Ship of Fools (82 page)

In the bar Herr Hansen was bowed over a stein of beer like a man looking into an open grave. The Spanish company sat around a table with coffee cups before them, Ric and Rac clawing into the sugar bowl; they were all silent and sulky-looking and concerned only with themselves. Their affairs with this ship and its passengers were ended, they were finished with all on board, they had no need to express their hatred and contempt any more. They looked a little dull and melancholy in their sullenness, as if their victory had cost more than it was worth, and had exhausted them. Freytag passed on through the bar without stopping when he saw who was already there: no beer could do him any good in such company.

Jenny returned to her cabin, and there was Elsa on the divan, hands flattening a book on her knees. “What's that you're reading?” asked Jenny, washing her hands for lack of something to do.

“The Bible,” said Elsa, distantly, without raising her eyes.

“Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes,” said Elsa, “and those Spaniards were already there, and when we passed them my mother said, loud enough for them to hear, ‘Look out for your wallets!' but they pretended not to hear. My poor father, I felt sorry for him, he said in a low voice making a joke, I think, that my mother would get him stabbed in the back if she said such things to that kind of foreigners, and my mother just said loudly in Spanish that thief was too good a word for them after all the names they called other people. I thought I would just die,” she added suddenly. Without warning she closed the Bible and fell sidewise on the divan and stretched out, crying deeply with tears rolling into her hair.

“It's no use,” she babbled, “nothing helps. I can't find anything in it that tells me how to live when I am so ugly and stupid and nobody wants to come near me, nobody can dance with me! Once my mother made me try to play the piano. I took lessons years and years, but anybody could play better than me, nobody wanted to hear me—”

Jenny offered her a clean handkerchief and said helplessly, “Elsa, Elsa, it's not so bad as all that! Here, take this. Let's wash our faces and go up on deck. We're coming into Vigo soon, and we'll all go ashore and those wretched dancers will stay there, and everything will be better then.”

“No, no,” said Elsa, “I am not going. You go.”

Johann woke from his short heavy sleep warm and eased all over; he stretched and yawned and rolled like a cat, making luxurious noises in his throat. He had come in just before daylight decently quiet but not guiltily, not cautiously; his uncle was awake, and did not question him, but asked only for a glass of water. Now he was sleeping well, comfortably composed, with a peaceful reconciled face, his eyelids tightly folded, his wax-yellow skin smoothed out and cold-looking. In panic Johann laid his palm near the mouth and nostrils to feel if there was still breath; then to the heart, his hand shaking. “Uncle!” he called loudly. “Wake up!” His uncle opened his eyes, gave a little melancholy sound of protest, and said, “No, why must you wake me? I did not sleep until very late.”

Johann snatched back his hand and stammered a confused apology. His uncle did not reply, but closed his eyes again. Johann waited uncertainly for some sign of life, trying to remember his promises, fighting down resentment and impatience mixed with fear of that deathly presence—why could he not draw his last breath and make an end of this dirty job? “Uncle.” He spoke more sharply than he intended. “Would you like a wash and some breakfast now? Tell me!”

His uncle opened his eyes and said, “Yes, Johann, your task is what it was yesterday. Do the necessary things, as before. But first, kneel down here beside me, and let us say a prayer together.” Johann knelt and bowed his head in a rebellious silence, and did not join in when his uncle began, “Our Father …” Concha would be waiting for him, she had promised to spend the afternoon alone with him. His clasped hands doubled into fists over his mouth, he was almost blind with the deathly rapture of lust that struck him like a blow from an unknown source, with a violence not of pleasure but like a mortal sickness or other disaster he had not dreamed of, and no one had warned him. “And deliver us from evil—” said his uncle. “Amen.” Johann blundered to his feet and began getting the morning sponge bath ready, silent, back turned to the cabin, hot with defensive outrage that his own uncontrollable body had so nearly put him to shame before that pious old hypocrite who would pretend to be shocked and would give no matter what to have just a flash of such feelings again. As he went on with the work he calmed down quite well, even felt a little remorse for thinking rude things of his poor wretched burden, and at last, when the steward brought the breakfast tray, he made a very creditable show of disappearing reluctantly. Once outside the door he went leaping like a stag, whistling “
Das gibt's nur einmal, das kommt nicht wieder
—”

Lizzi finally got up and ventured on deck. She lay in her chair, shawled and muffled like an invalid, drinking hot broth. She was quite silent, and for the rest of the voyage sat or walked alone, had food brought to her cabin, her face melancholy and confused as if she could not see well, or had just received painful news. Mrs. Treadwell observed silence with her, and they lapsed rather comfortably into their natural relation of strangers, as separate as silkworms in their cocoons. Yet moved by some impulse, perhaps of vague mischief, Mrs. Treadwell brought Lizzi an orange from the breakfast table, and remarked: “Herr Rieber was up and about this morning. He seems to be doing very nicely.”

Lizzi inserted a thumbnail in the orange peel and pulled off a section as if she were flaying something that could suffer. “Let him,” she remarked, sinking her teeth into the fruit.

At Vigo the harbor was filled with anchored, idle ships standing bows pointed outward. The steerage passengers again crowded upon the main deck and were herded down the gangplank first. The bride and groom, her hand on his arm, went ashore for good and disappeared without a single word of farewell to anyone. The Cuban family with the small girl and boy nodded and bowed to several of the officers as they went. David and Jenny set out together as they had finally agreed, to get visas for France. They went down just behind the Spanish company, who without a glance, not even a frown, towards their recent accomplices, the medical students, streamed off, loaded again with their parcels now containing their loot from Tenerife, chattering like blue jays, looking and behaving quite as they had when they boarded ship at Veracruz. The weather was wonderfully warm and tender, and they went at once to a small shaded park nearby, where they occupied a half dozen benches and seemed for the first time at ease with themselves.

Jenny and David, in a pleasant moment of truce, went to the French consul, an earnest bearded young fellow of the utmost gravity of manner, and were told with gestures of regret that he had not the faculty to grant visas to persons in transit. He went to the door with them, still expressing sympathy in a stern uncompromising voice. Jenny held her head while David took her elbow and led her down the steps. “Let's go to Spain?” she said, woefully. “No,” said David. “Do you know where we are going first?” They passed the little park again, and the zarzuela company were still sitting, very quietly for them, as if they were waiting for something to happen. Jenny and David sat on a bench some distance from them, and for no reason, David took his wallet out and looked at his passport and ticket. “To Bremerhaven, that's where,” he told her, at the same moment that he discovered that his ticket read “Southampton.”

“Good God,” he said simply. “Let's go.” They hurried back and ran to the purser, who already had prepared to put David aboard the British tender at Southampton, a notion that filled David with acute horror. The purser made a few small grumbles in his mustaches about people who were always changing their minds in mid-ocean, refusing utterly to grant that the mistake was not the passenger's. Jenny wanted to argue the question, but David marched her out firmly, though he could not prevent her thanking him much too warmly as they went. “It's the Captain who needs to make up his mind,” said Jenny, and they exchanged the familiar bits of rumor drifting from ear to ear; someone had heard the Captain swear repeatedly that once that cursed steerage was emptied at Vigo, the next harbor would be Bremerhaven. He would not stop at Gijón, nor at Boulogne, and if he pleased, not at Southampton. His contention, so the gossip ran, was that his was a German ship sailing through enemy waters, and his duty was to get her into home port safely without international incident. Wilhelm Freytag had been looking forward to seeing the last of those Cuban medical students at Boulogne, to say nothing of Mrs. Treadwell. Yet even as it was, the ship seemed nearly deserted. No one except David Scott and Jenny had gone ashore—the passengers had been warned to stay on board unless they had urgent business ashore, for it was necessary for the
Vera
to get out of the harbor before nightfall, whether because of port regulations, or the weather, or the shipping strike, the announcer did not say. David learned from the purser that the fare was the same for all ports from Vigo, and that from there the Captain could put them off where he liked, or take the whole lot to Bremerhaven and, said the purser kindly, “Our good Captain is not in the mood to have his orders questioned by anyone. However, in any case, I am sure we will not stop at Southampton.”

“Well, I'll be going on to Bremerhaven, anyway,” said David, and Jenny said instantly, “Yes, and then we can get our visas for Spain!”

David said nothing. They went on deck together, in the oddly changed mood of tenderness they were arriving at as if they were two strangers discovering something lovable in faces they were seeing for the first time. David's fury had melted at white heat all his habitual views and impressions and feelings about Jenny, and these began to flow and mingle and form again into quite different shapes, so new, so unexpected, David seemed a stranger even to himself; and whatever Jenny he thought he had once known, she had vanished. Silently he watched her turn into someone else, someone he did not know, maybe would never know, yet this new creature before him was certainly one he had created for himself, as he had created the other, out of stray stuffs of his own desire. They leaned together and their hands slid along the rail and took gentle hold. Jenny said, “What are we doing, venturing out into this livid world without our keepers?—I don't know who to curse this time, that little worm of an agent in Mexico who told me I could get a French visa in any port, or the purser, who assured us in Veracruz, while it still wasn't too late, that the ship would not stop at Boulogne, but never mind, just go to the French consul at Vigo, the old liar said—”

“I don't mind at all,” said David, “I don't care where we land, just so we do land, sometime or other, in the same place. That's the way I really feel, Jenny angel, and I wish you'd stop fretting.”

“Or maybe I should just curse myself,” said Jenny, in mock resignation, snuggling her face for a moment blissfully on his sleeve. “David, darling, when you're like this, I could creep back inside and be your rib again!”

“I like you better the way you are,” said David. And his mind added, Even if I can't keep you from creeping off into corners with other men … one day this won't matter either, it will help finish things off. He changed the subject.

“We are certainly not loitering in port,” he said, “and the pilot is going with us all the way to Gijón.”

Jenny said, “I wonder if the pilot at Tenerife got back all right?”

David said, “Pilots always do.”

Between Vigo and Gijón the famous weather began to whip up. The waters rolled and whirled upon themselves and piled up in spiteful green mountains opening suddenly to another abyss. The
Vera
almost lost her head at the mere approach to the Bay of Biscay. Jenny could not sleep, but sat at her porthole until nearly morning, watching the great
faros
along the coast flaring and turning and flaring. Spain was the most beautiful coast she could even imagine: after the solid promontory of rock, a great table rising out of the sea, further along the hills were like low mounds of greenest moss, then again the rocks thrust up like furious fists, but softly colored as agate and jade and coral, with the great ill-humored clouds louring above them. “What was wrong with me?” she wondered. “It should have been Spain all along. We'll go straight to Spain,” she assured herself firmly, watching the turning lights flashing across the tumbling waters, hoping she would never forget them. Now and then the
Vera
would rear like a giant shied horse, give a loud frozen roar with all her machinery and plunge head-on once more.

At Gijón, coming into harbor, hearing yelps outside, Freytag put his head through the porthole to take a glimpse of the new scene. The
Vera
was turning very slowly. Half a dozen launches were circling round filled with yelling enthusiasts, all waving colored scarfs, nearly all standing up at their own peril in their bounding little shells. Again there was a long row of Spanish ships backed neatly into docks like parked motor cars. Here, he noted later on the bulletin board, a strike of longshoremen had been added to the general strike, so no cargoes would be unloaded here on this account. The air was gray and heavy, and Freytag observed that the effect of the shouting welcoming people swaying in their little boats, getting in the way, only added confusion, not gaiety. The ship began her wild plunging again almost before she was out of the harbor, and Dr. Schumann remarked to Herr Professor Hutten that it looked like a good classical kind of crossing, he expected to give out a good many sedatives, and it was a relief to have all those steerage people safe on land. Herr Professor Hutten improved the moment and asked for a few cachets of something to help his wife sleep.

Then, after all, the ship did stand out from Boulogne, at midnight, foghorn bellowing, the half-empty ship lighted with sailors bustling and scurrying. Jenny leaped into a long coat over her gown and slipped into shoes without stockings and hurried to the side. A small shadowy French pilot boat eased up to the gangplank on the lower deck, its small bell going
twing-twingtwing
, and leaning out Jenny saw the six Cuban students, silent for once, leap to the narrow deck. Mrs. Treadwell followed, holding out her hand towards one of the officers for help; she seated herself with her back to the ship she was leaving. The Mexican diplomat's wife went next, with the Indian nurse carrying the baby. The officer took the child from her arms, and Jenny saw her narrow naked feet as she stepped into the wet slippery little boat. Jenny listened with pleasure to the sharp quick nasal speech in French voices, and she watched with something near an anguish of longing to be there, as the little bell went
twing-twing
and the pilot boat moved slowly out of the circle of ship's light, and moved, glimmering faintly in its own thrifty light, towards the blessed shores of France, towards the beloved City of Light—when would she come there? Jenny put her head down on the rail and broke into tears, then ran wildly down to her cabin. Elsa was at the porthole, but drew her head in and asked at once in concern—“Why, what has happened?”