Page 66 - Titanic: Forbidden Stories Hollywood Forgot

52 Jack Fritscher

was a moment of almost absolute silence. It was 2:15 AM.
Then thunder again. Titanic’s stern reared high in the
water, bright, brilliant with light, phallic, magnificent in
disaster, tall as a skyscraper. In a crashing avalanche,
everything movable on the ship slid violently into the
water. The postal clerks, dedicated to faithful de livery of
their mail, were swept downwards in a tidal wave of en-
velopes and parcels. Hundreds and hundreds of people,
a thousand, shouting, more than a thousand, screaming,
were thrown into the cold sea thrashing in the 28 degree
water. At 2:18 the lights in Titanic’s stern flickered and
failed. Titanic stood verti cally for ninety seconds, and at
2:20, the stern of the great ship slipped gurgling beneath
the surface of the sea, sending up one immense white
burst of steam toward the unblinking stars.
Two thousand people watched Titanic sink; 706 were
in lifeboats.
Less than a mile away, an iceberg floated slowly on
the current, a scrap of red and black paint smeared like
whore’s lipstick along its face.
Madame Ouspenskaya, too old to row, sat regally in
the bow of Lifeboat 6, fully opposite Molly. Her face was
impassive. Voices, passengers floating, swimming, freez-
ing, sink ing in the sea, cried out for help in the night.
I strained to hear, really not to hear, Edward’s voice.
“Don’t listen,” Felix said. “They’d only swamp us.”
Against their distant fading cries, our lifeboat lapped
quietly on the ink-cold sea.
Molly wrapped the clothes meant for Edward around
Mr. Astor’s five-months-pregnant wife.
We rowed in the starry dark in si lence. Other lifeboats
floated on the quiet waters.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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