Ship of Fools (59 page)

“The monkey wrench was found lying near the scene of the struggle,” said Dr. Schumann. “No one seems to know anything at all about it.”

“As if it were of the slightest importance,” said the Captain. “Let them decimate each other if they like, but not on my ship. I am astonished that Father Garza, who was so near, did not notice and identify the criminal.”

Dr. Schumann smiled and drank his coffee. “Father Garza does not know one face from another,” he said. “He sees only souls.”

After a moment's consideration, the Captain decided it would not be unbecoming for him to share this pleasantry, since it seemed to contain a slight belittlement of the priestly office.

“He will want sharp eyes to see a soul in that rubbish heap,” he said almost cheerfully. He leaned towards the Doctor and remarked as if making some generous concession not required by the rules: “I admit that with the crowded condition of this ship, and the peculiarly hostile elements fermenting in the steerage, with the possibilities of a breakout of the lowest forms of violence and disorder, I am not readily able to proceed with such disciplinary measures as might be most effective.”

He thought this speech over for a while and added: “After all, the first-class passengers have rights that must be considered.” He considered them with an expression of distaste fleetingly, and went on, “Frankly, I get no help from the priests. My officers have of course done admirably in every way, but they cannot be everywhere at once! The habit of the shiplines overloading their second-class passenger ships in cases like this—”

He stopped, amazed at the word “second-class” hanging in the air before him, at his indiscreet reference to the landlubberly characters who ran the shipping business and had no decent respect for ships or ships' officers—such crosses were his own and none of Dr. Schumann's business. He closed his lips and frowned deeply.

“It is reprehensible in every way,” said Dr. Schumann, too readily perhaps.

The Captain shook off the subject. “What shall I do with this scum until I can empty it out into the ports of Spain?” he asked frankly. “My dear Doctor, what do you advise?”

Dr. Schumann said, “I should want a little time, dear Captain, to consider that question fully, but my first thought is to say, Do nothing at all. The worst of this is most certainly over, the one real troublemaker is disposed of for the voyage. I have no doubt he is a professional agitator of some underdog political movement, the disturbances always occurred where he was. Yet generally, I believe those are good harmless people—nothing at all wrong with them except they are born unfortunate …”

“For them to have been born at all is everybody's misfortune,” said the Captain. “There is nothing left for us but to conceal them as well as we can and keep their plague from spreading.”

The Doctor maintained that silence which the Captain regarded as a dubious way of avoiding honest controversy: at times it had the look of tacit consent to those evils the Captain was so quick to observe and so keen to suppress. In any question of mere discipline, the Captain had long since discovered the Doctor was not a man to be depended upon, and his indifference to graver problems began to impress the Captain as a dangerous moral inertia. Yet he was of the good old Junker class; his instincts, training, natural point of view must surely support the great old society in which both of them were born to take their rightful places, perform their destined duties, reap their timely reward—rigorous, unflinching, Junker to the last.

“When we weaken in our exercise of authority, slacken in our moral fiber, we betray our class and our country,” he said, severely.

Dr. Schumann rose. “Quite, quite,” he said amiably. “Our responsibilities are endless.” Bidding the Captain good night, he absented himself from the scene and the argument—not for the first time, either, the Captain thought, sourly. He remembered too late that he had neglected to inquire about the health of La Condesa, who did not seem to be thriving under the Doctor's care.

The bulletin board was the object of uneasy curiosity. It had bloomed out in a number of boldly printed notices, each printed separately and posted flat with thumbtacks.

Sorebelly cannot afford to buy a ticket to the Captain's party because he is already afraid he cannot pay his bar bill, yet he sits drinking brandy after brandy. Long life to his ulcers
!

“What indecency!” exclaimed Frau Baumgartner, warmly taking her husband's arm. “Don't pay any attention, my dear!” for she was touched at the grief in his face. He smiled bravely at her, blowing his nose and wiping his eyes as they walked on, Frau Baumgartner silently and deeply wishing the cruel words were not true. “They have said worse about others,” she reminded her husband, who tried to appear consoled.

Herr Löwenthal read:
If a Jew is invited into the society of human beings he would do better to take advantage of his opportunity. It may not happen twice
. He wrote carefully on the margin with a thick pencil:
What human beings?
and strolled on looking very pleased with himself.

“This is what I mean,” David said to Jenny, glancing over the morning display of insults. “Look!
The American artists so-called are afraid if they take their noses out of their sketchbooks, someone will discover that they draw caricatures for each other because they can't read
.”

“Somehow that doesn't get to me as much as they hoped,” said David. “My feelings are not really hurt.”

“Mine aren't hurt, either,” said Jenny. “Let's make a few caricatures of them and post them here.”

“Why?” asked David. “It would just be a nasty row. What's the point?”

“It's just the kind of row I'd like to make,” said Jenny.

“Well, leave me out of it,” said David. “It's not worth it.”

Jenny's temper began rising in her like a newly lighted bonfire. “Passive resistance,” she said, contemptuously. “Superior silence. Toploftical reserve. Stiff upper lip. Turn the other cheek but with dignity, mind you. Don't let them ever dream we are too yellow-livered to answer back. Just don't look now and they'll get tired of spitting in our eye. Never let it be said—”

David turned on his heel as squarely as a soldier on parade drill, and walked away from her. Jenny clenched her eyes tight, drummed both feet on deck, and screamed after him: “Coward, coward, coward, you always were—coward, coward!”

She then opened her eyes and there was Wilhelm Freytag standing not ten feet away, watching her with a real sparkle of interest. Jenny tried to change her scream into a peal of merry laughter, but Freytag was not deceived. He came straight to her and looked very closely into her eyes, smiling handsomely.

“But you are wonderful,” he said, “I never imagined you had so much fire in you. I thought you were a self-possessed, cold sort of girl. Tell me, what does a man have to do to get you into this state?”

Jenny said, “You'll not believe me, but David does
nothing;
nothing, he won't talk, he won't stay to listen, he won't answer, he won't give in, ever, he won't believe anything I say, he won't—”

“If he won't, he won't, Jenny,” said Freytag, very gently reasonable. “Didn't your mother tell you that?”

“Nobody told me anything that was of the least use,” said Jenny, all at once feeling quite restored and good-humored. “And I wouldn't have listened if they had.”

“Will you listen to me?” asked Freytag. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Not particularly,” said Jenny, “I'd like some company.”

“Anybody special?” he asked, full of self-confidence. She walked along beside him without answering, and he saw by the guarded look on her face what she thought of that gambit. This made it easy for him to decide again that she was not an attractive girl, or at least not to him, and apparently, not to her young man, either. A girl in her situation hadn't got any business being so stiff-necked and hard to handle.

Herr Rieber and Lizzi stopped to laugh again at the funny things those Spaniards had posted against other people, and saw this:

If the pink pig would stop guzzling beer and ogling the peahen, he might be a brighter social asset on this voyage
. Scribbled next to this in red crayon were the words
¡Arriba Españal ¡Arriba la Cucaracha! ¡Mueran a las lndiferentistas—
!

“But what has that to do with us?” asked Lizzi, trembling with anger. “What do we care for their savage politics?”

Dr. Schumann entered the bar for his eleven-o'clock glass of dark beer. One of the Cuban students was fastening a new notice to the board, with little Concha standing by watching. The Doctor paused, put on his spectacles and read:
The fake Condesa with her glass jewelry and bead pearls loves to dance, but does not like to pay the piper—a typical anarchist attitude. Perhaps her devoted doctor should change her prescription from drugs to a ticket for the Captain's party
.

Dr. Schumann blinked, his face contracted as if dust had blown in his eyes. He pinched the slip of paper off the board and carried it between thumb and forefinger to the corner table where the dancers were seated at coffee. “I suggest,” he said with the careful firmness he would use with a patient who might be a homicidal maniac, “that this is carrying your stupid comedy a little beyond bounds. I advise you to change your methods, and your manners, if possible, at least for the rest of the voyage.” As he tore the notice into strips and placed them on the table, he looked into the half-circle of staring, hard faces with an impression that he was gazing into eyes that had got misplaced: they belonged to some species of fierce beast peering out of a cave or ready to leap in a jungle, prowling and sniffing for blood; the same expression, only older, more intensely aware and ready, that had dismayed him in the eyes of Ric and Rac. Not one of them spoke, and moveless as lurking wildcats, they did succeed in staring Dr. Schumann down. Involuntarily his glance flickered aside. He spoke sternly: “Be good enough to drop this nonsense.”

A chilling burst of laughter followed him down the deck. Dr. Schumann, not intimidated but repelled and indignant at the immunity of such insolence, reflected on the so-called lighter side of life, the merrier arts and their practitioners; cabarets and beer halls where one went in relative innocence for a pleasant evening of listening to popular music, watching the pretty young dancers, drinking a little wine or beer, clinking the glass with one's wife across the table—how had it happened that this side of life was almost entirely the work of such creatures as these, a criminal league organized and managed by the lowest of the criminal world? Yes, even the outdoor, health-giving sports? They were all run by the same people who dealt in drugs and packaged sex and murder and every possible sort of monstrous cheat and forgery. The gauzy glittering surface of gaiety lay lightly over the foulest pools of evil. Yet how dull life would be without the dancing and the music and the drink and the lovemaking and all that ecstatic confusion! God bless the comedians, just the same—are we not all sinners?

He knew well that the next time that gang of hoodlums chose to put on their dancing dress and bring out their instruments to sing and dance and clatter and strum in their enchanting way, he would be there; he would not be able to resist, he would drift into their rhythms without a thought or care for what they were in truth, for in truth what were they? He would take for truth only what they appeared to be at that moment, when they had no more humanity than a flock of bright-plumaged birds, just a pretty sight provided for his enjoyment. Dr. Schumann had always loved the circus, the music hall, the cabaret, or any little half-lighted cellar full of queer goings-on. As he grew older his sense of professional gravity, of obligation, had restrained him. Often his wife, who seemed a more severe character than she was in fact, would persuade him in his moments of fatigue: “Come along, my dear, let's go to see the vaudeville. We need a change!” And she was always right. Dr. Schumann admitted, but only to himself that if hyenas were beautiful and could sing and dance, he would forgive them for being hyenas. But would they ever forgive him for being human? And then, who was he to presume to offer forgiveness even to the least of God's creatures? And what indeed
was
he? He loved La Condesa because she was perverted, strayed, a taker of drugs, a woman who lived outside religion, outside law, outside morality, who was beautiful, willful, and he had no doubt, a born liar. In what way had he tried to help her? He had subdued her, caged her, shut her off from those ambiguous students—even at moments half believing the scandals about them that seeped like filth under the surface of the ship's talk; not by any medical means or by human sympathy, but by abuse of his power, and by using against her the vice that harmed her most—drugs.

Dr. Schumann faced an aspect of his character he had not suspected until that hour. He had lived on flattering terms with the delusive wickedness of his own nature; comfortable in the doctrine that no man may be damned except with his own consent, and that man's desire for redemption is deathless as his own soul; and when he does evil he knows what he is doing. How could he have wronged that unhappy creature so, when he had believed he meant only to help and comfort her? He was so horrified his words of denial took shape, sound, he could hear himself speaking within his skull. “No,” he was saying, “I did not harm her, I did what I could in an emergency. Father Garza assured me that what I have done was not wrong. That I must treat her severely as a responsible doctor towards an incorrigible patient … ‘Otherwise in one way and a dangerous way you are yielding to her seductions,' Father Garza said.…”

He was not consoled or reassured, and knew that he could never be by any means he was able to imagine now. She was a burden on his conscience he was condemned to carry to his death. He gave a great deep-drawn sigh, but not of resignation, and said most cheerfully, “
Grüss Gott
” to that poor wretch Herr Glocken, who was strolling along by himself as usual, with a face more desolate than ever. “How are you this morning?” Dr. Schumann asked, rashly.