Ship of Fools

by Katherine Anne Porter

  “In the mining camp,” said David, pouring another round, putting the stopper back and bracing the bottle between his feet, “up in the mountains of Mexico where I had my first job, the whorehouse, the only one, was just one big room, big as a barn, with rows of cots so close together you could barely squeeze your way in between them, and it was dark in there except for a red light in one corner. You and your girl just fumbled around among the cots until you got one that wasn’t busy, just ran your hands along until you didn’t feel a leg or a rump, and then you piled in …”

  “Gosh, I’d a went limp,” said Denny, appalled, sitting on the floor and taking off his shoes.

  “It wasn’t so bad,” said David. “In fact, for what it was, it was all right.” And slowly there poured through all his veins again that deep qualm of loathing and intolerable sexual fury, a poisonous mingling of sickness and deathlike pleasure: it ebbed and left him as it always had before, merely a little sick. Once in the early days with Jenny, he had confessed to her, haltingly, after their fresh gay love-making in the cool spring morning, the strange times he had lived through in that place; somehow he felt, and expected her to understand, that this aftertaste of bitter disgust had cleansed him, restored him untouched to the wholeness of his manhood. He was glad to be able to say he was sick of the thought of sex for a good while after such nights. He had felt superior to his acts and to his partners in them, and altogether redeemed and separated from their vileness by that purifying contempt.

  Jenny, sitting up in bed, had leaned over and taken his face between her hands and said blithely, “Never mind, darling. That’s a normal Methodist hangover. Men love to eat themselves sick and then call their upchuck by high-sounding names … I … Oh, I do hope you won’t make yourself sick on me!” He had never forgiven her for that. He never would.

  “Another?” he asked, pouring. Denny nodded. “Well,” he said, “hot chance there is for any loose piling in bed around this tub!” He inspected his ingrowing toenail with deep alarm. “Gosh,” he said, “I think this thing is infected!” He forgot everything else in his search for the iodine.

  Until they came on the ship, Hans had never seen his parents dressing and undressing together. He could remember when he was very little, they would take him into bed with them in the morning and play with him. But one day, he did not know just when, his mother said to him, “No, Hans, you are a big boy now, time to stop all this babying.” Until then, he had been able to open their door and come in when he pleased. Afterwards when he tried the knob now and then, the door was always locked; his father and mother came instead into his room at night to say evening prayers with him.

  In their close, crowded cabin, there was nothing for it, nowhere to go. When the time came, his mother would fold a handkerchief over Hans’s eyes, and say, “Now, don’t take this off until I tell you! and don’t peep!” But he did peep of course. To his disappointment, there was nothing much to see. He could not quite understand what all the mystery was about. With their backs turned to him and to each other, they would remove their clothes a garment at a time, slipping their night clothes on a little at the same time, so they were never really undressed at all, and he caught only an occasional glimpse of his mother’s plump shoulder, or his father’s lean ribs. This secrecy was all the more mysterious to him because he had many times seen more of them in broad daylight at the beach. So he was certain there was something about undressing for bed that was different from undressing at other times, and he meant to find out what it was if he could. Before Hans could quite see how it happened, they would face about fully covered again, his father in a long skinny nightshirt edged with red cotton braid, his mother in a billowing, long-sleeved white nightgown. She would say “Now!” as if it were a game, and whip the handkerchief from his eyes, and Hans would try to look sleepy.

  The air of the cabin was thick, even when the porthole was open; but it was closed at night, for night air was always dangerous, but night air at sea was deadly. While his parents were undressing they loosed smells from their skins that made Hans long to beg to have the porthole opened, but he would never dare—his father’s smell, bitter and sharp like the drugstore in Mexico City where his father often went with a little paper his doctor had given him; his mother’s smell, sickly sweet, like the mixed-up smells of the fishstalls and the flower stands right next to each other under the hot noon sun of the Merced market. He knew which smell was which, his father’s and his mother’s, for he often got a whiff of them outside, in the garden in Mexico or at the table, or even on the deck of this ship. It made him sick, it made him feel sometimes that his mother and father were strangers, he was afraid of them, there was something wrong with his father’s breath and his mother’s armpits, and it made him wonder if there was something wrong with him. Now and then he would turn his head towards his own shoulder and breathe in, or even pull open his shirt front and take a good sniff of himself from below. He always smelt just like himself, nothing wrong at all, and he would feel easier for a while.

  His mother knelt beside his bed, and Hans got up and knelt by her. The arm she put around his shoulders smelt of sweet freshly washed linen. His father knelt on the other side, and they said their prayers together in a murmuring chorus. They both hugged him and kissed him good night; and at once he felt so near to them, so full of confidence, he said, sitting up again: “Mama, today Ric and Rac told me they were going to throw me overboard, but I wasn’t scared!”

  His mother said sharply, “Hans, you are not supposed to talk after you have said your prayers.” But his father almost leaped out of his shirt, and said, “What did you say?” and to his wife, “Didn’t you hear what he said? That those terrible Spanish children threatened …”

  “Nonsense,” cried his wife, and to Hans, “What do you mean, running off to play with those children? Haven’t I told you to keep away from them?”

  His father said to his mother, “Well, where were you, that you lost sight of him?”

  “I was at the hairdresser’s, and I told him to sit still and wait for me in his deck chair. Blame me, of course—I am not to have a moment’s peace for anything!”

  “Look after your child, and stop tormenting your husband,” shouted his father, and Hans saw they had forgotten him entirely.

  “I didn’t leave my chair,” he said almost tearfully, “they came and stood there, and they said, ‘We are going to throw you overboard. And everybody else too, and the bulldog.’ That is what they said, and it is not my fault. I said ‘Go away, or I’ll tell my father.’ And they laughed and made fun of me …”

  “Monstrous!” said his mother, deeply shocked. “That good innocent helpless dog? Oh Hans, if you are ever so cruel as to mistreat a poor dumb animal, never let me hear of it.”

  “I wouldn’t hurt Bébé, not for anything,” said Hans, piously, having got his mother’s attention again.

  “I shall speak to them, or to their shameless parents if necessary,” said his father. “After all, it is not exactly a joke, they have threatened to throw Hans overboard as well, remember.”

  “My advice is to say nothing to them, to ignore them as if they do not exist, and Hans, stay near me always and do as you are told—don’t let me have to speak twice.”

  “Yes, little Mama,” said Hans in his most submissive voice. The lights were turned out and all was quiet. Hans fell asleep after a short time of worry because his mother had not seemed to hear at all what he was trying to tell her about how very nearly he had come to being drowned off the ship while she was having her hair washed, without a thought for him.

  Herr Rieber had wound himself up to a state of decision regarding Fräulein Lizzi Spöckenkieker. First, she was not a Fräulein at all, but a woman of worldly experience; and though Herr Rieber liked nothing better than a proper amount of feminine coquetry and playful resistance, still, carried beyond certain bounds, they became mockery and downright insolence which no man worthy of the name would endure from any woman, no, not if she were Hele
n of Troy herself! In this frame of mind he took her arm after dinner and guided her for their stroll. While listening to music, he drew her up the stairs to the boat deck, and led her, with the silent intentness of a man bent on crime, to the dark side of the ship’s funnel. He gave his prey no warning, no moment in which to smack his face or flee, he seized Lizzi low around her shoulders, hoping to pin her arms to her ribs, and snatching her to him, he opened his mouth for a ravenous kiss.

  It was like embracing a windmill. Lizzi uttered a curious tight squeal, and her long arms gathered him in around his heaving middle. Her thin wide mouth gaped alarmingly and her sharp teeth gleamed even in the dimness. She gave him a good push and they fell backward clutched together, her long active legs overwhelmed him, she rolled him over flat on his back and for a moment her sharp hipbones ground his belly cruelly. Herr Rieber had one flash of amazed delight at the undreamed-of warmth of her response, then in panic realized that unless he recovered himself instantly, the situation would be irremediably out of his control.

  He braced himself to reverse the unnatural posture of affairs, and attempted to roll into the proper position of masculine supremacy, but Lizzi was spread upon him like a fallen tent full of poles, her teeth now set grimly in his jowl, just under his jawbone. Pain took precedence of all other sensations in Herr Rieber’s being; silently with tears in his eyes he fought to free himself. Yet there was a muted exhilaration in the struggle. When, if ever, he got the upper hand of this woman he would have got, he felt, something worth having. Meanwhile she showed no signs of surrender, but gripped him with her knees as if he were an unmanageable horse, her arms folded him in almost intolerably, with long thin tough muscles like a boy’s working in them.

  Never before had he encountered a woman who would not let herself be overcome properly at the correct moment: her intuition should tell her when! In despair, his jaw by now benumbed, his eyes wandered as if seeking help. The half-darkness showed a white blotch which proved to be the motionless form of Bébé, who had found the Hutten cabin door ajar, and had wandered aimlessly alone until at last he stood there not three feet away from them, openly gazing.

  “Lizzi, my dearest,” gasped Herr Rieber, “Lizzi, the dog!”

  His agonized tone brought Lizzi out of her carnivorous trance. Her teeth parted, she breathed “Where?” Herr Rieber snatched his face out of her reach. Her arms loosened and he seized her wrists, at the same time rolling over until he was at least lying beside her. At last by a series of resolute disentangling movements, for now Lizzi seemed quite inert in his hands, he brought them both to a sitting position once more.

  Bébé, balanced on his bowed legs and wavering slightly with the roll of the ship, the folds of his nose twitching, regarded them with an expression of animal cunning that most embarrassingly resembled human knowledge of the seamy side of life. Plainly he could see what they were up to, their intentions were no secret from him, but because of their strange shapes, and the weird sounds they made, he was puzzled—puzzled, and somewhat repelled. Indeed he was not at all sympathetic.

  “Go away, get out,” commanded Herr Rieber, in as deep a growl as Bébé himself could have fetched up; but because Bébé wore a hairy hide and was on all fours he was therefore sacred, there was no question of using sterner measures. Herr Rieber was the soul of sensibility on this question: as a child, he had cried his eyes out on seeing a horse fall in the icy street, tangled in his harness, prisoner to a beer truck. He wanted to beat, to kill the cruel driver who had let him fall. No tenderness could exceed Herr Rieber’s for the entire brute kingdom—indeed, he still believed hanging too good for any person who abused even the humblest member of that mystical world. When for the most unavoidable reasons of discipline he was forced to beat his own dogs, his heart almost broke, every time. He spoke now to Bébé in his most wheedling tone. “Go away, there’s a good doggie,” he said, looking around hopefully for something weighty to throw at him. “Good doggie!”

  Lizzi began to laugh uncontrollably, her head between her hands. “Ah hahaha,” she uttered in a voice thin as a twanging wire. Bébé went away then in silence, padding softly on his big feet, dismissed but not minding, full of his own business. He had ruined the occasion, though. Herr Rieber had not the heart to take up again at this perhaps more promising point with a now somewhat chastened Lizzi. He contented himself with taking her hands and saying soothingly, “No, no—there now, there!” She scrambled to her feet talking incoherently, gave Herr Rieber a weak little poke in the chest, and ran ahead of him down the steps without looking back. Herr Rieber followed but more slowly, thoughtfully fingering his jaw. He must not for a moment admit discouragement. After all, this was only another woman—there must be a way, and he would find it. He thought with some envy of the ancient custom of hitting them over the head as a preliminary—not enough to cause injury, of course, just a good firm tap to stun the little spirit of contradiction in them.

  Earlier in that evening at dinner, Herr Professor Hutten, still lacking his proper appetite, barely refrained from pushing away his loaded plate, rising and seeking fresh air; but his wife was eating well, and though the sight was faintly repugnant to him, still that was no good reason for interrupting her. The other guests seemed as usual, the Doctor amiably silent, Herr Rieber and Fräulein Lizzi exuding their odious atmosphere of illicit intimacy, Frau Schmitt unremarkable as ever; only Frau Rittersdorf was chatting away lightly in the direction of the Captain—a frivolous woman, with what a vanity at her age!—and even if Herr Professor Hutten had no hope of hearing anything in the least edifying or enlightening, he listened in the wan hope of some distraction from his inner unease.

  Frau Rittersdorf noted his attention, saw the other faces beginning to take on a listening look; without loosing her hold on the attention of Captain Thiele, she turned clever glances upon the others and raised her voice a little to include them in the circle of those who had been lately amused or annoyed or both with the antics of the zarzuela company and their outré notions of the etiquette of social occasions on shipboard—if such a word could be used even remotely in such a connection. There was above all that impudent creature they called Tito, who had tried to sell her some tickets of one kind or another for some sort of petty cheat they had thought up among themselves, who knew what?

  “Ah yes,” Lizzi broke in, “for a raffle! I bought one and got rid of them.”

  “You should have told me!” cried Herr Rieber. “For I bought two—you must give one of yours away!”

  “I’ll return it to them and get back my money!” whinnied Lizzi, tossing her head.

  “Oh,” said Frau Rittersdorf, “that should be something to see, anyone getting back a pfennig from those bandits, for I know they are that! No, dear Fräulein, good businesswoman, that you are, everyone knows, but you will want to be better than that!”

  “But wonderful dancing partners, don’t you find, Frau Rittersdorf?” asked Herr Rieber, gleefully. Lizzi slapped his hand, annoyed, because she had meant to say that herself. “Shame on you,” she said, “you are not very kind. Dancing partners are sometimes scarce, one cannot always choose too delicately.”

  Frau Rittersdorf, shocked at this turn of talk just when she was ready to give a sparkling account of that unusual incident, cried out in a high yet ladylike soprano, “Ah, but there are effronteries so utterly unexpected one is taken off guard, one is defenseless, it is better to follow one’s instinct—yes, as well as training! and to behave as if nothing out of the way were happening—how could I dream of such a thing as that?” She sat back and held her napkin to her lips, staring over it in distress at Lizzi, whose laugh was a long cascade of falling tinware.

  “Ah, but that is just what ladies are supposed to dream about,” called Herr Rieber in delight, leaning forward to make himself heard over Lizzi’s clamor. “What is wrong with that, please tell me?”

  Pig-dog, thought Frau Rittersdorf, her dismay turning in a flash to a luxury of rage, at least I am not reduced to d
ancing with you! She bared her teeth at him and lifted her brows and narrowed her eyes: “Are you sure you would know what ladies dream about, Herr Rieber?” she inquired, dangerously.

  These tactics impressed Herr Rieber, who had got his face smacked more than once by easily offended ladies, and at that moment Frau Rittersdorf resembled every one of them, in tone and manner. A man couldn’t be too cautious with that proper, constipated type, no matter how gamey she looked. He wilted instantly, unconditionally.

  “I meant it as a pleasantry, meine Dame,” he said, with rueful respect.

  “No doubt,” said Frau Rittersdorf, turning the knife-edge of her voice in his wounded vanity. “No doubt at all.”

  Herr Rieber could not quite give up, but floundered and floundered. “It was a roundabout allusion to a theory of Freud’s on the—ah—the meaning of dreams …”

  “I am well acquainted with his theories,” said Frau Rittersdorf icily, “and I see no connection whatever between them and our present topic!”

  Herr Rieber sat back, his underlip pouched, and began loading his fork, sulkily. Frau Rittersdorf turned to the Captain with her most sparkling smile, full of confidence after her plenary chastisement of that presumptuous fellow—Freud, indeed!—and said: “We are all of us taking these Spaniards very lightly, and indeed, we may as well, seeing there is no help for it, we must endure their presence until Vigo, I believe. But tell me, how can it happen that such people are traveling first-class on a respectable German ship? One finds oneself in unheard-of situations which they invent.…”

  The Captain did not relish hearing his ship called “respectable” in a tone implying she was barely that; he did not like hearing the quality of his passenger list criticized, though privately he respected none of them except La Condesa, and she was turning out to be a grave disappointment in a personal way. His chin jerked forward irritably, he spoke as bluntly as possible: “The Mexican government paid their fares; no doubt it was worth it to be rid of them.”