Marjorie Morningstar (83 page)

Eden smiled. “He was a genius, all right. But he wasn’t a Darwin or a Copernicus,
you’re wrong there. Nobody can really build on him, and that’s what makes the true
landmark scientist. He’s got his followers, sure—the way Swedenborg and Henry George
have. A sect of enthusiasts. Actually Freud was a great writer, a brilliant polemist,
say like Nietzsche or Voltaire. His work will live and shed light forever, like any
great philosopher’s, but—”

“The blonde’s looking at you again,” Marjorie said with a tilt of her head. “She makes
me self-conscious.”

“I wish she’d fall overboard,” Eden said.

“Don’t be absurd.”

Eden mashed his cigar out violently in an ashtray. “Did you see the paper this morning?
Czechoslovakia’s gone. It seems to me that if I were a German it would give me the
greatest conceivable pleasure to cut my own throat…. I’m sorry you told me about Hilda.
I can feel her eyes crawling on my neck like a spider. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

They went back to the promenade deck for the ping-pong tournament, in which he was
enrolled. There were only half a dozen other entries for the men’s cup. “It’ll all
be over in an hour or so,” Eden said. “Stick around and cheer for me.” He beat his
first opponent easily, playing a steady defensive game. Then he stood by Marjorie
and watched the next match, which was won by a young German named Thaler, in a green
hound’s-tooth jacket; Marjorie recognized him as the man who had sat in the night
club with the blond girl, Hilda. At the last point the German turned to Mike, saluted
with his racquet, and bowed. “Mr. Eden, at your service.” He had long straight blond
hair and very broad shoulders. Eden stood and took off his coat and tie, and the German
grinned. “Not necessary, Mr. Eden. You are my master with ease.”

Eden lost the first game, making wild slams and faulty services, holding himself very
straight and raking at the ball in tense sharp strokes. The German, profiting by all
his mistakes, coolly and methodically piled up points. Hilda came, halfway through
the game, and leaned against the rail beside Marjorie. She applauded all Eden’s good
shots, and when he lost the game, she said to Marjorie, “He won the cup on the
Champlain
. He warms up soon.” Marjorie didn’t answer.

In the second game the German pounded away at Eden’s backhand, the source of most
of his wild errors; but Eden’s backhand drive began to stay on the table. It was a
very swift flat stroke when it worked, and Thaler had to grin foolishly a couple of
times as it streaked past him. Hilda called, “That’s like on the
Champlain
, Mike.” It pleased Marjorie to observe that the German girl’s ankles were quite stubby;
the walking shoes she wore made them look worse.

Hilda said to Marjorie, “He does well, hm? Dance, talk, play ping-pong—All-American
boy, no? You’re old friends?”

Marjorie nodded slightly. She felt awkward and stiff, and quite unable to talk to
the German girl.

“So he tells me. Nice to meet an old friend on the boat. You’re lucky. He is a sympathetic
person. Very cultured. Oh, we had fun on the
Champlain
—”

Marjorie felt a tiny stab of pain in her temple; a ping-pong ball bounced off her
face. “Sorry, Margie,” Eden called. “I wasn’t trying to blind you.”

Hilda laughed. “Steady down, Mike, you lose the cup.”

Eden won a run of points with swift serves. The spectators—there were twenty or so,
crowded around on the deck near the table—applauded. The German held up his racquet,
smiling at Mike. “You make it warm for me.” He took off the loud green jacket and
opened his tie; the onlookers laughed, and Eden smiled coldly.

The blond girl said, “Ach, he’s charming. To me he is like a typical Englishman. I
lived in London three years. If I would see him in Piccadilly I would never guess
he was American, let alone Jewish, you know?—
Good
shot, Mike.”

The word made all the nerves in Marjorie’s body contract. She calculated a slight
pause, and then said, “I beg your pardon?”

“Hm?” said the blond girl.

“Did you say Mike Eden was Jewish?”

The blond girl’s smile was affable. “You’re an old friend of his, surely you know
that? Please don’t think because I’m German I care. We’re not all exactly like that.”

Marjorie had a strange and utterly irresistible impulse. She said, shaking her head,
“Well, I’m just wondering how you got that impression. I happen to know he isn’t.
We lived in the same neighborhood years ago. I lived across the street from the church
his family went to.”

“To church? His family went to church, you say?” There was a burst of applause which
the two girls ignored. They were looking each other straight in the face. The ping-pong
ball clicked and clicked. The blonde’s eyes wavered. “Aren’t you mistaken?”

Marjorie shook her head.

The blonde glanced at Eden and then at Marjorie. “I feel very ridiculous. He never
said so, I just assumed it—you see, he was so terribly sympathetic. My father had
a very bad time with the Nazis, and—Oh, I make a damn fool of myself sometimes…. Ach,
look
at that shot!” Eden had lured Thaler to one side of the table and slammed the ball
in the other corner. Everybody clapped, and the German rapped the table with his racquet.
“Gut, gut.” He was smiling at Eden; his eyes were reddened and determined. He won
the second game by a closer score. Eden won the third game.

The contest was best three out of five. Both men were perspiring through their shirts
in dark splotches. Eden’s face was dead gray, his scar purple-red. The spectators
were not applauding any more, but watching in a hush. The eighth point of the next
game was a fierce volley lasting a couple of minutes, and Eden won it at last with
a crashing backhand shot. The German began making errors after that. Eden switched
to a soft style, brought the German in far on one side, then sent a teasing spin clear
to the opposite side of the table. Thaler ran for it, tripped on a table leg, and
fell on his face. A burst of scattered uneasy laughter did not lighten the tension.
Thaler got up laughing too, his face dark red. Eden won the game, playing with murderous
vigor.

The last game was a rout. The German stopped trying, popped up the ball, and made
jokes about Eden’s prowess. Eden unsmilingly crashed ball after ball past him. The
German said, when the score was 17—3, “I think I concede to Mister Babe Ruth.” Eden
shook his head and served the ball whizzing past Thaler, who made a mere comic motion
with his racquet.

When it was over there was no applause. The German put on his coat, nodded and smiled
at Eden, and walked out. Eden played the final round with the thirteen-year-old boy
who had volleyed with him in the morning. All the sting went out of his game; the
boy was an excellent player, and beat him in straight sets. Hilda left halfway through
the match, as did most of the spectators.

Marjorie took Eden’s arm as they walked down the deck. His shirt was soaked and he
was trembling. “You’d better have a shower.”

Eden nodded. She walked to his stateroom with him. He said nothing all the way. When
they were inside he threw his coat across the room and sank in an armchair. “I want
to puke at myself. The Nazis conquered, America triumphant, civilization saved. On
the ping-pong table.”

“Don’t get so wrought up, for God’s sake,” Marjorie said. “You’re warped on the subject—”

“I’m not warped on the subject at all. I’m insane on it,” Eden said, jerking a cigar
out of a drawer and slamming the drawer. He lit the cigar with shaking fingers.

Marjorie told him about the conversation with the blond girl. His face drawn, he stared
at her, smoking, not moving. “Whatever possessed you,” he said, “to tell such a ridiculous
lie?”

“I really can’t imagine,” Marjorie said. “I just couldn’t help myself. Somehow I wanted
to confuse her as much as possible. She was obviously pumping me—”

“Well, that doesn’t mean anything, it’s a characteristic of theirs. They’ll ask you
about anything, including your bowel condition—”

“I’m sorry, if I did anything wrong. It certainly was a silly lie.”

He got out of his chair and came toward her. She didn’t know what he was going to
do. He bent and kissed her mouth lightly. He smelled of sweat. “You didn’t do badly
at all.” He went to a shelf, took down a bottle of white capsules, poured water from
a jug and swallowed two capsules. “One of the privileges of being in the chemical
business,” he said, replacing the bottle. “Drugs are part of the game. All the happiness
pills you can use. Let me know if you get nervous or depressed about anything. I am
Old Doctor Happiness.” He started to take off his shirt. “Don’t worry about Hilda.
Put her out of your mind.”

“What’s it all about, Mike?”

“Why, nothing at all. She’s just a snoopy Teuton, and there are some eighty million
of them, I regret to say. Run along. I’m going to take my shower and sleep. I didn’t
sleep much last night. See you at dinner.”

Marjorie’s first inkling that the ship was running into a storm came at dinnertime,
when, with a sort of universal groaning creak, the immense restaurant slanted far
sidewise, generating a din of sliding and clattering dishes, and much shrieking and
laughing among the startled passengers. All the soup ran neatly out of her plate under
her spoon, making a wide brown stain on the cloth, and she clutched at the arm of
her chair, feeling on the verge of toppling out of it. “Heavens, what’s all this?”

“It’s going to get worse,” Eden said. “The weather report isn’t good. Let me know
if it bothers you. I have pills.”

Marjorie said, “I feel fine. Hungry as a bear, in fact. Natural-born sailor, I guess.
I’ll just order things that don’t spill.” And she did in fact eat a hearty dinner,
while the salon swayed and tumbled and careened with slow long groans, and many passengers
hurriedly left.

Afterward they went to the movie together. Marjorie found the Marx Brothers amusing
for a while despite the queer heaving and dropping of the seat under her. But all
at once she began wishing she had not eaten quite so much. She was very aware of her
meal, heavy under her tight waist, and it was dizzying to keep her eyes on the screen.
The seat seemed to be gyrating like a Coney Island ride. Reluctantly, after trying
to fight the weakness off, she laid a hand on Eden’s arm and whispered, “I guess maybe
I’ll try your pills.”

They went staggering and laughing down the passageway. “Doesn’t it bother you?” she
said.

“I’ve had a pill. I’m the world’s champion pill consumer. I believe in them. A man
should believe in his own products.”

He picked a bottle out of several which were rattling on a barred shelf in his room,
and shook a red capsule into his hand. “Here. Take some water.”

“How do you keep them all straight? You must be a drug fiend.” She swallowed the capsule
and stared at him. “How long will it take?”

“Just give the gelatin a chance to dissolve. That’s the quickest stuff there is. German,
I regret to say. We’ve got nothing to touch it.”

“What do I do till it starts working, Mike? I’m an unhappy girl.”

“Well, are you game to go out on deck? We’ll get in the lee somewhere. There’s nothing
like cold air.”

She hurried to her stateroom and put her camel’s hair coat over the black taffeta.
They went up extremely unsteady stairs, and stepped through a door into a wet icy
night, full of horrid noise.

Strangely, in the spot where they stood the air was fairly calm, yet around and above
them the wind whistled and shrieked, tumbling thick black smoke like a stream of waste
ink down from the funnels into the gray-black sea. The waves were crashing and thundering,
throwing immense phosphorescent green crests as high as the deck on which they stood;
higher, when the ship rolled toward the water. Black sheets of rain waved along the
deck, only a foot or two beyond their shelter, spattering and hissing, but only a
few stray drops struck their faces.

“Lively, isn’t it?” He held her close, one arm around her shoulders, the other hanging
to a metal bracket on the doorway.

“It’s terrific! Is it a hurricane?”

“Don’t be silly. It’s a rainstorm, that’s all, and not much of one. This big tub doesn’t
even know we’re having bad weather.”

“
I
know it. My God, Mike, look how we’re rolling! You’d swear we were going down.”

“They won’t even call off the dance for this.”

“Well, I’m not going to dance, that’s for sure. I can hardly stand up.” They stood
swaying together for a few minutes, listening to the howls and whines of the wind,
and the insane crashing of the sea. “Good God, it’s so eerie, Mike, isn’t it? You
come out of the Waldorf-Astoria, and suddenly the whole world is black and tossing
and going to hell all around you. I wonder how it was when the
Titanic
went down!” She spoke in a high strained voice over the storm.

Eden said, “The Waldorf-Astoria just fools you because the sidewalk outside isn’t
rolling. It’s in just as bad shape as the
Titanic
ever was.”

“All right, shut up!” she said. “You’re too morbid for me. I’m feeling better. Or
maybe I’m so scared I can’t feel anything else. Let’s go back inside.”

They stood blinking in the pinkish light of the quiet passageway.

“Back in the Waldorf,” he said. “Cosy, isn’t it?” His face glistened with rain.

She panted, “So, that’s a storm at sea.”

“I hope you’ll be spared from ever finding out what a storm at sea is like. What do
you want to do now? How do you feel?”

Marjorie, holding to a fire extinguisher on the bulkhead, felt the deck falling away
slantwise under her feet, but the motion didn’t seem to bother her. “Sort of as though
I’ve had novocaine all over. Warm and numb. I’m not seasick.”

“Good.”

“But I think I’ll go to my room. I’m all blown about. Come along.” As they reeled
down the passageway, hanging to the handrails, she said, “That pill was marvelous,
Mike. The fact is, I feel a bit looped.”