The voyage began this afternoon, with more than ten thousand passengers on board. Yes, ten thousand. I was gripped with seasickness from the start. It was crippling in a way that forced interruption of my duties.
Several hours into our journey to Kiel, at precisely 9:15 p.m. per my watch, the ship was struck by three torpedoes. It began to sink. Alarm bells hammered and we were mustered to boat stations. Passengers were seized with savage panic. It would be inappropriate for me to document the scene for you. You see, the dark corridors I ran through felt like a lumpy mattress, the kind I detest. But I soon realized that it was, in fact, a carpet of bodies that I was walking over. The three explosions tore not only through the ship, but also the passengers. I asked a young girl in the corridor to move. When she didn’t respond, I nudged her. Her round head, the shape of a summer peach, rolled and she was missing half of her face. I can’t stop thinking of it. I’m grateful you weren’t here to witness such haunting devastation.
The sinking took just under sixty minutes. The Gustloff’s final dive will pull her deep, to the bottom of the Baltic Sea. I estimate the water temperature to be approximately four degrees Centigrade at this time of year. It is quite impossible for a body to survive in that cold for any length of time. As a result, the many thousands of people I now see in the water will surely perish, despite their life vests. I am fortunate to have station on a raft, joined by a young Latvian woman whose newborn baby was snatched into a lifeboat without her. The waves are enormous and I am plagued with illness, constantly spilling my stomach over the side of the raft. My uniform is soiled. I seem to be missing a shoe.
Floating amidst this darkness and death, I have time not only for reflection but for honesty. I am now faced with the unbearable truth. How, Lore, could I truly love you? I could not, I should not—not after what you said, what you so rudely announced to everyone in the street. Yet the infatuation preserves and satiates me in an indescribable way. Perhaps it fences the fear.
So I cling to it.
You see, fear is a hunter. It encircles us when we are unarmed and least expect it. And then we are forced to make decisions.
I made the right decision. I tried to help.
You tried to pull your shade, to keep me out. Your decision, Hannelore, was the wrong one.
florian
“The ship, it’s under,” said Joana, her teeth chattering. Her voice was barely a whisper.
I counted nearly fifty people in our large lifeboat. We could have fit more.
The shoemaker.
The Polish girl.
Gone.
The cold on the open water would kill us. I called out to the little boy and pulled him onto my lap. I turned my body and straddled the bench in the boat. “Do the same,” I told Joana. “We’ll put the kids between us. Put the baby under your blouse and coat, against your skin.”
She turned toward me, holding the baby. I moved as close as I could. I wrapped my arms around her, sheltering the children from the elements. Our heads touched.
“Can you hear me?” Joana whispered. Her voice sounded thin, frightened.
I nodded and turned my good ear toward her.
“It’s so cold. Will anyone come for us?” she asked.
The air was black. The moon hid behind the clouds, unable to stomach the wretched scene. I looked out across the water, thousands of corpses floating silently. So many children. The girl I had pulled into the boat was already dead. She lay blue and lifeless at our feet. How would the Nazis report the news of the sinking? But then I realized.
They wouldn’t report it at all.
“Will anyone come for us?” repeated Joana.
“Yes,” I lied. “Someone will come for us.”
With the threat of Russian submarines in the area, most ships would probably detour to avoid us.
Everything I ran with was in my pack—my papers, the forged documents, my notebook, and the swan. All the running, the hiding, the lies, the killing, for what? The endless circle of revenge: answering pain by inflicting pain. Why did I do it?
The strange sailor had not made it to a lifeboat. There were none left. I looked down at my boots. My heel was still intact. Had the map and key survived? Did it matter? Water slowly crept through a crack in the bottom of our boat. The precious treasure would end up at the bottom of the Baltic.
So would I.
Maybe the Amber Room truly did carry a curse.
During my weeks on the run I had imagined every scenario. I had counted all of the ways I could die. They were gruesome, frightening. I had carefully planned how I would defend myself, what weapon I would use. But this, I had never imagined. How do you defend yourself against the prolonged, insufferable agony of knowing you will surrender to the sea?
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.