Ship of Fools (54 page)

Denny turned his head with a leer meant to be full of ridicule, turned back to the sea pointing, and asked, “Is that him, down there?”

Frau Hutten looked down and saw the boat being drawn up with Bébé sprawled in the bottom. She gave a shriek, fell back against her husband's chest so violently he almost toppled, then fell forward as he seized her waist; he could feel by the surge of her body that if he had not been holding her, she would have gone forward full length upon her face.

The sailors lifted the long narrow body of the man over the side, limp as seaweed, his bare feet with crooked toes dangling, the shabby black wool scarf still knotted around his neck; the water streamed from his clothes as they carried him carefully back down to the steerage deck. Two sailors hoisted Bébé into Frau Hutten's opened arms. She tottered under his nerveless weight, let him down on deck, and kneeling beside him, wept aloud like a mother at the graveside of her only child.

“How really revolting,” said David Scott to Wilhelm Freytag, who happened to be near. Herr Baumgartner heard and could not refrain from protest.

“But grief is grief, pain is pain, Herr Scott, no matter what the cause,” he said, his mouth wan and drooping.

“Ah, the drooling German soul,” said Freytag in pure disgust, moving away, remembering with an unpleasant start that this was a phrase of his wife's, and one he had always resented from her. Herr Professor Hutten, in a heavy sweat of humiliation, finally got his wife to her feet, a sailor came forward to help him carry Bébé, and the mournful little group disappeared. At this point it occurred to Herr Lutz to suggest to one of the young officers that perhaps Dr. Schumann should be sent for to attend the nearly drowned man. “They are already giving him resuscitation exercises,” said the officer, as a rebuff to officiousness. But he did send for Dr. Schumann as, to be sure, he had intended to do without advice from a passenger.

Dr. Schumann walked slowly down the passage on his way to the main deck, not being able to decide by the sounds what sort of panic or emergency it was, and met La Condesa at the first turning, strolling like a ghost, in a black nightgown and a long old brocade wrap trimmed with monkey fur.

“Ah, there you are,” she said in a dreamy childish voice and reached to touch his face with her fingertips as if she did not expect to find him solid flesh. “What is the strange noise? Is the ship sinking?”

“I think not,” he said, “what are you doing here?”

“I am walking about, just as you are,” she answered. “My stewardess ran away. Why not? The steward told her something was happening.”

“Maybe you had better come with me,” said Dr. Schumann, taking her arm.

“I'd like nothing better,” she whispered. He saw that the drug he was giving her was beginning to lose its effect; by this hour she should have been unconscious—no shipwreck could wake her. His heart gave a perilous leap of rage when he thought of her abandoned there by that cowardly stewardess, and yes—yes, abandoned by him, who had caused her to be made helpless and then had left her to her fate. In this moment of possible danger he had not given her a thought. “God help me,” he said, almost terrified at the evil he was discovering in his own nature.

“Let's walk a little faster,” he told her, “the ship seems to be turning. There is surely something gone very wrong.”

“How can you tell if the ship is turning?” asked La Condesa, moving he thought as if she were already under water. She leaned until her cheek touched his shoulder and spoke in a wavering chant. “Imagine, if the ship should sink, we should go down together embraced, gently, gently to the bottom of the sea, quiet dark love in the cool sleepy water.…”

Dr. Schumann's hair moved crinkling upon his crown, he had a savage impulse to strike her from him, this diabolical possession, this incubus fastened upon him like a bat, this evil spirit come out of her hell to accuse him falsely, to seduce his mind, to charge him with fraudulent obligations to her, to burden his life to the end of his days, to bring him to despair.

“Hush,” he said, putting into that mild word a weight of command that arrested her roving attention, and even lighted a small flicker of life in her voice: “Ah yes, I do talk too much, you always said so!”

“I never said such a thing,” said Dr. Schumann, flatly.

“Oh never—not in words,” she answered, lapsing once more into her half-stupor. On the stairs she roused a little and said, “Isn't that my stewardess coming back?” It was, and behind her came the steward. “You are needed below, sir,” he said. “Man overboard, half drowned.”

Dr. Schumann said to the stewardess, “Take this lady to her cabin and don't leave her again without an order from me.” Returning to his own cabin to pick up his black case, he reflected on the expression on the face of the stewardess as she acknowledged his rebuke—an unpleasant mixture of furtive insolence and false abasement, the all too familiar look of resentful servility. He reflected uneasily that she could not be trusted, and La Condesa, who knew well how to deal with her sort, was now in no condition to control her. His agitation grew as he felt the oppression of the increasing millions of subhuman beings, the mindless grave-stuff not even fit to be good servants, yet whose mere mass and weight of negative evil threatened to rule the world. Sweat broke out on his forehead, he slipped a small white pellet under his tongue, picked up his case, and set out walking as fast as he dared, in the hope of saving a nameless, faceless fool in the steerage who had been stupid enough to fall overboard. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” he prayed, to chase away the stinging swarm of his thoughts, and crossed himself openly as he emerged on deck, without caring who saw. Frau Rittersdorf saw, and crossed herself responsively, saying on impulse to the Lutz family, “Ah, the dear good man, going with prayer on his errand of charity!”

“Charity?” inquired Herr Lutz, who considered that Frau Rittersdorf gave herself airs above her station in life—she was no better than he was! “Charity in what way? He is only doing a duty that he is paid for, after all!”

Frau Rittersdorf gave him a bright stare of amused curiosity as if he were a kind of strange insect, and moved away in silence.

Father Garza, surrounded by weeping women and gloomy men huddled on the floor in the stinking cabin beside the bunk where the drowned man lay, rose from his knees and turned when Dr. Schumann stood in the doorway. A weak naked light hung from the ceiling, and a single candle burned on the small collapsible table the priest had brought with him for the Viaticum ceremony. He blew out the candle and assembled the sacred objects, and shook his head.

“Too late, I'm afraid,” he said, smiling rather cheerfully, “for materia medica.”

“Still,” said Dr. Schumann, “there is something to be done,” and he advanced with his stethoscope and sat on the edge of the grimly dirty bunk where the dead man, naked to the waist, washed and purified by the salt sea, lay at perfect ease in the state and dignity of his death.

Dr. Schumann in his long experience as unwilling witness of death in nearly all its aspects had never lost his awe and tenderness for that Presence. He felt it now, again, an almost visible shade hovering over them. He knew by all the signs and all his senses that the man was dead, yet he continued for some time to listen intently through his instrument for some flutter or whisper of life in the gaunt rib cage and the sunken famished belly of the long body with its great knotted shoulder joints, the skeleton arms, and big warped hands, now curled inward like a child's. Nothing. He rose and took a last glimpse at the dark melancholy exhausted face now closed in a secretive faint smile. The women, huddled together near the dead man's feet, began praying aloud, their rosaries clicking, and one of the men came forward and crossed the limp hands on the breast, and tenderly covered him up.

“Can you imagine anything more absurd,” said Father Garza to Dr. Schumann in his atrocious German as they walked back slowly and took a turn around the deck together, “than this, that a man jumps from a moving ship at night in mid-ocean and is drowned, a deed of carelessness reprehensible to the last degree, not suicide certainly, but a blamable disregard for his life, which is not his to throw away so lightly—Imagine, my dear Doctor? to save the life of a dog?”

Dr. Schumann considered his own rash act in leaping to save the ship's cat from Ric and Rac, and wondered what the priest would think of
that
. He felt he did not have to imagine anything, the man's impulse seemed almost too crudely natural. “I have seen him down there, on the deck, carving little animal figures with his pocket knife,” said Dr. Schumann, after a pause. “He was a Basque,” he added, as if that might explain some mystery.

“An unbalanced savagely individualist people,” said Father Garza, “with their weird untraceable language and their pagan Catholicism … what would one expect? His name was Etchegaray,” he pronounced, rolling the word with sensuous pleasure.

“I must remember,” said Dr. Schumann. “Thank you. Sorry, I have a call to make.” He turned away, then retraced a step and asked, “Oh Father—who do you think threw that dog overboard?”

“Those devil-possessed children with the zarzuela company, of course,” answered Father Garza. “Who else?”

“I wonder if anyone saw them,” said Dr. Schumann, pleasantly, “or are they real devils who can take any shape, or make themselves invisible for their deeds of darkness?”

“A sound whipping and three days' penance on bread and water would drive out their devils,” said Father Garza, “they are only rather dull little sinners. I do not believe in making them feel self-important by calling them devils. A series of good whippings on an empty stomach is all that is needed.”

“I wish it might be so simple,” said Dr. Schumann, a lively sparkle of impatience in his eyes. Seeing the priest's frowning glance ahead, and his mouth pursing to pursue the topic, Dr. Schumann said “Good night” hastily and turned aside.

He found the Huttens kneeling on the floor of their cabin, bowed like a sculptured Pietá over the prostrate form of Bébé, who now and then raised his head, retched and drooled more salt water. They raised their heads towards him with the same burdened, sorrowful air of the men and women beside the dead man, and Frau Hutten, against all her rules of domestic discretion, spoke first: “Oh Doctor, I
know
it is not right to ask you, but oh, what can we do for our Bébé? He is suffering so!”

Dr. Schumann said dryly, “I have dogs at home.” He spread his hand under Bébé's head, lifted it, put it down gently and said, “Go on kneading him strongly and keep him flat on his belly. He will recover. But the man,” he added, “the man who jumped overboard to save him is dead.”

Frau Hutten sat back on her heels and covered her ears flatly. “Oh no no!” she cried out with a note of anger under the shock, then remembered and went back to digging her clenched fists into Bébé's lower ribs and spine, heaving him forward and back, fetching a low grunt from him and a rush of frothy water.

“Let us hear what the Herr Doctor has to tell us,” said Herr Professor Hutten with the utmost formality. With some barely disguised struggle he got to his feet and faced the Doctor as man to man, leaving his wife to her humbler duties towards their wretched beast, who, the Professor could not help but see plainly, would become a more and more onerous burden as time went on.

“Do you wish me to understand, sir,” he asked, “that a man leapt into the sea to save our dog?”

“I should have thought you knew this,” said the Doctor, “there was a rescue with a lifeboat,” he said, “with all shipboard on deck. No one told you?”

“I was occupied with my wife, who was on the verge of fainting,” said Herr Professor Hutten, almost regretfully. “Yes, I was told, but I did not believe it. Who could be such a fool?”

“He could,” said Dr. Schumann. “He was a Basque, his name was Etchegaray. He was the man who carved those little animals from bits of wood …”

“Ah,” said Herr Professor Hutten, “so! Yes now I recall—he was among those dangerous agitators—those whom the Captain ordered to be disarmed …”

“They took away his pocket knife, yes,” said Dr. Schumann, sighing on a wave of weariness and hopelessness. “He was quite harmless, and entirely unfortunate—”

“Ah, of course he expected a reward!” cried Frau Hutten in a voice of revelation. “We would have been glad to pay him well! What a pity we can never shake his hand and thank him.”

“At least,” suggested Herr Professor Hutten, consulting gravely with the Doctor, “at least we can offer some little financial relief to his family …”

“He has none, or none on this ship,” said the Doctor, observing the look of relief that passed like a beam of light across the Professor's face. Frau Hutten's face also lightened as by reflection. “Well, it can't be helped,” she said, almost cheerfully, “it is done now, it is out of our hands.”

“Yes,” agreed Doctor Schumann. “So good night to you. Keep him warm,” he said, bending his head towards Bébé, who was showing signs of recovery. “Give him some warm beef broth.”

Frau Hutten held up her arms to her husband, who drew her deftly to her feet. She stole out after the Doctor, motioning him to stop as if she had something secret to tell him. Yet she only asked, “What was his name?” something mysterious and wondering in her half-whisper, the fat aging face suddenly childish.

“Etchegaray,” pronounced Dr. Schumann, carefully, “a very common family name among the Basques.”

“Oh,” said Frau Hutten, not attempting to repeat the name, “just to think he gave his life for our poor Bébé and we cannot even let him know we are grateful! I can't bear it,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

“The burial will take place tomorrow morning at the first Mass,” said Dr. Schumann, “if you wish to attend.”