Ship of Fools (34 page)

Running, they collided somewhere at the head of the steps, and both of them saw the same thing at once and had the same notion about it. The canvas covering of one of the lifeboats was partly unfastened, it hung loose and could easily be opened further. They tried the fastenings, which gave way surprisingly; they raised the flap and wriggled into the boat, Rac first, Ric following, without a word.

The boat was very much deeper than they had thought. With a good deal of scrambling about, they managed to bring their faces up to the opening in the flap, where they listened attentively, faces touching, for some moments. Then the fat man and the scrawny girl passed by them, she buttoning her blouse and both of them very angry-looking. Ric lost his balance and made a scrabbling noise; the girl turned her head and peered toward them without seeing; then she stumbled on the steps and the fat man took her arm. “Careful, my beautiful,” he said softly.

“Stop that,” she said, bitterly, snatching away from him.

Ric and Rac fell back into the boat, all tangled up giggling in the darkness. “Give me my peso,” said Rac fiercely, clutching Ric in the ribs and digging her nails in. “Give me my peso or I'll tear your eyes out.”

“Take it,” said Ric, in the same tone, clenching his fist over the money. “Go on, take it, just try!”

Locked in what seemed to be a death grapple, they rolled to the bottom of the boat and fought furiously, knees in ribs, claws in hair; the pain they inflicted on each other had a strong undertow of pleasure. Little by little they fell quiet and then began to giggle again. A young officer passing stopped to listen, his face very thoughtful. Stepping forward, he snatched back the canvas, and whatever he saw there appeared to turn him to stone for a second. Then, throwing himself over the side and bending down nearly head first, he seized them and dragged them both over the side of the boat. They were as light as if their bones were hollow, and they came out limp and dangling as broken dolls.

La Condesa and Dr. Schumann remained at ease in their long chairs, watching the ship's lights dance in the darkened sea, and the Doctor was saying: “One has no new weaknesses, no new strengths, but only developments, accentuations, diminishments, or perversions of original potentialities. These may at times be so abrupt and powerful they give the illusion of radical change, but it is only illusion, I am afraid. As one grows older, one is more conscious of the shifting, unstable elements in one's temperament. One attempts to keep accounts, to assume control, you might say. One realizes at last, simply and perhaps with some dismay, that what one was told in childhood is after all true—one is immortal certainly, but not in this flesh. One …” He paused.

“One, one—one,” said La Condesa lightly. “Who is this
One
you are always talking about? Let's talk about us—you and me, precisely.”

“Myself, I have a very ordinary weakness of the heart; so I ship as doctor for a voyage or two, following the prescription I have so often given others, hoping for a little repose, imagine. Now if only I can live long enough once more to see my wife chasing the chickens out of our country kitchen with a broom, and scolding steadily, I shall ask no more of this world. How much that dear woman has scolded me, and everybody and everything, all her married life, at least, with such good reasons always, and for everybody's good, for truly she is nearly always right—and what has it come to?”

“Well,” said La Condesa gaily, “for you at least, it has come to an end for a little while.”

Dr. Schumann chose to smile only a little at this and looked away over the rail to the waters. “Imagine me, a doctor, after all these years in quiet Heidelberg thinking I should find repose from the world on a ship. I am astonished at myself for thinking, now maybe I shall learn something new about myself or the people I live with; but no such thing. I have seen all this before, over and over, only never until now did I see it on a ship. These people I have seen them all before, only in other places, under different names. I know their diseases almost by looking at them, and if you know what sickness is in a man you very often can tell what form his vices and his virtues have taken.”

“Now talk about me,” said La Condesa, clasping her long hands lightly about her knee and bending forward from the leg rest of her chair.

There appeared at the upper end of the deck an unusual group in a state of violent action. A young officer with his cap knocked crooked was struggling with those dreadful Spanish twins. Yet in spite of all, the officer continued to advance firmly and managed a kind of ragged progress toward Dr. Schumann and La Condesa, hauling his captives, who were trying to bite his hands.

“More mischief,” said Dr. Schumann, his serenity fading away. “I have yet to see those children in a situation where they are not making trouble for somebody.” He called out to the young officer, “What is happening?”

The young officer blushed at the question. He planted himself before the Doctor and renewed his grip on Ric and Rac, who suddenly gave up struggling and stood stock-still, sullen eyes gazing at nothing. The young officer began: “Sir, these children, these unspeakable—”

Ric and Rac made a concerted bolt for freedom in opposite directions so that his arms flew wide but he did not lose hold of them. His blush deepened until his ears seemed about to burst into flames. He turned his head from side to side, mouth opening and closing in silence, appealing to them both wordlessly that in the presence of a lady he could not continue.

“I am a mother,” said La Condesa encouragingly, giving him a most unmaternal smile; her bright red mouth rounded and softened, her eyebrows went up. “I can guess the very worst and truly I must say I do not find it so bad. What do you think, Doctor?”

“I agree that no matter what they did, they are little monsters,” said Dr. Schumann, bending his head to observe them without hope, “and entirely outside any usual mode of discipline.”

“They were in a lifeboat,” said the young officer, stuttering slightly. “They had unfastened the edge of the canvas top and had crawled in—”

“And were amusing themselves?” asked La Condesa. “Well, il
faut passer la jeunesse
… infancy is a great bore, I find, one's own first, and then other peoples'… my poor children were not in the least monstrous, on the contrary almost disconcertingly normal—but they were quite simply bores until they were eighteen years old. Then they became charming young men to whom one could talk. I do not know how this miracle occurs. And so,” she added, “we must wait and have patience with such phenomena as these,” and she smiled enchantingly at the children, who stared back with utter malignance.

“Nothing of the sort will happen with these,” said Dr. Schumann. “Their evil is in the egg of their souls.” And then to the young officer: “Can't you just hand them over to their parents?”

“Their parents, my God!” said the young officer, in a spurt of contempt and despair. “Have you not seen them, sir?”

“Then,” said La Condesa, “I see nothing for it but to let them go—or,” and she looked tenderly into the burning eyes of the two little criminals, “perhaps we should save time and trouble for everybody if we threw them overboard?”

“Yes, Madame, a good idea,” said the young officer, grimly, “and a pity it cannot be carried out.”

“Oh, you take everything too seriously,” she said. “They're only children.”

“Devil-possessed, though,” said Dr. Schumann. La Condesa studied his friendly benevolent face now overcast with an almost military severity. “What an old-fashioned sort of man you are,” she said, admiringly.

The Doctor's eyelids flinched once. “Yes, I know—a little dull, no doubt.”

“But charming!” she said, and reached for his hand.

The young officer, whose moral sense was in a particularly tender, inflamed state, was almost as shocked by this gesture as he had been by the sight of Ric and Rac in the boat. So all the rumors he had heard about La Condesa were true! He saw himself abandoned to his dilemma with Ric and Rac—very well, they were no worse than their elders. Let them do as they pleased. He loosed them as if he were throwing off vipers; they broke instantly into their long, shambling run up the deck. He then bowed with a courtesy as false as he dared to show to La Condesa and the Doctor, straightened his cap and moved on.

La Condesa glanced after him and laughed, in a fresh, joyous tone, her eyes glistening. “Poor, nice young man,” she said, “he's still too young—too young to remember his own childhood. Dear Doctor, I have never understood the dogma of Original Sin. Children are only perfectly natural little animals before they are brought under the whip—why be shocked at them?”

“There is nothing discoverable of good in these,” said the Doctor. “Never these. Why deceive ourselves with hope? They will come to no good end.”

“They are not in such a good state now,” said La Condesa. She leaned back and drew a long breath. “What kind of childhood had you?”

“An innocent one,” said Dr. Schumann, in perfect good temper again, “or so I like to think.”

“Ah, so you like to think and maybe it is true,” cried La Condesa. “But can't you remember anything interesting at all? Did nothing gay ever happen to you?”

Dr. Schumann meditated in silence for a few moments, began to smile rather reluctantly, then decided to make a clean breast of it.

“Innocence,” he began, “our highly debatable innocence …”

“So you do have some amusing memories,” said La Condesa, laying her silky hand over his, the blue veins standing up branched like a little tree. “Well, truth—to encourage you—I was never innocent, never. I had not the opportunity, for one thing, surrounded as I was by attractive cousins, boys of the most adventurous temperament, like mine. I had no aptitude for it, above all, never the wish. I could never endure to think that any secret or any pleasure was being kept from me. I surmised without help, everything, very early. From there to experience, it was only a step; from experience to habit a matter of moments. I cannot be sorry for anything except that I did not always make the most of my chances!”

“I
was
innocent,” said Dr. Schumann, “as a calf; full of hopes and animal spirits, a simple soul without a care, believing everything I was taught, an obedient loving child … I could be kissed into anything,” he said. “But still, it is true that at the age of five I seduced my little girl cousin aged three, and at six I was in turn seduced by a little girl playmate aged nine. In our ignorance, we did preposterous things—not even parodies,” he said. “Both of my playmates were very nice, charming, virtuous girls who turned out well, married happily, and spanked their own children thoroughly for the least thing. Yet I say, the impulses that drove us were grounded in Original Sin, in which I believe as I do the Real Presence.…”

“I believe in neither,” said La Condesa, without emphasis.

“Still you must allow me my beliefs,” said the Doctor, gently. “As for innocence, does anyone know what it is? For I remember guilt and pleasure, always associated, yet never seeming to touch that part of my life and those acts founded on the moral law and which seemed real to me and not a fable, or a mere daydream, and which I do believe were innocent.”

“I shall not try to follow this,” said La Condesa. “Are we not talking for pleasure? Theological discussion fills me with gloom. I had all the joys of sinning as you call it, without guilt,” she said, with a certain complacency. “But you must have been a most charming little person. I should have adored you, even then. Some of my crimes were of a base, unimaginative order, I am sorry to say. When I was four I persuaded my little brother to drink lye-water used for cleaning drains, telling him it was milk. He took a mouthful, spat it out, ran shrieking. He was rescued at once, his mouth scrubbed out; I was punished, beaten black and blue; otherwise nothing came of it. And indeed, I meant no harm—I was only curious to see whether it would kill him. But older people do not understand these things.”

“Ah, childhood,” said Dr. Schumann, “time of the tender bud, the unfolding leaf.” They both laughed pleasantly and sat back in their long chairs.

“Truth is, it was not so bad,” said La Condesa. She lifted the Doctor's hand and slipped her fingers between his, knitting them together.

“I love you,” she said, gently and unexpectedly. “Not so much you, perhaps, though you are very nice, but I love what you are. I like gravity and seriousness and strong principles in a man. There is nothing more repellent to me than a frivolous, timid, vacillating man, who does not know his own mind and his own heart. And why? Because then he cannot ever know the mind and heart of a woman. Were you ever unfaithful to your wife?”

“Well!” exclaimed Dr. Schumann. “What a question!”

“Oh yes, I know, you have to be surprised and even a little shocked. It is quite proper, you are always right. But think a moment. It is not just curiosity and impertinence in me. Partly that, of course, but there is something more besides, and it is that something more I want you to believe—”

Dr. Schumann untangled his fingers from hers, took her hand in his, and then slipped his fingers to her pulse.

“How does it do?” she asked. “Is it settling down?”

“Very well,” he said, “perhaps better than mine just now. But then I have told you,” he said, and yet could not help mentioning again his unsteady heart. “At any moment,” he told her, and laid her hand down again.

“I think it is enviable to know how you will die,” she said, “and that it will be sudden and not ugly. I wish I knew, because I am afraid of long suffering and disfigurement. I don't want to leave a hideous body behind me—”

“You are just hopelessly vain,” said Dr. Schumann, and it sounded as if he were praising her. “I know that nothing is more precious than beauty to the one who has it. And it is hard to come into the world in beauty and to go out in ugliness. And it is like any other gift or quality in the least worth having, you must be born with it, you cannot acquire it, and you should treat it as it deserves.”