Uncertain Voyage Read online

  Fragments of conversation drifted past her:

  Very good trip, I thought.

  Yes. A little more sun and it would have been perfect.

  …They hushed it up, of course, shipping companies just don’t approve of passengers dying aboard ship.

  So that’s what the commotion was! You know I saw them unloading what looked like a coffin at Cherbourg—I really did—and I thought, Why, that looks like a coffin if ever I saw one!

  Yes, it happened a few hours before we reached Cherbourg. Poor devil was to have disembarked there.

  Old man, I suppose…

  No—quite young, the steward said. No more than forty. Suddenly fell to the floor in the corridor—made a terrible sound—and died at once. There’ll be an autopsy, of course, there always is…

  Traveling alone?

  Yes, quite alone. Sad, isn’t it?

  Abruptly murmurs of pleasure rose from the front of the line and with a surge the passengers began moving. “I don’t like change,” thought Melissa fretfully. “I liked this boat, I wanted to stay on it, I was just growing accustomed to it and now I have to start all over again, there isn’t a single blasted thing I can hold on to, it’s just move move move and nothing familiar at all.” She wondered angrily why someone couldn’t see what this was costing her and come to help her. Didn’t anyone understand what this was like for her, did she really look so calm and knowledgeable and poised and self-sustaining?

  The answer, of course, was that she did look all of these as she stood there in her blue cotton suit, hair brushed into silk, an aloof, amused smile on her lips. Only Dr. Szym would know because he would look behind the mask and into her eyes, which felt like deep funnels of terror and pleading.

  “Ah, there you are!” shrilled Mrs. Comfort. “Come with us, Mrs. Aubrey!” The woman had planted herself firmly in Melissa’s path, her three children surrounding her.

  “Yes, but what are we to do?” asked Melissa ruefully.

  “We go there,” cried Mrs. Comfort, pointing to the glass-enclosed gangplank, “and we wait for our luggage, they call out our names over a loudspeaker when it arrives.” She added peevishly, “I can’t imagine where my husband is! That man is never around when he’s needed.”

  On the ship Mrs. Comfort had been a bore to be avoided at all costs but now she wore the superiority of a woman who had gone through this countless times before. Melissa followed, and like sheep herded into a sorting house, they streamed over the gangplank into a huge terminal furnished with lines of tables and a scattering of chairs. Mrs. Comfort seized upon five of the chairs with triumph.

  “Sit and hang onto your doll, Pamela. No, Herbert, no ice cream, sit and mind your little brother.” To Melissa she said with exasperation, “It’s so like a man to disappear when he’s most needed.” Her lips thinned. “Not enough—oh no—that we’ve got to uproot ourselves again so he can lecture for three months in Sweden, just look who has to wipe the noses, fetch the luggage, and at this rate go to Sweden and lecture for him if he doesn’t show up.”

  “Perhaps he’s inquiring what to do next.”

  Mrs. Comfort gave a roar of laughter. “Him? That’ll be the day.”

  It occurred to Melissa that Mrs. Comfort had singled her out in expectation of complete accord on the subject of men, and she resented this conclusion about her singleness. Melissa also noted that although Mrs. Comfort gave no evidence of helplessness she had lost no time in securing a substitute prop for this traumatic moment of arrival. Mrs. Comfort might be a martyr but she did not travel alone, even if her husband was never around when he was needed, and Melissa felt a flare of anger at being so subtly used.

  But Mrs. Comfort had not finished. “All very well for him to take the applause but who does the work, I ask you, and who wrestles with foreign schools and no hygiene at all, it’ll be just like the last time, I know it. The stove won’t work, the children will catch filthy diseases—and you just try to cook decent American food in Europe.”

  Melissa regarded her thoughtfully. “Surely it could be a wonderful experience living abroad?”

  She had disappointed Mrs. Comfort. “Wonderful! Obviously men think so.” Her eyes rested speculatively upon Melissa. “Men can be so thoughtless. Was it female trouble, dear?”

  Startled, Melissa said, “I beg your pardon?”

  “You said you were convalescing, you’d been in the hospital.”

  Melissa stood up, unable to bear the woman any longer. She said with distaste, “It wasn’t quite the sort of hospital you’re thinking of, Mrs. Comfort, nor quite that type of illness. It was a hospital for emotional disorders, and I’m recovering from a form of schizophrenia.”

  She had silenced the woman at last, and this brought a wonderful sense of achievement. “Now if you’ll excuse me,” she said with deadly politeness, “I’ll leave and look for my suitcase.” One glance at the open mouth and horrified eyes and Melissa found herself smiling as she walked away. And to hell with you, Mrs. Comfort, she thought, her anger giving her impetus. To the man at the desk she said crisply, “Now when will the luggage be arriving?”

  He looked surprised. “It’s downstairs, you can pick it up any time you want.”

  Melissa gave one triumphant glance at the hordes of people waiting passively for deliverance and she thought, “I asked!” All her life she had waited passively for such deliverances, as her parents had waited and then Charles, and now she tasted the heady sensation of action. It made her speculate about the Melissa that she would find waiting when all the false masks and the fears had been stripped from her. Obviously aggressive, she thought, relishing the idea, and she descended the stairs chuckling.

  “Anything to declare?” asked the man in uniform, looming up in her path as she headed for the door.

  Melissa glanced down at the suitcase she had retrieved from the counter. For the first time she remembered the package that Stearns had thrust upon her for delivery in Majorca; she had almost completely forgotten about it, and she had certainly not opened it yet to make sure it was a book. She felt a surge of resentment toward Stearns. He had been quite right to call it an imposition. “Two cartons of cigarettes,” she told the man.

  He smiled at her. “Then welcome to Germany.”

  Melissa walked out into the sunlight to the waiting boat train.

  * * *

  —

  The compartment she chose was occupied by an old man, and Melissa went in and stowed her suitcase away and sat down. The man was asleep; he looked tired and old. Melissa wished that she might sleep, too, for the train was not to leave until it was filled. She leaned her head against the cool windowpane and thought of the words she had hurled at Mrs. Comfort, words that brought back memories she preferred to forget. But she had been unkind to use Sunnybrook as a weapon of assault against the woman; looking back she knew that when she reached Sunnybrook it had been to emerge at last from an endlessly endured, long, black tunnel. She had been blind until then, a mole burrowing through layer after layer of darkness until patiently and slowly Dr. Szym had exposed her to precisely measured gradations of light, and for the first time she saw clearly. Saw herself. Saw Charles. Saw the world. But saw herself most acutely of all, with the terrible intelligence of insight.

  Only then had come the terror with which she lived now. It was as if Dr. Szym had taken her by the hand and led her to the door of her tunnel and said, “There is the sunlit garden waiting, the flowers and the blue sky. There is your gift of freedom.” But did no one realize that freedom was the most terrifying gift of all? Prisoners must feel as she did when after years of captivity they faced their liberation, for to live in darkness was to live in safety and ease, without struggle, fear, doubt, or anxiety. Above all it was to exist without change. Change frightened Melissa; it frightened her so terribly that out of anguish she had embarked upon this trip, which she regarded as a form of shock treatm
ent. Deliberately she had set out to expose herself to change after change, so that like a kaleidoscope the shape of her life would be forced to fall into a different, less rigid pattern.

  The old man stirred and a snore escaped him. Melissa brought her itinerary from her purse and unfolded it to read again. The train would presently leave Bremerhaven and an hour later arrive in Bremen; following a short wait it would proceed to Hamburg, with arrival that evening at nine and a reservation for the night at the Hotel Prem. Tomorrow morning she would take the Alpen Express from Hamburg to Copenhagen, arriving in Copenhagen in mid-afternoon. On Saturday she would fly to Paris, and four days later to Majorca. She tried to make it seem real to her by going over and over it like a nun telling her beads.

  But it did not seem real. The thought that tomorrow she would be in Denmark was impossible to imagine when she had not yet made her first stop in Germany. She decided to take this one day by itself, to isolate this endless day of disembarkation and attempt to make it familiar. She would be spending the remainder of it on the train to Hamburg—this was comforting to her, except that since it was already late afternoon there arose the question of dinner: how was she to manage food? She thought of leaving this compartment to ask if there was a dining car on the train; she thought of leaving the train to buy crackers or chocolate, but she was afraid, she felt tied to her seat by invisible bonds she dared not sever. She was here, and because she was here she was safe, but out there beyond the train lay the terrors of insecurity. If she left she could imagine herself wandering farther and farther looking for the right person to ask, and then—horror of horrors—the train leaving without her. The train was not supposed to leave yet, but what if it did?

  What if it did?

  The thought of being left behind was intolerable. Her only safety lay in following the rules of this printed itinerary without the slightest deviation: its instructions were a path hacked out for her through a jungle of unpredictables, but just one misstep, one error, and she would risk extinction. “I’m like a dinosaur,” she thought wretchedly. “They were so damn rigid they couldn’t adapt and just see what happened to them.” It would be different if she had a companion; for others she could be daring, even reckless, but it was no joke to be alone. Alone she was afraid. No, it was better to sit very still and forget her own needs—except that to remain quiet was to think ahead to Hamburg. Nine o’clock was a terrible hour at which to arrive in a strange city, it would be late and dark and if the train was delayed would the hotel hold her reservation for her, or assume she wasn’t coming? She dug out the itinerary again and was somewhat reassured to discover that a deposit had been made, and lacking this to concern her, felt her anxiety searching for a new outlet.

  After a while the train began to move and Melissa took out her book and began to read, her interest divided between the printed words and the countryside sliding past her window.

  * * *

  —

  But panic had been building inside of her all day, and it descended upon her in Hamburg as if it waited only for an object upon which to expel itself. The train was fifteen minutes late in arriving. Melissa was tired, hungry, nervous, and her suitcase heavy. She followed the crowds to the nearest exit but saw no taxis outside. She turned and plunged across the station to the opposite exit but there was no taxi stand there, either, and she felt old terrors of entrapment mount in her. To a passing woman she said, “Tak-see?” The woman smiled and pointed to the first exit that Melissa had abandoned, and Melissa picked up her bag and hurried back, almost insanely anxious now lest all the taxis had departed. It was late and it was nearly dark and she had become a child again belonging nowhere.

  Still she found no taxi stand. It was like a nightmare.

  She stopped and forced back her panic to stare around the huge vaulted station. There were large bright signs picturing Coca-Cola, summer holidays, toothpastes, and beautiful women; but there was simply no sign with a word approximating either taxi or exit, and she felt bereft, like an orphan. “I have lost a taxi,” she thought forlornly, and wanly smiled at her absurdness. Why did she give in to these totally unreasonable, blind attacks of hysteria? “Calm down,” she told herself. “Nobody’s been lost forever in a railroad station.” She put down her suitcase, took a deep breath and waited. Presently a man in naval uniform passed and she said, “Please—sprechen Sie English?”

  “A little,” he said.

  “I can’t find the taxis.”

  He smiled. “This way.” He picked up her suitcase and returned her to the first exit. “Around there,” he told her.

  Melissa swore softly to herself. They had begun construction at this corner of the building and had erected a high rough fence on the left. She need only have walked a few more feet and peered beyond the fence to see the taxi stand. She was going to have to do much better than this.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Danke schön.”

  The man tipped his hat and walked away, and she reflected that he would never guess that he had soothed a child masquerading as a grown woman or performed, however briefly, the act of a parent for her. Thank you for that, too, she added fervently.

  But the incident had taken its toll. When Melissa gained the privacy of her hotel room—which had, after all, been saved for her—she felt of no more solidity than a piece of paper. All content had been drained from her. When the bellhop left she stared at the door he closed behind him and longed to cry, but the tears that arose to her eyes were fraudulent, for only a real person could feel grief. Her glance swerved to the sumptuous hangings at the window, she moved to touch the ornate bureau and then she sat tentatively on the edge of the bed. These things at least were real but inside of her nothing felt real, for to be suspended between A and B was to be neither here nor there, and all sense of reality had been left behind her on the familiar, substantial boat. Her exacerbated nerves shrieked now for the comfort of one familiar face, a familiar language, a familiar place, she longed to give up and to rush home but this was Hamburg, Germany, and before she could reach home she must endure Copenhagen, Denmark, and then Paris, France, and then Palma, Majorca. It seemed endless, unendurable, she had the feeling that home was forever lost to her and that she could never return to it; it was the ultimate rejection and she must remain forever suspended between worlds, weightless, transparent, unreal.

  Once Dr. Szym had said, “But we are all of us homeless from birth to death.”

  Tears flooded her eyes; how did people endure such homelessness? There was no one to whom she could turn, and no one who cared—not here, not anywhere; she had never felt so alone, so cut adrift from everything secure in her life. Yet tomorrow she must doggedly and relentlessly go on—she knew this, and wept at last for herself with great sobs of self-pity, for this was Hamburg, Germany—whatever that might be—and tomorrow, by another wearying, day-long process she would have to reach Copenhagen. Only by going on, by continuing, could she reach the end of this interminable odyssey. Ahead of her lay vast emptinesses of the unknown, holding terror after terror, but there was no escape, she could only weep and go on.

  After a while, exhausted, she fell asleep.

  3

  The Copenhagen hotel was modern and luxurious, her room narrow but strikingly colorful with polished Danish woods and a vivid blue cover across her bed. With a hotel breakfast behind her Melissa lighted a cigarette and walked to the long window. She had arrived late yesterday afternoon after traveling by train and ferry, but she had not yet ventured out to experience her first European city; her moment of truth had arrived. There was no sun—somehow she had expected sun. There were three motor scooters parked under the trees that divided the avenue, and across the road a woman walked briskly, carrying a furled umbrella. This was Copenhagen, thought Melissa, and suddenly the immensity of it overwhelmed her: what was she to do with Copenhagen?

  But she did not cry; she had done her crying in Hamburg, and now she was frozen, res
olute, all tears spent. She thought, “I can’t spend the next four days hiding in this room.” She walked to the closet and brought out her raincoat and buckled it around her waist. She lifted her suitcase to the bed, unlocked and unzipped it and removed an umbrella. As she leaned over the suitcase she saw Stearns’ small white package lying exposed in a corner. It seemed a long time ago that she had placed it there. Curious, she picked it up, studied it a moment, then broke the string and tore open the paper.

  It was indeed a book but it was a paperback that could be bought anywhere, and this startled her. Its title was Basic Selections from Emerson: Essays Poems and Apothegms. Emerson—and it was not even a new book, she noted, seeing both a crease and a smudge on its pasteboard jacket. She turned to page 191 but it held no surprises, no underscored words, no pencil notations along the margins, it looked exactly like every other page. What was so valuable in this—was it a joke?

  She shrugged. Crumpling up the white paper she threw it into the wastebasket, and placed Stearns’ book on the bureau next to Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit. Stearns had at least contributed reading material for her evenings, and she was reassured that his package did not contain contraband. She replaced the suitcase and sat down with the abbreviated tourist map that she had been given upon registering. The hotel was here, she discovered, circling it with a pen, and although it looked some distance to the center of Copenhagen, the Raadhuspladsen, she could reach it by walking down the Ostergade, which was recommended as Copenhagen’s most exciting street of shops.

  She tucked the map into her purse and stood up. It was important to leave now, before she lost her courage, and yet she could feel the weight of desire holding her back; she did not want to go. But she was alone, she told herself firmly and without self-pity, and she was to be alone for the next two weeks: she must not expect magic rescues. She wandered to the window again, wistfully hoping that there might be sufficient life outside, observable through a pane of glass, so that she might avoid or postpone leaving the safety of this room. But nothing had changed and standing there she reminded herself that everything in the universe was as alone as she: each star shone by itself yet was a part of the cosmos, each cloud racing across the sky was complete in itself yet moved with others in a same direction, each leaf on the tree outside her window remained a part of its tree. Separateness…it was a frightening word and one that had proven so unendurable that she had long ago forfeited her identity, her feelings, her emotions, even her integrity, so that she might lose the pain of its meaning. Now she had to go back in Time and recover what had been rejected: the lost emotions, unvalued opinions, scorned integrity.