For a moment, Esme’s heart soared. Then the grief of losing Charlie returned tenfold, and her heart clenched with the anticipation of going through the pain of parting yet again. Esme could barely nod as he waved his arm out and down, motioning everyone in the boat to duck their heads. She couldn’t stop looking at him, even when his foot crashed through the window and glass shattered, sending a shard toward her face. She didn’t realize she’d been cut until she wiped at her cheek and saw the blood on her fingers.
The older crewman stepped into the center of the lifeboat, tipping its balance and making the passengers cry out in concern. He held an oar through the hole Charlie had created, and Charlie took hold of the other end. The lifeboat edged closer to the Titanic, leaving only a foot-wide gap. Bracing one elbow against Charlie and reaching out to the crewman with her other hand, the woman climbed into the boat.
“Thank you,” she said, in a cool British voice. She sat on a bench in the middle of the boat, sitting defiantly upright, looking ahead rather than at the man she was leaving behind. And then Esme’s interest in her vanished, because Charlie was reaching out, less than an arm’s length away. She leaned forward and slid her fingers between his. Charlie’s breath swirled toward Esme in gossamer clouds, and she gulped it in. When the boat dropped down with a creak of the ropes, Esme felt everything that was true and good slipping from her grasp.
Did she pull? Did he jump? All Esme knew was that Charlie was suddenly beside her, his limbs and hers tangled on the floor of the boat. She clung to his arms when he pulled her up to sit, right as they touched down in the water. As they pulled away from the Titanic’s shockingly crooked silhouette, another rocket illuminated the night. The light lasted just long enough for Esme to see Hiram on deck, watching with dignified calm as his wife and her lover rowed away.
US SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE
Titanic Disaster Investigation
Wednesday, April 30, 1912
Testimony of Mr. Charles Van Hausen, First-Class Passenger
Senator Smith: After you were awakened by the sound of voices, what did you do?
Mr. Van Hausen: I came out of my stateroom and spoke to a steward, who told me there was an order for passengers to put on their life belts. I spent some time looking for my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Harper, and I found them on the boat deck, near one of the lifeboats.
Senator Smith: There was no panic or confusion?
Mr. Van Hausen: No. An officer was directing women and children into the boat. Mr. Harper escorted his wife forward, and she took a place along with the others. Mr. Harper and I remained on deck as the boat was lowered, and we heard a shout from one of the crewmen. A woman on a deck below wanted to board, but the window wouldn’t open. I offered to go down and help her. I broke the window and assisted her into the boat. Very soon after, I was asked to enter the boat.
Senator Smith: Who made this request?
Mr. Van Hausen: Mrs. Harper, and a few others.
Senator Smith: Passengers?
Mr. Van Hausen: The crewmen appeared to welcome my assistance. I don’t believe either had much experience in manning a boat.
Senator Smith: Could your lifeboat have carried more passengers?
Mr. Van Hausen: Yes, I suppose so. But I can’t say how well we would have fared with a full load. It would have made it much more difficult to maneuver.
Senator Smith: You were the only male passenger?
Mr. Van Hausen: Yes.
Senator Smith: We have heard from other witnesses that a man was seen disguising himself in a woman’s clothing in order to enter a lifeboat. Could such a subterfuge have taken place in your boat?
Mr. Van Hausen: Absolutely not. I saw no evidence of cowardly behavior.
Senator Smith: A crewman in your boat, Mr. Wells, has testified that you paid him ten dollars after you were rescued. What was the reason for this payment?
Mr. Van Hausen: Mr. Wells was very angry at the loss of the ship. He said everything he owned was at the bottom of the ocean, and his pay would be stopped from the hour of the sinking. I gave Mr. Wells and Mr. Healy the money to buy new clothes and other personal items when we arrived in New York. It was a gift.
Senator Smith: So you did not pay them in exchange for being allowed to board the lifeboat?
Mr. Van Hausen: No. Absolutely not. What kind of man would that make me?
ANNA
The first time Anna Halversson drowned, her seven-year-old body slipped into the water like a rock tossed in a tranquil pond. Shocked and disoriented, she fought the downward pull of her drenched skirt. Then a hand grabbed her arm, the fingers digging into her skin so hard that their imprint remained as purple-gray bruises for days afterward. Papa hoisted Anna into his boat, the same way he pulled in a fish, and rubbed her face briskly. Only the quickness of his breathing told her he’d been scared.
That was the day Papa decided Anna would learn to swim.
“Why?” Mama asked, as if Papa had suggested teaching her to fly. “Anna fell because she was careless. She’s learned her lesson.”
“I won’t take her out again until she can swim.” Papa rarely raised his voice, but he had a way of clipping his words that made it clear when he was in no mood to be argued with.
Mama grunted, a familiar sound. She had countless small ways of expressing her feelings: the raise of one shoulder, a silent shake of the head, an icy stare. Life, for Mama, was an onslaught of frustrations and setbacks, and Anna wasn’t sure if Mama was angrier about the swimming or the fact that Anna would be spending time with Papa, time better spent doing chores.
The Halverssons had always been farmers, not fishermen, but Papa enjoyed the challenge of coaxing a fish onto his line. Already, Anna’s skinny fingers could gut and clean a perch in minutes, and the satisfied nod she got from Papa was better than any monetary reward. Papa was the center of her world, and she was grateful for whatever time she was granted in his orbit. He was always busy: planting, plowing, and helping out neighbors who were also scraping a living from the same stubborn earth. Anna’s oldest sister, Frieda, had been born in the optimistic days when Papa expected a house full of boys and put everything he’d saved into buying more land; when Kirsten arrived three years later, Papa began envisioning future sons-in-law who’d work by his side as his weather-beaten hands stiffened. Anna was a surprise arrival after ten barren years, and Mama always accused Papa of spoiling her.
Anna’s swimming lessons took place in the morning, after the cows had been milked and the pigs fed. She wore bloomers under a shabby dress handed down from Frieda, a dress that would otherwise have been taken apart for scraps. She learned to keep her head up and tuck her skirt under, leaving her legs free to kick. Though the icy lake water pricked at her skin, she pushed her way forward, eager to be rewarded with Papa’s smiles.
The Halverssons weren’t well off, but they owned their own land, unlike many others in their small Swedish village. Mama often held up the Anderssons as a family who had it far worse. Mr. Andersson eked out a living as a hired hand, and Mrs. Andersson was bony and pale, more a spirit than a flesh-and-blood woman.
“God’s plan is mysterious, isn’t it?” Mrs. Andersson asked Anna once. “Your father, with three daughters, must mourn the lack of a son. And here I am, with two fine boys, and I would give anything to have a little girl.”
Anna wasn’t sure how to respond. Would it would be disloyal to admit Mrs. Andersson was right? Papa loved Anna and her sisters, in his quiet way, but disappointment had marked him, like a scar or a limp.
Mr. Andersson was known to be stubborn, and there were some who said the accident was his own fault. He’d pushed his poor horse as if it were an Arabian racer; who could blame the old nag for throwing him off? God punishes the proud, the gossips whispered, but Anna thought God had better things to do than meddle in the affairs of country folk. Their lives were beneath his notice.
Mr. Andersson’s death served no larger purpose, other than increasing the misery of his family. Si
ckly Mrs. Andersson sat forlornly in her ramshackle one-room house, shunning the few kindly women who came to visit, and her sons, Josef and Emil, walked miles each day in search of work, though Emil barely looked strong enough to lift a pitchfork. The network of family bonds that would have propped up any other family had long since withered; Mrs. Andersson came from fishing folk up north—none of them anxious for more mouths to feed—and Mr. Andersson’s only brother had emigrated to America years before. The Anderssons were alone, and even sober, penny-pinching Mama felt sorry for them. When Frieda married a schoolteacher and moved to Stockholm, and Kirsten was promised to a young farmer more interested in expanding his family’s property than working Papa’s land, Mama proposed an arrangement: Josef and Emil would be brought on as Papa’s new farmhands, in exchange for food and a payment when the harvest was in.
Never having had a brother, Anna found it odd, at first, to spend so much time in the presence of young men. They had such a different way of moving, such different smells. Twelve-year-old Emil was awkward and bashful, with crooked teeth and a protruding nose. He could barely make it through a complete sentence without tripping over his words and seemed more comfortable with pigs and cows than other people. Though he was only a year younger than Anna, she developed a protective kind of sympathy for him. She was grateful, too, for his help with the chores, which left her with free hours she wouldn’t have otherwise.
Anna spent far too many of those spare hours watching Emil’s brother, Josef, trying to sort out her complicated feelings. Unlike Emil, Josef kept his distance from Anna and the house; he was out with Papa until sundown, proud to put in a full day of work. At sixteen years old, his shoulders were filling out, and his face was hardening into sharper angles. His eyes, when they met Anna’s across the supper table, were clear and blue, like the lake in summer. Slowly, promisingly, he began raising his hand in greeting when he spotted her across a field. Rather than walking silently past her, he would stop and ask what she was doing as she watched the sunlight hit a cobweb, or searched for animal shapes in the clouds.
“You see more than the rest of us,” he told her one day.
Was it a compliment? Anna’s dress was sticking to her back after an afternoon pulling weeds and peeling potatoes; her cheeks were flushed with the heat. She wanted to turn away, and yet she also wanted to stare at Josef’s face. He actually looked interested in what she had to say.
“Surely everyone sees the same things?” she asked shyly.
“Ah, but most don’t take the time to look.”
Josef smiled, and Anna felt joy and hope and terror cascade through her, all at once. Anna knew she didn’t have much to offer—she was plain, with limp, dark-blonde hair and a splotchy complexion—but Josef was looking at her as if they’d exchanged a confidence. And though she couldn’t think of anything else to say, and Josef was soon hoisting up his hoe and turning back to the fields, she felt they’d come to an unspoken understanding.
Anna guarded her admiration for Josef like a hidden treasure, but when she finally confided in her friend Sonja, Sonja said it was obvious to anyone with their wits about them that Josef and Anna were meant to be married.
“I’ve seen the way he looks at you after church!” Sonja teased. She was petite and vivacious, with a bubbly laugh that drew others toward her. “He’ll be going to your papa before you know it.”
Anna had not been raised to believe in passionate love; her affection for Josef was simple and direct, like Anna herself. By the time she was seventeen, when Papa started dropping hints about the next generation and grandchildren running among the chickens, Anna took each look Josef gave her across the table and every nod they exchanged in the barnyard as an acknowledgment of their arrangement: Yes. I choose you.
Then came the letter from America, the first of two that would change Anna’s life. Josef’s uncle Tomas wrote that there was plenty of good-paying work in the lumber mills of Minnesota; he’d saved up enough for Josef’s passage, if he wanted to come.
Josef read it out loud to the Halverssons. “What do you think?” he asked, eyes lively with delight.
Anna wanted to say, No. Or, I don’t know what my life will look like without you. But she only nodded as Mama tut-tutted and Papa leaned over Josef’s shoulder to read the offer for himself. While they were distracted, Anna quietly excused herself and ran to the hayloft to cry.
Josef expected Anna to be happy for him, so she pretended to be, all the way through his send-off at the train station. Mrs. Andersson and Emil looked as miserable as Anna felt: Josef’s mother lamented that she might never see her son again, and Emil was jealous that he wasn’t going to America, too. At first, Josef’s absence was unbearable; Anna found herself looking for him, in the way she had for years, and feeling a fresh disappointment every time she realized he wasn’t there. From time to time, Anna thought of confiding in Emil, who must miss Josef as much as she did, but he showed no interest in talking to her about such personal matters. He’d grown nearly as tall as his brother but was wiry rather than brawny, his arms strong but thin. His face fell naturally into a mournful expression and he rarely made the effort to change it. Unlike Josef, Emil didn’t seem to care what Anna was doing or thinking; he never indicated he saw anything in her to admire.
The second life-altering letter came more than a year later, a few months after Mrs. Andersson’s death. Mama had informed Josef of the sad news by telegram, and Anna expected the envelope that arrived a few weeks later from Minnesota to contain polite but succinct thanks; Josef wrote the way he talked, in direct, short sentences. So Anna was surprised when Papa pulled out several pages from the envelope. She knew, right away, that this letter would be different.
Josef began with the usual greetings and his hope that his mother’s funeral had been well attended. He grieved her loss and was sorry he had not been able to come. With both their parents gone, Josef wrote, he had decided Emil should come to America and live with him. The offer didn’t come as a surprise to the Halverssons—they’d expected it since Mrs. Andersson’s death—and Anna was sure Emil would be anxious to go. But when Papa read the words, Emil’s impassive expression didn’t change.
Papa silently read ahead, then he glanced up with an expression of delight.
“Listen!” he announced. “There’s more. Josef says, ‘I have saved enough for Emil’s passage and have begun working my own plot of land on my uncle’s farm. I therefore find myself in a position to marry, and there is no better wife than a good Swedish girl.’”
Papa looked at Mama, then at Anna. She became aware of each heavy breath she took, in and out. There was only one reason Josef would be writing such a thing to her parents. Only one question he was preparing to ask. Mama’s mouth twitched; Emil picked at a fingernail. It was the first and last time Anna felt complete, unreserved happiness.
Papa read on. “I hope you will make my case to a young woman I have long admired. As I am not well acquainted with her parents . . .”
It made no sense. How could Josef not be well acquainted with Anna’s parents? Emil glanced up at Papa, who looked equally baffled.
“I ask that you speak on my behalf to Sonja Gustafson’s father.”
Papa’s voice drifted off. Sonja? Anna felt the others looking at her, each stare scorching her skin. Of course. Sonja was pretty and sociable; Sonja was exactly the sort of person a man like Josef would want for a wife. Anna had no right to be upset, for wouldn’t she have made the same choice in his place?
Papa read the rest of the letter in a considerably more somber tone. Josef had already thought through the arrangements; if Sonja and Emil made the journey together, his uncle’s wife would look after Sonja until the marriage could be held. He anxiously awaited an answer, hopefully from Sonja herself. At the very end of the letter were a few hastily scribbled words that made Anna’s chest seize with grief: “Send my greetings to Anna—I hope she rejoices at this happy news.”
There was very little rejoicing. Papa slowly fol
ded the pages and slid them back in the envelope. Mama stared into the fireplace, her knitting needles silent. Emil pushed his chair back and walked out of the house, without a word. Anna watched through the window as he paced across the front field, tracing the furrows with his feet. He looked upset, though she couldn’t think why. Later, when Anna asked him whether he was pleased to be going to America, he said yes, of course, but his expression remained mournful. How like Emil, Anna thought, to mope over an offer that anyone else in his position would have welcomed.
Sonja was the one who suggested Anna come to America, too. She and her parents had quickly agreed to Josef’s proposal, the prospects for a girl in rural Sweden being limited to poor, overworked farm wife or poor, overworked servant. In America, you could buy your own land, build your own business, and determine your own future. Sonja was a kind and loyal enough friend to put Anna’s feelings above her own happiness. She swore to Anna that she’d known nothing of Josef’s intentions, and if the marriage would cause Anna pain, she’d call it off. Anna promised it didn’t matter. She said she thought of Josef as a brother and Sonja as a sister and they were a perfect match, all of which she believed in her heart was true. Sonja confided her worries about traveling so far with only Emil for company. Wouldn’t it be fun if Anna came, too? With so many good-paying jobs in America, she might even be tempted to stay.
It was just talk, at first. Anna knew she could never leave home for good; as the youngest, unmarried daughter, she was the one expected to take care of her parents as they aged. She would mash their food when their teeth fell out and empty their chamber pots when they were bedridden. But would it be wrong to see some of the world first? To be near Josef again, even if he would never be hers?
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