Ship of Fools (64 page)

David stood up suddenly, shaking his head, going hot all over with a rush of blood to all his vital strategic points—his nerve centers raged and his mind was a reek of spermy violent images and sensations which he loathed for the pleasure they gave him. He stepped forward, meaning to follow Jenny. The bride and groom saw him then; their arms dropped away at once, the bride slipped her hand into the crook of the groom's elbow, and they walked by rather stiffly.

David felt like a fool. He had unfathomable contempt for all those unsavory imaginations roused to concupiscence by sexual scenes, music, certain words or reading matter, by dancing, by dirty stories—the peepers, the eavesdroppers, the feelers, the footie-players, the neckers, the strip-tease chasers, or just the daydreamers who could bring it on by sitting still and staring into space. His own method had been clear-cut, at least. When the fit took him, he had gone out and found an object. Once or twice he had tried the risky business of having a regular girl in the mining camp. But that could get very sticky in no time at all; he wondered at women. There wasn't a whore on earth, he was willing to bet, who didn't believe that some fellow would come along, fall in love with her, and take her away to a life of luxury, or at least idleness. Some of them even dreamed of marriage—it had been known to happen. A little grubby half-Indian girl with black finger nails and lice in her beautiful thick glossy hair had attracted him. He put kerosene in her hair (she distrusted the stuff, did not know how to apply it) and then had heated gallons of water in a pot in his narrow, walled patio, and had given her a good scrub from head to foot, outside in the sunshine, including hairy parts and fingernails. He had finished the job by showering her with his West Indian bay rum. After having prepared the dish so carefully, he found his appetite gone. He ended by giving her five pesos and sending her away, to her entire mystification. While she was putting on her petticoats, she asked him matter-of-factly, “Why do you not marry me? I would make a good wife—I know how!” He explained that he was not ready to marry yet, and she went away quite cheerfully confident, but from her look and manner it was clear she regarded him as a species of eunuch or one of those foreigners with strange tastes, for she said as she went: “When you feel like a man, you let me know!”

Well, what a roundabout his mind had gone to get out of this mess. He waited until the bride and groom passed, and fell in to the straggling pilgrimage. He could not help but notice that Jenny was now walking with Freytag and Mrs. Treadwell, and he was offended when Jenny suddenly jumped for joy and pointed excitedly ahead. Everybody paused and turned their heads. So did David and he saw something strange and new and beautiful; after that day, he would not see it again, or ever forget it.

A young slender girl, limber and tough as a ballet dancer, in a short tight black dress showing her bare brown legs, her head swathed in a small square black shawl with a tiny hat no larger than a doll's resting on her forehead, secured somehow under the knot of her covered hair, hurled herself across their path and leaped up the rocky incline ahead of them, turning sharply to the left on a narrower path, sure-footed as a deer and as wild. On her head she carried a great flat tray loaded with battered metal water cans, and under this weight, in her worn tennis shoes, she went at flying speed uphill, in a half-run with rigid shoulders, raised chin and extravagantly swaying hips, her arms spread like wings.

Looking about them, the travelers saw that the girl was not alone. From all directions in every place for the rest of the day, they saw the water-carriers, up and down the island, young beautiful girls with fine noses and tender mouths, and the wonderful Spanish pale cream skin. A few older women, perhaps as much as thirty, still had this beauty of athletes in training—“It would kill two longshoremen in a week,” remarked Freytag, admiringly, after watching them run so endlessly and apparently without effort or fatigue. “They
can't
last long.”

All the strangers were enchanted, they wanted it explained. There was, they might have known, no mystery to it. They hailed in a common cause the first Islander they saw passing, a rough-haired man, barefooted, with his cotton drawers rolled to the knees, a large shapeless bundle on his back, and Herr Professor Hutten questioned him about this phenomenon. The Islander began, as he always did, for he made a business of meeting boats, and he knew these foreigners well, by remarking simply that those girls were very respectable young persons employed in making an honorable living. He was familiar with the strange views of tourists, and not only the men, on the subject of the conduct of young women in foreign lands. He could not however after long experience overcome his amazement that boatload after boatload of tourists passing through could never understand the simple, natural, everyday task of young girls carrying water. It was part of woman's household work through all ages, who else would be supposed to carry it? They were all under the strict family rule young girls must observe … They were employed by the company that controlled water-carrying, they wore a uniform, of course. At this point he always ran again into the one thing they wanted to know—what, what was the meaning of that little black doll hat every girl wore flat on her forehead just under her tray? This he did not know, nobody knew; it was not a question any Islander had ever been heard to ask. It was a custom, nothing more. A part of their dress. If a girl did not wear that hat, she would not be allowed to carry water. It was all so simple, yet they could never understand it. And when Freytag asked the inevitable question: “Why are they all so beautiful?” the rough-haired man was happy to give his familiar answer—“We have no choice on this island. We take what God sends. All our girls are beautiful and chaste.”

This was invariably received with respectful silence.

The Baumgartners with Hans, Freytag and Mrs. Treadwell, the Lutzes and Jenny, the Huttens, who had overtaken them, and Herr Glocken, wearing his red necktie, were now clustered around the Islander. Tourists, therefore barbarians all, the Islander knew them well, and offered to show them the sights, with appropriate histories, at so much a head. This was the last thing anybody in the group wanted, so they scattered somewhat and walked on at discreet distances from each other, but all in the same direction and bound, sooner or later, to meet in the same places on pretty much the same errands. Herr Glocken had straggled along hopelessly, but in the pause made up his lost time. He waved genially to David as he went past, flashing his painful smile. “Hurry!” he called, helpfully. “You'll be left!”

David followed along, keeping them in sight but not trying to overtake them. He thought with some satisfaction how grotesquely out of place everybody looked with their makeshift shore clothes and wrong kinds of shoes. All sizes and shapes; even Jenny looked awkward in that sagging-hopsack bag she insisted on wearing all times and places, on the grounds that it was hand-woven. If she could see herself! It took this kind of perfectly clear air, the palm shade and the dappled sunlight along the crooked narrow old streets, for they were coming near the town, to show them up in their awful dullness, Jenny among them. Father Garza and Father Carillo flapped by in their billowing soutanes and old-lady shoes with elastic sides; their flat-topped side-rolled hats stiff as boards over their grim faces; striding like ostriches they caught up to and passed the dawdling sight-seers.

David meditated a little on his situation, and admitted that it looked hopeless—yet had it ever been anything else? He had never been anywhere but that he wanted to be somewhere else; never in any kind of fix that he wasn't planning all the time to get out of it. He had never known a girl he could trust, and Jenny was the last straw. But he couldn't hate her—or not just yet, or not except in fits and starts. Whatever their feeling for each other had become, it could even now be a kind of love, he supposed, but if it was, they'd both be better off without it … How better, or in what way, he had no idea. As if it mattered. Having arrived at this tolerable mood, he set out in haste and caught up with Jenny, took her arm, greeted Freytag and Mrs. Treadwell and some of the others as he passed them, and unfolded his plan of action: “Jenny angel, let's look for a nice little joint and drink the wine of the country, with those red bull meat sausages? I'm hungry, let's eat and then go looking around.”

Jenny said, “Let's go,” and gave a little skip. They put on such a burst of speed they left the others at a safe distance, and came into one of the small plazas of shops and wine rooms. Trying to choose, for they all looked and smelled much alike, they lit on a sign over a door,
El Quita Penas
. “That's ours,” said Jenny, “come along, David darling, let's forget our troubles.” As they took the little table near the small dark window, they saw the zarzuela company entering the plaza on the other side. They streamed into a doorway festooned with embroidered silk shawls and lace-trimmed linen and swooped upon the merchandise displayed, while Ric and Rac fumbled and pulled and hauled at the rolls of stuff on the counter outside the shop. The shopkeeper rushed out to shoo them away, and back to keep an eye on her customers. David said, “It looks more like a raid than a shopping expedition,” and Jenny said, “It probably is a raid—” but they spoke idly and went on sampling the Canary wines from the barrels along the wall: along with a very copious, savory platter of Spanish peppers and sausage, they tasted Malaga, Muscatel, Malavasia, an Islands brandy called Tres Copas, and afterward with their coffee an orange liqueur which reminded them distantly of Curaçao. Denny came in, greeted them almost fondly, and sat down with them as if he had been invited.

“God, I'm bushed,” he began. “I've been nearly all over this island at a dead run. You know those girls with water cans on their heads? Well, one of them give me the eye, can't tell
me
, I'd know the kind if she was wearing mule's harness—so I took out after her, thinking she meant to let me know she was knocking off soon and would be ready for a—for—” he swallowed and looked at Jenny, “for a little sociability, and honest to God, she went stomping up and down those rocky ridges and paths like a mountain goat, and every once in a while she'd come to a house, and practically without stopping, she'd hold her tray steady and bend her knees and a woman would come out and lift off a can of water, and put on an empty, and away she'd go buckety-buckety, me trailing after with my tongue hanging out. A couple of times she doubled on her tracks and passed me, and every time she'd give me that look—she didn't smile, she just sparked her eyes at me.… What's that you're having?” he asked David. “Get me some, will you? I can't talk the lingo, I don't know the names—and finally I figured she was about through, couldn't have anything but empties by now, so I followed her on down a good ways, and there she came to a kind of long shed full of barrels—great big water kegs they were, and there were a lot of the girls sitting round resting, and a lot more were getting fresh cans set on their trays. My girl wasn't resting though. She got a fresh trayful and went by me like a runaway wildcat and this time she just cut her eyes at me and said ‘
Vaya, vaya
!' … I know what that means. The old runaround. Well, I looked over the situation down near the waterworks, and decided it was no deal …”

“Just as well,” said David. “Wait till your luck changes.”

“Look at that Pastora, now,” said Denny, holding up his glass for another Malaga. “This stuff's too sweet, ain't there any hard liquor?”

“She's right across the street, in that shop,” said Jenny, encouragingly.

“Let her stay there,” said Denny, “For the time being. I don't mean look at her actually. Right now I wouldn't care if I ever saw her again. I'm beginning to think Spanish women are just plain skittish,” he said, “you can't seem to get 'em to keep still long enough to get anywhere …”

“Well, you've seen the sights,” said Jenny, “so David and I are going out to be tourists for a while.” David paid in American money, and received a handful of Spanish coin.

“You'd better hurry out and spend that,” said Denny. Waving his glass to signal a third drink, he said almost plaintively, “What's the name for brandy? I wish you all wouldn't go off and leave me here by myself. I'll get into some kind of a mess. I don't feel good. If I get a few more drinks I'm liable to go out and beat the pants off that Pastora—”

“Unless she beats you first,” said David, cheerfully, “she's tougher than she looks and has a tough gang with her.”

“Why don't you pick on a Guardia Civil?” asked Jenny, who had noticed a great burly pair of them, at the wharf, in their varnished cocked hats and tight uniforms, looking solid as walnut. “Why do you want to pick on a girl?”

Denny unexpectedly showed logic and even dimly, remotely, some hint of a deep-buried sense of justice, even morals, even to strain a point, ethics. Or at least, common sense.

“Because she's the one I'm mad at,” he said, simply. “What did the Wardia Civeel ever do to me?”

Jenny gave him a deep, friendly smile, which faded instantly when she remembered he might take it as an illicit invitation, but said, “How right you are! David, did you hear that? Mr. Denny has just uttered a most important rule from the code of honor.”

“No … what is that?” asked David uneasily, but Jenny was quite harmlessly silly, after all. “Why, don't fight with anybody you're not mad at,” she said. “Don't get your grudges crossed … use your judgment.” They both waved a hand to Denny as they went. He was frowning into his half-filled glass. He wondered if that sassy piece was poking fun at him. Well, it would be a hot day in January when he'd make a pass at
her
.

Frau Rittersdorf, somewhat uneasy at being alone at a table under a tree in a strange place—in spite of a surly old man setting a cup and a ragged cotton napkin before her, and the greasy smells pouring out of the barracks-like house, she could hardly call it a café—pulled her rose-colored scarf a little over her eyebrows, flattened her notebook beside her coffee, and wrote: “The innumerable heterogeneous elements so freely mingled on that ship naturally have brought on a series of most sinister occurrences, the logical consequences of such lack of discipline, the insolence of the lower classes when allowed the least shade of liberty—” She read this sentence over and decided that her indignation had got the upper hand of her style, and the paragraph was getting away from her. She drew thin lines through each sentence, not enough to conceal it but only a reminder that she had rejected it, yet kept it as a disciplinary example of something to avoid in the future. She began: “They are all over the shops, everywhere, like a pack of invading rats. I have watched them, and I know they are stealing right and left. I cannot quite make out the objects, nor precisely their method, but then I could not come close enough for a clear view. I feel they carry a kind of pestilence with them, they shed around them the true metaphysical odor of evil.” Frau Rittersdorf paused to read this sentence with surprise and delight. Where had it come from? Was it hers? Had she read it somewhere? She could not recall ever having had such a thought, but then, certainly she had never heard anyone say such a thing. Indeed, was there such an odor? She had always adhered to the maxim that dirt is misplaced matter. It offered a powerful scientific argument for keeping the inferior orders in their place. This did not answer her questions but it brought her around to her subject again. The zarzuela company, as well as a number of other persons in first class on this voyage, were most certainly misplaced matter, and the consequences were beginning all too obviously to be seen.…