Ship of Fools (18 page)

“Oh, there is only one rule everywhere,” said Herr Lutz, expansive as if he were bringing a pleasant piece of news. “The big fish eat the little ones, and the little ones eat seaweed, maybe.”

“Well do I know that,” said Herr Hansen, joining Herr Lutz in a moderate laugh.

“I tell you what,” said Herr Lutz, warmed by the young man's wonderful sense of humor, “let's all have one more little cup of coffee in the bar. Or maybe Elsa would like a glass of beer, eh?” he said slyly teasing. Frau Lutz frowned, Elsa turned dark red under her powder, and Hansen said quickly, “No, please let me invite you.”

There followed a sociable little contest all the way to the table, but finally it was as Herr Hansen's guests that the Lutzes sat down to the morning beer.

“You being Danish,” said Herr Lutz affably, after the first fine swig, “naturally you would be in the dairy business.”

“I am Swedish,” said Herr Hansen, patiently weary of this lifelong dullness on the part of foreigners who could not tell a Dane from a Swede or a Norwegian from either. “There is a slight difference.”

“So? Well, myself being Swiss, naturally I am in the hotel business. From my great-grandfather to me, we had the same hotel in St. Gallen. But I was restless, a good living was not good enough for me, I must go and run a hotel somewhere else besides Switzerland. Switzerland, for me, was too peaceful. Ah, beautiful, picturesque, peaceful Switzerland, as the travel books say. That's true enough. But almost every week I got in the mail guidebooks and pamphlets from Mexico inviting solid businesslike foreigners to come to Mexico, invest their money and make their fortune.”

“So did I,” said Hansen. “Some of it was true.”

“Not enough of it, though,” said Herr Lutz. “Not a word about politics, not a whisper about revolution. Just all about beautiful scenery, beautiful weather, beautiful tourists with pockets bursting with beautiful money. Now then,” he asked in some surprise, “wouldn't you think that I, a man weaned on those very things, would have said to myself, Why, we have all that here already. But only one thing wrong: there are many tourists in Switzerland, but also there are many, many too many hotels. The tourist trade did not always go around. We had dead seasons. There came those times when we were all prepared to hand out lavish hospitality and almost nobody came. In Mexico, the pamphlets said—serious, official, from the proper departments of government—all was better. No seasons, the suckers just poured in the year round. Cheap food, cheap labor, cheap rent, cheap taxes, cheap everything except the tourists. They were nearly all North Americans and you could charge them just what they were used to paying at home or even more. You could give them almost anything, they wouldn't know the difference.… Of course the pamphlets did not say this in so many coarse words, but I, a good hotelkeeper, could read between the lines. Even now, it sounds like Paradise on earth—well, we all know there is no such place. In Switzerland it was the Germans and the British and the French and the Spanish and the Central European Jews and oh, my God, in the old days the Russians who drove us to our graves. Also the political refugees from everywhere who arrived looking rich without a franc in pocket who were always expecting tomorrow huge sums of money … So, we started out, my wife and I with this Elsa here, who was a lump of a thing this high, in 1920—”

Elsa fidgeted and clutched her beer glass. Hansen glanced at her briefly as if she were an inanimate object of no interest whatever, and away. Her mother tried anxiously to catch her father's eye, but failed. Herr Lutz was wound up in his story and talked only to Hansen.

“We told our families we were coming back millionaires, and they believed us. We promised to send back money in the meantime and make everybody rich. Truth is we never sent a centime. We were a year getting started, with finding a suitable place, arranging things with the government, bribing here and there, struggling with native labor—too long to tell, and you know all of it, anyway. But we did get a presentable little inn going, and yes, it was true, the tourists did come and they did pay well for everything. In 1920 there was revolution. Likewise in 1921, 1922; then counterrevolution in 1923 and '24: and so, revolution again, and so on, until now. At last we decided to go back to peaceful Switzerland. So you see? Well, maybe we can talk a little business. Send me tourists from your country and I will buy a few pounds of your best butter. We have butter too—we have everything in Switzerland but not quite enough …”

Herr Hansen then talked a little, obligingly, in turn, about the export business in butter and cheese, also eggs and bacon, strictly and minutely from the standpoint of the hazards and profits to be expected from it. Elsa, discouraged, was sure that Hansen did not talk about the butter business to Amparo. Well, it was a good thing he really did look crossgrained and hard to get along with. And he was as tiresome to listen to as her father. She was glad she did not like him, never had; she did not want him to like her, either, yet she was deeply wounded by his neglect, which seemed as if he meant to insult her. He was too old, anyway—at least twenty-eight.

She drew a deep weary breath and straightened up and turned her eyes away to the morning light on the glittering, dancing sea. Quietly she worked up in her mind a sound grudge against him, his poor manners, his awkward long legs and huge feet and furry light eyebrows. No, she wanted another kind of man altogether. Surely now her mother would be able to see that Herr Hansen, even without Amparo, would never be the right one. Not even just to dance with on a ship. No, she would never dance with him even if he asked her. But of course he never would …

There was a tall thin black-haired young student, with a dangerous eye as if he feared nothing and nobody on earth, who went leaping madly around the deck at the head of the line, shouting mysterious Spanish phrases—some kind of slang she could not make out. Once he had looked at her and leaned out towards her as they passed, smiling on one side of his face as if they had a secret together. His glance had shot like arrows into her eyes and he had gone on leaping and singing. That was the one for her. She leaned her face on the palm of her hand, hiding from the others, fearing that the warmth and sweetness that poured into her heart would show on her face.

“Elsa,” asked her mother, anxiously, “what is the matter? Do you feel badly?”

“No, no, Mama, thank you,” said Elsa, without taking her hands from her face, “the light is blinding.”

That very student, as if Elsa had conjured him up, appeared in the bar; he was not leaping or shouting, but walking lazily with two others of his crowd. He was talking, though, and his voice carried to her buzzing ears. “
La Cucaracha Mystica
,” he was saying, with a flourish of theatrical inflections, “the mystical cockroach herself, the queen of insects, is on board this ship, the very figure of rampant idealism. I saw her. She is here, pearls and all, a prisoner.”

“
La cucaracha, la cucaracha
,” chorused the others, as instinctively malicious as monkeys. They were halfway through the first verse, leaning towards each other and making dreadful harmonies, when the bugle sounded for the second breakfast sitting. With famine-stricken comic faces they turned as one and charged towards the dining room. As by then everyone on shipboard lived for food, there was the usual crowd milling at the top of the stairs, thinning out gradually into a procession.

At lunch, the Captain was seated at the head of his table, his napkin tucked into his collar and spread neatly over his rigid chest. Dr. Schumann, seated at the opposite side, was turning his water glass about absently. At sight of the ladies of the party they both rose. The Captain withdrew his napkin, made a deep bow and seated himself once more, tucking the napkin back under his chin.

Lizzi Spöckenkieker, at his left, giggled and blushed, eying him with coy intimacy. “Dear Captain, we met this morning, I believe!” she said, indiscreetly.

“We did indeed, my dear Fräulein,” responded the Captain, with extreme formality. On his right, Frau Rittersdorf gave Lizzi a guarded look of warning and social censure, then turned her most charming smile upon the Captain, who rewarded her with a glimpse of his two front teeth and slightly upturned mouth corners. The others ranged round him, faces bent towards him like sunflowers to the sun, waiting for him to begin conversation.

“It is not usual for me to appear at table so early in the voyage,” stated the Captain, as if he were reading an address, “since all my energies and attention must be devoted to the affairs of my ship. But I am happy to be able to say that in spite of a thousand difficulties and inconveniences which added together amounted to a state of emergency, never have I been able so swiftly and so effectively to dispose of them all. On a ship, no detail is trivial; the slightest laxity at any given point may lead to the gravest consequences. For this reason,” he said, “usually I must deprive myself at intervals of the good company I enjoy at my table. But it is in the cause of your safety and comfort that I deprive myself,” he told them, putting them forever in his debt.

Little Frau Schmitt blushed at her own boldness but managed to utter in a tiny voice, “Even if it is for our own good, we are also deprived.”

Frau Rittersdorf was annoyed at this speech, which should have been made, certainly, but in much more elegant terms, with more manner, and not by Frau Schmitt, who by no means took precedence at that table. The Captain however seemed pleased. He bowed gently to Frau Schmitt. “You are very kind,” he said, approvingly.

Herr Professor Hutten, without changing the conversation from its prime subject, the presence and authority of the Captain, shifted the emphasis from the feminine to the masculine domain by speaking in general terms of the importance of the science of navigation: “Of which, frankly I can do no less than admit, I know nothing,” with the manly generosity of one who knows himself to be an authority in his own field, “yet it is of never-failing interest to me to observe how all science, as all art, is based firmly, immovably, upon mathematics. Without mathematics, where should we be for music, for architecture, for chemistry, for astronomy, above all for the scientific art of navigation, both on the sea and in the air? One may safely set it down as a rule that the better the mathematician, the better the navigator, the better the composer of music. Do you, my dear Captain, from the point of view of practical experience, find yourself in agreement with this rule?”

The Captain almost modestly admitted that his native aptitude for higher mathematics had been of great value to him as seaman. Professor Hutten went on to expand his ideas somewhat, from the purely philosophical view, while the others, more especially the ladies, listened in respectful silence, all except Frau Rittersdorf having lost the thread of discourse some time ago.

A slight but welcome interruption occurred when Wilhelm Freytag was heard again as usual to refuse the delicious Westphalia ham as appetizer. “Deviled eggs, then, sir?” asked the waiter, “or perhaps liver pâté?”

“Herring in sour cream,” said Herr Freytag, “I think.”

“Oh, Herr Freytag, are you a vegetarian?” asked Lizzi. “How interesting! How can you give up all these delicious sausages and bacon for breakfast and this delicious ham. You must try it with a slice of melon sometime. It is divine!”

Freytag, helping himself to a fine mound of fresh peas, said rather flatly, “Oh, no, I never eat pork at all,” at which Frau Rittersdorf exchanged a lifted eyebrow first with the Captain, then with Frau Hutten, then with Herr Rieber, and her fleeting thought was returned to her in the quick gleam of their eyes from all three. Herr Rieber smiled broadly, wagged a finger at Freytag and remarked, “Aha! Observing the dietary laws, I suppose.” At this improbable notion—or was it?—everybody laughed heartily and beamed upon Herr Freytag as a man who could take a friendly joke. They then exchanged a few customary remarks about the Jews and their incomprehensible habits, a sort of small change of opinion which established them once for all as of the same kind of people without any irreconcilable differences; and they settled down together comfortably prepared to change the topic; but their attention was directed to a rather noticeable commotion at the students' table.

The boys rose from their chairs and bowed in the direction of the stairs, and one of them shouted “
Vival
” explosively. The woman who came in made them a formal little bow, very old-fashioned and learned in courtesy, then followed the steward to a small table where she sat alone with her back to the students. They sat down again exchanging odd malicious glances, elaborately wiping away smiles under their napkins.

She was perhaps fifty years old and she had been a fine beauty not so long ago. Her face was smooth and wax-colored, her small round mouth was painted bright red, the small, clever-looking black eyes were sketched in and lengthened with dark blue smudges, her lightly tinted reddish hair was cut short and curled around her forehead and ears. She was slender except for a lazy little belly, and her clothes were very expensive-looking; shabby as they were, they were still much too elegant for her present occasions. She wore enormous pearls in her ears, around her throat, on two fingers of her left hand. On her right she wore what appeared to be a light-colored much-flawed emerald, big as a robin's egg and surrounded by small diamonds. These hands, very narrow, fine, heavily veined, and old-looking, were in constant movement. Thumbs turned in lightly to the palm, the hands moved aimlessly from the edge of the table to her lap, they clasped and unclasped themselves, spread themselves flat in the air, closed, shook slightly, went to her hair, to the bosom of her gown, as if by a life of their own separate from the will of the woman herself, who sat quite still otherwise, features a little rigid, bending to read the dinner card beside her plate.