Ship of Fools (79 page)

She took it by the sole firmly as if it too were a weapon. She thanked him gently, modestly, standing there before him quite unconcerned in her nightgown. His eyes flickered over her once, up, down, sideways, and he resented what he saw. To her he was just a servant, a nothing, something that came when it was called and did whatever she demanded. He leaped away down the passage wishing there were some way to get even with her—to make trouble for her, standing there smirking like a cat as if he didn't know how that stupid Herr Denny had got those heel marks in his face. Served him right! He made the gesture of spitting, but he did not spit—he would have had to clean it up.

Mrs. Treadwell went again to the porthole over the spraddled form of Lizzi, and cast the second gilded sandal after its mate into the sea. She leaned forward a moment to breathe blissfully the damp fresh wind, to hear again the surge of the waves rolling up in great round hills, under the black-blue sky scattered with immense stars. She remembered how once she had sat for her portrait to a young painter in a tall old house near the Avenue Montaigne, and as the evening came on, he went down all those flights of stairs and brought up bread and cheese and cold beef and a bottle of wine for their supper. Afterwards, he held the creaky ladder for her while she climbed and put her head through a tiny open skylight in the roof; and she saw the glimmering lights of Paris coming on slowly, and above, the clear darkening blue sky with the stars coming out, one by one. It was the middle of May.

As the evening wore on, Dr. Schumann emerged for a walk and a look around him, but wearied soon of the disturbances and disorders taking form and breaking like waves, the monotonous barbarous beat of the music, and the inevitable results of an evening of gaiety on shipboard. The Spanish dancers, he noted, remained sternly sober, and kept their minds on business. They still had some business to transact, though the possible audience appeared to be thinning out in all directions. One or two of the young officers were still dancing occasionally with the Spanish girls, and the students were indefatigably athletic as usual, performing a comic version of a Basque male square dance; but several of the other men were miserably drunk—such as Herr Denny, having a violent argument with the zarzuela dancer called Pastora. Dr. Schumann considered seriously what means might be used to control such people, or at least, their language and behavior in public; that fellow should not be allowed to use such language on deck even to such a woman as she; but it was not his affair, thank God. Nearly every woman still visible showed signs of having been recently in tears, or a temper, or both, and some of them were none too sober, either. He retired to his quarters, where he might be found if needed, and almost at once a cabin boy came with a message that he was wanted in Herr Rieber's cabin. He went at once, oppressed with weariness, and found Herr Löwenthal, drowsy, indignant, reeking of beer, wringing out towels in cold water and laying them on top of Herr Rieber's head.

“Bottle fighting,” he said, “like in the lowest places. Come in, Doctor. And now tell me, Doctor, can anybody show me a place on this ship where I can go to get rid of this fellow, who makes nothing but trouble for me every day? What did I do I deserve to get stuck with him when I'm nearly asleep after a hard day?”

He dipped another towel in the washhand stand, wrung it out and slapped it down on Herr Rieber's head. “Is there any way I can lose him?”

Dr. Schumann said, “Wait, I'll look at him. It's a pity, I'm afraid there's no place to put him. I'll get the steward to nurse him.”

“Nurse?” groaned Herr Löwenthal. “Is it that bad?”

Dr. Schumann took a brief look at the wound under his flashlight, mopped the skull with alcohol, gave Herr Rieber a
piqûre
at the top of his forehead, and took seven neat stitches in a row on his scalp. He tied a line of small black silk stitches, snipping them off so that Herr Rieber appeared to be growing an extra row of eyelashes on his head. Herr Rieber squeezed his eyelids together during this operation but was otherwise motionless. Dr. Schumann then gave him a
piq
û
re
, and sent for the steward to undress him and put him to bed. Herr Löwenthal was very near complete demoralization. “My God, my God,” he kept muttering to himself under his breath, until Dr. Schumann said, “He'll sleep a long time. I think you don't have to worry about him any more. But if you need me, call me.” He heard the croak of exhaustion in his voice as he pronounced the ritual words.

He was no sooner in bed and settling into sleep than he was called again by the cabin boy. This time it was Herr Denny, the young Texan; he had got into an encounter with mysterious forces which left his face from forehead to chin a lumpy, discolored mass of ugly-looking little cuts and bruises, full of dried blood and already swelling.

Herr Glocken was shaking and fluttering in helpless fright. “I sent for you, Doctor, what could have happened to him? Two stewards brought him, and said they found him so, and one of them said he knew what had happened, he had seen it before, these were heel marks from a woman's slipper!” He fluttered and nattered at Dr. Schumann's elbow, who was giving his patient an antitetanus
piqûre
as a beginning. He washed the battered face carefully with alcohol and said, “Yes, or it could have been a tack hammer. There must have been metal caps on them.” Dr. Schumann had seen such wounds before, too, and of course, he decided at once, the sharp talons on that Spanish dancer's slippers would exactly fit any and all of these wounds.

“What could have happened, Doctor?” gibbered Herr Glocken, and his self-pitying face added plainly, “
Why
must such things always happen to me? What am I to do now, with no one to help me?” And he implored, “Doctor, you know I am not well. Don't leave me here alone with him! Confidentially, dear Doctor, he is a species of monster, certainly not quite human, I have seen and heard him. What can I do?”

Dr. Schumann smiled at him very frankly and said, “You are one of the few sober passengers I have seen this evening. Why not go looking for Herr David Scott and bring him back to help you? But I think you will not need it. Herr Denny will sleep, never fear. Good night.”

Herr Glocken followed him out, but took his forlorn way up deck alone, and Dr. Schumann went at once, fearing he might collapse before he could reach the porthole in his cabin for a breath of air while he took his crystal drops. In that moment, when he truly expected death, he looked upon all these intruders as his enemies. Without exception, he rejected them all, every one of them, all human kinship with them, all professional duty except the barest tokens. He did not in the least care what became of any one of them. Let them live their dirty lives and die their dirty deaths in their own way and their own time, so much carrion to fill graves. He crossed himself and folded his arms and lay still breathing carefully, turning his head slowly from side to side, denying his own bitter thoughts even as they rose and flowed again painfully all through him as though his blood were full of briers.

The blessed medicine worked its spell again. In his waking sleep La Condesa's face floated bodiless above him, now very near, peering into his eyes; then retreating and staring and coming again in ghostly silence. The head rushed away into the distance, shrunken to the size of an apple, then bounded back, swollen and white like a toy balloon tossed upward by a hand, a deathlike head dancing in air, smiling. Dr. Schumann in his sleep rose and reached up and out before him and captured the dancing head, still smiling but shedding tears. “Oh, what have you done?” the head asked him. “Oh, why, why?” not in complaint, only in wonder. He held the head tenderly between his spread palms and kissed its lips and silenced it; and went back to bed with it, where it lay lightly on his breast without smiles or tears, in silence, and he slept on so deeply he did not know it was a dream.

At eleven o'clock, the band played “
Auf Wiedersehen
” and disappeared, all except the pianist, who held a ticket for the raffle. The Spanish company started their show, with the gramophone going at top voice. They first did a bolero, with Ric and Rac taking part; when in the dance they came face to face, they searched each other's eyes fiercely threatening murder. The medical students sat in a shallow ring near them, clapping their hands and shouting “
Olé
” at the right moments. The expected audience however had all but dispersed; those who stayed or wandered by and wandered back were not ticket-holders. Arne Hansen, after disposing of Herr Rieber and disappearing to change his bloodied shirt, was back in his chair with a bottle of beer beside him. He seemed calm enough, his eyes were closed, and one might have thought he was asleep, except that at intervals he would reach for his beer and take a good swig. Now and again he sat up, motioned to a deck steward, and uttered one word: “Another.” Amparo decided prematurely that she need not expect any more trouble with him for the evening.

Frau Schmitt, clutching her ticket, sat timidly on the edge of a deck chair near the band. Frau Rittersdorf, passing, said, “Good night. I wish you luck!” If she had stuck needles in her Frau Schmitt could not have been more injured. Herr Löwenthal, who had spent the earlier part of the evening in the writing room smoking, drinking beer and addressing postcards to family, friends and business associates to go by airmail from Southampton, avoiding his cabin for sheer detestation of Herr Rieber's presence, had given up and gone down to his quarters just in time to receive Herr Rieber's battered person. He was now back on deck and meant to stay there until the last light was out. He had even a notion to stow himself away on the leather couch in the writing room. His stomach was turned for good, he would not pollute his nostrils with the breath from that pig. Nobody could force him: he would sleep on deck first. He would go down to the steerage—there was plenty of room there now, on deck anyway. He stood at the rail, arms folded, brooding, his cigar shooting sparks into the wind, and stared with pure unappreciation at Amparo's expert performance of a dance she announced as a Cachucha, a dance he had never seen, would not care if he never saw again, and he wondered what any man in his right mind could see in a woman like that no matter what she was doing. He had heard plenty of times that shicksas were good stuff if you took them in the right way, that is, you didn't have to think of them as people, the same as Jewish, only just live meat, but he never had been able to buy that argument.… He presently went in the bar, asked for a stein of beer and a piece of cheese, returned to the writing room and enjoyed his snack. He turned off the light and stretched out on the leather sofa. Oi, oi oi; this was peace and quiet, the first he'd had on the voyage.

A steward pulled naggingly at his sleeve. It was daylight and the steward remarked, “You must have gone to sleep, sir,” with the chilly resignation of a man who cannot afford to despair of clearing up one more little area of disorder in self-perpetuating chaos. Herr Löwenthal, instantly wide awake, sat up, scrubbed his face swiftly with the palm of his hand, planted his feet on the floor and asked with sarcasm, “What do
you
think?” The steward spun away with an angry jerk of his shoulders, at which Herr Löwenthal, who delighted in forcing unwilling service from any kind of subordinate, bawled, “Hey, boy!” meaning to order a pot of coffee. He noted with satisfaction the purely automatic pause in the steward's stride, but the man in the servant conquered, and the man fairly burst from the room as if devils were after him.

Herr Löwenthal, feeling sodden and lumpy, went back to his cabin to wash and change before breakfast. He supposed he would have to go on doing that, but never again would he sleep in the place—nothing could force him. He found another steward and Dr. Schumann already there, fussing over Herr Rieber, who was installed in the lower berth without so much as an if-you-please to Herr Löwenthal, the lawful occupant, who took in the state of affairs with instant rage which he betrayed only by the slight shake in his voice. “He is welcome to my bunk, Doctor, so long as he has got it already. I wouldn't want it, I got no further use for it.”

That pig Rieber kept his eyes shut but his lids were working, pretending he was asleep, or sick or couldn't hear, it didn't matter which, he was pretending and it was enough to drive an honest man crazy. As if a little crack with a bottle could hurt a skull like that. Dr. Schumann nodded and spoke absently as he changed the dressing, spreading a nasty smell of iodoform around. “Well, no, I suppose you haven't,” he said. “There is always the divan, anyway.”

A deep slow swelling soundless howl rose and echoed and died away in Herr Löwenthal's soul. It was a howl and a song with words. “Take my table, take my bed, take my blood, grind my bones, God curse Them what do They want more?” In his fury he shouted so loudly close to Dr. Schumann's ear, the Doctor jumped and almost dropped the gauze he was winding around Herr Rieber's brow. “Careful, will you?” he snapped, but Herr Löwenthal's voice drowned the words. “Maybe I want my bed for myself, Doctor? Maybe for once I should like to come back somewhere and not find somebody pushing me out? Is there a law saying I shouldn't have what I paid for? How is it you can come in here as if he owned the place and take my bed just because he is drunk and I am not? Doctor,” he said, his speech trailing off in a tone of pathos, one righteous man appealing to the sense of pity and justice in another, “Doctor, I want to know these things—you tell me!”

Dr. Schumann, deeply repelled by this show of selfishness and bad temper, as if his disgusting patient were not trial enough, asked coldly: “Is it such a martyrdom as all that to give up your bed to someone who needs it, especially since you have another as good? I shall have him put on the divan if you wish, but the ship is beginning to roll heavily and there is less danger of his falling out here.”