Ship of Fools (74 page)

“Not much,” she said. “Are you trying to pick a quarrel with me? Don't do it. I have enough of that already.”

Freytag, reflecting that this was indeed a bad start for an evening of which he had some hopes, changed his tone at once. “Don't mind me,” he said, “I am perhaps just a little jealous. Let's dance again before we start our ramblings, what do we care what those funny Spaniards think?”

David finished his dessert, drank his coffee with a liqueur and a cigarette, then wandered leisurely out to the bar, rather hoping that Jenny might notice his entire composure. She was not in sight, though, so he joined William Denny in the bar, where the Baumgartners were already installed without their child at a small table. The Huttens were sharing a bottle of wine at another, Bébé, apparently completely recovered from his misadventure, lying near their feet.

David wondered now and again at the way he and Denny had settled down into the limited but satisfactory relationship of fellow drinkers. He decided that Denny could drink with anybody or alone, it made no difference; but David, whose main trouble was that he did not really like anybody except Jenny now and then, and Jenny less and less every day, was at ease with Denny because, so far as David could see, Denny did not exist at all; at least, as nothing more than a bundle of commonplace appetites and cranky local prejudices. He had tried him out and there was nothing to him. They sat and drank each in his own silence so far removed and so unrelated to each other it had the look of companionship.

Over their fourth whiskey, David remarked in a sluggish tone, his tongue a little thick: “Ev'ry time I look out there, I see her going by with Freytag. Now, there she goes again,” he said, waving his hand loosely, “there she goes.”

Denny leaned sidewise from his stool, he bulged towards David, his face full of conspiracy. “I don't want to get personal,” he said earnestly, “I never mix in anybody's business, understand, but if that bitch belonged to me, I'd break every bone in her. Not that it's any of my business, understand, but believe me you're gettin' a raw deal.”

His moony expression of solicitude touched David, who felt at once a responsive glow of benevolent feeling not exactly for Denny but for the words. “Oh, that's all right,” he said, “I know what you're up against, too. That Pastora. We're just two shipwrecked mariners in the same lifeboat,” he said, genially. Inside him the thin sharp wires were twanging, snapping, letting go one at a time, he was getting easier under the ribs, he wasn't even annoyed with himself to hear himself talking like a fool to Denny, who talked like one all the time; in fact, he enjoyed it. “We all have our troubles,” he told Denny, expansively. “You'll find a way out.”

“I'm tryin' to find a way
in
,” said Denny, lewdly. “The way out's easy. I don't mind tellin' you, she got a lot more out of me than I meant to give her, she's a slick worker; and now she's tryin' to give me the runaround. Well, there's goin' to be a showdown tonight, this here very night, I'm tellin' you. It's not goin' to be any trouble, no trouble at all for anybody but her,” he said. “I just mean to show her, like I told you, that's all.”

David thought this over carefully. “Well,” he decided, sympathetically, “with a woman like that, no wonder you eat yeast.”

Denny was bewildered but not offended. “What's yeast got to do with it?” he inquired. “Who said yeast?” He began pushing David about somewhat at arm's length, urgently. David leaned back out of his range. “Go on,” said Denny, “are you a man, or a mouse? Go ahead. Now is your time. Knock her front teeth out.”

“Pastora?” asked David. “Why don't you? That's your job.”

“Yeah, well—” said Denny, doubtfully. “No, not exactly. I aim to give her a little more time to do the right thing. I'd like her in good condition,” he said, thoughtfully. “I wouldn't want her all bunged up … what I always say is, better the man, worse the bitch trouble. That's me. But you've
had
that Jenny, and I'd put her out of circulation if she belonged to me.”

David focused his nearsighted eyes with some effort upon the face sagging near him and said distinctly, because it now occurred to him that Denny was getting extremely personal, “Well, she doesn't belong to you,” and added, with a stroke of lightning revelation, “She doesn't belong to anybody, not even to herself.” He heard this with some astonishment, then felt instantly he had crossed a line into a new truth and was even then looking back calmly on old false hopes. His brief flash of elation sank again into gloom as the dancers passed the barroom door again, revolving swiftly—among them, Pastora with her student, Jenny with Freytag. He rapped on the bar and pushed their two glasses forward. “The same,” he said. “Oh well, so long as they keep passing we know where they are.”

“Yeah, and what they're doin',” said Denny, leering with such abandon his face went all out of shape.

The bride and groom, arm in arm, paused in their after-dinner stroll on the lee side away from the dancing, stood back to allow the surly blond boy to pass with the sick man in the wheel chair, the ghostly little dying man drooping among his rugs and blankets, turning the leaves of a small Bible with tremulous fingers. As he neared them, he lifted exalted eyes and raised a shaking hand towards them reaching to touch the bride. Her husband felt her tremble deeply and shrink against him. “God bless your marriage and make it fruitful,” said Herr Graf. The groom said, “Thank you, sir, thank you,” for he was bound to pay the respect due to age, and they remained motionless until the boy, ignoring them with a furious face, had pushed the chair safely past them. The bride still trembled a little, and leaned closer to her husband. “Oh, it sounded like a curse,” she said. “Oh, he almost touched me!”

Her husband said in his new tone of husbandly fondness, indulgence, reassurance and guidance, delicious to them both: “You know perfectly there is no such thing as a curse. Besides, what could harm us? He is only a poor dying man—after all, he wished us well. It is a sad thing to be old and sick …”

The bride, who was gentle-hearted, repented at once of her uncharitable feelings, and being honest, she knew they were caused by her horror of age and ugliness and sickness and her fear of them, and her greater fear of death, which was the only alternative, the one possible escape from them. Feeling rather sensible and calm, and joyously well and immortal, she said in a dreaming voice, “I hope we die young.” Her husband, in the privacy of the bow, slipped his arm around her and gave her a little shake. “Die young? We'll never die. We're going to live together until the end of the world!” They laughed together for happiness, without a trace of irony, and kissed hastily and guiltily, for fear they might be seen.

Johann had been so late for dinner the salon was almost deserted, he missed the balloons and the paper hats and all, and nobody came to sit with him. He was late because his uncle had chosen to have a coughing fit that almost strangled him. Johann had given him smelling salts to breathe, had washed his face in cold water, and sat fanning him with a folded paper, hoping he would die. Instead he had come around rather strongly, and demanded to be bathed and dressed, fresh from the skin out, demanded that Johann sit with him and help him eat his dinner, and insisted on being taken for an airing on deck afterwards—the old hypocrite, pretending he wanted fresh air when what he really wanted was to watch the dancing and hear the music and talk about how sinful it all was. By the time Johann finished his hurried dinner and got on deck, Concha was already dancing. She wiggled her fingers at him over her partner's shoulder and gave him a look that would melt stone; but Johann still knew that without money he would never be any nearer her than he was then. When she saw him again, wheeling his uncle on the margin of the party, she was with another partner, and this time she looked at his uncle, crossed herself, made an obscene sign against the evil eye with her right hand, and went on.

Johann was slowly coming to a most desperate resolve—money he would have, he would not put up another day with this selfish greedy old man who pretended to be such a saint and was pure devil. He would end this slavery, he would free himself no matter how—this is the end, the end, he said, and each time the thought repeated itself in words he got again a shock of fright that almost stopped his heart; yet he would do it. He would ask his uncle once more for the money he owed him—no more than he would have to pay a servant; if he refused, why then—then he would search the cabin, he would find it. He believed his uncle kept his wallet under the mattress at the head of the bed. He would wait until his uncle slept, he would give him a sleeping powder, he would find the money and take it—

He turned the wheel chair abruptly into the doorway and started for the cabin.

“Where are you going, nephew?” asked Herr Graf, rousing with a groan.

“Where do you think? Back to that filthy hole. It is time for you to sleep!”

“Turn back, Johann. I do not want to sleep.” As the wheels bumped roughly from step to step downward, Johann stubbornly silent, Herr Graf added: “God is good, but He is also just. I say again, I leave you to Him, Johann.”

“You'd better,” said Johann contemptuously, “it's all you can do.”

When he shoved the wheel chair roughly through the cabin door, the sickly shaded light burning day and night and the profuse loathsome smells accumulated there almost broke the spirit of his resolution; he was suffused from head to foot in a slow sweat of terror. Not daring to hesitate an instant, he spun the chair around and crouched as if he would spring at Herr Graf, almost choking on his words. “Now you will give me some money, or I'll—where is it? Where do you hide it, you old miser? I give you one more chance! Where is the money?”

“Not so loud, Johann. I do not want strangers to know your disgrace. I expected this,” he said calmly, through the bubbling of phlegm in his throat. “This is your next step towards damnation. The money is where it should be …”

“Give it to me!” shouted Johann desperately. “Give me only a little, but I must have it. I will take it, I will kill you if you don't give me the money!” and he raised his hands together fingers curved like talons as if they would close around his uncle's throat.

Herr Graf without moving his head fixed his gaze in Johann's eyes, lifting both hands, palms outward. He spoke just above a whisper with laboring, scanty breath: “Don't do it, my Johann, my dear child. You will be found out. They will put you to death. Beyond that, Johann, after your miserable end here, there is God's judgment.”

“Damn God's judgment,” said Johann raging, but retreating a step, his fists clenching, “don't talk that rot to me any more. Where is the money? Where is the money?”

“Be a thief if you must, Johann, but not a murderer. I beg of you, not for my sake—do you think I am afraid of death? but for your own, don't be either. Don't throw your life away, my child. Why can't you be patient just a few days longer, when you have so many years to enjoy after I am gone?”

Johann's fury and fright broke in him like a burst artery. His face crumpled, his chin shook, his eyes filled and flooded over on his cheeks, his mouth drew together convulsively in the center and opened at the corners, in a frenzy he shouted and sobbed until his words were almost smothered in his throat: “I don't want to kill you, I don't want to rob you, why do you drive me to it? Why can't you treat me like a human being, Uncle? What harm did I do you? Give me a little money,” he wept, inconsolably, “that is all I want! I won't kill you—I want only to be free!” He was sitting huddled over the edge of the divan, mopping his face with his soiled handkerchief and blowing his nose. His uncle watched him, shaking his head sorrowfully.

“There is no such thing as freedom, Johann,” he said, with a long broken sigh, “no such thing. If there were, how could you hope to gain it this way?”

“I want to buy a bottle of wine!” cried Johann, in a passion of renewed rebellion. “I need some decent clothes, you keep me looking like a beggar! I want to dance and be young while I'm young, I have the right to live. Just because you are going to die—is that any reason you should take me into the grave with you?”

Herr Graf said, “I wanted only to save your soul, Johann. You are dear to me.”

Johann felt himself melting, giving way, losing the fight, betrayed by this sly attack on his blind side, that side of his human feeling that was famished for love and blinded with the anguish of being forever outside of life, always left out of things, never being able to take part, to give his share, to be one of his own kind: he struggled and thrashed within himself trying to find the very words he needed to explain to this old man, to placate him if possible, to get what was needed from him, without hurting him, without stealing, without killing him, damn him! “My soul is my own,” he said sulkily, almost in his normal voice.

“No, it is not,” said his uncle calmly, “and that is a stupid thing to say. But I cannot contest with you any longer. I shall let you go.” He motioned towards his bunk. “There,” he said, “reach under the mattress, back near the wall, and give me my wallet.”

Johann, shocked by this sudden victory, fumbled among the blankets with uncertain hands, ashamed and humbled and resentful. He brought it out and handed it to Herr Graf, who opened it at once, reached into a certain compartment without hesitating, and without counting gave a generous sheaf of notes to Johann, a terrible smile on his suffering face.

“For your good, I should have done otherwise, perhaps,” he said gently, “but no gift is good unless given with a blessing,” he said. “Bless you. Johann, you should have known I am not afraid of death. I do not give you this for fear that you may take my life. I do it because I am afraid you may otherwise become a murderer. These are two quite different things, Johann. This is yours and I am no longer your guardian. Take it freely and go your ways, my child.”