JASMINE
Chapter Nineteen
The Escape and the New Beginning
By now, the water was rising up to the upper
hallway of the ballroom, which was where Rose and Jack were. Jack was
panicking, and Rose could see the panic reflecting in Jack's blue eyes. Rose
was at a loss. "What do we do now, Jack?" she asked, her voice
reflecting panic.
Jack looked up, and he eyed the crystal
chandelier which was right above him. He thought, I swear I can almost reach
that with my hand. He extended his hand upwards, and sure enough, it was
touching the tip of the chandelier. "Come on, Rose…" he called out.
He grabbed Rose's left hand with his right. Then he grabbed the pole of the
chandelier as he stretched his other hand. He felt quite nervous, because he
wasn't sure if he could pull himself and Rose up on the chandelier. But he
breathed hard, and suddenly he felt a rush of adrenaline pumping through him,
and suddenly he felt like Superman as he felt a surge of super strength and
super energy flow through his body, and he immediately pulled himself and Rose
up on the chandelier.
Rose gasped as she watched the water rushing
up to them. She had seen water before, but not like this! She closed her eyes
and shook her head in disbelief. She gasped in helplessness as she could feel
the coldness of the water waft up and chill her. The ocean she had seen had
been quite calm and placid. The water that was raging up below them was furious
and appeared to have strength and energy of its own. It appeared to have its
own soul and a mind of its own. It appeared to be reverting back to its innate
nature of wildness, and appeared to be angry that it had been subdued by the
Titanic and by modern science. The raging water below Rose appeared to be
vengeful at humans for controlling its nature, and appeared to be extracting
its revenge by showing itself in its true form to Rose. Rose thought to
herself, in a reaction to her observation, Please God, let me live, and I'll
respect nature for as long as I live!
Rose and Jack were quickly and silently
moving across the ceiling of the ballroom. They were grabbing extensions from
the ceiling while doing so. Rose was stunned by what was going on. Earlier, the
Titanic had appeared to be an unnatural and supernatural behemoth. It had
appeared to have a strength and ingenuity that was bequeathed to it by the
wonders of modern science and engineering. Earlier, it had sailed with pride
and arrogance across the Atlantic Ocean, as if to say, I am stronger and
more superior than you. I am able to conquer and tame you. The Titanic had,
after all, been dubbed the unsinkable ship. Rose, however, realized that this
was a farce, because she was seeing that the Titanic was indeed vulnerable,
because it was sinking under its own weight. Rose realized that the very
engineering feats that were designed to make it unsinkable were now sinking it.
Rose realized that the Titanic was falling victim to its own strength. This was
indeed defeating the claim that modern science and modern man could conquer
nature, which was a phrase that she had heard leaders and scientists claim
constantly. The Titanic would leave a permanent scar on the world, most notably
the West, and would seriously shake the West's confidence in conquering nature
through science.
Jack said, "Come on, Rose. Hurry
up." No sooner than Rose and Jack had escaped from the ballroom than they
opened the door, and they saw a huge column of ice cold water greet them. Jack
said, "Well, I guess we have to swim." Rose and Jack froze in the
water as they swam. Jack strained his eyes as he scanned the ceiling for a
place to rest on. They couldn't swim in freezing water while holding their
breaths forever. Jack and Rose eventually came to rest on a rail, and they
placed their hands on the railing while swimming out of the room.
"Jack…J-J-Jack…" Rose shivered, her
teeth chattering. "I'm so cold!"
Jack said, "Come on. Don't give up
now!" Jack and Rose finally made it to the door. They opened the door and
exited out through it.
They were up on the deck of the ship where
they were witnessing true mayhem. People were in a panic. Indeed, the
superficial order had given way. People were abandoning their practices of
self-restraint, and everyone was truly out for him or herself. This was
especially true of the upper classes. The engineers might have prided
themselves on their ingenious design of the ship, but apparently they hadn't
counted on it sinking, because they hadn't designed enough lifeboats for the
ship. The lower classes had realized that the ship was going down, and
everyone, lower, middle, and upper classes, was making a frantic scramble for
the boats, which they realized would be their only way of surviving. However,
the ship's crew was shouting out, "Women and children only…women and
children only!" The ship's crew was also making it clear that the upper
class people would get the first priority on the boats.
Rose noted that there weren't enough boats,
and she said, "Captain, there aren't enough boats. What are you going to
do?" The captain was too distraught to answer. He appeared to be entering
a state of delirium, and moments later, shot himself in the mouth with a
pistol, thus killing himself.
Jack said, "Come on, Rose…"
However, they were stopped by a crewmember.
The crewmember didn't see Jack and Rose as lovers and lady and gentleman. He
saw Jack as a grubby lower class man who was trying to escape with a high
society woman. He let Rose into the lifeboat, but he stopped Jack. He said,
"You can't come." The lifeboat that Rose was in was being extended
out to slightly beyond the deck of the ship. However, when Rose saw that Jack
wasn't coming with her, she immediately stepped out of the boat.
Jack looked at her in shock as he called,
"Rose!"
But Rose fiercely retorted, "Jack, if
you aren't coming with me, then I'll die with you and we can both go up to
heaven together!"
Jack was quite touched by her comment, and he
said, "Oh, Rose!" Then he pecked her on the lips, and smiled.
The other upper class people, including Cal,
however, were quite keen to escape. Cal by now had completely forgotten about
Rose and Jack. However, he found himself in quite a quandary, because he wanted
to escape, but couldn't because he wasn't a woman or a child. He immediately
spotted a crying young girl, and a look of feigned concern appeared over his
face. He picked up the child, and held her as though she was his daughter. He
then looked at the crewmember and said, "Can I take my child with
me?" He was smiling at the man as he said this, and the man smiled, and
nodded his head. Cal was quickly on the boat, and while there, he immediately
forgot about the child.
Ruth and the other upper class women were
also scrambling to get off of the ship. The crewmembers were frantically trying
to dictate their entry onto the lifeboats. Ruth was a little concerned about
Rose's welfare. After all, she hadn't seen her daughter for a day, but her
concern for her own life overshadowed her concern for the welfare of her
daughter. Ruth thought to herself, this thought relieving the guilt she was
feeling that she was neglecting her daughter's welfare, Oh, well. I'm sure
Rose is on one of the lifeboats. I'll probably meet her in New York! Ruth
was smiling as she thought this. However, it turned out that all of the ladies
would not fit on one lifeboat, so some of the ladies had to be accommodated on
other lifeboats. Then the lifeboats were lowered into the water. Once in the
water, the ladies on Ruth's lifeboat, including Ruth herself, were totally
lost. All of their lives, they had been acting as high society ladies, and had
not a clue as to how to survive. They curiously looked at the oars, and Ruth
said, "I guess we row with these." A feeling of disgust shot through
her body, because she realized that that was laborers' work, and she was above
that!
Mrs. Jones said, "I don't want to
row!"
It was at that point in time that an older
and hardened matron said, "Shut up and row, all of you!" The ladies
did as they were told.
Rose was looking at her mother in the
lifeboat, and she sighed in disillusionment. She thought, My mother doesn't
even care about me! Rose could feel her heart sinking with the ship as she
realized that her life and the order that her life had assumed was falling
apart with the ship. Rose could see the false order that had held her life
together and had surrounded her falling apart all around her. She could see
this in the way that people were being assigned to the lifeboats. There was
absolutely no rhyme or reason to the assignments. Instead, the assignments
reflected the harried and frantic nature of the crewmembers, who had no idea
how to handle a catastrophe. Some boats were lowered into the water empty. Rose
thought to herself sarcastically, Well, when there's a shortage of lifeboats
to begin with, that is an unwise move! Other boats either had one person on
them, or had a few, and some boats were stuffed to overcapacity, so that they
began to capsize in the water. The people on the overstuffed boats had a cruel
way of dealing with this overcapacity. They mercilessly shoved some of the
people out of the boats and into the water against their wills. The people who
were shoved into the water would die there, and they knew it, but the people in
the boats were too concerned with their own welfare to care. From their narrow
and selfish standpoints, they were thinking, Well, I'm glad I'm not the one
who's going to die. Let someone else die. I want to live! It didn't stop
there. In the boats where there were too few people, the members were bickering
amongst themselves as to who was going to row, and how. Not only that, but in
these lifeboats, none of the people appeared to be willing to do the teamwork
necessary to do the rowing to ensure that the people on the boats would row to
safety.
Sometimes, some of the people who had been
shoved off of the boats frantically clung to the side of these boats and were
yelling, "You have under capacity. Could you let me aboard?" The
people on the boats dealt with these people by using their oars to drown them,
literally. They saw these people as filthy boarders who were trying to do them
in. Rose could see that the ship had split into two, and that one part of the
ship was capsizing into the water. The upper class people on the part of the
ship that was capsizing did not want to fall to their deaths into the water,
but the force of gravity was forcing them towards the water. They held onto the
rail in an attempt to cling on to life. However, the rail was icy, and many
fell to their deaths into the water. Rose went over to look at them, and she
saw that for all of their money and status, their true and vulnerable nature
was reflecting on the panicked and scared looks on their faces. Rose could see
that the face is truly an expression of the soul, as their faces were
reflecting their nervous and scared selves. Somehow, Rose could see that these
people knew that they had led false and sinful lives which were full of greed,
and that they were going to meet their maker and would have to account for
their deeds and their nature to their maker. It would be at that point in time
that they would be naked in front of the supreme one, and that they would have
to account for their deeds with their souls. Rose smiled and thought to
herself, Justice is delivered!
The lower class people could see that the
ship was sinking, and they wanted off of the ship as well. However, the
crewmembers were stopping them. Rose's heart sank, because she knew that the
only thing that was keeping these people from surviving was their social
status, which Rose had come to realize was superficial to begin with. The lower
class people were saying, "Please, let me aboard the lifeboats!" The
crewmembers responded by firing bullets into the thickening ranks of the lower
classes, killing quite a few in the process. Some of the lower class people
were bold and muscled their way to the boats, and some of them were overpowering
the crewmembers by allowing their compadres to lower the boats into the water.
Rose sighed, because she knew that there were
more lower class people who were trying to escape, but couldn't. She was right
about this. She did not know it, but the doors to the third class deck were
locked, so that the lower class people were literally locked into their rooms
to die. Some of the lower class people were crowding around the doors,
frantically trying to open them, but to no avail! Others simply resigned, and
some mothers had left their fate, as well as the fates of their children, in
the hands of God, and were reading bedtime stories to their children, who were
in bed, pretending as though nothing had happened, and they would wake up the
next morning as usual. Well, they would wake up the next morning, but not as
humans!
Rose looked down into the water, and she saw
that her mother and the other ladies who were on the lifeboat were rowing like
frantic chickens--literally! Rose could see that these women hadn't the slightest
clue as to how to row to safety, and neither did anyone else who was in the
lifeboat. These women were simply frantically rowing, as were the other people.
Well…when they weren't bickering with each other, hoping that divine
intervention would happen and they would magically be rescued! It wouldn't
happen, thought Rose. These people would simply row and row, waiting to
be rescued, waiting for something, waiting for death! Rose looked down at
the people in the lifeboats, and she thought to herself, Boy, am I glad I
climbed off of the lifeboat. These people aren't human, they're demons. They
haven't the slightest bit of humanity or compassion for anyone else, and they
only think about themselves, even when their own survival might depend on
teamwork and caring about the welfare of others! Then it dawned on her. Boy,
I'm glad I met Jack! In our short time together, he and Jasmine have taught me
that compassion, caring, happiness, self-respect, respect for others, and other
humane things are the most important things in life! She breathed a sigh of
relief.
Rose looked around her, and she could see
that other upper class people were unsuccessfully clinging to the deck of the
ship for sheer life. However, the overwhelming force of gravity triumphed, and
the people were forcefully rendered to their watery graves. Rose could hear
them screaming, and she could see the look of fear on their faces as they
realized that their time had come. Rose could see, by the look of sheer fright
on their faces, that they knew that they had eventually reached the end, and
would soon pass to the other side, the spiritual realm, where they would meet
their creator, and would be stripped of all of their false high social status,
which included, rank, title, money, and created social recognition which they
had forced on the rest of an unwilling society. They had used America's
corrupt, unruly, and premature capitalist system to procure wealth through
illegal and unethical means. They were the robber barons and the captains of
industry in American society who profited off of the blood of others. They had
taken advantage of the system to procure their money. Then they had gotten
drunk off of the status and the advantages that wealth offered them, and they
had tweaked the system to ensure that they would stay on top. They had realized
that it was nice to live lives of leisure, even if that means breaking the
backs of those below you and ignoring them. However, the working classes had
been unwillingly supporting them, as the working classes felt this burden
literally forced on their backs. Rose smiled as she thought to herself,
Well…it's payback time! What goes around comes around!
Rose realized that she didn't belong in such
a fake society. She thought, Such a society is no society at all. I am
seeing, right now, that the order in this society is disintegrating into its
true form, which is chaos and mayhem. It was chaos and mayhem, all along.
However, it managed to be disguised as order so that it could function, however
incoherently and dysfunctionally! I don't belong in such a society, and I never
did. I want to escape!
She would get her chance. Jack grabbed her
hand and said, "There are no more lifeboats, and we can’t stay on this
ship forever. We have to jump now!"
Rose's eyes widened as she looked at the
water below, which reminded her of an unforgiving and watery chasm and grave,
she said, "Jump into that!" She didn't have time to say anything
else, because, at that moment, Jack grabbed her hand, and both of them sprang
off of the deck of the ship. Rose flashed back memories of her trying to commit
suicide by jumping off of the deck, and Jack saving her. That had been her
first spiritual experience. Then, Jack and Rose had had another spiritual
experience on the deck of the ship, when they had held each other by the bow!
Now, they were jumping to freedom off of the deck of the ship! Rose thought to
herself, the deck must be spiritual! Then, thud! Their bodies hit the water
with a powerful force. The force hurt Rose's body, and she immediately began to
shiver.
Jack found a piece of plank, and he moved it
under Rose's body. He said, "Here. Rest on this!"
Rose did as she was told. She said,
"Jack! Get on it!" But alas, the plank was only large enough to
support Rose, and there wasn't a lifeboat around.
Additionally, the last of the Titanic was
sinking into its watery grave, and Rose gulped as she saw the last of the
lights on the ship begin to go out. She strained her neck and her eyes for
sight of her room. Suddenly, she was accosted by a flashback of her lighted
room, and she shook her head in shock.
She was shivering, and she chattered her
teeth. She saw that Jack was shivering even more. She said, "Jack, please
don't go!"
It was too late. Jack's body was freezing and
beginning to go into shock, which is the first stage of the deadly hypothermia.
Something told Rose that Jack wouldn't live to see the next morning. Jack put
his hands on hers, and somehow, Rose could feel a warmth emanate from his hands
into hers, and the gaze from Jack's eyes pierced hers with an intensity. Jack
said, "Look, Rose, you're going to be free…free. You hear me? You'll die
in a nice bed. You'll never know poverty or despair. You're going to live a
happy life, and you'll do what you want. You'll live life on your own terms.
For me, it's been a great experience just to meet you. Jasmine was right. You
are a special lady! I mean…I mean, it's been a treat just to fall in love with
you…" Then he looked at Rose with a look of sincerity and true love in his
eyes.
Rose whispered, "Jack…I love you…"
Jack responded, "I love you, too,
Rose…" It was then that the cold was really getting to Jack, and Rose
could see that the life was being snuffed out of him. Somehow, the cold water
was crushing Jack's soul. Rose could see that Jack's soul wasn't strong enough
to brave the water. Rose could feel the water choking her soul, but somehow,
something in her was keeping the water from snuffing her life out.
It was late at night, and the water was full
of bodies, dead bodies, and lifeboats with lifeless people in them. Rose woke
up, and she touched Jack's cold and limp hand, which was lying on her plank. He's
dead! Rose could see the light from a ship, and she called out to it,
"I'm here! I'm here!" The light from the ship illuminated the water,
and the crew on the boat could see lifeboats and people in the water.
It was on the other ship that a crewmember
told the pilot, "Hey, wait a minute. I think that this is the course the
Titanic was traversing!"
The captain said, "But there's no ship here!"
Then a dumbfounded look came over the captain's face as he said, "Don't
tell me it sank!"
The crewmember said, "Well, there's only
one way to find out. Go look!" So the crew shone the light more intensely
over the surrounding water, and sure enough, they saw bodies, and in disbelief,
they surmised that the unsinkable ship had sunk!
Rose sighed relief when she saw the ship
coming her way. She screamed, "I'm here! I'm here!" The ship came
close to her, and the crewmembers got off and rescued her, as well as the other
surviving passengers. They sailed to New York.
In New York, Rose got off near the Statue of
Liberty. She sighed in relief. She was in America, the promised land. She
remembered the phrase, ‘Give me your tired, your hungry, and your restless…’
America was a place where people started all over again. They left their old
lives and their old nations behind, and became new people! Into the melting pot
goes a Prussian, a German, an Englishman, a Frenchman, and out comes an
American! She would go through the same process. She looked at the Lady holding
the torch of liberty, and all of a sudden, she felt free. She thought to
herself, I'm free at last! When she got off of the ship, she reached
into her coat pocket, and she pulled out the Hope necklace. She blanked out,
and she completely forgot about Cal. She thought, Why, this was the necklace
that Jack gave me!
One of the crewmembers asked, "Madame,
what is your name?"
Rose replied, "Rose Dawson!" Well,
she felt as though she had married Jack, somehow.
Rose was walking around, feeling quite
relieved that she could start over again. Meanwhile, Jasmine was watching her,
from her invisible place in the fabric of time. Jasmine was relieved that Rose
had finally found freedom. Jasmine thought to herself, Well, now Rose will
get to do what she wants! She's really come a long way from the day I initially
set eyes on her, and I think she's matured to the point where she will be able
to make the right decisions!
Many years later, Jasmine met Rose. The year
was 1996, and Rose was on a ship which was trying to find the remains of the
Titanic. Jasmine asked Rose, "So, how did your life turn out?"
Rose jumped up, and said, "Oh, thank you
so much. I mean, you don't understand. I remained single, and I loved it! I flew,
I rode horses, and I did what I wanted!"
Jasmine said, "Well, that's good!"
Later, Rose went to sleep, and she passed on
and went to heaven. Suddenly, she was walking up the stairway. When she got up
to the top of the stairway, she saw Jack there, and Jack was smiling. He said,
"Welcome to heaven, Rose!"
The End.