Ship of Fools (80 page)

So I can fall out until all the Jews go back to Jerusalem, what of it? It is only my head is cracked, who cares? Aloud he said in a luxury of contempt: “Let him have the whole stinking place, I got no use for it!”

Dr. Schumann said with weary scorn: “Thank you,” at which Herr Löwenthal gave a loud spluttering puff of air from his pouched lips, and got out into the passageway before he really said what he thought about that kind of thanks.

The Captain invited Dr. Schumann for mid-morning coffee on the bridge, and opened the conversation at once. “I have had the reports of various officers in line of duty,” he said, stretching his wattles and tucking them in his collar again, “and beyond the sheer impudence of the thing, beyond their total ignorance of any forms of social decency, those disorderly dancers seem to be quite a common sort of petty criminal, too, of the pilfering and pickpocket order. This has been an unusually eventful voyage—”

“It is a disaster,” said Dr. Schumann, making no attempt to conceal his weariness or his indifference to the whole sordid affair.

“That is not a word we use at sea for anything less than the loss of a ship,” said the Captain, tempering his austerity with a thin smile. “An old sea-dog,” he said, leaving Dr. Schumann to infer which sea-dog he meant, “knows what danger and disaster really are, and could never mistake the misdemeanors of a load of passengers for anything serious. They do not know how to behave on a ship—”

“Nor on land, either, some of them. But there are still some very decent persons on board.”

The Captain almost smirked at this opportunity handed to him as if on a tray. “I shall be more than pleased if you will show me one,” he said, with unctuous enjoyment. Dr. Schumann decided to appear somewhat amused. “It is difficult,” he agreed, “on short acquaintance and in a trying, unfamiliar situation. Very few persons show up at their best.”

This required no answer. The Captain went on: “I am told La Condesa's pearls were stolen—unhappy lady! I began to think at last that her mind was not exactly—” He touched his forehead lightly with an index finger.

“It is possible,” said Dr. Schumann, to end that topic. “We do not know whether the pearls were stolen or not. La Condesa said the children snatched them from her. Her nurse the stewardess said La Condesa was not wearing her pearls that day. The children threw some object overboard. There were two witnesses, Herr and Frau Lutz, but unfortunately they do not support each other's testimony. Nothing is proved.”

“The trouble with this sort of thing,” said the Captain, raising a hand and keeping silence while the young steward standing out of earshot came forward and poured more coffee, “the trouble is, when a man, any sort of man,” he added generously, “not just a naval officer, finds himself embroiled in a low kind of women's gossip, it is an affront to his self-respect to have to deal with these things on their natural debased level. I was told the Spanish company robbed many shops in Santa Cruz, and that many of those you call decent persons among the passengers witnessed this. No one interfered or took steps to prevent this on the scene?”

“Several passengers, not women,” said Dr. Schumann, “have agreed among themselves this morning that what they saw looked very dubious indeed, they had well-founded suspicions, but after all, no proof. At no time did anyone feel it was his business to interfere or even to take particular notice.”

“That was very prudent,” said the Captain, dryly. “Tell me, how are your casualties getting on? The young fellow whose name I do not remember, who seems to have been attacked by someone wielding an unorthodox weapon, perhaps a tack hammer or a woman's shoe heel?” Dr. Schumann saw the glint of gallantry in the Captain's pale eyes. “I should imagine there are the usual number of shipboard romances with their inevitable disappointments and dramatic scenes,” he said, with relish. “Is the young man recovering?”

“He'll live,” said Dr. Schumann, “and so will all the others. There is again the question of who committed this thoroughly mischievous act. The young man himself insists it was a girl called Pastora, one of the Spanish company. But a steward has defended this girl, says she is innocent—a strange word to use about any of that troupe—and that he is certain it was done by a woman wearing a mask, so that he did not recognize her. That was all he knew.”

“As for the incident on deck when Herr Rieber got his scalp scratched?”

“That is the only perfectly clear incident we have. Herr Hansen has, throughout the voyage, showed himself consistently as a man of unstable temper and eccentric views, and for his own reasons he broke his beer bottle over Herr Rieber's head when Herr Rieber was dancing harmlessly with a lady—”

“Lady—” echoed the Captain thoughtfully. The word hung between them like a drift of vapor. Dr. Schumann proceeded without a pause: “Everybody knows this and it seems to be the one thing everybody does know. All the rest is a very sordid little sort of tempest in a teapot … a trivial mystery.”

“La Condesa was the mysterious one,” said the Captain. “That beautiful lady should never have been left on that barbarous island alone. No matter what she did. No lady could do enough harm politically to deserve such a sentence. By the way, you were her physician and in her confidence, what
did
she do?”

“I don't know,” said Dr. Schumann, rather bluntly.

The Captain's chin retreated, his neck stiffened, his face turned slowly a dark red. “I have thought as much from the beginning,” he said with rancor. “It is a pity she did not respond better to your treatment. Indeed, I gather that her condition worsened very much in your hands … well, Dr. Schumann, flesh is grass, no? A doctor cannot afford to let his failures weigh upon his mind!”

Dr. Schumann stood up suddenly in the middle of this speech, and at the end, took his leave with a stiff bow, noting the signs of the Captain's wrath and chagrin, but with such a stinging anger in himself it crossed his mind only a good while later that the Captain's blood pressure was apparently rather high.

Denny's loud groans and threats of revenge on Pastora had been quieted by Dr. Schumann's needle, but his swollen lips and end of his nose just visible in a swathe of bandages big as a large pumpkin emitted burbles and rattles and snorts for the rest of the night. David stood swaying, legs wide, feet rocking, trying to keep his balance and to take in the meaning of the squalid disorder in the cabin. Herr Glocken was almost entirely terrorized, and tearfully begged David not to go to sleep, and not to let him, Herr Glocken, go to sleep either. Life was too dangerous on board this ship, nobody was safe, the innocent and the guilty were threatened alike, and the innocent first—

“Not always,” said David, with a flapping gesture full of drunken portentousness towards Denny.

“Always,” said Herr Glocken, obstinately.

“Have it your way,” said David, struggling to the bunk by the wall, falling into his pillow face downward and letting his drunkenness take charge of him. He sank through qualmy waves into bottomless deeps of drowning and yet could not drown. Nightmare closed around in whirling flame and orange flashes of dreadful shapeless visions with crazed eyes and stretched silently screaming mouths. He rolled face up and opened his eyes on the low comedy of his surroundings and heard himself say loudly, “I'm ready for the nut-hatch!”

“What? What is that?” Instantly Herr Glocken responded. “Don't turn out your light. Don't go to sleep!”

“All right,” said David, “I won't. But you go to sleep. It's all over anyhow. Nothing more can happen.”

“Oh, how do we know?” moaned Herr Glocken, but in a few minutes David saw that he was asleep. He slept also at last, for an hour, and woke in the horrors of headache fit to crack his skull, a leaping gorge, blazing thirst, and a stomach so estranged it refused to harbor its only friends, aspirin and cold water.

Denny was awake again, too, this time merely groaning at intervals, begging for water, but unable to lift or turn his head to drink it. David said, “Just keep still for God's sake and open your mouth as much as you can, and I'll pour a little and you swallow!” This was done with much commotion and spilt water and sounds of choking from Denny, with Herr Glocken pleading, “
Bitte, bitte, bitte
, my medicine, Herr Scott, please my medicine, I am late with it,
bitte
—”

David gave him his medicine, swallowed more aspirin, and while he washed lightly at the stand and changed his clothes, he asked Denny whatever had happened to him. Denny's beaten mouth moved and he told the story of his afflictions, or rather his version of them, slowly in a vocabulary that astonished even David, who thought he knew all the words and most of their meanings. He almost lost track of the events in his fascinated attention to the language, but the name Pastora did emerge from the depths of boiling pitch.

“Are you sure?” asked David. “
Last
time I saw her she was running from you like a rabbit, way ahead, too—”

“I finally got to her cabin,” said Denny in a low hoarse voice, “and she came right out and lit into me with an ice pick. I bet her pimp put her up to it. I bet he was right there back of her—” His mouth pouted and twitched at the corners. “She already had my money,” he whispered, “all the hell she was going to get. I guess they figured it all velvet and no wear and tear—”

David left the cabin without waiting for more, pretending that he didn't hear Herr Glocken pleading earnestly that Herr Scott should not leave him alone. “Let him get out on deck by himself,” David decided, “I'm through.” Hunched and sick, he found his table. For once he was not hungry but drank coffee, hoping for Jenny and fearing she would not come, glancing around in spite of himself every time someone entered, hating the very thought of seeing her and hardly able to endure his waiting for her. At last he felt he had something to say to her that she would not be able to answer. Would she dare to say to him again, “
It wasn't love, David
—” Well, this time he didn't care what it was. It was the end for him and he was going to walk off the ship at Vigo.

When he glanced about again, Jenny was there, coming towards him. He was so blinded with excitement he could not see, until she was quite near, that she was pale, exhausted, her eyes swollen; but she was freshly washed and smelled of roses, her smile was quite frank and friendly if a little shamefaced. She seated herself, shook out her napkin and said, “Lord! that was heavy going last night, wasn't it? I've never been so absolutely blotto in my life. What happened to the raffle, I wonder? Finally? Or to anything else? David darling, you look downright done in. What became of you?”

She had not looked straight in his eyes, in spite of her smile; she now asked the steward for orange juice and coffee and toast and jelly and milk, then said, “Heavens, it's just force of habit. I can't eat anything! Is coffee all you're having, too?”

David said in a crackling voice, “Look here, Jenny, what are you up to? What are you trying on this time? Pretend you don't remember? Well, you never believed me when I told you that, and now I don't believe you.”

“That's fair enough,” said Jenny, “but now I do believe you, because I don't remember one single thing after a lot of dancing and scurrying around the ship with Freytag and drinking a lot, and then I woke up this morning with a crashing head in my own chaste narrow bunk with Elsa lying there staring at me across the cabin, and the minute I opened my eyes she asked, ‘How do you feel now?' I was delighted to tell her I felt simply immeasurably awful and it seemed to cheer her up.”

David saw that she was really uneasy and kept a cold steady eye upon her as she rambled along, but interrupted to ask: “You don't remember?”

Jenny said, “I am trying my best to tell you that for the first time in my abandoned career, I don't remember a thing after a certain point. We joined up for a while with Mrs. Treadwell and her little powder puff of an officer, and we were all over the ship and we seemed to drink everything in sight, but I can't remember how I got back to my cabin. Oh,” she said painfully, drooping her face into her hands.

“Are you sure you went to your cabin at all?” asked David with a scorching smile.

“I woke up there, if that's any proof,” said Jenny, feeling a chill in her spine, for David was about to tell her something she did not want to hear, and her blood knew what it was. “Why?”

“Why, nothing,” said David. “This alcoholic blank
is
convenient, isn't it?”

“Why, no,” said Jenny, drearily, “not if you've been trailing me around again and peeping. What was it? What did I do?”

He turned his head away and his profile was one tight small secretive smile. “Ask Freytag,” he said, watching acutely her pallor taking on faint greenish shadows.

Jenny knew that expression in his face too well, and resented it again. “I'll do that, later,” she said. “There's no hurry.” The anger in her voice didn't match the tears slowly filling her eyelids. More tears, yes, she could draw them at will—this time they wouldn't work. “Don't cry, Jenny, or not before people. They'll think I've been beating you—” he said. “You do cry so nicely, but it's a little late for that now. We've crossed a line, it's all over, why can't we say so and let go?”

“Haven't we been doing that, letting go little by little, all along?” asked Jenny, her tears drying at once and her face beginning to glow pinkly with anger. “Does it have to be a wrench? Do we have to break bones? I wish we could let it come of itself when we are really ready for it—when it won't hurt so much! We'll get used to it gradually—”

David flared up in turn. “What exactly am I supposed to get used to? Seeing you sprawled flat on your back in a fairly public place, the boat deck? And the only reason you stayed nearly faithful to me is that you were too drunk to be interesting to your seducer, after all.” He poured another cup of coffee and said, “Let's drop this subject. I'm sick of it already.”