In America (14 page)

“He does not beat you, does he?” he whispered into her ear.

“Only if the mister complains,” she replied.

He let himself be pushed over on his back and felt her chapped lips brush against his cheek. She had hiked up her cotton shift and was rubbing her bony loins against his body. He was becoming aroused, despite himself. “I would rather not,” he said, slipping his hand beneath her and lifting her torso a few inches above his. “I will give you the money and you can say—”

“Oh, please, sir, please,” she squealed. “You can't give the money to
me!
”

“Then I—”

“And he'll find out you didn't like me, and he'll—”

“How can he find out?”

“He will, he will!” He felt her tears on his neck, the grinding of her pubis. “He knows everything! He'll see from my face 'cause I'll be ashamed and worried, and then he'll look, you know, between my legs.”

Sighing, Ryszard shifted the frail body to the side of his torso, unbuttoned his pants, and took out his semi-erect penis, and moved her back on top of him. “Do not move,” he said, as he gently inserted it between her scrawny thighs, just above her knees. “What are you doing?” she moaned. “That's not the right place. You're supposed to put it where it hurts me.” Ryszard felt tears prickling his eyes. “We are playing a game,” he whispered hoarsely. “We pretend we are not on this big horrible ship, we are on a little boat, and the boat is rocking and swaying, but not so much, and the boat has this little oar that you must hold tight with your legs because otherwise it will fall into the water and then we can never row home, but you can shut your eyes and pretend to sleep…”

Obediently, the girl closed her eyes. Ryszard closed his eyes too, still stinging with pity and shame, while his efficient body did the rest. It was the saddest story he had ever invented. It was the saddest game he had ever played.

*   *   *

“
JULIAN
…” Ryszard began. He was in their cabin, watching the older man sipping some broth. “Do you ever go much to brothels in Warsaw, I mean did you go before you married Wanda?”

“Even then not as much as you, I'll wager,” said Julian, managing a smile. “Now? Hardly ever. Marriage has tamed me.”

“It can be dispiriting,” said Ryszard, torn between the hackneyed desire he was feeling at this moment to confide in Julian and a wiser determination to keep this experience to himself. “Dispiriting,” he repeated, waiting for Julian to draw him out.

“Not as dispiriting as marriage,” Julian said. “What's the sadness of a loveless hour, compared with a lifetime of loveless cohabitation?”

Ryszard realized that what he had unwittingly provoked in Julian was a desire to confide in
him.
For a moment the weakness of the young man who had never had a father (he'd died before Ryszard was born) stood off the second nature of the writer whose favorite pastime was inciting other people to talk about themselves. Then the writer won.

“I'm so sorry to hear there is discord between you and Wanda.”

“Discord!” Julian howled. “Do you know what I dream of alone in this cabin, vomiting up my guts all these days? Let me tell you. That we reach America, that we locate a site for the phalanstery, and then, just before the rest arrive with Maryna, I disappear. Nobody knows where I've gone. But I won't have the courage, you'll see. There will be no New World for me.”

“You don't love her at all?”

“Do I seem to you to be a man who could love such an imbecile?”

“But before you married her you must at least have had an inkling of—”

“What did I know about women? She was young, I wanted a companion, I thought I could mold her and she would look up to me. Instead, she's simply afraid of me. And I can't keep from showing my exasperation. My disappointment.” He groaned. “You can't imagine how I envy you. Blessedly unmarried, you can toddle off to whores whenever you like with a clear conscience, while courting an ideal woman whom you will never win—”

“Julian!”

“I'm not supposed to mention your designs on Maryna, am I? Everyone knows.”

“Even Bogdan.”

“How could he not? He'd have to be as stupid as my Wanda.”

“And everybody finds me quite ridiculous.”

“Let's say … youthful.”

“I
will
win her! You'll see. There's sadness in that marriage, too. I could make her much happier.”

“How?”

Ryszard could hardly say to Julian that his intuition told him a man like Bogdan does not know how to make a woman happy sexually. “I'd write plays for her,” he said.

“Ah, youth,” exclaimed Julian.

It suddenly occurred to Ryszard that Julian wasn't really sick, that he had only fallen into a fit of despondency, that he'd been hiding.

“Dress and come on deck with me,” said Ryszard. “You'll feel better, I promise.”

“And flirt with the girls? You'll share some of your conquests?”

“Oh, my conquests.” Ryszard laughed. “Which one do you want? The Englishwoman with the lorgnette and the copy of
A History of White Slavery
in her reticule? The Spanish dancer with the finger cymbals? The French widow you'll hear crooning ‘You come wiz me, my love' to the little white dog she walks about the deck? The Roman countess bedecked with paste jewels, who hopes to restore the fortunes of her ancient family by capturing a rich American husband? The lady from Warsaw, yes, Warsaw, we are not the only Poles in Saloon class, who announces to all and sundry that she is going to America to escape the yoke of the Muscovite, or her sister, who is already so homesick (I'm afraid she reminds me of Wanda) that she will certainly want to show you the little silk bag of Polish soil she keeps between her breasts? The unhappily married German who confides that she could never be attracted to a man who did not share her adoration of Wagner? The American (Julian, you'll not believe these American girls!) who recommends, for your health, a trip on her papa's railroad? The sickly Irish girl who is traveling with her uncle in steerage—” He had started to laugh at his own rollicking inventiveness, of course one isn't supposed to laugh when one is trying to be amusing, so why couldn't he stop laughing, laughing so hard his eyes filled with tears, but he staggered on, finishing breathlessly with: “You're welcome to all of them.”

“Bravo,” said Julian.

“So will you get dressed now?”

Julian shook his head. “Let me live vicariously. I shall look forward to reading a story about each of these ladies in your next book. Don't disappoint me. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm afraid I am about to be sick.”

*   *   *

HOW IRRITATING
that Julian would not accept his offer of rescue from naïve self-pity and unhealthy inactivity. How odd for him to have extended it, after being so bent on disburdening himself of Julian's company during the voyage; but a change of inner weather can no more be ignored than the coming of an ocean squall.

Leaving the cabin, after dutifully cleaning up after Julian, he regained the sun and wind and his own perch of scornful acuity. Like most writers who are intelligent, Ryszard had long since accustomed himself to being actually two people. One was a warmhearted, anxious man, rather boyish for his twenty-five years, while the other one … in the other one, detached, reckless, manipulative, flourished the temperament of someone much older. The first self was forever being surprised by the evidence of his own intelligence; it never ceased to astonish him, thrill him, when words, eloquence, ideas, observations just
came,
like birds flying out of his mouth. The second was condemned to finding nobody clever enough—and everything he saw a challenge to his skills as an observer and describer, because so blindly, thickly steeped in itself (“the world” is not a writer).

The first self was the insecure youthful Pole who aspired to be a man of the world. The second had always, in the recesses of his furtive heart, considered himself to be someone unlike anyone else. One of those extremely intelligent people who become writers because they cannot imagine a better use of their watchfulness, their sense of being different from others, Ryszard knew that his intelligence could also be a handicap: how good a novelist could he ever become if he found everybody he met either preposterous or pathetic? One must believe in people to be a great writer, which means one must continually adjust one's expectations of them. Ryszard could never be so contemptuous of a woman for being less intelligent than he, since stupidity was a quality Ryszard found to be in ample supply among everyone he knew, including Maryna (whose intelligence he found … endearing). And, despite what he had said to Julian, Ryszard would have been affronted if everyone back in Poland did
not
think him in love with her; and to these easily mocked yearnings of a younger man for a famous actress, the man who was always seeing through people, the writer, gave his fervent assent. He thought it becoming, even improving, to be humbled by love.

Love, a voluptuous sacrifice of judgment. Love, the shape-shifter—changing as much in the absence as in the presence of the beloved. The variety of his feelings for Maryna enchanted him. One day it was lust, pure lust. He could conjure up only the smooth white nape of her neck, the curve of her breasts, the pink heaviness of her tongue. The next day it was fascination. She is the most interesting subject I've ever come across. Another day: it's only (only!) her beauty. If she didn't look exactly like that, that face, those gestures, if she didn't have that voice, if she weren't so tall, if she didn't wear those soft, silkily expressive clothes, she could never have burned a hole in my heart. And sometimes, often: no, it's admiration. She has a great talent, and a great soul; she is sincere, which I am not.

Maryna, he knew, would approve of his sympathy for the steerage passengers, and when, two days later, he went down once more to steerage—whether because Maryna would want him to or simply because he had to re-experience, but more coldly, that dismay, at that moment Ryszard was delightfully unable to say—he also came away with more than enough material for his article about the trip from conversations he succeeded in conducting with some dozen stuporous or bewildered emigrants. (The old man who recited from the Book of Revelation, explaining how it had been ordained by God that before the end of days everyone in the world would come to “Hamerica”—Ryszard would save him for a short story.) It took two days before the smell of putrefying food and shit-clogged toilets was out of his nostrils.

It was still in his nostrils when the captain of the
Germanic
took Ryszard aside to remonstrate with him about his forays, saying that while he could not of course forbid “communication” between Saloon and steerage passengers, he had instructions from the company to discourage it strongly. “For reasons of health,” he said. He was a large man, a whale of a man, on whom this mincing language seemed ill-suited, Ryszard was thinking—for he assumed that the captain was referring to the wretched sexual commerce offered below. But no, it turned out to be a more immediate inconvenience: should the Health Officers in New York who would be examining the steerage passengers for signs of contagious or infectious disease find out there had been any visits from Saloon passengers during the voyage, those passengers might also be made subject to quarantine.

“I thank you for your concern,” said Ryszard.

They were in the Smoke-Room, to which all the men were expected to adjourn once dinner was over (wives and daughters had the Ladies' Boudoir for their own off-duty chatter), and where Ryszard had excused himself from the obligation of making polite conversation and sat a little apart with his pipe, watching, listening. The men, flushed with drink, mostly talked of stocks and percentages (he understood little of what they were saying) or related stories of their sexual exploits (he wondered which of them had been with Nora) while Ryszard—Ryszard was cultivating elementary forbearance and good-humored indifference. What a great distance I have come on this ship, he thought. He felt not only many miles but many years from the callow young man who had come aboard at Liverpool. How fast the intelligence travels. Intelligence travels faster than anything in the world.

*   *   *

TOWARD THE END
of the voyage the weather turned rough (one day of real gales) and, as if needing only this challenge, Julian ruled himself recovered from seasickness and able to resume the routines of shipboard life. “I feel quite refreshed,” he announced to Ryszard. “As if I'd taken a cure.”

They were standing together at the railing above a now calmer sea and Julian was alerting Ryszard to some differences between British and American English (“A booking office is a ticket office, luggage is baggage, a station is also a depot…”) when the girl from Philadelphia came onto the deck.

“Oh, there you are! I've been looking for you everywhere.”

“Aha,” said Julian.

She was upon them now.

“Good morning, Miss,” Julian said. “It's a beautiful day, is it not? What a pity, is it not, that this delightful voyage is about to end.”

“Want her?” said Ryszard in Polish. “She's yours.”

“What are you saying?” said the girl. “My mama says it's not polite to say something other people don't understand.”

“I am telling Professor Solski that you have found me so charming that you are very eager to meet as many Polish gentlemen as you can.”

“Mr. Krool, how can you say such a thing! Why, that's a lie!”

“Excuse me,” said Julian, “excuse me, Miss,” and fled.

“How naughty you are,” cried the girl. “Now your friend has left. If you did want me to meet him, that wasn't the way to go about it. Why, I believe he was even more embarrassed than I was.” She paused, and then wagged a finger at Ryszard. “Oh, you are very, very naughty. Were you
trying
to embarrass your friend?”