Ship of Fools (66 page)

She moved nearer the group, and they all spoke to her, and smiled, so that she stood near them, and they all saw the same thing, each with his own different way of seeing. The zarzuela company went through their well rehearsed act with their unswerving attention to the business of the moment, with the same bold contempt for the bystander they had shown on board ship, and it was like a play: Amparo and Concha went to one side of the shop, calling to the shopkeeper, distracting her attention by holding up objects and asking the price loudly, both at once. Manolo joined Pepe outside. Pastora and Lola kept up a noisy conversation on the other side of the shop with Pancho and Tito, now and again flurrying their way across to the shopkeeper, carrying some object, turning her eyes from Amparo and Concha, whom she rightly suspected as the ones worth watching. But the whole company was in constant movement, all over the place, running to the door to show Manolo and Pepe what they were thinking of choosing and asking their advice, then back to the shelves to pull down and scatter more stuff and turn it over. Ric and Rac bustled about, always at their best when playing in a show, begging and tormenting: “Please, Mama, buy me this, buy me that,” brandishing whatever they had been able to pick up. Stern Lola then would threaten to smack them, order them to put everything back where they found it, and in a few minutes, sure enough, the whole company surged out of the narrow door, bitterly protesting there was nothing in the place worth having after all, or that they would never pay such bandit prices! This shopkeeper too was left in her little corner burning with helpless fury, all her goods in such disorder she would spend hours searching and folding and counting before she might miss what had been stolen.

It went on, in other plazas, with other witnesses. Herr Professor and Frau Hutten met them piling out of a little cubbyhole jeering and taunting a wild-eyed little man who cursed them for thieves. They laughed their bloodcurdling laugh, and flaunted on. Frau Hutten said to her husband, “They are just the same as they are on the ship! Is there nothing we can do? Where are the police? The Guardia Civil? They look so very able. Where are they? Should we not call them?”

Herr Professor Hutten gave her arm an affectionate squeeze; no doubt about it, what he had found most endearing in her, that quality which outlasted youth, beauty, slenderness, blue-veined breasts, hollow, sweet-smelling armpits and a firm rosy chin was this: her eternal female imbecility of faith that there was a power in this world existing solely for the purpose of rushing infallibly when called upon to the rescue of the innocent and oppressed …

“Call the police,” she said, the dear idiot.

“Listen, my love,” he said, “this is not any country we know, and its customs are strange to us. They cannot like us, we are from another country and speak another language—”

“We speak Spanish as well as they do, and maybe better,” said Frau Hutten, with girlish vanity. Her husband made love to her often now, she was confident as a bride with him. Ever since the night the poor Basque had been drowned rescuing Bébé, her husband had seemed restored to his first manhood again. It made her feel like a young woman, too: she was beginning to look at herself, and to plan what she must do to keep herself attractive; the first thing, to grow thin. The streaks of gray in her hair must be tinted. Her husband would undoubtedly find a professorship in a good German college. She would demand that he have a secretary to free her from the slave-work of research, typing, correcting proofs, the whole tedious existence of a professor's wife. She would save herself for love.

“You are right,” she said, taking his arm, “it is not our affair, not in the least.”

Frau Schmitt followed Herr Freytag and his friends a few steps into the street, but stopped when she heard him invite his party for a drink. All too obviously she was not included, in fact they seemed to ignore her. It was not of course, could not be, that they intended a rudeness to her; they were lighthearted careless people, thinking only of themselves. Frau Schmitt had her proper pride and it never failed her when she needed it most: wounded she might be, newly widowed and tender, but she would die rather than force her presence where it was not wanted. She returned to the ship after stopping to buy a little sack of candied fruits. She ate morsel by morsel as invisibly as she could, knowing well that only persons of inferior breeding would be seen eating in the streets. She could only hope she was not seen.

Herr Glocken, looking about vaguely for some article of attire to brighten up his shabby suit, fingered with envy the wide scarlet waistbands to be worn only by male dancers, the delightful white pleated bosoms, the coquettish narrow collars of shirts made for bullfighters. The neckties seemed to be either narrow black strings, or so gaudy they could only be intended for masquerades or other fancy dress events. He fingered covetously a fine silk scarf in his favorite color, bright red, and was gathering courage to ask the price, knowing without asking that he must not afford to buy it, when the shopkeeper, a woman riddled with anxiety, spoke to him kindly: “Come inside—I have much better things inside, not expensive—”

Herr Glocken was not such a fool as to think her hardbitten face had a trace of coquetry. She wanted something, but what? Then he heard the all-familiar hateful sounds of the zarzuela company, and the woman said urgently: “Come inside, please. Help me watch them!” He followed her not so much to be of help as for protection, and he backed his hump against the folds of shawls and mantillas.

He saw that the woman was shrewd and wary. She greeted the invaders with a harsh voice, and commanded them all to stay out but one, one only, whoever they chose to come in and buy. As if she had not spoken they rushed and crowded into the little cubby, began pulling at things and asking prices, arguing among themselves. Concha saw Herr Glocken trying to hide. She called in delight, “Oh, look, here is our little luck piece!” and flew to touch his hump. Then each in turn added to the confusion by struggling to reach him. He defended himself by backing more deeply into the shawls and flattening his hands on his shoulders. But they touched him anyway, anywhere they could reach, slapping him sharply with open palms, until he could bear no more. In a panic he broke through and got to the open air, where Ric and Rac, on guard, shrieked and chased him to get their share of good luck, too. Blindly he careered into the Baumgartners, and just beyond them, the Lutzes. Mrs. Lutz again rose instantly to her duties as a mother: all in a breath, she tripped Ric with her foot and sent him sprawling, seized Rac by the arm, smacked her most satisfyingly, and spoke sternly to Herr Glocken: “Why did you not defend yourself? What were you thinking of?”

Herr Glocken, much grieved and ashamed, said meekly, “I did not think. It was like getting caught in a hornets' nest.”

They went nearer the shop but did not venture in. The Spaniards were everywhere, the shopkeeper could not watch them all at once, she could not drive them out because they did not listen, but finally Lola, to fix her attention, with immensely prolonged haggling and fast talking and high contempt for the object, bought with hard money a small square of embroidered gauze with lace. Meantime the children had got back to their station; the desperate shopkeeper, wedged in a corner, shouted to them all to get out. Even as Lola handed over the money, and the woman was counting change, they all surged out into the street, and very plainly the watchers saw that the shapes of the company were all lumpy in odd places, and from under Amparo's black shawl there dangled the fringed corner of a pure white one.

They dashed across the plaza and hailed a large open conveyance drawn by a big sad bony horse. The women and children piled in upon one another first; Manolo, Pepe, and Tito squatted on the steps and Pancho crowded in beside the driver. “Hurry,” he said, “hurry, we are late!”

“For what?” inquired the driver. “Look, Señor, this carriage is for six persons, you are ten; you will pay me for ten. I charge by the passenger.”

“That's mere robbery,” said Pancho, “I will not pay it.”

The driver drew his horse to a stop. “Then all must get out,” he said convincingly. Lola leaned forward and said, “What are we stop ping for?” an edge of panic in her voice.

“We are being robbed,” said Pancho, though without much force.

“Tell him to drive on, drive on!” screamed Lola. “Goat, mule! Drive on.”

Pancho said, “Who are you talking to? Shut your big mouth!”

Tito said, “Listen, Pancho, you're not talking to Pastora. Lola's running this, don't forget. Get on there now …” and he said to the driver, who seemed to have gone to sleep along with his horse, “How much do you want?”

The driver roused to full life instantly and named his price. “And I want it in hand, now, Señor,” with the self-possession and readiness of a man long experienced in human trickiness. “Now,” he said, without lifting the reins, holding out his hollowed hand so that whoever had the money could put it where it belonged. Tito paid.

The Lutzes and the Baumgartners had wandered about, enjoying such pastimes as the island afforded, including the sweet heavy aromatic wines of the country, so festive and so soothing. Herr Baumgartner had taken two or three more than he should have, and had bought a bottle of Malavasia, promising his wife he would drink it instead of brandy. They now being chance-met at this place, Mrs. Baumgartner remarked that it seemed to be a fate that they were not to be free of those sinister characters the dancers for a moment—they had spoiled the voyage until now and they would go on spoiling it to the end …

“No, they leave at Vigo, thank God,” said Herr Lutz, “and so do the rest of the steerage people.”

“It will be a pleasant ship then,” said Frau Baumgartner to Frau Lutz.

“I cannot think improvement will go so far as that,” said Frau Lutz, quelling all hope, “but we have the right to expect at least decency. Those creatures,” she said, bobbing her chin towards the old carriage lumbering away like an overcrowded bird's nest, “should be left here in jail, if there were any such thing as justice—”

“Instead of that poor Condesa,” said Herr Baumgartner. “I am sure she was an innocent afflicted lady, suffering and not strong enough to bear her pains without the relief of drugs—”

“I never approved of that woman,” said Frau Lutz. “I cannot find one argument in her favor, still I think it injustice that she should be punished for her faults—not that she doesn't deserve it—but that these worse criminals than she should escape without a scratch … Well, what do you expect of this world?”

Herr Glocken, who dimly resented Frau Lutz's tactless intervention in his favor, saving him but making him ridiculous, spoke up to get the talk down to facts. “They were stealing everywhere today, they have been cheating on the ship all the time—that raffle!—those children, those little monsters, stole La Condesa's pearls and threw them overboard—”

“It was never proved,” said Herr Lutz. “It is not known whether they were real pearls, even—nor whether the object thrown overboard was her necklace or a string of beads—”

Frau Lutz broke into cold indignant speech. “My husband is very nearsighted,” she said, “or at least, he does not see well. He cannot possibly know what went on when those children collided with us on deck.… I did see, and I do know now, though I doubted at first, that it was a pearl necklace with a diamond clasp, and those unnatural children stole it and the girl threw it into the sea. That is all,” she said, with sarcasm. “All. It is by no means enough to disturb anyone, we are wrong to concern ourselves with such peccadilloes—”

Herr Lutz rebuked his wife by speaking in turn to the others as if she were not present: “My poor wife has the highest principles, and no misdeed is too trivial not to call for hanging at least; I have never known her to overlook the slightest fault in anybody's character but her own, and it is no good to tell her that no matter what appearances may be, what circumstances may indicate, we must not rely on them as positive evidence, no, not even in the lightest cases—”

Frau Lutz spoke up firmly: “Elsa! You saw it too, did you not?” Elsa, who had stood silent and lumpish, looking away from her elders and hardly listening, started and answered instantly, “Yes, Mama.”

Herr Baumgartner roused and reached to Herr Lutz to shake his hand, saying, “But you talk like a lawyer, like a good defense man, it is rare to find a layman who has any grasp at all of the great principles ruling evidence, that crux of all legal procedure … Congratulations! Did you ever read, perhaps, for the bar?”

“No, but I have good friends in the profession. In my business, I have needed them. They gave me good advice.”

Herr Glocken was suffering from his sense of failure, of having run away when he should have stood his ground, to witness the zarzuela company do their thieving, to denounce them, to have seen them all arrested and dragged away to the
juzgado
—and instead of this heroic conduct, he had run, cravenly. He had let that Frau Lutz even defend him from children—children; what humiliation! He had then seen the dancers leaving with their loot, and so had all the others, and yet they stood there, gossiping all around the subject and never once admitting guilt or complicity.…

“We should have done something, that I know,” he said to them all, and they all looked down at him with varying degrees of condescension.

“Can you think of anything?” asked Herr Lutz. “In my business, we take no notice at all of petty pilfering, what we lose on one customer we make up on another. We have a budget for replacing all sorts of portable objects—you'd hardly believe what magpies tourists are; it does not matter how respectable they look. So I do not take it seriously—”

Herr Lutz glanced at his watch and then at the sun. The great dark clouds were rolling up again from the east, just as they had yesterday. The others glanced too at their wrists and Mrs. Baumgartner said, “It is late. If we walk, we may miss the ship.”