Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter Read Free Book Online

am I to get there?”
    David said, “You take the divan and I’ll take the upper.”
    â€œI don’t know how I’ll sleep there, it’s so narrow,” said Herr Glocken, and David, measuring the curve of the monstrous body by the width of the couch, saw painfully what he meant. He looked away from both and said, “Better stay where you are, then—don’t you think?” he said to Denny.
    There was silence while David looked for a glass to hold his toothbrushes.
    Though his ticket called for berth number one, plainly, Denny, with a decency that surprised David, offered the lower berth to Herr Glocken, and Herr Glocken accepted with eager thanks.
    Herr Glocken fell asleep almost at once. He lay on his side, facing the light, knees drawn up to chin, near the edge of the bed to make room for the curved spine. His thin dry hair was rumpled like sunburned corn silk, the great misshapen face closed in deathly melancholy. The toes of his shoes turned up, there were patches in the soles.
    David observed the clutter of small articles belonging to Denny that already took up most of the small shelf above the washbasin. Denny had hastened to wash and comb on coming aboard, and had left as much disorder as if he were at home. “Eats yeast,” said David silently, and disgust was added to his deep sense of wrong. He had been assured by the ticket clerk in Mexico there would be only two passengers to a cabin. “Smokes a pipe, and reads improving literature.” He removed from the couch a fully illustrated clothbound book entitled Recreational Aspects of Sex as Mental Prophylaxis , with a subhead, A Guide to True Happiness in Life . “Jesus,” said David.
    The smell of disinfectant could not down the other fetid smells of unclean human garments, the rancid smell of Herr Glocken’s shoes, the old mildewed smell of the cabin itself. The ship rolled a little as she met the first waves of the sea outside the harbor. David saw his face in the mirror. He looked greenish, he felt qualmy, the floor visibly upended under him and his gorge heaved spontaneously. He rushed for the door, almost falling over Herr Glocken’s duffel bag, and made for the upper deck. Another outrage: he had been promised a cabin on the promenade deck, but he was actually on Deck C, with a porthole instead of a window.
    The warm slow winds were clean and sweet and so moist they blew like soft steam against his face. The deeply slanted late afternoon sun cast long shafts of light into the sea, dark blue in the depths, clear green fluted with white at the surface. David saw Jenny Brown strolling towards him, the first time since they had separated to find their cabins. She had changed from the blue trousers to a white linen dress and white leather sandals, with no stockings; she was walking with a man, a strange man—David had never seen him before—as if he were an old friend. He noted with a pang that the man was good-looking in a detestable sort of way, like a sports jacket or whiskey advertisement, with a typically smug, conceited German face. Where and how had Jenny picked him up in this short time? He stood at the rail and pretended not to see them, then turned casually, he hoped, as they drew near.
    â€œWhy hello—David?” said Jenny absent-mindedly with a vague air of imperfect recognition. “Are you all right?” and they moved by without pausing.
    Her wide light hazel eyes had the look of blind diffused excitement he knew best; she was probably talking already about the most personal things, telling her thoughts such as they were: for even when Jenny seemed intelligent, or sincere, he still distrusted her female mind, crooked and cloudy by nature: she was no doubt asking questions designed to lead the man to talk about himself, meaning to trap him into small confidences and confessions that later she could use as a weapon against him when needed. Already David felt she was