“I told you to listen,” she said, and sounded extremely measured, all things considered. “I just want you to listen like I told you.”
She was holding his face so tightly that I could see the skin turning white beneath her fingers. He grunted, pushed back against her but seemed unable to dislodge her, bending back against the table as she held on to his head.
“I can’t stop it now,” she said. “It’s all I can hear anymore. I know I’m not supposed to respond but I can’t help it. It’s like there’s something on the inside”—she pressed her thumbs upward into his temples—“like water condensed on the inside of my brain and I can’t wipe it away. Ghosts don’t speak,” she said, again, the way she had before, “but something is speaking to me.”
I don’t remember what Matteo’s face did at that moment; all I remember is her hands and the white of his skin as her fingers crept in toward the corners of his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’ll pray if you want me to.”
She said nothing to this, only paused for a long time before releasing him, looking at him with an expression that could have meant anything but which I took as proof that Matteo had said the right thing.
“Listen,” I said, “why don’t I make us some coffee,” and things must have been all right for a while after that because the next thing I remember, Jelka was asleep in her bunk and Matteo was eating at the table as though nothing had happened.
“It’ll be all right now,” I remember Matteo saying, and I didn’t ask him what he was basing that on, although oddly enough when I went over to Jelka’s bunk sometime later to tuck the bedclothes up around her shoulders, she said the exact same thing. “It’ll be all right now,” she said, and I bent down to pick up her figurine of Saint Brendan from where he had fallen on the floor.
The second half of the day went like this.
I was asleep, not in my bunk but on the main deck, which is why I didn’t see all of it. I woke to a crash and to Matteo yelling, and when I came through to the rear chamber he was beating on the lower hatch leading to the escape trunk—through which, I came to understand, Jelka had just disappeared.
Escape trunks are a feature on most submarines and operate as a fail-safe in medium-depth waters, where the pressure of the ocean outside is intense but should nonetheless still be survivable if a person is able to exit in the correct diving gear. One climbs through an inner door, which is then sealed tightly, before engaging a switch that partially floods this closed-off section without needing to drown the entire craft. As the chamber floods, the air is simultaneously pressurized until it matches the pressure of the ocean against the outer doors, though a bubble of air remains at the top of the chamber to allow the person inside to continue to breathe. Once the pressure in the chamber is equal to the pressure outside, the outer doors can be opened and one can theoretically swim to safety. Of course, this is all predicated on the pressure outside not being such that the doors opening would result in one being instantly crushed.
I remember we tried the handwheel that opened the hatch and found it immovable. I remember we beat on the door, though I don’t remember much of what we said. She had gone out, as Matteo would explain to me only later, while he was in the wash stall, she had been sitting at the table beforehand as if nothing was wrong. I remember the light above the hatch blinking on, to indicate the trunk was being flooded. I remember the clattering on of the internal mechanism that would cause the air in the chamber to change. I remember, too, the brief silence before the sound of the external doors opening, and then the rush of the water—miles and miles of it on top of our heads.
MIRI
I buy a length of surgical bandage and use it to bind up the side of Leah’s face. The effect is semipiratical—the bandage sits at an inappropriately jaunty angle, covering up the place where her eye used to be. “Can you see?” I ask, and she nods, and that seems to be all there is to say.
She appears shaken but not exactly disturbed. She doesn’t resist my hand at her cheek when I tip her head to check the bandage is lying straight. I put her back in the bath, because that is all I can think of to do with her, and bring her three tablespoons of salt dissolved in water.
“It’ll be all right now,” I hear her saying, in the brief time I’m out of the room, and I think of the very first days after her return, wiping the blood from her face in the bathroom: be all right, be all right in a minute.