Ship of Fools

by Katherine Anne Porter

  “I am never excited, never,” he told her, with a tremor in his voice that could mean anger, “it is simply that I who live a life of endless discipline have no patience with all the stupid muddle caused by such people as he, who do not know how to live!”

  “Do you know?” asked Mrs. Treadwell gently, stopping and raising her face to his so that their glance met steadily. “Tell me.” It occurred to Mrs. Treadwell that this was an odd conversation in the light of what she saw at once was going to happen. He enveloped her wholly, waist, shoulders, arms, brought her instantly under control and kissed her violently on her mouth, which was still open in speech. Mrs. Treadwell shuddered at the same unpleasant sensation of being bitten, of the blood being drawn by suction to her mouth that had revolted her in the past, and she drew away, turned her head outward, refused, and defended herself by a passivity that dismayed and enraged him.

  He drew his head back, lifted his elbow and swept her hair back with his forearm, and she saw the sweat standing on his forehead. “I have been looking at you, thinking about you, for a long time,” he said, harshly. “You never noticed me, no not even when we danced—why not? Now you will not kiss me—why not?… Do you want me to beg you? to say I love you? I never knew what people meant by that word.”

  “Don’t say it, don’t say it, I cannot bear the sound of it …”

  His face, manner, mood, all shifted with the same violence, from erotic impetuosity to sheer pettiness. “Then why did you come with me, why did you encourage me to kiss you?”

  Mrs. Treadwell drew away altogether, stood back facing him. “And now for the first lovers’ quarrel,” she said outrageously and laughed with a somewhat extreme amusement. What a young face he had; she saw him as if for the first time—smooth and lineless, clear features, tightly drawn, with angry vanity in the set of the mouth, a burning uneasiness in the eyes.

  “I do not deserve for you to laugh at me,” he said, with a dignity that carried his resentment past its crisis. He offered her his arm again but as if he did not wish to touch her. “Thank you for a very pleasant evening, Madame, and I shall be happy to see you to your door.”

  “Oh thank you, but it isn’t at all necessary. Please don’t trouble, I can go the rest of the way by myself.”

  He clicked his heels, bowed sharply from the waist, made a fine swift about face, and marched straight back towards the dancers. Mrs. Treadwell took time to admire him, thinking that the masculine passion for physical discipline of all sorts had its points—he was undoubtedly as drunk as she was, and yet, here she was, skipping and leaping down the perilous slopes from main deck to B deck, where on the last step but one she caught her sandal on the metal-edged tread and tore the heel off. It rattled down before her as she stood a moment, balancing herself on one foot. A young steward who was polishing shoes rose, came forward, picked up the heel, and spoke with high good manners, holding out his hand; “If you please, meine Dame, allow me to repair it for you.” Mrs. Treadwell, with a wave and a smile, bent her knee, raised her foot and offered him the slipper, which he removed; she then went hippety-hop down the corridor, now and then stopping to raise her skirts and try a good high kick, straight up, toe pointed. What an absurd evening, and how pleasant to know it was over. She liked the young steward’s shadowy face and tactful gestures: if everyone were like that, how much more possible life might be.

  Lizzi would be dancing and then lurking about in corners with her pet pig, until any hour at all. Mrs. Treadwell leaned very close to the looking glass and studied her features thoughtfully, and began to amuse herself with painting a different face on her own, as she used to do for fancy dress balls. She drew long thin very black eyebrows that almost met over her nose and ran back over her temples almost into her hair. She covered her eyelids with bluish silver paint, weighted her lashes with beads of melted black wax, powdered her face a thick clown white, and at last drew over her rather thin lips a large, deep scarlet, glistening mouth, with square corners, a shape of unsurpassed savagery and sensuality. She brushed her black hair sleekly from her forehead, and moved back a few steps to admire the effect at the right distance. Yes, it would have done very nicely—she could have worn a mantilla and comb and gone to the party masked as one of the zarzuela company—Amparo perhaps. Why hadn’t she thought of it? Because it would have been dull, and the evening would have ended just as it did, no matter what.

  Mrs. Treadwell was nearly through her third round of solitaire, cards spread on her small game board, at the dressing table before the looking glass, where now and again she might glance at her strange assumed face, which no longer amused her but seemed a revelation of something sinister in the depths of her character. Mrs. Treadwell had, to begin with, hardly suspected she possessed a character in the accepted sense of the word, and had never felt the lack of one. It was rather late perhaps to discover there were depths in her, where were hidden all sorts of unpleasant traits she would detest in anyone else, much more in herself. She sighed and pushed the cards together without finishing the game, and rummaged in her dressing case for her sleeping tablets.

  The door flew open and Lizzi fell in, went to her knees and up again in a sweeping movement, her features distorted, her speech incoherent and full of tears. A thin, chronically worried-looking young man just behind her let go her arm a moment too soon for fear of being dragged with her into a ladies’ cabin. He could not conceal his astonishment at Mrs. Treadwell’s face in its bizarre disguise; at first glance he had mistaken her for one of those Spanish dancing women, at second he knew better and was mystified. He stepped back and stood in shadow outside the door. “Meine Dame,” he began, and swiftly gave Mrs. Treadwell a brief account of events. Lizzi, far gone in hysteria, wrapped her arms around her head and swayed to the rhythm of sobs and hiccups. “I must leave her to you, pardon, Meine Dame,” said the young man, “I am in the band and must get back to my place at once.”

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Treadwell with extreme sweetness, closing the door. Lizzi moaned luxuriously, now lying at full length on the divan, and kept it up to intolerable lengths. “Oh, the brute, the savage, the beast,” she repeated monotonously. Mrs. Treadwell repressed her airy impulse to ask, “Which one of them?” as she helped Lizzi get out of her dress and into her nightgown. She even picked up and put away tidily those garments steaming with body heat and the dreadful stale musky scent. She then remembered her sleeping tablets and swallowed two. Lizzi’s abjectly suffering face on the pillow turned to her, the eyes like a beaten dog’s, the forehead glistening with sweat. “Oh,” said Mrs. Treadwell, full of remorse and gentle feelings, “you need those, too.” She brought water and the sleeping pills, and Lizzi took them in silence. “There,” said Mrs. Treadwell, simply as one friendly woman to another, “That should settle something for tonight, at least.”

  “Oh, but tomorrow!” sighed Lizzi brokenly, calming a little.

  “Tomorrow? Let it come!” said Mrs. Treadwell. “At least tonight will be over!” She was quieted and easy, her lightness of heart might almost have been happiness, only of course that would be absurd. What was there to be happy about? She moved about rather unsteadily, not noticing that she was walking with one high-heeled sandal and one bare foot. Lizzi, soothed and wearied, forgot her troubles long enough to stare at Mrs. Treadwell’s face. “But whatever for?” she gasped. “Whatever—what did you do to yourself?”

  “I was putting on a mask,” Mrs. Treadwell explained reasonably. “A mask for the party.”

  “But you’re late,” sang Lizzi, weeping again, “the party’s over!”

  “Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Treadwell, thinking that Lizzi was already coming back in her old ghastly style, and would soon be the same bore as ever. She felt she must be entirely drunk, for Lizzi’s high voice came to her full of echoes as if she were calling down a well: “Oh what shall I do now? Oh everything is so changed. Oh, I wish never to see him again … Oh dear, Mrs. Treadwell, can you tell me how I could have been so deceived? I never loved h
im, I see it now!”

  “How does one know these mysterious things, always so sure, first one thing and then another?” asked Mrs. Treadwell, amiably detached and smiling, dressing gown in hand. She spoke apparently to the ceiling, for her eyes were raised as if she expected to see an answer written there. “How do you know what you feel?”

  She lowered her eyes slowly without curiosity and listened a moment to a clamor at the door, a ferocious beating and kicking, and drunken shouting. She moved nearer, recognized Denny’s voice: “Listen, Pastora, let me in there, you filthy little—” Mrs. Treadwell’s ears shuddered, but she listened to Denny’s thick-tongued descriptions of the Gothic excesses he intended to commit upon Pastora’s person, of which rape would be the merest preliminary.

  Lizzi sat up covering her ears and screaming, “Oh no, no, no, this is the last straw … No, no, I do not deserve this … No, I will not have this, no no, no …”

  “Oh, please,” said Mrs. Treadwell, carefully. “He is not talking to you. He is not talking to either of us. He is talking to himself. Lie down and be quiet.”

  She took her time, put a wet cloth on Lizzi’s forehead, rearranged her as if she were a jointed doll, then went to the door, walking hippity hop, and stood there a moment, hand on the knob. Quite suddenly, she snatched the door back wide. Denny, surprised, swayed backward a step, then surged forward and seized the front of her gown, wrung it into a rag and said, “Come out here, you whore,” almost formally as if he were delivering a message from someone else. “Come out here now, I’m goin’ to break every bone in you.” He gave a twist to her front, which wrenched her breast so painfully she almost went off balance.

  She seized his wrist with both hands and said earnestly, “You are terribly mistaken. You’d better look again!”

  “Who are you?” he asked dimly, then: “Jesus, what is this?” leaning over to examine her face under the paint, blowing a pestiferous breath in her face. “Oh, come on, come on, you can’t fool me.”

  Mrs. Treadwell braced herself against him and pushed him in the chest with more force than she knew she had. He tottered back limply, taken off guard, staggered against the opposite wall, slid along it sideways as he fell in a confusion of grunts, arm-waving, thumpings, scrapings and sprawlings. Mrs. Treadwell watched him in motionless amazement, unable to believe that her unpremeditated little gesture had accomplished so much. He lay still. Mrs. Treadwell knelt near him and felt his head and neck with the tips of her fingers, not being willing to touch him further. There seemed to be nothing broken; though his neck felt loose, that might be only natural. He was breathing loudly with his mouth open, his eyes rolled up between his half-closed lids. His tongue moved to the edge of his lips, he seemed to be forming a word, Mrs. Treadwell doubled her fist and struck him sharply, again and again, in the mouth, on the cheek, on the nose. The blows hurt her hand and seemed to make no impression on Denny. He moved as if he might get up. Feeling her sandal under her, she took it off and held it firmly by the sole and beat him in the face and head with the heel, breathlessly, rising on her knees and coming nearer, her lips drawn back and her teeth set. She beat him with such furious pleasure a sharp pain started up in her right wrist and shot to her shoulder and neck. The sharp metal-capped high heels at every blow broke the skin in small half moons that slowly turned scarlet, and as they multiplied on his forehead, cheeks, chin, lips, Mrs. Treadwell grew cold with fright at what she was doing, yet could not for her life stop herself. Denny stirred and groaned bitterly, opened his eyes for one glimpse, then amazingly opened them wide, struggled until he sat halfway up, fell back again, crying out in his nightmare in a strangled voice, “Pastora, Pastora!”

  Mrs. Treadwell got to her feet, feeling that not Denny, but she, had been averted from a shocking end. She swayed in drunkenness and exhaustion, balancing on one foot while she put on her sandal; there was just time for it before the steward appeared at the head of the passageway. She motioned to him anxiously and he hurried to her as if she were the injured one, though he saw instantly at a distance the crumpled form at her feet.

  “Meine Dame,” he inquired with real anxiety, “you are not hurt? The gentleman,” he glanced downward, “he did not …?”

  “Oh, no,” she said vaguely, “nothing of that sort.” The boy knelt beside Denny, who had relapsed into stupor. Mrs. Treadwell recognized the boy to whom she had given her other sandal. “I was in my cabin,” she said, with blameless candor. “I heard cries, I heard someone fall … he seemed to be calling for someone, I couldn’t hear … I came to see if I could help …” Her voice faded into a bewildered child’s, her mouth trembled. “I was frightened,” she added, clearly, with perfect truth.

  “Don’t trouble yourself, meine Dame,” said the boy. “I will look after this. It is not serious,” he said, scrutinizing the bleeding little half-circle wounds all over Denny’s features. “It is just that the gentleman is a little—perhaps … not quite …”

  “I’m sure of it,” said Mrs. Treadwell, with a deprecating smile, taking her hand from her forehead in a small, round defensive motion. “I’m very grateful to you, and sorry for your trouble. Good night.”

  Lizzi had pulled the sheet over her head, and peered out at Mrs. Treadwell like a timid furry beast from its nest. Mrs. Treadwell’s smile still lingered on her lips if not in her eyes. She was very reassuring. “He is gone. It was nothing, just a mistake. He knocked at the wrong door, that was all. He knows it now.”

  “I wish I were dead, just the same,” whimpered Lizzi. “Life is unbearable, don’t you find?”

  Mrs. Treadwell laughed outright. “Nonsense,” she said, handing Lizzi a glass of water and a third sleeping pill. “I think it is wonderful.” She swallowed another herself, and smiled delightedly at her hideous wicked face in the looking glass. In her joy and excitement, she snatched off her bloodstained sandal and kissed it. Leaning over Lizzi on the divan, who asked dreamily, “What are you doing now?” she tossed it through the porthole. “Bon voyage, my friend,” she said, and to Lizzi peremptorily, “Go to sleep at once, or I’ll give you a whole handful of sleeping pills!” She stood over her threateningly. Lizzi in her daze was flattered by all this attention, mistook it for an unsuspected softheartedness in this difficult stranger, dropped away into a light snore.

  Mrs. Treadwell washed her disfigured face lavishly, slapping on warm water, anointing, patting, restoring herself to a semblance she recognized. Blissfully she sang a tuneless song under her breath as she tied her Alice in Wonderland hair ribbon and slipped into her white satin gown with the bishop sleeves. She was just folding herself into bed like a good little girl who has finished her prayers when a discreet knocking at the door brought her out again. The young steward stood there at attention, bowing. He handed her the sandal with the heel nicely replaced. “With your permission,” with deep respect and an expression that was too near a knowing smile to match his words, “meine Dame, your sandal.”

  She took it by the sole firmly as if it too were a weapon. She thanked him gently, modestly, standing there before him quite unconcerned in her nightgown. His eyes flickered over her once, up, down, sideways, and he resented what he saw. To her he was just a servant, a nothing, something that came when it was called and did whatever she demanded. He leaped away down the passage wishing there were some way to get even with her—to make trouble for her, standing there smirking like a cat as if he didn’t know how that stupid Herr Denny had got those heel marks in his face. Served him right! He made the gesture of spitting, but he did not spit—he would have had to clean it up.

  Mrs. Treadwell went again to the porthole over the spraddled form of Lizzi, and cast the second gilded sandal after its mate into the sea. She leaned forward a moment to breathe blissfully the damp fresh wind, to hear again the surge of the waves rolling up in great round hills, under the black-blue sky scattered with immense stars. She remembered how once she had sat for her portrait to a young painter in a tall old house near the Avenue Montaigne, and
as the evening came on, he went down all those flights of stairs and brought up bread and cheese and cold beef and a bottle of wine for their supper. Afterwards, he held the creaky ladder for her while she climbed and put her head through a tiny open skylight in the roof; and she saw the glimmering lights of Paris coming on slowly, and above, the clear darkening blue sky with the stars coming out, one by one. It was the middle of May.

  As the evening wore on, Dr. Schumann emerged for a walk and a look around him, but wearied soon of the disturbances and disorders taking form and breaking like waves, the monotonous barbarous beat of the music, and the inevitable results of an evening of gaiety on shipboard. The Spanish dancers, he noted, remained sternly sober, and kept their minds on business. They still had some business to transact, though the possible audience appeared to be thinning out in all directions. One or two of the young officers were still dancing occasionally with the Spanish girls, and the students were indefatigably athletic as usual, performing a comic version of a Basque male square dance; but several of the other men were miserably drunk—such as Herr Denny, having a violent argument with the zarzuela dancer called Pastora. Dr. Schumann considered seriously what means might be used to control such people, or at least, their language and behavior in public; that fellow should not be allowed to use such language on deck even to such a woman as she; but it was not his affair, thank God. Nearly every woman still visible showed signs of having been recently in tears, or a temper, or both, and some of them were none too sober, either. He retired to his quarters, where he might be found if needed, and almost at once a cabin boy came with a message that he was wanted in Herr Rieber’s cabin. He went at once, oppressed with weariness, and found Herr Löwenthal, drowsy, indignant, reeking of beer, wringing out towels in cold water and laying them on top of Herr Rieber’s head.

  “Bottle fighting,” he said, “like in the lowest places. Come in, Doctor. And now tell me, Doctor, can anybody show me a place on this ship where I can go to get rid of this fellow, who makes nothing but trouble for me every day? What did I do I deserve to get stuck with him when I’m nearly asleep after a hard day?”