Кейт Кристенсен - The Last Cruise

“We can get off in Honolulu if you hate it.”

Sleep, soft and muffling, folded itself around Christine’s brain.

The Sabra Quartet had spent most of the afternoon before the sail-away party in the ship’s chapel down on “A” deck, rehearsing, or rather desecrating, Rivka Weiss’s scherzo. This was a dampish, seldom-used closet containing a laminated wood lectern for a pulpit, four heavy wooden pews that could have been repurposed from a defunct Southern Baptist church’s fire sale, and a sort of graceless modern stained-glass chandelier, ecumenically incorporating a Star of David, a cross, and a star-and-crescent, dangling from the ceiling on a heavy chain. The room’s low-pile mustard-yellow carpet dampened all sound and deadened the air. The walls and ceiling were paneled with dark wood, and the back wall was heavily curtained in gold brocade, further hindering the acoustics. Imprisoned and isolated with their own difficult dissonance, they found themselves looking forward, all four of them, to later, when they’d play the breezy, boringly pretty, decades-memorized Four Seasons in the restaurant upstairs amid the genteel scents and sounds of fine dining. Ah, the freedom, such luxury.

For one thing, Sasha couldn’t seem to nail his diabolically tricky entrance in the seventeenth measure; but even before that, Miriam’s staccato arpeggios, meant to sound like machine-gun fire, bore a closer aural resemblance to chattering teeth. And Jakov’s long cello notes, which were intended to be human moans, sounded like kvetching. Only Isaac was able to navigate his part with any conviction, but Rivka had gone comparatively easy on the viola, whose part in the scherzo consisted of a lot of low-pitched blatting interspersed with high glissando screeches. Isaac’s part wasn’t even that hard to count. Miriam suspected Rivka of favoritism: she had always batted her eyes at Isaac.

The Six-Day War had been written in honor of the Sabra; for one, because they were one of Israel’s finest string quartets, but also because they were all veterans of the war. Playing it not only caused Miriam to break out in a psychic rash, it reminded her of being an IDF soldier fifty years before, the sun baking her head through her helmet as she barreled along in a jeep through the sand. Isaac had fought alongside Miriam in the Sinai; that was where they’d met. Sasha had been an Air Force pilot and was responsible for some particularly effective air strikes against Syria. Jakov had worked in Intelligence and had been on the team who’d intercepted the cable from Nasser to the president of Syria, urging him to accept a cease-fire. Why Rivka had thought any of them would be pleased to relive this experience musically was anyone’s guess.

“Let’s try this again,” said Miriam, glancing at Isaac, who looked over his fingerboard at his colleagues, acknowledging their distress with his hoary eyebrows knitted. “Sasha, what if we count you in this time?”

“I’ll get it right,” said Sasha crossly. “I can count it.”

“Hey,” came a bright, female American voice in the doorway. “Sorry to interrupt, I had no idea anyone was in here.”

A small, dynamic woman burst into the chapel wearing yoga pants and a sports bra with high-heeled tango shoes. She waved at them all, amused by their puzzlement.

“Sorry, I’m Kimmi,” she said. “I’m the cruise director as well as the entertainment director, they doubled me up on duties for this cruise because it’s so small. You must be the string quartet from Israel. I came in to get a Bible. I’ll just grab one and get out of your hair.”

She strode to the lectern and looked behind it, into its shelf, talking steadily as she went, trying to minimize any awkwardness she’d caused.

“We’re planning a performance for the talent show later in the cruise, a few of us entertainment crewmembers. We wanted something ocean-related, and Park thought of the story of the parting of the Red Sea as maybe a jumping-off point, but none of us really remember the exact text and there’s no Internet so we can’t Google it.” She rummaged around. “Can there really be no Bible? What kind of a chapel is this?”

“We might be able to help you,” said Jakov. “We’re all familiar with the book of Exodus.”

“Moses held out his staff,” said Isaac, “and the Red Sea was parted by God.”

“The Israelites walked on dry land, pursued by the Egyptian army,” said Jakov. “Once the Israelites were safely through, the sea closed again, and the Egyptian army drowned.”

“That’s right,” said Isaac. “And there was a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.”

Miriam nodded. Here she’d just been playing staccato machine-gun fire that sonically re-created her own army’s successful war with the Egyptians, and now they were talking about the Egyptian army drowning while the Jews were saved in the Torah. There were similarities in the two scenarios, but no one had parted the Red Sea in 1967. The Jews had had to fight, with the element of surprise standing in for God’s miracle.

“Don’t forget the Song of the Sea,” she said.

“The Song of the Sea,” said Kimmi. “That’s what I came to look up! I need the words.”

“It’s long and I don’t know it all, but I can tell you Miriam’s Song, which she sings after the Israelites cross to safety,” said Miriam. “It’s much shorter, and it goes in English, ‘Sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea.’ Not really talent-show material, though.”

“Probably not,” said Kimmi doubtfully. “But let me write down the words anyway.”

Christine came downstairs after her epic nap on the deck chair to find Valerie still sitting at the little table, squinting at her laptop screen through her glasses, typing away. Christine stripped in the tiny bathroom and stood in the weak stream of water in the shower stall, which appeared to have been built for a medium-sized child.

“You have such a nice body,” Valerie said as Christine came out of the shower and started dressing. “I’d kill for your boobs.”

Valerie’s breasts were flat little bumps, but her body was lanky and narrow-hipped, the kind most women envied and yearned for. Anyway, she’d never had any difficulty finding boyfriends; she just had trouble staying interested in them for longer than two months.

“You’re sexy and glamorous,” she told Valerie. “And I’m ordinary and always have been.”

Valerie was still fixated, a frank and frankly sexless appraisal that made Christine feel like a cow at a state fair. “You have amazing arm muscles. Farming kicks the ass of going to the gym.”

“Thank you,” said Christine with effort.

A few minutes later, wearing her dusky rose shantung sheath, bare-legged and bare-armed, and a short string of seed pearls she’d found in a small Williamsburg thrift shop back in the 1990s, plus the strappy gold stilettos she’d worn at her own wedding, Christine climbed the grand staircase and wandered along the ship’s main promenade. Her hair was pinned up with another thrift-store find from her city days, a rhinestone comb sparkling on the back of her head. Her hands, which she’d had manicured in Portland the morning before her flight, looked totally unfamiliar with their well-shaped nails, pinkish gold. Her toenails were a darker shade of the same color, and her feet were weirdly free of calluses.

She checked out her own reflection in a long beveled mirror hanging in the stairwell. She felt confident, not awkward anymore, thanks in part to Valerie’s compliments, which felt much less intrusive in retrospect. She felt like a woman. Gone were the mud boots, the dog-hair-bedecked jeans, fleece jacket and knit cap, the drab wool scarf that she joked with Ed had molecularly fused with the skin on her neck. Gone were the sloppy, country-girlish ponytail, the ever-present farmer’s smell of sweat, fingernails full of dirt. She had no evening chores, no canvas totes full of wood to bring in from the woodpile, no chickens or ducks or dogs to feed, no dinner to cook, no checklists or orders to look over, no runs next door to Steve and Molly’s farm for a quart of sheep’s milk and a quick hello. Too bad Ed wasn’t here to appreciate this. He loved to tell her in his understated way that she “cleaned up good.”