“Stop that,” she said, bitterly, snatching away from him.
Ric and Rac fell back into the boat, all tangled up giggling in the darkness. “Give me my peso,” said Rac fiercely, clutching Ric in the ribs and digging her nails in. “Give me my peso or I’ll tear your eyes out.”
“Take it,” said Ric, in the same tone, clenching his fist over the money. “Go on, take it, just try!”
Locked in what seemed to be a death grapple, they rolled to the bottom of the boat and fought furiously, knees in ribs, claws in hair; the pain they inflicted on each other had a strong undertow of pleasure. Little by little they fell quiet and then began to giggle again. A young officer passing stopped to listen, his face very thoughtful. Stepping forward, he snatched back the canvas, and whatever he saw there appeared to turn him to stone for a second. Then, throwing himself over the side and bending down nearly head first, he seized them and dragged them both over the side of the boat. They were as light as if their bones were hollow, and they came out limp and dangling as broken dolls.
La Condesa and Dr. Schumann remained at ease in their long chairs, watching the ship’s lights dance in the darkened sea, and the Doctor was saying: “One has no new weaknesses, no new strengths, but only developments, accentuations, diminishments, or perversions of original potentialities. These may at times be so abrupt and powerful they give the illusion of radical change, but it is only illusion, I am afraid. As one grows older, one is more conscious of the shifting, unstable elements in one’s temperament. One attempts to keep accounts, to assume control, you might say. One realizes at last, simply and perhaps with some dismay, that what one was told in childhood is after all true—one is immortal certainly, but not in this flesh. One …” He paused.
“One, one—one,” said La Condesa lightly. “Who is this One you are always talking about? Let’s talk about us—you and me, precisely.”
“Myself, I have a very ordinary weakness of the heart; so I ship as doctor for a voyage or two, following the prescription I have so often given others, hoping for a little repose, imagine. Now if only I can live long enough once more to see my wife chasing the chickens out of our country kitchen with a broom, and scolding steadily, I shall ask no more of this world. How much that dear woman has scolded me, and everybody and everything, all her married life, at least, with such good reasons always, and for everybody’s good, for truly she is nearly always right—and what has it come to?”
“Well,” said La Condesa gaily, “for you at least, it has come to an end for a little while.”
Dr. Schumann chose to smile only a little at this and looked away over the rail to the waters. “Imagine me, a doctor, after all these years in quiet Heidelberg thinking I should find repose from the world on a ship. I am astonished at myself for thinking, now maybe I shall learn something new about myself or the people I live with; but no such thing. I have seen all this before, over and over, only never until now did I see it on a ship. These people I have seen them all before, only in other places, under different names. I know their diseases almost by looking at them, and if you know what sickness is in a man you very often can tell what form his vices and his virtues have taken.”
“Now talk about me,” said La Condesa, clasping her long hands lightly about her knee and bending forward from the leg rest of her chair.
There appeared at the upper end of the deck an unusual group in a state of violent action. A young officer with his cap knocked crooked was struggling with those dreadful Spanish twins. Yet in spite of all, the officer continued to advance firmly and managed a kind of ragged progress toward Dr. Schumann and La Condesa, hauling his captives, who were trying to bite his hands.
“More mischief,” said Dr. Schumann, his serenity fading away. “I have yet to see those children in a situation where they are not making trouble for somebody.” He called out to the young officer, “What is happening?”
The young officer blushed at the question. He planted himself before the Doctor and renewed his grip on Ric and Rac, who suddenly gave up struggling and stood stock-still, sullen eyes gazing at nothing. The young officer began: “Sir, these children, these unspeakable—”
Ric and Rac made a concerted bolt for freedom in opposite directions so that his arms flew wide but he did not lose hold of them. His blush deepened until his ears seemed about to burst into flames. He turned his head from side to side, mouth opening and closing in silence, appealing to them both wordlessly that in the presence of a lady he could not continue.
“I am a mother,” said La Condesa encouragingly, giving him a most unmaternal smile; her bright red mouth rounded and softened, her eyebrows went up. “I can guess the very worst and truly I must say I do not find it so bad. What do you think, Doctor?”
“I agree that no matter what they did, they are little monsters,” said Dr. Schumann, bending his head to observe them without hope, “and entirely outside any usual mode of discipline.”
“They were in a lifeboat,” said the young officer, stuttering slightly. “They had unfastened the edge of the canvas top and had crawled in—”
“And were amusing themselves?” asked La Condesa. “Well, il faut passer la jeunesse … infancy is a great bore, I find, one’s own first, and then other peoples’… my poor children were not in the least monstrous, on the contrary almost disconcertingly normal—but they were quite simply bores until they were eighteen years old. Then they became charming young men to whom one could talk. I do not know how this miracle occurs. And so,” she added, “we must wait and have patience with such phenomena as these,” and she smiled enchantingly at the children, who stared back with utter malignance.
“Nothing of the sort will happen with these,” said Dr. Schumann. “Their evil is in the egg of their souls.” And then to the young officer: “Can’t you just hand them over to their parents?”
“Their parents, my God!” said the young officer, in a spurt of contempt and despair. “Have you not seen them, sir?”
“Then,” said La Condesa, “I see nothing for it but to let them go—or,” and she looked tenderly into the burning eyes of the two little criminals, “perhaps we should save time and trouble for everybody if we threw them overboard?”
“Yes, Madame, a good idea,” said the young officer, grimly, “and a pity it cannot be carried out.”
“Oh, you take everything too seriously,” she said. “They’re only children.”
“Devil-possessed, though,” said Dr. Schumann. La Condesa studied his friendly benevolent face now overcast with an almost military severity. “What an old-fashioned sort of man you are,” she said, admiringly.
The Doctor’s eyelids flinched once. “Yes, I know—a little dull, no doubt.”
“But charming!” she said, and reached for his hand.
The young officer, whose moral sense was in a particularly tender, inflamed state, was almost as shocked by this gesture as he had been by the sight of Ric and Rac in the boat. So all the rumors he had heard about La Condesa were true! He saw himself abandoned to his dilemma with Ric and Rac—very well, they were no worse than their elders. Let them do as they pleased. He loosed them as if he were throwing off vipers; they broke instantly into their long, shambling run up the deck. He then bowed with a courtesy as false as he dared to show to La Condesa and the Doctor, straightened his cap and moved on.
La Condesa glanced after him and laughed, in a fresh, joyous tone, her eyes glistening. “Poor, nice young man,” she said, “he’s still too young—too young to remember his own childhood. Dear Doctor, I have never understood the dogma of Original Sin. Children are only perfectly natural little animals before they are brought under the whip—why be shocked at them?”
“There is nothing discoverable of good in these,” said the Doctor. “Never these. Why deceive ourselves with hope? They will come to no good end.”
“They are not in such a good state now,” said La Condesa. She leaned back and drew a long breath. “What kind of childhood had you?”
“An innocent one,” said Dr. Schumann, in perfect good temper again, “or so I like to think.”
“Ah, so you like to think and maybe it is true,” cried La Condesa. “But can’t you remember anything interesting at all? Did nothing gay ever happen to you?”
Dr. Schumann meditated in silence for a few moments, began to smile rather reluctantly, then decided to make a clean breast of it.
“Innocence,” he began, “our highly debatable innocence …”
“So you do have some amusing memories,” said La Condesa, laying her silky hand over his, the blue veins standing up branched like a little tree. “Well, truth—to encourage you—I was never innocent, never. I had not the opportunity, for one thing, surrounded as I was by attractive cousins, boys of the most adventurous temperament, like mine. I had no aptitude for it, above all, never the wish. I could never endure to think that any secret or any pleasure was being kept from me. I surmised without help, everything, very early. From there to experience, it was only a step; from experience to habit a matter of moments. I cannot be sorry for anything except that I did not always make the most of my chances!”
“I was innocent,” said Dr. Schumann, “as a calf; full of hopes and animal spirits, a simple soul without a care, believing everything I was taught, an obedient loving child … I could be kissed into anything,” he said. “But still, it is true that at the age of five I seduced my little girl cousin aged three, and at six I was in turn seduced by a little girl playmate aged nine. In our ignorance, we did preposterous things—not even parodies,” he said. “Both of my playmates were very nice, charming, virtuous girls who turned out well, married happily, and spanked their own children thoroughly for the least thing. Yet I say, the impulses that drove us were grounded in Original Sin, in which I believe as I do the Real Presence.…”
“I believe in neither,” said La Condesa, without emphasis.
“Still you must allow me my beliefs,” said the Doctor, gently. “As for innocence, does anyone know what it is? For I remember guilt and pleasure, always associated, yet never seeming to touch that part of my life and those acts founded on the moral law and which seemed real to me and not a fable, or a mere daydream, and which I do believe were innocent.”
“I shall not try to follow this,” said La Condesa. “Are we not talking for pleasure? Theological discussion fills me with gloom. I had all the joys of sinning as you call it, without guilt,” she said, with a certain complacency. “But you must have been a most charming little person. I should have adored you, even then. Some of my crimes were of a base, unimaginative order, I am sorry to say. When I was four I persuaded my little brother to drink lye-water used for cleaning drains, telling him it was milk. He took a mouthful, spat it out, ran shrieking. He was rescued at once, his mouth scrubbed out; I was punished, beaten black and blue; otherwise nothing came of it. And indeed, I meant no harm—I was only curious to see whether it would kill him. But older people do not understand these things.”
“Ah, childhood,” said Dr. Schumann, “time of the tender bud, the unfolding leaf.” They both laughed pleasantly and sat back in their long chairs.
“Truth is, it was not so bad,” said La Condesa. She lifted the Doctor’s hand and slipped her fingers between his, knitting them together.
“I love you,” she said, gently and unexpectedly. “Not so much you, perhaps, though you are very nice, but I love what you are. I like gravity and seriousness and strong principles in a man. There is nothing more repellent to me than a frivolous, timid, vacillating man, who does not know his own mind and his own heart. And why? Because then he cannot ever know the mind and heart of a woman. Were you ever unfaithful to your wife?”
“Well!” exclaimed Dr. Schumann. “What a question!”
“Oh yes, I know, you have to be surprised and even a little shocked. It is quite proper, you are always right. But think a moment. It is not just curiosity and impertinence in me. Partly that, of course, but there is something more besides, and it is that something more I want you to believe—”
Dr. Schumann untangled his fingers from hers, took her hand in his, and then slipped his fingers to her pulse.
“How does it do?” she asked. “Is it settling down?”
“Very well,” he said, “perhaps better than mine just now. But then I have told you,” he said, and yet could not help mentioning again his unsteady heart. “At any moment,” he told her, and laid her hand down again.
“I think it is enviable to know how you will die,” she said, “and that it will be sudden and not ugly. I wish I knew, because I am afraid of long suffering and disfigurement. I don’t want to leave a hideous body behind me—”
“You are just hopelessly vain,” said Dr. Schumann, and it sounded as if he were praising her. “I know that nothing is more precious than beauty to the one who has it. And it is hard to come into the world in beauty and to go out in ugliness. And it is like any other gift or quality in the least worth having, you must be born with it, you cannot acquire it, and you should treat it as it deserves.”
“But you find me beautiful now?”
“Of course,” said the Doctor. After a short pause he said, “I will answer your question truthfully. I was never unfaithful to my wife.”
“How charming of you,” said La Condesa, sympathetically. “It must have been dull at times.”
Dr. Schumann, who had always viewed himself as the soul of reserve, found himself possessed by a demon of frankness. “It was,” he answered simply, amazed at himself, “but she was faithful to me, and that could have been a little dull for her, too, at times.”
“Were you really so very good because you wished to be, or was it your weak heart?”
“My heart was sound until about two years ago,” said Dr. Schumann with a faint trace of resentment, feeling that his confidence was being abused, and that perhaps he deserved it.
“But you love me just a little, don’t you?”
“No,” said Dr. Schumann, “not at all. Not at all if I know in the least what love is. I know what I should say, I know that is not very gallant, but I am not a man who can afford to say what he does not mean; and would you wish to hear it? There is perhaps not time for that sort of thing.”
La Condesa took his chin between thumb and fingers and kissed him on the forehead twice. Her round mouth left two shiny red smears on his face. Dr. Schumann looked very pleased but quite calm.
“You are delicious,” she told him. “You are exactly right. I love you.” She added, “Let me wipe your dirty face.” She touched her wet tongue to her small lace-bordered handkerchief and scrubbed away the red spots and said, “If anyone saw us now, they would think we were the most devoted married pair.”
“Someone has already seen us,” said Dr. Schumann, “the very one of all people who would enjoy it most.”
They sat in silence, hands folded, heads inclined towards the sea, faces tranquil, as Frau Rittersdorf strolled by alone. “Such divine weather for sitting out,” she informed them in a high clear voice, full of the most intimate sympathy and comprehension. She paused, shivered a little, and wrapped her thin scarf about her bare arms. “Perhaps one should be careful of the night air, especially at sea,” she said, smiling gaily. She bent over and peered into their faces with the most ravenous inquiry. They gazed back calmly. A second’s hesitation and Frau Rittersdorf moved on slowly, tossing back over her shoulder, “After all, rheumatism and arthritis lurk in night air and we’re only young once.”
“What a museum piece,” said La Condesa, also in a high, clear sweet voice, aimed at Frau Rittersdorf’s undulating shoulder blades.
“Oh come now,” said Dr. Schumann mildly, “do leave that sort of thing to her,” and he seemed ruffled and uncomfortable.
La Condesa gave a little saw-edged trill of laughter. Then she fell silent again for a moment, and her face was grieved and weary.
“I loathe women,” she said, in a tone of flat, commonplace sincerity such as the Doctor had never he
ard in her voice. “I hate being one. It is a shameful condition. I cannot be reconciled to it.”
“That is a pity,” said Dr. Schumann, who in his heart knew that he quite agreed with her. But he did his manly duty of reassuring her. “And you are quite wrong. It may be a misfortune to be a woman, so many of you seem to think so, but there is nothing shameful in it—it is a destiny to be faced, like any other. You are,” he told her earnestly, “a more than ordinarily perverse sort of being, and a change of sex would do nothing for you. There are many men of your temperament and of your habits; if you were a man, you would still be a mischief-maker, a taker of drugs, a seducer.”
La Condesa rose lightly as a cloud, opened her arms wide as if to embrace him, leaned over him smiling and exhilarated. “Naturally!” she said with delight, “but think with what freedom, and more opportunity, and no scolding from mossy old souls like you!”
Dr. Schumann rose deliberately and stepped back from her hands that were about to rest on his shoulders. “I am not scolding,” he said, in pure forthright anger, “and you are talking like any foolish woman!”
“And you sound like a husband,” cried La Condesa over his shoulder, for he had turned and was leaving her, “like any foolish man!” and her terrible peals and trills of laughter followed him, blowing like a cold rain down his collar as she ran after him, came abreast, slipped her arm around his elbow, folded her hand in his. “You are adorable and you can’t shake me off,” for Dr. Schumann was trying to reclaim his arm without losing at least the appearance of dignity.
She loosed him then and stepped before him, and he saw that her eyes were wild and inhuman as a monkey’s. “Stop,” she said, her laughter threatening to slide into tears. She held his hands and laid her head on his shoulder lightly for an instant. “Oh, can’t you see? I am tired, I am crazy, I must sleep or die … You must give me a piqûre, a huge one that will make me sleep for days … Oh, don’t leave me, you can’t—you shan’t, I won’t let you go!… Oh, quiet me—put me to sleep!”