Ship of Fools (15 page)

She advanced upon the steward firmly though kindly. He was a most polite and attentive fellow who spoke with an Austrian accent … “
meine Dame
,” he called her, which she rather preferred to the homelier-sounding
Frau
, “it cannot be lost, it is only misplaced for the moment, and I shall find and return it to you. After all, this is a small ship, and it cannot have got overboard by itself! So do please, dear lady, be at your ease and I shall bring it to you very presently.”

Frau Rittersdorf, winding her green veil closely about her head and knotting it over one ear, noticed those two awful Spanish children standing a few feet away, simply staring at her with animal curiosity. She returned their attention with a slit-eyed disciplinary face, such as had always proved effective with her English charges when she was a governess with a country family in England.

“Have you lost something?” asked the little girl in a high bold treble.

“Yes, have you stolen it?” inquired Frau Rittersdorf, sternly.

At this they seemed strangely agitated; they wriggled somewhat, exchanged wicked glances; the little boy said, “Who knows?” Then they both cackled with unchildish laughter and ran away. Frau Rittersdorf, considering exactly what she would do with them if they were in her power, moved over to the deck rail near that pair of young people, obviously American—what was there about Americans that made them so obviously
only
that? the gradual mongrelization of that dismaying country by the mingling of the steerage sweepings of Europe and the blacks had resulted only in a mediocrity of feature and mind impossible to describe!—yet she wondered what they could find to talk about so constantly, as they spent at least half their time in each other's society, and one might think they should finally have exhausted topics for conversation. They were leaning together companionably, both pairs of eyes fixed on the glittering stretches of water, talking idly, with short pauses.

Frau Rittersdorf did not hope to overhear much, for she was slightly deaf, nor to observe details except at short distances, for she was extremely nearsighted. At the right distance, however, considering these disadvantages, she leaned upon the rail next the young man, and bringing her vision into focus swiftly, ascertained that he was younger than she had thought. His light hair was nicely cut, he had a good thin high nose and a well-shaped mouth, and a general though no doubt misleading air of good upbringing. His pale gray shirt was quite fresh but his white linen suit was ready for the wash.

The young woman wore a short-sleeved, belted no-colored frock that appeared to have been fashioned from hop sacks. Her face was pale and too thin, with high cheekbones and a sharp pointed chin that gave her a vixenish look. She had fairly good light eyes and black hair parted plainly in the middle—one of these advanced, emancipated young women of the Bohemian world, no doubt. Frau Rittersdorf noted that in repose his face was sulky and hers impatient. Suddenly they both lifted their heads and laughed together, and their faces were instantly gay, good-humored, a little reckless. She smiled involuntarily at the fresh, pretty sound of youthful happiness; they both saw her smile. Their expressions grew a little blank and cool, and they turned their faces away.

Frau Rittersdorf had seen quite enough to convince her that this was an odd outlandish pair; there was something about them she could not understand and did not like at all. They were not the sort of persons she would care to cultivate as traveling companions. She returned to her chair, arranged her skirts carefully about her legs, leaned back, missing her soft little pillow, and got out her notebook.

She had a poor memory and a passion for recording every minutest detail of her daily existence—even to the very moment in which she carelessly spooned her soup too hot or forgot to stamp a letter—mingled with scraps of philosophy, observations, reminiscence and meditation. For years she had filled notebook after notebook with tiny jottings in a sharp cultivated little handwriting, and as they were filled, she put them away neatly and never looked at them again. Shaking her gold-banded fountain pen, she wrote in English:

“These young Americans have the affectation of addressing each other always by their full names, perhaps the only formality they maintain between themselves, and a very
gauche
sort of thing it is, or perhaps it's the only hope they have of making themselves known to the public. There is a faint atmosphere of moral slackness in their manner, their dress—I cannot quite place or describe it. It is more of an
effluvium
. The names are musical, if somewhat sentimental: Jenny Angel—the real name is, I suppose, Jane, Johanna Engel it would be, and much better, in the German—and David Darling. The latter is a common surname as well as a usual term of affection among Americans, I believe; much less among the frozen English naturally, though it does seem to be a corruption of the word
Dear
, Dearling, the diminutive; this would sound as if pronounced Darling, since the English have a slovenly way of speaking certain words to which, frankly speaking, I could never accustom myself during those seven long penitential years in that country. Naturally I learned English perfectly at school in Munich, and had always heard it spoken well, and the English manner of speech seemed very crude to me after that. Ah, those years of bitter exile! Ah, those frightful two-faced English children whose affection I could never win, and who could never learn German by any means.
Deyahling
, the English would call it after all, and the Americans, who seem to learn their language phonetically, or by ear, as they say, because of their distaste for reading, would add the sound of R, a letter they seem fond of to excess. It is all quite interesting in its limited way.”

Reading this over, she decided it was too good to hide, but would go well in a letter to her dearest friend and schoolmate of long ago, Sophie Bismarck, highly connected, unhappily married and living in luxury in Munich. Stupid little Sophie's head would spin as always, trying to follow her brilliant schoolmate's mind. She made a note in the margin, “
Für liebe Sophie
, to be translated in case she has forgotten her English,” dropped the book into her large flat handbag and got up to take her walk, nine times around the deck. Exercise warded off seasickness, kept down liverishness, gave one an appetite, indeed there was everything to be said for it, dull as it might be; and the boundless rolling waters of the mighty deep inspired noble thoughts.

Her dear husband had taught her all this. He was a man of endless activity, and believed firmly—how right he was—that good health was necessary to good morality. How many times he had fairly dragged her up and down during their Channel crossings, even in the worst weather—indeed he welcomed the worst weather as the most exhilarating test of courage—when they had to cling to any available support as if they were drowning, the waves dashing over them. Somewhere in the calm blue sky above she felt that her dear Otto, dead in his manly strength and beauty at the battle of Ypres, was looking down approvingly at his good, obedient Nannerl, walking—yes, and alone, Otto, alone!—round and round the deck for the sake of her health, as he would have her do.

On the seventh lap, feeling her arches fail her in her three-inch heels, she rested provisionally on the arm of her chair and took out her notebook again: “If those young American persons are not married, they ought to be. But in that monstrous country all the relations of life are so perverted, more especially between the sexes, it is next to impossible to judge them by any standards of true civilization.”

Reading this over, she decided it was unworthy of her. Where had her mind been wandering all this time? She struck out the whole passage, and wrote in above the thick black line: “Divine weather, if a little too warm, and a heavenly stroll with the pure sea air on my face, thinking of my dear Otto and of the blessings of our happy though all too brief marriage. R.I.P. August 25, 1931.”

She went on, piously to finish the two laps—what were fallen arches in comparison to the blissful sense of keeping faith with Otto?—carrying the journal between her hands as though it were a prayer book. She met the bride and groom also strolling, their clasped hands swinging lightly, both very beautiful in pure white; looking, too, astonishingly fresh and carefree considering the newness of their honeymoon. As they neared, she perceived that the bride, though serene-looking, was rather pale, with darkening smudges under her eyes; even a little ill, perhaps? And quite properly, Frau Rittersdorf answered herself with matronly approval. One had well-founded suspicions of those brides who remained unchanged in appearance and manner after marriage. Even with all the happiness of the new state, still one does not step from virginity to the strains and stresses of married life without visible sign. Say what you will, it is not all roses! She considered this thought for a while and decided it was leading her mind into forbidden areas: “Even during the most passionate of her husband's embraces, a pure woman never permits herself an impure thought,” her Otto had instructed her more than once: a hard saying, but no doubt true. Resolutely she turned her mind to higher things, putting the memory of Otto back once more in the sacred potpourri of the past.

Jenny had coffee early, on deck, in the cool morning light blue-tinctured between sea and sky, and began making sketches with a fountain pen: the canvas wind-funnel like a conventional ghost with outspread arms over the grated pit of the steerage eating place; Bébé the white bulldog, apparently recovering from his seasickness, sprawled weightily on his belly; Elsa, her cabin mate, from memory, big arms raised, doing her hair; a passing sailor with a bucket; furtively, after a quick glance around, a hasty outline of Herr Glocken's harmonious, interesting deformity. Jenny, sitting at ease in her own neatly pretty small body which gave her very little trouble except for its long famine of love, rather idly wondered what it might be like to live in such a hideous shape as Herr Glocken's. The thought frightened her so much she started sharply and dropped her pen, in a flash of blind terror and suffocation, a child again locked in her grandmother's bedroom closet narrow as a coffin. She shut her eyes so tightly that when she opened them she saw Wilhelm Freytag through a rainbow dazzle of light, taking a long rather graceful stride toward her, holding out her pen.

He stopped before her then, receiving her thanks, looking very sunny and amiable, waiting to be invited to sit with her. She moved her legs aside and made room for him on the footrest of her chair.

“But if you are doing something—?” he said.

“This is just idleness,” Jenny told him. “A form of solitaire. I'd much rather gossip a little.” She leaned toward him, feeling again how her habitual mood of resentment, the growing bitterness and melancholy of her mind when she was alone, could so quickly be dispersed in the sound of voices and the nearness of others, no matter if the voices had nothing to say to her, if the presences were strangers indifferent to her. Women spoil this fellow, she thought: his charm is perhaps slightly overconfident—and then reflected that the society of someone with no troubles of his own might be a rest for her after her thorny progress with David.

Freytag was cheerfully ready for gossip, and happy to tell her there was a mysterious stranger aboard, a real political prisoner, being deported from Cuba, it was said, in connection with the student riots that led to the closing of the University—to be confined in cabin for the whole voyage, finally to be put off ship at Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

“In chains, I suppose,” said Jenny. “What did he do?”

“It's a woman.”

“Would that make any difference?”

“I hope so,” said Freytag. “But then, besides that, she is a Spanish countess, and to the Captain, let me tell you, that alone makes all the difference possible. He has given orders all around that she is to be treated with the utmost consideration, and sends messages to her himself asking her what she would like. No, our prisoner isn't going to suffer. She has a whole stateroom on Deck A to herself—more than I was able to get!”

“I would be a prisoner myself for that,” said Jenny.

“Yes, indeed. I like space above everything, but I have that seven-foot Swede Hansen for cabin mate, and he sleeps in the upper berth with his feet stuck out so that I bump my head on them every morning.”

“My cabin mate is on the ample side, too,” said Jenny, “but a very nice girl and we don't elbow each other much.”

“Why, I thought you were with your husband,” said Freytag, and there danced in his eyes a curiosity so instant and so candid it was almost appealing.

“We are not married,” said Jenny. She scratched a few lines on the drawing of the wind-funnel and stopped herself sternly from adding, “We are just friends who happened to take the same boat.” Could she fall so low? No, there
were
limits, and she believed she still knew where some of them were. And that was not altogether an innocent question on Herr Freytag's part, either. She took a good, considered look at him. Perhaps not innocent at all, but a blunder and he knew it. Did his face contract for a moment in strain and embarrassment or was she giving him more credit for sensibility than he deserved? He picked up her drawings and turned them about and she saw by his look that he cared very little about them. He lingered over the sketch of Herr Glocken and said finally, “It's terribly like. I wonder what he would think of it.”

“He'll never see it,” said Jenny, taking the drawings back and putting them in the folder. Freytag said, “I didn't know you were an artist,” and Jenny gave her usual answer to that, “I am not, but maybe I shall be someday.”

The evil little moment blew over, but there would be an endless series of them from now on out no matter where. She was beginning to see too clearly what she had let herself in for when she took up with David. At this point she was losing confidence in her whole life, as if every step of it had been merely one error leading to another, back to the day she was born, she supposed—no, that is too much! I'm not going to let this business throw me off track completely. That poor Elsa thinks there is something wrong with her; she would feel better if she could know about me. Yet I wanted to live in clean air and say Yes, or No, mean what I said and have it understood and no nonsense. I hate half-things, half-heartedness, stupid false situations, invented feelings, pumped-up loves and hand-decorated hates. I hate people who stare at themselves in mirrors and smile. I want things straight and clear or at least I want to be able to see when they're crooked and confused. Anything else is just nasty and so my life is nasty and I am ashamed of it. And I have an albatross around my neck that I didn't even shoot. I simply don't know how he got there.