Ship of Fools

by Katherine Anne Porter

  “I don’t doubt it,” said Dr. Schumann, “but I cannot. You are much too reckless, I can’t trust you—remember? You told me so yourself.”

  “That was then,” she cried, gaily, putting on her jacket again. “I am altogether changed now, as you see—reformed by your good example!” She put her feet over the edge of the bed and sat beside him. “Tell me something,” she said, “you know we shall never see each other again. Why then may we not talk like friends, or even lovers, or as if we two were meeting again on the other side of the grave. Ah come, let’s play that we are two little winged, purified souls met in Paradise after a long Purgatory!”

  “But you have told me you do not believe in the other side of the grave,” said Dr. Schumann, smiling, “much less in souls and Paradise.”

  “I don’t, but it shall make no difference—we shall meet there just the same. But why not tell me something now?”

  She leaned towards him until he felt her light breath and asked very simply without any special feeling in her voice:

  “Did you come in here late last night and kiss me? Did you put your arms around me and almost raise me up from my pillow, and call me your love? Did you say, Sleep, my love, or was I dreaming? Tell me …”

  Dr. Schumann turned towards her and took her deeply in his arms, and laid his head on her shoulder and drew her face to his. “I did, I did,” he groaned, “I did, my darling.”

  “Oh why?” she cried, “Why, when I didn’t know waking from sleeping? Why did you never kiss me when I could have known surely, when I could have been happy?”

  “No,” he said, “no.” He raised his head and folded his arms around her again. She began to sway a little, from side to side, as if she were rocking a cradle; then releasing herself very gently and sitting back from him with her hands on his shoulders she said, “Oh, but it was only a dream then—oh, do you know what it is, coming so late, so strangely, no wonder I couldn’t understand it. It is that innocent romantic love I should have had in my girlhood! But no one loved me innocently, and oh, how I should have laughed at him if he had!… Well, here we are. Innocent love is the most painful kind of all, isn’t it?”

  “I have not loved you innocently,” said Dr. Schumann, “but guiltily and I have done you great wrong, and I have ruined my life.…”

  “My life was ruined so long ago I have forgotten what it was like before,” said La Condesa. “So you are not to have me on your mind. And you must not think of me as sleeping on stone floors and living on bread and water, for I shall not ever—it is not my style. It is not becoming to me. I shall find a way out of everything. And now, now my love, let’s kiss again really this time in broad daylight and wish each other well, for it is time for us to say good-by.”

  “Death, death,” said Dr. Schumann, as if to some presence standing to one side of them casting a long shadow. “Death,” he said, and feared that his heart would burst.

  “Why of course, death,” said La Condesa as if indulging his fancy, “but not yet!” They did not kiss, but she took his hand and held it to her cheek a moment. He trembled so he could hardly write the prescription and the note he had promised. He opened her handbag and tucked the papers inside. They did not speak again. He walked to the gangplank with her, and handed her the small valise. She did not raise her eyes. He watched while she stepped into an elegant white caleche on the wharf, drawn by an inelegant shaggy small horse, and then noticed the two quite ordinary-looking men who took the next available equipage and drove away slowly after her, at a discreet distance.

  “Have you any plans?” Freytag asked Jenny as they lingered while the students formed a line and went leaping down the gangplank shouting the chorus of “Cucaracha.”

  “Aren’t they tiresome!” said Jenny, watching them. “No plans at all. I’m waiting for David.”

  “I’ll be getting along, then,” said Freytag, easily, “maybe we can all meet somewhere for a drink on the island.”

  “Maybe.” His retreating straight back and manly stride reminded her of an actor, a good-looking leading man used to taking the stage whenever he appeared. He veered expertly around a straggling little crowd of frowzy-looking persons, men and women with a child or two, coming on board with odds and ends of stuff to sell, bits of linen and silk, clumsy small objects not worth a glance. A very dark young gypsy woman stepped before Jenny as if she had been looking for her to give her good news. “Stop,” said the gypsy, in Spanish, “let me tell you something strange.” She came so close Jenny smelt the pepper and garlic on her breath, the weathered animal reek of her skin and great gaudy red and orange petticoats. She took Jenny’s hand and turned the palm upward. “You are going to a country that is not for you, and the man you are with now is not your real man. But you will go soon to a better country, and you will find your man. You will be happy in love yet, don’t be troubled! Cross my palm with silver!” She held Jenny’s hand firmly, her eyes were shrewd and impudent, she smiled with her teeth closed.

  “Go away, gypsy woman,” said Jenny, in English. “You don’t know enough. You’ve got a one-track mind. I don’t want any other man, the very notion gives me the horrors. I’ll stick by the trouble I know. There are going to be a lot of other things much more interesting in my life than this man, or any other man,” she assured the gypsy with the utmost seriousness. The gypsy stared, her eyes glinting with suspicion; she held Jenny’s hand, refusing to go without her coin. But their hands had changed positions—Jenny was now holding the gypsy’s palm upward examining it studiously. “Those are the things I’d like to hear about! Now as for you,” she added in Spanish, “you are going to take a long journey and meet a dark man …” The gypsy snatched her hand away violently and stepped back.

  “What are you saying to me?” she asked in a fury.

  “I was telling your fortune, free,” said Jenny, in Spanish, putting a one-dollar note in her hand. “You are born lucky.”

  “Valgame Dios,” said the gypsy, suddenly mild, crossing herself. Her dark fingers closed over the crumpled paper, and instantly, a look of complete contempt, triumph, a quite astonishing play of hatred, twisted her mouth and paled her skin under its patina of dirt. As she spun away with a wide swing of her many ruffles, she flung back over her shoulder a word Jenny did not understand, except by the tone and look. She called back clearly in her best Spanish, “And you, too!” with all confidence.

  “Do you really know what she called you?” asked David, materializing at her side.

  “Something apt, something appropriate, no doubt,” said Jenny. “Anyway, she got it back.”

  “Must you go on brawling with gypsy women?” asked David, though without curiosity. “Did you pick up any new tricks?”

  “Wait and see,” said Jenny merrily. “Mind your own business.” In dead silence they walked down the gangplank, just behind the Huttens and Bébé, just before Elsa and her parents, the Baumgartners with Hans following closely. Herr Freytag had disappeared, Mrs. Treadwell, wearing an enormous flat black hat, and carrying of all things a parasol, stepped into a second waiting caleche and was carried away as if for good. The students piled into a larger conveyance, in a tangle of arms and legs, their heads clustered like a nest of noisy birds.

  The Spanish company went off together in an unusual silence, eyes fixed ahead, faces closed and hard. Ric and Rac, still looking somewhat battered, lagged and sulked. The women all wore widely fringed, large black silk embroidered shawls, the children wore short jackets with deep pockets, the men wore, for the first time during the voyage, quite ordinary sack suits except they were somewhat too snugly fitted. They all managed without any trouble to look most disreputable. Once on the dock they closed ranks and walked away up the stony street towards town as if they were late for an appointment.

  Following them closely, each one intent on his own interest in their movements, Hansen and Denny found themselves jostling elbows somewhat at the gangplank. “There they go,” said Denny, spiteful and baffled, trying to keep ahead of Ha
nsen, who just the same shouldered past him rudely with thunderous brow, bawling: “Is it your business? Why not they go where they please?”

  Keep your shirt on, you big bastard, said Denny to himself, and aloud: “Dirty work at the crossroads, I bet,” but without contending further for the right of way. The big Swede looked like a tough customer, no use tangling with him, anyway not now. He tried to pick out Pastora from the huddle of dancers, who were keeping well ahead of the crowd now straggling through the dock; by the time Denny and Hansen reached shore, they had vanished.

  The steerage passengers left on the ship, those who would go ashore at Vigo, crowded to the rail and leaned at ease, watching intensely but without envy their shipmates on the dock being rounded up and counted once more by the officials who had come to take charge of them. On the upper deck Johann wheeled his uncle’s chair near the gangplank, steadied it against the rail, and tried with flickering vision and leaping heart to pick out Concha from the black-shawled dancers as their graceful backs swayed and retreated. He fetched from his depths such an explosive breath of despair, Herr Graf roused and spoke: “What is your trouble, dear boy, are you in pain?”

  Johann kicked the near wheel of the chair, jarring the sick man, who flinched and groaned loudly, glancing about him to call any chance passer-by to witness the behavior of his shameless nephew. “It’s none of your business,” said Johann, also glancing around and speaking in a low voice. The silence of the nearly deserted ship in harbor disturbed them, as if a protective wall had been tom away. Dr. Schumann, walking slowly, hands clasped behind him, meaning to go to his cabin but dreading to be there, stopped a moment beside them. “You are looking very well, this morning,” he said to Herr Graf. “I hope you are enjoying your voyage.”

  “My soul is at peace,” Herr Graf assured him, a little sulkily, “here, or anywhere. It does not matter where I am.”

  “That is most fortunate,” said the Doctor, amiably, “most enviable.”

  “It is a question of God’s grace,” said Herr Graf, whose grudge against doctors and surgeons was soundly based on professional jealousy, the inspired knowledge that they were standing in his light, preventing his free exercise of God’s will in the matter of the cure of souls and bodies. “What good is all your materia medica if the soul is sick?”

  Dr. Schumann said mildly, “That is one of materia medica’s thorniest problems. For myself, I try to do my human part, and leave the rest to God,” for he always gave a respectful answer even to the most afflicted minds and misguided beliefs; and at this moment his own suffering in his own guilt drew him slowly into a vast teeming shapeless wallow of compassion for every suffering thing, a confusion so dark he could no longer tell the difference between the invader and the invaded, the violator and the violated, the betrayer and the betrayed, the one who loved and the one who hated or who jeered or was indifferent. The whole great structure built upon the twin pillars of justice and love, which reached from earth into eternity, by which the human soul rose step by step from the most rudimentary concepts of good and evil, of simple daily conduct between fellow men, to the most exquisite hairline discriminations and choices between one or another shade of faith and feeling, of doctrinal and mystical perceptions—this tower was now crumbling and falling around him, even as he stood beside the little dying fanatic gazing up at him with a condescending smirk on his exhausted face.

  Miracles are instantaneous, they cannot be summoned, but come of themselves, usually at unlikely moments and to those who least expect them. Yet they make use of some odd assistants, and the Doctor’s rescuing miracle took advantage of Herr Graf’s all-too-human glance meant to tell the Doctor what a poor, inadequate, ill-informed and poverty-stricken sort of Christian he was, and the message went home like an arrow. The Doctor suffered the psychic equivalent of a lightning stroke, which cleared away there and then his emotional fogs and vapors, and he faced his truth, nearly intolerable but the kind of pain he could deal with, something he recognized and accepted unconditionally. His lapse into the dire, the criminal sentimental cruelty of the past days was merely the symptom of his moral collapse: he had refused to acknowledge the wrong he had done La Condesa his patient, he had taken advantage of her situation as prisoner, he had tormented her with his guilty love and yet had refused her—and himself—any human joy in it. He had let her go in hopelessness without even the faintest promise of future help or deliverance. What a coward, what a swine, Dr. Schumann told himself, calmly, bathed in the transfiguring light of Herr Graf’s contempt; but not only, not altogether, if he did not choose to be!

  With a pleasant “Good morning” he dispersed the hovering miasma of theological discussion with Herr Graf and went to one of the writing rooms, where he wrote a short letter to La Condesa, which he entrusted to the purser, who would know how to convey it to the care of the right police agent. Dr. Schumann wished to convey his respects to Madame, he gave her his own office address, in his home city, with his telephone number, the address of the International Red Cross headquarters in Geneva, with an earnest request that Madame write to him at once and let him know where a letter might find her at all times. He renewed his anxious inquiries for her health, hoped for a reply to the ship before it would have sailed at four o’clock. He signed himself her assured and devoted servant. He then made a round of the sick bay, where he found two sailors, neither of whom needed further attention, and a tour of the steerage, where a newly born baby’s navel showed faint signs of infection. This occupied him for a few minutes, cleansing, anointing, and binding, but at last the day was on his hands, and he did not know what to do with it. He walked slowly around the deck, noting with some relief that Herr Graf had disappeared with his bad-tempered nephew; but walking tired him. At last he gave way, and returned to his cabin to rest. Lying there, in his habitual posture of early medieval effigies, feet crossed, hands crossed over his midriff, his perverse infatuation began to fade, and with it his distrust and hatred of his love—it had been only a long daydream. A warm surge of human grief for that creature who was doomed maybe beyond his or any human help filled him like a tide body and mind, bringing its own healing. What nonsense to say anyone was doomed until his last breath! Gently, clearly, steadily, his long plan of reparation unfolded in its simple, sensible, practical perfection; he was to provide for her and see that she was cared for and protected, that medical treatment should be available: she was to be watched and guarded and saved from her own suicidal romantic folly. It would be a blameless charity which could call for no explanation, could be carried on at a distance, and his wife need never know. He thought of his wife with habitual fondness, of her known strength, always the same, her unexpected and constantly changing weaknesses and whims. She was the center, the reason, and the meaning of his marriage, around which his life had grown like an organism; she was not to be disturbed for anything. He would make his reparations for the wrongs he had done, in silence, as part of his penance. Dr. Schumann, soothed, eased, felt himself blissfully falling asleep in the divine narcotic of hope, and relief of conscience.

  He waked to the familiar creaking, pounding, shouting commotion, rolling and heaving of the old Vera getting out to sea again, and lay quietly a few minutes enjoying the absurdity of his situation, the combination of homely domestic muddle and the rigors of nautical discipline on an old tub like this, where God knows, anything could happen. The Doctor felt refreshed, full of a gentle, smiling delight. He looked out of his porthole and saw the island at a little distance, already shrouded in mist, its scattered lights twinkling like Christmas candles. His darling was there, and she would know by now that she was not alone, not deserted, not left to her fate, the wayward little soul who should never have been treated with severity. He would feel better to know she was on that island for a while, until he found a way to have her set free; meantime, why had the steward not brought him her answer to his letter? He would go up. Indeed the dinner bugle was sounding; in the Captain’s absence the Doctor should always appear at
the table. He stopped by the purser’s office to inquire about a message. The purser of course was already at his dinner, but the young assistant had been instructed and had an answer for Dr. Schumann. The police agent, he said carefully, standing very straight, had delivered the Herr Doctor’s letter to Madame. She had read it there in his presence, and the police agent said he would be pleased to wait for an answer.

  Dr. Schumann took a short step forward and extended his right hand slightly curved. “Where is it?” he asked, his voice contracting.

  The assistant purser spoke his piece as if he had memorized it. “Sir,” he said, “Madame thanked the police agent, and said there was no answer.”

  “David darling,” said Jenny, “let’s be tourists again. Oh look, look,” she said in rapture, “at all the things here we never saw before.”

  “Such as …?” asked David idly, without turning his head. “Palms, you mean? Burros? Red tile roofs? Barefooted, unwashed peasantry? We had all that in Mexico, we’ll have all that in Spain …” They found themselves again in their most familiar difficulty, being quite unable to agree what to do next. They were sitting on a bench on the edge of a small plaza halfway up the hill beside the stony ascending narrow street shaded with palm and mimosa.

  “Well, camels, you idiot,” said Jenny patiently, “for example. Camels with great loads on their humps and barefooted unwashed peasantry with turbans driving them.”

  “Just variations on a theme,” said David. “Why don’t we sit here and let the scenery pass us?”

  Jenny would not have this for a moment. She was restless and looking, David knew, for something besides scenery. She sat stiffly forward on the bench, her eyes roving, feet planted exactly for a straight leap up and away on a second’s notice, and leap she did, waving her hand and calling out, as if they were old friends and delightful company, to sad Elsa and her dull parents laboring up the path towards the market center of town. Elsa waved back sedately. Herr and Frau Lutz waggled their heads with solemn faces, for Frau Lutz was not reconciled to Elsa’s view that Jenny behaved like a nice woman in the cabin. Jenny said briskly, “All right, David, you stay here and sprout mushrooms; I’m off with the raggle-taggle gypsies O!” David was left to mull over in his mind again the fact, the incomprehensible fact, that Jenny at times seemed to prefer any company to his own.