“Of course they are ours,” said Lola. “Whose do you think they are?”
“You might be glad if they were somebody else’s before this is over,” said the purser. He bawled suddenly at Ric and Rac: “Did you steal the lady’s necklace?”
“No,” they said in one voice, instantly.
“What did you do with it?” asked the purser, keeping his voice harsh and loud. “Answer me!”
They stared at him in silence. Lola took Ric by the nape of the neck and shook him. “Answer!” she said, fiercely. The purser noticed that her face had gone a strange yellow, her lips were pale, she looked ready to faint. In truth, Lola had not known why the sailors were searching the ship. The zarzuela company had planned to rob La Condesa, but not until the last moment, perhaps as she left the ship or just afterward; and here these unspeakable brats had ruined everything. The purser might have doubts, he might just be trying the old game of scaring somebody into confession by surprising and bullying them, but she, Lola, knew already that the worst was true—Ric and Rac had done it, no matter what it was, and they had almost caused her to show fright before that fat pig of a purser. “Jesús!” she said devoutly under her breath. “You wait!”
Ric said very clearly and deliberately, “I don’t know what you are talking about,” and Rac nodded her head at him, not at the others.
The purser said to Tito and Lola, “Let them alone until later. If you do not know, really do not,” he said, insinuatingly, “I will tell you,” and he did tell them the fragments that had been assembled about the incident—what the Doctor had heard from La Condesa, what Herr Lutz had told him first, and later, unwillingly, Frau Lutz and even Elsa—yes, it was a necklace in Rac’s hand and she had thrown it overboard. Lola and Tito had no trouble expressing horror and dismay, as well as their belief that it could all be a mistake, and a hope that their accusers could be proved in the wrong; and a severe promise to question the children further in private and to find out the truth. The purser did not for a moment believe anything but that they were doing a fair job of acting, but not good enough to fool him.
“Do what you please,” he said, dismissing them coldly. “We will go on with our investigation.”
The sailors were gone from the cabin when Tito and Lola returned, having put back everything in decent order; but they found waiting there, crowded together in silence, Amparo and Pepe, Manolo and Concha, Pancho and Pastora; they rose in silence and converged upon the pair, who were each holding a twin by the arm, high up near the shoulder. Their breaths were hot in each other’s faces. “What is it?” whispered Amparo. “Is it about us? Those students say so, but nobody will tell us anything.”
“Get out of my way,” said Lola, “let me alone.” She elbowed her way into the cabin and sat down on the end of the divan with Ric held firmly between her knees. Tito stood by holding Rac.
Lola said, “Now tell me,” and wrapping her legs around him, she took both of his hands and began pressing the finger nails down bitterly, one at a time, steadily and coldly, until he was writhing and howling, but she only said, “Tell me, or I’ll turn them backward, I’ll stick pins under them! Ill pull your teeth out!”
Rac began to struggle in Tito’s hands and scream incoherently, but she did not confess. Lola began turning Ric’s eyelids back with thumb and forefinger, so that his screams turned from pain to terror. She said, “I’ll tear them out!” and Manolo lowered his voice to a croak: “Go on, give it to him, don’t let up!” The others kept moving restlessly, calling out to her in a ragged echo not to stop, but to go on, make him tell.
At last Ric collapsed between her knees, his head rolling back helplessly in her arms, tears flooding, strangling, crying, “You said they were only beads, not worth the trouble. Only beads!”
Lola abandoned him at once, adding a slap in his face for good measure, and rose up in fury. “He is an idiot,” she said, “why do we keep him? I will leave you in Vigo,” she told him, “and you can starve!”
Rac shrieked at this, jerked and bounded in Tito’s grasp, until he flailed her head and shoulders with his fist, but she still cried out: “Me too! Leave me, too. I won’t go with you—I stay in Vigo—Ric, Ric,” she squealed like a rabbit in the teeth of the weasel, “Ric, Ric—”
Tito let go of Rac and turned his fatherly discipline upon Ric. He seized his right arm by the wrist and twisted it very slowly and steadily until the shoulder was nearly turned in its socket and Ric went to his knees with a long howl that died away in a puppylike whimper when the terrible hold was loosed. Rac, huddled on the divan nursing her bruises, cried again with him. Then Manolo and Pepe and Tito and Pancho, and Lola and Concha and Pastora and Amparo, every face masking badly a sullen fright, went away together to go over every step of this dismaying turn of affairs; with a few words and nods, they decided it would be best to drink coffee in the bar, to appear as usual at dinner, and to hold a rehearsal on deck afterwards. They were all on edge and ready to fly at each other’s throats. On her way out, Lola paused long enough to seize Rac by the hair and shake her head until she was silenced, afraid to cry. When they were gone, Ric and Rac crawled into the upper berth looking for safety; they lay there half naked, entangled like some afflicted, misbegotten little monster in a cave, exhausted, mindless, soon asleep.
PART III
The Harbors
For here have we no continuing city …
Saint Paul
In the evening, late, with the reflected sunlight still faintly green and golden in sea and sky, the voyagers’ long day’s waiting, hovering and staring at the horizon was rewarded with a distant sight of Tenerife, a jagged, rock-shaped, rock-colored fortress of an island rising abruptly from gray water, misty at the base and canopied with sagging violet clouds.
David spoke quietly to Jenny after a long silence together leaning on their arms at the rail so as not to disturb the gentle mood between them; the deep shining satisfaction in his face surprised her. “That’s my notion of Spain,” he said, “that’s my kind of country. Toledo, Avila, not Sevilla. Orange groves and castanets and lace mantillas—not for me!”
“They’re got them in Spain too, though, for those who prefer them,” said Jenny, tenderly, “but no, not for you, David darling. Granite and sand and faces of the finest Spanish leather, and bitter bread, and twisted olive trees—where even the babies are so tough they won’t wear diapers. I know that is really your idea of heaven, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said David stoutly, “something tough and grand—Toledo steel, and granite, and Spanish leather, and Spanish pride and hate, and Spanish cruelty—they’re the only people who know how to make an art of cruelty … I’m sick of things all runny at the edges.…”
“Couldn’t there be something between a runny edge and a knife-edge?” asked Jenny, hearing herself sound wistful and hoping David did not notice. “There are palms and flowers even in Tenerife, I’ll bet you anything, and a lot of people who are very soft on each other; and the boys serenade the girls on moonlight nights just as they do in Mexico—you’ll hate it!”
He said nothing more, gave her a blue-eyed look that she loved, and that quieted her entirely, because no matter what came up for them to fight about, she still believed that she was willing to make peace with him on his own terms, if only she could find out what they were.
The gulls came out to meet them and circled about screaming furiously, pumping their stiff mechanical wings and turning their wooden heads as if on hinges to eye the scene severely, falling like stones to the waves, snatching at lumps of galley refuse.
“Same old story,” said Herr Lutz, pausing alongside, “all looking for something to eat, and they don’t care where it comes from.”
“It will be nice, hearing the last of him,” whispered Jenny, hopefully.
In the morning, the engines gave three loud thumps, and stopped. Jenny put her head out, and there at her very porthole was Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a jagged long rock indeed, sown with palms, smothered in bougai
nvillea, the flat square houses perched and huddled on cliff-steep levels hacked out as with chisels. The wharf was on a wide beach, the longshoremen were gathered and ready, a small crowd waited without much expectation. Two policemen came among them and began to wave them back towards either side of the wharf, until there was a wide path opened between them. Jenny heard the anchor going down. By the time she reached the deck, the gangplank was settling into place. Almost everybody was there before her, she observed, and nearly all in festive, going-ashore dress. The breakfast bugle sounded, but almost nobody stirred from the side; a loud gruff voice, the purser’s maybe, began bawling good advice through a megaphone: “First-class passengers will please be so good as to go to breakfast, which is now waiting for them. In any case, will the ladies and gentlemen of the first class be so good as to clear the decks: a part of the passengers of the third class are now about to be disembarked from the main deck. Attention! First-class passengers will please be so good …”
They began straggling away reluctantly, David among them; Jenny started towards him, but was intercepted by Wilhelm Freytag, who gently put out an arm to bar her way. “This should be something to see,” he said. “Who wants breakfast?” David does, thought Jenny, watching him disappear. “Let’s go over here,” said Freytag, taking her elbow, “where we can see them start up.”
The people in the steerage who were about to go were gathered at the foot of the steep iron stairway, packed solidly together, their lumpy sack bundles on their shoulders, the smaller children riding above them, all the faces turned upward waiting for the signal that would bring them to the wide freedom of the upper deck, for the blessed word that would give them permission to cross the gangplank and set foot once more on their own earth. Every face wore its own look of private expectation, anxious joy, tranced excitement; and as they stood each body inclined, straining upwards in perfect silence and stillness, their breathing made a small moaning sound and there was a tight trembling of the whole mass. A short young fellow with black-jawed blunt easy-going features, a wild shock of hair, his bare feet clutching into the steps, rushed uncontrollably up the stairs to the rail of the upper deck and poised there on his spread toes, his gaze soaring out from him like a bird to the little towns lying at the foot and climbing up the sides of the stony island. Oblivious, smiling, the round instinctive eyes filled with tears. Even as Wilhelm Freytag saw him and envied him his homecoming, even as Jenny said, “It must be wonderful to cry for joy!” a young officer dashed at the man as if he would strike him, stopping short three feet away, mouth open and square and noisy with outraged authority.
“Get back down there, you!” he shouted, but the man did not hear. “Get back down!” bawled the officer in an indecent fury, his bad Spanish almost failing him, his face turning purple. Mrs. Treadwell, passing the door on her way to breakfast, paused to glance at him with some curiosity. Yes, no doubt about it, that was her young dancing partner who had practiced such downright pretty manners. She went on, one eyebrow slightly raised. The man at the rail blinked, heard and understood at last, and turned upon the frantic officer the same tender smile, the bright film of water covering his eyes; still smiling, he turned obediently as an unoffended dog and dived back down into the crowd, swinging his hemp bundle. Even before he had turned about again, the officer leaned over and shouted at the waiting people: “Come on, you, come on up, hurry up there, get on up here and get off this ship! Don’t crowd, come three abreast, come on, get off, get off!” As he heckled and nagged, several sailors below herded the crowd and urged them on.
The young fellow leaped ahead instantly and led the people upward. They approved of his boldness, and they had found new heart. They scrambled and stumbled and shoved each other about in good-tempered play, laughed aloud in a ragged chorus of free voices calling out jokes and catchwords to each other, no longer oppressed and intimidated, but home from exile, back to the troubles they knew, in their own country where a man’s life and death were his own business. They ignored the little yelling angry man with the purple face and the comic Spanish; nothing he could do, or say in any language, could make any difference to them any longer; they could hardly wait to leave his ship. They turned back and shouted blessings and farewells to those left behind, who shared their joy and shouted back hopefully.
Seven women who had borne children during the voyage came up slowly in a group, some of them supported by their husbands or leaning upon other women, carrying their young in tightly wrapped bundles. They were flabby and pale, some of them with brassy spots on their foreheads and cheeks, their bellies still loose and soft, with their milk staining the fronts of their faded clothes. Their older children, with sad, disinherited eyes, clung determinedly to their skirts. A boy of about twelve years with a fierce, burning smile turned about as he reached the upper deck, and saw them.
“Olé, olé,” he called out, raising a clenched fist and shaking it in the air. “We are many more than when we started!”
One of the mothers lifted her worn dark face and called back in triumph, “Yes, and men, too, all of them!” A great rollicking torrent of laughter rolled through them all. Shouting they rose and poured like a tidal wave upon the deck, spreading, forcing the officers and the other passengers back to the rail and within doors, thinning out in good order at the gangplank and flowing off the ship without a backward glance. The officer turned aside, his face writhing with nausea. He looked straight into the eyes of Dr. Schumann, on his way to say good-by to La Condesa and to help prepare her to go ashore. “God, how they stink,” he said, “and how they breed—like vermin!”
Dr. Schumann said nothing, and the young officer calmed down a little, interpreting the Doctor’s absent glance as sympathy. The Doctor watched two sailors helping the fat man up the steps. He was wearing the same cherry-colored shirt he had come aboard in at Veracruz, but he was dazed and leaned heavily on his escorts. Dr. Schumann had been down to change the dressing and re-bandage his head, and the wound was doing very well. No doubt he would recover and get into more mischief. As the man passed he looked out from under his huge helmet of surgical dressings directly at Dr. Schumann, but gave no sign of recognition.
Dr. Schumann noticed as he turned the knob of the door that his hand was bloodless, the veins a sunken greenish tracery. He felt weak and tired and wished he had stopped for coffee. He found La Condesa dressed and ready, even wearing a tiny rosy velvet hat with a short, coarse-meshed black veil over her face, lying almost flat as if posing for her effigy, ankles crossed, handbag on one arm, a pair of short white leather gloves in her left hand. She turned her head towards him slightly and smiled. The stewardess, who had long since made up her mind about the odd goings-on between this pair, who were certainly old enough to know better, bowed with an air of great respect to the Doctor, and swiftly closing the small hand valise she had been packing, left at once. The rest of the luggage had been taken away, the lights were turned off, and the place was altogether empty, gray and desolate.
He stood beside her with such grave, rueful depths of concern in his face, she shrank from him with the slightest quiver of her eyelids, and asked with an edge of fright in her voice:
“Have they come for me?”
“Yes, they are here. No, please listen. The Captain and I have talked with them to find out their orders for you. They have been instructed. They will not touch you, or even come near you. They are only to be at the foot of the gangplank—don’t look around you, you need not even see them—to make certain you leave the ship, and that you are on the island when the ship sails again.…”
“When the ship sails again,” she said, “just to think, for me this voyage will have ended.”
“You have nothing at all to fear,” he said, taking her wrist and feeling for her pulse. Even now he refused to doubt that he had done, not right, perhaps—who could be certain of that, ever?—but the only thing possible. La Condesa drew back her hand and said, “Oh, what can a pulse matter now? That is all over too. You may say I
have nothing to fear—how easy for you, who are going home! But I am going to be a prisoner here. Never think once I am left here at their mercy they won’t put me in a dark dirty place by myself.”
He sat on the side of the bed and held her hand firmly. “You are not going to be a prisoner except on this whole island,” he told her. “A most beautiful place, and you may live where and how you choose in it.”
“As I choose?” she said, her voice rising but not in a question. “Alone? Friendless? Without a centavito? Without my children, not even knowing where they are? And how shall they ever find me? Oh, my friend, have you gone mad with virtue and piety, have you lost your human feelings, how can you have forgotten what suffering is?”
“Wait,” he said. “Wait.”
He brought out the needle and the ampule and prepared deliberately to give her another piqûre. She watched him, not with her familiar expression of clever mischief, but passively, her eyes scarcely moving to follow him. She sat up in silence and took off her jacket, unbuttoned the cuff of her shirt and rolled the sleeve up for herself very slowly and said with a short intake of breath as the needle pierced the flesh, “Ah … how I shall miss this! What shall I do without it?”
“You are to have it when you need it,” he reassured her. “I am giving you a prescription and a special note to show to whatever doctor you choose there. I believe any doctor will accept it. I do not think you will be allowed to suffer.”
She took his hand between both of hers and clung with imploring inquiry: “Why will you not tell me what it is? Or better, give it to me and let me use it for myself—I know how to use a needle.”
Ship of Fools Page 47
