On a Cold Dark Sea(50)
Impulsively, Anna put it on, feeling the shoulders’ weight settle over her own. Its size overwhelmed her slight figure, and the sleeves hung past her fingers. It felt like an extension of herself, in a way she couldn’t explain but went deeper than reason. It would always be a reminder of that night and the sinful choice she had made later. But she knew that given the chance to go back, she would do everything exactly the same.
The coat belonged to the English woman, the one who’d taken charge of Anna when she was pulled into the lifeboat. The woman was strikingly pretty—like an angel, Anna thought—and talked in a steady, reassuring voice, though Anna couldn’t understand most of what she was saying. As the others around them chattered in a confusing mumble of barks and hisses, the woman wrapped her coat around Anna with motherly briskness. It was a man’s coat, far too big for Anna, and she burrowed into the wool, her hands and feet throbbing from the cold. Her relief had been so overpowering, and her mind so scattered by the disaster she’d escaped, that it was some time before she remembered Sonja and Emil were still in the water. The English woman was the only person who was kind to Anna when she cried.
The woman had introduced herself as Charlotte, a name that sounded to Anna as delicate as fine lace. Years later, Anna had wanted to name her first daughter Charlotte, but Josef had talked her out of it; he thought their children should have simple American names. Anna never told Josef why she had suggested it. She didn’t talk to him about the lifeboat.
Anna had made a half-hearted attempt to return the coat to Charlotte after they were rescued. Aboard the Carpathia, the Titanic survivors were sorted as efficiently as products on a factory line, with each passenger shunted off to the appropriate class, and Anna tried to catch Charlotte’s attention as they were led in different directions. Charlotte, shaking her head, waved off Anna’s attempts to pass her the coat as they were sent their separate ways. Anna joined a line of bedraggled immigrants in the third-class dining hall, a procession of the near-dead, shuffling toward their own nautical version of Saint Peter’s pearly gates. Anna was given a blanket and a pillow and directed to the third-class lounge. She was relieved to find Bridget and Mary there, weepy but unharmed. With tears more than words, they told Anna the Brians were lost, but when they asked after Sonja, Anna could only shake her head. Opening her mouth would allow the sorrow to escape, and Papa had always said wailing and carrying on was no way to honor the dead. Like the Titanic itself, her grief must be buried at sea.
By the following day, the third-class passengers had further sorted themselves by language and nationality. Anna hovered near a group of Swedish girls, grateful for the familiarity of their conversation but unable to make an effort at friendship. The Swedish American steward who had become their unofficial guardian said they could send telegrams to their families, and the others eagerly scribbled messages on the notepad he provided. But Anna couldn’t find the right words. How could she tell her parents that Sonja and Emil were dead? And who would tell Josef?
In the end, Anna took the coward’s way out. She wrote down her father’s name and her hometown, then the words, I am safe. She did not send a telegram to Josef. She told herself she would write from New York, when she’d had time to order her thoughts.
But her thoughts were no less muddled when the Carpathia arrived in New York. The other Swedish girls had friends or relatives meeting them; Anna had no one. The mass of people she saw gathered at the pier shocked and alarmed her; how would she possibly get through? The steward told her that due to the special circumstances of their arrival and the outcry of public sympathy, the third-class passengers would be spared the usual processing at Ellis Island.
“Were you planning to travel on from New York?” he asked.
Anna said nothing. If she kept to her original plans and went to Minnesota, she would have to tell Josef his brother and future wife were both dead. She would always be a reminder of his terrible loss.
“The Swedish Immigrant Aid Society can help with arrangements,” the steward told her. “They’ll pay your train fare and give you food and new clothes. They might even be able to book your passage back to Sweden, if that’s what you prefer.”
Anna wished the man would simply tell her what to do, rather than give her the burden of deciding. He frowned, concerned, as the silence between them lengthened.
“I’ll stay,” Anna finally said. The choice was made as much from fatigue as anything else; Anna simply couldn’t face another sea voyage. But the image of Josef, grieving, exerted its own pull. Much as Anna dreaded telling him, it would be a kindness if he heard the news from a friend rather than a stranger. Just because she went to Minnesota didn’t mean she was going to settle there; she could always go home.
But even then, Anna’s hopes were scattering down paths of possibility she’d never admit to following. Josef, whom she still loved beyond all reason, wanted to be married. And now he had no wife.
In the chaos of unloading, Anna had lost track of Bridget and Mary, and she made her way alone to a pair of women holding signs in Swedish. Both had come from Sweden themselves, more than twenty years before. In America, they told her, new immigrants were taken under the wing of those who’d preceded them, each past generation lifting up the next.
One of the women took Anna to her apartment in a taxi; it was the first time Anna had ever ridden in a car. In the kitchen, a trio of girls stared at Anna wide-eyed, and the oldest asked bluntly if she’d been on the ship that sank. Their mother, thankfully, shooed them away and gave Anna their bedroom for the night. Sleep came blessedly quickly, though Anna wouldn’t have thought it possible. Perhaps it was the lingering smell of cabbage rolls, which reminded Anna of home.