He frowned and said in a bullying tone: “Did you think I would? Do you take me for such a fool?”
Her hand dropped away. “Valgame Dios, so you haven’t got it.” Her despair infuriated him.
“Of course I’ve got it,” he boasted angrily without shame, “and I didn’t even steal it, either.”
Concha flung herself upon him and attempted to leap into his arms. He seized her by the waist and swung her above his head and set her down again still without smiling.
“Let’s dance,” she whispered, nipping the lobe of his ear with her smooth white teeth, “I don’t care what you did! And let’s have some champagne,” she added, as they turned slowly together, not dancing, in time to the music. “Remember? You promised.”
He tightened his grip around her ribs until she could hardly breathe. “We’re going to bed,” he told her, “now. Remember? Now, while everybody is out here. Where’s your cabin?” Concha said, “Don’t be such a German!” as he marched her across the deck more like a police officer than a lover.
“What do you expect me to be?” he asked, but not as if his mind were on the question.
“Well,” said Concha, uneasily, “look—” and he could feel resistance in her whole body through the slight yielding arm. “Look then, if you are going to be like this, I’ll show you my cabin when you show me your money. How do I know you are telling me the truth? Manolo would kill me … how do I know?”
“You’ll know,” he said. “Just wait.” Now he was sure, there was nothing to worry about, he had the winning card in his pocket. His face cleared and grew amiable, he gave her a warm little squeeze that could almost pass for tenderness.
“Well,” said Concha, her doubts vanishing also, “if you fool me, I’ll kill you.” She nuzzled under his arm.
“You think so?” said Johann, with lordly indulgence. “Try it.” He drew her swiftly in front of him, stopped in the dim passageway and closed his hands lightly around her throat. “Like this?”
Concha quivered with pleasure and smiled up at him without a shadow of uneasiness, and said, “No, not like that. Another way. Better.” They laughed in each other’s faces and went on, his arm around her shoulders.
“Here we are,” she told him, opening the door and going in first to turn on the light. She expected an onslaught, a violent blind fumbling brutality such as she knew too well from the inexperienced and overwrought; or worse even, panic and impotence and the fury of impotence or its deathly despair, which she must coddle and flatter and persuade away without seeming to, for men in such disgrace with themselves were likely to turn resentful, unmanageable, even dangerous, blaming her and wanting revenge for their outraged male pride. She was on guard, ready for anything; but he just stood there looking at her expectantly, all shining and golden-haired. She had a weakness for blond men, and this one had turned eager and warm and simple; he put out his hand and stroked her smooth black hair and said in German, “Beautiful, beautiful.”
She laughed with relief to find that everything would be easier than she had thought, took his hand in both of hers and said, “Come in, don’t be strange, you are with me—we are going to be gay together.” She drew his head down and kissed him, then began to loosen his tie, saying, “And you must help me undress, too. It is more fun to do everything together. Tell me darling, am I your very first girl?” He nodded, and blushed, then gathered himself together and said, “Why do you say that?” Concha sheered away from the subject. “Do you love me, ah, well—do you love me just a little?”
“I don’t know,” he said, hoarsely, wrapping himself around her so resolutely she could hardly get his shirt off him. He began to pull at the front of her dress to get at her breasts. “Wait,” she said, “are you going to let me be very nice to you?” and she wriggled out of her shabby little black frock, dropped her colored silk petticoat and was naked. “I am a very bad girl,” she said, teasing, “you’ll see.” He did not seem to hear her, and he did not need any blandishments.
Herr Rieber sent beer once more to the band, and called for “Tales from the Vienna Woods” for the fourth time. The music, the Schaumwein, the starry sky, Lizzi in a tender promising mood whirling in the waltz almost caused him to forget future pleasures in the wanton luxury of his present delights. His bib worked round under his ear, his baby cap slipped to the back of his neck, he had not a care in the world. His wide tireless smile showed the tip of his wet pink tongue, when now and then he smacked his lips over the sweet morsel of his joy. Taking a fresh grip on Lizzi’s waist and hand, he pressed his hard little stomach against her and burst wordlessly into high tenor song. “La dedada, la dedada, la de da, de daa!” sang Herr Rieber, frisking like a faun, turning lightly on his toes gazing up in ecstasy at Lizzi, who answered at once “La dedada,” like Echo herself. He felt he was a faun, a fleet prancing faun deep in the forest glade, stamping a pattern of cleft flowers into the leaf mold under his sharp little polished hoofs; with the winds moaning like violins in the treetops, the sweet voices of birds calling la de da to each other among the branches where the harp strings were sighing, and the nymph waiting for the young goat-boy, half god, light on his hoofs and ready to leap the likely, long-legged creature in the green gown who loved a good caper! Ah, lade-dada, de da, sang the young faun at the top of his voice in a panic rapture as he spun wildly on the very tiptoe of his sharp hoofs, while the nymph, leaning backward from the waist, whirled so steadily her lace skirts rose and spread out slowly upward at the back like an opening fan.
Hansen, sunk in his chair, nursing his bottle of beer, glared at them from under his frown clutched hard over his nose. They had passed him several times, and the last time they came so near Lizzi’s skirt brushed his knees, an outrage so unbearable he resolved that, if she did it again, he would put out his foot and trip her up and send the pair of them sprawling. As they careered towards him again more wildly than ever, he gathered himself and put a foot forward in readiness. Lizzi’s flying skirts brushed his face this time, he blinked and flinched, and Herr Rieber’s boot came down grinding cruelly into his toes. Her Hansen, with a subterranean rumble of groans, rose instantly, opened out to his full height and brought his beer bottle down forcefully on Herr Rieber’s naked defenseless skull. Herr Rieber stopped dead in his tracks looking immensely surprised. The glass shattered and a long, bright red track appeared at once on his head and began streaking and trailing downward rapidly.
“You see?” inquired Herr Hansen sternly as if he had proved something beyond argument. “You see?”
The blow knocked Herr Riber still deeper into his fantasy. He bleated like a goat, “Baaah, meeeeh!” and charged Herr Hansen, butting him accurately in the sensitive midriff just where the ribs divide. Herr Hansen doubled over deeply and fought for breath. Before he could recover it, a matter of seconds, Herr Rieber charged again. “Baaaah, meeeeeh!” he bawled and butted with all his might, leaving untidy red smears on Herr Hansen’s shirt front.
“Just stop that now,” gasped Herr Hansen, his chest heaving. He caved in once more, and pushed Herr Rieber’s face away with the flat of his hand. “Just you now, you stop that!”
Herr Rieber threw the hand off and drew away for a third charge. The trap drummer pushed his paper hat off his forehead and grappled with Herr Rieber, who looked confused and did not resist. The violinist laid a gently restraining hand on Herr Hansen’s arm and was shaken off like a kitten. When the music stopped so suddenly, the Cuban students, dancing with the Spanish girls, crowded about to see the show, and when they saw Herr Rieber’s blood-festooned head, they shouted, “Que vive la sangre! Viva la barbaridad!” Frau Rittersdorf and the Huttens had been sitting together not so much as spectators as living models of decorum publicly rebuking an indecorous spectacle. They now rose ostentatiously though nobody noticed, and took themselves away. Frau Rittersdorf said, “We shall do very well if we reach port alive!” a conclusion so obvious the Huttens thought it not worth answering.
Lizzi stood staring, he
r hand over her mouth, her forehead wrung with shock. The violinist patted her on the cheek. “So, so,” he said soothingly, and at this gentleness she woke to a sense of her disaster. Little fine wrinkles leaped about in her face, she turned from him and ran blindly, bent forward, hands up, palm outward, uttering the shrill cries of an anguished peahen. The violinist followed swiftly and said, “My dear Fräulein, let me help you if I can. Don’t try to go by yourself.” She hunched her shoulder away from his hand, and broke into shrill laughter and tears. She moved past Herr Rieber without a glance at him, and he did not see her go, or remember her. Herr Hansen walked away alone, his arms folded tightly across his stomach. The trap drummer stayed firmly by Herr Rieber, who was plainly dazed. Both Rieber and Hansen stopped abruptly, some distance apart, and leaned over the rail. They stood back after some moments of agitation, wiped their faces and went on weaving with the rise and fall of the deck.
The violinist by then regretted his gallant attempts to aid a distressed female who showed nothing but the most shameless ingratitude, who would scream “Don’t touch me!” as if she were being raped, every time he tried to take her arm and guide her. Yet she was staggering all over the passageway, from side to side, bumping into the walls, and God knows she was the ugliest woman he had ever seen. Yet, slave to his decent upbringing and perhaps his natural good temper, he persisted, keeping a brave face to the business, and did succeed at last in landing his nuisance at the right door, where he knocked as loudly as he dared, and waited.
Denny struggled up from his bar stool for the first time that evening, and said, “I’ve got business. I’m going to cut in on Pastora. I see her buzzing around with one of those Cubans. She’s going to do some tall explainin’ now—little she knows!”
David, who had been benumbed for some time without having enjoyed any of the progressive pleasures of getting drunk, now felt detached enough to offer good advice to Denny, who was so obviously born to do the wrong thing no matter what he did: “You ought to have started earlier, maybe. You’ve lost control. You won’t be able to gauge distance or pull your punches. Remember, it’s dangerous to hit a woman anywhere, even when you’re sober. They’re all over soft spots, they can’t take it.”
“This one will,” said Denny, firmly. He tottered, held on to the bar with his left hand, hit himself in the stomach with his right, and gave a loud belch. As if this had a steadying effect, he walked a fairly straight line towards the dancers. David followed along, hoping to see Denny snubbed properly. Not at all: the Cuban student surrendered all claim to his partner at once. Before she could refuse and take flight, Pastora was hedged in Denny’s arms; while they wobbled about in a series of ellipses, Pastora held him away by both his elbows, and Denny hung on around her shoulders in gruesome silence, breathing a miasma of mingled unclean fumes into her face. “Let me go, you smell like a buzzard!” Pastora was crying out, turning away and struggling. Altogether, a most unpromising situation, David was pleased to see. With a cheerful heart he wished Denny a fine busy evening bringing Pastora under, and all the bad luck in the world at it.
He had troubles of his own, and as he had begun to do lately, when the whiskey, as he hoped, had cleared his head and taken the edge off his anxieties, he wondered at his lack of self-respect, letting any woman, and above all a woman like Jenny, weigh on his mind and hound his feelings day and night and interfere with his plans and sidetrack him into places he had never meant to be, and corner him with unfair arguments and work on his weaknesses with her tears and her lovemaking, upset his work and drive him to drink—simply no end to her bitchery—what in God’s name could he have been thinking of? Here he was, getting drunk every day simply to get away from her and the thought of her, and what had come of it? What had become of Jenny? For the girl he thought he knew had disappeared so entirely he had almost to believe he made her up out of odds and ends of stuff from his own ragbag of adolescent dreams and imaginings. Of course, it was time he grew up. There never was, there couldn’t possibly be, any such living girl as he had dreamed Jenny was.…
His drunkenness almost bowled him over. He leaned on the rail holding his head, and though his knees shook under him, and his gorge rose as it did too often even under less provocation, his heart and his will hardened as if they had separate lives of their own not subject to the caprices of alcohol. “Darn you, Jenny angel, I give you up. I won’t fight with you any longer. It’s not worth it. I can’t live like this.” When he heard his own voice he glanced about in dismay, but no one was near. Jenny’s bright voice spoke up with its unbearable gay mockery: “… and the Emperor Cuautomoc then spoke to him from his pit of fire and asked, Think you that I am on a bed of roses?’” She had already said that a long time ago when he did not take her seriously; when he let her know she was causing him distress and making him unhappy, she had always answered in some oblique way that she was unhappy too, and it was his fault, and it was her belief that if they tried hard enough, they were bound to be blissful together. But she never said how they were to try, nor who should begin.
Pastora, with a face of fury, passed him in full flight, her ruffled skirts and black lace mantilla flowing backward; with a glance over her shoulder she dived through the nearest door. Denny, far off his center of gravity, approached more slowly but in earnest pursuit. He blinked at David and rounded on him confidentially: “She thinks she’s goin’ to get away,” he said easily, “but there isn’t any place on this ship she can hide. I’ll get her, don’t worry.”
David said, “Maybe you ought to wait now until morning, you’ll be in better shape,” but Denny shook his head obstinately and said, “No, tonight’s the night.” He hobbled on with a good deal of waste motion, but made it safely to the doorway where Pastora had disappeared, leaned against the jamb for a few seconds, and went on. David wandered without plan, meeting strayed revelers whom he saw through a mist—Mrs. Treadwell with that solemn young officer; poor Elsa being escorted probably to bed by her parents; Dr. Schumann, who appeared to be walking in his sleep: they swam past him, and from the other side of the ship floated the strains of that never-ending bore of a waltz, “Tales from the Vienna Woods.” At last he admitted where he was going, and who he was looking for and what he expected to find; he was beyond feeling, his nervous system felt dead, yet he was in anguish, a distress so deathlike it gave him a shock of fright, he really feared for the first time in his life that he might be going to die. There was nothing for it, though, but to keep going, up one flight of steps after another, to the boat deck, there to circle about warily and stealthily until he found them there together, and they were not even trying to hide. With a scalding shock in his blood as if he had not known all along they would be there, his search ended. They were huddled together on the deck, backs against a funnel, their knees drawn up, heads bowed thoughtfully, turned to each other, their foreheads touching, their bodies infolded, and fitted together smoothly. The twilight of the moon in a drift of cloud shone on Jenny’s frost-white face, the look of one suffering in her sleep on her closed eyes and mouth. Freytag was holding her firmly and easily, his arms completely around her, her folded hands held in one of his rested on her closed knees turned helplessly towards him.
David’s hands and feet turned cold, his nose grew thin and white and pointed downward, the nostrils working—he could feel it changing shape, drawing in upon itself in utter repulsion. A frightful confusion of simple jealousy, human outrage, pure disgust, a freezing hatred of Jenny set up their clamor in him at once. Yet he could not tell which was the more loathsome to him, the scene itself and its meaning, Jenny’s face of shameless, painful rapture, or Freytag’s self-possession, his easy, familiar hold on her, his control, the kind of professional expertness of a born handler and trainer of women.
This was what David, then and afterwards, could not endure; very murder rose in his soul at the sight of Freytag’s amiable, composed face, with its rather pleasantly elated look. Obviously he was waiting for Jenny to move into another phase
of her desire, with his attentive help, and to declare herself first, before he closed with her. They might have been in a tower or on an island, in their absorption with themselves. Freytag raised his forehead from Jenny’s, and spreading one hand upon her hair, he held her head back, turned her face up to his, studied it with quiet interest for a few seconds, then kissed her deliberately with the utmost luxury on the mouth. Jenny stirred and seemed to try to bury herself in his arms. He gathered her to him fully, competently, without haste or excitement, and began straightening out her legs, until he lay at full length beside her, moving his hand over her breast.
Still watching her face, he shifted his shoulder easily and covered her upper body with his, and there he stopped, and put his cheek to hers as if listening to her breathing. Then he turned away, and lay beside her, cradling her head on his arm, and he laughed, a very odd small laugh, under his breath, all to himself. He shook her head a little, kissed her, drew her up sitting, and tried to raise her to her feet. “Shame on you, you wench!” he said, in the utmost good temper. “Imagine passing out at a moment like this!” Jenny moaned, and said, “Oh, let me alone. Leave me here!”
“You know I can’t do that,” said Freytag in a tone very like brotherly annoyance. “Now stand up, Jenny, don’t be tiresome.”
David, standing frozen there in the shadow of the funnel, now turned in an utter horror of humiliation and tiptoed down the steps, his head roaring like a seashell.
In the bar, Herr Baumgartner, his clown make-up streaked, his whiskers on the floor under his chair, fumbled for the stern of his liqueur glass, jostled his coffee cup and spilt coffee on his napkin. Using the napkin as a handkerchief, he wept in silence, wiping his mouth, eyes and forehead distractedly. His wife watched him with eyes like agates, and spoke in a lowered, hardened voice: “Everybody is very carefully not looking at you. So after all I suppose you are not making a show of yourself in public.”
Ship of Fools Page 58
