Ship of Fools (61 page)

All her resolves about standing up to Frau Rittersdorf had come to nothing. Frau Rittersdorf pushed her toilet things to one side and said, “Please keep your things out of my way!” and she, Frau Schmitt, had tucked them into one small space on the dressing table. She said once, trying to sound firm, decisive, “I do not like the porthole open at night.” “Well, I
do
,” said Frau Rittersdorf, and the porthole stayed open. Frau Schmitt took a long breath, and wondered what those children had thrown overboard, though it was none of her affair.

The stewardess asked the purser to go to La Condesa. He went and listened to her story, noted her drugged speech and manner, decided the whole thing was a dream, and sent for the Doctor. Dr. Schumann believed what she told him, and explained to the purser that he understood her temperament and that her fantasies did not take such forms. He advised the purser to report the theft to the Captain, who would no doubt order a search and investigation. The purser took the liberty of informing the Captain, who was much put about with this latest piece of awkwardness on his ship, that though Dr. Schumann took the lady's word for it, he, the purser, did not. The Captain at once ordered a search, a good thorough one, the criminal might have accomplices in the steerage, and meantime he would be pleased to ask Dr. Schumann a few questions.

Dr. Schumann asked La Condesa: “Are you sure? It
was
the children—?”

She took his hand between hers and held it loosely, stroking the fingers, and said, “You are no better than the purser! What a question.”

“Do you always get up and wander about by yourself this way?”

“Whenever the stewardess goes, yes.”

“Tell me,” he said, anxiously, “if your pearls are not found, what will you do?”

“I still have the emerald,” she said, “and a few other little things.” She touched her forehead to his for a moment, then drew back smiling. “What can it matter now? What I love about this is, you are thinking about me—you are troubled, you would help me if you could! But you can't,” she told him, in triumph. “Nobody can.”

A cabin boy brought him a message from the Captain. Dr. Schumann rose and kissed her hand. “Where are you going?” she cried in distress. “Don't leave me!”

“I am going to help the Captain look for your necklace,” he said, “and I could wish you might stay here quietly and I could know you were safe. Please can you not do this?”

“For you,” she said, “for you, and for nobody else.”

“There goes La Condesa's doctor,” said Herr Lutz. “Let us ask him if she has missed her pearls.”

Frau Lutz said, “You will only go making trouble for yourself, only you can be so indiscreet! How do we know they were pearls? They could have been beads, for all we know.”

Herr Lutz said, “There was a diamond clasp on them. And hidden in his blouse?”

“How do you know they were diamonds? Where could he put things except in his blouse?”

Herr Lutz drew a deep breath and expelled it in a sigh of monstrous despair. “Look, my poor wife, stay where you are while I speak to the Doctor.” Going straight towards Dr. Schumann, and cutting across his path, he brought him to a pause, and spoke only a few words. Dr. Schumann nodded very gravely, and went on.

The search for the lost pearls turned out to be a rather cut-and-dried affair: the four staterooms of the zarzuela company were turned out rather thoroughly, a few suspicious characters in the steerage, known to be antireligious, were harried about enough to make them sullen and insolent, even the fat man was hauled up to sit in his bunk while three sailors searched the mattress and inside the pillow cases. He snarled bitterly, “What are you looking for?” One of the sailors said, “You'll know if we find it” and left him dangling so, cursing luxuriously.

The purser sent for Lola and Tito, but as all the dancers had been turned out of their cabins by the sailors making the search, they went in a body to the purser's door, where all but Tito, Lola, Ric and Rac were turned away and asked to wait outside.

The purser asked without ceremony, “Are these your children?” glancing from Lola to Tito to the twins, who stood back huddled together shoulder to shoulder facing out like wild cattle in danger. His look was a mixture of repulsion and incredulity—surely these creatures could not really exist. But yes, there they stood, their snake eyes glittering. He turned back to the parents.

“Of course they are ours,” said Lola. “Whose do you think they are?”

“You might be glad if they were somebody else's before this is over,” said the purser. He bawled suddenly at Ric and Rac: “Did you steal the lady's necklace?”

“No,” they said in one voice, instantly.

“What did you do with it?” asked the purser, keeping his voice harsh and loud. “Answer me!”

They stared at him in silence. Lola took Ric by the nape of the neck and shook him. “Answer!” she said, fiercely. The purser noticed that her face had gone a strange yellow, her lips were pale, she looked ready to faint. In truth, Lola had not known why the sailors were searching the ship. The zarzuela company had planned to rob La Condesa, but not until the last moment, perhaps as she left the ship or just afterward; and here these unspeakable brats had ruined everything. The purser might have doubts, he might just be trying the old game of scaring somebody into confession by surprising and bullying them, but she, Lola, knew already that the worst was true—Ric and Rac had done it, no matter what it was, and they had almost caused her to show fright before that fat pig of a purser. “
Jesús
!” she said devoutly under her breath. “You wait!”

Ric said very clearly and deliberately, “I don't know what you are talking about,” and Rac nodded her head at him, not at the others.

The purser said to Tito and Lola, “Let them alone until later. If you do not know, really do not,” he said, insinuatingly, “I will tell you,” and he did tell them the fragments that had been assembled about the incident—what the Doctor had heard from La Condesa, what Herr Lutz had told him first, and later, unwillingly, Frau Lutz and even Elsa—yes, it was a necklace in Rac's hand and she had thrown it overboard. Lola and Tito had no trouble expressing horror and dismay, as well as their belief that it could all be a mistake, and a hope that their accusers could be proved in the wrong; and a severe promise to question the children further in private and to find out the truth. The purser did not for a moment believe anything but that they were doing a fair job of acting, but not good enough to fool him.

“Do what you please,” he said, dismissing them coldly. “We will go on with our investigation.”

The sailors were gone from the cabin when Tito and Lola returned, having put back everything in decent order; but they found waiting there, crowded together in silence, Amparo and Pepe, Manolo and Concha, Pancho and Pastora; they rose in silence and converged upon the pair, who were each holding a twin by the arm, high up near the shoulder. Their breaths were hot in each other's faces. “What is it?” whispered Amparo. “Is it about us? Those students say so, but nobody will tell us anything.”

“Get out of my way,” said Lola, “let me alone.” She elbowed her way into the cabin and sat down on the end of the divan with Ric held firmly between her knees. Tito stood by holding Rac.

Lola said, “Now tell me,” and wrapping her legs around him, she took both of his hands and began pressing the finger nails down bitterly, one at a time, steadily and coldly, until he was writhing and howling, but she only said, “Tell me, or I'll turn them backward, I'll stick pins under them! Ill pull your teeth out!”

Rac began to struggle in Tito's hands and scream incoherently, but she did not confess. Lola began turning Ric's eyelids back with thumb and forefinger, so that his screams turned from pain to terror. She said, “I'll tear them out!” and Manolo lowered his voice to a croak: “Go on, give it to him, don't let up!” The others kept moving restlessly, calling out to her in a ragged echo not to stop, but to go on, make him tell.

At last Ric collapsed between her knees, his head rolling back helplessly in her arms, tears flooding, strangling, crying, “You said they were only beads, not worth the trouble. Only beads!”

Lola abandoned him at once, adding a slap in his face for good measure, and rose up in fury. “He is an idiot,” she said, “why do we keep him? I will leave you in Vigo,” she told him, “and you can starve!”

Rac shrieked at this, jerked and bounded in Tito's grasp, until he flailed her head and shoulders with his fist, but she still cried out: “Me too! Leave me, too. I won't go with you—I stay in Vigo—Ric, Ric,” she squealed like a rabbit in the teeth of the weasel, “Ric, Ric—”

Tito let go of Rac and turned his fatherly discipline upon Ric. He seized his right arm by the wrist and twisted it very slowly and steadily until the shoulder was nearly turned in its socket and Ric went to his knees with a long howl that died away in a puppylike whimper when the terrible hold was loosed. Rac, huddled on the divan nursing her bruises, cried again with him. Then Manolo and Pepe and Tito and Pancho, and Lola and Concha and Pastora and Amparo, every face masking badly a sullen fright, went away together to go over every step of this dismaying turn of affairs; with a few words and nods, they decided it would be best to drink coffee in the bar, to appear as usual at dinner, and to hold a rehearsal on deck afterwards. They were all on edge and ready to fly at each other's throats. On her way out, Lola paused long enough to seize Rac by the hair and shake her head until she was silenced, afraid to cry. When they were gone, Ric and Rac crawled into the upper berth looking for safety; they lay there half naked, entangled like some afflicted, misbegotten little monster in a cave, exhausted, mindless, soon asleep.

PART III

The Harbors

For here have we no continuing city …

Saint Paul

In the evening, late, with the reflected sunlight still faintly green and golden in sea and sky, the voyagers' long day's waiting, hovering and staring at the horizon was rewarded with a distant sight of Tenerife, a jagged, rock-shaped, rock-colored fortress of an island rising abruptly from gray water, misty at the base and canopied with sagging violet clouds.

David spoke quietly to Jenny after a long silence together leaning on their arms at the rail so as not to disturb the gentle mood between them; the deep shining satisfaction in his face surprised her. “That's my notion of Spain,” he said, “that's my kind of country. Toledo, Avila, not Sevilla. Orange groves and castanets and lace mantillas—not for me!”

“They're got them in Spain too, though, for those who prefer them,” said Jenny, tenderly, “but no, not for you, David darling. Granite and sand and faces of the finest Spanish leather, and bitter bread, and twisted olive trees—where even the babies are so tough they won't wear diapers. I know that is really your idea of heaven, isn't it?”

“Yes,” said David stoutly, “something tough and grand—Toledo steel, and granite, and Spanish leather, and Spanish pride and hate, and Spanish cruelty—they're the only people who know how to make an art of cruelty … I'm sick of things all runny at the edges.…”

“Couldn't there be something between a runny edge and a knife-edge?” asked Jenny, hearing herself sound wistful and hoping David did not notice. “There are palms and flowers even in Tenerife, I'll bet you anything, and a lot of people who are very soft on each other; and the boys serenade the girls on moonlight nights just as they do in Mexico—you'll hate it!”

He said nothing more, gave her a blue-eyed look that she loved, and that quieted her entirely, because no matter what came up for them to fight about, she still believed that she was willing to make peace with him on his own terms, if only she could find out what they were.

The gulls came out to meet them and circled about screaming furiously, pumping their stiff mechanical wings and turning their wooden heads as if on hinges to eye the scene severely, falling like stones to the waves, snatching at lumps of galley refuse.

“Same old story,” said Herr Lutz, pausing alongside, “all looking for something to eat, and they don't care where it comes from.”

“It will be nice, hearing the last of
him
,” whispered Jenny, hopefully.

In the morning, the engines gave three loud thumps, and stopped. Jenny put her head out, and there at her very porthole was Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a jagged long rock indeed, sown with palms, smothered in bougainvillea, the flat square houses perched and huddled on cliff-steep levels hacked out as with chisels. The wharf was on a wide beach, the longshoremen were gathered and ready, a small crowd waited without much expectation. Two policemen came among them and began to wave them back towards either side of the wharf, until there was a wide path opened between them. Jenny heard the anchor going down. By the time she reached the deck, the gangplank was settling into place. Almost everybody was there before her, she observed, and nearly all in festive, going-ashore dress. The breakfast bugle sounded, but almost nobody stirred from the side; a loud gruff voice, the purser's maybe, began bawling good advice through a megaphone: “First-class passengers will please be so good as to go to breakfast, which is now waiting for them. In any case, will the ladies and gentlemen of the first class be so good as to clear the decks: a part of the passengers of the third class are now about to be disembarked from the main deck. Attention! First-class passengers will please be so good …”

They began straggling away reluctantly, David among them; Jenny started towards him, but was intercepted by Wilhelm Freytag, who gently put out an arm to bar her way. “This should be something to see,” he said. “Who wants breakfast?” David does, thought Jenny, watching him disappear. “Let's go over here,” said Freytag, taking her elbow, “where we can see them start up.”