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I, Titanic

When you live in the ocean, it's easy to drift apart.

By Eric DovigiPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 24 min read
2

Until the dolphin came, I was alone.

I. I Am Born

Twelve dogs, thirty-nine birds, an unknown number of rats and mice, and one cat. Her name is Jenny. Jenny bore kittens a few weeks ago but Jim the scullion sold them before we left Belfast.

Jenny’s been despondent since then. She slinks around the deck with her head down and her ears pulled back as if she’s aware that something’s missing but she just can’t put her finger on it. She’s starting to cheer up a bit, though. That’s the good thing about being a cat: you’re never in a funk for very long.

I wish the same could be said of ships.

-

“She is no mere Ark, and nothing upon her will come in pairs,” my humans seemed to say when they beheld me for the first time. Sloughing off the ladders and catwalks and rigging and glistening in the rare Irish sun, I seemed to mock Noah, to laugh at Jonah. I seemed to be more than an Ark. A God.

O, to depart then and there under the admiring gaze of my creators! To take to the open ocean! Light and unburdened, a wild mustang, I longed to dart back and forth, to show them what I could do.

Then they put a saddle on me.

The humans began to stuff me with all kinds of junk: furniture, tools and appliances, cargo, fuel. So much going up and down the gangway every day that I started to lose track of it all. I realized, finally, what I was: a beast of burden.

They wrote the cargo down on a document that they referred to as the “manifest.” Thanks to the manifest, I can confidently tell you that I have the honor to bear, among other treasures, five cases of pharmaceuticals, one case of toothpaste, eight cases of orchids, seven cases of pens, four cases of straw hats, five cases of books and one case of parchment, twenty-five cases of what American Express has deigned to label “merchandise,” forty-three cases of wine, twenty-five cases of cookies, one automobile, four printing presses, four bales of straw, 1,192 bags of potatoes, ten boxes of melons, fifteen cases of rabbit hair, and (my favorite) one case of speedometers.

On the Great Titanic, everything comes in multiplicities. Except, that is, for two things.

The Captain and the cat.

Edward and Jenny. The only creatures of which there is only one. The un-Arkables. This is what created the indelible bond between us: we were the only indispensable creatures present, which meant we were the only lonely creatures present.

At night, when everyone else falls into bed in pairs and trios and quartets, Edward and Jenny retire in solitude. Edward bids the navigator good night and shuts the door to his berth. He sits alone on the edge of his bed in the soft light of the oil lamp. He holds a book, keeping the place with his forefinger, and stares out of his window at the lights of the city of Belfast. Crew sleeps on land tonight, but not Captain.

On the other side of my vast body, hundreds of feet away, Jenny watches Jim the scullion finish sorting non-perishables in their proper places in the pantry. He gathers his things and tromps down the gangway; he will sleep at home. She watches Jim for a while and enjoys the soft salt breeze. Then she turns and slinks through a small crevice between the outer wall of the galley and a stack of crates, makes a few careful turns, and comes to a series of intricate footholds that take her up to the tallest smokestack. She curls up and falls asleep in the glow of the same city lights by which her captain reads his book.

And I, who do not sleep, wait.

II. I Gain A Friend

Until the dolphin came, I had no one to talk to.

I’d been getting a little impatient sitting in that cold Belfast water. Rising and falling with the tide every day. Thinking, thinking, thinking. It's not healthy to be alone for so long.

I was, in short, depressed. The unsettling truth of my vocation was sinking in. Yes, I was a beast of burden. I was to bear loads of goods and people from Europe to America and back again, forever and ever, until that distant day, with rivets rusted and my steel plates barnacled, I would be broken up for parts.

And then the dolphin came.

-

“Good morning!”

“Who said that?”

I could sense something small, something swift, darting around my belly, measuring my dimensions. A fish? A submersible? No, too intelligent, too agile.

“The name is Fungie,” said the voice. “At least, that’s what the humans call me. If I told you my true dolphin name, you wouldn’t understand it.” To prove its claim, the dolphin whistled and clicked and chattered. The noises reverberated unintelligibly off my hull.

“Well, I’ll call you Fungie then,” I said. Then I gathered myself, as it were, and proudly said my name.

The dolphin laughed. “That’s not the most modest name, is it?”

Disarmed by Fungie’s frankness, I relaxed a little and laughed too. “No, it isn’t,” I conceded. “But in my defense, I didn’t choose it.”

“I’ll give you a true dolphin name,” Fungie said. “iwojwer0w99)#($Jf.”

“It’s lovely,” I lied. “What does it mean?”

“Not easy to translate. Loosely, it might mean, ‘tiny.’ Or maybe, ‘cutie.’”

I blushed.

Fungie, who although charming was proving to be a bit of a showboat, suddenly shot up out of the water and did two backflips. Then he darted deep into the water, burning momentum in a few tight circles. Seeing that I was expected to praise the lithe creature, I did so. Fungie smiled proudly. “Thank you, iwojwer0w99)#($Jf.

There were some cheers from the deck; the crew had spotted Fungie. All humanity loves a dolphin.

It was the last day before we were to sail to Southampton to pick up our passengers. The chief steward had finished loading in all of the food stock and hardware and was convening with the cook; Jim was secreting away a dish of cream, to make amends with Jenny for the crime of selling her kittens. Captain and Navigator and the mates sipped whisky in the wheelhouse.

Now that the crew had a moment to breathe, they noticed the dolphin and took its playful antics as a good omen. They gave three cheers. One of the men rose a finger and said, “I know that dolphin! That’s Fungie!”

“You’re a bit of a showboat, aren’t you?” I asked Fungie. He laughed.

“I’m known for it. But so are you. Ha!”

He spun around a few more times and, lifting his blowhole above the surface of the water, shot a flute of spray high above the waves. More applause from the deck.

“They are charmed by me,” explained Fungie, “because there are few dolphins who come this way. So far as I know, I am the sole dolphin in history to have lived by these shores.”

The dolphin proceeded to tell me the story of his discovery of Ireland. One bitter winter he and his family found themselves caught in a terrible storm and were blown hundreds of miles off course into strange waters. They tried to stick together but by the time the storm was over and the sea was calm, Fungie and his oldest son were alone; his wife and two younger dolphins were nowhere to be found. Fungie and his son listened intently for any sign of a dolphin voice, but not so much as a whale song could be heard. They must indeed be far from any civilization.

They swam to the nearest land and found themselves in a craggy inlet. Around the inlet was a human village of a few hundred houses. They lingered here for a while, but one morning Fungie awoke to find that his son was gone. “When you live in the ocean, it's easy to drift apart,” Fungie told me without much emotion. “So I was alone. Big deal!”

The village, a tiny hamlet on the west coast of Ireland, was called Dingle. The Dinglers were delighted to see that a dolphin had condescended to live in their little lagoon.

Fungie had spent the past several years entertaining the villagers and exploring the Irish coast. He explained that he mostly avoided the bigger cities since the docks there were dangerous for dolphins, but after hearing rumors concerning my construction he had decided to investigate. He tried to talk to me while I was being built, but I must not yet have been fully awake. He’d almost given me up for good when he heard my fateful “Who said that?” These, I suppose, were my very first words.

So that’s how we met, my only friend and I.

III. I Gain A Sister

“I wish I had a family like yours,” I said one day to Fungie, with some melancholy.

“But you do!” Fungie protested. “You have a sister. Olympic, they call her. She’s already gone off to pick up her own humans.”

I was astonished.

“You mean,” laughed Fungie, “that you didn’t know? During your whole construction, you two were side by side! Identical twins, you and Olympic.”

“Where is she now?”

“No clue. I think she’s a little snobbish, actually. Never said as much as a word to me. Not like you. You’re friendly. Maybe a little naive, but friendly.”

A sister! An identical sister! So I wasn’t alone after all. Somewhere on this watery globe there was a ship just like me in every respect, born in the same dock. A little snobby, maybe, if Fungie was right, but I don't mind. No ship is perfect.

“If only I could find her,” I said.

“Well maybe one day you’ll hail each other.” Seeing my confusion, Fungie laughed. “Don’t you know anything at all? Hailing is when two ships pass in the night and their humans send signals to each other. It’s how you say hello.”

I felt defeated. So much seemed to stand in the way of my ever meeting my twin. The vicissitudes of the ocean, the whims of humanity. Still, I didn't give up hope. I pictured the Olympic out there beating a path through the waves for me to follow, sailing proudly into the wind, too impatient to linger. "Failing to fetch me at first," her dwindling smokestacks seemed to echo, "keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another."

IV. I Have My Proudest Moment

The morning of the journey from Belfast to Southampton was, in some essential ways, my proudest moment.

It was time for the humans to see what I could do. They would use the Irish Sea as their playground, take me into the choppy waves and run me as fast as I could go, then bring me to a dead stop, then spin me around in a tight circle, then a slow wide arc through the water. Captain Edward stood proudly in the wheelhouse, erect in his beautiful blue uniform, his beard as pure and white as his captain’s hat. He was proud of me; I was proud of him. And all throughout the day, Fungie followed us, watching from a safe distance. When I would pull off a tight maneuver, he would shoot up into the air and do a few flips.

Only one small event marred the beauty of the day. A simple thing that no one but I could have noticed.

Jim the scullion, browbeaten by the unending preparations for the on-boarding of the passengers and finding himself now under the draconian eye of the chief cook and his staff, was in a foul mood. Jenny the cat came up to him during the afternoon, showing visible signs of seasickness. Jim was sneaking a cigarette behind some crates outside the kitchens, and sat cross-legged on the deck, muttering invective against the cook. He felt a sudden soft warmth hop in between his legs and curl up into a ball. It was Jenny. Jim began to stroke her head, but in his frustration must have employed too much force; Jenny mewled accusatorily. “Quiet!” Jim hissed. But it was too late; one of the cooks shot his head out of the kitchen door and around the corner. “You, scullion! What do think you’re doing, petting the cat when there’s work to be done? That’s a demerit. Back inside!”

Jim cursed, stood up roughly and sent his boot flying at Jenny, who whined with fear and only just managed to dart out of the way.

I couldn't believe it. Jim and Jenny were friends. In fact, I had thought that they were more than friends. They seemed to love each other. Jim never failed to make sure Jenny was well-fed and Jenny, at the first sign of discomfort or boredom, had always gone straight for the company of her human. But after what to me seemed like a very minor provocation, the scullion had tried to hurt Jenny. If the kick had connected, it could have caused serious injury.

Why? Why had Jim done it? What could be gained from hurting the one you love? How could something so frivolous as a workplace demerit send your foot flying through the air? It made no sense.

I remembered Fungie’s words: a little naive maybe.

V. I Take to the Ocean

After I passed all my tests, we sailed on to Liverpool and from there down to Southampton. Although I still considered mere transportation beneath my dignity, I was anxious to meet my first passengers. And, to my delight, Fungie kept pace with us across the Irish Sea. “It’s your first voyage, after all!” he said, and promised to accompany me the entire way to New York City. I was overjoyed. “I may hang around there for a bit,” the dolphin said. “Never spent much time in the waters around New York. Who knows, maybe I’ll hear word of my old family.”

I could barely contain my excitement when the people came aboard. From the highest to the lowest, from the kindest to the rudest, from the most beautiful to the most ugly, the most important to the least significant, tall people, short people, centenarians, infants—I greeted everyone. With every pair of feet leaving the gangway and stepping onto my deck, I said “Welcome aboard!”

Not a single person said thank you. We, it seemed, did not speak the same language. But the animals! Maybe they would talk to me.

I had thought there would be more of them, but I tried not to be disappointed. They were all so lovely. Lovely, but silent.

The other ships in the busy harbor, on the other hand, never stopped talking. They were rude, to be frank. A lot of: “Whoa, look at you!” “You’re huge!” “Grotesque!” “Can’t wait 'til she’s out of here.” Someone even tried to bump into me on my way out.

We left Southampton for Cherbourg, then Cherbourg for Queenstown. I was pleased that Fungie and I got to say goodbye to Ireland one last time.

The craggy Irish coast dissolved behind a gauze of mist. The Captain watched it recede from the rear windows of the wheelhouse. He and the mates were silent. I shared their reverence. The Captain remained quiet for just a little longer than seemed appropriate to the mates. Was he alive to some portentous omen that they could not see? That I could not see?

VI. The Ball

That night, the humans gave a wonderful gala in the ballroom. All of the first-class passengers were invited.

In pairs and trios and quartets they left their cabins and strode down the scarlet carpets, through the great oak doors into the ballroom. It tickled. It feels crude to admit it but I have always thought of the ballroom as my womb.

Trusting the skill of the navigator and the officers, I turned my gaze inward for a while, anxious to be part of the celebrations.

My ballroom is huge. The ceilings are high and gorgeously paneled. Two galleries run along the second floor on either side and curl around into the grand staircase, down which guests may regally and slowly step, making their entrances. Above the staircase is a colossal skylight of rose-patterned wrought iron. It is as if God himself wrenched it from a cathedral of paradise to give to us as a birthday gift.

The gala was overwhelming. I didn’t know where to look, what to pay attention to. I was everywhere at once: locked in a heated philosophical debate with the two theology students by the bathrooms; playing whist with Mrs and Miss Kensington and their new friends the Smiths; watching the Captain hobnob with John Jacob Astor, a man, I understood, of great importance.

I left the Captain’s side to follow a young man and woman up a narrow side staircase to the west gallery. They spoke in passionate, hushed tones.

“Do you love me?”

“How can you ask that? It should go without saying.”

“Love never goes without saying. You have to say it.”

Embarrassed, I should have given them their privacy. But I was transfixed. The ingenuousness of the argument fascinated me.

“Very well,” the gentleman said, pausing a few steps short of the top landing. “I love you.”

“Then why…” the lady began. She looked up and down the staircase as if for eavesdroppers (I blushed), then leaned in closer to the gentleman and spoke in a hushed tone. “I’m sorry. This is not really about you, what you did or what you did not do.” She sighed. “It’s about me,” she continued. “That’s the thing about love. It’s always only about oneself. Love happens when two people find each other, who are adept at enabling each other’s selfishness.”

“That’s a bit cynical.”

“Cynical? I don’t mean it is a cynical remark. Why do you choose not to understand me?”

The lady leaned back to allow the passage down the steps of a waiter bearing a tray of champagne. She removed a glass so deftly that the waiter did not seem to notice, shot it like whisky, and put the empty glass in the gentleman’s hands. Then, still pressed against the wall, the young woman gently turned her head and put her cheek on the oak panel.

Her cheek felt warm. I closed my eyes.

“When you left me there, I thought you were not coming back. And there was one thing, and one thing only, that went through my mind: dread. Dread that I would have to do the work all over again of creating myself from scratch.”

The gentleman was quiet. It had not occurred to him, it seemed, that he could have this much power over someone. He dipped a finger in the dregs of champagne and touched his tongue.

“I realized that this was a lover: someone on whom to build myself. If I was in love, I was a coat and my lover was a coat rack. I am capable of no deeper love than that. This is why it hurt me so much. I realized that I am and will always be shallow. Extremely shallow. I'm far shallower than you. You, at least, are capable of dissatisfaction.”

The gentleman thought for a moment, then said, “I’m going to go give this to a waiter,” gesturing with the empty champagne glass. He trotted down a few steps, hesitated, then looked back at the young woman. “It’s really impossible to talk to you, you know.”

In a breath, he was gone.

The lady rose a hand to her forehead. I could tell by her expression that she was experiencing the intense suffering of someone who has been practicing intently for some important event, and when the moment finally comes, gets it wrong.

I longed to jump out of the oak panels, to rise up from the carpeted steps and take the young woman in my arms. I longed to whisper to her as gently as she had to her lover, “Everything will be okay. I am holding you, and you don’t even know it.”

Suddenly all of the gaiety and mirth and joy in the ballroom seemed false, like the jingling bells on the cap of a weeping jester. Every laugh was a dare, every smile concealed desperation.

A waiter paused at the top landing with a tray of shrimp. Seeing the lady, he turned away to find a different staircase.

VII. I Learn to Speak

“I can teach you to speak if you want,” Fungie said.

“How? I have no voice.”

“Everything has a voice. It’s easy. You just take stock of the noises you are able to make, and then organize them. Actually, your voice is pretty close to mine when you think about it. Echoes, whistles, chirps. I see great potential in you.”

My lessons began.

-

Fungie teased me about my accent, but I could tell he was proud. I had proven a quick learner.

It’s hard to explain, but basically, all I have to do is manipulate the steels plates on the inside of my hull, and ping jets of air off some of the hollow metal tubes that run through my walls. I can do nearly all the same whistles and clicks as Fungie.

The only dolphin noise of which I am incapable is that long, plaintive tone that they sometimes howl at night.

“That is the long-distance call,” Fungie explained. “99% of the time we don’t use it. It is reserved for when you need to see what’s out there at the very edge. You have telegrams, wireless, foghorns, morse-lamps. You don't need it.”

I may not have needed the sound, but I wanted it. I practiced and practiced, but I couldn’t do it. Whenever I would try, I would get only a sad little metallic echo.

But, at close and moderate distances, I was loquacious. I could speak. I could finally speak. One time, a bottlenose dolphin was passing through. “Hello,” I said. “Hello,” it returned. A modest victory, but I was overjoyed.

A question suddenly occurred to me. “Fungie,” I asked. “If I’ve only just learned dolphin, then what have you and I been speaking this whole time?”

“Ship.”

“You speak ship?”

“Every dolphin speaks ship,” he stated.

VIII. The Tempest

We had our first storm.

A mere few hundred miles of ocean separated us from New York City. We were somewhere in the west Atlantic. The water was freezing. Still enamored by my new language, I would “listen” to the sea around me by issuing various clicks and whistles and hearing the echoes. There was quite a bit of flotsam. Some large, mysterious object was drifting south from the Arctic.

I sensed a growing trepidation from the officers and the navigator. They convened one night, discussing a certain unnamed danger: the object from the north, which they spoke of in hushed tones. Strangely, they had not invited the Captain. Soon their conversation turned to him.

“He doesn’t listen,” complained the navigator. The rest of the officers agreed. “Something’s up with him. It’s as if he’s retreated so deep into himself he can’t hear anything on the outside.” “It’s like he’s turning to stone.”

Where was the Captain now? In his cabin. Fingering his book, gazing at the black window. Thinking. I asked him what he was thinking about. The Captain does not speak dolphin. He doesn’t even speak ship.

When the storm hit, he transformed. They met in the wheelhouse and the Captain expertly led us through the tempest. It was a pleasure to yield myself completely to his leadership and I confidently maneuvered the peaks and troughs of the waves according to his direction.

When the waters finally calmed sometime after midnight, I sighed with relief. “What a gale!” I exclaimed. “Are you alright, Fungie?”

Silence.

“Fungie?”

I called for him again in his own language.

Nothing.

When you live in the sea, it’s easy to drift apart.

I “listened” to the water, but all I could hear was the great, shadowy object, closer now, lurking over the northern horizon.

“Fungie!”

IX. My Sister

Is it her? Is it my sister? Watching from the north, observing my progress?

These are perilous waters. We ought to turn back, or at least turn out of the way and make for the southern part of the coast. That's what the officers are all saying. They use their machines to look at the shadow in the north and they're afraid of it.

But I think it's you. My sister. The Olympic.

"Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged."

The shadow is so colossal, how could it be anything other than you?

The helmsman cries out in sudden fear. He pulls at the wheel madly, tries to turn me out of the way. I wrench myself back on the forward path.

Nothing will keep me from you. No more drifting, no more separation. I will not allow them to keep us apart. You and I will break free of our saddles, turn and venture into the blue wild, carve out a corner of the sea for ourselves, and stay there, bearing no burden but seaweed and barnacles, and these with joy. Fungie will find us again and we will be a trio. I'll keep the Captain and Jenny. None of us will be alone again.

It has to be you.

X. Disaster

-

Everything is in uproar.

I catch sight of the young woman from the staircase: she clutches a velvet satchel and climbs barefoot into a lifeboat.

On my other side, a full boat is ready to descend into the water. It has one free space. An elderly gentleman stands in the boat and screams at an old woman who refuses to get in unless she be allowed to bring her French bulldog.

The hens and roosters and other birds are already drowned in their cages, down deep in my hold.

Below deck, a woman and a man hastily gather their valuables from their luggage. Their poodle barks furiously. The man ties its leash to the bedstead. Realizing that it is to be left behind, the dog is frantic; it lunges forward and grabs a fold of the woman’s coat with its teeth, digs its feet into the carpet, and attempts to pull her backward. The man is already running down the hallway. The woman, tears on her cheeks, tears free of the poodle and shuts the door. The poodle is alone. It gnaws at the leash as water begins to flood in the cabin.

I feel a searing pain. It is as if Neptune himself has grabbed me by the head and the feet and is ripping me apart. Worse than the pain is the terrible sense of fullness. Water floods my lower abdomen with impossible speed. I tip up at a steep angle, rising high above the surface. Boxes and rope and furniture and people slide down my deck. The crate filled with speedometers gains speed, and crushes a young boy against the wall of a utility cabin.

Jenny is in the kitchens. She is afraid. She searches for Jim, but he's on my other end, all the way up toward my nose, which is now almost vertical. He clutches madly at a rail, but his hands are wet; he loses his grip.

The cupboard doors in the kitchen fall open. Jenny crawls in, finds a hole in the wall, clambers through it. She purrs, and curls up tight. As I continue to arc upward, Jenny falls deeper into the wall and lodges in a tight crevice.

The Captain, as ever, is alone. He has remained in the wheelhouse after exhorting the officers to help the passengers into lifeboats. With one white hand, he grips the wheel tightly; with the other, he holds open his book.

There is final tearing pain in my belly and I am back on the waves again.

By now, many of the humans are in lifeboats, watching me from a distance. But the greater part of them remains on board or floating alone in the water. I fight to stay afloat, but it is useless. Within a few minutes, I am entirely submerged.

-

Jenny is coral. She is there still, in the kitchen wall, curled up tight.

The Captain and his book float in the wheelhouse. Every once in a very long while, the book will nudge against his hand and his finger will mark a page.

It is perfectly dark, the water perfectly still. My voice travels far, but not that far. I hear not so much as a whale-song; I must be far from any civilization.

I have new passengers now. Creatures I could never have dreamed of, strangely shaped, muttering lowly to each other. But they don’t talk to me.

I listen and listen for you, Olympic. You'll find me. Someday, you will come. Until then, we must be patient. The Captain and Jenny sleep.

I, who do not sleep, wait.

Classical
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About the Creator

Eric Dovigi

I am a writer and musician living in Arizona. I write about weird specific emotions I feel. I didn't like high school. I eat out too much. I stand 5'11" in basketball shoes.

Twitter: @DovigiEric

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