Ship of Fools (51 page)

They made their bows and escaped. “Not so fast, please,” she said, on the stairs, breathing heavily and limping. Her husband slowed his step immediately. “Ah,” she said gratefully, then hurried on to speak before the silence full of danger could widen between them, “my dear, why I spoke as I did, I cannot think!”

The Professor's tone was measured as his step. “Save your breath for the stairs, my dear,” he said coldly. “When a wife contradicts her husband, at some length, in public and before strangers, on a subject to which he has devoted some thought, and about which she knows nothing—may I remind you that if she cannot think why she speaks, she may have done better to keep silence?”

“Oh God, oh God!” cried Frau Hutten, falling into a moral huddle before the awful traps of life, her life which was like walking in the dark with wires stretched across the path. “Oh God, I didn't mean it!”

The Herr Professor almost stopped in his tracks, then lunged forward again abruptly. “You did not mean it?” he asked in amazement. “You were then only talking frivolously? Like a woman? When you say such things, it is unpardonable not to mean them. Only a mistaken sincerity can excuse such wrongheadedness! What am I to understand then? That you merely wished for your own reasons to put your husband to shame? What disloyalty!”

“Oh God, no!”

“Disloyalty to my ideas,” said her husband, resuming his reasonable tone after his brief outburst of righteous wrath, “to my whole mind, to my humble career as scholar, to the entire inner meaning of my life, which I had so foolishly confided to your hands—merely that,” he assured her, with dreadful gentleness, “nothing, nothing at all!”

They were in the passageway leading to their cabin, and both of them saw at once that the door was wide open. Each felt the shock in the other's body. The Professor recovered first.

“How could you have done that?” he asked his wife, still in that reasonable voice which nearly drove her distracted when there was no reason at all in what he was saying.

“I didn't do it,” she said, and the tears came up, “why must I always be blamed for everything?”

“This is not a time for self-pity,” said the Professor, “you came out after me and closed the door, or so I supposed. I remember your hand on the knob.”

“No, I can't bear that,” she told him, tremulously, “whenever in your life did you go through a door before me? You know you hold the door for me and close it after us.”

At this, the Herr Professor stood and studied his wife's face as if he had never seen her before, and was ready to dislike her on first sight.

“I do that?” he asked with sarcasm. “You are sure I have always been so courteous to you?”

“Yes,” she said, “you have always been.” She met his eyes with perfect obduracy. The Professor was shaken somewhat—in some devilish way she had got him in an awkward fix, because of course he did observe courtesy with her; habit had become second nature and he no longer remembered his acts; but no doubt he had held the door, and …

“Thieves, perhaps,” he said, as they entered, and pretended to examine the lock. His wife was stooping over slightly, peering with crinkled lids in every corner.

“He is not here,” she said in a small childish voice, “my dear, he's gone.… He has wandered out by himself because you left the door open!”

“I forbid you to say that!” he almost shouted.

“… He is lost and looking for us. He is wondering why we deserted him. Somebody will beat him or kick him if he wanders into some place he shouldn't be. Oh, let's go back quickly and find him, oh why couldn't you think of Bébé when you left the door open? He is like a child, he wants to go everywhere with us … Oh how could you?”

“You are still not thinking, that is clear,” said the Herr Professor, pulling himself together with a mighty shrug and a sudden upward and outward gesture of his right hand. “Come, let's look for the beast before you become entirely unhinged. Has it not occurred to you that this could be a matter of breaking and entering, theft may have been the object, where are your garnet necklace and your grandmother's diamond earrings?”

“With the purser,” answered Frau Hutten, the tears running freely by now. “Please, let's go find him?”

The Professor, hand on knob, stood aside for her to pass, and drew the door closed firmly after him. “Can you not see, my dear, how securely it is closed when I close it?”

“This once,” she answered implacably. Not for the first time did the Professor dwell with warm sympathy on the wisdom of the fathers about women: they were merely children of a larger growth, and needed a taste of the rod now and then to keep them in order. In gnawing silence, arm in arm, they set out again, pacing up and down the closed corridors of the lower decks, asking everybody, passengers, sailors, officers, stewards, whether any of them had seen their dog. “Surely you remember him? a white bulldog—the only dog on the ship.” Several claimed to remember him, but no one had seen him that evening. They turned and climbed upward once more. Frau Hutten felt her husband's shoulder rise and his elbow thrust out giving her a slight impatient nudge in the side, as if her weight were a burden to him. She was so frightened she almost let go of his arm, and then dared not for fear he would take her sign of wounded feelings as resentment. This new fear caused her to cling tightly, knowing at this point that anything she did, or left undone, would only offend him further.

The after-dinner waltz music was thumping along vigorously on the port-side deck, a beat regular as a clock striking, mingled on the wind with the wandering current of a wilder strain from the accordions below, where the men of the steerage were dancing in circles, clapping hands, snapping fingers, clacking heels, clattering castanets and shouting “
Olé
!” while the women and children watched in stillness, massed in the shadows.

“Oh, Papa,” said Elsa, pleadingly, “I don't want to dance … always those same old waltzes …”

Her mother said, “Now Elsa, you know that is no reason not to dance. The waltz is very pretty and becoming to a lady. What do you want, to dance that indecent jazz? What would they think of you in St. Gallen?”

“No, Mother, just a fox trot, maybe …”

“Well, my Elsa,” said her father, “you are just being shy, so now let me tell you that when you go to a dance, you dance first with your escort. Now I am your escort, so you will dance first with me and then, who knows? You haven't danced with your papa since your last birthday dance.”

“And then when you are seen dancing,” said her mother, “someone else will invite you.”

Elsa at her first glance round had seen her student dancing with that Spanish girl called Pastora, and her heart, which felt bruised all the time, was crushed again. She put her hand on her father's arm, dreading the coming ordeal. No matter what the music, her father danced a funny little hopping and whirling dance, swinging her out and bringing her in again on the turns, stamping his feet in pauses while she hung suspended waiting for his next move. She dared not even look around her for fear of seeing people making fun of them both. She was taller and larger than he, and he pranced like a little bantam saying loudly, “Lift your feet, Elsa, my girl, move, move, can't you hear the music?”

Elsa longed to cry out, “I am not a mealsack, I am not a broom, this is no way to dance, you are making us ridiculous, nobody but you would dance like this!” Her father's face was merry and full of love as he stamped and romped and hauled her about against her will, and she went with him, suffering numbly because a girl must obey her father.

One white-clad young officer standing near said to another who was just moving into the fray for the evening: “One of us must do something about that girl. Now which?”

The other took a small coin from his pocket, said, “Heads or tails?”

“Heads,” said the other. The coin fell tails. The spinner said, “It is all yours,” and picked up his coin. “Your time will come,” said the other. They both laughed, and the loser moved in gently at the end of the dance and spoke to Frau Lutz with the deepest respect. “I should so enjoy dancing with your daughter,” he said, bowing, “with your permission.”

“You may invite her,” said Frau Lutz, with the highest elegance as if she were conferring a priceless favor. Alas, Elsa was taller and larger than the dapper little officer, too, and felt it bitterly, and could not catch step with him, either. He felt moisture on the back of his neck, seized her more firmly, asserted himself, pushed her unresisting but unresponsive bulk here and there as long as the music lasted, always managing to avoid her feet and to keep almost in time with the band. At the end, he thanked her profusely and handed her back to her parents and fled. “You see?” said Frau Lutz. “One thing leads to another. We are going in to play chess, but we are not far away. Stay here and enjoy yourself. We will come for you in an hour.”

Elsa looked about desperately for a place to hide, or failing that, to sit. The stewards had left several deck chairs about, and one of them was near the chair of the poor sick man, the poor sick man who believed he could cure others even though he was dying himself. She went near to him, timid and uncertain of her welcome, made tender and charitable by her own sufferings and feelings of being shut out from natural life. She was still several steps away from him when he lifted his hand eagerly and motioned towards a chair near him. “Bring it closer,” he said, “and let us talk.”

She drew the chair towards him, and sat so awkwardly her knees nearly touched his. She veered around and her sad gaze roamed over the dancing pairs: Jenny Brown and Herr Freytag; Mrs. Treadwell and the best-looking of the young officers, a gold-braided one, too; hers had had only silver. Herr Hansen always always with that terrible Amparo—and, hard to believe but there they were, turning and swaying with not a rift of light between them, the sulky boy Johann and that girl called Concha. Nobody for Elsa—nobody, and there would never be; she would always sit and watch her love dancing with someone else, and always someone like Pastora! Her blood surged so hard in her veins she began to ache all over with real pain. Herr Graf saw her distress and asked kindly: “How are you feeling tonight?” before she remembered to inquire about his own health. “Why are you not dancing, a fine young girl like you? You should be dancing with my wild nephew instead of that strange girl he is with …”

“I have a sore throat, I think,” she said, not knowing very well how to lie fluently. “My mother says it is better for me to be quiet.”

“Come nearer still,” he said, “lean towards me, I will cure your throat. You need not be sick so long as God lends me His power to heal you.” His hand was lifted ready to reach out and touch her. She leaned away instead, slow mind and honest flesh repelled by his corpselike nearness, death itself—

“But then, first make yourself well,” she said, softly but forthrightly.

“‘He saved others, let him save himself,'” Herr Graf rejoined instantly, for he had heard this speech many times before. “‘
If
he be Christ,' remember? He gave the power of healing to his chosen disciples and apostles, yet not one of them could save himself, either, nor can we of the holy descent, even to this day. Why should I heal myself? God does not will it, and so neither do I. Listen to me, my child—if I could heal myself I should become selfish like the others; I should go about my own pleasures and forget my duty to the suffering ones. God wills it I should stay and suffer with others in houses of pain and death. Only in my own pain am I useful to Him, He has given me His word. It is not so hard,” he said in a weak whisper almost drowned by the sound of the waves, the wind blowing past her ears. She inclined deeply to him to catch the words, respectful of the holy speech, and he said, “Don't pity me. It is easy. It is my visitation of God's love.”

She was silent, on the edge of tears. The music rose piercingly, the lighted deck looked so festive with its floating dancers, even those dreadful Spanish twins seemed happy for once—the stars seemed so near and the rushing wind was so sweet, so pure, so cool and clean and
good
—

“I must go now,” she said, uneasily, “I wish you a very good night, Herr Graf. Thank you for offering to help me … but I am not really sick, not really—”

“I have taken the pains of the world, the diseases of all the diseased, upon myself,” he told her, “into my own flesh, and so I will take your sore throat, too, and your unhappiness … but I must touch you,” he said. He drew himself forward, straightening his neck a little, pointed thin beard rising from his chest. “Let me touch your throat,” he said, “and say a prayer for you, and you will be truly well, body and soul.” Before she dared to draw back, not wishing to be rude, he stretched out his arm and clasped her throat with his long cold bony hand, the curved fingers clung feebly for an instant and slipped away, sliding over her breasts and falling back upon his lap rug. He saw her face of horror, felt the firm flesh shudder keenly. “God forgive you, you hard-hearted girl,” he said sternly. She stood up and turned away, but not before she saw the tears sliding out and down his cheeks into the scanty dirty-looking beard. In desperate haste she ran up the deck past the dancers, dodged the white bulldog Bébé, who appeared at that moment coming down the steps from the boat deck, and plunged into the lighted salon. Her father and mother were so engrossed in their chess game they barely nodded to her as she sat down near them. She was gasping a little.

“You seem out of breath, Elsa?” asked her mother. “Have you been dancing so hard as all that?” They both then favored their daughter with beaming warm intimate little family smiles of approval. “Ah, good, good,” said her father, “our Elsa must not be the kind of girl who sits against the wall. Now go to bed,” he instructed her, “and get your beauty sleep.”