THE NAVIGATOR

Stiff. Cold. Devoid of all emotion and thought and logic. This is Max as he sits beside Emilie’s still form. She has been laid straight on the cot, arms at her side, her head turned slightly to the left. Covered with a thick wool blanket. He has not seen what lies beneath. He has been told he does not want to. And yet he sits here, as he has the entire night, his eyes fixed upon her chest, willing it to rise and fall beneath her shroud.

It has not.

It will not.

He knows this somewhere, in the deeper parts of his mind, but he won’t admit it to himself yet.

Because he can hardly breathe himself.

Max Zabel does not move from her side. He cannot move at all.

He marks the passage of time by the sun at his feet. The rectangular patch from the window far above his head has moved three feet when someone drops the lockbox beside the cot. Later he will remember that it must have been last year’s postmaster, Kurt Schönherr, because a key is pressed into his hand as well. He squeezes Max’s shoulder and then leaves. There are no words to fix this, and the helmsman is smart enough not to try.

Max looks at the lockbox, charred but perfectly intact, and then at the key in his palm. The part of his mind that controls thought and reason and choice wakes up and pushes aside the instinct he has been surviving on for the last nine hours. He looks up. He sees people going about their work. The smell of smoke and disaster still hangs heavy in the air, but something else is present as well: spring. The hangar doors are open and a southerly breeze brings an occasional breath of fresh-cut grass and warm pine. Max turns his face to the light and breathes deeply and long through his nose.

Emilie was pronounced dead last night, but she was only positively identified an hour ago. He had held out hope, of course, that he had been keeping vigil over the wrong woman. That there was some mistake. That Emilie was simply on another part of the airfield, asleep or unconscious. But in the end it was Xaver Maier who took his last shred of hope and ground it to dust. Max had not even known that Emilie had fillings in her teeth. But the chef did, and the medical examiner confirmed the size and location that Maier described to him. And all the while Max sat beside her, his gaze on her still form, and prayed for a miracle that would never come.

So far Maier is the only one who has been brave enough to acknowledge his grief, and this one small gesture enables Max to forgive the chef.

“I am so sorry,” Maier said when the medical examiner pulled the blanket back over Emilie’s body.

That’s all he said. And yet it was enough. Max nodded at him, and then the chef was gone, puffing away at his damned cigarette, leaving Max alone to say his final good-byes.

It is the lockbox that finally draws his attention away from Emilie. The burned chunk of metal and its contents give him something to do, something to focus on besides the black hole of his grief.

Max reaches out one trembling hand and lays it on top of the blanket, cupping the side of Emilie’s face. She is still beneath his touch. She is gone. Max rises slowly from the chair beside her, his body groaning in protest as joints and muscles stretch beyond the point of comfort.

“I love you,” he says, then chokes back a sob when she does not answer.

Max stoops to lift the lockbox from the floor, wincing at the twinge in his back, then tucks it under one arm. A pause, short and filled with yearning beside the cot where Emilie lies, and then he turns toward the hangar door and limps out into the sunlight.

The sight that greets him on the field is surprising. It is orderly. It is controlled. The images of death and carnage from the night before have been replaced by order and discipline. The airship is there, of course, but the smoke and fire and screams are gone. As are the spectators—they have been cordoned off, a mile away at the outer edge of the base. Crewmen and soldiers pick through the wreckage, like scavengers, looking for clues, for souvenirs. But not survivors. That hope is long past.

Max grabs a passing naval officer by the sleeve. He has to order his rusted mind to search for the words in English. Finally they come. “A quiet room.”

The young man is busy and impatient. “Why?”

He lifts the lockbox. “The mail. I have a job to do.”

“Right. Okay. This way.” He leads Max toward one of the smaller hangars where survivors gathered the night before. It’s mostly empty now. The healthy passengers have fled and only a handful of the Hindenburg’s crew loiter about.

“Max!” As always Werner’s voice is bright, his expression wide open.

“I need a room. To sort the mail.” He clears his throat. “And something to drink.”

“Have you eaten yet?”

Max has no idea what he looks like, but it must be alarming. Werner’s eyes rove over his uniform in amazement. The boy is too polite to comment.

“This way. There’s an office at the back where they keep the telegraph machine.”

Werner leads him to the small windowless room and helps him lift the lockbox onto the table. “Do you want a shower first? A change of clothes?”

“No. That can wait. I need to do this now.”

He has to do it now. This is his anchor.

The door closes with a soft click, and Max sits at the table beneath the single hanging lightbulb. He opens his palm and studies the key.

The lockbox opens easily and Max pulls out the package that Colonel Erdmann paid him to keep. It is addressed to his wife, Dorothea, and the very way he has written her name—the gentle, sloping letters—suggests an adoration that makes Max wince.

He will not open the package, but his curiosity is aroused. He gives it a gentle shake, then presses his ear against the brown paper wrapping. Within he can hear the faint chimes of a music box, a few random notes let loose by the movement. Erdmann could have given his wife this gift in Frankfurt when he’d had her paged. But no, he had waited. And Max believes he had done so purposefully. This was to be a gift she would receive in the event of his death. A farewell. He slides the package carefully to the side, incapable of sorting through his emotions.

Erdmann’s is the only package in the box. The rest are letters and postcards. He pulls them out and places them in two large stacks to be counted. There are 358, but this is not something he will be able to say with any degree of certainty for at least an hour. Because he has counted half of the first stack when he finds the letter.

There is no stamp. No address—return or otherwise. Just one name written hastily in black ink.

Max.

His own name. And he recognizes Emilie’s direct handwriting.

The letters blur before his eyes, and frantic blinking does nothing to clear his vision. He lays the envelope on the table and presses it down with a trembling hand.

Max Zabel drops his head to the table and weeps.