against it? Why aren’t you on it, up out of the water?”

“Because I could not do that without letting go of you.”

“Oh. Margrethe, when we get out of this, will you kindly give me a swift kick? Well, I’m awake now; let’s find out what you’ve found. By Braille.”

“All right. But I don’t want to let go of you when I can’t see you.”

“Honey, I’m at least as anxious not to lose track of you. Okay, like this: You hang onto me with one hand; reach behind you with the other. Get a good grip on this cushion or whatever it is. I turn over and hang onto you and track you up to the hand you are using to grip the pillow thing. Then we’ll see—we’ll both feel what we have and decide how we can use it.”

It was not just a pillow, or even a bench cushion; it was (by the feel of it) a large sunbathing pad, at least six feet wide and somewhat longer than that—big enough for two people, or three if they were well acquainted. Almost as good as finding a lifeboat! Better—this flotation pad included Margrethe. I was minded of a profane poem passed around privately at seminary: “A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou—”

Getting up onto a mat that is limp as an angleworm on a night as black as the inside of a pile of coal is not merely difficult; it is impossible. We accomplished the impossible by my hanging on to it with both hands while Margrethe slowly slithered up over me. Then she gave me a hand while I inched up and onto it.

Then I leaned on one elbow and fell off and got lost. I followed Margrethe’s voice and bumped into the pad, and again got slowly and cautiously aboard.

We found that the most practical way to make best use of the space and buoyancy offered by the mat was to lie on our backs, side by side, starfished like that Leonardo da Vinci drawing, in order to spread ourselves as widely as possible over the support.

I said, “You all right, hon?”

“Just fine!”

“Need anything?”

“Not anything we have here. I’m comfortable, and relaxed—and you are here.”

“Me, too. But what would you have if you could have anything you want?”

“Well…a hot fudge sundae.”

I considered it. “No. A chocolate sundae with marshmallow syrup, and a cherry on top. And a cup of coffee.”

“A cup of chocolate. But make mine hot fudge. It’s a taste I acquired in America. We Danes do lots of good things with ice cream, but putting a hot sauce on an ice-cold dish never occurred to us. A hot fudge sundae. Better make that a double.”

“All right. I’ll pay for a double if that’s what you want. I’m a dead game sport, I am—and you saved my life.”

Her inboard hand patted mine. “Alec, you’re fun—and I’m happy. Do you think we’re going to get out of this alive?”

“I don’t know, hon. The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive. But I promise you this: I’m going to do my best to get you that hot fudge sundae.”

We both woke up when it got light. Yes, I slept and I know Margrethe did, too, as I woke a little before she did, listened to her soft snores, and kept quiet until I saw her eyes open. I had not expected to be able to sleep but I am not surprised (now) that we did—perfect bed, perfect silence, perfect temperature, both of us very tired…and absolutely nothing to worry about that was worth worrying about because there was nothing, nothing whatever, to do about our problems earlier than daylight. I think I fell asleep thinking; Yes, Margrethe was right; a hot fudge sundae was a better choice than a chocolate marshmallow sundae. I know I dreamt about such a sundae—a quasi-nightmare in which I would dip into it, a big bite…lift the spoon to my mouth, and find it empty. I think that woke me.