by Ruta Sepetys
How foolish to believe we are more powerful than the sea or the sky. I watched from the raft as the beautiful deep began to swallow the massive boat of steel.
In one large gulp.
joana
The baby. The wandering boy. What was I to do?
florian
The Polish girl. My pack. Where were they?
emilia
The knight. He had the baby. I knew he’d be a savior.
alfred
Bodies were strewn like human confetti. Would I still get my medal?
florian
The tail of the ship was all that remained sticking out of the water. People dangled from the railings, their legs swinging wildly. The glass-enclosed sundeck at the back of the ship was packed with hundreds of trapped passengers. They banged their desperate fists against the glass. The water inside rose higher and higher. A brave sailor, balancing on the stern, hacked at the glass with an ax, trying to free the trapped people. The glass would not break. He swung harder, then lost his balance and fell into the sea. We watched in horror as the people behind the glass began to drown.
A lifeboat floated near the back of the Gustloff. In it sat a captain and several sailors.
Thousands of lifeless bodies floated around us. I searched for Heinz and the sailor with my pack. A young girl kicked and shrieked in the water next to our lifeboat.
I removed my life vest and threw it to her. “Grab my hand,” I told her.
“No!” yelled a woman in our boat. “She’ll turn us over!”
I stood and leaned over the side. Our lifeboat tipped toward the water. Everyone screamed. I reached down and grabbed the girl by her hair. She gripped my arm and I pulled her into the boat. She fell, soaked and exhausted at our feet.
A woman in a fur coat yelled at me. “You had no right! You’re endangering everyone!”
“Shut up!” I roared. My body shook with anger. “Do you hear me? Shut up!” Everyone fell quiet. The wandering boy hid his crying face in the crook of his arm. Joana reached up to me.
I slumped down beside her and dropped my head into my hands.
Fate is a hunter.
Its barrel pressed against my forehead.
joana
The dark air was full of screams. Snow and sleet blew horizontally, battering our faces. A lifeboat near ours was sandwiched full of crying women and children. Florian saw them and stood up.
“They need someone to row their boat.”
My free hand grabbed at his back. “Stay,” I begged him. “Please, Florian. Stay with me.”
“I’ll go.” The husband of the woman in the fur coat stood up. The woman yelled and berated her husband as he bravely jumped from our boat into the other.
Floating in the sea of black, we were forced to witness the massive and grotesque deaths of thousands of people. I clutched the baby tight and closed my eyes. But the scenes continued to play in my mind: The severely angled deck. A woman throwing her baby down to a sailor. He reached. He missed. The child hit the steel raft and then rolled off into the sea. Thousands of desperate people jumping, kicking, gulping. Seawater filling mouths and nostrils, collapsing lungs. High waves, angry sea, snow, and wind.
The injured soldier who had begged for a kiss now floated dead near our lifeboat, his head strangled in the netting of a raft. So many people needed my help. And now I could do nothing. The frigid temperature of the water would induce immediate and lethal stress on their hearts. They would die of hypothermia. Instead of helping, I was forced to watch the panorama of catastrophe unroll before my eyes.
Guilt is a hunter.
I was its hostage.
emilia
A whitecap tossed us beyond a cluster of rafts, most of them empty. Less than an hour had passed since the ship was torpedoed. Thousands of dead bodies, eyes wide, floated frozen in life vests. In the darkness, closer to the sinking ship, I thought I could make out the silhouette of lifeboats. We were much farther from the ship than the others. The sailor was sick into the water. I pulled the pack from his arm. He thanked me and leaned farther over the edge of the raft.
I had the knight’s pack.
The knight had the baby.
The knight would want his pack.
I wanted my baby.
Pain ripped through my chest. I wanted her. I wanted my baby.
A deep popping came from the ship. Its bones were snapping, breaking from the contortion pressure. The rounded stern sloped vertically toward the sky. People dangled from the railings, screaming. Others plummeted backward to their death. An explosion detonated from within the boat under the water. Suddenly, the entire ship lit up. A blaze of glittering lights brightly illuminated the water and the grotesque scene. I stared at the massive twinkling ship. A groan, like a deep yawn, sent echoes across the waves into my face. And then the lights vanished. The boat disappeared into the black. The huge steel city—and thousands trapped inside—was sinking to the bottom of the sea.
A momentary quiet followed, leaving nothing but the sound of the wind and waves. We bobbed up and back, up and back, waves lapping and curling, the sound of crying filtering through the dark.
Next to me in the water, a young woman floated silently in a life vest. Her skirt rose up in a perfect circle around her. She turned in slow pirouette, dead arms outstretched, snow dusting her dark hair like powdered sugar. A set of false teeth drifted by on a piece of wood and faded into the darkness.
The lifeboats were too far away to yell. I didn’t have an oar. I scanned the water for something to row with. Bobbing all around us were tiny children. The weight of their heads, the heaviest part of their bodies, had flipped them over in their life vests. With each wave, small corpses knocked against my raft. I was surrounded by hundreds of drowned children, heads in the water, their little feet in the air.
All the little duckies, with their heads in the water
Heads in the water.
It was my punishment. Honor lost. Everything lost.
Shame is a hunter.
My shame was all around me now.
alfred
My angel, Hannelore,
The night is dark. I scarcely know where to begin. I am floating on a buoyed raft in the Baltic Sea. My ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff, she is gone. We left Gotenhafen at lunchtime on January 30. I thought it such a perfect departure date. After all, January 30 was the birthday of Wilhelm Gustloff, for whom the ship was named, and also the anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power.
The voyage began this afternoon, with more than ten thousand passengers on board. Yes, ten thousand. I was gripped with seasickness from the start. It was crippling in a way that forced interruption of my duties.
Several hours into our journey to Kiel, at precisely 9:15 p.m. per my watch, the ship was struck by three torpedoes. It began to sink. Alarm bells hammered and we were mustered to boat stations. Passengers were seized with savage panic. It would be inappropriate for me to document the scene for you. You see, the dark corridors I ran through felt like a lumpy mattress, the kind I detest. But I soon realized that it was, in fact, a carpet of bodies that I was walking over. The three explosions tore not only through the ship, but also the passengers. I asked a young girl in the corridor to move. When she didn’t respond, I nudged her. Her round head, the shape of a summer peach, rolled and she was missing half of her face. I can’t stop thinking of it. I’m grateful you weren’t here to witness such haunting devastation.
The sinking took just under sixty minutes. The Gustloff’s final dive will pull her deep, to the bottom of the Baltic Sea. I estimate the water temperature to be approximately four degrees Centigrade at this time of year. It is quite impossible for a body to survive in that cold for any length of time. As a result, the many thousands of people I now see in the water will surely perish, despite their life vests. I am fortunate to have station on a raft, joined by a young Latvian woman whose newbor
n baby was snatched into a lifeboat without her. The waves are enormous and I am plagued with illness, constantly spilling my stomach over the side of the raft. My uniform is soiled. I seem to be missing a shoe.
Floating amidst this darkness and death, I have time not only for reflection but for honesty. I am now faced with the unbearable truth. How, Lore, could I truly love you? I could not, I should not—not after what you said, what you so rudely announced to everyone in the street. Yet the infatuation preserves and satiates me in an indescribable way. Perhaps it fences the fear.
So I cling to it.
You see, fear is a hunter. It encircles us when we are unarmed and least expect it. And then we are forced to make decisions.
I made the right decision. I tried to help.
You tried to pull your shade, to keep me out. Your decision, Hannelore, was the wrong one.
florian
“The ship, it’s under,” said Joana, her teeth chattering. Her voice was barely a whisper.
I counted nearly fifty people in our large lifeboat. We could have fit more.
The shoemaker.
The Polish girl.
Gone.
The cold on the open water would kill us. I called out to the little boy and pulled him onto my lap. I turned my body and straddled the bench in the boat. “Do the same,” I told Joana. “We’ll put the kids between us. Put the baby under your blouse and coat, against your skin.”
She turned toward me, holding the baby. I moved as close as I could. I wrapped my arms around her, sheltering the children from the elements. Our heads touched.
“Can you hear me?” Joana whispered. Her voice sounded thin, frightened.
I nodded and turned my good ear toward her.
“It’s so cold. Will anyone come for us?” she asked.
The air was black. The moon hid behind the clouds, unable to stomach the wretched scene. I looked out across the water, thousands of corpses floating silently. So many children. The girl I had pulled into the boat was already dead. She lay blue and lifeless at our feet. How would the Nazis report the news of the sinking? But then I realized.
They wouldn’t report it at all.
“Will anyone come for us?” repeated Joana.
“Yes,” I lied. “Someone will come for us.”
With the threat of Russian submarines in the area, most ships would probably detour to avoid us.
Everything I ran with was in my pack—my papers, the forged documents, my notebook, and the swan. All the running, the hiding, the lies, the killing, for what? The endless circle of revenge: answering pain by inflicting pain. Why did I do it?
The strange sailor had not made it to a lifeboat. There were none left. I looked down at my boots. My heel was still intact. Had the map and key survived? Did it matter? Water slowly crept through a crack in the bottom of our boat. The precious treasure would end up at the bottom of the Baltic.
So would I.
Maybe the Amber Room truly did carry a curse.
During my weeks on the run I had imagined every scenario. I had counted all of the ways I could die. They were gruesome, frightening. I had carefully planned how I would defend myself, what weapon I would use. But this, I had never imagined. How do you defend yourself against the prolonged, insufferable agony of knowing you will surrender to the sea?
joana
The black water lapped against the side of the boat. Snow drifted down around us. In the quiet dark, Florian began telling me things. He told me of his mother, how he missed her, how he mourned the mistakes with his father. He spoke of many people and places.
He was telling me things now because he knew we were going to die.
I thought of my mother, waiting patiently for me to arrive, worrying about her only daughter, perhaps her only surviving family member. How would she hear the news? Everyone knew the story of the big ships, Titanic and Lusitania. I looked toward the thousands of corpses floating in the water. This was so much larger. More than ten thousand people had been on board the Gustloff. The gruesome details of the sinking would be reported in every world newspaper. The tragedy would be studied for years, become legendary.
I sat, wrapped up with a handsome thief, an orphan boy and a newborn baby between us. I thought of Emilia standing on the deck of the Gustloff in the freezing wind, handing her baby to Florian. She had looked down at us in the lifeboat, her blond hair blowing beneath her pink hat.
“One more.”
That’s what the sailor had said.
Most would have fought to be “the one.” They would have insisted they ought to be “the one.” But Emilia had pushed the wandering boy into the boat, sacrificing herself for another. Where was she now? Had she gotten into a boat? I thought of frightened yet brave Emilia, and I started to cry.
I wanted my mother. My mother loved Lithuania. She loved her family. The war had torn every last love from her life. Would she have to learn the grotesque details of our suffering? Would news make it to my hometown of Biržai, to the dark bunker in the woods where my brother and father were thought to be hiding?
Joana Vilkas, your daughter, your sister. She is salt to the sea.
We floated in the blackness, bobbing along the waves. A woman in the boat announced the time every thirty minutes. There was no more splashing in the water, only the quiet echoes of crying. We sat, snow falling from an infinite sky.
We waited.
We drifted.
And then I felt Florian’s face in my hair. He was kissing me. He kissed my head, he kissed my ear, he kissed my nose. I looked up at him. He took my face in his hands.
“There’s a light. A boat is coming,” he whispered.
alfred
Dear Hannelore,
The news is grim, the night so very cold. To warm myself I think of summer in Heidelberg. I see you there. I can see you here now, your dark hair against your snug red sweater. I saw a lot of things back home, but most did not credit me for my observant nature. Instead people, like my naïve Mutter, insisted I was suited for bakery work. “How doth we judge a man . . .” I can’t recall the rest at this time. People knew I had thoughts, but never wanted to hear them from me. I had more than thoughts. I had theories, plans. Do you remember on the sidewalk when I began to tell you of them? You were so enlightened you ran away, probably to share them with others.
Hitler, he understands my theories. And I, his. Protection of the sick, weak, and inferior is not sensible. That is why I told the Hitler Youth boys about your Jewish father. Do you understand that I was trying to help, Lore? Your mother is not Jewish. I thought surely you would have had sense enough to tell the officers that your mother was a gentile, that you would have aligned yourself to the greater being inside you.
But you decided otherwise.
And now, years later I am still confused by our final conversation. Do you remember it? I remember it so clearly. I ran out onto the sidewalk as they were taking you away. I told them that half of you was part of the master race. You stopped in your tracks and whirled to face me.
“No,” you yelled. And then you screamed so very loud.
“I am Jewish!”
Your words echoed between the buildings and bounced down the street.
“I am Jewish!”
I am certain everyone heard your proclamation. It almost sounded like pride. And for some reason those words are now caught, like a hair, in the drain of my mind.
“I am Jewish!”
emilia
We tossed for such a long while. At times I thought I saw tiny faint lights in the distance, but the waves had carried us too far to tell. Where was the Russian submarine that had torpedoed the ship? Was it underneath us? I clutched the knight’s pack in front of my body to shield me from the wind. Having his pack made me feel close to him. He was a good man. Thoughts of him made me warmer. I just needed to wait until sunrise. H
ow long would that be? Perhaps seven or eight hours?
I could make it. I’m coming, Halinka.
The sailor alternated between talking and heaving over the side of the raft. He was pointing his finger at me, speaking of Hitler. He kept calling me Hannelore. It frightened me. He frightened me. There was a look behind his eyes. I had seen it in the port. Frau Kleist had the same disapproving look.
His speech became slow and slurred from the cold. He was delirious. He threw his hands in the air, repeating the word Jewish. It made me think of my sweet friends Rachel and Helen from Lwów. How we used to sing as we collected mushrooms in the forest when they visited me. How we’d be covered in flour and sugar after rolling plum dumplings. How I missed them.
The sailor began talking about a medal. His medal. He then insisted that the medal was in the knight’s pack.
“Did you take my medal? Are you a thief?” he asked, deranged from the cold. He crawled over to me and started grabbing at the pack. I swatted his hands away. He became more insistent.
I shouted at him. His face pinched at my words.
I hadn’t realized: I was speaking Polish. I was so tired of the game. What did it matter now? “Nicht Deutsche,” I yelled. “Polin.”
He stopped and wobbled in front of me, confused. “What? You are Polish?”
“I am Polish!” I yelled.
He wagged a delirious finger at me. “Filthy Pole. You liar! Finally, I will serve my country. I am a hero, Hannelore. Einer weniger!” he bellowed.
Einer weniger. One less.
He leaned over and tried to shove me into the water. I kicked him with all of my remaining strength. He fell backward on the raft, chanting and repeating, “Hero, hero.” He pulled himself to a crouch, then leaned in, eyes narrowed. He began reciting. Or was he singing?
