Ship of Fools

by Katherine Anne Porter

  The British officers, at the Captain’s invitation, seated themselves around a table on the sunny side of the bar, temporarily closed. Jenny wandered in and sat within hearing distance quite purposely, though David refused to stop with her. But the officers were disappointingly silent for some time, unfolding and looking at their various documents, passing them around, signing something. One of the British officers asked the Captain kindly to explain a puzzling entry on a certain page, and his forefinger jabbed the place rather abruptly. Then glancing around and seeing Jenny, he dropped his voice, the half dozen heads leaned towards each other, and there followed to Jenny’s chagrin a pantomime of bad temper and disagreement. The Captain’s face was scarlet, he was awkward, baffled, fuming, even his wattled jaw puffed up over his collar, his eyes turned bloodshot. The young Britishers were quite self-possessed, they sat back with their chins up and their hands properly disposed and stared down their noses at the German making a holy show of himself, managing to put him in the wrong by their very postures of righteous ease. Jenny was pleased to observe that the British really behaved the way they were said to, in newspapers and novels. They were behaving as if they thought this was a social occasion and some low uninvited person had managed to get in and commit a nuisance.

  The Captain raised his voice. “Of course, the French, the Americans, the British, they have everything, they can do as they like, it is only the Germans who need not expect any justice, or rather, even decency at this point.”

  “I did not make this ruling,” said one of them, in a chilling voice, “I am only here to see it carried out.” He frowned severely, and Jenny noticed that the more severely he frowned, the more helplessly he blushed with some deep inexpressible embarrassment.

  “Of course,” said the Captain huffily, “we are all martyrs to our duty, who does not know that? But is it a state of affairs that we may not even complain of?”

  There followed a stiff silence. One of the British officers reached out and touched the papers. “We may as well get on with this,” he said to the others, and after that they spoke only to each other and not once to the Captain.

  “I’d give anything just to know what they were arguing about,” Jenny said to David later.

  “Something dull, no doubt,” said David.

  “I wish I knew what that little boy was trying to tell us,” said Jenny.

  “He was trying to sell us a newspaper,” said David.

  “Oh, all right,” said Jenny. “All right, all right.”

  The last part of the voyage was quiet and pleasant enough, the few survivors agreed among themselves: even Herr Löwenthal, noting all the vacant chairs in the dining room, suggested to his steward that perhaps Herr Freytag could have a whole table to himself, now. The steward was happy to inform Herr Löwenthal that Herr Freytag had thought of that for himself and the change had been made. William Denny got up and took the bandages off his head without telling Dr. Schumann, who promptly put them back on again, but allowed him to go down for his meals. His one slowly burning resentment was that Pastora had, after all, got clean away, had nearly got clean away with murder. “These little head wounds are very chancy,” said Dr. Schumann. “Why do you suppose I gave you a tetanus shot? Do please let me handle this.”

  “That Pastora ought to be sent to the clink for life,” said Denny, “and given the hell of a beating before she got there.”

  Dr. Schumann, deeply offended by the generally coarse low nature of his patient, said very coldly: “It was not Pastora. It was Mrs. Treadwell, that modest and gentle lady whom you somehow succeeded in exasperating beyond bounds.”

  Denny was so shocked he could only give a long low whistle that ended “Jeeeeee-sus! For a fact? How did you know?”

  “A young steward told me.”

  “Which one?” insisted Denny, sitting up suddenly.

  “That I cannot tell you,” said Dr. Schumann. “This episode is now in the category of things past, and you will do much better to chalk it up to Experience. Good morning. I will see you tomorrow.” He closed his black satchel and left, feeling a real glow of some kind of malicious satisfaction mixed with moral unction: for once justice was being done in the most roundabout and no doubt reprehensible way, but it did Dr. Schumann’s heart good to see it at work.

  When the ship passed the Isle of Wight, Jenny was enchanted with the fairy-looking castle standing in a greensward the color of an emerald, surrounded by small tender woods, and the grass shaven neatly to the very edge of the sea. As they passed so near to the shore, she believed she was deceived again in her sense of smell, which often brought her strange improbable whiffs of cross currents of air. Now she smelled herbs and freshly cut grass and grazing cows.

  “Yes, yes,” said Elsa, almost happily, “it is true. I have passed here this is the fourth time and there is always that lovely smell. When I was little I thought maybe heaven would be like that.”

  The passengers began to be restless and inert at once; the daily games ceased, some of the moving pictures were being shown for the second time, they lolled on deck or in their cabins, and began packing and repacking their luggage and worrying about their belongings in the hold. By the time the Vera went through the lock and emerged into the narrow River Weser, Lizzi was still refusing to return to the Captain’s table when she learned that Herr Rieber was back in his accustomed chair. She brooded on the way Mrs. Treadwell had simply picked herself up and left the cabin as if she were going to take a turn on deck, and had said no farewell—not even a little simple “Grüss Gott,” which costs nothing. When she was in her deckchair, which she had caused to be moved far away from Herr Rieber’s, she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep when she saw him trotting by—what a little pig, after all, with that big piece of tape and lint on his bald head … what a disgusting life it was!

  The Captain, Herr Rieber, Frau Rittersdorf, and the Huttens, with Frau Schmitt and Dr. Schumann, sat at their table nearly in silence, for they all felt that any topic they had in common would lead to awkward or trivial gossip. And they were no longer interested in anything the others had to say—their minds were closing in and folding up once more around their own concerns, their only common hope being to leave that ship and end that voyage and to take up their real and separate lives once more. Yet at the very last dinner together, they drank each others’ healths and gave each other friendly looks, and Herr Professor Hutten said warmly, “At last we are nearing home, and we are, after all, all good Germans together. Let us thank God for his blessings.”

  There at last they faced another port town, with its cluttered docks and warehouses crowding down to the water, full of floating harbor filth around the familiar line of idle empty ships waiting like others in harbors all over the world for the strike to be settled. Again small craft full of people waving scarfs and shouting welcomes circled about playfully and got in the way.

  Bremerhaven! And the old Vera safe in harbor, among a fleet of others like her, battered rusty tired veterans coming in from all the seas, always the long way round, carrying the scars of their hard voyages with their untidy cargoes and middling people in the anxious middling way of life, who were not traveling for pleasure. Yet from every ship the flags were flying and dipping in courtesy to the harbor and all in it, the little bands on every deck were playing their hoppety tunes, the crews and the officers were at their stations, all paint-fresh, fit and ready, in good discipline. On the Vera the passengers lined up as near to the gangplank as they could without disorder or crowding. They were indeed all Germans and together, except for the three Americans, who stood together somewhat back and apart. Eyes met eyes again vaguely, almost without recognition and no further speech. They were becoming strangers again, though not suspicious and hostile as at first. It was a pleasant indifference to everything but the blessed moment of escape to life once more. For a moment all the faces were raised, eyes searching out the roofs of the town, filled and softened with generous feelings—their hearts beat freely and their st
omachs trembled with the illusion of joy; all mysteriously entranced as if they approached a lighted altar, they prepared to set their feet once more upon the holy earth of their Fatherland.

  The day was dark and cold, with lightly floating snow. The family groups drew together, the tall golden-haired Johann with his dying uncle in the wheel chair, who opened his eyes now and again and looked about him; the Baumgartner child in the orange buckskin leather charro dress shivered in it instead of sweating. Elsa, wearing a wooly white coat, her white beret covering her hair, clutched her small traveling bag to her, and repeated patiently, “Yes, Mama,” or “No, Mama,” to every question her mother asked her, sometimes twice over. “Elsa, did you pick up all your hairpins and safety pins, did you leave any handkerchiefs, have you got all your stockings together? Did you leave your nail file and scissors? In underwear you started out with six of everything, I hope we reach home with that number … besides sweaters—”

  Herr Lutz said jocosely, “You have not said exactly how many hairpins, Elsa. Twenty-seven, maybe?”

  “Oh, Papa,” she said gratefully, “I’m sure I brought everything.”

  “Of course you have, my dear little girl. Now we are going home and you should be happy.”

  “Yes and thank God,” said Frau Lutz, glad to shift the ground of argument, since she plainly was losing. “And the rest will be on land, in our own compartment, on a European train, like a real family once more and none of this promiscuous mingling with low types we cannot avoid. Ha!” she said in gloomy triumph, “This will be my last voyage. There is no sea where we are going to live, Elsa.”

  “No, Elsa,” said her father, “and no ships. And no iodine or salt: You buy salt with iodine in it from the pharmacist. Otherwise you’ll have goiter.”

  “Oh for shame!” cried Frau Lutz. “How can you say such things? Elsa, your father is making one of his jokes—”

  “How many of your relatives in St. Gallen have goiter?” asked Herr Lutz, reasonably. “There was Aunt Fike, and Aunt Wilhelmina, and Uncle Wolfgang and Cousin August, and your own sister Lotte, and your grandfather on your mother’s side—”

  “Stop!” cried Frau Lutz, nearly beside herself. “Slander your own family, not mine!”

  “It is no slander,” said Herr Lutz. “Elsa, what are you looking for? Who do you see?” For he noticed that while they were talking her eyes roamed slowly, steadily, furtively under her half-closed lids, her head turned ever so slightly, and he had never seen an expression like that on her face. As a father, he did not approve and he was disturbed. Elsa flushed darkly and put her hand over her mouth. “Nothing, no one,” she said in such confusion he said nothing more. At that moment Herr Hansen lunged by, his face in knots, and he threw Elsa a glance as he went, the glance of a wandering eye that is seeking nothing, and yet for Elsa the blow was as cruel as if he had intended it. He had always looked at her as if she were thin air or a blank wall. She flinched, and her father said, “That was never the man for you, my dear.” Her mother was shocked into agreement. “The idea,” she said in derision. “Whoever thought so, for a minute?”

  Hateful as Herr Hansen was to her, yet he had been crazed about that terrible Amparo, and he had smashed that horrid Herr Rieber for some good reason, she was sure, so he was a man of strong feelings, only he had never treated her as if she were human; what did she care? Yet she did care. She did not really want anything from him, no not even a look. It was her student she would remember all her life, standing there on deck with the music playing and his arms around her, with his smiling questioning face and his coaxing voice—and still she could not dance. She drew such a deep breath she felt she must explain it. “I am only tired,” she told them. “I am not sick, Mama.”

  Freytag moved away from the German group and approached Jenny and David, who stood hand in hand near Denny, who was picking silently at bits of tape and cotton covering the heel cuts all over his face. Freytag stopped before them and held out his hand to Jenny, who took her hand out of David’s and gave it to him with a gentle pressure. She smiled, but he saw her eyes grow very dark and excited. “Good-by,” said Freytag, his own gray eyes clear and pleasant. “I hope you will like it here.”

  David offered his hand and Freytag gave it a good manly shake. Their eyes met, and though their faces were entirely impassive Jenny saw a curious expression pass between them—the merest flicker of a glance like light on water, but it chilled her blood. It was the wordless affirmation of pure male complicity, complete understanding from far depths of instinctive being, safe from all surface movements and perplexities of events, sympathy and a secret alliance, from which she was excluded by natural law, in their unalienable estate of manhood. Jenny trembled so violently that David said, “Are you cold, Jenny angel? Let me help you.” He took her coat off her arm and held it for her to put on. While he did this, he nodded to Freytag, who was going towards the gangplank.

  “Good luck,” he said, and Freytag answered with a wave of his hand.

  “Just to think, it’s all over,” said Jenny. “Soon it will be only a dream. Why did I come here?”

  “Because you wanted to go to France and I wanted to go to Spain, wasn’t that it?”

  “I am a sleepwalker,” said Jenny, “and this is a dream.”

  “Dreams are real too,” said David, “nightmares, everything.”

  “David, we aren’t going to spend our lives together, why are we going on with this?”

  “Don’t you remember? We aren’t ready yet.” He stood beside her and took her hand again, quite composed and certain of his own mood. He watched her eyes beginning to glisten, and he became very touched and gentle with her as he did sometimes when she wept on his account. The sight of her weakness and defeat gave him pleasure like no other.

  “Do you know,” he said, falsely, “maybe we shall never leave each other. Where could we go?”

  “We’ll think of somewhere,” she said, “let’s wait.”

  “Here we go talking again,” said David. “Let’s think of something pleasant.”

  “You think of something, David darling,” said Jenny, “something wonderful.”

  David leaned with great discretion and a very straight face and whispered, “Tonight in Bremen we’ll sleep in the same bed for a change.” Jenny made a slight purring sound at him, and he watched her face grow radiant.

  The band played “Tannenbaum” at last, and kept it up until the gangplank was down, and the passengers began to descend rapidly and silently. As the musicians were wiping the mouthpieces of their instruments, wrapping up their drums and putting away their fiddles, their mouths were wide with smiles, their heads towards the dock, towards the exact narrow spot where the Vera had warped in and cast her anchor. Among them, a gangling young boy, who looked as if he had never had enough to eat in his life, nor a kind word from anybody, and did not know what he was going to do next, stared with blinded eyes, his mouth quivering while he shook the spit out of his trumpet, repeating to himself just above a whisper, “Grüss Gott, Grüss Gott,” as if the town were a human being, a good and dear trusted friend who had come a long way to welcome him.

  Yaddo, August, 1941

  Pigeon Cove, August, 1961

  A Biography of Katherine Anne Porter

  Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award in 1966. Her only full-length novel, Ship of Fools (1962), was a national bestseller.

  Born Callie Russell Porter on May 15, she was the fourth of Harrison and Mary Alice Porter’s five children. In March 1892 her mother died two months after the birth of her last child, and Porter’s father moved the family from the central-Texas settlement of Indian Creek to his mother’s home in Kyle, south of Austin. Porter’s time with her grandmother, Catherine Anne Porter, became one of the most meaningful of her life, and in early adulthood, Porter adopted her name as a signifier of this
time.

  Upon the death of her grandmother, the family was left emotionally broken with uncertain finances, hardships that recurred in Porter’s adult life. In 1903 her father moved the family to San Antonio, where Porter received the last of her formal education at a private girls’ school. Using the training she received there, Porter and her elder sister taught music and drama in Victoria, Texas, the family’s next location.

  On June 20, 1906, at the age of sixteen, Porter married John Henry Koontz, the scion of a prosperous ranching family, and converted to his religion, Roman Catholicism. This was the first of her marriages, and it lasted the longest. But Koontz was often physically abusive, and in June 1915, Porter finally obtained a divorce.

  During the end of her marriage, Porter spent a short time working as an extra at the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company in Chicago, but family matters brought her back to Texas and subsequently to Louisiana, where she briefly supported herself singing on a backwoods lyceum circuit. At the close of 1915, while working in Dallas, Porter was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent the following two years in Texas sanatoriums. Her hospitalizations rekindled her interest in writing, and what had started as a hobby during her first marriage turned into a profession.

  After her recovery, Porter secured a position at the Fort Worth Critic in September 1917 through a friend she had met at a sanatorium, and by September 1918, she had moved to Denver’s Rocky Mountain News. But in October, she fell gravely ill during the flu pandemic of that year. She emerged from the ordeal frail and bald.

  Beginning in the fall of 1919, Porter’s inquisitive nature and thirst for knowledge immersed her in the cultural revolutions of the day in New York and subsequently in Mexico, and gave her a firsthand view of Europe speeding toward the Second World War. After Denver, Porter moved to the center of artistic development in New York City’s Greenwich Village, which enabled her to move away from journalistic writing, hone her creative skill, and publish the first of her books.