Pacifica

by Jill Zeller

  She has to stop. This isn’t right. This is torture. Harriet seemed frozen, unable to move or breathe. Her arms quivered. Then, things got even worse.

  “He’s alive!” Star Picou’s voice ripped through us, sharp and shill. Standing, she shrieked again. “He’s not dead, he’s alive!”

  “Who? Who?” It was a demand, a teacher’s voice commanding students. Harriet reached for Miss Picou’s arm.

  “Don’t touch her!” This from Mr. Levesque, his voice rippled with terror.

  We were all standing now, our circle of hands broken.

  Star Picou turned her head to gaze at Harriet; her veil glimmered like a stream of starlight.

  “Your son, Daniel. He’s alive.”

  Mr. Farragut was not pleased. In point of fact he was very angry; I could see it in the muscles of his jaw, and the way he couldn’t look at me or speak.

  Harriet stood in their cabin, giggling laughter bubbling from her mouth. Tears rimmed her eyes, and she didn’t seem able to focus on me as I begged her to be quiet.

  “He’s alive, Tom. Alive. Oh my god I can’t believe it.”

  Before entering the cabin I had knocked, but I’m sure Mr. Farragut had heard his wife’s laugh and was opening the door seconds later, hastily tying his robe.

  He didn’t even ask what had happened. Taking his wife by the shoulders he sat her down on the bed. Kneeling, he slowly loosened the neck of her blouse, hand touching her face as he did so.

  “She spoke French, Tom. And used those words that the workers used. Somehow she knew everything, that he spent too much time with the workers, that he got ill. She knew it all.”

  I hadn’t heard Miss Picou say anything of the sort, but I stayed silent.

  “But then she said he’s alive.” Harriet clasped her hands together, laughing still, her face a shade of blotchy scarlet. My stomach turned over with guilt. Oh why had I given in, and invited her? I should have listened to her husband.

  But I knew that if there was a way Harriet would get her séance, it would have happened without my help. And there was no way to convince Mr. Farragut of that.

  Without looking at me, he said, his voice tight, “Please leave us. Please.”

  I stood in the passageway after he shut the door, a twisting pain in my belly The séance had seemed all wrong. Evil. My grandmother would have said it was the work of the devil. My grandmother was still deeply involved with the saints, and invoked them freely at need.

  We could have used a few of your saints in that room tonight, Grandmama.

  As I found my way back to my cabin, I remembered Miss Picou’s first revelation; pain pulled deep inside, weakening my knees.

  Inside I found the telegrams, two of them, and slid them from their still-sealed envelopes.

  The first was from my mother, telling me of the accident. All was as Star Picou had revealed; Arthur had been run over by a delivery wagon late at night in Manhattan.

  He had been drinking, I knew. I also knew the location, a saloon catering to the working class of the neighborhood where Arthur grew up. He liked to hide out there, among his childhood friends, away from his political life, his wife, and even me.

  The second telegram was from Arthur’s wife.

  I blinked at the name, felt my jaw slacken in awe. She knew.

  Arthur died the night you left. He wished for you to have a remembrance. Pick up in colon. Ellen sloan.

  When Philip came I was sitting on the floor of my cabin, knees drawn up to my chest as if to protect my heart from more pain. But it wasn’t working. A clutching tightness enveloped me, and I could feel nothing but a burning self-hatred for my thoughtlessness.

  Sitting on the floor, Philip wrapped his night-cool arms around me. I could feel his heart beating—a good thing, because I couldn’t feel mine.

  “Sephira is asleep.” Philip’s breath touched my ear as he spoke. He smelled vaguely of night and spice.

  I spoke into my knees, my throat as numb as my heart, “Did she tell you what happened?”

  “No.” I felt his fingers in my hair. “She never speaks after a session. All she does is sleep. Sometimes for several days.”

  “I suppose it’s private. Like a priest and confession?”

  “Yes.” His hand slid in under my chin. “It’s difficult holding a conversation with your knees.”

  Allowing him to raise my head, I looked into his eyes. His reflected my sorrow, I thought, and we watched each other silently for long seconds.

  He said, “You did the right thing. Don’t blame yourself.”

  Familiar words, stale as old crackers. But they helped to thaw, a little, the lake of ice inside me, even if Philip didn’t know the truth, perhaps would never know it.

  He stayed with me a long while. When I woke on my bed, in my clothes, a blanket tucked over me, I was alone, and a dim light came through the porthole as if Sephira’s veil covered it. Remembering this, and the séance, and Arthur’s death, and Mr. Farragut’s cold rebuff, I turned over onto my side, held the pain like a medicine ball and closed my eyes.

  My dream came in vivid colors. Inside a green globe filled with water I stood, my chin just above the fetid surface. Above me faces floated, watching as if I were a fish in a bowl. Behind the faces stood the skyline of New York at night, lights in the tower windows, backdrop of a tragic play. I held my breath, afraid because water would flow in, drown me, pull me under. One of the faces belonged to Arthur. He came close, took my globe in his hands, and began to rock it back and forth.

  Water closed over my mouth. I tried to swim but my head hit glass. Any second I must take a gulping breath but waves splashed into my face, threw me from side to side in the cold green death.

  I woke, gasping. Sat up. Catching air in the hot, hot cabin. Rain spattered through my open porthole.

  And the ship was rocking, up and down, back and forth.

  Getting up I glanced out before closing the porthole. The tops of white-tipped waves blew flakes of sea before a stiff wind. Rain glistened on the deck. It was stifling hot, and but for the water blowing in I would have left the porthole open.

  Nausea rippled through my stomach. The ship had sailed into a squall. Stripping off my sweat-ridden, wrinkled blouse and dress, I found my cordial where it had tipped to one side on the table and rolled back and forth. Took a sip straight from the bottle, for attempting the spoon would be too challenging in the ship’s pitch.

  My watch told me it was nearly supper-time. I didn’t want food and I assumed the saloon would be empty of patrons tonight. And as much as I wanted to hide I needed to see people, get news of the storm, and lastly, telegraph my mother.

  Finding a pale linen blouse and navy skirt, the last I had clean—time to avail myself of the ship’s laundry—I piled up my hair in a hurry, and went into the passageway. The floor pitched and rolled and I walked like a drunkard to the stairway leading down into the saloon.

  From there I could continue below decks to the radio room where I could write my telegram, but the thought of a cup of tea to settle my stomach stopped me.

  The only other occupants of the saloon were a pair of young men, used to the sea, I supposed, when she stirred up her waters. At least, they were human, and company of a sort, although I took a table across the room in a corner. Too early for the maitre d’, a young boy appeared, and I recognized him as the boy I had spoken to, the boy who liked books.

  “So we sailed into a storm,” I said when he brought my tea.

  “Yes miss. Usually we try to sail round, but this one came up sudden.” Worry creased the skin around his young eyes.

  “Is it a bad one?”

  “This? No, miss, this just a little squall. Clear away soon.” But his face didn’t match these words he had probably been told to tell any nervous passenger who asked.

  I nodded, tried to look as if I believed him. “Where’s Armand? Doesn’t he usually take the evening shift?”

  The boy’s reaction surprised me. Eye’s widening, lips parting,
he actually took a step back from me.

  “Not tonight, miss. He sick.”

  “Sick? Not seasick, is it?” Not Armand, the suave, careful steward, veteran of many Panamanian Railway cruises. The cold, sick ice sitting in my gut grew heavier.

  “No, not seasick. Not him. Just—” The boy took another step backward. I could see him taking quick, short breaths, and then I saw his hand, at his side, making a sign.

  “Wait a minute. Don’t go.” Under my ribs my lungs stiffened, and I almost choked. “What’s your name?”

  “I have to go, miss. For more tea.”

  He bowed and left me at a quick walk across the saloon. The two men beckoned him over and then he disappeared into the kitchen and didn’t return, with tea or anything else the two men might have ordered.

  The electric sconces on the walls flickered, then went steady. Creaking and muttering, the ship rocked back and forth. Chairs and tables stayed where they were, bolted down, but the draperies swayed. I could hear banging noises from the kitchen, pots swaying and dishes sliding.

  The ice inside me grew into a freezing heavy lump under my ribs. The boy was scared—was it the storm or something else, a hidden, special enemy?

  Getting up I made for the stairs, followed them down and found the radio room. Inside was a man of about thirty with sandy hair and a bit of weight on him. He wore a very elaborate handlebar mustache.

  Taking the paper, I wrote my message to my mother that I was all right, coping with the news of Arthur’s death, that a sea voyage was even more the right thing for me now. That I had made new friends, and on and on, to the point where I had to cross out whole sentences so that this telegram wouldn’t cost me a fortune.

  The telegraph operator was busy sending messages, working his fingers. I had to wait several more minutes before he was ready to take mine.

  He was no more forthcoming about the storm than the boy in the saloon. “Just a squall. Has to be, miss—we’re getting reports of several now from other ships.

  “It’s not a little bit of storm like this worries me,” he went on, counting my words. “But I can’t get the crew to take messages for me. For some reason they’re all holed up, refusing to come up on deck.”

  Under my feet the ship lurched, and I grasped the desk to steady myself. The wind whistled in the passageway. Sweat glistened on both our faces, I thought, because the air still was hot and damp.

  “Afraid of the storm?”

  The radio officer made a face. “Not them. They’re seasoned well enough. No, something’s got them spooked. They get like this, superstitious heathens as they are.”

  Then, as if realizing that he was telling a mere passenger too much, he added, “The Captain will see them right, soon enough. He’ll get everything in order.”

  It seemed like only moments later I was on the deck. Rain and wind lashed my face; the sea and sky were a scrim of gray and white, ceaselessly moving like dancers in fog. I held onto the rail as water drove itself through my blouse to my underclothes and skin. Cool, blessedly cool. What was needed was a blessing, I thought, from one of Grandma’s saints, to heal the ship of whatever illness possessed her now.

  I needed to see Philip. I needed him to explain it to me, how his sister knew those things about Arthur and poor Daniel Farragut. Why did she speak those terrible words? Why did she invite me, personally, solely to her séance? And she knew, I was sure of it, that I would bring Harriet with me.

  Was it just for the money, or something else?

  I didn’t know where Philip’s cabin was. He seemed to prefer it that way, and perhaps that was proper, but I was determined to find it, even if he didn’t like it.

  Wasn’t I Ondine, spirit of the sea?

  How was this to be done? Knock on doors? Bribe a crewman—if I could find one? The passenger list was posted, but not corresponding cabins. Except, perhaps, in Second Class.

  I left my rain-soaked post, re-entered the saloon and made my way down the stairs to the main deck, where the second class cabins were.

  A brass sign at the passageway denoted Second Class Cabins, the opposite direction from the parlor of last night’s séance. There, in a glass case, the passenger list was posted, names and cabin numbers written in a clearly readable hand.

  Drawing my finger down the list, I looked for the name Picou. Not finding it the first time I looked again, carefully reading each name to myself. Nothing.

  Around me the ship tossed restlessly, groaning as if delirious with the ever-present fever of the tropics. This can’t be. They have to be here.

  But they weren’t. Were they traveling under another name, as professionals sometimes do? There were several French names, including Roland Levesque’s, but it was impossible to determine if any of the names could be an alias for the Picous.

  My skirt, heavy with wet, dripped on the floor, making it slick under my feet. But I felt strong, refreshed, not at all chilled, as if that wind carried away the miasma of guilt and self-loathing.

  Was there another Second Class accommodation somewhere? Turning back I circled under the stairway and found another smaller suite of Second Class berths, but again, no one by the name of Picou.

  Bedamned. My favorite curse word, and the only one my father uttered aloud, although in my visits to the newspaper office I had acquired an entirely new vocabulary.

  Perhaps if I waited in my stateroom, he would appear. Perhaps he was already there, waiting for me. I hurried up the stairs, heart pounding against my chest and into my head. As I made the saloon deck I passed a couple walking slowly arm and arm. They gave me a shocked look, and I realized I must have looked like a drenched lunatic.

  Philip was not in my cabin. And I did not want to stay there to wait for him—the place was a cell in a prison; clues to my crime littered the floor, telegrams, sketches, clothing. I quickly ordered my hair, changed my clothes again, snatched up a light coat, and left.

  Long into the evening I walked the ship, following passageways, crossing through the First Class lounge, back to the Second Class saloon and along the deck in the drenching, sideways rain. The ship was a ghost ship; I passed the same young couple walking, and the two young sailors, and the occasional brave solo pedestrian in motion along the promenade, but no one else. It was as if I had been transported from a lovely playful yacht to a scow carrying the walking dead.

  In some depth of the night we sailed out of the storm. I noticed first, as I came up the stairs from Second Class, that Leopardo’s rolling had eased. Going through the First Class saloon doors and stepping out onto the deck, I found the rain was now a fine mist; whether it was rain or sea-spray, I couldn’t tell.

  A glow painted the rail and decking in soft light. Looking up, I saw the moon draped in a stream of broken silver clouds. A mercury curtain of moon-streaked rain moved away from us and left us to drift in a heaving swell.

  I don’t know how long I stood there, feeling the moon on my skin. A warm breeze pressed against me. If the deck chairs weren’t so damp, I would have curled up right here to watch the moon ride the clouds. As it was, weary and numb, I went back to my cabin, thinking the worst was over, perhaps, only to find, when I woke the next morning, that I was wrong.

  Our sweet, blue Caribbean was back. Sunlight gleamed everywhere, bathing the ship in white. By the time I got to the saloon I was famished. Tables were full in the First Class saloon; I had to wait for a seat at a round table filled with strangers, all laughing and smiling. Their mood caught me and I laughed too as I ate eggs Benedict and hot buttered toast. It was as if the night-storm had never been and Arthur’s death had happened long ago.

  I had not yet seen the Farraguts, or Philip and his sister. Armand did not appear to be the steward today, either. As I was sipping a second cup of coffee, however, Roland Levesque was seated at our table.

  We glanced at each other, then away. It was better not, I thought, to let on that I had met him already, even though I didn’t know another person here. There were four days left unt
il we called at Port au Prince where many here would disembark. Already word of the séance had spread through the ship, although no one at my table knew I had attended.

  “I’ve heard they are to be taken off at Havana.” These words, uttered by a girl about my age seated next to a young man, caught my ear.

  “Ah, those circus performers.” This from a burly gentleman seated beside me, several gold rings on the fingers that held his toast. He leaned in close to me. “I heard they scared one of the crew so badly with their fortune-telling magic act that he jumped overboard. In the middle of that storm.”

  As he shook his head, around the table everyone gasped. Under my ribs blackness spread, a cold remorse. Not Armand. This can’t be true.

  “Where they able to save him?” The girl gripped the hand of the boy next to her.

  The burly man shrugged. “In that storm? Unlikely.”

  “I don’t think that’s what happened at all.” Roland Levesque’s voice was soft, but everyone heard it, somehow. “I think the crew got it into their head that the magician and his sister are demons. Some of them are refusing to work until the two are taken off the ship.”

  My coffee lost its flavor and I felt myself caving in as if my spine no longer supported me. Why had I gone to that séance? Why hadn’t I kept Harriet away?

  But she knew Arthur had been killed. Thoughts of Arthur’s jaw, his fingers as they held his cigar, the way his laugh turned heads in restaurants, flowed through me like water.

  I found myself on my feet. The men scraped their chairs to rise and I saw them all looking at me.

  “Please excuse me,” I muttered. I could feel Roland Levesque’s gaze on me as I crossed the saloon, pushed out onto the sunny deck where a golden sky and sea lay.

  Was Armand really sick or had he indeed jumped into that raging sea to escape a demon? Was Arthur really dead? Had I really made love to a magician? Were he and his sister really to be evicted from the ship?