Free Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter

with hot appetites. They were all going home, home at last, and in this ship they had in common for the first time the feeling that they had already set foot upon a mystic Fatherland. Restored, fortified, they paused now and again to wipe their teeming mouths, nodding at each other in silence. Dr. Schumann ate with the moderation of an abstemious man who could hardly remember when last he had been really hungry. The guests gave him admiring glances as they ate and drank. The highest kind of German good breeding, they could see, with the dignity of his humane profession adding still more luster; and his fine scar, showing that he had gone to a great university, that he was brave and coolheaded: so great a scar so perfectly placed proved that he had known the meaning of the Mensur , that measure of a true German. If he seemed a little absent, thoughtfully silent, that was his right; it belonged to the importance of his duties as ship’s doctor.
    â€œPig’s knuckles, David darling,” said Jenny Brown, restoring his private particular name to David Scott for the first time in three days. His own mood was not so easy—he reflected that she probably would not become Jenny angel to him for several days more—if ever. How much simple fraying of the nervous system can love survive? How many scenes?
    â€œI’m boning up on German from the water taps and all the little signs about, but nearly all these people speak English or French or both. Do you see that fellow I was walking with? Over there—the Captain’s table. The one with the invincible haircut. I didn’t even know he was German until he told me—”
    â€œWith that face?” asked David.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with his face?”
    â€œIt looks German.”
    â€œDavid darling, shame on you! Well, I wanted to practice my German on him, but after the first sentence he simply couldn’t bear it, and I must say, he speaks better English than I do—awfully English, in fact. I thought maybe he had been brought up in England, but no, he learned it in school in Berlin.… Well, my Swiss girl—did I tell you I’m stuck in the same cabin with that big Swiss girl? She wears a white linen corset cover with tatting around the edges. I’ll bet you never saw one …”
    â€œMy mother used to wear them,” said David.
    â€œDavid! You mean you peeped while your mother was dressing?”
    â€œNo, I used to sit in the middle of the bed and watch her.”
    â€œWell,” said Jenny, “my Swiss girl speaks Spanish and French and English and a kind of dialect she calls Romansh—besides German—and she’s barely eighteen. And she will speak only English to me, though I certainly do as well at Spanish as she does. I don’t see an earthly chance to pick up any language, if this is the way it’s going to be.”
    â€œThese people aren’t typical,” said David, “and neither are we. Just roaming around foreign countries, changing money and language at every border. We do the same. Look at me, even learning Russian—”
    â€œYes, look at you,” said Jenny, admiringly. “But you even learn the grammar, from the book, a thing that would never occur to me. I can’t learn grammar, that’s flat, but then, I don’t feel the need of it.”
    â€œIf you could hear yourself sometimes,” said David, “you’d feel the need. You say some really appalling things, in Spanish I mean.”
    â€œYou look pretty as a picture in that blue shirt, darling,” said Jenny. “I hope that doesn’t appall you. My God, I’m starving! Wasn’t Veracruz deadly this time? What came over that town? I had the tenderest memories of the place and now I hope I never see it again.”
    â€œIt seemed to me as usual,” said David, “heat, cockroaches, Veracruzanos and all.”
    â€œAh no,” said Jenny, “I used to walk