He dipped another towel in the washhand stand, wrung it out and slapped it down on Herr Rieber’s head. “Is there any way I can lose him?”
Dr. Schumann said, “Wait, I’ll look at him. It’s a pity, I’m afraid there’s no place to put him. I’ll get the steward to nurse him.”
“Nurse?” groaned Herr Löwenthal. “Is it that bad?”
Dr. Schumann took a brief look at the wound under his flashlight, mopped the skull with alcohol, gave Herr Rieber a piqûre at the top of his forehead, and took seven neat stitches in a row on his scalp. He tied a line of small black silk stitches, snipping them off so that Herr Rieber appeared to be growing an extra row of eyelashes on his head. Herr Rieber squeezed his eyelids together during this operation but was otherwise motionless. Dr. Schumann then gave him a piqûre, and sent for the steward to undress him and put him to bed. Herr Löwenthal was very near complete demoralization. “My God, my God,” he kept muttering to himself under his breath, until Dr. Schumann said, “He’ll sleep a long time. I think you don’t have to worry about him any more. But if you need me, call me.” He heard the croak of exhaustion in his voice as he pronounced the ritual words.
He was no sooner in bed and settling into sleep than he was called again by the cabin boy. This time it was Herr Denny, the young Texan; he had got into an encounter with mysterious forces which left his face from forehead to chin a lumpy, discolored mass of ugly-looking little cuts and bruises, full of dried blood and already swelling.
Herr Glocken was shaking and fluttering in helpless fright. “I sent for you, Doctor, what could have happened to him? Two stewards brought him, and said they found him so, and one of them said he knew what had happened, he had seen it before, these were heel marks from a woman’s slipper!” He fluttered and nattered at Dr. Schumann’s elbow, who was giving his patient an antitetanus piqûre as a beginning. He washed the battered face carefully with alcohol and said, “Yes, or it could have been a tack hammer. There must have been metal caps on them.” Dr. Schumann had seen such wounds before, too, and of course, he decided at once, the sharp talons on that Spanish dancer’s slippers would exactly fit any and all of these wounds.
“What could have happened, Doctor?” gibbered Herr Glocken, and his self-pitying face added plainly, “Why must such things always happen to me? What am I to do now, with no one to help me?” And he implored, “Doctor, you know I am not well. Don’t leave me here alone with him! Confidentially, dear Doctor, he is a species of monster, certainly not quite human, I have seen and heard him. What can I do?”
Dr. Schumann smiled at him very frankly and said, “You are one of the few sober passengers I have seen this evening. Why not go looking for Herr David Scott and bring him back to help you? But I think you will not need it. Herr Denny will sleep, never fear. Good night.”
Herr Glocken followed him out, but took his forlorn way up deck alone, and Dr. Schumann went at once, fearing he might collapse before he could reach the porthole in his cabin for a breath of air while he took his crystal drops. In that moment, when he truly expected death, he looked upon all these intruders as his enemies. Without exception, he rejected them all, every one of them, all human kinship with them, all professional duty except the barest tokens. He did not in the least care what became of any one of them. Let them live their dirty lives and die their dirty deaths in their own way and their own time, so much carrion to fill graves. He crossed himself and folded his arms and lay still breathing carefully, turning his head slowly from side to side, denying his own bitter thoughts even as they rose and flowed again painfully all through him as though his blood were full of briers.
The blessed medicine worked its spell again. In his waking sleep La Condesa’s face floated bodiless above him, now very near, peering into his eyes; then retreating and staring and coming again in ghostly silence. The head rushed away into the distance, shrunken to the size of an apple, then bounded back, swollen and white like a toy balloon tossed upward by a hand, a deathlike head dancing in air, smiling. Dr. Schumann in his sleep rose and reached up and out before him and captured the dancing head, still smiling but shedding tears. “Oh, what have you done?” the head asked him. “Oh, why, why?” not in complaint, only in wonder. He held the head tenderly between his spread palms and kissed its lips and silenced it; and went back to bed with it, where it lay lightly on his breast without smiles or tears, in silence, and he slept on so deeply he did not know it was a dream.
At eleven o’clock, the band played “Auf Wiedersehen” and disappeared, all except the pianist, who held a ticket for the raffle. The Spanish company started their show, with the gramophone going at top voice. They first did a bolero, with Ric and Rac taking part; when in the dance they came face to face, they searched each other’s eyes fiercely threatening murder. The medical students sat in a shallow ring near them, clapping their hands and shouting “Olé” at the right moments. The expected audience however had all but dispersed; those who stayed or wandered by and wandered back were not ticket-holders. Arne Hansen, after disposing of Herr Rieber and disappearing to change his bloodied shirt, was back in his chair with a bottle of beer beside him. He seemed calm enough, his eyes were closed, and one might have thought he was asleep, except that at intervals he would reach for his beer and take a good swig. Now and again he sat up, motioned to a deck steward, and uttered one word: “Another.” Amparo decided prematurely that she need not expect any more trouble with him for the evening.
Frau Schmitt, clutching her ticket, sat timidly on the edge of a deck chair near the band. Frau Rittersdorf, passing, said, “Good night. I wish you luck!” If she had stuck needles in her Frau Schmitt could not have been more injured. Herr Löwenthal, who had spent the earlier part of the evening in the writing room smoking, drinking beer and addressing postcards to family, friends and business associates to go by airmail from Southampton, avoiding his cabin for sheer detestation of Herr Rieber’s presence, had given up and gone down to his quarters just in time to receive Herr Rieber’s battered person. He was now back on deck and meant to stay there until the last light was out. He had even a notion to stow himself away on the leather couch in the writing room. His stomach was turned for good, he would not pollute his nostrils with the breath from that pig. Nobody could force him: he would sleep on deck first. He would go down to the steerage—there was plenty of room there now, on deck anyway. He stood at the rail, arms folded, brooding, his cigar shooting sparks into the wind, and stared with pure unappreciation at Amparo’s expert performance of a dance she announced as a Cachucha, a dance he had never seen, would not care if he never saw again, and he wondered what any man in his right mind could see in a woman like that no matter what she was doing. He had heard plenty of times that shicksas were good stuff if you took them in the right way, that is, you didn’t have to think of them as people, the same as Jewish, only just live meat, but he never had been able to buy that argument.… He presently went in the bar, asked for a stein of beer and a piece of cheese, returned to the writing room and enjoyed his snack. He turned off the light and stretched out on the leather sofa. Oi, oi oi; this was peace and quiet, the first he’d had on the voyage.
A steward pulled naggingly at his sleeve. It was daylight and the steward remarked, “You must have gone to sleep, sir,” with the chilly resignation of a man who cannot afford to despair of clearing up one more little area of disorder in self-perpetuating chaos. Herr Löwenthal, instantly wide awake, sat up, scrubbed his face swiftly with the palm of his hand, planted his feet on the floor and asked with sarcasm, “What do you think?” The steward spun away with an angry jerk of his shoulders, at which Herr Löwenthal, who delighted in forcing unwilling service from any kind of subordinate, bawled, “Hey, boy!” meaning to order a pot of coffee. He noted with satisfaction the purely automatic pause in the steward’s stride, but the man in the servant conquered, and the man fairly burst from the room as if devils were after him.
Herr Löwenthal, feeling sodden and lumpy, went back to his
cabin to wash and change before breakfast. He supposed he would have to go on doing that, but never again would he sleep in the place—nothing could force him. He found another steward and Dr. Schumann already there, fussing over Herr Rieber, who was installed in the lower berth without so much as an if-you-please to Herr Löwenthal, the lawful occupant, who took in the state of affairs with instant rage which he betrayed only by the slight shake in his voice. “He is welcome to my bunk, Doctor, so long as he has got it already. I wouldn’t want it, I got no further use for it.”
That pig Rieber kept his eyes shut but his lids were working, pretending he was asleep, or sick or couldn’t hear, it didn’t matter which, he was pretending and it was enough to drive an honest man crazy. As if a little crack with a bottle could hurt a skull like that. Dr. Schumann nodded and spoke absently as he changed the dressing, spreading a nasty smell of iodoform around. “Well, no, I suppose you haven’t,” he said. “There is always the divan, anyway.”
A deep slow swelling soundless howl rose and echoed and died away in Herr Löwenthal’s soul. It was a howl and a song with words. “Take my table, take my bed, take my blood, grind my bones, God curse Them what do They want more?” In his fury he shouted so loudly close to Dr. Schumann’s ear, the Doctor jumped and almost dropped the gauze he was winding around Herr Rieber’s brow. “Careful, will you?” he snapped, but Herr Löwenthal’s voice drowned the words. “Maybe I want my bed for myself, Doctor? Maybe for once I should like to come back somewhere and not find somebody pushing me out? Is there a law saying I shouldn’t have what I paid for? How is it you can come in here as if he owned the place and take my bed just because he is drunk and I am not? Doctor,” he said, his speech trailing off in a tone of pathos, one righteous man appealing to the sense of pity and justice in another, “Doctor, I want to know these things—you tell me!”
Dr. Schumann, deeply repelled by this show of selfishness and bad temper, as if his disgusting patient were not trial enough, asked coldly: “Is it such a martyrdom as all that to give up your bed to someone who needs it, especially since you have another as good? I shall have him put on the divan if you wish, but the ship is beginning to roll heavily and there is less danger of his falling out here.”
So I can fall out until all the Jews go back to Jerusalem, what of it? It is only my head is cracked, who cares? Aloud he said in a luxury of contempt: “Let him have the whole stinking place, I got no use for it!”
Dr. Schumann said with weary scorn: “Thank you,” at which Herr Löwenthal gave a loud spluttering puff of air from his pouched lips, and got out into the passageway before he really said what he thought about that kind of thanks.
The Captain invited Dr. Schumann for mid-morning coffee on the bridge, and opened the conversation at once. “I have had the reports of various officers in line of duty,” he said, stretching his wattles and tucking them in his collar again, “and beyond the sheer impudence of the thing, beyond their total ignorance of any forms of social decency, those disorderly dancers seem to be quite a common sort of petty criminal, too, of the pilfering and pickpocket order. This has been an unusually eventful voyage—”
“It is a disaster,” said Dr. Schumann, making no attempt to conceal his weariness or his indifference to the whole sordid affair.
“That is not a word we use at sea for anything less than the loss of a ship,” said the Captain, tempering his austerity with a thin smile. “An old sea-dog,” he said, leaving Dr. Schumann to infer which sea-dog he meant, “knows what danger and disaster really are, and could never mistake the misdemeanors of a load of passengers for anything serious. They do not know how to behave on a ship—”
“Nor on land, either, some of them. But there are still some very decent persons on board.”
The Captain almost smirked at this opportunity handed to him as if on a tray. “I shall be more than pleased if you will show me one,” he said, with unctuous enjoyment. Dr. Schumann decided to appear somewhat amused. “It is difficult,” he agreed, “on short acquaintance and in a trying, unfamiliar situation. Very few persons show up at their best.”
This required no answer. The Captain went on: “I am told La Condesa’s pearls were stolen—unhappy lady! I began to think at last that her mind was not exactly—” He touched his forehead lightly with an index finger.
“It is possible,” said Dr. Schumann, to end that topic. “We do not know whether the pearls were stolen or not. La Condesa said the children snatched them from her. Her nurse the stewardess said La Condesa was not wearing her pearls that day. The children threw some object overboard. There were two witnesses, Herr and Frau Lutz, but unfortunately they do not support each other’s testimony. Nothing is proved.”
“The trouble with this sort of thing,” said the Captain, raising a hand and keeping silence while the young steward standing out of earshot came forward and poured more coffee, “the trouble is, when a man, any sort of man,” he added generously, “not just a naval officer, finds himself embroiled in a low kind of women’s gossip, it is an affront to his self-respect to have to deal with these things on their natural debased level. I was told the Spanish company robbed many shops in Santa Cruz, and that many of those you call decent persons among the passengers witnessed this. No one interfered or took steps to prevent this on the scene?”
“Several passengers, not women,” said Dr. Schumann, “have agreed among themselves this morning that what they saw looked very dubious indeed, they had well-founded suspicions, but after all, no proof. At no time did anyone feel it was his business to interfere or even to take particular notice.”
“That was very prudent,” said the Captain, dryly. “Tell me, how are your casualties getting on? The young fellow whose name I do not remember, who seems to have been attacked by someone wielding an unorthodox weapon, perhaps a tack hammer or a woman’s shoe heel?” Dr. Schumann saw the glint of gallantry in the Captain’s pale eyes. “I should imagine there are the usual number of shipboard romances with their inevitable disappointments and dramatic scenes,” he said, with relish. “Is the young man recovering?”
“He’ll live,” said Dr. Schumann, “and so will all the others. There is again the question of who committed this thoroughly mischievous act. The young man himself insists it was a girl called Pastora, one of the Spanish company. But a steward has defended this girl, says she is innocent—a strange word to use about any of that troupe—and that he is certain it was done by a woman wearing a mask, so that he did not recognize her. That was all he knew.”
“As for the incident on deck when Herr Rieber got his scalp scratched?”
“That is the only perfectly clear incident we have. Herr Hansen has, throughout the voyage, showed himself consistently as a man of unstable temper and eccentric views, and for his own reasons he broke his beer bottle over Herr Rieber’s head when Herr Rieber was dancing harmlessly with a lady—”
“Lady—” echoed the Captain thoughtfully. The word hung between them like a drift of vapor. Dr. Schumann proceeded without a pause: “Everybody knows this and it seems to be the one thing everybody does know. All the rest is a very sordid little sort of tempest in a teapot … a trivial mystery.”
“La Condesa was the mysterious one,” said the Captain. “That beautiful lady should never have been left on that barbarous island alone. No matter what she did. No lady could do enough harm politically to deserve such a sentence. By the way, you were her physician and in her confidence, what did she do?”
“I don’t know,” said Dr. Schumann, rather bluntly.
The Captain’s chin retreated, his neck stiffened, his face turned slowly a dark red. “I have thought as much from the beginning,” he said with rancor. “It is a pity she did not respond better to your treatment. Indeed, I gather that her condition worsened very much in your hands … well, Dr. Schumann, flesh is grass, no? A doctor cannot afford to let his failures weigh upon his mind!”
Dr. Schumann stood up suddenly in the middle of this speech, and at the end, took
his leave with a stiff bow, noting the signs of the Captain’s wrath and chagrin, but with such a stinging anger in himself it crossed his mind only a good while later that the Captain’s blood pressure was apparently rather high.
Denny’s loud groans and threats of revenge on Pastora had been quieted by Dr. Schumann’s needle, but his swollen lips and end of his nose just visible in a swathe of bandages big as a large pumpkin emitted burbles and rattles and snorts for the rest of the night. David stood swaying, legs wide, feet rocking, trying to keep his balance and to take in the meaning of the squalid disorder in the cabin. Herr Glocken was almost entirely terrorized, and tearfully begged David not to go to sleep, and not to let him, Herr Glocken, go to sleep either. Life was too dangerous on board this ship, nobody was safe, the innocent and the guilty were threatened alike, and the innocent first—
“Not always,” said David, with a flapping gesture full of drunken portentousness towards Denny.
“Always,” said Herr Glocken, obstinately.
“Have it your way,” said David, struggling to the bunk by the wall, falling into his pillow face downward and letting his drunkenness take charge of him. He sank through qualmy waves into bottomless deeps of drowning and yet could not drown. Nightmare closed around in whirling flame and orange flashes of dreadful shapeless visions with crazed eyes and stretched silently screaming mouths. He rolled face up and opened his eyes on the low comedy of his surroundings and heard himself say loudly, “I’m ready for the nut-hatch!”
“What? What is that?” Instantly Herr Glocken responded. “Don’t turn out your light. Don’t go to sleep!”
“All right,” said David, “I won’t. But you go to sleep. It’s all over anyhow. Nothing more can happen.”
Ship of Fools Page 61
