On a Cold Dark Sea(29)
Anna gently pulled away. She knew she should refuse him. But she wasn’t ready to say no, either. She couldn’t deny the emotions that Emil’s declaration had stirred up, emotions that were far from sisterly. In the moonlight, Emil looked older, the angles of his face heightened, and she could see the outline of the man he would become. The solemnness that hung so heavy on him as a boy would make him look distinguished as he aged. And she knew, with utter certainty, that he would always be kind.
Could a marriage be built on a mutual love of someone else?
So many questions and no clear answers. Now was not the time to resolve them.
“I’m not sure,” Anna said. It was the simplest form of the truth.
Emil’s relief was clear in the speed of his response. “Wait as long as you want. We won’t speak of it again till you’re ready.”
“We should see what Sonja’s gotten up to.”
Emil was as anxious as Anna to end the conversation, because he was quick to lead the way back to the stairs. They found Sonja standing by Bridget in the dining saloon, her face flushed. Sonja told them she was tired, and if Emil wondered why Sonja’s face was damp with sweat, he didn’t ask. Anna said good night to Emil and followed Sonja down the hall to the women’s quarters. A quick, careless departure that Anna regretted for the rest of her life. Why hadn’t she stayed? She’d wanted to dance, and Emil would have joined her if she had asked. She would have known what it felt like to be held in his arms, and that might have been enough to tell her whether she could one day grow to love him. If only she had that one happy memory, to counter all the others.
There was no dancing the next night; Sundays were intended for more godly pursuits. Still, it was impossible to suppress third class into a suitably holy silence. After supper, a pianist started banging out cheerful hymns, and the stewards turned a blind eye to the card games that were officially forbidden on the Lord’s day. Anna and Emil were polite but distant with each other, and both turned to Sonja as a distraction from their unresolved future. Sonja, hungry to know more about her intended, urged them to talk about Josef’s childhood, so Anna told her about the time Josef chased a runaway piglet halfway through the village, and Emil described how stubborn young Josef could be with their equally stubborn father. Each memory was a thread that wove Anna and Emil together. Before, she never would have said she had been happy as a child. She’d been loved and cared for by her parents and sisters, but her days were a constant progression of duties in which she had no choice or say. Anna saw things differently now, through Sonja’s eyes. Amid all the demands of farm life, there had been moments of contentment, even of joy. Moments she had overlooked until she remembered them with Emil.
The public rooms closed at ten o’clock on Sunday nights, but Anna retired to her cabin an hour earlier to study her English phrase book. As their arrival drew closer, she was becoming more nervous about the challenges ahead: finding their way from the boat dock to the train station, making the right connections, getting directions to the boarding house in Saint Paul where Josef was supposed to meet them. Her last clear memory before the crash was of practicing the question Is this the train to Chicago?
She must have fallen asleep with the book across her chest, because it thumped against the floor when she started awake. Voices were chattering just outside the door. Anna looked across the cabin at Mary, who was pulling herself upright.
“What is it?” Mary asked.
Words simple enough for Anna to understand. She shrugged. Bridget and Sonja leaned down from the top berths, asking similar questions in English and Swedish. Bridget, not surprisingly, was the first to climb out of bed and go outside to investigate. When she came back, jumpy with exhilaration, Anna couldn’t understand what she was saying; the word “iceberg” wasn’t in the phrasebook. She heard the Swedish-speaking steward marching down the corridor, shouting, “Stay in your cabins! Back to your cabins!”
Bridget and Mary were pulling on their shoes, and Anna wondered if the English steward was giving out different orders. When the Irish girls held the door open for Anna and Sonja to follow them, Sonja shook her head.
“We should do as we’re told,” she told Anna.
And so they waited. Anna was never sure how long they sat there, listening to the commotion outside, wondering if the steward would ever come back and tell them what to do. It felt like hours. Then they heard footsteps clanging along the corridor, and Emil lurched through the doorway. His shirt hung loose from his trousers, and his hair was as wild as Anna had ever seen it.
“What are you doing here?” Sonja demanded. It was a serious infraction for a young man to be found in the women’s quarters.
“There’s water,” Emil gasped between breaths. “Up front.”
Anna followed his eyes as he tilted his head down. The fabric at the bottom of his trousers was wet.
“It’s splashing around some of the cabins. I looked for you everywhere.”
“The steward said . . .”
“You’ve got to get out!” Emil urged. “Now!”
Anna nodded and pulled on her shawl and boots, not bothering to tie the laces. Sonja grabbed her bag, ignoring Emil’s protests. The women of the village had all given her wedding gifts—embroidered napkins and nightgowns, a beautiful linen tablecloth—and she refused to leave them behind. Anna and Sonja followed Emil toward the stairs. They passed a group of women in dark headscarves, forming a circle around a huddle of young children. One of the women asked Anna a question in a harsh-sounding language, and Anna could only shake her head. Everyone was looking for answers, it seemed, but no one had any to give.