By the way, I have now empirically verified that I am the only ticketed adult here without some kind of camera equipment.
At some point, unnoticed, Holland’s Westerdam’s snout has withdrawn from the west window: the window is clear, and a brutal sun is shining through a patchy steam of evaporated rain. The blimp hangar’s emptier by half now, and quiet. BIG DADDY and spouse are long gone. They have called Lots 5 through 7 all in a sort of bunch, and I and pretty much the whole massed Engler Corporation contingent are now moving in a kind of columnar herd toward Passport Checks and the Deck 3 25 gangway beyond. And now we are getting greeted (each of us) by not one but two Aryan-looking hostesses from the Hospitality staff, and now moving over plush plum carpet to the interior of what one presumes is the actual Nadir, washed now in high-oxygen AC that seems subtly balsam-scented, pausing for a second, if we wish, to have our pre-Cruise photo taken by the ship’s photographer, 26 apparently for some kind of Before/After souvenir ensemble they’ll try to sell us at week’s end; and I start seeing the first of more WATCH YOUR STEP signs this coming week than anyone could count, because a Megaship’s architecture’s flooring is totally jerryrigged-looking and uneven and everywhere there are sudden little six-inch steplets up and down; and there’s the delicious feel of sweat drying and the first nip of AC chill, and I suddenly can’t even remember what the squall of a prickly-heated infant sounds like anymore, not in the plushly cushioned little corridors I’m walked through. One of the two Hospitality hostesses seems to have an orthopedic right shoe, and she walks with a very slight limp, and somehow this detail seems terribly moving.
And as Inga and Geli of Hospitality walk me on and in (and it’s an endless walk — up, fore, aft, serpentine through bulkheads and steel-railed corridors with mollified jazz out of little round speakers in a beige enamel ceiling I could reach an elbow up and touch), the whole three-hour pre-cruise gestalt of shame and explanation and Why Are You Here is transposed utterly, because at intervals on every wall are elaborate cross-sectioned maps and diagrams, each with a big and reassuringly jolly red dot with YOU ARE HERE, which assertion preempts all inquiry and signals that explanations and doubt and guilt are now left back there with all else we’re leaving behind, handing over to pros.
And the elevator’s made of glass and is noiseless, and the hostesses smile slightly and gaze at nothing as all together we ascend, and it’s a very close race which of these two hostesses smells better in the enclosed chill.
And now we’re passing little teak-lined shipboard shops with Gucci, Waterford and Wedgwood, Rolex and Raymond Weil, and there’s a crackle in the jazz and an announcement in three languages about Welcome and Willkommen and how there’ll be a Compulsory Lifeboat Drill an hour after sailing.
At 1515h. I am installed in Nadir Cabin 1009 and immediately eat almost a whole basket of free fruit and lie on a really nice bed and drum my fingers on my swollen tummy.
6
Departure at 1630h. turns out to be a not untasteful affair of crepe and horns. Each deck’s got walkways outside, with railings made of some kind of really good wood. It’s now overcast, and the ocean way below is dull-colored and frothy, etc. It smells less fishy or oceany than just salty. Our horn is even more planet-shattering than the Westerdam’s horn. Most of the people exchanging waves with us are cruisers along the rails of the decks of other 7NC Megaships, also just leaving, so it’s a surreal little scene — it’s hard not to imagine all of us cruising the whole Western Caribbean in a parallel pack, all waving at one another the entire time. Docking and leaving are the two times a Megacruiser’s Captain is actually steering the ship; and m.v. Nadir Captain G. Panagiotakis has wheeled us around and pointed our snout at the open sea, and we, large and white and clean, are under sail.
7
The whole first two days and nights are bad weather, with high-pitched winds and heaving seas, spume 27 lashing the porthole’s glass, etc. For 40+ hours it’s more like a Luxury North Sea Cruise, and the Celebrity staff goes around looking regretful but not apologetic, 28 and in all fairness it’s hard to find a way to blame Celebrity Cruises Inc. for the weather. 29
On gale-force days like the first two, passengers are advised to enjoy the view from the railings on the lee side of the Nadir. The one other guy who ever joins me in trying out the non-lee side has his glasses blown off by the wind, and he does not appreciate my remarking to him that round-the-ear cable arms are better for high-wind view-enjoying. I keep waiting to see somebody from the crew wearing the traditional yellow slicker, but no luck. The railing I do most of my contemplative gazing from is on Deck 10, so the sea is way below, and the sounds of it slopping and heaving around are far-away and surflike, and visually it’s a little like looking down into a flushing toilet. No fins in view.
In heavy seas, hypochondriacs are kept busy taking their gastric pulse every couple seconds and wondering whether what they’re feeling is maybe the onset of seasickness and/or gauging the exact level of seasickness they’re feeling. Seasickness-wise, though, it turns out that heavy seas are sort of like battle: there’s no way to know ahead of time how you’ll react. A test of the deep and involuntary stuff of a man. I myself turn out not to get seasick. An apparent immunity, deep and unchosen, and slightly miraculous, given that I have every other kind of motion sickness listed in the PDR and cannot take anything for it. 30 For the whole first rough-sea day I puzzle about the fact that every other passenger on the m.v. Nadir looks to have received identical little weird shaving cuts below their left ear — which in the case of female passengers seems especially strange — until I learn that the little round Band-Aidish things on everybody’s neck are these special new nuclear-powered transdermal motion sickness patches, which apparently now nobody with any kind of clue about 7NC Luxury Cruising leaves home without.
Patches notwithstanding, a lot of the passengers get seasick anyway, these first two howling days. It turns out that a seasick person really does look green, though it’s an odd, ghostly green, pasty and toadish, and more than a little corpselike when the seasick person is dressed in formal dinnerwear.
For the first two nights, who’s feeling seasick and who’s not and who’s not now but was a little while ago or isn’t feeling it yet but thinks it’s maybe coming on, etc., is a big topic of conversation at good old Table 64 in the Five-Star Caravelle Restaurant. 31 Common suffering and fear of suffering turn out to be a terrific icebreaker, and ice-breaking is important, because on a 7NC you eat at the same designated table with the same companions all seven nights. 32 Discussing nausea and vomiting while eating intricately prepared and heavy gourmet foods doesn’t seem to bother anybody.
Even in heavy seas, 7NC Megaships don’t yaw or throw you around or send bowls of soup sliding across tables. Only a certain subtle unreality to your footing lets you know you’re not on land. At sea, a room’s floor feels somehow 3-D, and your footing demands a slight attention good old planar static land never needs. You don’t ever quite hear the ship’s big engines, but when your feet are planted you can feel them, a kind of spinal throb — it’s oddly soothing.