The Carp Castle

by MacDonald Harris

  “And then too, Dr. Eckener speaks so highly of you. You see, I was his chauffeur for many months and we had many interesting conversations, about all sorts of things. He says there were ten outstanding Zeppelin skippers in the War, and you’re the only one that came out of it alive. And that’s an important point, don’t you see, Captain. There are two points about life; one of them is to do well at what you do, and the other is to stay alive. Those other fellows weren’t so good at the second. So Dr. Eckener has a great admiration for you. He advised me to sign up for your trip.”

  The din in the room is rising again now. The Captain can only understand what Erwin is saying by bending a little toward him in a way that may seem suggestive to the others in the room, but there’s no help for it. The regular customers have come to the Heldenkeller tonight as usual; they’re dumbfounded by this unannounced invasion of Zeppelin veterans, all the more baffling because some of them are wearing caps that say League of Nations.

  Günther has rejoined the others and is now sitting across the table from the Captain and Erwin again. Evidently he has been talking for some time. The Captain hears him saying, as if in answer to a question, “I’m not against the Jews, but I’m for law and order.”

  Joch says, “Exactly.” He mentions someone, but in an undertone so that the Captain doesn’t catch the name.

  Günther says scornfully, “A corporal. It isn’t corporals we need but great men.”

  “He will be a great man. Have you read his book? He’s the first one to tell the truth about the Jews. Everyone has thought it, but nobody has said it.”

  The Captain attempts to shut out this unpleasant noise as well he can. Erwin opens his tankard, verifies the level of the fluid inside, but doesn’t drink any. He says after a moment, “You know, if I were in your place, Captain, I’d be careful in speaking to me in the control car because I think that English fellow understands some German. He’s hostile to us, that’s certain. And why wouldn’t he be?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why, on account of all those bombs we dropped on his pretty London, Captain. The only city he has. I mean, we Germans have Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Frankfurt, and a whole lot of other cities, but he only has London. We dropped all those bombs. I mean we did, Captain. You and I. And with deadly accuracy, I might add, Captain.”

  The Captain begins to be a little less pleased with the new Erwin. There is an innuendo, a note of insinuation, in his speech now that the Captain tries not to take as a hint of blackmail. Erwin goes on, “As I say, a lot of people went to London and didn’t come back. But that didn’t include yours truly, and your own self. And that is due entirely to your own skill, Captain. Nobody can deny that.”

  With piercing clarity, the Captain feels the bump under his feet in the aluminum floor when the L-23 exploded beneath him. He hasn’t thought about that for years, not with his surface mind. He starts to make his own remark about the War, to agree with Erwin that they were lucky to have come out of it alive, but thinks better of it and says nothing.

  “On the subject of women, which you were asking me about in the control car, Captain,” says Erwin, “I do think about them. Everybody does it. They’re half of what we think about. There’s men and there’s women. So what else is there to think about? If you understand me, Captain.”

  The Captain feels a warmth spreading into his face. He is torn now between a desire to shut Erwin up and a fear that he won’t go on. “On the subject of Schiller, Captain, which you were asking me about in the control car, I’ve read him in school like everybody else. He was a talented fellow but he dwelt too much on his misfortunes, like all poets.”

  “Yes,” said the Captain. He feels on stronger ground now. “A deplorable fellow, Schiller. A romantic. An admirer of the deep and gloomy German past. Believed in Lorelei and in robbers. The influence of Schiller, who is widely taught in the schools, is a good deal of what is wrong with Germany now. And I might add Wagner.”

  “I can’t say I know much about Wagner, Captain. You see, I’ve never been able to afford opera tickets.”

  “Don’t you have a gramophone?”

  “Yes, but the disks are expensive, Captain. I prefer fox-trots.”

  The Captain tries to imagine Erwin fox-trotting. Two men a little way down the table are talking rather loudly about mathematics. One is a mechanic, the other, he believes, is a rigger named Gleick or Glick. One says, “What do you say, then, are there more numbers less than zero, or more than zero?” The other: “Why, it’s just the same, you see, everybody knows that. Because it’s plus 1, plus 2, plus 3 and so on on one side, and on the other side it’s minus 1, minus 2, and minus 3, and so it goes, it’s just the same.” “But look here,” says clever Glick or Gleick, “there are special numbers on the plus side, complicated numbers that they don’t have on the minus side, because you see, on that side they’re prevented by the rules from having these things. There’s, for example, the square root of four and the square root of sixteen, and all sorts of complicated special numbers; but if you ask what’s the square root of minus four, or of minus sixteen, why there’s no such thing.” “But look, you fool,” breaks in a third man, “where did you go to school? You don’t know a thing about numbers. Because this square root of four you talk about, why that’s just the number 2. You’ve already counted that yourself; you said there’s 1 and there’s 2 and then 3. It’s not fair counting it twice. And it’s just the same on the other side; there’s minus 1, 2, and 3. So these special numbers you’re talking about on the plus side, why they’re imaginary numbers, don’t you see, they don’t exist, so you shouldn’t go on talking about them. So,” he concludes, “there’s exactly the same on both sides, plus and minus. And,” he adds, “they go all the way to infinity.” “That’s so, agrees the first man, not Glick or Gleick, anxious to be right about something at least.

  The Captain and Erwin have fallen into silence to listen to this. They find themselves looking at each other in the absent way of two men who are listening to other people talking. It’s clear to the Captain, from the expression on Erwin’s face, that Erwin has been following the whole thing with great interest and has changed his opinion in accordance with the arguments of the various experts, and is now left with the belief that numbers go all the way to infinity, whereas he, the Captain, recognizes it for what it is, the ignorant and alcoholic blathering of sub-educated people. The Captain feels a tristesse (that wonderfully consoling French word) and is suddenly reminded of Swann in Proust’s novel and his unworthy love for Odette, a vulgar tart who twists him around her finger and betrays him with every gallant on the Boulevard. He also remembers that Odette was actually Proust’s chauffeur, a catamite named Alfred. All this seems profound, but he’s not quite sure how or why; perhaps he should go back and reread the novel and see if it offers him any hints in managing his own romantic life. He remembers only that Proust considers Swann’s love to be a high and noble one, even though its object is unworthy. But Erwin isn’t unworthy. He’s getting confused by that wretched novel. Erwin is not a Parisian demimondaine. He just had the misfortune to be born in a different social class. Erwin seems to him all at once wonderfully wise, in spite of his simplistic and labyrinthine way of explaining things.

  “Erwin,” he says, “tell me something. Why are people bad? Why do they do the things they know they shouldn’t do? Why don’t they behave decently?”

  Erwin looks at him warily. “I’m sure I don’t know, Captain.”

  “But what’s the reason for it, Erwin? Why is everything so screwed up? Do you believe in Original Sin, Erwin? Is evil inherent in the world?”

  “I can’t say I’ve ever been much of a churchgoer, Captain. No doubt the padres have their arguments.”

  “It’s not a matter of religion, Erwin. When we speak of Original Sin, we simply mean that the world is out of joint, as the English Bard puts it, that we’re imperfect and the world is an imperfect place and so nothing but suffering can come from it.”
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br />   “Oh,” says Erwin, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us, or with the world either, Captain. It’s a matter of society being badly arranged.”

  The Captain sees that the mathematical experts have now fallen silent and are listening to his and Erwin’s dialogue with the same absent-minded attention that he and Erwin were previously giving to theirs.

  “The trouble all comes from setting up laws,” Erwin goes on. “If there were no laws, we couldn’t break laws and there would be no evil or sin; we would act naturally. No adultery or theft. It wouldn’t be wrong to be polygamous. We would all simply follow our own sweet will and everybody would love everybody else.”

  The Captain feels he must dispel this naive Rousseauism, even at the risk of offending Erwin, who has spoken with the eloquence of a man who has held these beliefs for many years. “But Erwin, think. How would it actually work? You’re not taking account of human nature. The instinctual monogamist would still defend his monogamous mate against the continual onslaught of the polygamists. This would lead to a lot of slaughter, and meanwhile the babies would be lying in pools of blood untended by anyone. The problem is that biologically monogamy is necessary for the raising of the family, but into the psychology of the individual, especially the male, has been built an insatiable and incurable polygamy. And this simply generates evil, tremendous quantities of evil, at an unstoppable rate. These same arguments apply of course to all kinds of avarice and possessiveness. It isn’t only women we covet” (the Captain finds the blood coming to his face again) “but all the fruits of the earth which others have amassed through their labor, and which we crave to possess without labor. And nations know they should be peaceful, but instead they make war on other nations.”

  “It all comes from laws, Captain, and from private property, which you mention in your reference to the fruits of the earth which some people have amassed. If there weren’t any private property, Captain, then nobody could amass it, and nobody else could covet it. You see, Captain,” he concludes confidently, “I’m an anarchist, is what I am.”

  All the better, thinks the Captain. He’s a long way from Odette, Erwin is. The men down the table have been following this with great interest. Glick or Gleick decides it is time to offer his bit to the discussion. Leaning forward to be heard over the din, he says, “Have you ever heard of Nitsky? He thinks that everybody should be left alone to fight it out. Animals, people, bugs, even microbes. Let the best one win. It may be hard on this person or that, but it improves the race. After you fight it out, what you have left is the Superman. An improvement over what you had before.”

  “You’re thinking of Darwin,” says the Captain. “Nietzsche didn’t talk very much about natural selection or the survival of the fittest. He did say we should all strive to produce the Superman. But that was back in the last century. Now the Superman is among us. Evolution has produced its final product. The German warrior with a spike on his helmet.”

  “I think you must be joking, Captain,” says Glick or Gleick. Everyone stares at the Captain, and now they’re staring at Erwin too, wondering why the Captain has chosen this unremarkable person for his drinking companion and stuck to him for the whole evening. They all fall silent for a while. Then Joch, after a look around, pokes Günther in the ribs.

  “Die Wacht am Rhein,” he says softly, like an invocation, a prayer.

  Günther goes to the piano, and his fingers form the chords of the sacred warrior hymn, banned by the French and their other enemies in the period after the War. Someone begins singing, and other voices join in, swelling to a chorus in the room in which all conversation has now stopped.

  The Captain has his hands below the table and is wringing them like Lady Macbeth. Finally something comes off and he puts it in his pocket. Then he takes it out of his pocket and says in a low voice, barely audible over the singing, “Here you are, Erwin. A little souvenir from the factory, eh? I had it made by the machinists from a scrap of metal.”

  Erwin tries it on. On his stubby hand it will only fit over the little finger, the pinky, not the ring finger where it rested on the hand of the Captain. Erwin looks at him perplexed. “Have you got another for yourself, Captain?”

  “Oh yes,” says the Captain, concealing his hand under the table. “You see, Erwin, a good deal of the aluminum they’re using now at the factory is made from scrap. And where does the aluminum scrap come from? Tons and tons of it were left over from the War. And a lot of it from airships and airplanes.”

  Their glances fall on Baron von Richthofen, who shot down eighty aluminum airplanes, each with a man in it, before his own airplane crashed to earth at Bertangles on the Somme.

  “No doubt,” says the Captain, “there’s metal in that ring from our wartime Zeppelins. Like my old L-14 that was burned in its hangar at Tondern when it was bombed by the British. I don’t know whether you were with me then, Erwin.”

  “Yes I was, Captain. I was lying in a slit trench while those Engländers went about wrecking the place.”

  “So that just in a poetic way, Erwin, we may say that your ring is made from our old Zeppelin.”

  “In a poetic way you may say so, Captain,” says Erwin. He twists the ring on his finger and sucks his cheeks in a thoughtful way. The Captain has never known him to be troubled in this way. Erwin has always been very insouciant. In a dangerous reverie, the Captain imagines himself touching Erwin’s hand to put the ring on it himself.

  *

  In the hall of the hotel in Mainz, Eliza slips her hand into Romer’s. Both hands are damp, cold, and slightly greasy from the pastries they ate on the hill. Still abuzz with the combination of her afternoon’s initiation into womanhood and the stings on her body, she feels something like the pleasant languor of a convalescent combined with the torment of the martyr, all rolled together and kneaded into one. For years to come, she knows, if she is stung by so much as a gnat she will feel a twinge of lust. Now, however, they must part. They can’t go up the stairs together for fear that some member of the Guild might see them. A flash of affection flares in her; she turns and kisses him impetuously, holding his head in her hands.

  “Good night, my love.”

  “Good night, sweet Eliza,” he whispers, his face close to hers.

  She watches while he thrusts his dripping umbrella into the stand and goes upstairs to his room. Close to tears which she cannot explain even whether they come from joy or sorrow, she waits for a moment until he is gone and then follows up the stairs herself and down the corridor to her room, which she unlocks with the large old-fashioned key, making a bump that wakes up Joan Esterel, who turns on the light and rears up in bed with cream on her face.

  The figure sitting in the bed is a small woman with narrow shoulders. Everything about her is undersized; breasts like quails’ eggs, a small face with protruding ears, a pointed chin, a Gypsy nose, and thin fragile limbs. Her complexion is like cordovan leather. She dyes her hair a blondish auburn with darker color showing through, and cuts it short with a part on one side like an English schoolboy. In the daytime, up and dressed, she stands out sharply among the other members of the Guild, an exotic and glittering little figure. Gold eyeglasses, gold earrings, gold buttons to her blouse; she glints like a Byzantine icon. When she takes off her sandals, which have gilded studs on them, her feet are narrow and unexpectedly long for such a small person. She gives the impression, above all other animals, of a bat; a cute bat in a cartoon, a bat better described by its Italian name, a pipistrello, or even better in German, a Fledermaus. Eliza detests her thoroughly, partly because of her fixed qualities (Eliza dislikes bats, gold ornaments, and Gypsy noses) and partly because for months, on the road with the Guild, she has had to share a room with her and has been exposed to all her unpleasant habits. Joan Esterel doesn’t care about her tiny breasts and goes around flaunting them in hotel rooms, wearing only her underpants. She gives the impression that she thinks Eliza’s own medium-sized breasts, which she conceals carefully from everyone e
xcept Romer, are bovine and common. Joan Esterel has no possessions except those that will fit into a shabby musette bag with leather corners that looks like a prop for La Bohème, and she borrows Eliza’s face cream, her Woods of Windsor Lavender soap, and her toenail scissors whenever she is gone from the room. (She is wearing her face cream right now).

  Sitting up in bed wearing her quails’ eggs like medals, she remarks, “You didn’t go to the séance.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Out with your financee, eh.” This is one of her bad jokes. It might make some sense if Romer had any money.

  “Yes,” says Eliza, “we ate pastries in a castle” (promoting the mysteriously named An der Favorite to a slightly higher architectural status) “and then we discussed philosophy.” In this way she seeks to emphasize to the maximum the contrast between her evening and that of Joan Esterel, alone in bed in the hotel room. She doesn’t mention the rain or the quarrels.

  “What are those red marks on the back of your neck?”

  “Love bites.”

  “They don’t look like it to me, Eliza Burney.”

  “And I have them in other places too,” Eliza tells her.

  Careful to remain facing away from her, Eliza takes off her clothes and slips on her nightgown. Then she puts her clothes away in the armoire, leaving her damp stockings draped over the light fixture. Sometimes she longs for a tiny place of her own, provided that it was her own and nobody else’s—a tiny flat in Camden Town, or a room in a villa in Tuscany—where she could have a pot of flowers, make tea on a gas-ring, and be utterly at her ease, without some Joan Esterel to observe her every move, every pimple, laddered stocking, and minor passing of gas. But it seems she is to share with Joan Esterel a cabin on the dirigible, no doubt even more cramped than a hotel room, with God knows what arrangements for beds and sanitary facilities. Eliza climbs into bed, pulls up the covers over her head, still buzzing with her combination of pain and ecstasy, and falls asleep instantly.