فصل 95

joana

The black water lapped against the side of the boat. Snow drifted down around us. In the quiet dark, Florian began telling me things. He told me of his mother, how he missed her, how he mourned the mistakes with his father. He spoke of many people and places.

He was telling me things now because he knew we were going to die.

I thought of my mother, waiting patiently for me to arrive, worrying about her only daughter, perhaps her only surviving family member. How would she hear the news? Everyone knew the story of the big ships, Titanic and Lusitania. I looked toward the thousands of corpses floating in the water. This was so much larger. More than ten thousand people had been on board the Gustloff. The gruesome details of the sinking would be reported in every world newspaper. The tragedy would be studied for years, become legendary.

I sat, wrapped up with a handsome thief, an orphan boy and a newborn baby between us. I thought of Emilia standing on the deck of the Gustloff in the freezing wind, handing her baby to Florian. She had looked down at us in the lifeboat, her blond hair blowing beneath her pink hat.

“One more.”

That’s what the sailor had said.

Most would have fought to be “the one.” They would have insisted they ought to be “the one.” But Emilia had pushed the wandering boy into the boat, sacrificing herself for another. Where was she now? Had she gotten into a boat? I thought of frightened yet brave Emilia, and I started to cry.

I wanted my mother. My mother loved Lithuania. She loved her family. The war had torn every last love from her life. Would she have to learn the grotesque details of our suffering? Would news make it to my hometown of Bir?ai, to the dark bunker in the woods where my brother and father were thought to be hiding?

Joana Vilkas, your daughter, your sister. She is salt to the sea.

We floated in the blackness, bobbing along the waves. A woman in the boat announced the time every thirty minutes. There was no more splashing in the water, only the quiet echoes of crying. We sat, snow falling from an infinite sky.

We waited.

We drifted.

And then I felt Florian’s face in my hair. He was kissing me. He kissed my head, he kissed my ear, he kissed my nose. I looked up at him. He took my face in his hands.

“There’s a light. A boat is coming,” he whispered.