Chapter 42. A GAME OF PING-PONG
When she opened her eyes next morning, white sunlight was coming in a slant shaft through the porthole. It took her a second or two to remember where she was. The ship was rolling much more than yesterday; she saw through the porthole clear blue sky, then rough purple water rushing by, then blue sky again. The ray of sunlight swung up and down on the wall. She lay on her pillow, blinking at the strong light, thinking of Mike Eden. She passed a lazy few minutes remembering some of the strange things he had said; then it occurred to her to be surprised at having him on her mind, and not Noel. Thinking of Noel Airman when she woke was a chronic ailment of hers, as some people woke with raw throats. It was very agreeable to be free of it even for a day.
She rang for coffee. The steward brought it with a copy of the ship’s newspaper, and told her that the clocks had been moved forward an hour; it was almost lunch time. This gave her an excuse to surrender to laziness for another hour or so. She piled the pillows, and sat up drinking coffee and reading the paper. She yawned through the news stories—Hitler was occupying Czechoslovakia unresisted—and turned to the calendar of ship’s events. There was going to be a ping-pong tournament in the afternoon, a Marx Brothers movie in the evening, and a dance in the main lounge. She decided to wear her best evening dress that night, a fetching black taffeta from Bergdorf, instead of saving it for the captain’s dinner.
She found herself, after a while, a bit dizzy and uneasy from the rolling of the ship. She bathed, clinging with a soapy hand to the rail over the tub, and giggling at the wild back-and-forth slosh of the steaming water. She dressed in a hurry, humming Falling in Love with Love, and went out on deck.
Sunglare smote her eyes, and she put on dark glasses. Marvelling again at the vastness of the ship—the deck receded into the distance, blocks long, the perspective exaggerated by the curving lines of the hull—she fell into the parade of morning marchers, gulping the sweet cool air. She rounded the far end of the port side, and came upon Eden at a ping-pong table, negligently clicking balls back and forth with an intent boy. “Hi, athlete,” she said.
He waved the bat at her. “Hi. Lunch?”
“Love it.”
He seemed very cheerful; he said he had been up since eight, walking the decks. They went to his table in the great ornate dining room; he depressed the steward by setting the long menu aside, and ordering a lettuce and tomato sandwich. When Marjorie asked for bacon and eggs, Eden joked, “I’m more Jewish than you are. You’re the one that’s having bacon.” She laughed and told him how long it had taken her to get used to it. He nodded, his face serious. “It must be a powerful mechanism. It’s a wonder you ever broke it down.”
“Well, it’s not too hard once you realize it’s just an old-fashioned superstition—”
“But you’re wrong there, food disciplines are part of every great religion. Psychologically they’re almost inevitable, and extremely practical. Let me ask you, didn’t you feel more—I don’t know—let’s say at home in the world, warm, safe, good, while you were observing your laws?”
“Well, yes, but I hadn’t really been thrown out in the cold cruel world yet, that’s all. I was leading a pretty sheltered life.”
“Religious discipline is nothing but a permanent psychic shelter. You stay inside it, and you’re less vulnerable to whatever horrors happen in life.”
“But if you don’t believe in it, how can it shelter you?”
“How do you know what you believe? Girls don’t think.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. There come our happy newlyweds.”
Jackie May and his bride were seating themselves at a table near them. The girl had a peevish look, and her makeup was too thick. The comedian, pale and smiling, seemed to be trying hard to amuse her. Eden lit a cigar and began to talk about the Freudian theory of humor. He said it might explain the deliberately childish antics of comedians: the affected high voices, the giggles, the silly faces, and so forth. References to taboo facts were forgivable and comical in children, odious in adults. “A baby’s bare behind is charming and funny,” Eden said. “An adult’s is a shocking offense. The comedian makes himself symbolically a child, and that’s how he gets the jester’s freedom.”
Marjorie, watching Jackie May vainly wagging his eyebrows and cracking jokes to his pouting wife, was struck by this analysis. “I never thought of that, but it’s absolutely true,” she said.
Eden said, “Well, I’m not so sure. The general theory of the comedian would have to be much more complex. Fred Allen, for instance, is over-adult, if anything, and he’s the best of the lot. It’s like the rest of Freud. Marvelous strokes of insight, but when you try to make them general truths you end up with useless dogma.”
“Don’t tell me you’re another Freud-baiter. That’s so commonplace nowadays.”
“I’m not against Freud, I’m anti-Freudian. Freud himself once said that he wasn’t a Freudian, and he sure as hell wasn’t.” The rare gleam of warmth, which Marjorie had seen only once or twice, now came into his eyes. “I spent a year and a half at the institute in Vienna. I knew him.”
“You knew Freud?” She stared at him.
“Well, very slightly. You almost had to, fifteen years ago when I was taking my Ph.D., if you wanted to write anything in the analysis field. I saw him at a couple of seminars. I wrote my thesis on dreams in Dickens’ novels…. What’s so amazing about all this? You look as though you didn’t believe a word of it.”
“I don’t know. It’s like saying you used to hobnob with Darwin, or Copernicus.”
Eden smiled. “He was a genius, all right. But he wasn’t a Darwin or a Copernicus, you’re wrong there. Nobody can really build on him, and that’s what makes the true landmark scientist. He’s got his followers, sure—the way Swedenborg and Henry George have. A sect of enthusiasts. Actually Freud was a great writer, a brilliant polemist, say like Nietzsche or Voltaire. His work will live and shed light forever, like any great philosopher’s, but—”
“The blonde’s looking at you again,” Marjorie said with a tilt of her head. “She makes me self-conscious.”
“I wish she’d fall overboard,” Eden said.
“Don’t be absurd.”
Eden mashed his cigar out violently in an ashtray. “Did you see the paper this morning? Czechoslovakia’s gone. It seems to me that if I were a German it would give me the greatest conceivable pleasure to cut my own throat…. I’m sorry you told me about Hilda. I can feel her eyes crawling on my neck like a spider. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
They went back to the promenade deck for the ping-pong tournament, in which he was enrolled. There were only half a dozen other entries for the men’s cup. “It’ll all be over in an hour or so,” Eden said. “Stick around and cheer for me.” He beat his first opponent easily, playing a steady defensive game. Then he stood by Marjorie and watched the next match, which was won by a young German named Thaler, in a green hound’s-tooth jacket; Marjorie recognized him as the man who had sat in the night club with the blond girl, Hilda. At the last point the German turned to Mike, saluted with his racquet, and bowed. “Mr. Eden, at your service.” He had long straight blond hair and very broad shoulders. Eden stood and took off his coat and tie, and the German grinned. “Not necessary, Mr. Eden. You are my master with ease.”
Eden lost the first game, making wild slams and faulty services, holding himself very straight and raking at the ball in tense sharp strokes. The German, profiting by all his mistakes, coolly and methodically piled up points. Hilda came, halfway through the game, and leaned against the rail beside Marjorie. She applauded all Eden’s good shots, and when he lost the game, she said to Marjorie, “He won the cup on the Champlain. He warms up soon.” Marjorie didn’t answer.
In the second game the German pounded away at Eden’s backhand, the source of most of his wild errors; but Eden’s backhand drive began to stay on the table. It was a very swift flat stroke when it worked, a
nd Thaler had to grin foolishly a couple of times as it streaked past him. Hilda called, “That’s like on the Champlain, Mike.” It pleased Marjorie to observe that the German girl’s ankles were quite stubby; the walking shoes she wore made them look worse.
Hilda said to Marjorie, “He does well, hm? Dance, talk, play ping-pong—All-American boy, no? You’re old friends?”
Marjorie nodded slightly. She felt awkward and stiff, and quite unable to talk to the German girl.
“So he tells me. Nice to meet an old friend on the boat. You’re lucky. He is a sympathetic person. Very cultured. Oh, we had fun on the Champlain—”
Marjorie felt a tiny stab of pain in her temple; a ping-pong ball bounced off her face. “Sorry, Margie,” Eden called. “I wasn’t trying to blind you.”
Hilda laughed. “Steady down, Mike, you lose the cup.”
Eden won a run of points with swift serves. The spectators—there were twenty or so, crowded around on the deck near the table—applauded. The German held up his racquet, smiling at Mike. “You make it warm for me.” He took off the loud green jacket and opened his tie; the onlookers laughed, and Eden smiled coldly.
The blond girl said, “Ach, he’s charming. To me he is like a typical Englishman. I lived in London three years. If I would see him in Piccadilly I would never guess he was American, let alone Jewish, you know?—Good shot, Mike.”
The word made all the nerves in Marjorie’s body contract. She calculated a slight pause, and then said, “I beg your pardon?”
“Hm?” said the blond girl.
“Did you say Mike Eden was Jewish?”
The blond girl’s smile was affable. “You’re an old friend of his, surely you know that? Please don’t think because I’m German I care. We’re not all exactly like that.”
Marjorie had a strange and utterly irresistible impulse. She said, shaking her head, “Well, I’m just wondering how you got that impression. I happen to know he isn’t. We lived in the same neighborhood years ago. I lived across the street from the church his family went to.”
“To church? His family went to church, you say?” There was a burst of applause which the two girls ignored. They were looking each other straight in the face. The ping-pong ball clicked and clicked. The blonde’s eyes wavered. “Aren’t you mistaken?”
Marjorie shook her head.
The blonde glanced at Eden and then at Marjorie. “I feel very ridiculous. He never said so, I just assumed it—you see, he was so terribly sympathetic. My father had a very bad time with the Nazis, and—Oh, I make a damn fool of myself sometimes…. Ach, look at that shot!” Eden had lured Thaler to one side of the table and slammed the ball in the other corner. Everybody clapped, and the German rapped the table with his racquet. “Gut, gut.” He was smiling at Eden; his eyes were reddened and determined. He won the second game by a closer score. Eden won the third game.
The contest was best three out of five. Both men were perspiring through their shirts in dark splotches. Eden’s face was dead gray, his scar purple-red. The spectators were not applauding any more, but watching in a hush. The eighth point of the next game was a fierce volley lasting a couple of minutes, and Eden won it at last with a crashing backhand shot. The German began making errors after that. Eden switched to a soft style, brought the German in far on one side, then sent a teasing spin clear to the opposite side of the table. Thaler ran for it, tripped on a table leg, and fell on his face. A burst of scattered uneasy laughter did not lighten the tension. Thaler got up laughing too, his face dark red. Eden won the game, playing with murderous vigor.
The last game was a rout. The German stopped trying, popped up the ball, and made jokes about Eden’s prowess. Eden unsmilingly crashed ball after ball past him. The German said, when the score was 17—3, “I think I concede to Mister Babe Ruth.” Eden shook his head and served the ball whizzing past Thaler, who made a mere comic motion with his racquet.
When it was over there was no applause. The German put on his coat, nodded and smiled at Eden, and walked out. Eden played the final round with the thirteen-year-old boy who had volleyed with him in the morning. All the sting went out of his game; the boy was an excellent player, and beat him in straight sets. Hilda left halfway through the match, as did most of the spectators.
Marjorie took Eden’s arm as they walked down the deck. His shirt was soaked and he was trembling. “You’d better have a shower.”
Eden nodded. She walked to his stateroom with him. He said nothing all the way. When they were inside he threw his coat across the room and sank in an armchair. “I want to puke at myself. The Nazis conquered, America triumphant, civilization saved. On the ping-pong table.”
“Don’t get so wrought up, for God’s sake,” Marjorie said. “You’re warped on the subject—”
“I’m not warped on the subject at all. I’m insane on it,” Eden said, jerking a cigar out of a drawer and slamming the drawer. He lit the cigar with shaking fingers.
Marjorie told him about the conversation with the blond girl. His face drawn, he stared at her, smoking, not moving. “Whatever possessed you,” he said, “to tell such a ridiculous lie?”
“I really can’t imagine,” Marjorie said. “I just couldn’t help myself. Somehow I wanted to confuse her as much as possible. She was obviously pumping me—”
“Well, that doesn’t mean anything, it’s a characteristic of theirs. They’ll ask you about anything, including your bowel condition—”
“I’m sorry, if I did anything wrong. It certainly was a silly lie.”
He got out of his chair and came toward her. She didn’t know what he was going to do. He bent and kissed her mouth lightly. He smelled of sweat. “You didn’t do badly at all.” He went to a shelf, took down a bottle of white capsules, poured water from a jug and swallowed two capsules. “One of the privileges of being in the chemical business,” he said, replacing the bottle. “Drugs are part of the game. All the happiness pills you can use. Let me know if you get nervous or depressed about anything. I am Old Doctor Happiness.” He started to take off his shirt. “Don’t worry about Hilda. Put her out of your mind.”
“What’s it all about, Mike?”
“Why, nothing at all. She’s just a snoopy Teuton, and there are some eighty million of them, I regret to say. Run along. I’m going to take my shower and sleep. I didn’t sleep much last night. See you at dinner.”
Marjorie’s first inkling that the ship was running into a storm came at dinnertime, when, with a sort of universal groaning creak, the immense restaurant slanted far sidewise, generating a din of sliding and clattering dishes, and much shrieking and laughing among the startled passengers. All the soup ran neatly out of her plate under her spoon, making a wide brown stain on the cloth, and she clutched at the arm of her chair, feeling on the verge of toppling out of it. “Heavens, what’s all this?”
“It’s going to get worse,” Eden said. “The weather report isn’t good. Let me know if it bothers you. I have pills.”
Marjorie said, “I feel fine. Hungry as a bear, in fact. Natural-born sailor, I guess. I’ll just order things that don’t spill.” And she did in fact eat a hearty dinner, while the salon swayed and tumbled and careened with slow long groans, and many passengers hurriedly left.
Afterward they went to the movie together. Marjorie found the Marx Brothers amusing for a while despite the queer heaving and dropping of the seat under her. But all at once she began wishing she had not eaten quite so much. She was very aware of her meal, heavy under her tight waist, and it was dizzying to keep her eyes on the screen. The seat seemed to be gyrating like a Coney Island ride. Reluctantly, after trying to fight the weakness off, she laid a hand on Eden’s arm and whispered, “I guess maybe I’ll try your pills.”
They went staggering and laughing down the passageway. “Doesn’t it bother you?” she said.
“I’ve had a pill. I’m the world’s champion pill consumer. I believe in them. A man should believe in his own products.”
&nb
sp; He picked a bottle out of several which were rattling on a barred shelf in his room, and shook a red capsule into his hand. “Here. Take some water.”
“How do you keep them all straight? You must be a drug fiend.” She swallowed the capsule and stared at him. “How long will it take?”
“Just give the gelatin a chance to dissolve. That’s the quickest stuff there is. German, I regret to say. We’ve got nothing to touch it.”
“What do I do till it starts working, Mike? I’m an unhappy girl.”
“Well, are you game to go out on deck? We’ll get in the lee somewhere. There’s nothing like cold air.”
She hurried to her stateroom and put her camel’s hair coat over the black taffeta. They went up extremely unsteady stairs, and stepped through a door into a wet icy night, full of horrid noise.
Strangely, in the spot where they stood the air was fairly calm, yet around and above them the wind whistled and shrieked, tumbling thick black smoke like a stream of waste ink down from the funnels into the gray-black sea. The waves were crashing and thundering, throwing immense phosphorescent green crests as high as the deck on which they stood; higher, when the ship rolled toward the water. Black sheets of rain waved along the deck, only a foot or two beyond their shelter, spattering and hissing, but only a few stray drops struck their faces.
“Lively, isn’t it?” He held her close, one arm around her shoulders, the other hanging to a metal bracket on the doorway.
“It’s terrific! Is it a hurricane?”
“Don’t be silly. It’s a rainstorm, that’s all, and not much of one. This big tub doesn’t even know we’re having bad weather.”
“I know it. My God, Mike, look how we’re rolling! You’d swear we were going down.”
“They won’t even call off the dance for this.”
“Well, I’m not going to dance, that’s for sure. I can hardly stand up.” They stood swaying together for a few minutes, listening to the howls and whines of the wind, and the insane crashing of the sea. “Good God, it’s so eerie, Mike, isn’t it? You come out of the Waldorf-Astoria, and suddenly the whole world is black and tossing and going to hell all around you. I wonder how it was when the Titanic went down!” She spoke in a high strained voice over the storm.