Such a profound melancholy fell upon her spirits at this point, she had half a mind to turn back and change to an ordinary gown. David Scott, who had been following her, overtook her and stopped to speak, and to gaze at her with that pleased, approving glint which she knew well in the eye of a man and never tired of seeing. “You are looking wonderful,” he said, in exactly the right tone; and this was so extraordinary, coming from him, Mrs. Treadwell took his arm and smiled at him with great confidence and charm. “You are simply a dear to say so,” she told him and they walked on together. She noticed that his black knitted tie was a little crooked, his linen suit slightly rumpled, but no matter. She rested her fingertips on his forearm and kept step with him, reassured and consoled by his attractive unequivocal male presence.
“I thought, though,” said David, “we had all agreed to ignore this party.”
“Well, it is a party, after all,” said Mrs. Treadwell, “no matter how it happened. I mean to dance a little, I should like to drink champagne, and I shan’t mind in the least pretending that I feel a little better than I do—at least, now. Something even halfway pleasant, or just funny, you know? absurd—may happen. Think of those slummy dancers giving a party for anybody! Suppose they did steal the prizes and pick pockets besides? I didn’t give them a penny, and neither did you. Why should we miss the show, if there is going to be one?”
“Oh, they’ll get away with it,” said David. “They always do.”
“I get so tired of moral bookkeeping,” said Mrs. Treadwell, gently. “Who are They? Why does it concern me what They do?”
David, chilled to the marrow at this hateful indifference, tightened his arm and drew it to his side impulsively. She lifted her fingers from his sleeve at once and dropped her hand to her side, and said, “For me They are just Others who bore me, or behave stupidly to me—anything of that kind. These Spaniards—what do I care what they did, or what they may do? They dance well, they are good-looking in their savage unkempt style, let them be amusing at least! What else are they good for? But even they make it sound dull with their horrid little unkind notices about people.…”
“It’s a form of blackmail,” said David, “and it nearly always works.” He glanced at Mrs. Treadwell, whose attention had wandered. They were coming into the crowd entering the dining room, and she nodded lightly in several directions—to Freytag, who nodded back without smiling; to the young Cuban pair with their two children; to the bride and groom, who did smile; to the purser, who beamed at her with his broadest smirk; to anybody and everybody, David noticed, without appearing really to see anyone. She behaved in fact like Jenny, except that Jenny was looking for something, a response of some kind, almost any kind at all, always either a little too hard or too soft, with no standards that he could understand or believe in. An intense resentment aganst Jenny rose in him when he saw her at work trying to undermine him, to break down by any means his whole life of resistance to life itself—to whatever environment or human society he found himself in. He preferred Mrs. Treadwell’s unpretentious rather graceful lack of moral sense to Jenny’s restless seeking outlaw nature trying so hard to attach itself at any or at all points to the human beings nearest her: no matter who. It was just that he could not endure promiscuity. He almost forgot the woman beside him in the familiar hatred of Jenny which moved all through him in his blood; then he saw her standing near the wall below, waiting for him, looking upward, very beautiful in one of her plain white frocks that looked well at any time of day. She had the severity and simplicity of a small marble figure, smooth and harmonious from head to foot, no rouge or powder visible, no varnished nails, fresh and sweet as a field of roses: she was smiling at him, and he smiled back, with such a deep intake of breath that Mrs. Treadwell, glancing down, nodded to Jenny, then turned back to David. The whiteness and tightness of his face and the blaze of his eyes astonished her. “There she is,” he said, and with the barest bob of his head to Mrs. Treadwell, he left her and leaped down the stairs while even then Jenny was coming towards him.
Herr Rieber had not for a moment given up his notion that he was still going to find ways and means to seduce Lizzi successfully and thoroughly. “Sometime, someday, somewhere, somehow,” he sang to himself silently the refrain of his favorite popular song; but no, it must be done on the boat, tonight or never. Once he set foot in Bremerhaven there would not be a moment to spare; he was in fact to be met at the pier by several of his employees. He would be able to do no more than bid Lizzi the most amiable of farewells—amiable but formal, of course, and final—as he put her on the motor coach for Bremen. Since that unfortunate evening of the dog, Bébé, and all the confusion that followed, he had been able only once to entice Lizzi to the boat deck again; and that time she had been all modesty and reserve, refusing to allow him even to touch her in any way that mattered, until at last he had thought of a new strategy—that of humility and childish gentleness. He laid his head in her lap and called her his little lamb. She stroked his brow a few times, as if she were thinking of something else. As indeed she was. She was wondering why, in all this whirligig, Herr Rieber had never once mentioned marriage. Not that she wished to marry him—far from it. For a permanent settlement, and she had resolved that her next settlement should be permanent, wedlock locked and double-locked, secured with the iron bolts of premarital financial contracts, she looked, materially speaking, considerably higher than Herr Rieber. Still, it would never do to let any man run away with a situation, whatever it was; it must be clearly understood always—and not just by implications, hints, threats, glances, by mute understandings, but plainly in so many words—that she was a woman of the marriageable kind, and any amorous frolics with her were only preliminary to a possible march to the altar. Every other man she had known unfailingly pronounced the magic word “marriage” before ever he got into bed with her, no matter what came of it in fact. This one had not, and until he did, well! so far and no further.
Herr Rieber had not mentioned marriage to her, much as he might have liked, for the simplest reason in the world—he had a wife from whom he was legally separated, who refused to divorce him, was blameless herself in any lawful sense so that he could not divorce her. He was supporting her and three children, a family of four who detested him and whom he detested, who would hang on him leeching his blood for life. Oh what had he done to merit such a fate? Yet there it was, and Lizzi must never learn of his embarrassing predicament; it would be an intolerable affront to his pride. Besides, he was certain she would never understand, and why should she? Ah, the fine tall creature who moved like a good racing mare, oh, for a nice soft bed in a quiet hotel in Bremen even for a night and a day before he must go on. No such hope. It must be here and now, during the party those impudent guttersnipe Spaniards were so unaccountably giving “in honor of our Captain”—honor, indeed!
He went on a tour of the boat deck, selected a likely spot, indulged again in his day dream that after plenty of champagne and tender words, after long waltzing to soft music on deck, she would be melted and oozing like hot cheese on toast. He would then persuade her to take a walk in the beautiful soft night—the nights were growing a little cooler and windier—and the deed could be done in a twinkling, while everybody else was dancing on the lower deck or drinking in the bar. Such was his eagerness by now he even feared an unmanly incontinence at the great moment, but even the thought was too great a shame to face. In his imagination it all was as easy and uninterrupted and blissful as the happy ending in a child’s story.
He had scrubbed and polished himself until he appeared to be lacquered, and with his playful mood at top peak he was wearing a white baby bib, and a frilled baby cap sitting on his bald head with strings tied under the chin. Leaving a solid wake of Maria Farina cologne, straight as a homing pigeon he bored his way through the crowd of confused dinner guests looking for places to sit, for the seating arrangements had all been changed about, with the usual place cards but no one knew where to look for his own. Stewards ho
vered being helpful and people followed them about blindly.
The one thing certain, common knowledge to all, was that the Spanish company were to be seated at the Captain’s table, and none of his original guests went near it. Herr Rieber lowered his head and charged through a group and took Lizzi by the elbow, who screamed with delight at his baby cap. She was wearing a long green lace gown and a small green ribbon eye-mask, and wanted to know at the top of her voice however he had managed to recognize her! Herr Rieber pushed her firmly towards a table for two under a porthole. “We’ll sit here, no matter what!” he cried recklessly and burst into song in a high tenor: “Sometime, someday …!”
“Somewhere, somehow!” Lizzi joined in, off key two tones above him. They bent towards each other until their noses almost touched and sang the whole chorus into each other’s mouth. “Bring champagne instantly,” he commanded the nearest steward, drawing out a chair for Lizzi himself. “At your service, mein Herr,” said the steward, who did not belong at that table. He disappeared at once and did not return.
“Champagne, champagne!” shouted Herr Rieber into the air. “We want champagne!”
“Sometime, someday,” sang Lizzi, and they were both overcome with enjoyment of her wit. They noticed that the Baumgartners, she in Bavarian peasant costume, he with his chalked clown face with false nose and movable whiskers, were observing them with particularly unfestive, censorious faces, their mouths prim and down at the corners, eyes glancing sidelong. The Cuban medical students came leaping in a line singing “La Cucaracha,” all wearing matelots and caps with red pompoms. They rushed upon their own table as if taking it by storm, and were prepared to defend it from a siege. The bride and groom, dressed simply as usual, went quietly to their own table, removed the cards and placed them on the table next to them, and sat smiling gently at each other. They opened the small packets beside their plates, unfolded the gilded paper hats and the noise-making devices and laid them aside. A bottle of wine was set before them, and they touched glasses before they drank.
A large square hand with fingers the same thickness from one end to the other, a rude-looking thumb attached to a palm powerfully secured to a muscular wrist covered with a thatch of hair that gleamed red under the table light, reached over Herr Rieber’s shoulder and plucked the place card from its metal holder.
Herr Rieber’s skin crawled coldly and colder still when a familiar voice brayed reverberating, outlandish, altogether repulsive German: “I am sorry to trouble you, but this is my table,” and coming around where he could face Herr Rieber, Arne Hansen brandished the card under his nose. Back of him stood Herr Glocken, wearing a single large colored quill pen in his hair; his pink necktie flourished the words Girls, follow me! painted on it. Hansen picked up the second card from before Lizzi’s plate and brandished that. “Can you not read?” he asked. “This says Herr Hansen and this Herr Glocken. So, I do not understand why …”
Lizzi reached out and struck him lightly on the forearm. “Oh, but dear Herr Hansen, do try to understand—”
“Please,” said Herr Rieber, pulling himself together, the top of his head bedewed with large clear drops that shortly began to join and run, “please, Fräulein, this is for me to settle …”
“There is nothing to settle,” bawled Hansen in his unmodulated voice heavy as a club, “nothing but that you find your own table and leave me mine!”
“Herr Hansen,” said Herr Rieber, swallowing violently and shooting his chin out of his collar, the baby cap bobbing, “I cannot overlook your rudeness to a lady. Please meet me on the main deck.”
“Why should I meet you anywhere?” bellowed Hansen, staring down at him overpoweringly. “I ask you for my table, you make trouble about that?” and he gave Lizzi a look of contempt that scalded her. She rose with her knees shaking and implored Herr Rieber, “Let us go, let us go,” and walked away so swiftly he had to run to overtake her. “Find us our table,” he shouted to the nearest steward, almost as ferociously as Herr Hansen. The steward said instantly, “Come with me, mein Herr,—never was there such confusion in this salon.” But he seemed to recognize Herr Rieber, found their table quickly, pulled out Lizzi’s chair, and said briskly, “Jawohl!” to Herr Rieber’s demand: “Champagne, at once!”
“He insulted me,” said Lizzi in a small whimper, and lifting her mask she dabbed at a tear. Herr Rieber had never seen her in such a mood. He was delighted in spite of its cause.
“Don’t think of it again, he shall pay for it,” he declared stoutly, mopping the top of his head and running his handkerchief inside his collar. “Let us not have our evening spoiled by such a lout!”
“He is always claiming your chair—remember that first day? I knew then he was a low person. He is a Bolshevik I think, from his talk …”
“Ha!” said Herr Rieber. “I threw him out that time! This is his revenge.” The thought restored his good humor. “Now I shall make him sorry for this!”
“What will you do?” asked Lizzi in delight.
“I’ll think of something,” he answered her, beaming with confidence.
They watched furtively under their eyebrows halfway across the room while Hansen put on the red cocked hat at his plate, glanced around him sourly, and took it off. That hunchback Glocken was grinning like a gargoyle. He would have been glad of a fight, no doubt—he would be in no danger! “Will you look at that nasty dwarf,” she said, as the champagne was being poured. “Why are such horrors allowed to live?”
“That is a great question,” said Herr Rieber, beaming at her and mounting one of his favorite subjects. “As publisher my aim is to direct the minds of my readers to the vital problems of our society. I have lately got a doctor to begin a series of articles, very learned, very scientific, advocating the extermination of all the unfit, at birth or as soon as they prove themselves unfit in any way. Painlessly, of course, we really wish to be merciful to them as well as to everyone else. Not only defective or useless infants, but the old as well—all persons over sixty, or sixty-five, perhaps, or let us say, whenever they lose their usefulness; in bad health, exhausted, a drain upon the energies of the gifted, the young and strong of our nation—why should we handicap them with such burdens? The doctor is preparing to present this thesis, with the strongest arguments, examples and proofs drawn from medical research and practice and sociological statistics. Jews too, of course, and then all persons of illegitimate mixtures of race, white with colored of any kind—Chinese, Negroes … all such. And for any white man convicted of serious crime—well, as for him,” he twinkled at her mischievously, “if we do not put him to death, at least the state shall make certain he does not bring any more of his kind into the world!”
“Wonderful,” sang Lizzi in rapture, “then we would not have that dwarf around, nor that dreadful little man in the wheel chair either—nor those Spaniards!”
“And a good many more besides! To our new world—” said Herr Rieber, lifting his glass to hers, his spirits rushing back so merrily in his vision of the glorious future he almost forgot that no amount of extermination of the kind of people he didn’t like could possibly include the one he liked least—Arne Hansen, who was himself one of the strong, the healthy, the useful, the powerful, the man who knew how to defend himself, who would always, ever and anywhere, find the chair marked with his name and take it, or take it anyhow, as he had done with Herr Rieber’s plainly marked deck chair. That hairy paw, fit to grapple a lion, that jaw with the big square teeth—
Herr Rieber shuddered abruptly. Such thoughts could ruin everything—let it all go until tomorrow. He gulped his champagne as if it were the first swig from a stein of beer. Lizzi tossed hers down too, and he poured again at once, and ordered another bottle. The great evening was begun at last, and where might it not end? Herr Rieber was certain that he knew.
The purser, dodging and striking at the colored balloons floating in his path as if they were perhaps horseflies, halted at Mrs. Treadwell’s table with a bottle in one hand and two
champagne glasses in the other. “We Germans, gnädige Frau,” he began, weightily, “are not allowed any longer since that war to use the word champagne to describe our German bubbling wine—not that we wish to do so. But I shall be happy if you will permit me to offer you a glass of our noble Schaumwein. I myself after many years’ comparison am not able to distinguish between this and the very finest Moët Chandon or Veuve Clicquot.”
“Naturally not,” said Mrs. Treadwell, consolingly. “Do sit down, I’ll be delighted. Have a chair brought, please.” The purser stood, holding his bottle uncertainly, a faint mistrust of her cordiality blowing like a small cold draft through his congenitally clouded mind. He set it on the table though, and motioned to a steward to bring the chair.
Jenny and David sat at their own table watching the joyless, agitated scene, noting certain absences—Dr. Schumann, Wilhelm Freytag. Jenny had seen Freytag in the bar a few minutes earlier, where dinner was being served him at a small table. He stood up, bowed and called out to her, “May I have the first dance this evening?” “Yes,” she called out without pausing, smiling back at him. She felt for the first time that the evening might not be a total loss. Pleasantly excited, she reached up and struck lightly at a balloon floating over her head.
Ship of Fools Page 54
