Читать книгу Atlantis - Gerhart Hauptmann - Страница 9

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Since, in Füllenberg's opinion, Frederick von Kammacher was not sufficiently interested in the dancer, Ingigerd Hahlström, he mentioned several other recent Berlin celebrities also on the Roland on their way to the United States. There was Geheimrat Lars, a man well-known in art circles, who often cast the deciding vote in purchases of works of art by the government. He was going to America to visit museums, private and public, and study the art situation in general. There was Professor Toussaint, an eminent sculptor, some of whose monuments had been erected in several German cities, chiefly Berlin, works done in a wishy-washy Bernini style.

"Toussaint," Füllenberg, who seemed to be fairly loaded with Berlin gossip, explained, "needs money. He needs the money that his wife spends and the social season in Berlin swallows up. He and his wife and his wife's maid are all travelling free on his reputation. When he lands in New York, he won't have enough in his pocket even to pay his hotel bill for three days."

Füllenberg pointed out the sculptor, Toussaint. He was lying in a steamer chair, rising and falling in unison with the Roland. As Frederick turned to look at him, he noticed an odd man without arms being led across the deck by his attendant, who grasped him by his collar and carefully dragged him through a small door close by into the smoking-room.

"That man's a vaudeville star," Füllenberg continued with his descriptive catalogue. "He will appear in New York with Webster and Forster."

Some stewards came oscillating across the deck to serve the chilly passengers with bowls of hot bouillon. After Füllenberg had seen to it that his lady was duly served, he deserted her and went with Frederick to the smoking-room. Here, of course, loud talking and tobacco smoke prevailed. The two gentlemen lit their cigars. In one corner of the small room, some men were playing skat, and at several tables, German and English politics were being thrashed out. The main theme of discussion was the rivalry between America and Europe. Wilhelm, the ship's doctor, with whom Frederick had become acquainted at breakfast, came in from his morning inspection of the steerage, and seated himself beside Frederick.

"There are two hundred Russian Jews emigrating to the United States or Canada," he told him, "thirty Polish families, and about the same number of German families from the south, north, and east of Germany. Altogether there are nearly four hundred steerage passengers, among them five babies at the breast and fifty children between the ages of one and fifteen."

Doctor Wilhelm invited Frederick to accompany him the next day on his tour of inspection. He was a man of not more than twenty-six. He had a fair complexion and wore glasses. His manner was somewhat stiff. Ever since he had passed his examinations, two years before, he had been a physician on a vessel. Once he had taken the trip to Japan, once to South America, and several times to the United States. Frederick, of course, immediately thought of his dying friend, George Rasmussen, put his hand in his pocket, and presented his new colleague with Simon Arzt cigarettes.

The cigarettes furnished a starting-point to tell all about George Rasmussen; and when Doctor Wilhelm had learned everything about him, except his name, and then learned his name, too, the world again turned out to be a very small place. Doctor Wilhelm was a friend of George Rasmussen's. They had studied together, one semester in Bonn and one semester in Jena, and had belonged to the same club in Jena. The last few years they had even corresponded. Naturally, the discovery instantly brought the two physicians closer.

The tone in the smoking-room was that of jolly carousals in German Bierstuben. The men let themselves go, talked in loud voices, and gave rein to that coarse humour and noisy gaiety in which time flies for them and which to many of them is a sort of narcotic, giving them rest and ease for a while from the mad chase of existence. Neither Frederick nor Doctor Wilhelm was averse to this tone, which revived old memories of their student days, when they had become accustomed to it. Though to the average student the carousals, now taboo, may be an evil, physically and intellectually, they are the time and place, nevertheless, at which the phoenix of German idealism soars up from tobacco smoke and beer froth to wing its flight to the sun.

Hans Füllenberg soon felt bored in the company of the two physicians who, in fact, had completely forgotten him; and he slipped away, back to his lady.

"When Germans meet," he said to her, "they must scream and drink Brüderschaft until they get tipsy."

Doctor Wilhelm seemed to be proud of the smoking-room.

"The captain," he said, "is very strict about not having the gentlemen disturbed. He has given absolute orders that women under no circumstances, not even if they smoke, are to be permitted here."

The room had two metal doors, one on the starboard and one on the port side. The person entering or leaving had to contend violently with the wind and the motion of the vessel. The stewards had mastered the art perfectly. Shortly before eleven o'clock, Captain von Kessel appeared. It was his custom to visit the room at about this time every day. After giving friendly or curt answers, as the case might be, to the usual questions regarding the weather and the prospects for a good or bad crossing, he seated himself at the same table as the physicians.

"A seaman was lost in you," he said to Frederick.

"I think you must be mistaken," Frederick rejoined. "I have had quite enough of a salt water sousing. I assure you, I am not longing for another."

A few hours before, a pilot-boat from the French coast had brought the latest news, which the captain proceeded to recount in a calm, quiet manner.

"A vessel of the Hamburg-American line, a twin-screw steamer, the Nordmania, running for only a year, had a mishap about six hundred miles out from New York. It turned back and reached Hoboken safely. The sea was comparatively calm, but all of a sudden a waterspout arose close to the ship, and a great mass of water burst over the ladies' saloon, crushing through its roof and the roof of the deck below and hurling a piano down into the very hold."

The other piece of news he told was that Schweninger was in Friedrichsruh with Bismarck and that Bismarck's death was being expected hourly. Though both Doctor Wilhelm and Frederick von Kammacher disapproved of Bismarck's exceptional anti-Socialist law and its consequences, they were filled with hero worship of the man, Doctor Wilhelm the more so, since the home of his childhood stood on the edge of Sachsenwald, scarcely an hour's ride from Friedrichsruh. He was choke-full, of course, of local Bismarck anecdotes and began to reel them off.

"Are you annoyed?" Bismarck asked his barber, when he came in one day with his moustache twirled upward in the new fashion of the race tracks. "A moustache trimmed and twisted like that to me looks as if it were terribly annoyed and for no reason."