Ship of Fools (40 page)

“I do not know any Jews named Freytag,” he said, and the tremor of his rage got into his voice, “that is, except one—my wife,” he said, and he raised his voice and steadied it. “She is Jewish and her name is Freytag, and she does it honor.”

The instant he heard the words pronounced he knew he had let himself be trapped again into temper, into melodrama, into a situation as false as it was unnecessary. His mother-in-law had spotted this weakness in him. A little mockingly she advised him: “Remember the rules! Never tell your family business. Never say what you are expected to say. Answer one question with another.” She said it with laughter, but he noticed that she practiced it seriously. He had felt again and again that he was living between two armed and irreconcilable camps, deserter from one side, intruder in the other, the turncoat nobody trusted. How often, when he had found himself alone among Jews, after he married Mary, they had attacked him, from all sides at once, some of them with open contempt, or a genuine personal dislike; others told Jewish jokes against the Goyim, and they used in his hearing the disrespectful names for Christians they used in their private talk. And now his own side—he turned his eyes slowly along the faces at the table, and there was not one he did not find detestable—his own side, for these were his people, were getting another chance at him; they would never let up on a German who had degraded himself so. He decided he had had enough; with his hands against the edge of the table he pushed back his chair.

Lizzi cried out in shrill excitement, so that he stopped on the point of standing up. “Oh, Herr Freytag, how strange! We some of us thought
you
were the Jew—how could we have been so blind?—and only a few evenings ago, I was talking to that odd American woman who shares my cabin—you know her? Mrs. Treadwell? and she told me something I simply did not believe—that no, it was your
wife
—just as you say!”

“Mrs. Treadwell?” repeated Freytag, shocked. “She said that?”

“Of course, am I not saying so? But—please don't misunderstand me—she was a little—you know, she drinks—sometimes she is very vague …” She looked for understanding in the faces now all pointed towards her with exact attention. Nothing however disreputable they could hear about the Americans on board could surprise them. Lizzi ended: “Well, more than once, a whole bottle of wine, by herself, after dinner!”

Freytag got up decisively at this point, favored his circle of compatriots with a nasty smile, and spoke like an actor giving the curtain line: “Well, I leave Mrs. Treadwell to your tender mercies!” and did not wait for an answer. And may they pull you into pieces, he wished hotly, noticing her seated alone at her small table, eyelids lowered, the living image of innocence, eating ice cream. He was struck with a wish to have a table to himself. He would speak to the head steward about it tomorrow. He could not stick that crowd at the Captain's table much longer. One more round of remarks about the Jews and he would slap their faces, once each. Yes, even Dr. Schumann, old hypocrite, who had got out without committing himself. And instantly upon this blaze of fury came a chill straight from the grave—he was going even now to Mary's relatives, those of them who would still call on Mary's mother, or come for dinner: to listen to jokes about the Goyim, jokes that had burnt acid-holes in his memory, and in his feelings for all of them. He leaned on the rail and gazed into the darkening water, by now no longer the pleasant novelty it had been. “Can I be thinking of suicide?” he asked himself after a short interval of rigid blankness; for all the time when he believed his mind was empty, he had seen himself going smoothly as a professional diver head-first in the depths, sinking slowly and slowly to the very ocean floor, and lying there flat, for good and all, eyes wide open, in perfect ease and contentment. He pulled up with a shudder, blinked several times, and began to walk. The image had been so clear it unnerved him almost. But no, nothing to worry about. That easy way out was not for him. His way was clear—the road ran all the way in, and through, and out again on the other side; all he had to do was to keep going, and not lose his head, and not let Jew or Christian bedevil him into losing his temper and playing into their hands. In the meantime, he'd like just a word with that Mrs. Treadwell; but no hurry.

The Captain left his second cup of dinner coffee and went out to grant, on the bridge deck, not in his private quarters, a curt interview to Fräulein Lizzi Spökenkieker, who embodied to the last trait and feature everything the Captain found most positively repellent in womankind; and to her besotted admirer Herr Rieber, who must surely be lacking in some indispensable male faculty, such as taste or judgment where women were concerned. They had requested to see him in writing, which gave an urgency no doubt spurious to their occasion. What business could they have with him that would not wait until lunch tomorrow, if not even to the judgment day? He suppressed a belch and eyed them sternly, meaning to warn them even at this late moment that he was not to be disturbed frivolously.

Both of his visitors were breathless at their own daring, the honor being done them, and the importance of their errand. Their message was simple but cogent. Not only the Captain's own guests, but many other German passengers, had almost from the first their suspicions that there was one person at the Captain's table who had no right to be there. Perhaps not a Jew himself—though they had no proof that he wasn't except his own word—but he was known—indeed, he declared it at table before everybody—that he had Jewish connections of a most intimate nature—in fact a wife! Oh how Fräulein Lizzi and Herr Rieber regretted to cause unpleasantness of any kind, but they were so certain the Captain should know, would indeed wish to know of such an unheard-of mischance at his table. They understood well that such details properly belonged to his subordinates, and yet—yet—

The Captain, instantly sensitive to the faintest implication that a subordinate of his should dare to be remiss in duty however slight—indeed, there was no such thing as a
slight
duty on his ship—now bridled haughtily and said, “Of course, I am very grateful to you for your thoughtfulness. I agree it is a most unusual occurrence.” Lizzi added impulsively, stretching her long neck at him and cackling in her highest voice, that the dear Captain had done so much for all of them and they could do so little for him, it was a divine pleasure to be of even the smallest service to him. The Captain, whose irritations invariably translated and expressed themselves in a knife-edged grinding and growling of his bowels, now began to feel his familiar distress. With many more thanks and compliments, even taking three steps forward with them to speed them on their way in the right direction, he dismissed them—they had been standing all the time on the well-lighted bridge deck under a starry sky—and burning, went to look for his bismuth. Changing his mind, he gulped down the last of the coffee and swallowed a drink of schnapps. This eased him at least for the moment, and with no period for reflection, he did not need it, he set in motion at once a train of events that would shortly result in a slight but significant rearrangement of the seating order in the dining room.

This done, the Captain's mind turned to relatively happier topics. La Condesa—ah, the right thought occurred at once. He would send her a little present of wine, an attention no lady could find fault with. She reminded him of his university days—he had hung around stage entrances and yearned after strange idols, great wax dolls so painted, laced, covered and disguised in the hieratic dress of their calling, he had offered his modest flowers and wine, his shy boyish itch of sex, his dirty little dreams without ever daring to get within arm's reach. He had never been able to imagine one of them undressed, and he had never even once confused any of them with any living women he had known. Yet he loved his dream of them, and La Condesa somehow brought it all back. The Doctor was right, though—it would not do to be too lenient with her. She must be kept in order, perhaps reminded from time to time that she was his, the Captain's, prisoner. He sent her two bottles of well-chilled sparkling white wine, with a gallant little note: “Dear Madame: We Germans no longer use the word ‘champagne' nor indeed, drink that rather pretentious wine any longer. So I am happy to say this modest offering is not French, but only good
Schaumwein
from an honest German vineyard, sent to you by one who wishes you well in the cordial hope that it may bring you an evening's refreshment and enjoyment. In the meantime, please do me the great favor to obey your doctor's orders and keep to your stateroom for so long as he thinks necessary for the good of your health.” And he was, so to speak, entirely at her service.

When Dr. Schumann called on La Condesa to administer the last hypodermic for the day, he found her in a fit of laughter, sitting up in bed with a red damask bedgown falling off her shoulder, her curly reddish hair somewhat too youthful for her face, standing up in tendrils waving like little serpents. She held a note open in her hand, and beside her were two bottles of German champagne.

“Ah,” she called out in delight, “you are just in time to share my wine and my love letter from the Captain! Oh, come and laugh with me please?” She gave him the note, and as he stood looking at it uncertainly, the stewardess, obeying Dr. Schumann's latest instruction always to be present at the giving of the narcotic, knocked and entered.

“What are you doing here,” demanded La Condesa, “did I send for you?”

“Let her stay,” said the Doctor. “I cannot read this letter, I am sure the Captain does not mean anyone but yourself to see it.”

“As if it mattered what the Captain means!” cried La Condesa. “It concerns you too! I am ordered to obey you and keep to my stateroom—in a word, I am in jail again!”

Uncomfortably, Dr. Schumann held the paper nearly at arm's length as if distance might lessen the fault of reading something not meant for him to see, while the stewardess began to pull at the bed coverlets and reached for the pillows to plump them. “Wait until you are told to do these things. Don't come near me unless I send for you,” said La Condesa. The stewardess backed away with a scarlet face and stood near the doorway.

“No, you exaggerate. And you distrust the Captain, who wishes to protect you, and I, who wish to help you, and yet look at your amiability, your confidence, in those mannerless students who should treat you with the regard due a mother, and yet!—I cannot repeat to you the disrespectful things they have been heard to say about you, but please take my word for it, they say them! Tell me, why do you let them make you a laughingstock?”

“Do they?” said La Condesa, and she reached out to stroke his hand. “On this ship? Well, that amuses me. You have heard someone laughing? Do not all boys speak disrespectfully of women of any age?” She laughed, holding her head. “I am not their mother! If I were, they might have better manners, better family, better minds, more imagination, and I think, I am almost certain, they would be somewhat better-looking too. No, I am attached to them because they were schoolfellows of my sons, my charming young madmen who must go running off after something they called the Revolution!” She turned to him with a face of distress, her hands beginning to dance. “Where are they now? I hid them for a day and night under the altar in the chapel, and the soldiers and the ruffians were everywhere, yet not one thought of looking under the altar! Then they set the whole hacienda on fire, cane fields and all … and my sons escaped, but I was taken away—”

Her voice had lapsed into the monotonous complaining light chant he had heard that first day out on shipboard, but she wrapped her arms around her knees and looked at him very reasonably. “It is over,” she said. “They are gone. They will never come again.”

“How do you know?” asked Dr. Schumann. “Can you not wait a little patiently for news? This need not be the end! I think you make everything unnecessarily difficult,” he told her. “Have we not troubles enough as it is?”

“We? You have troubles, too?”

“You are my trouble,” he told her, “but I shall help you if I can!”

“Do,” she said, lightly, her arms falling away to her sides. “Do try!”

“Captain Thiele has not sent you a command, but a recommendation; I hope you will take his advice as well as mine. He is an honorable man.”

“I shall always take yours, always,” she said, with her habitual gesture of reaching for his hand, which this time he quite openly evaded. She drew hers back instantly and laughed again. “
Schaumwein
!” she said in mocking delight, making it an absurd sound. “Oh, how ineffably German! I'm sure the Captain's honor is just as good an imitation as this,” and she flourished one of the bottles.

“Please,” said Dr. Schumann, feeling a new sort of sting of anger against her that made him sound touchy and quarrelsome. “If you please, remember I am German, too—” and he stopped himself just short of saying something as ridiculous as “and proud of it.”

“Ah, yes,” said La Condesa, and she sighed with real weariness, “too true. It's an incurable malady, isn't it? As hopeless as being a Jew.”

“Or a woman,” said Dr. Schumann with malice, “you said so yourself.”

“It is not the same,” said La Condesa almost gaily, “I am not going to listen to you any longer, I have something better to do.” She threw back the covers and swung her delicate white feet, legs bare to the knees, over the side of the bed, let her bedgown fall away, and stood up in a limp blue silk shift that hardly covered her thighs. She picked up the two bottles of the Captain's
Schaumwein
and went to the washhand stand. She wrapped each in a towel neatly, then stood back at the right distance and crashed them, one and then the other, against the metal edge of the bowl. The jagged glass flew from the bottom of the towels and the wine foamed up through the cloth and splashed the walls, the looking glass and the carpet. Leaving the debris, she nodded to the stewardess. “Now you will have something to do,” she said, pleasantly.