Ship of Fools (7 page)

He collapsed sobbing, streaming; there were dark wet streaks in the wrinkles of his leather trousers. “I'm dying,” he told her, in a fainting voice, his freckles looking like spots of iodine on his pale skin.

“Dying!” said his mother contemptuously. “A big boy like you talking such nonsense. Wait till your father sees you like this.” She rummaged, orderly even in her haste and discomfort, through the layers of folded things, stopping to push her damp hair off her forehead. She was pale too, flabby and wet down the spine and in the armpits; she could feel the sweat running down her legs, her arms shone wetly through the thin dark stuff of her dress. “I suppose you think your mother is not tired and suffering too? Do you think you are the only one? Instead of whining and complaining and making my troubles worse, get up from there and stop sniveling and help me with these suitcases.”

“Mayn't I just take off my jacket?” he persisted hopelessly, wiping his nose on the back of his hand, shedding tears again in spite of himself.

“So—take it off then,” she said. “I see you are still just a baby and I shall give you a bottle to nurse—a bottle with a rubber nipple, with milk and sugar, and you shall have nothing else for your supper,” she went on, beginning to enjoy her cruelty, the pleasant feeling that she could hurt his pride even if he had won in the matter of the jacket. He had no pride whatever—he stripped off the jacket instantly, the air from the porthole blew over him and the gooseflesh rose all over him deliciously. His face cleared, and he gazed at his mother gratefully with a deep sigh of bliss.

“Wait till I tell your father how you worry me,” she said, but in a softer voice, “and if I see you being a crybaby again, you know what you will get.”

He waited timidly in the corner at the head of the divan, yearning for kindness, hoping his beautiful good mother would come back soon. She vanished in this frowning scolding stranger, who blazed out at him when he least expected it, struck him on the hands, threatened him, seemed to hate him. His head drooped, his hands hung beside him, he gazed from under his scanty light brows, not afraid, but waiting. She got up, pulled her skirts straight, saw him clearly, and was filled with pity and remorse.

“Well, my little one, my Hans,” she said tenderly, and kissing her finger she laid it gently on his forehead. “Now wash your face and hands, wash well, wrists and neck too! and put on your knit jumper and shorts and we will go and have some cold raspberry juice. But hurry. I will wait outside.” As if she had never been cross, she smiled upon him most lovingly. In the confusion of his feelings, Hans could have wept again, but the cold water on his face stopped his tears.

Frau Rittersdorf, on Deck A, took advantage of the absence of her cabinmate to establish her prior rights and privileges as to space and choice of bed. Her ticket specified the upper berth, but Frau Rittersdorf had taken a good look at little Frau Otto Schmitt, and saw at once that the situation would be easy to control. She called for vases and set out carefully the two enormous floral offerings she had sent herself, one of pale pink roses, one of gardenias, bought in Veracruz, wrapped in wet cotton, and carrying cards attached by silver ribbons: “
To my dearest Nannerl, from her Johann
.” “
To the gnädige Frau Rittersdorf with greetings. Karl von Ettler
.”

They looked well, and it was not really a deception as those interesting friends would have been happy to send her flowers on this as on many another occasion, except for the lamentable circumstance that they were both dead—yet again, so recently departed both of them, she still could not quite realize their loss, and these flowers did almost give her the feeling that they were still alive. In the old days they had sent more than flowers, God remember them both. She crossed herself several times although she was a Lutheran. It was a gesture she felt becoming to her, and it warded off bad luck.

She set out two silver and cut-crystal bottles of perfume, “Garden of Araby” and “Souvenir d'Amour,” and fastened a quilted silk contrivance for containing her silver-backed brushes and mirror, comb, nail file and shoehorn on the righthand side of the washbasin, the most convenient spot. She did her hair well, and dressed slowly. She had come on board early to avoid the nuisance of mingling with the crowd, which appeared to be rather inferior in tone. Taking her mirror, she regarded her profile with approval. She had many times been called a beauty and she deserved it. She was beautiful
now
, say what you like. Sitting a moment, she opened a large notebook of red and gilt Florentine stamped leather with a gold pencil attached and began to write:

“So in a way, let me admit, this adventure—for is not all life an adventure?—has not ended as I hoped, yet nothing is changed for the worse. Indeed I may yet see the all-guiding Will of my race in it. A German woman should not marry into a dark race, even if the candidate is of high Spanish blood, of the ruling caste, of sufficient wealth … There are those fatal centuries in Spain when all too insidiously Jewish and Moorish blood must certainly have crept in—who knows what else? That I entertained the notion for a moment is no doubt a weakness of which I should be ashamed. Yet, surrounded as I was by foreign influences, soft persuasions of friends, good Germans whose counsels I respected, alone as I am in the world and somewhat reduced in means, perhaps I should not be too severely censured. After all, I am a woman, I need the firm but tender guidance of a husband, whose authority shall sustain me, whose principles shall be my—”

Frau Rittersdorf paused. Inspiration had ceased, the next word would not come. She knew well there is ever and always only one true way of looking at any question, and she had always looked at everything exactly as she should, as she had been taught. She had said and thought all this so many times, why say and think it again? She closed her eyes and fell into a daydream of the long, dark, severe yet benign face of Don Pedro, with its air of remote nobility; hair graying slightly at the temples; around his presence the aura of Spanish wealth and Spanish pride, based soundly on a large Mexican brewery—oh why should this all rise again to plague her? Why had it seemed so likely at one time that he would ask her hand in marriage? Her dead husband's cousins in Mexico City, also brewers, had believed that he would; her dear friend Herr Stumpfen the Consul had been certain of it; she herself had gone so far as to choose—in her mind—the style of her announcement cards.… She clenched her teeth slightly, opened her eyes, closed the book. The dinner bugle sounded with a fine martial clamor as if calling heroes to the battlefield. Frau Rittersdorf rose instantly, a girlish eager light in her eyes. She would of course be seated at the Captain's table.

“Ah, my God, there goes the bugle, we shall be late,” said Frau Professor Hutten to her husband, but she continued to hold a bath towel under Bébé's chin. Herr Professor Hutten with torn newspapers was wiping up a mess in the near corner rather ineffectually. Bébé, his big white bulldog face the very picture of humiliation, rolled his eyes and heaved again into the towel.

“My God, my God,” said Frau Hutten in patient despair, “seasick already, what shall we do?”

“He was seasick before, when we went to Yucatán, nearly all the way, and from the first moment, if you remember,” said the Professor, rolling up the soiled newspapers and standing there before her in majestic benevolence, as if he were getting ready to address his classes. “We need not look for any radical change in his organic constitution as time goes on. As a puppy, if you recall, he was easily upset, he could not keep his bottle down if he was in the least agitated; and so he is now, and so,” concluded the Professor, “no doubt he will continue with perhaps some increasing symptoms of the sort, to the end.”

His wife's distress was if anything increased by this prospect. “But how can I leave him in this condition?” she inquired. She was sitting on the floor, a solid mound of flesh, Bébé sprawled beside her, and they were both equally helpless. “I cannot get up until you come back, either,” she reminded him, “my knee—”

“You are in no circumstances to forgo your dinner,” the Professor told her, firmly. “I will take your place at his side, and you are to have your food, which otherwise you will miss greatly later in the evening.”

“But my dear, you will starve instead, think of that,” said Frau Hutten, gazing up at him gratefully.

“A small matter,” said her husband. “In fact, I shall not in the least starve, dear Käthe; one does not starve for missing only a meal; one merely goes a bit hungry, which is not always the greatest misfortune. In fact it is possible for man to go without nourishment for forty days; we now have scientific confirmation of the word of Holy Writ. More especially so, I dare say, if the subject has flesh to spare, plenty of water, and perhaps a little stimulant of some kind at intervals.… However, none of this will be necessary. At the worst, you might have them send me a little something on a tray. Better, if we should fold a fresh towel under Bébé's head, with plenty of newspapers underneath, he will do very well by himself for let us say an hour.”

Frau Hutten nodded. She lifted Bébé's head and examined him. He seemed more at ease. “Don't think your little Vati and Mutti are deserting you, my precious one,” she told him in round maternal tones. “We are only going for a little while.” The Professor hooked both his forearms under her armpits, from the back, hauled her up with the expertness of long practice, steadied her while she got her balance, and then carried out his own proposed measures for the care of Bébé, who seemed very little interested in them or in his surroundings.

“Ah,” sighed his wife, leaning her head briefly on his bowed shoulder, “it is all very difficult.”

“We will find ways and means,” said the Professor, reassuringly. Bébé was going to be a problem, though, if not a complete nuisance, as always, he could see that. A hard thought which the Professor rebuked himself for innerly, but could not deny. “Away with us before the soup is cold,” he exclaimed with the false gaiety of a guilty conscience.

The big girl Elsa Lutz and her parents Herr and Frau Heinrich Lutz were taking their first stroll in dull leisure around the deck. Elsa towered over her rather weedy elders, but walked between them, their obedient child, holding each by a hand. They stopped and peered downward through an iron grating which rewarded them with a sight of the steerage feeding quarters. There were rows of narrow trestles loaded with food, and long benches ranged beside them. Cooking smells rose warmly, the people were coming in slowly and seating themselves. They recognized the billowing back and bowed head of the fat man in the cherry-colored shirt, already deep in his dinner, helping himself freely from large platters of substantial food in a half circle round his plate.

“Well, God bless us,” said Herr Lutz in some surprise, and he put on his spectacles for a closer look. “Why, how can they make any profit if they set a table like that?” He was a Swiss, descendant of a long line of hotelkeepers, and he had run a hotel of his own in Mexico; his interest was entirely professional.

“Fried potatoes,” he murmured, “there must be a pound of them on his plate. A whole braised pig's knuckle, with fried onions, red sweet-sour cabbage and split-pea purée—well, true it's none of it on the expensive side, yet it all costs something. And coffee. Fruit besides, and
Apfelstrudel
—no, they can't keep it up and break even. Look how that fellow eats! It makes me hungry to watch him.”

His wife, a dumpy plain woman with a roll of faded dry hair bristling with wire hairpins, observed the scene with her habitual expression, long ago settled into a blend of constant disapproval and righteous ill-humor. “It is only to make a show in the beginning,” she remarked. “They will begin to economize on all of us before the trip is over. A new broom,” she said, “sweeps clean.”

“Ha, ha,” laughed her husband, “you mean a new customer eats clean.” His daughter joined his laughter dutifully but a little uneasily; his wife treated the joke with the contempt it merited, keeping her face still long enough for him to see exactly what she thought of his nonsense. He continued his laughter long enough to let her see that he could enjoy his little joke without her.

“But Papa,” said Elsa, leaning again over the grating, “hadn't you noticed another thing? The third class is empty, almost, only a dozen passengers, and yet they would not sell us third-class tickets. Don't you think it was very wrong of the clerk in Mexico City to tell us there was no room in third class for us?”

“Well, yes,” admitted her father, “in one way. In another, very good business. Here we are, first-class tickets and all, they have made already more than three hundred fifty dollars on us; you turn that into reichsmarks now and you have some real money.…”

“But there must be some other reason besides,” said Elsa.

“Oh yes, there are always a lot of good reasons and they know them all, for cheating us,” said Frau Lutz. “I wish you might have learned some of those reasons for your own use,” she told her husband, and long years of deeply cherished, never-to-be-settled grudges lay in her tone. The three walked on, a family clumsiness in their movements, eyes straight ahead and dull with small anxieties.

“Answer me one thing, my poor wife,” said Herr Lutz in a mild, reasoning voice which he knew exasperated his wife more than anything else. “Did we do so badly in Mexico after all? In any sense of the word? Did we by any stretch of your imagination fail? I think not.”

“I no longer care what you think,” said Frau Lutz.

“Even for you, that is going a little far,” said Herr Lutz. “And just the same it doesn't keep me from thinking. And sometime maybe when you happen to be thinking you might think about how we're going home, all in good health, with enough money, honestly earned, to start our own little hotel in St. Gallen.”