Ship of Fools

by Katherine Anne Porter

  Löwenthal, in spite of the unpleasant state of affairs—it was nothing new to him—was still quite willing to engage in a little conversation for sociability with almost anybody who came along, just so they kept off the subject of religion—his religion, for he did not admit the existence of any other; all religions except his own were simply a lot of heathens following false gods. It didn’t matter what they called themselves. He had been reminded more than once by some Goy who wanted an argument that there were something like two billion human beings in the world, all presumably created by the same God, and only a matter of some twenty million Jews. So what had God in mind, showing such unjust partiality? Such nonsense never fazed Herr Löwenthal for an instant. “I got nothing to say on the subject,” he would answer, “you should argue with a rabbi. I take his word he knows God’s business.” But the mere pronunciation of the Name, even in a heathen language, even only the Name which stood for the Name which must never be uttered, made him uneasy. He always changed the subject if he could, or walked away if he couldn’t. It didn’t matter to him what the Goyim thought of him, whether they liked him or not. He didn’t like them, so he was a jump ahead of them from the start. He didn’t want them to do him any favors—he would get what he wanted out of them by himself, and no thanks to anybody. All he wanted in the world was the right to be himself, to go where he pleased and do what he wanted without any interference from Them—what right had They …?

  That no race or nation in the world, nor in all human history, had enjoyed such rights made no difference to Herr Löwenthal: he should worry about things none of his business. He simmered and seethed like lava boiling underground, turning upon itself with no way out. He distrusted all Goyim, but he distrusted most of all those who plagued him with talk about how they disapproved of all racial prejudice, how they had none themselves, and how they hated what the Captain had done, and how they had good Jewish friends, and how everybody knew that some of the most talented people in the world were Jews. And so generous—always helping somebody. Herr Löwenthal pursed up his mouth and made a spluttering sound, almost in the very face of that American shicksa who carried a drawing book everywhere, the one traveling with a man she wasn’t married to, as if it mattered! Who without even saying good morning came up from the back and started walking along with him, chattering about how she thought the whole thing was a perfect disgrace, and she wanted him to know that she was shocked at it.

  “At what shocked?” he asked, not looking at her, feeling his face curl up with distaste at her nearness. She kept bending her neck around trying to look him in the eye, but one quick glance was all she got from him. He couldn’t stand shicksas at any distance. “What happened you got shocked?”

  She didn’t take the hint, but went on saying she couldn’t bear for him to think that everybody had felt the same as the Captain, or Herr Rieber or—well, people like them. Nearly everybody she had talked to had hated the whole thing; but the Captain, she pointed out, was running the ship, so what could a passenger do? “I just wanted you to know,” she ended, rather timidly, as if that settled something, as if he cared what she thought, as if what she said would make any difference to him. The nerve of her!

  He said, “Well, what I got to do with all this? I’m not worrying, I just sit where they put me, minding my own business; maybe Herr Freytag is the one you should sympathize with. He’s the one got kicked out, not me. I been out all along,” he said, “I got no complaint, I’m used to being a Jew.”

  The shicksa stopped in her tracks and asked him in a blaze of temper: “Are you always so stupidly rude, or is this a special occasion?” Without waiting for an answer, she spun about and made off in the opposite direction. Herr Löwenthal noted that her legs were like a stork’s. In a pleasant glow of satisfaction he lighted a good cigar and stretched out in his deck chair. He snapped his fingers at a passing steward. “Beer,” he said, briefly but not unkindly.

  One of the Spanish dancing girls stopped beside his chair, and offered two oblong bits of cardboard with printing on them. “Here are your two tickets for our fiesta,” she said, her harsh voice toned down to a rough murmur. Herr Löwenthal on inspiration decided to pretend he took them for a gift. “Thanks just the same,” he said in a patronizing manner, making a motion to put them in his pocket.

  “Two dollars,” she said, holding out her palm slightly cupped, rubbing thumb and forefinger together.

  “What? You selling them? What for?” Herr Löwenthal was in a waggish humor.

  “A fiesta.”

  “What kind of fiesta?”

  “We dance, we sing, we eat and drink and then we have a little lottery for beautiful prizes—maybe one of your tickets win? Maybe both! Who knows?”

  Herr Löwenthal’s good humor lapsed. “Who knows? I know one thing, I got this kind of luck—if I had a winning number in my pocket, by the time I got to the place to claim it, the number would have changed, all by itself … Now don’t argue,” he said, thrusting the tickets back into her hand. “Take these and go away.”

  “Filthy pig,” she said in a Romany dialect.

  “Whore,” he said in Yiddish.

  Manolo bowed to little Señora Ortega, bent over her deck chair offering tickets and a shattering fire of explanations. The Indian nurse, sitting near holding the baby, glanced quickly at the tickets and away again, face calm, eyelids lowered. She could not read words, but she could smell a chance-game at a great distance, she knew numbers when she saw them, and bought a fraction of every lottery that came along, because she knew one more thing very well: for her kind, born on the straw mat, barefoot from dirt floor to grave, there was only one hope of fortune—to hit the lucky number, just once! Her dead mother often spoke to her anxiously in dreams: “Nicolasa, my child, listen now to me carefully—listen, do you hear me, Nicolasa? I am about to give you the winning number for the next lottery. Buy the whole ticket, look until you find the seller who has it. He is in Cinco de Mayo street. His name is …” and always, as she began to recite his name, the number, the serial, all, her words would run together, her face grow dim, her voice die away, and Nicolasa, waking in fright, would hear herself calling out, “Oh wait, Mother! Don’t go … tell me, tell me!”

  Señora Ortega smiled at the expression on Nicolasa’s face. She knew it well, and what it meant. She bought the two tickets from Manolo and gave them without a word to the Indian girl, who would have kissed Señora Ortega’s hand if she had not instantly taken it back. She then dismissed Manolo without a glance at him as if he were a stupid servant, and said to the girl, “Let me hold the baby awhile. He is so sweet this morning.” Manolo was touchy and impudent: he had the money and it would take more than a Mexican halfbreed to insult him. In fact he was so elated with success where he had not expected it, he sold tickets to the Baumgartners and to the bride and groom before his spirits flagged; they didn’t put up any sort of fight. He observed, however, in the two pairs of eyes, light blue and dark blue, of the American painters a glint of pure, implacable hostility which did not waver as he came nearer. He had no words to express his contempt for this colorless, sexless pair, no more juice in them than a turnip, sitting around with their drawing boards pretending to be artists. He did not pause at their chairs, just the same: he would leave them to Lola or Amparo, especially Amparo, who could tame tigers.

  Jenny and David, sitting together amiably, watched Manolo prance by with an extra flip of his behind for their benefit. David said, “I liked them better before they began mingling social consciousness with their blackmail. Did you happen to see the bulletin board this morning?”

  “I was so furious with that Löwenthal I couldn’t see anything,” said Jenny. “What are the dancers up to now?”

  “I could have told you not to say anything to Löwenthal,” said David. “It’s none of your business, to begin with, and even if it were, he wouldn’t think so—you’re just another Goy, so far as he’s concerned, the Enemy.”

  “I should think he’d be
able to see when a person is really friendly to him,” said Jenny, and her melancholy expression began to settle on her face.

  “You mean you’d think he’d make an exception for you? He just couldn’t help seeing how sincere you are? Well, Jenny angel, he might hate you worse for that very thing! Oh, can’t you ever see?”

  Jenny said carefully, cross-hatching a hasty sketch of Manolo’s back view: “I don’t think that is what I felt at all. I somehow wanted to have my part in the business straightened out. I wanted him to know …”

  David said, “Angel, get it in your head that he doesn’t want to know. He knows what he knows already.”

  “All right, David darling,” said Jenny, “let’s not run this into a quarrel. I feel lovely with you today. Please let me sit here near you and don’t scold me. I’m tired of quarreling … only, my feelings are real, and my thoughts are part of me, I can’t just throw them away; I can’t go all my days not saying this, and not doing that, and not feeling what I do feel, anyway, no matter what I might pretend to you—just to keep the peace! Well, I’ll see you dead and damned first.” She kept her voice low and never stopped drawing.

  David went on drawing too, without a word. His face was taking on the paleness and coldness that Jenny dreaded and was seeing more and more often. She loved David’s roseate flush, a fresh masculine young tone of coloring, thin-skinned and healthily tough. If he didn’t look out, all that food and alcohol would catch up on him someday, he’d wake up some morning to find that fatal ruby network on his nose and cheeks. This treacherous thought having come of itself expanded at once into action. David sat very still and intent on his work, and Jenny, stealing slant-eyed glimpses at him, began a prophetic portrait of David, say at fifty. She draped forty sagging pounds on David’s familiar bony framework, added jowls, thinned his hair back level with his ears, doubled the size of his unbelievably handsome acquiline nose, extended his chin so extravagantly he began to resemble Punch, and as a last satisfying luxury of cruelty, she added a Teutonic roll of fat across the base of his skull. She was so happily absorbed and soothed in the execution of her little murder, her features assumed the sweet serenity and interior warm light that David loved to see, and saw only when he surprised her really sunk in work. Of himself, by no means could he bring that look to her face. When Jenny faced him, she was always under tension, poised for the encounter, full of contradictory emotions, her eyes always seeking, wandering, gazing, flickering, dilating and wincing. She had got in the habit of expecting trouble from him, no matter what. He thought grimly, “And she won’t settle for less now, won’t have anything else. That’s what it has come to, it is simply no good any more, no matter if we can fool ourselves into thinking so a little while every day. And what a rotten painter she is! Why can’t she see it for herself and give up?” He studied her a few seconds longer. Her knees were drawn up to make a table for her drawing pad, her graceful slender ankles were crossed, and a smile curled delicately at the corners of her mouth, not ecstasy, but something tender and pleasant and happy. He could not resist breaking it up. He reached out abruptly to seize her drawing. Jenny jumped violently, snatched it out of his reach, crumpling it. He rose out of his chair and took hold of the drawing and was surprised at the ferocity of her resistance.

  “What is this you’re so pleased with?”

  “No, David, let go—let go—you shan’t see it—”

  “Look out, Jenny—you’re going to tear it!”

  “I mean to.” She stuffed the drawing down the front of her dress and held the sketching table over it with her crossed arms. “Do I go peeping and snatching at your papers?”

  “Oh,” said David, offended, and he gave way sulkily. He detested Jenny’s obstinate insistence that there was any comparable connection between his ways with hers and her ways with him. She fought with him bitterly about his habit of opening her letters—he had no such right, she said. “I don’t open your letters,” she argued.

  Certainly not—why should she? “Do you suspect me of getting love letters?” she inquired indignantly. Of course not—or rather, well, no. That was not the point. It was just that he could not admit that Jenny had any privacies he was bound to respect. At least that was her view of the matter. His own boundaries and reserves were inviolable, and Jenny was little by little finding it out; but she had not found out, nothing could teach her, what it was a man really wanted from a woman. At this point, he felt lost in a fog, as usual. A man, a woman, meant nothing to him. Jenny was the question and he could not find the answer. She had got back into her chair, knees up, ankles crossed, hugging her drawing close. She met his eye gaily and cunningly. “This is one thing you’ll never see!” she assured him, and burst out laughing all over, shaking from head to foot, wriggling her bare toes in her flat thonged Mexican sandals.

  He gave up his grudges and his bad temper as useless, charmed again by Jenny’s laugh, always so fresh and merry; you couldn’t call it a belly laugh exactly, proceeding from that flat little midriff, but it was right out of the cellar, every time. He said, “Look, tell me the joke, I’d like to laugh, too.”

  “No, then it wouldn’t be funny,” said Jenny. Still smiling in high good humor, she said gently, “David darling, if only you could know how beautiful you are to me this minute. Let’s never get old and fat.”

  “All right, grasshopper. Not fat, anyway.” They were agreed that to grow fat was the unpardonable sin against all the good in life, from ethics to morals to esthetics and back again. “Not like the Huttens.”

  “Not like Bébé,” said Jenny. “What was that you said about those dancers having social consciousness?”

  The Cuban students, deprived of the society of La Condesa by her jealous lover the Doctor, somewhat bored with their secret society into which no one had attempted to intrude, and their newspaper, read by no one but themselves, took to chess tournaments and pingpong. Their style however continued the same, implying that fascinating sophisticated secrets were to be read by initiates into their symbolic speech and ritual. It was coming over them gradually that really, nobody cared; they were not annoying anyone enough to make a difference. They decided to attack directly. Where the zarzuela company merely stared bitterly at their victims and uttered their jeering laughter, which never failed to raise a responsive blush of anger or shame, the students thought of a method they believed more subtle and deadly. They consulted with each other gravely, then turned to regard some chosen subject with clinical detachment, saying to each other audibly:

  “A serious case?”

  “No hope,” the other would reply. They would shake their heads, glance piercingly again at their patient, and go on with their chess.

  On deck, in passing, they exchanged critical medical views. “Chronic skeletonism,” they said of Lizzi, gloating over the instant look of fright in her face. “No hope.”

  “Congenital albondigitis,” they called loudly to each other as the Huttens approached with weighty tread, Bébé waddling laboriously on a leash. “No hope!” Professor Hutten glanced swiftly at his wife to see if she had heard. Of course she had, and her feelings were hurt again. The Professor recalled that from the beginning he had expressed his disapproval of these savage boys, and his astonishment at hearing them bandying about, in their unintelligible gabble, the noble, the revered names of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kant; did his ear mislead him or had they dared also to take in vain the name of Goethe? Besides lesser yet still venerable names such as Shakespeare and Dante. Their faces even in relative repose were never serious, their voices not thoughtfully modulated. They chattered like monkeys while daring to utter the name of Nietzsche, no doubt misinterpreting and dishonoring him to their own base satisfaction. No reverence, no proper humility in the presence of greatness—these were the failings of all the non-Nordic races, Iberian, Latin, Gallic, especially; indeed, frivolity was endemic among them, a plague they had carried with them to the whole New World, truly appalling in its lack of intellectual sobriety. Professor Hutt
en felt he could despair once for all of the human race if there did not remain some hope of the survival of the old Germanic spirit. Rallying bravely, he tried to comfort his wife.

  “Don’t listen to them, my dear, they are mere ragamuffins, naturally stupid, and stupidity is always evil, it is not capable of anything else.” These words dismayed him, they sounded like an echo—from where?—in his mind. Surely he did not believe that any human being, no matter how sunk in sin, was irredeemable? What had come over him? He could not imagine, but he could not deny either that this strange point of view struck him powerfully as revealed truth. There was such a thing as incurable love of evil in the human soul. The Professor tasted such bitterness in his mouth he wondered if his gall bladder had emptied itself suddenly on his tongue.

  “I heard them, though,” said Frau Hutten, like a grieved child. “They called us meatballs.” She had not expected anything better of them; she was only tired of the unkindness of people to each other.