Ship of Fools (81 page)

Jenny took a good swig of too hot coffee, gasped a little and said, “You are a monster, did you know that, you monster?”

“Are you still drunk?” asked David in something like triumph. “Sometimes when I thought I was sobered up and could face the mean trivialities of real life again, one cup of hot coffee would slam me back into the ditch, I'd have to crawl out once more through the slime and weeds—”

“You're pleased with yourself, aren't you?” asked Jenny accusingly. “You're glad this happened, aren't you? You were really hoping all along for something like it, weren't you? I'd give a good deal to know what you really have had in mind all this time—not that it concerns me.”

“It did concern you,” said David in a new tone, as if he were talking pleasantly with a stranger, “but you are right. It doesn't now.”

Jenny stood up calmly, her face quietly intent, but David saw her hands shaking. “I'm sorry,” she said, “but I must run away now. I've got a question to ask somebody.”

“I've told you already.” David raised his voice a little, but did not glance at her again as she went. He poured more coffee, and said to the waiter, “I'll have scrambled eggs and ham now, thank you.”

Mrs. Treadwell and Herr Freytag greeted each other pleasantly on a morning stroll around the deck and agreed that breakfast together in the open air would be a very nice way to dispel the lingering miasma of last night's uproar. They were both clear-eyed, in amiable mood and inclined to smile at each other when some specially used-up-looking reveler strayed by their chairs. They exchanged one or two universal if minor truths—pleasure was so often more exhausting than the hardest work; they had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not. “Both equally disfiguring,” said Freytag. “The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own—even more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being—”

Mrs. Treadwell turned her dark blue eyes on him in faint surprise. “I never thought of that,” she said. “I just thought beauty was a phase of living and would pass with everything else in time—”

“Maybe,” said Freytag, “but that is not the same as hurrying to kill it, do you think?”

“Maybe not,” said Mrs. Treadwell, watching Jenny Brown coming towards them slowly, head towards the sea, hands crossed and folded at the wrists. She passed without seeing them, all pallor and melancholy. “That poor girl,” said Mrs. Treadwell, rather idly, turning to Freytag. He started so sharply the things on his tray rattled, he gazed after the retreating Jenny, and his dilated pupils turned his gray eyes to black fire. Mrs. Treadwell instantly was warm with embarrassment, as if Freytag had spoken some dire impropriety: he simply had no reserve, no dignity. It did not matter what kind of thing existed between him and that girl, it was so weak of him to let every feeling he had show in that way. She carefully avoided facing him. It was like that other morning when the talk about his wife came up; like the time he had picked the quarrel with her in the writing room. Mrs. Treadwell set her tray carefully on the deck between their chairs, alighted feet together, and rose as if she were getting out of a motor car.

“Why are you going?” asked Freytag simply as a small boy.

“My cabin mate is not well, I promised to help her.”

“Isn't that the screeching hag who made all the trouble?” asked Freytag with a writhing mouth. Mrs. Treadwell walked away. Freytag got up and went in the opposite direction, looking for Jenny. He did not find her after a half hour's search.

As Mrs. Treadwell neared her own door, the door of the cabin next hers was opened, and the Baumgartner family emerged, the little boy in front with his timid hangdog air. Herr Baumgartner held the door for his wife and stepped aside for her with an almost theatrical show of deference on his weak-mouthed, self-pitying face, with its beaten look of guilt. His wife passed him like a stranger, yet her perpetually grieved air was now touched with shame, the silence among the three was like some burdensome secret they were carrying together. Mrs. Treadwell opened her door and, halfway in, said hastily, “
Grüss Gott
—” over her shoulder, then closed the door, and Lizzi, pushing the ice cap off her brow, said plaintively, “Please, what is it now?”

“Nothing,” said Mrs. Treadwell. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I would like another sleeping pill,” said Lizzi, drearily. “Tell me, did you hear anything new upstairs? What happened to the party?”

Mrs. Treadwell handed her the pill and a glass of water. “There are rumors,” she said, “not very interesting. There was almost nobody at the raffle, and one of those twins drew the tickets out of an open basket, and the Spanish company won all the prizes except a little white shawl for the pianist and a pair of castanets for one of those Cuban students.… I only overheard this—some of the Germans talking, those Huttens and others. Nobody told me anything directly. Now then,” she ended amiably, “will you go to sleep again?”

“I think so,” said Lizzi, almost entirely chastened. “You did not hear any word of Herr Rieber?”

“He is resting,” said Mrs. Treadwell, “and I hope you will too.”

Out she went near desperation, but managed to make her way to the small writing room, where almost no one went these days, without a glance or greeting for anyone. She sat there alone reading stale magazines until the luncheon bugle sounded. The exact vision of the Baumgartners' faces would not leave her. It was plain they too had suffered some sort of shabby little incident during the night. Mrs. Treadwell did not even wish to guess what it might have been. That sad dull display of high manners after they had behaved no doubt disgracefully to each other and their child was intended no doubt to prove that they were not so base as they had caused each other to seem. That dreadful little door-holding bowing scene had meant to say, You can see, can't you, that in another time or place, or another society, I might have been very different, much better than you have ever seen me? Mrs. Treadwell leaned back and closed her eyes. What they were saying to each other was only,
Love me, love me in spite of all! Whether or not I love you, whether I am fit to love, whether you are able to love, even if there is no such thing as love, love me
!

A small deep wandering sensation of disgust, self-distaste came with these straying thoughts. She remembered as in a dream again her despairs, her long weeping, her incurable grief over the failure of love or what she had been told was love, and the ruin of her hopes—what hopes? She could not remember—and what had it been but the childish refusal to admit and accept on some term or other the difference between what one hoped was true and what one discovers to be the mere laws of the human condition? She had been hurt, she had recovered, and what had it all been but a foolish piece of romantic carelessness? She stood up to take a deep breath and walk around the stuffy room. All morning long she had been trying in the back of her mind to piece together exactly what had happened last night to her, and what she had done. The scene with that young officer was clear enough. She remembered Herr Baumgartner hanging over the rail looking sick. Lizzi was delivered to her hands later, when she had been amusing herself painting her face; and then—

No good putting it off any longer. She could not find her gilded sandals when she was putting her things in order. There were small random bloodspots on the lower front of her nightgown. And as she walked, she remembered, and stopped, clutching a chairback, feeling faint. Walked again, then left the room and set out to look for Jenny Brown. She should know everything about it, being the “girl” of that rather self-absorbed young man, Denny's cabin mate.… Mrs. Treadwell remembered very well what had happened, what she had done; she wanted a few particulars of the damage she had caused, and above all to learn whether her enemy had recognized her.

Jenny Brown was reading the bulletin board. A ragged-edged imitation of an ancient proclamation announced:
The victims of last night's violence and bloodshed are resting quietly. The suspected criminals are under surveillance, not yet apprehended, but an early disclosure of some interesting identities is expected
. Signed:
Les Camelots de la Cucaracha
.

For the rest, news from the faraway world mentioned the shipping strike, the number of ports tied up, the number of men involved, the amount of wages lost, the many millions of money lost to the shipping business, and no end in sight; the situation in Cuba was not improving, all attempts at a settlement between factions had failed; unemployment was world-wide and growing worse, a real threat everywhere; yesterday's ship's pool, so much, had been won by Herr Löwenthal; the horse races would begin at two o'clock, and whoever had lost a gold-banded fountain pen with the initial R engraved on it, please call at the purser's office.

Mrs. Treadwell said to Jenny: “But no bulletins about the casualties in last evening's engagement. I wonder how they are doing.”

Jenny said: “It seems to have all been very gay. That dancer called Pastora is said to have attacked that William Denny with an ice pick. And that long-legged Swede hit that Herr Rieber over the head with a beer bottle. These are notes I have just picked up in my travels around deck.”

Mrs. Treadwell suddenly and surprisingly laughed out—not a loud laugh or an empty one—a small rich trill of merriment, pure pleasure; Jenny was so taken with the sound she laughed too, in a small shaken voice; she had not expected to feel like laughing about anything, and now she laughed without knowing why.

“So it was that little dancer, after all?”

“That's what he says, and I'd think he should know,” said Jenny, and they went on with light laughter in their voice, quite blithe and ruthless, perfectly frank in their delight that the insufferable fellow had got his comeuppance.

“It nearly restores my faith in life,” said Jenny. Her face then changed, instantly, became pale and anxious once more. Mrs. Treadwell saw Freytag coming towards them, and without any sign of uneasiness, she drifted away in her strange motionless walk as if she did not use the ordinary human muscles. Jenny stood until Freytag came straight towards her and waited until he spoke. He leaned very close and said gently: “I've been worried about you.”

Jenny said, “Don't, please.”

He said, “I've been looking for you all over. Where were you?”

Jenny said soberly, “Oh, here and there. No one can get really misplaced for long on this ship.… Oh, I can't bear it much longer. Oh, I want to leave at Vigo, but I haven't got a visa for Spain.”

“Stop saying ‘Oh,'” said Freytag, soothingly. “Things aren't so bad as all that. You haven't got anything to be sorry for.”

“Oh, what do you know about it? Tell me, tell me, what happened—?”

“If you could see your face!” he told her. “Jenny, you're such a strange sort of girl. You'd think you'd just been sentenced to death. Listen to me,” he said, familiarly as a brother. With something of a brother's impersonal touch he took her elbow lightly and steered her out to deck center and strolled along with her. “You'll not believe this maybe, but nothing, nothing, absolutely
nothing
happened, we were both too drunk, I'm very sorry to say; I was good for nothing and you were—well, not there at all, on the moon, I should say; and Jenny, it was perhaps a little dull and certainly absurd and nothing for either of us to think about again. Do you hear me?” he said, leaning forward and peering into her face. She stopped short, and to his astonishment, laughed with convincing merriment. “How idiotic!” she said. “Nothing, after all. For all the trouble you've made me, I should have had
something
out of it! Something more than just trouble!
You
needn't think of it again, but David will for the rest of his life. He saw us last night—saw something that about finished him, I think …”

“So long as he goes prowling and spying on you,” said Freytag, boldly, “anything he sees will be too good for him.”

After a long pause, Jenny took a few slow steps ahead of him. “I deserve that,” she said flatly. “Good-by.” Her face was anything but repentant-looking and the manner of her leavetaking was, to say the least, he observed wryly, not humble. He did not cast off at once the tingle of annoyance and curiously wounded feelings her sudden snub left in him. Even after he reminded himself again that she was not really attractive, a little nobody not worth a man's attention, just a moody, shallow neurotic American girl pretending to herself she was an artist to give herself false importance—the whole series of belittling tags seemed inadequate to his sense of injury, his desire for revenge of some kind on her. His grudge against Mrs. Treadwell for her inconsequent gossip with Lizzi had quite vanished—indeed he had a slight new grievance against Mrs. Treadwell because she had not once made the smallest gesture towards advancing their dubious entente, thus denying him the satisfaction of putting her off in the little ways he knew, just enough to whet her appetite for conquest but not enough to discourage her. He had been rather pleased at her readiness to have breakfast with him again as if their first had made a light bond between them; and she had ended by walking away rudely, as rudely as Jenny, after all, though she did seem to be of a somewhat better class; well, maybe American women are all of them rude. He shook his head as if that might scatter his uncomfortable thoughts, and tried to think of Mary, but the nearer he came to her bodily, the more dimly her image flickered in his mind. What was there to think of? She was Mary, she was there, waiting, they would take up their life together just where they had set it down—no, they had never set it down anywhere, this separation was nothing, a mere interruption of habit, of custom, of the good warm dailiness of marriage, as if marriage could be in any way changed or affected by absences from each other. He drew a deep breath and sighed loudly.