Within the hour passengers emerged from tween decks for morning services, but for the first time in my life I did not join in the prayers and singing. I sat away from the congregation as they kneeled, rose again, kneeled once more. If they were devotion’s tide, I was rock. I was unmoved. Each assurance of grace felt like a lie.
After prayers my brother wandered to the side of the ship and spent some time staring into the water alone. My heart swelled with affection for him. I wanted to ask him what he was looking for. Was he thinking of me, of my body now absorbed by the ocean? I was unsure how much time had passed since I had died.
Hans approached starboard and joined my brother at the gunwale. He leaned out as far as he was able, lifting his arms wide.
‘Do you ever wonder how deep it is?’ he asked, eyes staring down, as though he planned to dive.
‘Three foot,’ murmured Matthias.
Hans snickered.
‘Did you find her?’ my brother asked.
‘Who?’
‘The kitten.’
‘Not yet. But I will.’ He gestured behind him. ‘It’s not like she has any place to go.’
They both looked back down to where the hull cut through the filmy water. There were dolphins racing alongside the ship, sleek and twisting below the surface.
‘Did I ever tell you about when my mother died?’ Hans said.
Matthias shook his head. ‘No. I don’t think I even know what she died of.’
‘A weak heart. I was eight.’
‘I remember her funeral.’ Matthias glanced up. ‘It must have been hard for you.’
Hans nodded. ‘She had a shirt. This blouse. I remember her holding me when I was a boy. I used to rub the material of it between my fingers. I still think about it all the time.’
Matthias glanced across at him. ‘Her shirt?’
‘Her holding me.’
They lapsed into silence. I watched as they gazed out at the horizon beyond the greasy, shifting water. Clouds had appeared, banking steadily darker.
‘It doesn’t go away. The grief,’ Hans said eventually. He cleared his throat. ‘I liked Hanne a lot. I liked that she was different.’
My brother said nothing. I heard him swallow.
‘Different in a good way, I mean. She was fast as a kid, wasn’t she? Beat me every time.’
Matthias smiled. ‘Everyone beat you.’
Hans reached out and cuffed him on the ear.
‘What? It’s true.’
‘I know.’
They watched the dolphins for a while.
‘How do you bear it?’ Matthias’s voice was quiet. ‘The grief, I mean. If it doesn’t go away.’
Hans considered this. ‘I make room for it somehow.’
‘Sometimes I think it will kill me,’ Matthias said, and I saw then, in the way his chin trembled, that he had taken my death into himself, that he carried it in his gut.
‘I know what that feels like,’ replied Hans.
‘I don’t understand how God could let it happen.’ Matthias cleared his throat. ‘It’s not right.’
Hans squinted up at Matthias. ‘No. No, it’s not.’
‘Do you ever see her?’
‘Hanne?’
‘Your mother. Do you ever see her? Sitting on your bed. There when you wake up, or before you fall asleep.’
Hans leaned over the gunwale. ‘I dream about her sometimes.’
‘But does she ever appear to you?’
Hans shook his head. ‘You see Hanne?’
Matthias hesitated, his mouth contorting, as though he were trying not to cry. ‘No.’ He turned back to the sea. ‘Gottlob, sometimes.’ He breathed in deeply through his nose. ‘Out of the corner of my eye.’
Hans nodded. ‘I wish my mother did appear to me. I hope she does one day.’
They pulled away from the gunwale and watched Daniel Simmel cut his brother’s hair. Rudolph was laughing and pulling a face as the scissors ran close, running his hand across his shorn neck. I leaned down and picked up a tuft of clipped hair, rubbed it between my fingers. Smelled sweat and maleness. Locks of hair drifted along the boards. I raised a hand to my own head, felt the tight coil of my own braids.
‘Hey, boys, stop!’ A sailor approached them, face dark. He grabbed the scissors in Daniel’s hand and pointed out to the horizon where the clouds were amassing. ‘You’re bringing on bad luck,’ the sailor said, and he threw the scissors on the deck.
There was a brief flash in the sky and, as if in reply, the wind stirred. There were rapid movements from the sailors, furling sails.
I ran my fingers through my hair and turned it loose, and there was satisfaction in its weight upon my shoulders, in the way the gathering wind pulled it.
The passengers stood breathing in the cool change. Thunder rumbled. The sailors directed the women below deck, and Daniel pocketed his scissors, face red, as his brother’s cut locks flew across the boards and out to sea.
The wind was strong now. It blew my hair across my face. I felt it like a feeding fire. The women obediently retreated to the dark interior of the ship with the elders, while the single men began to assist the sailors and haul their belongings down the hatchway. I waited.
The sky closed in upon the sea.
The storm approached.
The wind wanted to drag me into a dance. To be touched like that! The feel of the natural world running its hands over me, all violent invitation, was a wild pleasure. The ocean rose. My skin smacked with water lifted from the cresting waves, and I suddenly felt loose and angry and desirous. As the wind pulled my head up into the closed fist of sky, I understood that I need not hide from it. I was free to do as I liked. Unanchored from life, I could be unmoored from fear of its loss.
And so I stayed.
I remember laughing throughout the storm. I was open-mouthed. I climbed the rigging and clung to it like a spider and felt the spume dash across my teeth, felt my hair whip about my skull as if the wind would have me scalped. It could not touch me. The water could not drown me. I swallowed it down. I remember the cold upon my skin, the laceration of salt. The ship groaned, boards creaking, and I imagined passengers below, hands gripping the planks between their bunks, rolling with the waves, praying for safety.
I shook the rigging and curled my toes about the rope and sang to the storm.
‘Praise God,’ I screamed, ‘for He has a wild heart and I am in His image! Praise God, for his angels are birds and their trumpets are filled with fish! Praise God for the wind that blows the skies apart!’
I am done with my dying. I remember thinking that, as the storm filled my lungs. I am done with my dying.
I woke sticky with salt. My cheek pressed against the rope, my hands and feet knotted in the rigging. Undrowned, skin raw only with the cold.