فصل 95

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 newborn 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.