Free The Black Isle by Sandi Tan Page A

shopkeepers among us, yet they were all behaving so disgracefully, as if third class was a state of mind and not simply a ticket price.
    Li nibbled at his undercooked yam, prodded the congealed fat around the overboiled pork, and told Father he felt sick. His complexion was green, as if his blood vessels had been eclipsed by those foul wallpaper vines.
    The following morning, I skipped lunch and smuggled my unsupervised self back to the swimming pool. The girl, Rachel, was already doing her laps. Odell sat in a lounge chair, as if he’d been expecting me for some time. As promised, he walked me through the ship—the ballroom, the hairdressing studio, the squash court and gymnasium, and the wood-paneled galley where first-class dinners were prepared, with its army of gas rings and railcars of humming iceboxes. He told me the names of everything in English. Parquet, pommel horse, aperitif—how grand those words felt on my tongue!
    In the depopulated shopping arcade, elaborate cut glass panels unfolded across two facing walls like parallel comic strips. The tableaux were vivid with monsters and men whose near nakedness made me blush.
    “They’re Greek,” explained my guide. “The weather’s very warm there.”
    He went on to narrate the two tales inscribed in those panels. In one, a young hero named Perseus went on a quest to slay Medusa, a deadly Gorgon with snakes for hair who turned men to stone at a glance. Aided by special gifts—sword, shield, and flying sandals—Perseus emerged triumphant, Medusa’s head wriggling in his hand. In the other panel, another hero, Theseus, faced off against the Minotaur in its labyrinth. Also aided by a gift—a ball of string—Theseus survived and laid rest his beast.
    The pictures were luridly exotic—Medusa’s head dripped blood—but I was struck by a glaring imperfection. “Isn’t it cheating,” I asked, “if the heroes had outside help?”
    Odell laughed. “Have you tried slaying a Gorgon? You need all the assistance you can get.” He pursed his lips. “Actually, you remind me of another Greek character, a stubborn young girl who never wanted any help. Pandora.”
    “Was she a hero, too?”
    “To some.” Odell twitched his brows dramatically. “To others she’s a villain .”
    He followed this with the story of Pandora and the infernal box she opened, a parable whose old-fashioned moralizing provoked my deepest yawns.
    “Tired, are you, Pandora?”
    He flicked a switch and a series of sconces fired up along the walls, hissing and flickering uncertainly. I realized that until then, we’d been standing in near darkness. We were in the first-class lobby, surrounded by clusters of empty settees and ashtrays set on kingly pedestals. Nobody was manning the welcome desk and we passed right through. At the mouth of a corridor lined with numbered rooms, Odell paused.
    “Feel free to use any room here you like. You’ll find they’re much more comfortable than the ones in steerage.”
    I ambled down the hallway and chose a room at random. Room 88. It felt like a lucky number. As Odell promised, it was unlocked. The room was easily four times the size of our pathetic cabin. A double bed, big windows, frilly drapes—everything done in genteel pink and cream. I looked back to thank Odell but he was gone.
    I hadn’t thought I was tired but no sooner had I collapsed into bed than I submitted to slumber. When I woke, the sky was dark. My stomach rumbled. Dinnertime.
     
    The peacock salon was not empty. I stopped at the doorway, wondering if I’d be caught in this forbidden zone. A long-legged blonde in a shimmering gown danced a somber tango by herself in the silence, by the stage where no musician had yet been installed. But she was fully absorbed and seemed not to mind my presence.
    I sauntered in, trying to decide which of the hundred tables I should sit at.
    “Pandora.” Odell was sitting by a trompe l’oeil window at a table for two. The Mediterranean