by Jerry Sacher
“If I receive a letter, I shall let you know, but remember Russia is in chaos right now, and I can’t imagine the post is moving very fast, if at all….”
“What are you thinking about, Carter? You looked like you were a million miles away over there.”
“I was thinking about home….” Benjamin stopped himself from saying more to a man he only knew by sight on the ship.
Mason was obviously not a man to be put off, so he moved closer to Benjamin, failing to notice that Benjamin moved away again. Mason turned his head in Benjamin’s direction.
“Where is home for you, Carter?”
“Right now it’s the HMHS Pendennis, and before that I was in St. Petersburg.”
Mason let out a whistle, and pulled the cigarette case from his pocket, then handed another one to Benjamin. The hand that wrapped its own around Benjamin’s to light his cigarette had a firm grip. Benjamin blew the smoke over the rail. He asked John where he was from, and learned that he had a medical practice in Liverpool before the war, and now his home was this same ship. Benjamin only replied with a half smile, and let the conversation lag so he could turn his mind to Sergei.
“I don’t even have a photograph of him,” Benjamin whispered out loud to the wind and the spray blowing over the bow.
Doctor Mason continued making small talk, and Benjamin gave him enough of a response to keep him satisfied, but he had a feeling that Doctor Mason was trying to make romantic overtures to him, just like Colonel Dyson and poor Reggie, who Benjamin had recently discovered had been killed at Passchendaele.
Benjamin became aware that Mason was leaning close to him, but this time Benjamin didn’t move away; they had run out of rail to move farther away. He turned his face away toward the land, which lay several miles off the side of the ship. He hoped they would reach their destination before nightfall since they always faced the danger of enemy submarines patrolling the strait. Next to him, Mason noticed Benjamin scanning the water around the ship.
“You’re not afraid of U-boats, are you?”
Benjamin didn’t respond, because he would have reminded the doctor that he had made this trip without incident, so he imagined nothing would happen this time either. He dropped the cigarette from his fingers and onto the deck, where he stepped on it. He excused himself to return to duty, and walked away leaving Doctor Mason standing where he was and staring after him.
BENJAMIN MADE a last check of the dispensary to make sure all the supplies were in order, and being satisfied that everything checked out to his satisfaction, he locked the door and made his way upstairs to the mess hall, where Doctor Mason was saving a place for him at the table. He paused at the railing to smoke a cigarette before going in. He exhaled the smoke above his head and lowered his head to gaze at the passing land, so close he could almost reach out and touch it. Through an open porthole, Benjamin heard music coming from a gramophone, a popular song that made him smile. He tapped the rail in time with the music, and he looked back down at the water. Just off the side of the ship he saw a disturbance in the water heading for them, somewhere along the bow. His first thought was that it might be a porpoise, but the line of bubbles was too straight for that. He heard a chorus of shouts and running feet, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the faint white line in the water. He stared hypnotized as it disappeared somewhere below the bow anchor.
Benjamin was thrown off of his feet by the explosion. A column of water shot upward and fell, showering Benjamin and everyone around him with water and debris. Recovering quickly, he ran for the mess hall where Mason was waiting. The ship was listing sharply over to starboard, and Benjamin had to use the doorframe to pull himself up into the officer’s dining room. The lights were beginning to flicker, and he saw Doctor Mason sprawled on the deck at the other side of the room. Everyone else had abandoned the room, so Benjamin made his way to him through the tumbling furniture and broken glass. The dining room was becoming black with heavy smoke from a fire that was spreading from the bow. A shrill alarm was ringing, drowning out most other sounds.
“Doctor Mason… John, are you all right?” Benjamin hoped that he could hear him over the noise.
John was momentarily stunned, but he seemed okay. He stood up and made his way toward Benjamin, meeting him in the center of the room. “I’m fine, Carter, but now we’d better get out of here before she goes down.”
Benjamin couldn’t have agreed more. Holding hands, they helped each other navigate the tilting deck to reach a ladder to the upper deck, where the lifeboats were located. When they got there, they found the ladder already clogged with crewmen, doctors, nurses, and passengers fighting the smoke and the list to reach the boats in time.
Benjamin could hear John shouting something to him, but he couldn’t hear what he was saying. Another heavy explosion rocked the ship just as they reached the boat deck, nearly throwing John and Benjamin and everyone else off their feet. Somehow Benjamin found a life jacket, which he fastened around himself quickly. When he looked around, John was gone; he searched the crowd, but found no sign of him.
He heard a voice shout, “Come on, man, another explosion will finish her!”
It took Benjamin a second to realize that the voice belonged to a sailor, and he was calling out to him from the bow of a crowded lifeboat. Benjamin didn’t make the boat before a loud rumble from somewhere below threw the ship over on its side, throwing him into the water. He never saw what happened to the lifeboat.
He went down underwater for what felt like a great depth, his lungs bursting for air. Above him, he saw the surface of the water, and he kicked toward it, and finally broke the surface. Taking in a lungful of air, he started swimming, ignoring the objects bobbing in the water and the unseen hands that pulled at him, trying to take him under again. He grabbed hold of a floating chair and looked around just in time to see the Union Jack on the stern mast of the ship unfurl as it plunged to the bottom of the Channel. Smoke hung over the bubbles where the ship had gone down.
Following the sinking, Benjamin focused on survival in the cold waters. Land, which had appeared so close on the ship, was actually too far to swim. People were struggling in the water around him, and off in the distance he saw a couple of the lifeboats that had been launched before the sinking. He started swimming toward them.
Benjamin was within arm’s reach of the lifeboat, and he was exhausted, but he knew that if he stopped swimming he would sink. People struggled to be taken aboard the boat, and nobody seemed to see him. Hands suddenly grabbed his shoulders and pushed him underwater. He surfaced, spitting and taking in just enough air before the hands pushed him under again. He used the last of his remaining strength to fight the unseen swimmer behind his back, kicking and punching with legs and fists, but he wasn’t very successful. The unseen hands pushed him under once more, and this time Benjamin knew if it happened again, he wouldn’t make it. He had to try, before the last of his spirit gave out.
He thought about his parents, and most of all he thought about Sergei, somewhere far away. Just then Benjamin felt a strong pair of hands grab him and pull him up and over the side of the crowded lifeboat. He wanted to thank the person who’d saved him, and he turned slowly around, and blinked. He couldn’t believe his eyes. It was Sergei.
Benjamin thanked him in Russian, but the voice that responded was in English.
“What did you say there, mate?”
Benjamin blinked again, and instead of Sergei, he saw a young sailor with curly red hair, dripping wet from under a waterlogged cap.
“I said thanks for bringing me in. I just thought you were someone else for a minute.”
The sailor laughed and then turned away to help bring in some others still in the water. Someone put a blanket around Benjamin’s shoulders and pressed a bottle of brandy into his hand. He put it to his lips, and the brandy burned when it went down, but it warmed him up. He would survive.
THE SURVIVORS were rescued an hour later by a battleship, which had been trailing forty miles
behind the Pendennis. While Benjamin was waiting his turn to be taken on board, he thought about the incident in the water. I wasn’t mistaken. It was Sergei who pulled me into the boat, and it wasn’t a dream.
Yet Benjamin knew Sergei wasn’t there. It had been his exhaustion from swimming and being pushed under by some other swimmer that brought on the hallucination. Yet it felt so real—even the rough grasp of Sergei’s hands had felt real. He was so distracted he could hardly eat any of the food a Red Cross nurse set before him. Finally he gave it to one of the men sitting at his table and got up to go out on deck. He wished he had a pack of cigarettes at that moment, but none was within reach. The coffee in the mug he’d grabbed on his way out was lukewarm and tasted like tin. He set it down on the rail and stared silently out over the water.
It was getting dark, and the lights of Le Havre were coming into view at last. Benjamin knew from the increase of activity among the ship’s crew that the ship would dock in an hour or two. Just then a familiar voice spoke, nearly causing Benjamin to knock his cup off the rail.
“I never thought I would be happier to see land.”
John Mason walked up and stood next to Benjamin, his borrowed clothes just as ill-fitting as the ones Benjamin wore. He was thrilled to see that John had survived.
“I never thought I would see you again after we got separated in the crowds.”
“I would have looked for you sooner, but there were injuries from our ship, and several patients already on board that needed my help.” John finished speaking and watched the approaching harbor with Benjamin. John stood next to Benjamin, hands only a fraction of an inch apart on the wooden rail.
Benjamin could feel the warmth of John’s hands next to his, but he didn’t move his any closer, or take it away. For a moment Benjamin turned his attention to the two small boats that came out to meet the battleship and guide it into dock. He thought about Sergei, as he always thought about Sergei. The handsome, muscular Russian with the mustache was always in his thoughts.
John heard him. “What’s so far away, Carter?”
Benjamin was almost embarrassed to have been thinking out loud, but he answered John.
“I’m sorry, John, I was thinking aloud, but I was thinking of someone back in Russia, a soldier.” Benjamin didn’t know why, but he was sorry to have mentioned his innermost thoughts to a man he only knew briefly. Normally he didn’t reveal himself until he could trust someone, but John seemed to him like someone he could trust.
John was silent for a second. “Oh… were you very close?” He reached into his pocket, extracted a pack of borrowed cigarettes, and handed one to Benjamin, who accepted it gratefully. He lit it, and then blew the smoke over the sea. He looked back to John.
“If by ‘close’ you mean were we lovers? Well… I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. We were friends.” Benjamin went quiet, not wanting to tell John any details concerning his feelings for Sergei. He gripped the railing tightly. “I wanted him to join me, but… he changed his mind, and I haven’t heard from him since.”
“I’m sorry. Really I am, Ben…. I know how it feels to love someone, make plans, and then to have them disappear from your life.”
When John had finished, he turned his face away, and Benjamin smiled into the twilight over the rail. This was the first time in his life that anyone had called him Ben. He didn’t know if he should correct him and remind him of his full name, or remind him further about Sergei. Instead he reached out and put his left hand on John arm. John turned back, and then smiled at Benjamin.
Chapter 22
WHEN HE opened his eyes again, the train had stopped and daylight poured through the cracks of the wooden boxcar. He slid one of the doors open an inch or two, and found the train surrounded by other trains in a siding. He heard the voices of two men approaching, and when they came nearer, he listened in on their conversation.
“Da, this train will continue on to Poland, and transfer this car and this one on to aid our allies all the way in France. It’ll be travelling a long way.” The man rapped on the side of the affected railcars with his fist. His companion spat on the dirt.
“We should be aiding the revolution instead of sending railways cars to other places. Should we check the car for stowaways?”
“Nyet, Nyet. They want the switch to be accomplished as quickly as possible. They can check the cars when they get where they’re going.”
“Less work for us, then. Come on, let’s get this train ready to move.”
There was more to the conversation, but the two men walked away and soon their voices faded. He hid back under the canvas, and slept through the long process of transferring railroad cars. It was dark again when he woke to find the train moving slowly through yet more countryside. He sat on a crate and listened to the endless clack of the iron wheels over the tracks. He didn’t even know where he was or how far he had travelled. He didn’t even know if the fair-haired young man he imagined was reality or the illusion of his feverish brain.
He knew only one thing: he had to find someone—the one he felt could help him.
IN THE confines of the boxcar, one endless day shifted into another. The train would grind to a jerking halt, and soldiers and railway personnel would inspect each car. He had positioned the crates and canvas bags so he could avoid discovery, and when the train jolted forward he congratulated himself on another lucky escape.
The risk of discovery increased when the train would stop for longer periods to take on fresh crew or freight. One day, peering through a sliding door to one side of the car, he saw the Bolshevik soldiers taking away someone caught hiding in the next car. Four men held him, kicking and calling out for help, while they carried him down the line of railroad cars. Cold sweat beaded his forehead, fearing he could be the next one discovered. The train once again began moving, and as it picked up steam, he was sure he heard gunfire from a distant railroad yard.
He woke just after dawn to find they had stopped again. He crawled from under the canvas sheet, and slid the door open just enough to poke his head out. In the direction of the engine, he saw several men with electric torches walking along; they appeared to be looking at the undercarriage of the giant steam engine up in front. One of the men on the edge of the group raised his torch and shined it down the length of the train and spotted him. A guard began walking in his direction.
Sergei ran from the train and managed to conceal himself from the pursuing guards and engineers by hiding in a ditch running alongside the tracks. He covered himself with the grasses growing there until they were out of sight. He stood slowly, and crept across the tracks toward the long line of boxcars. He kept himself flat against the cars, thankful for the combination of drizzle, fog, and steam from the trains that hid his shadow. They were still searching for him, and their voices reached him from somewhere in the train yard.
The sound of crunching stones came toward him, and something told him to hold his breath, which he did until the beam of torches passed by and went in another direction. Doors slid open and were closed—they were searching boxcars for him too. He hung his head in despair. The Bolsheviks would find him and send him back to prison or perhaps worse.
Just then a bright beam of an electric torch hit him in the face, blinding him, and on the other end of it was the gruff face of a man in a worker’s cap. When his eyes adjusted to the brightness, the other walked over to him, pulling a gun out of his pocket.
“Stay where you are, and if you make one move….” The worker shoved the gun against his belly and shoved him.
In the brief silence, he could hear his own heart beating, and the only thing left now was for the worker in the cap to call out to his companions for assistance. The man yelled at the top of his lungs, “Comrades, help me, I have him cornered on the tracks by the ditch!”
He felt a nervous sweat on his forehead. He would have to act before the others reached the spot where they were standing. He didn’t know why, but at that second he looked to his right and saw
the fair-haired young man standing next to the ditch. He whispered, “My angel….”
The guard with the gun saw him looking to the right and turned to glance where his prisoner was looking. That was all he needed—he knocked the guard’s arm upward, and the gun discharged. Voices called out for their comrade, and he heard their feet stumbling over stones toward the last line of railcars. The gun fell on the tracks as they struggled, falling to the ground. He bumped his head on the track but continued throwing punches.
While they fought, something became perfectly clear to him, as if a dark shadow over his mind had been pulled away. He knew his name was Sergei Breselov, and he remembered he had been arrested and imprisoned and was now on this train trying to get to Benjamin.
Sergei heard the footsteps running across the yard and getting closer. He landed another punch in the man’s face and managed to get him on his back. Sergei grabbed the gun, got to his feet, and pointed the gun at the man.
“Get to your feet. Now tell me exactly where we are.”
The man rose on unsteady feet and spat on the ground in front of Sergei, and in response, Sergei prepared to pull back the trigger. The man on the other end of the barrel raised his hands and obviously wished his comrades would move faster.
“You’re in R-Riga, in L-Latvia…,” he stammered.
Sergei was amazed that he hadn’t travelled farther than this without getting caught. Riga also had a seaport—that much Sergei knew from geography.
“How far is the port from here?” Sergei asked, and when the man was reluctant to answer, Sergei raised the barrel of the gun.