Night Gallery 1 (2 page)

"Feeling better?" the ship's doctor asked.

The man just stared at him, not responding.

"I think we'd best have a chat, you and I," the Captain said, with a brief look toward the ship's doctor, who nodded, turned, and left the room.

The Captain pulled up a chair alongside of the bed. He tried to keep his voice neutral. "Now, let's have it from the beginning," he said. "At approximately fourteen:thirty we found you in a ship's boat. On it was written 'The Titanic,' and in it—there was you and there was one blanket. Now, what I'd like to know is—"

The ship's bell rang nine times. Inside his office the ship's doctor checked desultorily the various patients' charts. His mind wasn't on it. At intervals he would lift up his head to listen to the muffled voices from the room alongside.

In that room the Captain had just left his chair. There was nothing neutral in his voice by that time. He felt nothing but frustration and helpless bewilderment. The survivor, after an hour and a half, still made no sense whatsoever.

"Surely you can't have been the sole survivor," the Captain said, obviously persisting along a familiar line. "After your boat was lowered, what about the crew, the other passengers?"

The survivor's eyes looked overly big, set deep in the emaciated face. "I . . . I don't remember," he whispered. "All I remember is just drifting. Waking up in the boat . . . and just drifting."

There was a tap on the door. The ship's doctor entered, looking at his watch.

The Captain made a gesture as if to say he was almost finished.

"And the name of your ship?" the Captain asked for perhaps the dozenth time.

"
The Titanic
," the survivor said.

The Captain pursed his lips, held his breath and then blew it out. "The
Titanic
, you say."

"Yes, sir. The
Titanic
."

The Captain looked toward the ship's doctor with a shrug, then over his shoulder toward the survivor. "And your name? Tell the ship's doctor your name."

The survivor looked around toward the ship's doctor. He closed his eyes tightly as if deep in thought.

The Captain's voice was much louder now. "The gentleman doesn't remember his name," he halfshouted. "The gentleman doesn't remember very damned much."

The ship's doctor made a little pantomiming gesture as if pleading for restraint.

The Captain shook his head and turned away, pacing restively.

"What do you recall?" the ship's doctor asked as he approached the bed, his voice soft.

The survivor opened his eyes. "We fouled an iceberg. It was a point on the starboard side. Then there was this . . . shuddering noise scraping somewhere under the starboard bow." He shook his head. "That's all I remember," he added helplessly.

The ship's doctor turned from the patient toward the Captain, who had halted his pacing.

The Captain looked disgusted. He retraced his steps over to the bed, this time scaling down his voice, though the impatience and distaste showed through. "You were dressed in women's clothing," he said. "Can you explain that?"

Silence

"Can you?"

Still silence.

"You have no idea?" The Captain's voice was now

that of a British officer in a Court of Inquiry. It just

happened to take place in the ship's Infirmary. "Perhaps," he said, after a pause, "perhaps you won't mind if I take a stab at an explanation."

The man on the bed kept his eyes averted.

"Perhaps you put that dress on," the Captain said, "to gain access to a lifeboat. Could that be it?"

The survivor whispered. "I don't know."

The Captain moved closer to the bed. "You don't know? Is that what you said? I think you do."

The survivor's face seemed to shrivel, and he cringed, as though half-expecting a physical blow.

The ship's doctor put a restraining hand on the Captain's arm and again warned him with a look.

The Captain nodded, jammed his hands into his pockets, looked up toward the ceiling, then back down to the survivor on the bed. "We'll talk again later," he said. "Perhaps when you've rested, some of the answers that presently prove so elusive will manage to wriggle their way to the surface."

He turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

The ship's doctor looked from one to the other and was about to follow the Captain when the survivor painfully inched his way back to a partial sitting position. "Doctor," he called out hoarsely.

The ship's doctor turned to him.

"What year is it?"

The ship's doctor frowned. "What year do you think it is?"

The survivor lowered his head back down on the pillow. "It's 1912. Isn't it? Isn't it 1912?"

The ship's doctor's voice was very soft. "Try to get some more sleep," he said. "There'll be someone in attendance at all times."

He moved out into the passageway, closing the door behind him. The Captain was standing there. The ship's doctor tried to smile. "I should very much like to know what this is all about, Captain."

The Captain looked toward the closed door. "And so should I. Obviously it's some kind of hoax. And obviously it's an outrageous one. And there's no doubt in my mind that he's been carefully coached."

"Coached?" the ship's doctor asked.

The Captain nodded. "And in spite of that—he supplied us a few pieces to the puzzle."

The ship's doctor looked bewildered. "Like what?" he asked.

" 'Fouled the iceberg,' That's what he said." The Captain pointed to the closed door. " 'Iceberg, a point on the starboard bow.' Doctor, that's a sailor talking.
But in whose service?
"

Slowly, his shoulders hunched, the Captain started toward the stairway. The ship's doctor followed him. At the foot of the stairs the Captain stopped and looked straight ahead, deep in thought.

The ship's doctor's voice was tentative. "I don't think I understand," he began.

The Captain turned to him, his voice grim. "I'm wondering if it's possible your patient was put adrift for a very specific purpose."

"Purpose? You've lost me, Captain."

The Captain put one foot on the first rung of stairs. "To slow us down, man. To make us alter course. I know that sounds altogether incredible, doctor . . . but you know, there
is
a war on."

He looked down the length of the passageway toward the Infirmary door, then turned and started a slow walk up the stairs, leaving the ship's doctor staring up at him.

On the bulkhead wall a life preserver made a small sideward movement in a sudden swell. On it was stencilled, "The Lusitania."

An infirmary attendant came out of the patient's room into the passageway just as the ship's doctor came down the stairs. The ship's bell rang eleven times. The attendant balanced a tray with two plates of untouched food. The ship's doctor noted it briefly. "Not eating?" he asked.

The attendant shook his head. "Not a morsel, sir—which is odd, if you'll forgive me. Poor bloke's thin as a drainpipe. Hasn't got a pound of flesh on his bones. Looks to be proper starving is what he looks." He looked down at the tray. "Still—I couldn't get a cracker into him."

The ship's doctor moved past him to the Infirmary door, opened it, and entered. A small orange night light sent darting shadows around the room. The ship's doctor approached the bed and leaned over.

The survivor was awake, his eyes wide open.

"No appetite, I'm told," the ship's doctor said.

The survivor stared straight up at the ceiling. "What time is it?"

"Shortly after eight."

The survivor's voice sounded hollow, strangely like some kind of sepulchral confession. "Dog Watch just ended," he said.

Again the ship's doctor tried to read something in the skin-tight, unrevealing face. Despite himself, he felt an unbidden thrill. What if the man were a spy? What if he knew something that no one else knew? What if he asked the time because he knew that at a certain hour—

The ship's doctor unconsciously shook his head. Paranoia, he thought. But God, in a ship at sea during wartime, you could conjure up any kind of jeopardy. He forced an evenness to his tone. "Were you a member of the
Titanic
's crew?" he asked.

"Stoker."

The ship's doctor smiled, or at least tried to smile. "Well," he said in a bedside tone, "if you want to ship out again when we reach London, I'd recommend taking some nourishment."

The man on the bed turned to study him. The oversized eyes in the undersized face seemed to glow fanatically in the night light. "This ship's the
Lusitania
," he said softly, as if trying to authenticate that which he already knew.

"That's right," the ship's doctor answered.

The survivor lifted a thin, veined hand to his beard-

stubbled chin. "It's 1915," he said.

The ship's doctor nodded.

"I've been in that lifeboat for three years."

It was chilling just to hear him say it—chilling. To voice the impossible as if it were a matter of record.

"Well, now," the ship's doctor said, his voice nervous. "Well, now—we both know you couldn't have been in a lifeboat for three years."

The room, the ship's doctor noted, in another portion of his mind, had grown suddenly silent. It was as if the engines had stopped—that constant, rhythmic, pounding noise of dynamos that somehow fused into the subconscious and disappeared—now it was as if they were nonexistent. The room was utterly silent.

The survivor's voice seemed louder in the stillness. "A question to you, doctor," he said. "How do you know what I've told you isn't possible? Listen to me—listen to me and then tell me if you still think it's impossible.''

Not a spy, the ship's doctor thought. Spies fitted molds. Cold, callous, always planning kind of chaps. But this man . . . those haunted eyes . . . the anguish that seemed so much a part of him—deranged, of course, but not a spy.

He leaned forward. "Tell me about it," he said.

For a moment the survivor's lips moved with no words forthcoming; then he abruptly tore his gaze from the ship's doctor and stared fixedly toward the wall. His voice sounded choked. "Have you ever been frightened, doctor? I mean, so frightened you'd do anything to survive? Have you?"

Humor him, the ship's doctor thought. Always humor the deranged. Give them at least that much comfort.

"Fortunately," the ship's doctor said, "I've never found myself in that kind of situation."

The skeletal face turned to him again. "I have," the survivor said. He took a deep breath. "She was down by the bow and going fast. When I tried to get into a lifeboat, they stopped me. No crew members. Just women and children."

"That's a traditional rule of the sea," the ship's doctor said, his voice slightly aimless, like a kind of absentminded teacher.

The survivor stared at him. "Sure. Sure—unless you're standing on a tilted deck heading into icy water that'Il kill you in three minutes. Then you don't think about traditional rules of the sea."

A silence. The ship's doctor waited. "So you put on a dress," he said finally.

The survivor nodded. "And a muffler to hide my face. And I knocked a half a dozen people aside and got on. While they were lowering her, one of the cables broke. She capsized. But I hung on. Somehow I hung on. When she hit the water, I was the only one who had."

The silence, the ship's doctor thought—the incredible silence of the room and the ship. No ship's engines. No creaking bulkheads. No metallic tinkle of dishes or glassware. No squeak of a ship's lamp as it undulated slowly in the ocean's swell. There was absolutely no sound.

And then the survivor's voice continued. "The ship's band was playing. Some kind of hymn. And there was this . . . this great wailing cry. I could look up at the deck and see faces along the rail. Hundreds of faces. Then there was this explosion. She was going down by the bow, and everything inside that ship was moving. Pianos, furniture, deck chairs—everything . . . all crashing down into the bow. And then there was this . . . this
cry
. Then one by one the funnels disappeared . . . and then the ship. Then there was nothing but bodies floating. Stars . . . dead calm . . . and bodies."

The ship's doctor felt mesmerized.

The voice of the survivor continued in a dead monotone. The night light swayed back and forth from the ceiling.

"An illusion," the ship's doctor finally managed to say. "Understand? It
had
to be an illusion. You
couldn't
have been on the
Titanic
. You couldn't have survived in an open boat for three years."

He rose from the chair, bewildered and shaken by the spectral voice and the skeletal figure who spoke so calmly and so believingly about something that was beyond belief.

"There is an explanation for this," he said. "A rational, believable, altogether understandable explanation. And it'll come out eventually. In the meantime—"

The survivor interrupted him. "In the meantime, doctor—let me tell you something."

The ship's doctor felt his hand shake, and it was suddenly hard to breathe.

The man on the bed swung his legs over the side and rested them on the floor. Skin and bones. Skeleton. Just a frame covered by a thin parchment of flesh.

"You're going to be hit by a torpedo," the man said, "off the Old Head of Kindale. You're going down in eighteen minutes flat."

The voice was so soft, so matter-of-fact, that for a moment the ship's doctor found it difficult to connect tone with words. What had the man said? Something about a torpedo? Something about going down in eighteen minutes? And what had the Captain said? The man was a spy.

"By God," the ship's doctor said finally. "By God, you
are
a German agent."

For the first time the survivor smiled—thin, slit mouth just slightly turned up. "A German agent? I wish . . . I wish to God I was." He shook his head. "No, doctor, I'm no agent. Not a spy. Not a saboteur. But you know something? I'm beginning to understand just what I
am
."

Again the blanketing silence.

"What . . . are . . . you?" the ship's doctor asked. The survivor stood up, swaying slightly, holding onto the night table for support. "I'll tell you what I am, doctor," he said. "I'm a Flying Dutchman, built of flesh, blood, and bones. Damned and doomed. An eternity of lifeboats . . . rescues . . . and then—"