Ship of Fools (27 page)

There being no Lutheran minister aboard, the Captain assumed leadership of the religious observances suitable to the day. At eleven o'clock all the guests at his table except Dr. Schumann and Frau Schmitt gathered in the main salon, and were joined there by Herr Wilibald Graf and his nephew, Herr Glocken and the Lutz family, the Baumgartners and their son Hans. Even Wilhelm Freytag, who happened to be already present, stayed on for the service. The Captain read a few verses of Holy Scripture in his most commanding voice, and said the appropriate prayers, his congregation listening respectfully with bowed heads. Everybody joined in several fine rollicking hymns, their firm warm voices carrying all through the ship, even out to the bar, where the barman stood listening thoughtfully, with a pleased face, nodding in time and humming under his breath.

Frau Hutten, Frau Rittersdorf and Frau Schmitt retired to the shady side of the deck prepared to sit there in Sunday dullness waiting for their dinner. Herr Professor Hutten took part in a conversation with the Captain and Dr. Schumann, a short distance away. Their voices were low and their manner earnest, so the women gave up trying to overhear, and Frau Hutten, observing that Frau Rittersdorf was writing in her notebook, kept a considerate silence, fumbling absently with Bébé's cropped ears.

“It seems that those young Americans,” wrote Frau Rittersdorf neatly, “have quite commonplace names, after all, Scott and Brown. Braun the name no doubt was, and perhaps the young woman is of German origin, though I should detest thinking so. One more un-German in every respect it would be difficult to imagine. Angel and Darling are their love-names for each other. In quite bad taste of course, and much exaggerated besides, as neither of them is in the slightest degree attractive. She is a dry thing like too many American women—even the beautiful ones have no real freshness, but seem either like painted wood or just on the point of fading. This is caused, I am told on good authority, by their almost universal custom of losing their virginity at puberty or even earlier, and thereafter leading lives of the utmost promiscuousness. But this young woman is not beautiful in the least; I should think she might have encountered difficulties in losing her virtue at any age. As for the young man, I suppose she is the best he can do for himself, and indeed, is quite all that he deserves.” She tucked her pen in the narrow pocket on the back of the book and leaned back cheerfully, thinking she had well repaid that pair for misleading her in the first instance.

She turned to speak to Frau Hutten, when her attention was arrested by the queer behavior of Herr Rieber and Fräulein Spöcken-kieker, engaged in a most unedifying scuffle at the rail. Herr Rieber was wearing the lady's green and white scarf around his neck, and she was rather pulling him about by the ends. Frau Rittersdorf snapped her
face-à-main
upward for an instant. Yes, that girl was pretending to tie a bow under Herr Rieber's chin, but she was really drawing the noose about his windpipe until he clutched for air and his beaming smile almost disappeared in a blue cloud of distended veins. She then loosened the knot, and the good-humored martyr went through a pantomime of coming to life again, gratefully.

His whole attitude was offensive to Frau Rittersdorf. It was unbecoming to the dignity of a man to submit to amorous persecutions from any woman, no matter how irresistible her charms. More properly the other way about, for the crown of womanhood was suffering for the sake of love. A positive thrill of sensual excitement ran through Frau Rittersdorf's frame as she tried to imagine what would have happened if ever she had, no matter how playfully, attempted to strangle her Otto.

“Let us have some beer,” shouted Herr Rieber gleefully, stuffing the scarf in his pocket, where it dangled like a tail, and the shameless pair ran away, followed by a row of censorious glances. Frau Rittersdorf remarked to Frau Hutten, in a sweet charitable voice: “If one judged always by appearances, how often one would be obliged to think the worst.”

Frau Hutten stirred lazily, and after reflection, answered with indulgence: “Ah well, it seems that neither of them is married. Who knows, it may be a match.”

Little Frau Otto Schmitt ventured: “They seem rather oddly matched. I always like to see the man taller than the woman.”

The three then noted that Captain Thiele, Herr Professor Hutten and Dr. Schumann were still absorbed in their talk a safe distance away. They gave free rein to their womanly tongues without fear of being overheard by the men, to whom such talk was always trivial, unworthy, and fair game for their male sense of ridicule.

“Fräulein Spöckenkieker is a divorced woman, so I have heard,” said Frau Rittersdorf. “She is, I am given to understand, a woman of business—a lingerie business of sorts, she has three shops and has kept her maiden name in all circumstances. No wonder she no longer has a husband. It may also account for her manners, or lack of them.”

“I wished to continue with my teaching after marriage,” said Frau Hutten, with wifely pride, “but my husband would not hear of it for a moment. The husband supports the family, he told me, and the wife makes a happy home for them both. That is her sacred mission, he said, and she must be prevented at all costs from abandoning it. And so it was. From that day to this. I have done only housework, except to act as secretary to my husband.”

Frau Schmitt blushed. “I taught for years,” she said, “in the same school with my husband, who was in poor health, almost an invalid, after the war. He could not carry a full professorship; it was important for him not to be too heavily burdened. We had no children, what else should I have been doing? There was not enough to do in our simple little house to keep me occupied. No, I was glad to help my husband. And we had a happy home as well.” Her tone was gently defensive and self-satisfied.

“We can make no fixed rules, after all; it depends always on what the husband wishes,” said Frau Hutten. “For me, I lived only to please my husband. Now, whatever life was like in that wild foreign country, we are all going home at last. But it cannot be the same,” she told Frau Rittersdorf. “Nothing can be the same. We went out to Mexico in 1912, foreseeing nothing of the disaster that was to overtake our beloved country. Fortunately, the Professor has very poor eyesight, and has suffered since youth with fallen arches: there was never any question of his going to war—”

“Fortunately?” echoed Frau Rittersdorf, her arched eyebrows rising. “Fortunately, my husband was a magnificent, a perfect physical specimen of a man, a Captain, who saw three years' service at the front, in the very thick, I may say, of the battle. He received the Iron Cross for his displays of superhuman courage in action, and he was killed on the field.… Is it not strange that war should destroy such men, the brave, the noble-minded, the sound in body, the invaluable fathers, and leave only the defectives to carry on the race? Oh, I have asked myself that question many times in these years since I have been alone, and I can find no answer!”

“The world needs scholars and thinkers as well as soldiers,” said Frau Hutten, mildly. She was proof against this argument, being the sort of woman who admired intellectual attainments and bowed eagerly to moral superiority. “But I quite understand your feelings in the matter.”

“My husband,” said Frau Schmitt, “was a brave soldier, and a fine scholar, at once. These qualities are not incompatible. My husband …”

She stopped, drawing a long breath, which fetched up tears on its return as a pump from a well. Her face quivering, she felt blindly for her handkerchief. “No better than a dead man all those years,” she said, choking, “a dead man all those years.”

The two women observed her display of feeling with composure and perhaps a slight tinge of satisfaction. Women must weep, each one her own tears for her own troubles, in her own time. Tearless themselves at the moment, their faces wore also a faint expression of disapproval. Frau Schmitt appeared to be making rather a parade of grief, yet they could not help seeing with some adverse criticism that, in spite of her widow's crape, she wore a heavy gold necklace with a large locket—inappropriate, to say the least. Frau Schmitt saw their glances wandering around her neck and throat, and being another woman, guessed their thought. She put her hand over the locket: “My husband's portrait,” she said. “I have worn it so long, I cannot be without it!”

In a rather prolonged silence not without edges, Frau Schmitt rose, her small nose and eyelids scarlet. “Excuse me,” she said. Balancing herself on her blunt-toed pumps, she edged around them and proceeded uncertainly towards the door. She paused there and stood aside for the sick old man in the wheel chair. Above the yellowed, parchment-colored skull the bright angry face of the young boy hovered, and rudely he attempted to crowd his way through the door, almost before Frau Schmitt could get out of his path.

“Stop,” said the sick man, in a hollow voice, holding up his hand, taking hold of Frau Schmitt's sleeve with finger and thumb. She trembled and dared not move, as if a ghost had laid a hand upon her. “Are you in pain, my child?” he asked her. “Let me help you. Come, walk beside me and tell me your trouble.”

“Oh, no, no,” whispered Frau Schmitt hurriedly. “It is nothing. Thank you, thank you so much. You are very kind.”

“It is God who is kind through me, his instrument, his servant,” said the sick man. “I, Wilibald Graf, can heal your sorrows by His grace if only you will believe …”

“Uncle,” said the boy, hoarse with rage, “we are blocking the doorway.” He shoved the chair forward violently, and Herr Graf's fingers still clinging slipped from Frau Schmitt's sleeve. “Oh
no
,” she said, hurrying by, her body clumsy in flight, “thank you!” The shock of his blasphemous proposal dried her tears, her grief made way for a sound religious indignation, and a few minutes later she was talking to the Baumgartners, who had been sitting in a doleful family isolation in the main salon. Herr Baumgartner was making his daily brief losing fight against his longing for a brandy and soda before his dinner, and his wife was waiting coldly for the moment when he should admit defeat. Hans was kneeling on a chair at the window, watching the sea and waiting for his glass of raspberry juice. His mother would then sit between him and his father, her head on her hand, and she would not let either of them out of her sight for a minute if she could help it. Hans wriggled and sighed, seeing Ric and Rac climbing to the very top of the rail, leaning far out over the water, shouting to each other, wild and free. They saw him and put out their tongues at him. Rac turned her back, flipped up her skirts and showed him the seat of her pants. He shrank down a little at this, behind the upholstered chair, shocked but not unpleasantly. He had never seen a girl do
that
before.

Frau Schmitt said to Frau Baumgartner, “Imagine a man on the edge of the grave …” and Frau Baumgartner mentioned, almost shyly, that she had herself known persons, not always in the best of health themselves, who had the power of healing. Indeed, it had sometimes seemed it was their own health they gave away to others, so that they had none left for themselves.

Frau Schmitt shook her head. “His face is not good. He frightened me with the look in his eyes.”

Herr Baumgartner frowned with pain, groaned softly, and said, “There were saints in the old days certainly who could heal the body as well as the soul.”

“He is a Lutheran,” said Frau Schmitt, impulsively, “how could he be a saint?”

Frau Baumgartner stiffened slightly, her tone and manner thoroughly chilled. “We are Lutherans,” she said. “We have our saints also.”

“Oh dear,” said Frau Schmitt, “please believe me when I say I would never willingly offend the religious feeling of anyone—oh, to me, that is an unpardonable thing! I am sure I did not make myself clear …”

“I am afraid you did make yourself very clear indeed,” said Frau Baumgartner, not ceding an eyelash. “There are saints in every church. But I suppose you Catholics think that nobody exists in God's sight but yourselves—I suppose you could not admit that I am as much God's child as you are …”

“Oh please, Frau Baumgartner,” cried little Frau Schmitt, who by now seemed ready to swoon away. “Yes, we are all God's dear children together, and I have never dreamed of anything else. When I said you had no saints in your church, it was my ignorance—I did not
know
you had saints, nobody ever told me! I thought only the Catholic church had saints—forgive me!” She held out her hands wrung together. “Who are they?”

“Who are what?” asked Frau Baumgartner, distracted by the expression on her husband's face which meant he was going to order a brandy and soda.

“Your saints?” asked Frau Schmitt, eager to learn.

“Oh good heavens what a question,” said Frau Baumgartner, firmly putting an end to the scene. “I never discuss religion with anyone. Come Hans,” she called to her son, “we are going to have raspberry juice.” With averted face she snubbed Frau Schmitt finally and forever, and left her sitting there feeling deeply, unjustly injured. Even with the best will in the world, with nothing but kindness in your heart, Frau Schmitt felt again for the thousandth time, how difficult it is to be good, innocent, friendly, simple, in a world where no one seems to understand or sympathize with another; it seemed all too often that no one really wished even to try to be a little charitable.

Captain Thiele, in his talk with Herr Professor Hutten and Dr. Schumann, mentioned the trouble in the steerage that morning. He remarked in the easy tone of one whose authority is not to be disputed, if there was any more disturbance among that riffraff, for any cause, he would lay the troublemakers in irons for the rest of the voyage. He loved to see his small brig occupied, and it was now standing empty. Dr. Schumann mentioned he had been told that one man had a broken nose, another a cut chin. On going down to see for himself, he had found them both getting on very well; he had put court plaster on the nose and had taken two stitches in the chin. Herr Professor Hutten was pained to hear that the fight had been about religion.