Salt to the Sea (23 page)

BANG!

My body was thrown from the cot.

I hit the floor.

BANG!

Pitch-black. I crawled. I couldn't see the baby.

I yelled for Joana.

BANG!

Screaming.

Glass breaking.

Alarms ringing.

We were twenty-five nautical miles offshore.

BANG!

Something slammed into the port side of the ship.

What was that?

BANG!

Another explosion. Darkness. I could not breathe.

BANG!

Panicked screams filled my head. My body shifted.

The ship was listing.

The nose was going under.

BANG!

Our bodies slammed into each other.

The old man grabbed my arm. “Did we hit a mine?” he whispered.

BANG!

The little boy stirred. “Opi?”

“Yes, yes. I'm right here.” The old man quickly tightened the straps on the boy's life vest.

BANG!

And then I knew.

Torpedoes.

I stood, not knowing what to do. Where were Dr. Wendt and Dr. Richter? I helped a screaming pregnant woman off the floor. She gripped my arm in terror.

“Please. Help me!” she pleaded.

Emilia grabbed Halinka. She wrapped her in a pillowcase and then quickly spiraled a sheet around her. She looked at me and shouted, pointing up with her finger.

The ship's tilt increased. Everything in the room slid. The pregnant woman's nails pierced my skin.

Emilia sprang into action. She put on her coat and pink hat, grabbed a life vest from the corner and tied it on. She held the swaddled baby in one arm and threw life vests from the corner to everyone. I grabbed a vest with my free arm and put it around the pregnant woman.

“Let's all stay calm,” I said. “We'll wait for Dr. Wendt or one of the captains to advise us. I'm sure they'll make an announcement.”

“No!” Emilia yelled, gesturing frantically. “Coat. It's cold. Up. Now!”

Emilia was saying we had to go up top into the cold.

Emilia was saying the ship was sinking.

The image of the burning, sinking wreath flashed before my eyes. Noise increased from the corridor.

I called out to the women. “Hurry! Take your coats. Wrap up. The cold will kill you.” Was anyone listening? Did they understand me? Didn't they realize that we had to get out of the metal container?

The boat carried more people than the population of some cities. I thought of the ship's many levels. Thousands of passengers would surge toward the top. The stairways would be jammed. No one was moving fast enough. I ran around the area, swatting at them like pigeons.

Joana wanted to wait for instructions. No.

We had to move. Now.

I looked down at the tiny baby. Her eyes were open wide, staring into mine.

She began to cry.

Emergency lights blinked on. A sailor ran through the heaps of refugees, instructing everyone to put on life vests.

“What happened?” I yelled to him.

“Torpedoes. A Russian sub.”

We had been torpedoed by a Russian submarine? The ship's list increased dramatically. Things began sliding down the angled floor.

Suddenly, the grand piano in the music room rolled fast, crushing the little girl with the bear in its path before crashing into the wall and releasing a discordant cry. Passengers shrieked and wailed, trying to help the girl who now resembled smashed fruit.

Burning bile rose in my throat.

A woman sitting nearby held her infant out to me and screamed. “Help us! What do we do?” She reached for me.

I picked up the life vest near the feet of the mangled girl. I slipped it over my head.

“You should probably leave,” I told the woman.

I pushed my way to the stairs.

The corridor was jammed with passengers.

“Torpedoes! The submarine is under the ship,” someone yelled. Panic flared into a desperate rush of yelling and pushing.

I slung my pack onto my back. I grabbed the little boy and picked him up.

“Do we have to leave the boat?” asked the boy.

“Yes. Hang on to my middle. Tight. Do not let go.”

“Opi!” yelled the boy.

“Yes, yes, Opi's here,” said the shoe poet. “I'm here.”

“Do you have our coins?” called the boy.

“Yes, I have the coins,” he replied.

My mind raced through the layout of the ship. We were on A deck, front dining hall. We had to climb up, two decks to Joana. Then up to the sundeck. I thought of the four levels below us. The boat tilted farther. Frantic screams splintered through the dark passageway. We would soon be trapped.

“Hurry,” shouted the old man. “Wait, Florian, where's your life vest?” he asked me.

Alarm bells continued to shriek.

“Walk in front of me,” I yelled to the shoemaker. “I can lift you if I need to.”

The boy on my front, my pack on my back, we pushed our
way through the sea of people toward the stairs. The boy clung to my neck, his legs around my stomach, feet locked at the ankles under my pack.

The width of the crowd knocked the fire extinguisher from the wall in the stairwell. It fell and exploded, sending foam everywhere. People began to slip and fall. Others simply scrambled over them. I felt the crunch of bodies underfoot in the dark and the little boy's panting breaths in my hair. I pushed Poet up in front of me. People grabbed and clawed at my back. I leaned forward, trying to stay upright. And then I felt a pull on my shoulder. It was the strap on my pack.

It snapped.

Announcements crackled through the speaker system.

“Remain calm. Proceed in an orderly manner to the top deck.”

Dr. Wendt burst into the maternity ward.

“Don't listen to the announcements. Get the women on deck and into lifeboats. Quickly!”

“What should we take?” I asked, moving toward my suitcase.

“Nothing!” he said. “Just take your life vest, hurry!”

I corralled the women out of the ward and directed them to the stairwell. The hallway was already flooded. Where was Emilia? Icy water seeped through my boots.

“Erika!” a desperate man shrieked. “Erika, where are you?”

The boat was nose-first and tilting left, to port side. The stairs slanted at an awkward angle, making them even more difficult to climb. The lifeless body of a child lay trampled near the stairs. I tried to stop and pick him up but the surge of the crowd knocked me forward.

Thousands of piercing screams filled the stairwell. “We're going to drown!” a woman cried. A gunshot echoed somewhere below. Further panic swelled through the mass of people on the stairs. I was moving but not sure I was even walking. People
clambered over one another as they climbed. The weaker ones fell backward and were sucked underfoot, unable to pull themselves up.

The stairway became choked. The ship tilted deeper into the water. The woman was right.

We were all going to drown.

I ran downhill along the tilting corridor, freezing water up to my knees. A small boy swam by me. All of the passengers seemed to be going the other way. But I knew something they didn't. There were interior ladders inside the ventilation ducts. I pushed past people, continuing on my way.

“Sailor, please,” someone called out behind me.

I reached the end of the corridor. Another sailor appeared. He grabbed me by the shirt.

“Hurry, we have to get everyone out of the cabins and up on deck!” he said.

“How severe is it?” I asked.

“Three torpedoes. E deck, the engine room, and the forward compartments are destroyed.”

E deck. The swimming pool. The naval auxiliary girls were on E deck. The sailors' bunks were in the forward compartments.

The sound of joists snapping and rivets popping echoed through the stairwell.

“She's going down,” said the sailor. “Grab a coat if you can find one.” I followed him onto the upper promenade deck, taking a coat from a woman who was struggling with her life vest.

The sailor began smashing and breaking open cabin doors
that had jammed. He shuttled people toward the stairs. “Come on!” he shouted to me. “Get these people out!”

“Yes, everyone, hurry,” I said to myself. I opened a door.

A woman and child lay bloody on the floor. In the center of the cabin, a naval officer stood with a gun to his head.

I watched, somehow fascinated. Would he do it?

He turned and pointed the gun at me.

I ran back to the ventilation ducts.

I am a thinker. I am thinking.

Torpedo strike: Approximately 9:15 p.m.

Ship's capacity: 1,463.

Passengers on board: 10,573.

Lifeboats: 22.

But then I remembered.

Ten of the lifeboats were missing.

I made it to the top deck. Snow whipped, stinging my face. I clutched the baby. The wind lashed, trying to pull us over. The nose of the
Gustloff
was already beneath the water and the ship was rolling onto its left side. The icy deck glimmered, slick. I crouched down and crawled with Halinka, speaking to her in Polish.
Nie płacz.
Don't cry.

The night was dark. The sea churned, boiling and angry. Huge waves crashed against the ship. A sailor fired a flare. It soared high, a red shooting star illuminating an endless snow-filled sky. Frantic passengers tried to run as soon as they emerged from the stairs. I watched as they slipped and skidded across the icy deck, screaming and plunging into the water like human raindrops.

People cried. They fought. Sailors yelled. A grown woman kicked a teenager out of the way, ignoring her pleas for help. I stopped and crouched farther down with Halinka, holding her soft, warm body close to mine. I sang
All the little duckies
and hooked one arm around a metal railing on the deck. The ship submerged deeper into the sea.

Sailors struggled with the frozen winches that held the lifeboats on the left side.

The lifeboats on the right side were unusable, suspended high out of the water.

But I wasn't looking for a lifeboat.

I was looking for the knight.

We made it to the top deck.

“Hang on to me,” I yelled to the old man.

“Wait. It's slippery. Our shoes will slide,” shouted the shoemaker. “We must crawl.”

Hordes of people emerged onto the icy deck. A man began to run. His feet slipped out beneath him. His body sailed through the air, his back snapping in two against the ship's rail before bouncing into the sea.

I saw a lifeboat, only half full, lowered into the water. It had two sailors in it. The winds and sea spray whipped against our faces, making it hard to see or even move. People scrambled to the next boat, fighting and jumping to get in. Someone cut the back rope but the front rope didn't release. The boat overturned and dangled, spilling all of the people into the deep black to drown.

Screams of death filled my good ear. The other half of my head felt detached, muted.

“Where is your life vest?” yelled the shoemaker to me as he clutched the wandering boy.

I had been hiding. I hadn't been issued a vest.

Some passengers dove off the ship rather than wait for a boat. Countless bodies bobbed in life vests in the water.

“Look for our girls,” said the shoemaker. “Where are the girls?”

I emerged up top into the freezing wind and snow.

I had lost sight of Emilia on the stairs. I yelled for her and looked for her pink hat. Dr. Wendt and Dr. Richter were already on deck loading the wounded into a boat. I directed the remaining pregnant women to them. They gave me a life vest. I put my arms through it and tied the strings in the front.

“Please,” a girl cried to me. “My cousin is down on the lower deck. Please, help me go find her.”

Her cousin. Thousands were on the lower decks. Thousands were trapped.

The ship suddenly groaned and shifted into a deeper tilt.

“Get in a boat. Now!” I yelled to the girl. I directed her toward a lifeboat.

I grabbed a railing near the staircase. A loud
crash
thundered from behind. The enormous anti-aircraft weaponry slid across the deck, broke through the rail, and smashed onto a lifeboat that had just been lowered. The weapons, the boat, and all of the passengers sank quickly beneath the surface.

A scream erupted from within me.

I had made it up top. Everyone was screaming. Screaming was not thinking. Passengers struggled toward the rail and the lifeboats. I watched them cry, yell, and beg for help. Beg for life.

The scene played as if to music. People looked to me, eyes panting and desperate. Their hands reached for me in choreographed synchronization.

Save me. Save me. Save me.

We crawled on the slippery deck. An injured woman grabbed my ankle.

“Please, help me!” she shrieked. The salt of her tears had smudged her eye makeup.

I nodded. Yes, she would need help to fix her ruined face.

Panic required me to take action. I could not. The chaos disrupted my ability to focus, pulling me instead from reaction to observation. My arm began moving, turning the invisible crank of Death's music box. Somewhere inside, I didn't want the melody to end. I saw Captain Petersen lowered with passengers in a boat. My intelligence then called to me. If our captain was leaving, surely I should depart as well.

A lifeboat. Yes, I would get in a lifeboat.

The blisters on my hands popped and bled. I wiped them off on the wool coat I had taken from the passenger. I shoved
through the thick crowd to the rail. And then I saw the recruit, the old man, and the little boy.

The recruit was screaming. Veins bulged in his neck. His mouth contorted as he summoned all of his strength to roar one, single word.

Joana.