Blue Voyage: A Novel (10 page)

“Absolutely nothing I can do—I surrender.”

“I’m afraid you’ve lost a piece—whatever you do …”

“Yes. Thanks very much. We’ll have another some time … Has the bugle blown?”

“I think so.”

Why “think so”? He knew it had. They descended the red stairs to the dining saloon. The orchestra was beginning the
Blue Danube:
and the music rose to meet them, mixed with a confused sound of voices and dishes. The palm trees trembled, swayed slowly trembling, in the bright light from pearly ceiling lights. Pink curtains were drawn over all the portholes save one, which yawned black, night-engulfing. A hundred faces feeding as one. Stewards running soft-footed on the stinking carpets, dishes clattering, dishes chirruping, trays clanging—all interwoven, pouring, with the
Blue Danube
. The pale pianist, with frayed and spotted sleeves, smiled wearily at the score,
tum-tum:
the girl-faced flute player hooked his lip, uncous lip, over the flute, and eyed Demarest mournfully,
tootle-too. Blaue Donau
. Should he tell Hay-Lawrence Wagner’s remark?… “My God, what a melody!… But—
Jesus Christ
! what orchestration …” No, too noisy, not the right moment for it. Save it up.
Da,
die, dee,
dum:
—die—
dum:
die
dee …
Anita. He always, when a kid, at dances, danced the
Blue Danube
with Anita. Her odd, delicious laugh, which ended in an inbreathing bubble, like the bubbling of a starling! Darling starling. Darling, hoydenish, long-legged Anita.
Down from a star by a stairway of vines
. That Sunday in the rain by the pond. “But
William,
you don’t seem to
think
anything about
marriage
! Do you?” Then the streetcar in the rain, the rain-soaked curtain blowing against their backs; flap, flap. Rejected. Was he heartbroken? Surprised at being able to eat a good dinner at Memorial Hall. “Where are my waffles, Sam Childers?” “On de fire, suh—waffles on de fire.”

“Good evening, Mr. Barnes—Good evening, Miss Dacey—Good evening, Mrs. Faubion—Good evening, father.”

“All right for
you,
Mr. Demarest!” Mrs. Faubion, mournful and reproachful, mock angry.

“For me? What have
I
done?”

He dived, laughing into the somber eyes, which darkened maliciously to receive him … Swimming. I swim, you swim, he or she swims. We swim, you swim—the rich sardonic mouth tearing bread.

“Oh, I know what you’ve done. And
you
know
too
.”

“Cross my heart and hope I die … Not guilty. I appeal.”

She cut her meat savagely. Roast beef
au jus,
underdone, in watery gules. Green and celluloid cabbage. Barnes was drinking black stout. Jingle, went Daisy’s bangle.

“The little girl’s in a bad temper, tonight,” said Smith, lowering his voice. “I wouldn’t let her have the dress she wanted …” Then louder—“Who’s your dressmaker, Madam?”

“
You
be
careful
!”

“Careful! Reckless is my middle name.”

“Water, Miss Dacey?”

“Oo thank you, Mr. Barnes.” Titter, titter.

“Walking right by me like that!”

“Never!”

“You did! On the deck this afternoon. And I was alone.”

“You don’t ask me to believe
that,
do you? Alone!”

“Where was Australia?” said Smith. “How come?”

“I’m not talking to
you,
Mr. Smith. I’m talking to your
son
.”

“Oh!… God.”

“Sixpenny fine, Mr. Smith. Swearing at meals.” Mr. Barnes serenely peeped over the tilted stout.

Da
dee die
dum
—die
dum:
die
dee
.—Anita looked over the silver-spangled white fan, long-leggedly, gracefully gliding, the green irises of her eyes irregularly flecked, gold-flecked, the pupils dark and—witty. “I thought you were
afraid
of dances!… I believe it’s all a pretense!” … That lesson in the dining room. “You don’t hold me
tightly
enough—that’s the trouble!” And the peal of laughter, bubbling, inbreathing. Her
Empire
gown—high-waisted, white, like the Empress what’s-her-name, standing at the top of the stairs—stairs of alabaster. Sorosis; Sesostris. “But she’s
nervous
—very highly strung,” Anita’s mother had said. “Ever since her operation” … Well, what of it? Why did she eye him (knitting) so meaningfully? Ah—! she had meant to warn him off. Die
dum
—die
dee … Da
dee die
dum
—Faubion was looking at him rather hard—but as if she were not quite focusing her attention—no, she was beginning to smile, but obviously the sort of smile which is an answer to a smile—it must be for someone behind him. He turned his head—it was Australia, the Romantic Young Man, who was now in the act of passing the water bottle. A well-dressed, vapid young man with a high collar and a high color; he was a little too self-conscious, elaborately polite, a shade too much of the traveling salesman’s genuflectory manner. “Swipey—I don’t like this cat—he’s too swipey.” O God that word—how fond of it Aunt Maud had been, and how terribly her choice of it lighted that part of her vulgarity which he had always hated. There must be the same stratum buried somewhere in himself, of course—or his disgust would not have been so intemperate. Where had he got it? No—he was damned if he had it! It must have been a natural dislike—that element in Aunt Maud’s sensibility (or lack of it) had done him a violence from the beginning. What could so have poisoned her? Her mind, her character, her outlook blackly poisoned:—a savage coprophily, a necessity for dwelling on the foulness of things. Well—he did this himself! but not surely in the same unclean way. Aunt Maud’s perceptions were somehow septic. A septic sceptic. Himself, an aseptic sceptic. Tut tut … This was probably completely wrong. More likely it was simply Aunt Maud’s lack of sensibility—a failure to perceive things clearly, to make fine distinctions? A bitter and unbridled woman.

“Penny for your thoughts,” said Faubion.

“The fleshpots of Egypt,” said Demarest swiftly. Why? Faubion = fleshpot.

“What!…”

Smith shook sadly his close-cropped gray head.

“Eating
this
dinner, he thinks of fleshpots!… No. Give me a Creole chicken dinner. Okra soup.”

“Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, where we sat by the fleshpots … For we, alas, the Fleshpots love … Man cannot live by bread alone.”

“Shame!” cried Fleshpot. A flaming shame.

“It’s all the Bible I know.”

“Did you go to church this morning?” A finger uplifted, schoolteacherly.

“Certainly not. I played bridge.”

“Bridge! Oo aren’t we swell,” Daisy derisively caroled.

“He’s got too much brains,” said Smith. “He plays chess, too … But I beat him at drafts just the same, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

“Got to hand it to the old man!… Chess is an old lady’s game. I don’t like chess. Let the old ladies play it. But I’ll beat you at checkers any time. Yes, sir, I’m all right at checkers.”

“And what do
you
play, Mr. Barnes?” Daisy Dacey wriggled, jingled, slanted her long white face, and wide blue eyes, leaning against the tablecloth with phthisic breast. Mr. Barnes, tolerant, slow-smiling, with slow-burning eyes of amusement, looked down at the proffered head. Herod and Salome.

“Golf,” he said.

Daisy was disconcerted. Golf! What the devil was golf? She smiled a weak smile, too elastic, and looked sadly forgetful—Ophelia straying by the stream. Let me Ophelia pulse! There’s rosemary—that’s for remembrance. Wan, and oh so wistful. Weak, and oh so helpless. But no pansies—ah no: for never a thought had she. Straying with little white feet among the lilies. Oh, pity me, a shopworn Ophelia! Come and find me where I wander at twilight, sadly singing, or perchance weeping, among the cowslips! Put your strong arm around me, and hold me, hold me! Don’t let me remember—O God, don’t let me remember!… When I was thirteen. It was dreadful!… and I trusted him … Have you read the Rosary?… Where the cowslips, there slip I.

“… a clairvoyant,” Faubion was soberly saying.

“You don’t say,” said Smith. “Where?”

“Under the middle window, at the end of the table.” Window equals porthole.

A little mournful sallow face, dark-eyed and shy. A hurt and frightened little victim, eating stiffly.

“Yes,” said Demarest. “Silberstein was telling me about him.”

“What did he say? Is he a real one?”

“Don’t ask me! He told Silberstein that he’s going to England to sell chewing gum—which was correct. He’s also a clairaudient.”

“Clairaudient! What’s that?” Her dark eyes are wide and serious. Melodiously fluting.

“He hears things—at a distance. Voices. Probably hears what we’re saying about him.”

“Don’t be silly!… I think they’re all fakes.” She looked witheringly toward the meek little clairvoyant.

“You can’t fool
her,
” said Smith. “She’s from Missouri.”

“He predicts,” said Demarest, “a murder, on this ship.”

Daisy Dacey gave a little screech, pressing her hands together. A crumb of gorgonzola shot from her mouth into Mr. Barnes’s tumbler. She slapped a hand against her mouth, too late.

“Oh!” she cried, blushing. “Mr. Barnes! I’m so sorry!”

“Quite natural, I’m sure,” said Mr. Barnes. “Worse things might have happened, under the circumstances! A little upsetting to hear a murder predicted, what?…” He lowered his left lid at Demarest. Poor Pol.

“An old man came to him in a dream—an old man, pardon me—wearing pajamas; he had a hole in his head. He stretched out his hands to the clairvoyant, as if beseeching … The clairvoyant jumped out of his bunk—and probably bumped his head—thinking there was someone in the room. He turned on the light, and of course there was no one. But he says he’ll recognize the man when he sees him … Father!”

“
Don’t
call me father!… What.”

“…. Nothing … A goose walked over my grave. I think it must be
me …
”

Why conceal it? He had suddenly thought—and thought vividly, with absurd apprehension—that it was
Smith
! Ridiculous, both to entertain the thought and to suppress it … Nevertheless, he had seen Smith, with shattered forehead, blundering into the dark stateroom. Plenty other old men on the boat. Poor old Smith. What if it
were
true? There was nothing in such predictions, of course—if it proved true, it was simply a coincidence.

“I dream things myself,” he said. “I once dreamed three times in succession that a certain ship—the
Polynesian
—had sunk. I was shortly going to sail on her. The dream was confused, and it seemed to me in each case that she sank somehow in the dock—collided with it, or something … A few days after the third dream I was walking in London, and saw a headline (one of those posters the newsboys wear, like aprons) saying:
Atlantic Liner Sunk. I knew,
absolutely
knew,
it was my ship; and it was.”

“You’re making it up,” said Faubion.

“You
never
take my word, Mrs. Faubion! Why?”

She relented, smiling; but smiled coolly.

“When you dream about
me,
I’ll believe you,” she said, rising.

“I’ll have something for you at breakfast!”

She turned her dark head away. The cold shoulder. Humming, she walked slowly, with abstracted thought, lifting her cape to her round neck. A coarse lace blouse, slightly cheap, well filled, through which one saw bits of blue ribbon. Ah Faubion! Ah, Fleshpot! How attractive, how vulgar, how downright, and yet how mysterious you are! “
O Faubion,
” sang the evening stars … “
deep, deep Faubion
!”

“Coming for a walk?” said Smith. “Beautiful air tonight—beautiful.”

“I’ll join you in fifteen minutes. In the smoking room?”

“All right. I’ll wait for you” … Smith departed sedately, brown eyes among the palm trees.

… A curious remark, that of Faubion’s—“When you dream about
me
——” Extraordinary, her instinctive directness; this observation of hers, and his reply (of which she had dictated the key) left their relationship changed and deepened. To sleep, perchance to dream—one dreamed only of those for whom one had profound feelings? “When I walk, I
walk
with Willy——” He had never dreamed of Anita—not once. But on several occasions he had dreamed, erotically, of women for whom he had never consciously felt any desire; and had found them, when next encountered, magically changed; they belonged thereafter to the race of salamanders, opalescent and fiery. But Faubion had now, in a sense, saved him the trouble of dreaming—the suggestion of the dream was sufficient. It was a tremendous step toward intimacy—intimacy of that sort … But a step (alas!) which perhaps meant, for her, little or nothing. She would say the same thing to everybody—to any male who was reasonably attractive? Was she, perhaps (as the Welsh Rarebit had suggested), under the “protection” of Barnes, and being handed about from one member of the crew to another? Such things, of course, were common enough. A special technique was always employed in such cases. The girl avoided the officers in the day-time—consorted only with the passengers; but after the lights were out—the dark ship sleeping, sleep walking on the dark sea—then it was her footstep which one heard, furtive and soft and quick, passing one’s door, or treading nocturnally over one’s head. Was Faubion leading this kind of double life? Time enough to find out. Meanwhile—

Tin-tin: tin-tin: tin-tin: tin-tin:
eight o’clock. The flute player folded his tripod, the pianist closed the yellow-toothed piano. The
Blue Danube,
miles behind, sank into the Atlantic, was caught by mewing gulls.

“Good night, Mr. Demarest … Are you comfortable in your stateroom?”

“Quite, thanks.”

“That’s good … Good night.”

“Good night …”

“G’night, sir,” said the table steward, flicking crumbs.

… Smith’s alley: but Smith was not there, and neither of the girls … The long red carpet abruptly declined before him. The wind had freshened. The sea was getting rougher. 142-156. Home. A light in the room beyond his own—the Irish girl moved about, there, with door half opened.
Snap,
went a suitcase lock. A tumbler clinked. The bed curtains were harshly slid along, brass rings on brass rod—Z
RING
… An electric bell buzzed remotely, twice: a voice, remote, called “Mrs. Atherton!…
Mrs. Atherton
!… One sixty-eight …” “Coming!” cried Mrs. Atherton … Mrs. Atherton could be heard pelting down the corridor, a whirlwind, and laughing, then a male voice, laughing, and Mrs. Atherton gave a squeal, and “Don’t!” she cried. “Get out of my way!” she cried, then both laughs sliding down the scale, diminuendo … A madhouse. I am in a madhouse, thought Demarest … Figures given for the year 1920 show a considerable increase in the number of cases admitted to institutions in the United Kingdom. Of these 56 per cent were female, 44 per cent male … It is noted with interest that few insane people die of cancer … General paralysis of the insane … Certified as insane … All is insanity … Who so among you that is without insanity, let him think the first think … Shall we read, tonight? A nuisance carrying a book … The amusements provided for the insane show a gratifying variety … Croquet, phonographs, picture puzzles in great numbers … We are happy to report that the Society for the Encouragement of Vocal Therapy has co-operated with us now for six months with … Music and hot baths … Therapeutic value of jazz … Even staid old country preachers are engaging tango teachers … You can’t get away from it—can’t get away from it—you can’t get away from it at all … If one could only establish a direct mode of communion with another being, instead of undergoing this pitiful struggle of conversation? Extraordinary, the way conversation, even the most intimate (not at present
apropos)
concealed or
refracted
the two personalities engaged. Impossible to present, all at once, in a phrase, a sentence, a careful paragraph—even in a book, copious and disheveled—all that one meant or all that one was. To speak is to simplify, to simplify is to change, to change is to falsify. And not only this—there were also the special demons who inhabit language; and again, the demons who make a perpetual comedy, or tragedy, of all human intercourse, the comedies and tragedies of the misunderstood. These were the same thing—or aspects of the same thing? The experience of an individual is coextensive with the world and therefore infinite?—he is, in epitome, the history of the world, a history still being lived. But this “language”—by which one such epitome seeks to make himself understood or felt by another (felt, rather than understood!)—this meager affair of signs and sounds, this tiny boxful of shabby, worn trinkets, few in number, dim in color and crude of shape—how much, of one’s infinitude, could one express by an earnest stringing together of these? Little or nothing. And these demons of language—they invited one, how tiresomely often, to disregard the reference of the trinkets, and to play a
game
with them, to toss and catch them, to match their colors and shapes, to demonstrate one’s
skill:
turning human intercourse into a game of anagrams. Ah, the disgusting way in which one is always trying to “make an impression!” and the even stranger way in which casual groups of people actually co-operate to make a
collective
impression, a mutual deception of smartness, gaiety, good humor, good breeding, vulgarity, or wit! Their dinner table, for example—all of them unnatural. Bridge with Silberstein and the others—unnatural. Chess with Hay-Lawrence—unnatural … Smith? Ah—this seemed closer to the real … Faubion? Relations with her, too, would be real or nothing. And what a profoundly interesting experience! A marriage with earth … With reversed meanings:—
Blest be the marriage betwixt earth and heaven! Now, in the round blue noon of space
(round blue noon was delicious)
the mortal son, and the daughter immortal
(immoral!)
make of the world their resting place
… Not so bad: the colors a little aniline, perhaps, as in a flower piece by Hiroshige Third … Curious that Silberstein—Caligula (who seemed so almost identically one person!) should have started this train of feeling and precipitated a poem involving (so transparently!) Cynthia and himself. But, of course, the Caligula strain in himself was familiar enough—from the age of ten (that vacant lot, with ruined cellar walls, grass-grown, secret) all through the horrible furtive years of adolescence. Little Caligula ran on the sidewalk, pulling after him a toy fire engine, from which poured the thick smoke of burning excelsior. Little Caligula invited Gladys Dyson to come to the vacant lot. Little Caligula was kissed unexpectedly in the tailor’s shop by the Italian tailor’s black-eyed daughter. Walking through a slum alley, little Caligula heard voices, peeped in through the wet green shutters, saw a Negro and Negress embracing, heard the Negress moan. He had wanted to remain and watch, but hadn’t dared. The vocabulary of little Caligula—the profane vocabulary—increased rapidly. The cook made startling contributions to it, screeching with laughter as she did so. Then there was that Swedish sailor, caught in the same doorway during a shower, who on seeing the two dogs had cried “
Jesus
!” Why Jesus? What connection? Little Caligula looked from dogs to Axel, from Axel to dogs, and sought a clue. Jesus, then, was not merely a god who had suffered crucifixion, but could be mentioned, laughingly, on such occasions as this?… There were also the singular totems carved out of wood by the “gang” to which he had once or twice been admitted. And there, too, strange words had been pronounced, which had rendered him more than ever a little Caligula—a Caligula with strange festered recesses in his mind, with wounds in his body. Love (he had been taught) was sensuality, sensuality was evil, evil was prohibited but delicious: the catechism of the vacant lot. But how, then, had beauty come in? How had it so managed to complicate itself with evil and sensuality and the danks and darks of sex?—It had come in with the trumpet vine. It had come in with the seven-year locust and the chinaberry tree. It had come in with the stenciled shadows, on a tropic moonlight night—shadows, on the walls and floors, which suddenly galloped. It had come in with the song of the Negress who walked in the sun with the basket swaying on her head and sang “Ay-y-y-y prawns—ay-y-y-y-y prawns …” No—the tissue was too complex;—it was impossible to say where beauty had come from, or even to predicate that there had ever been a beginning; to be born, to become conscious, was to be, and at the same time to face, pain and beauty … “All this, Faubion, is what I am trying to say to you when I make a vulgar joke and laugh at you!… It is Caligula, who nevertheless has the rainbow wings of a seraph; Caligula, corrupt and yet devout, who beseeches you to be kind to him. And yet it is not entirely Caligula—it is something less than Caligula, and also something more; it is a life small and innocent, inconceivably naïve and at every instant new, a life infantine and guileless; but unhappily this ethereal waif harbors in his heaven-born mind a little black seed, the gift of Tellus. This little black seed is the yearning to be Caligula. I
MUST
be Caligula. And is it not you who provide me with the opportunity to achieve my destiny—you and your sisters? It is in your presence that the black seed begins to grow. Eunice warmed it, smiling upon it. Helen Shafter wept upon it, watering its terrible roots. Mary gave her body to be devoured by the terrible roots. Anita, fleeing, tempted it to grow like a vine … And here are you, Faubion—vigorous synthesis of all these; the familiar theme repeated, but repeated more emphatically than ever …” O God, if he could only escape! But did he really desire to?… The Irish girl in the next room again moved the bed curtains, brass rings on brass rod—Z
RING
. The light, which had shone through the reticulated grill at the top of the wall, above the upper berth, suddenly went out. She was going forth—he could meet her. It was time to meet Smith. And the five minutes of solitude, of morose reflection, had been (as he had foreseen) just what was needed to restore him to himself. His periodic need of escape. To re-establish his boundaries—to re-establish his awareness of his own periphery. Now he could go forth calmly—to face the Irish girl calmly, to face Smith calmly, to face the sea with joy.