Christine laughed aloud: it was all so improbable. And here she was, Christine Thorne from western Maine, spending two weeks on a ship whereon presidents, movie stars, and astronauts had vacationed.
“Just like all great beauties, the Isabella grew older and frailer. After her sisters died natural deaths, she was getting ready for her own retirement when Cabaret Cruises swooped in, adding this sentimental favorite to its fleet in 2002 and restoring her, almost completely, to her former glory. For fifteen years, refreshed and fully renovated, she sailed the Pacific Ocean from Long Beach, her adopted home, up to Alaska and down to Mexico and out to the Hawaiian Islands. And now, at last, after a long and fruitful life of dignity, health, and success, the Queen Isabella is making her final voyage. Her last cruise will be a celebration of the glorious era of glamour and elegance, a theater of nostalgia.”
Christine closed the brochure and leaned back in her chair. She had been aware for a while of a thrumming deep in the bowels of the ship, like a constant presence, a noise she could feel in her bones, the sub-aural hum of the engines. Simultaneously, she noticed the gentle fore-and-aft rocking of the ship as the bow plowed steadily through each rolling impulse of water, muscling through one broad swell after another. She felt safe, unaffected by the scale of the effort, like a flea perched on the back of a smoothly cantering horse. The relationship between ship and water didn’t affect her. She was too small, of a whole other scale. Her body reacted only to sun and air while the ship did all the work of moving. It was so relaxing, she found her eyes closing slightly, her muscles giving up their terrestrial battle against gravity. Her mouth went slack, and she felt herself beginning to drool and closed it. No wonder people went on cruises.
“Shut up,” someone shrieked nearby, a throaty male voice. “No way.”
“The pool is tiny,” came a snotty female voice from the other direction. “I can’t believe how small. It smells musty in our room, too.”
“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.