Dr. Schumann said easily that yes, he had heard something of the sort two or three days ago, but from a source he considered very unreliable; his tone seemed to say, “The ladies, God bless them, of course, but don’t listen to them.” He did not even have to restrain himself from saying he was not in the least concerned whether Freytag was a Jew or not, and that he thought the whole question beneath contempt. He regarded the unbridled expression of opinion on all topics and at all times as mere self-indulgence, if not actually the mark of a mischievous nature. Also Dr. Schumann had been all over this rather dreary subject many times before with too many persons long before he had come on this ship, and he was a little tired of it; he no longer felt able to fight with those strange senseless states of mind, as shapeless and uncapturable and real as smoke.
The Captain understood the Doctor’s detachment as his professional unwillingness to take sides: after all, everybody on board was his potential patient, he could not choose any on personal grounds. Yet tactfully as he could, he hinted to the Doctor that in his special situation he must learn a great deal about all sorts of persons. “Priests, lawyers, doctors,” he said, cordially, “how many secrets must be unloaded on you! I don’t envy you, really,” and the hint was rather broad that the Doctor would find a way to pass on to the Captain any scandals, queernesses, indecorums which might need to be corrected. The Doctor did not pretend to misunderstand: he simply ignored the suggestion, amiably refused a second cup of coffee, shifted the topic almost imperceptibly, and very soon took his leave. The Captain, newly flushed, uneasy, irritable, resolved that no later than tomorrow he would proceed to settle this dubious and unbecoming state of affairs, whatever it was. The Doctor had left with him an uncomfortable impression that he, the Captain, was listening to women’s gossip. Well, this was a question to be settled strictly between men, and the first thing to be done was to get the women out of it, and keep them out. The unsavory fact remained that women had started the whole thing: that American Mrs. Treadwell had told Fräulein Lizzi Spöckenkieker some confidence she had got from Herr Freytag, and Lizzi had told Herr Rieber, who had passed it about freely until it had come to the ears of the Captain, who now, as a matter of social duty and his own dignity, must at once take steps. He shook his head as if in a swarm of gnats, and decided to dine alone that evening.
Freytag was a few minutes late to the dinner table. Everybody was present except the Captain; Dr. Schumann conveyed the Captain’s regrets to his guests for his unavoidable absence, which were received in form. Freytag slipped into his chair with a smiling nod of greeting all around, which was returned not so smilingly—or was it his own state of nervous exasperation which caused him to imagine all these rather dull strangers were looking at him with a kind of furtive curiosity, except Dr. Schumann, whose air of benevolent detachment was beginning to annoy Freytag somewhat, as being a little patronizing; and Frau Hutten, who gazed in her plate, as usual.
The steward presented him with the appetizer, Westphalian ham folded delicately beside a slice of melon. He shook his head, and the steward asked, “What would you like instead, sir? Smoked salmon? Herring in sour cream?”
“Either will do nicely,” said Freytag. “The herring.”
Herr Professor Hutten, observing Herr Freytag’s lack of conformity in choice of food, as usual, remarked almost absent-mindedly, as if his thoughts had taken off from some very distant point of origin: “The condition of Jewishness offers to the Western, more especially the Christian, mind an endless study in spiritual and moral contradictions, together with a mysterious and powerful emotional and psychological cohesiveness. Nothing can equal the solidarity of the Jew when attacked from the outside, by the heathen, as they say; nothing can exceed the bitterness of their rivalries in every field among themselves. I have asked many in all scholarly seriousness and philosophical detachment, ‘Tell me, please—what is a Jew?’ and not one of them has been able to give me an answer. They call themselves a race, yet that is absurd. They are just a tiny fragment of a branch of the white race, like ourselves!”
“Oh, not Nordic!” squealed Lizzi, “not that! Since when?”
“Are they Hamitic then?” answered the Professor, turning upon her witheringly.” “Mongolic? Or Ethiopic?”
“They are everything, utter mongrels to the last degree, from every dregs of every race and nation!” said Herr Rieber, suddenly losing his merry temper and turning quite scarlet. “And so they were from the beginning of time …”
“In that sense,” said Wilhelm Freytag, putting down his fork, “we are all mongrels by now, I expect …”
“Oh, speak for yourself, dear Herr Freytag,” said Frau Rittersdorf, and she leaned forward to smile at him with her teeth closed. “But I am astounded. How can you, a German of the purest type, blond, tall, gray-eyed—”
“… and I ask them, ‘What is a Jew?’ and I ask them, ‘Are you a nation?’—No.—A race?—No.—Are you then only a religion?—No.—Do you practice your religion, do you observe dietary laws? No.” Herr Professor Hutten raised his voice and chanted, silencing Frau Rittersdorf and forging on determinedly to his little joke, which he would not be denied. “So then, I ask them—and I would have you remember that I choose only those who could easily have been mistaken for pure Germans, anywhere—I ask them, ‘On what grounds then do you call yourself a Jew?’ And without a single exception, every one of them said with perfect obstinacy, ‘Still, in spite of all, I am a Jew!’—So then, I say to them, ‘Ah, so! it is clear that Jewishness is a state of mind!’” He beamed under the approving smiles of his hearers.
“It is their claim of Chosenness that annoys me,” said Frau Rittersdorf. “It makes God look so stupid, don’t you think?”
There was a shocked silence, as if no one dared to deal with this mixture of good sense and something too near blasphemy for comfort. Frau Rittersdorf instantly perceived her mistake and tried to right it. “I only mean,” she began, “I—I—”
Herr Professor Hutten rushed to her rescue kindly. “That mistaken idea, born of tribal vanity, is of such an extreme antiquity I think we may safely say it was a most primitive kind of god who chose that peculiar people. Or rather, let us say more precisely that they chose him—not an ignoble concept at the time,” he added, generously, “when we consider the nature of certain other gods equally ancient. By comparison at least, on the whole Old Jahweh does not come out so badly.”
“You are right!” cried Herr Rieber, swallowing and wiping his mouth. “It was Jahweh who chose the Jews, and he can have them—”
“Imagine a handful of people, a few little millions among nearly two billion others, having such impudence!” cried Lizzi. “I think it is that makes me most furious. Besides their manners, their tricks, their—”
“The divinely inspired truth of a God of Justice, Mercy, and Grace, the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the great truth which Christianity brought to the world,” began Herr Professor Hutten, by now faintly discouraged, “proves …”
Frau Rittersdorf, while conscious of the social inferiority of Herr Rieber, yet in justice, swallowing her prejudice, agreed with him. “You are right, Herr Rieber,” she said, with condescension. “It is only their god who chose them, we must remember. We are under no obligation to emulate his poor taste …”
“I am not interested in the religious question,” said Herr Rieber, who never dreamed that Frau Rittersdorf was condescending, “I am anxious only that the German nation, the bloodstream of our race, shall be cleansed of their poison.”
“But you are a real anti-Semite!” cried little Frau Schmitt, suddenly, as if frightened. “I don’t know any Jews, but I don’t dislike them—”
“I am not an anti-Semite at all,” said Herr Rieber, contentiously. “How can you say that? I am very fond of the Arabs, I lived among them once and found them very good people …”
Frau Rittersdorf turned her smile upon Dr. Schumann. “You have said nothing, dear Doctor! What do you think about Jews?
”
Dr. Schumann said mildly and precisely, “I have nothing to say against them. I believe that we worship the same God.”
“But Doctor,” said Lizzi, leaning forward and waving her head, “you are a Catholic, are you not? Do not Catholics worship the Virgin Mary first, and then God?”
“No,” said Dr. Schumann, crossing his knife and fork in the form of an x, laying down his napkin carefully, and rising without emphasis. “Allow me to be excused, if you please,” he said, and left them.
“He is subject to heart attacks,” said Frau Hutten to her husband. “Do you suppose we should send to inquire after him?”
“He is a doctor,” said the Herr Professor, “he does not need our attentions or advice.”
“Schumann,” said Rieber, pouting his underlip, “is that not a Jewish name?”
“There is no such thing as a Jewish name in the German,” said Herr Professor Hutten, who seemed a little on edge and spoke rather abruptly, for him. He observed that Herr Freytag had sat in stiff silence throughout the talk, now and then moving a morsel on his plate from one point to another with his fork, but not eating; and his face was so fixed and pale one might suspect oncoming seasickness. “There are only German names adopted by Jews in medieval times and later, when they decided to drop their ancient style—Isaac ben Abraham, let’s say—a good old custom, and a pity they abandoned it; and these by lineal descent have become associated with Jewish families. Schumann is one of them, and Freytag, may I venture, is another. Is that not so, Herr Freytag?” He spoke directly across the table, unexpectedly, and Freytag raised cold gray furious eyes. “Have you never been troubled by discovering Jewish branches of your old German family name?”
“I do not know any Jews named Freytag,” he said, and the tremor of his rage got into his voice, “that is, except one—my wife,” he said, and he raised his voice and steadied it. “She is Jewish and her name is Freytag, and she does it honor.”
The instant he heard the words pronounced he knew he had let himself be trapped again into temper, into melodrama, into a situation as false as it was unnecessary. His mother-in-law had spotted this weakness in him. A little mockingly she advised him: “Remember the rules! Never tell your family business. Never say what you are expected to say. Answer one question with another.” She said it with laughter, but he noticed that she practiced it seriously. He had felt again and again that he was living between two armed and irreconcilable camps, deserter from one side, intruder in the other, the turncoat nobody trusted. How often, when he had found himself alone among Jews, after he married Mary, they had attacked him, from all sides at once, some of them with open contempt, or a genuine personal dislike; others told Jewish jokes against the Goyim, and they used in his hearing the disrespectful names for Christians they used in their private talk. And now his own side—he turned his eyes slowly along the faces at the table, and there was not one he did not find detestable—his own side, for these were his people, were getting another chance at him; they would never let up on a German who had degraded himself so. He decided he had had enough; with his hands against the edge of the table he pushed back his chair.
Lizzi cried out in shrill excitement, so that he stopped on the point of standing up. “Oh, Herr Freytag, how strange! We some of us thought you were the Jew—how could we have been so blind?—and only a few evenings ago, I was talking to that odd American woman who shares my cabin—you know her? Mrs. Treadwell? and she told me something I simply did not believe—that no, it was your wife—just as you say!”
“Mrs. Treadwell?” repeated Freytag, shocked. “She said that?”
“Of course, am I not saying so? But—please don’t misunderstand me—she was a little—you know, she drinks—sometimes she is very vague …” She looked for understanding in the faces now all pointed towards her with exact attention. Nothing however disreputable they could hear about the Americans on board could surprise them. Lizzi ended: “Well, more than once, a whole bottle of wine, by herself, after dinner!”
Freytag got up decisively at this point, favored his circle of compatriots with a nasty smile, and spoke like an actor giving the curtain line: “Well, I leave Mrs. Treadwell to your tender mercies!” and did not wait for an answer. And may they pull you into pieces, he wished hotly, noticing her seated alone at her small table, eyelids lowered, the living image of innocence, eating ice cream. He was struck with a wish to have a table to himself. He would speak to the head steward about it tomorrow. He could not stick that crowd at the Captain’s table much longer. One more round of remarks about the Jews and he would slap their faces, once each. Yes, even Dr. Schumann, old hypocrite, who had got out without committing himself. And instantly upon this blaze of fury came a chill straight from the grave—he was going even now to Mary’s relatives, those of them who would still call on Mary’s mother, or come for dinner: to listen to jokes about the Goyim, jokes that had burnt acid-holes in his memory, and in his feelings for all of them. He leaned on the rail and gazed into the darkening water, by now no longer the pleasant novelty it had been. “Can I be thinking of suicide?” he asked himself after a short interval of rigid blankness; for all the time when he believed his mind was empty, he had seen himself going smoothly as a professional diver head-first in the depths, sinking slowly and slowly to the very ocean floor, and lying there flat, for good and all, eyes wide open, in perfect ease and contentment. He pulled up with a shudder, blinked several times, and began to walk. The image had been so clear it unnerved him almost. But no, nothing to worry about. That easy way out was not for him. His way was clear—the road ran all the way in, and through, and out again on the other side; all he had to do was to keep going, and not lose his head, and not let Jew or Christian bedevil him into losing his temper and playing into their hands. In the meantime, he’d like just a word with that Mrs. Treadwell; but no hurry.
The Captain left his second cup of dinner coffee and went out to grant, on the bridge deck, not in his private quarters, a curt interview to Fräulein Lizzi Spökenkieker, who embodied to the last trait and feature everything the Captain found most positively repellent in womankind; and to her besotted admirer Herr Rieber, who must surely be lacking in some indispensable male faculty, such as taste or judgment where women were concerned. They had requested to see him in writing, which gave an urgency no doubt spurious to their occasion. What business could they have with him that would not wait until lunch tomorrow, if not even to the judgment day? He suppressed a belch and eyed them sternly, meaning to warn them even at this late moment that he was not to be disturbed frivolously.
Both of his visitors were breathless at their own daring, the honor being done them, and the importance of their errand. Their message was simple but cogent. Not only the Captain’s own guests, but many other German passengers, had almost from the first their suspicions that there was one person at the Captain’s table who had no right to be there. Perhaps not a Jew himself—though they had no proof that he wasn’t except his own word—but he was known—indeed, he declared it at table before everybody—that he had Jewish connections of a most intimate nature—in fact a wife! Oh how Fräulein Lizzi and Herr Rieber regretted to cause unpleasantness of any kind, but they were so certain the Captain should know, would indeed wish to know of such an unheard-of mischance at his table. They understood well that such details properly belonged to his subordinates, and yet—yet—
The Captain, instantly sensitive to the faintest implication that a subordinate of his should dare to be remiss in duty however slight—indeed, there was no such thing as a slight duty on his ship—now bridled haughtily and said, “Of course, I am very grateful to you for your thoughtfulness. I agree it is a most unusual occurrence.” Lizzi added impulsively, stretching her long neck at him and cackling in her highest voice, that the dear Captain had done so much for all of them and they could do so little for him, it was a divine pleasure to be of even the smallest service to him. The Captain, whose irritations invariably translated and expresse
d themselves in a knife-edged grinding and growling of his bowels, now began to feel his familiar distress. With many more thanks and compliments, even taking three steps forward with them to speed them on their way in the right direction, he dismissed them—they had been standing all the time on the well-lighted bridge deck under a starry sky—and burning, went to look for his bismuth. Changing his mind, he gulped down the last of the coffee and swallowed a drink of schnapps. This eased him at least for the moment, and with no period for reflection, he did not need it, he set in motion at once a train of events that would shortly result in a slight but significant rearrangement of the seating order in the dining room.
This done, the Captain’s mind turned to relatively happier topics. La Condesa—ah, the right thought occurred at once. He would send her a little present of wine, an attention no lady could find fault with. She reminded him of his university days—he had hung around stage entrances and yearned after strange idols, great wax dolls so painted, laced, covered and disguised in the hieratic dress of their calling, he had offered his modest flowers and wine, his shy boyish itch of sex, his dirty little dreams without ever daring to get within arm’s reach. He had never been able to imagine one of them undressed, and he had never even once confused any of them with any living women he had known. Yet he loved his dream of them, and La Condesa somehow brought it all back. The Doctor was right, though—it would not do to be too lenient with her. She must be kept in order, perhaps reminded from time to time that she was his, the Captain’s, prisoner. He sent her two bottles of well-chilled sparkling white wine, with a gallant little note: “Dear Madame: We Germans no longer use the word ‘champagne’ nor indeed, drink that rather pretentious wine any longer. So I am happy to say this modest offering is not French, but only good Schaumwein from an honest German vineyard, sent to you by one who wishes you well in the cordial hope that it may bring you an evening’s refreshment and enjoyment. In the meantime, please do me the great favor to obey your doctor’s orders and keep to your stateroom for so long as he thinks necessary for the good of your health.” And he was, so to speak, entirely at her service.