Going Under Read online

  “You know,” Esme said to Stephen, “I believe him."

  “I'm going to talk to his sister, or whoever she is, about this."

  “I heard what you said.” Michael turned away from Poppa, who seemed lost in thought. “I have very good hearing, I heard everything you said. Go ahead and talk to her, talk to the captain, if you like. It won't do you any good. I'm an international hero, if you'd like to know. The girl who wears the camera in her hair already did an interview for me for the poll.” Then he gave them his back and resumed his hushed conversation with Poppa.

  “Who does he mean?” asked Esme.

  “The woman reporter from Interfax,” Stephen said.

  “Her job is to guess which passengers will opt to die, and why,” interrupted Michael, who turned around in his chair. “She interviews the most interesting passengers, then gives her predictions to her viewers—and they are considerable. They respond immediately to a poll taken several times a day. Keeps us in their minds, and everybody loves the smell of death.” Michael turned back to Poppa.

  “Well, she hasn't tried to interview me."

  “Do you really want her to?” Stephen asked.

  “And why not? I'm for conspicuous consumption, and I want so much for this experience to be a success. Goodness, let the whole world watch us sink, if they want. They might just as well take bets.” Then, in a conspiratorial whisper, she said, “None of us really knows who's opted to die. That's part of the excitement. Isn't it?"

  “I suppose,” Stephen said.

  “Oh, you're such a prig,” Esme said. “One would think you're a doer."

  “What?"

  “A doer. All of us are either doers or voyeurs, isn't that right? But the doers mean business,” and to illustrate she cocked her head, stuck out her tongue, and made gurgling noises as if she were drowning. “The voyeurs, however, are just along for the ride. Are you sure you're not a doer?"

  Michael, who had been eavesdropping again, said, referring to Stephen, “He's not a doer, you can bet on that! He's a voyeur of the worst sort. He takes it all seriously."

  “Mitchell, that's not a very nice thing to say. Apologize or I'll turn Poppa off and you can go right—"

  “I told you before, its Michael. M-I-C-H-A-"

  “Now that's enough disrespect from both of you,” Poppa said. “Michael, stop goading Stephen. Esme says she loves him. Esme, be nice to Michael. He just made my day. And you don't have to threaten to turn me off. I'm turning myself off. I've got some thinking to do.” Poppa closed his eyes and nothing Esme said would awaken him.

  “Well, he's never done that before,” Esme said to Michael, who was now standing before the bed and trying to place his feet as wide apart as he could. “What did you say to him?"

  “Nothing much."

  “Come on, Michael, I let you into the room, remember?"

  “I remember. Can I come into bed with you?"

  “Hell, no,” Stephen said.

  “He's only a child,” Esme said as she moved over to make room for Michael, who climbed in between her and Stephen. “Be a sport. You're the man I love."

  “Do you believe in transmigration of souls?” Michael asked Esme.

  “What?"

  “Well, I asked Poppa if he remembered any of his past lives, that is, if he had any. Poppa's conscious, you know, even if he is a machine."

  “Did your sister put such ideas in your head?” Esme asked.

  “Now you're being condescending.” However, Michael made the rubber-lips face at Stephen, rather than at Esme, Stephen made a face back at him, and Michael howled in appreciation, then became quite serious and said, “On the contrary, I helped my sister to remember. It wasn't easy, either, because she hasn't lived as many lives as I have. She's younger than me. I bet I could help you to remember,” he said to Esme.

  “And what about me?” asked Stephen, playing along, enjoying the game a little now.

  “You're a nice man, but you're too filled up with philosophy and rationalizations. You wouldn't grasp any of it; it's too simple. Anyway, you're in love and distracted."

  “Well, I'm in love too,” Esme said petulantly.

  “But you're in love with everything. He's only in love with one thing at a time."

  “Am I a thing to you?” Esme asked Stephen.

  “Certainly not."

  But Michael would not be closed out. “I can teach you how to meditate,” he said to Esme. “It's easy, once you know how. You just watch things in a different way."

  “Then would I see all my past lives?” Esme asked.

  “Maybe."

  “Is that what you do?"

  “I started when I was six,” Michael said. “I don't do anything anymore, I just see differently. It's something like dreaming.” Then he said to Esme, “You two are like a dream, and I'm outside it. Can I come in?"

  Delighted, Esme asked, “You mean, become a family?"

  “Until the end,” Michael said.

  “I think it's wonderful, what do you think, Stephen?"

  Stephen lay back against the wall, impatient, ignoring them.

  “Come on, be a sport,” Michael said. “I'll even teach you how to make the rubber-lips face."

  * * * *

  Stephen and Esme finally managed to lose Michael by lunchtime. Esme seemed happy enough to be rid of the boy, and they spent the rest of the day discovering the ship. They took a quick dip in the pool, but the water was too cold and it was chilly outside. If the dirigible was floating above, they did not see it because the sky was covered with heavy gray clouds. They changed clothes, strolled along the glass-enclosed lower Promenade Deck, looked for the occasional flying fish, and spent an interesting half hour being interviewed by the woman from Interfax. Then they took a snack in the opulent first-class smoking room. Esme loved the mirrors and stained-glass windows. After they explored cabin and tourist class, Esme talked Stephen into a quick game of squash, which he played rather well. By dinnertime they found their way into the garish, blue-tiled Turkish bath. It was empty and hot, and they made gentle but exhausting love on one of the Caesar couches. Then they changed clothes again, danced in the lounge, and took a late supper in the Café.

  He spent the night with Esme in her suite. It was about four o'clock in the morning when he was awakened by a hushed conversation. Rather than make himself known, Stephen feigned sleep and listened.

  “I can't make a decision,” Esme said as she carefully paced back and forth beside the desk upon which Poppa rested.

  “You've told me over and over what you know you must do,” said Poppa. “And now you change your mind?"

  “I think things have changed."

  “And how is that?"

  “Stephen, he ..."

  “Ah,” Poppa said, “so now love is the escape. But do you know how long that will last?"

  “I didn't expect to meet him, to feel better about everything."

  “It will pass."

  “But right now I don't want to die."

  “You've spent a fortune on this trip, and on me. And now you want to throw it away. Look, the way you feel about Stephen is all for the better, don't you understand? It will make your passing away all the sweeter because you're happy, in love, whatever you want to claim for it. But now you want to throw everything away that we've planned and take your life some other time, probably when you're desperate and unhappy and don't have me around to help you. You wish to die as mindlessly as you were born."

  “That's not so, Poppa. But it's up to me to choose."

  “You've made your choice, now stick to it, or you'll drop dead like I did."

  Stephen opened his eyes; he could not stand this any longer. “Esme, what the hell are you talking about?"

  She looked startled and then said to Poppa, “You were purposely talking loudly to wake him up, weren't you?"

  “You had me programmed to help you. I love you and I care about you. You can't undo that!"

  “I can do whatever I wish,” she sa
id petulantly.

  “Then let me help you, as I always have. If I were alive and had my body, I would tell you exactly what I'm telling you now."

  “What is going on?” Stephen asked.

  “She's fooling you,” Poppa said gently to Stephen. “She's using you because she's frightened."

  “I am not!"

  “She's grasping at anyone she can find."

  “I am not!” she shouted.

  “What the hell is he telling you?” Stephen asked.

  “The truth,” Poppa said.

  Esme sat down beside Stephen on the bed and began to cry, then, as if sliding easily into a new role, she looked at him and said, “I did program Poppa to help me die."

  Disgusted, Stephen drew away from her.

  “Poppa and I talked everything over very carefully, we even discussed what to do if something like this came about."

  “You mean if you fell in love and wanted to live."

  “Yes."

  “And she decided that under no circumstances would she undo what she had done,” Poppa said. “She has planned the best possible death for herself, a death to be experienced and savoured. She's given everything up and spent all her money to do it. She's broke. She can't go back now, isn't that right, Esme?"

  Esme looked at Stephen and nodded.

  “But you're not sure, I can see that,” Stephen insisted.

  “I will help her, as I always have,” said Poppa.

  “Jesus, shut that thing up,” Stephen shouted.

  “He's not a—"

  “Please, at least give us a chance,” Stephen said to Esme. “You're the first authentic experience I've ever had, I love you, I don't want it to end ..."

  Poppa pleaded his case eloquently, but Esme told him to go to sleep.

  He obediently closed his eyes.

  * * * *

  The great ship hit an iceberg on the fourth night of her voyage, exactly one day earlier than scheduled. It was Saturday, 11.40 PM and the air was full of coloured lights from tiny splinters of ice floating like motes of dust. “Whiskers ’round the light” they used to be called by sailors. The sky was a panoply of twinkling stars, and it was so cold that one might imagine they were fragments of ice floating in a cold, dark, inverted sea overhead.

  Stephen and Esme were again standing by the rail of the Promenade Deck. Both were dressed in the early-twentieth-century accouterments provided by the ship: he in woolen trousers, jacket, motoring cap, and caped overcoat with a long scarf; she in a fur coat, a stylish Merry Widow hat, high-button shoes, and a black velvet, two-piece suit edged with white silk. She looked ravishing, and very young, despite the clothes.

  “Throw it away,” Stephen said in an authoritative voice. “Now!"

  Esme brought the cedar box containing Poppa to her chest, as if she were about to throw it forward, then slowly placed it atop the rail again. “I can't."

  “Do you want me to do it?” Stephen asked.

  “I don't see why I must throw him away."

  “Because we're starting a new life together. We want to live, not—"

  Just then someone shouted and, as if in the distance, a bell rang three times.

  “Could there be another ship nearby?” Esme asked.

  “Esme, throw the box away!” Stephen snapped; and then he saw it. He pulled Esme backward, away from the rail. An iceberg as high as the forecastle deck scraped against the side of the ship; it almost seemed that the bluish, glistening mountain of ice was another ship passing, that the ice rather than the ship was moving. Pieces of ice rained upon the deck, slid across the varnished wood, and then the iceberg was lost in the darkness astern. It must have been at least one hundred feet high.

  “Omygod!” Esme screamed, rushing to the rail and leaning over it.

  “What it is?"

  “Poppa, I dropped him, when you pulled me away from the iceberg. I didn't mean to ..."

  Stephen put his arms around her, but she pulled away. “If you didn't mean to throw it away—"

  “Him, not it!"

  “—him away, then why did you bring him up here?"

  “To satisfy you, to ... I don't know, Stephen. I suppose I was going to try to do it."

  “Well, it's done, and you're going to feel better, I promise. I love you, Esme."

  “I love you, Stephen,” she said distractedly. A noisy crowd gathered on the deck around them. Some were quite drunk and were kicking large chunks of ice about, as if they were playing soccer.

  “Come on, then,” Stephen said, “let's get heavy coats and blankets, and we'll wait on deck for a lifeboat. We'll take the first one out and watch the ship sink together."

  “No, I'll meet you right here in an hour."

  “Esme, it's too dangerous, I don't think we should separate.” Stephen glimpsed the woman from Interfax standing alone on the elevated sun deck, recording this event for her millions of viewers.

  “We've got time before anything is going to happen."

  “We don't know that,” Stephen insisted. “Don't you realize that we're off schedule? We are supposed to hit that iceberg tomorrow."

  But Esme had disappeared into the crowd.

  * * * *

  It was bitter cold, and the Boat Deck was filled with people, all rushing about, shouting, scrambling for the lifeboats, and inevitably, those who had changed their minds at the last moment about going down with the ship were shouting the loudest, trying the hardest to be permitted into the boats, not one of which had been lowered yet. There were sixteen wooden lifeboats and four canvas Englehardts, the collapsibles. But they could not be lowered away until the davits were cleared of the two forward boats. The crew was quiet, each man busy with the boats and davits. All the boats were now swinging free of the ship, hanging just beside the Boat Deck.

  “We'll let you know when it's time to board,” shouted an officer to the families crowding around him.

  The floor was listing. Esme was late, and Stephen wasn't going to wait. At this rate, the ship would be bow-down in the water in no time.

  She must be with Michael, he thought. The little bastard must have talked her into dying.

  * * * *

  Michael had a stateroom on C Deck.

  Stephen knocked, called to Michael and Esme, tried to open the door, and finally kicked the lock free.

  Michael was sitting on the bed, which was a Pullman berth. His sister lay beside him, dead.

  “Where's Esme?” Stephen demanded, repelled by the sight of Michael sitting so calmly beside his dead sister.

  “Not here. Obviously.” Michael smiled, then made the rubber-lips face at Stephen.

  “Jesus,” Stephen said. “Put your coat on, you're coming with me."

  Michael laughed and patted his hair down. “I'm already dead, just like my sister, almost. I took a pill too, see?” and he held up a small brown bottle. “Anyway, they wouldn't let me on a lifeboat. I didn't sign up for one, remember?"

  “You're a baby, they—"

  “I thought Poppa explained that to you,” Michael lay down beside his sister and watched Stephen like a puppy with its head cocked at an odd angle.

  “You do know where Esme is, now tell me."

  “You never understood her. She came here to die.”

  “That's all changed,” Stephen said, wanting to wring the boy's neck.

  “Nothing's changed. Esme loves me, too. And everything else."

  “Tell me where she is."

  “It's too late for me to teach you how to meditate. In a way, you're already dead. No memory, or maybe you've just been born. No past lives. A baby.” Again, Michael made the rubber-lips face. Then he closed his eyes. He whispered, “She's doing what I'm doing."

  An instant later, he stopped breathing.

  * * * *

  Stephen searched the ship, level by level, broke in on the parties, where those who had opted for death were having a last fling, looked into the lounges where many old couples sat, waiting for the end. He made his way down to F D
eck, where he had made love to Esme in the Turkish bath. The water was up to his knees; it was green and soapy. He was afraid, for the list was becoming worse minute by minute; everything was happening so fast.

  The water rose, even as he walked.

  He had to get to the stairs, had to get up and out, onto a lifeboat, away from the ship, but on he walked, looking for Esme, unable to stop. He had to find her. She might even be on the Boat Deck right now, he thought, wading as best he could through a corridor.

  But he had to satisfy himself that she wasn't down there.

  The Turkish bath was filling with water, and the lights were still on, giving the room a ghostly illumination. Oddments floated in the room: blue slippers, a comb, scraps of paper, cigarettes, and several seamless plastic packages.

  On the farthest couch, Esme sat meditating, her eyes closed and hands folded on her lap. She wore a simple white dress. Relieved and overjoyed, he shouted to her. She jerked awake, looking disoriented, shocked to see him. She stood up and, without a word, waded toward the other exit, dipping her hands into the water, as if to speed her on her way.

  “Esme, where are you going?” Stephen called, following. “Don't run away from me."

  Just then an explosion pitched them both into the water, and a wall gave way. A solid sheet of water seemed to be crashing into the room, smashing Stephen, pulling him under and sweeping him away. He fought to reach the surface and tried to swim back, to find Esme. A lamp broke away from the ceiling, just missing him. “Esme!” he shouted, but he couldn't see her, and then he found himself choking, swimming, as the water carried him though a corridor and away from her.

  Finally, Stephen was able to grab the iron curl of a railing and pull himself onto a dry step. There was another explosion, the floor pitched, yet still the lights glowed. He looked down at the water that filled the corridor, the Turkish bath, the entire deck, and he screamed for Esme.

  The ship shuddered, then everything was dead quiet. In the great rooms, chandeliers hung at angles; tables and chairs had skidded across the floors and seemed to squat against the walls like wooden beasts. Still the lights burned, as if all were quite correct, except gravity, which was misbehaving.