Ship of Fools (43 page)

Herr Rieber, after the first few moments of merriment, began to grow more and more thoughtful. As he ate, the cold sweat formed on his temples; it collected in small rivulets on his bald head and ran into his collar. His breath began to come short and agitate his tight round stomach. He stopped eating and pushed back his plate, thinking hard, his underlip pursed out like a sulky child's. Wriggling a little, he wiped his face and head with his napkin and stuffed it in his pocket. Taking it out again at once he folded it neatly as if he were at home, crossed his knife and fork carefully; knife across, fork up and down; his grandmother had taught him he must leave the sign of the Cross on his empty plate as a mark of gratitude to Our Lord for his food, and he never forgot.

“Please excuse me,” he muttered in fussy haste, sidling away and breaking into a short-legged canter as he neared the stairway. Action, quick decisive—yes, the Herr Professor was right. And he, Siegfried Rieber, had through his own carelessness, yes through his own weakness, allowed himself to be put in a false position on this ship, unworthy of his dignity as a German: he was sharing his cabin with Löwenthal, and this should never have been allowed to happen in the first place. It was an inexcusable offense against that natural order of things which he, as well as the Captain, was bound to obey and to see that others obeyed. What could people have been thinking about him all this time? That he was perhaps privately fraternizing with that Jew, treating him as an equal? Herr Rieber was as embarrassed and confused as he remembered to have been in nightmares, where he found himself in a public place, in a crowd, conspicuous for his nakedness in a clothed world; or worse, found himself hideously exposed in some grotesque forbidden act which had drawn upon him the condemnation of a horde of ghostly spectators, not one face of which he recognized, though they every one knew him well, all his vileness, his shameful history …

Ach, Gott! ach Gott
! he told himself, speeding up as he approached the purser's office, this can't go on, no, no—this must be set right at once, all this must be changed
now
!

The purser was leaning back in his deep chair eating a large piece of spicecake he had brought away from the table, a third piece of cake he had seized guiltily as he was leaving. He was enormously fat and getting fatter all the time, and hunger gnawed his vitals night and day. When he saw Herr Rieber peering in upon him, he made a motion to hide the cake under some papers, thought better of it and stuffed the whole chunk in his mouth.

“Come in, then,” he said grumpily, blowing cake crumbs and choking on his mouthful. He swallowed heavily twice and repeated, “Well, come in, please,” with some emphasis on the last word. He felt under-nourished and regretted his cake. He had meant to enjoy it slowly, and he resented Herr Rieber's intrusion. He had never liked the fellow anyway, from the very first day out, and he resolved to do as little as he could for him, no matter what his business.

Herr Rieber went at once to the point. The purser, he was sure, would see the situation at once and clearly. “I have felt the honor of being seated at the Captain's table,” he said. “The Captain is a man very particular in his choice of company. If he will not allow a Jew to sit there in his presence, why then must I share my cabin with one? I must ask you to regulate this mistake at once.”

“He is not a Jew,” said the purser mildly. “It's his wife. I have heard about it.” He pretended to be, if not exactly sympathetic, at least willing to fulfill his duties as purser, part of which consisted of listening to the complaints of fellows like this one. He must not give the little nuisance any cause for thinking he was being neglected. “You are right. I shall see what can be done. There is only one proper place for Freytag, of course; with Löwenthal. If I had known, I would gladly have made that arrangement. But I think now,” said the purser, “in the present case, we shall have to ask Herr Arne Hansen to change into the cabin with you, since he is now quartered with Freytag.”

Herr Rieber heard a dim roaring in his ears at these words. “Hansen no!” he almost shouted, then lowered his voice. “No, that would be almost as bad.”

“Why?” asked the purser, who knew why. Hansen and Rieber had disliked and avoided each other ever since the first day on deck, when they had some sort of silly argument over deck chairs. The purser took no interest in this kind of nonsense—it was merely part of his job to know such things. Herr Rieber said, “That is a fellow I would not want to have around me, that's all.”

“Well, leave it to me,” said the purser, “I will see what can be done. Come back in an hour, please.”

Promptly Herr Rieber returned and the purser, looking very cheerful, had only bad news. Merely for the sake of leaving nothing undone, he had spoken to Herr Hansen about Herr Rieber's predicament. “After all,” said the purser, soothingly, “a Swede is at least a human being.” “Not that one,” said Herr Rieber, gloomily. However, Herr Hansen was not uncomfortable, in fact he expressed very friendly feelings for Herr Freytag, and would remain where he was—so that part was settled. But if Herr Rieber would be willing to move into a cabin with three occupants, no doubt Mister Denny or Mister Scott would be willing to go with Löwenthal, and Herr Rieber could then share the cabin with one or the other and Herr Glocken the hunchback. Herr Rieber objected violently. “No, I could never do that!”

Very well. Then let Herr Glocken move in with Herr Hansen, who would never refuse, the purser was certain. Then Freytag could move in with Löwenthal, and Herr Rieber could move in with Mister Scott and Mister Denny. Herr Rieber thought this over for a while, and at last with deep reluctance decided that such an arrangement might be the least objectionable of the whole series of painful choices. Considering the change as good as made, he went to pack his belongings. Löwenthal was not there; he had got in the habit of spending all but his sleeping hours on deck. When Herr Rieber returned once more to the purser's office, he received a brutal setback.

Under no circumstances whatever, said the purser, evidently repeating verbatim, would Mister Denny or Mister Scott consent to any change at all. Herr Glocken, they said, was a very small man who took up almost no room, they were used to him and he to them, they were nicely shaken down and doing fine and saw no reason to disturb themselves.

The purser then leaned towards Herr Rieber and said in an insinuating manner: “Let me tell you they were really anything but agreeable, oh, I don't mean angry, or anything of that sort—no, just the opposite. You must have heard Americans make fun of people—you know, they always laugh. That makes it worse. Well, that Scott fellow said something in American slang, I think, I couldn't understand it, but at any rate they both laughed—a jeer it is, you know, not really a laugh, and it freezes the blood. I should try to kill anyone who laughed at me like that!—well, at any rate, you don't want to get in there with them. God knows what would happen. I do not trust Americans—they all have Indian, or Negro, or Jewish blood—mongrels and savages. They kidnap little children for money, and then murder them,” said the purser, on the verge suddenly of tears. “Imagine, even if you give the money, they murder them just the same!”

Herr Rieber, who had been listening with his whole head on fire, watching the purser's face with intent blinking eyes, was outraged by this sudden detour from the subject. He suspected the purser of all evil. It was no time to be sniveling over kidnapped children—Americans at that! No doubt he was in collusion with Freytag, who was determined with the effrontery of his race to push himself in among his betters whether they wanted him or not; for though Herr Rieber knew the facts, he would not admit that Freytag was a Christian. He had married a Jew and he
was
a Jew, that settled it … or maybe he was in criminal conspiracy with those foul Americans, who were probably part Jewish themselves. As for Arne Hansen, that big nose of his was not Nordic, let him call himself a Swede if he liked. The purser, at any rate, was clearly a traitor with Jewish sympathies himself; perhaps that Löwenthal had bribed him in the first place for the privilege of sharing a cabin with a German. Herr Rieber fumed himself into a fury, his face swelled and grew scarlet, and he shouted at the purser, “So I am to be called names and laughed at by those guttersnipes and you do not say one word to them?”

“What shall I say?” asked the purser. “I am not responsible for their manners.”

“You let them insult Germans on a German boat, do you? Well, the Captain shall hear of this, we'll see what he has to say to such goings-on on his ship.”

The purser raised one hand mildly. “I advise you earnestly not to mention any business of mine to the Captain,” he said. “Take my word, you will find he does not take kindly to any passenger mingling in the affairs of the ship. I say this to spare you embarrassment,” he added, kindly. And indeed, Herr Rieber seemed to be subsiding into something like despair. “They talk, they do stupid things, what do we care?” asked the purser, largely, and somewhat vaguely. “Try to control yourself, Herr Rieber, this is not such a bad situation, it will all end in a few days! Things can't be settled in a day!” he reminded him, with an air of discovery. “We may yet think of something. Now come,” he said, with fatherly cordiality, “let's have a good glass of beer, and ideas may occur to us.” Herr Rieber revived a little at this, and seemed willing to cultivate patience for a time.

The purser heaved himself up and stood, breathing heavily. It was the hour for his nap, and yet he must be humoring this fool. He said politely, “Let us go,” and restrained, no doubt to his own permanent moral injury, a very pure, laudable impulse to spread his huge fat hand over Herr Rieber's red, sweating face and push, hard.

It was Mrs. Treadwell's birthday, not the first she had spent alone on a train or a ship; she was feeling her age, forty-six, as a downright affront to her aesthetic sense. All the forties were dull-sounding numbers, but forty-six was so hopelessly middle-aged, so much too late to die young, so much too early to think of death at all. The last day of August was a nondescript time to be born, anyway—the coarsened, sprawling sunburnt afternoon of summer, not becoming to her at all; and yet, here she was arrived at that age in human life supposed most to resemble this insect-riddled month … when nothing blooms but weeds in earth, and the soul puts out rank growths, too, according to dreary popular opinion. The lower instincts take alarm for fear they have missed something, are hot for marginal enjoyments. Hearts grow hard and cold, they say, or go overripe and pulpy; women especially, one is told, so often lose their modesty, their grace. They become shrill, or run to fat, or turn to beanpoles, take to secret drinking or nagging their husbands; they get tangled up in disreputable love affairs; they marry men too young for them and get just what they deserve; if they have a little money, they attract every species of parasite, and Lesbians lurk in the offing, waiting for loneliness and fear to do their work; oh, it is all enough to scare anybody, said Mrs. Treadwell, shaking her head and taking up her magazine again.

She was half reclining in her deck chair, partly reading an old copy of
L'Illustration
in a comfortable drowse, partly thinking about her age, which had never really worried her before, when without any warning at all she felt Time itself as a great spider spinning a thick dusty web around her life, winding and winding until it covered all—the light is shut out and the pulse shrivels and the breath is slowly smothered off—Death, death! she said, and her fright was as simple and overwhelming as her fear of the dark when a child. Oh how absurd, she told herself, and stood up, throwing aside the magazine, remembering how her elders talked long ago some pleasant nonsense about growing old gracefully; she had told them firmly then and there that she was never going to grow old at all, no matter how gracefully. And she had believed it—that was what being a child meant. But had she grown up at all, then? Had she simply gone without knowing it from childhood to age, without ever becoming—unattractive word—“mature”? Well, everybody knows that melancholy brooding and a tendency to dwell in the past are most certain signs of growing old. She left her chair and walked to the rail—such a little ship, like a prison almost, so few places to go—and leaned there breathing in the sweet cool wind, assuring herself that this late-summer day in mid-Atlantic was not going so badly—she could easily remember worse birthdays. The heat was lessening gradually, the sunshine was paler; for the past two evenings great motionless columns of cloud had reared up and shone red over the far waters, full of muttering thunder and broad slow lightnings; they were beginning to form again, on a sky-filling scale. “I wish I knew somebody to watch clouds with,” she said, and decided that she did not want a cocktail before dinner.

The thought of dinner reminded her of her tiresome cabin mate Lizzi Spöckenkieker, who had gone on excitedly making great mystification about something that had happened in the dining salon, something about a most significant change in seating arrangements. “But it happened yesterday!” cried Lizzi. “I was waiting for you to speak!”

“What about, though?” asked Mrs. Treadwell, idly, not caring.

“What, you really did not see
anything
?” demanded Lizzi. “And something so much before your very eyes?”

“I didn't look,” said Mrs. Treadwell.

“I am dying to tell you, but no, you must find out for yourself.”

“Does it really concern me, or am I supposed to be peeping?” asked Mrs. Treadwell.

“It concerns all of us,” said Lizzi in an exalted lilting voice. “It is something so wonderful it makes me happy and I want to laugh.” She did laugh and Mrs. Treadwell heard it wondering, thinking that if a hyena suffered from hysteria it would laugh like that. This was the moment she had left the cabin and decided on fresh air and the French magazine for the rest of the afternoon. What had Lizzi called out to her as she closed the door after her? “Ask Herr Freytag—he'll know.” In remembering it, Mrs. Treadwell heard an insinuation in the tone she had not noticed before. Why not then look for Herr Freytag, who had been quite pleasant during their hour in Havana over the planter's punch, hear the newest scandal over cocktails, ask the band to play “
Ich bin die fesche Lola
,” and maybe even dance a little after dinner? She began a search which ended in one of the writing rooms, with Freytag just getting up from a desk with a sealed envelope in his hand. He stood stock-still at sight of her, but she spoke too quickly, before she had got a clear sight of his face.