Ship of Fools (9 page)

“To happiness then,” he said, touching her glass again.

Though it was still broad daylight, the August sun, dipping into the far horizon, threw a burning track over the waters which ran like oil in the wake of the ship. The ladies of trade appeared on deck in identical black lace evening gowns, their fine smooth backs gleaming to the belt, their jeweled sandals flashing. They paced about slowly and came face to face with the two priests, who were pacing slowly also, their dark trap mouths locked, their relentless eyes fixed on their breviaries. The ladies bowed respectfully, the fathers ignored or perhaps did not see them. William Denny followed them at a safe distance once around, pausing now and then to appear interested in something in the depths of the sea, his Adam's apple bobbing ever so slightly. The bride and groom sat together in their extended chairs, watching the sunset in silence, their eyes tranced and mystified, their hands clasped lightly.

The Mexican Indian nurse brought the newly born baby to his mother, who received him rather helplessly in her inexperienced arms. Frau Rittersdorf, passing, took the liberty of a true woman who, though childless herself and never ceasing to be thankful for it, still appreciated instinctively the glorious martyrdom of motherhood as enjoyed by others. With a smile of intimate sympathy for the mother, she dropped silently on her knees to adore the divine mystery of life for a few seconds, admiring his feathery eyebrows and tender mouth, the complexion to the last degree enviable. His mother looked on with a formal, unwilling smile, thinking her son was spoiled enough already, she wished people would let him alone; remembering how he woke and yelled in the night and pulled on her like a pig when she was tired to tears and wanted only to sleep.

“Such a splendid man-child,” said Frau Rittersdorf. “Is he your first?”

“Ah, yes,” said the mother, and there was a shade of terror in her face.

“A fine beginning,” said Frau Rittersdorf, “a perfect little general. El Generalissimo, in fact!” She had been told by her German friends that every second male Mexican was a general, or intended to be one, or called himself one, at least.

The mother could not after all quite resist the flattery, however crude, however German in its style. El Generalissimo indeed! How vulgar; still, she knew her child was superb, she loved to hear him praised, even in Spanish with such an atrocious accent. Somehow Frau Rittersdorf led the talk from infant to mother; began to speak pretty passable French, which delighted the Mexican woman, who prided herself on her command of that language. Frau Rittersdorf learned with great satisfaction that Madame was the wife of an attaché in the Mexican Legation in Paris, she was even now on her way there to join her husband; it had been impossible—“Well, you can see why,” said the mother—for her to accompany him. Frau Rittersdorf was soothed in her highest social sense to find a lady in diplomatic circles among the passengers; there would be someone to associate with, after all. Señora Esperón y Chavez de Ortega for her part seemed to sink rapidly in mood, to become a touch distrait, perhaps only natural in her new situation. El Generalissimo opened his eyes, waved his fists and yawned divinely in Frau Rittersdorf's face. His mother frowned just perceptibly and pleaded, “Oh,
please
don't wake him. He has only just got to sleep. If you could imagine the trouble we have with him—colic and all!”

Feeling rebuffed, Frau Rittersdorf rose instantly and took her leave with such exaggerated politeness it hardly stopped short of rudeness. The little Mexican woman was after all probably not particularly intelligent, perhaps not even particularly well bred. It was rather difficult to judge of the standards of the dark races, though no doubt they had them; even Don Pedro in Mexico, whose failure to ask for her hand in marriage after what had seemed irreversible overtures—was there not something sinister in his nature? And yet—could it have been the fact of his owning a great brewery?—he had at times seemed to her so human, so Germanized, she had been quite lulled and led astray. She walked on faster, in a small chill of fright, shaking her head.

After dinner all the desks in the small rooms off the bar were occupied by absorbed letter writers, last words to Mexico to be mailed at Havana. Only the Spanish dancing women patrolled the deck, living in the moment. They had no friends in Mexico and very few in Spain, and this did not trouble them in the least. It was fairly noticeable that romance of a sort seemed to be simmering around them. Their skins breathing forth musk and amber, wearing fresh flowers in their hair, they were to be seen about in shadowy spots, each involved more or less with one of the blond young ship's officers.

The officers were all poor, perfectly disciplined, dedicated to their calling, saving up their scanty earnings to be married: they all wore plain red-gold engagement rings on their left hands, and, bound to their narrow world always in motion, never set foot in any port. It was expensive, it could lead to international complications, and besides there were too many ports. They had clearly defined and not always onerous duties towards female passengers, such as dancing with them in the evenings if they seemed to lack partners, slighting no one, making themselves agreeable in a decorous way. They had no privileges, such as carrying an affair too far, but it was not to be supposed that any one of them should not avail himself of opportunities freely offered so long as appearances were preserved. In this particular case of the Spanish ladies, appearances obviously could not be preserved but must be disguised if possible.

Their experiences with many female passengers on many voyages to out-of-the-way ports had intimidated most of them to a certain extent. So, warily one by one the young officers in immaculate white, with gold or silver insignia at their collars and shoulders, found themselves on the first evening, in instructed gallantry but with also a good deal of pleasant excitement, each with an arm around a surprisingly muscular but slender Spanish waist, looking with mild expectation into the burning depths of eyes that meant business and nothing else.

Something always occurred to throw them off; mysteriously the combinations separated, re-formed with different partners, until at last, early in the evening, all seemed to be over—a question of money no doubt, decided Wilhelm Freytag, who had got into talk over beer with Arne Hansen. They had been watching the little scenes here and there.

“What else could it be,” asked Arne Hansen, and he watched one of the girls especially, his choleric blue eyes softened to simple admiration. She was indeed very beautiful, and though of a type with the others, Hansen could see a difference in her, even if he could not point it out to another eye. They all had fine dark eyes, shining black hair smoothed over their ears, their round small hips swayed as they walked in a self-conscious
meneo
, their narrow, high-arched feet were stuffed without mercy into thin black pumps. They all painted, with dark red grease paint, large square brutal mouths over their natural lips, which were thin and hard: but the one he preferred was called Amparo, he had found that out. Already he faced in his thoughts the first obstacle: he spoke very little Spanish and Amparo, so far as he knew, spoke nothing else.

“I can't imagine what they do,” said Wilhelm Freytag, “besides of course what they are doing now. They look like a set of gypsies. I saw them dancing and collecting money in the streets at Veracruz.”

Hansen could tell him about that. They were a zarzuela company from Granada, gypsies maybe, or pretending to be. They had got stranded in Mexico as such outfits always did, the great Pastora Imperio herself had just barely got out with the clothes on her back, he had heard—and the Mexican government was sending them home, as usual, at its own expense. Freytag considered they looked a tough lot, the four men especially, oblique-looking characters with their narrow skulls and thugs' eyes—a combination of table-top dancer, pimp, and knife-thrower.

Hansen studied them. “I think not dangerous,” he judged, “unless it was fairly safe.” He settled back comfortably in his powerful frame and stretched his long legs under the table.

The men of the dancers' troupe were sitting in the bar with the children, obviously keeping out of the way while their ladies practiced their arts. They were silent, entirely too graceful in their few movements, and watchful as cats. Sitting over a series of cups of coffee, they smoked constantly; and the children, who were subdued in a way they were not when the women were present, finally leaned their heads and arms on the table and went to sleep.

Frau Baumgartner sat head on hand wearily at a small table with her husband, who had begun his long evening of methodical drinking to ease his constant pain. His hair already was damp and plastered to his temples. For just a short time after taking food, he felt relief in his stomach, but he could not face the beginning of pain again, and hurried to his first glass of brandy and water. These pains had begun about two years before, when Herr Baumgartner lost three important cases in the Mexican courts. His wife knew why he had lost them: he was drinking so steadily he could not properly prepare his arguments, he could not make a good impression in court. Back of that was the sad mystery—why had he begun to drink? He could not explain and he could not resist his longing for brandy. From hour to hour throughout the day and into the evening, he drank—without pleasure, without any lightening of spirit, without relief, without will, in helpless suffering of conscience, his hand still stole out to the bottle and he poured into his glass quite literally in fear and trembling.

On those few days at long intervals when his wife persuaded him not to drink, he would take to his bed with frightful pains in his stomach, writhing, groaning, until the family doctor was called to give him an opiate. They called in specialists, each of whom made his own guess corresponding to his field of interest: ulcers, mysterious entanglements of his intestines, acute (or chronic) infections of one kind and another: one had even hinted at cancer: but none had been able to bring him any ease. He seemed to grow no worse, but he never improved, either. Frau Baumgartner to her own constant self-reproach no longer believed that her husband's illness was real. She did not know what she believed, indeed she believed nothing: and her unbelief was formless, a darkly moving cloud of suspicion that her husband's trouble, once known, would prove to be some kind of terrible reproach upon her. Whenever a marriage was unhappy, or the husband failed in his business, everybody knew it was the wife's fault. She would have to blame herself, too, for as she often said, her husband was the best and kindest of men. He had given her love of the kind she understood as love: faithful and pleasant every day, every day in the year, and thoughtful. Until he began to spend his money recklessly on drink, they kept a good comfortable house and saved money; and the savings were, she thanked God, safely invested in Germany since the mark was restored and business was flourishing and all promised well in that country. Her husband had fought all through the war, and had come out without a scratch—a miracle in itself for which he should be grateful, but no—he never spoke but with bitterness of his sufferings in that time. They were married after the war and went to Mexico, a new land of promise for Germans … Oh, what could have happened, what did she do, that their lives had come to this? All had seemed to go so well.…

“Oh, Karl, don't take another, that will be four already and it is not two hours after dinner.”

“I can't bear it, Gretel, I can't bear it, you cannot understand what this pain is like!”

The same old cry. His face drew together, his mouth twisted and trembled; his bright empty blue eyes grew fierce with suffering.

“Karl, how can it help? Tomorrow it will be the same thing.”

“Please, Gretel, be patient a little longer. With one more, I promise to get through the night.” He bowed over in grief, in shame. “Forgive me,” he said and his humility made her blush for him.

“Don't, my dear,” she said. “Go on and take it, if it will make you feel better.” She leaned over and gazed at the tablecloth to avoid seeing his face knotted in the expression of pain he made no attempt to conceal or control. The doctors had said he must go home, it might work a cure. She had hoped that the peaceful long voyage, the easy safe life of the ship, away from the false friends who drank with him, away from the place where he had failed, would be a good beginning. It was not going to happen. Herr Baumgartner drained the last drop from his tall glass.

“Now, my dear,” he said, in a tearful voice, “now, if you will help me.” He rose wavering and she stood close beside him. He leaned upon her heavily as they moved away through the crowded bar, and Frau Baumgartner, her eyes fixed straight ahead, felt sure that everybody was staring with contempt at her drunken husband who was pretending to be an invalid.

Herr Löwenthal, who had been put at a small table by himself, studied the dinner card, with its list of unclean foods, and asked for a soft omelette with fresh green peas. He drank half a bottle of good white wine to comfort himself (the one hardship of travel was this question of finding something he could eat in a world almost altogether run by the heathen) and ate the small basket of fruit brought him for dessert. Afterward he hung around searchingly for a while, first in the salon, then in the bar, then out on the decks, wandering and disturbed; but no one spoke to him and he therefore spoke to nobody. He peered here and there, at every face he saw, a quick glance and away, trying to pass unobserved himself, yet hoping to see one of his own people. It was hardly to be believed. In all his life it had never happened to him, but here it was, the thing he feared most was upon him: there was not another Jew on the whole ship. Not one. A German ship, going back to Germany, and not a Jew on board besides himself. Instantly his pangs of instinctive uneasiness mounted to positive fright, his natural hostility to the whole alien enemy world of the Goyim, so deep and pervasive it was like a movement of his blood, flooded his soul. His courage came back on this tide, incomplete, wavering, but bringing its own sense of restored good health of the mind. He made the rounds once more, this time with a bolder eye and a well-composed air which concealed his worry—but no, of course, why look any longer? If there had been another, they would have seated him at the same table. Two Jews would have recognized each other before now. Well, there would be nobody to talk to, but just the same, it wouldn't cost him anything to be friendly with these people; he intended to get along as well as possible on the voyage, there was no percentage in asking for trouble. He sat down in the bar near a rather decent-looking pair of middle-aged fat Gentiles with a white bulldog at their feet, thinking that if they spoke to him he might pass a half hour in some sort of sociability—better than nothing, and that was barely all it could be. But he never liked to speak to Gentiles first, you might run into anything, and they did not turn their heads his way. After two beers he decided he was tired, ready for bed.