‘Everything okay?’ she asked.
There was still some wine in the bottle.
‘Everything okay,’ I said.
Her ashtray was brimming over, her face was tear-stained, I filled our glasses as fairly as possible and apologized for what had gone before. Let bygones be bygones! I’m unbearable when I am overworked, and one is generally overworked.
Our sauterne was lukewarm.
When we clinked glasses, Ivy (who was standing) wished me a happy voyage, a happy life all around. Without a kiss. We drank standing, as at diplomatic receptions. All in all, I thought, we had had good times together, Ivy thought so too, our week-ends out on Fire Island, and our evenings on the roof garden here too.
‘Let bygones be bygones,’ said Ivy also.
She looked charming, but good sense personified, she had a boy’s figure, only her bosom was very female, her hips narrow, as was right in a model.
So we stood and said good-bye.
I kissed her.
She refused to kiss me.
While I held her, wanting nothing but a last kiss, and felt her body, she turned her face away; I kissed her out of defiance, while Ivy smoked and refused to put her cigarette down, I kissed her ear, her taut throat, her temple, her bitter hair.
She stood like a tailor’s dummy.
She not only smoked her cigarette as though it was her last, right down to the filter – in her other hand she held her empty glass.
I don’t know how it happened again.
I believe Ivy wanted me to hate myself and seduced me merely to make me hate myself, and that was her joy, to humiliate me, the only joy I could give her.
There were times when she frightened me.
We sat there just as a few hours earlier.
Ivy wanted to sleep.
When I phoned Dick again – I couldn’t think of any other solution – it was a long time past midnight, Dick was having a party of his own, I told him to come over with the whole gang. You could hear his party over the telephone, a confused uproar of drunken voices. I besought him. But Dick was adamant. Only when Ivy attached herself to the receiver did Dick consent to save me from being alone with Ivy.
I was dog tired.
Ivy combed her hair for the third time.
At last, when I had fallen asleep in the rocking chair, they arrived. Seven or nine men, of whom three were cripples who had to be carried in from the lift. One went on strike when he heard there was a woman present; that was too much for him or foo little. Drunk as he was, he walked down the stairs, cursing, sixteen storeys.
Dick did the introductions:
‘This is a friend of mine…’
I don’t believe he knew the fellow himself, somebody was found to be missing. I explained that one of them had turned back; Dick felt responsible for seeing that none of his friends got lost and counted them on his fingers; after a lot of fuss, it turned out that one of them was still missing.
‘He’s lost,’ said Dick, ‘anyhow…’
Of course I tried to look at everything from the funny side, even when the Indian vase smashed to smithereens – and it wasn’t even mine.
Ivy told me I had no sense of humour.
An hour later I still had no idea who these people were. One of them was supposed to be a famous acrobat. To prove it, he threatened to do a handstand on the balustrade of our sixteenth-floor balcony, which we were able to prevent; in the struggle a whisky bottle fell down over the front of the building – of course he wasn’t an acrobat, they just said so to fool me, I don’t know why. Fortunately the bottle didn’t hit anyone. I went down at once, prepared to find a crowd of people, ambulance, blood, police who would arrest me. But there was nothing of the kind. When I came back into my flat they burst out laughing, saying no whisky bottle had fallen down at all.
I don’t know what the truth was.
When I happened to go to the toilet the door was bolted. I fetched a screwdriver and prised it open. There was a fellow sitting on the floor smoking, who wanted to know what my name was.
It went on like this all night.
‘In your company a man could die,’ I said, ‘a man could die and you wouldn’t even notice, there’s no trace of friendship, a man could die in your company!’ I shouted. ‘What the hell are we talking to each other for at all?’ I shouted. ‘What the hell’s the point of this party,’ I could hear myself shouting, ‘if a man could die without your noticing?’
I was drunk.
It went on like this until morning – I don’t know when they left the flat or how; only Dick still lay there.
By 9.30 a.m. I had to be on board.
I had a headache, I packed and was glad Ivy helped me, I was late, I asked her to make some good coffee, she behaved wonderfully and even came aboard with me. Of course she cried. I didn’t know who Ivy had besides myself, apart from her husband; she had never mentioned her mother and father, I could only recall her curious remark, ‘I’m just a dead-end kid.’ She came from the Bronx, beyond this I really knew nothing about Ivy, to begin with I took her for a dancer, then for a tart, neither was right – I believe Ivy really did work as a model.
We were standing on deck.
Ivy in her humming-bird hat.
Ivy promised to see to everything in connection with the Studebaker. I gave her the keys. I thanked her as the siren blew and the loudspeaker kept telling visitors to leave the ship; I kissed her, because now Ivy really had to go, sirens were reverberating on all sides so that we had to stop our ears. Ivy was the last to cross the gangplank to land.
I waved.
I had to pull myself together, although I was glad when the heavy hawsers were cast off. It was a cloudless day. I was glad everything had gone off all right.
Ivy was also waving.
A good kid, I thought, although I have never understood Ivy; I was standing on the base of a crane as the black tug pulled us out stern first, the sirens blew again, I filmed (with my new telescopic lens) Ivy waving, until you could no longer distinguish faces with the naked eye. I filmed the whole process of leaving port, as long as we could see Manhattan, and then the gulls kept us company.
*
We shouldn’t have buried Joachim in the earth (it often seems to me), we should have cremated him. But that couldn’t be altered now. Marcel was absolutely right: fire is clean, earth is mire after a single storm (as we found out on our return journey), decay filled with seed, as slippery as vaseline, pools in the red of dawn like pools of filthy blood, menstrual blood, pools full of newts, nothing but black heads with jerking tails like a seething mass of spermatozoa, just like that – horrible.
(I want to be cremated!)
On our way back we never stopped at all, except at night, because without a moon it was simply too dark to drive. It was raining. There was a gurgling sound all night long, we left our headlamps on, although we were stationary, and there was a rushing of water like the Flood, the earth steamed in front of our headlamps, the rain was lukewarm and heavy. With no wind. What we could see in the cones of the headlamps was vegetation, motionless, the loops of aerial roots that gleamed in the light from our headlamps like entrails. I was glad not to be alone, although there was really no danger, looking at the situation objectively; the water flowed away. We didn’t get a minute’s sleep. We squatted there without clothes; it was unbearable to have the wet stuff against our bodies. And yet, as I kept telling myself, it was only water, no reason to feel disgusted. Towards morning the rain stopped, suddenly, like a shower being turned off; but the vegetation still dripped, there was no end to the gurgling and dripping. Then the dawn. It hadn’t got any cooler; the morning was hot and steamy, the sun slimy as always, the leaves glistened, and we were wet with sweat and rain and oil, smeary like newborn babies. I was driving; I don’t know how we got our Land Rover across the river; but we did get it across; and we couldn’t understand how we could ever have swum in this lukewarm water with putrid bubbles. The mud sprayed upon either side when we drove
through the pools, those pools in the red of dawn. At one point Marcel said: ‘Tu sais que la mort est femme!’ I looked at him. ‘Et que la terre est femme!’ he said, and I could understand the latter, because that’s what it looked like, just like that, I laughed out loud, involuntarily, as though at a dirty joke…
*
We had only just left port when I saw the girl with the blonde pony-tail for the first time, we had to queue up in the dining-room for our table tickets. I didn’t really care who sat at my table, though I hoped it would be one for men only, no matter what language they spoke. But there was no suggestion of choice! The steward had a plan in front of him, a French bureaucrat, ungracious towards those who didn’t understand French but loquacious when it suited him, infinitely charming as we waited in a long line. In front of me stood a young girl in black jeans, very little shorter than I, English or Scandinavian I guessed, I couldn’t see her face, only her blonde or reddish pony-tail that swung to and fro every time she moved her head. Of course I looked around to see if there was anyone I knew; it might have happened. I really hoped to be put at a table for men only. I only noticed the girl because her pony-tail was dangling in front of my face for at least half an hour. As I have said, I didn’t see her face. I tried to guess what it looked like. To pass the time; as people do crossword puzzles to pass the time. Apart from her there were very few young people. She was wearing (I remember it perfectly) a black roll-necked sweater, existentialist, with a necklace of plain wooden beads, rope-soled shoes, everything pretty cheap. She was smoking, she had a thick book under her arm and a green comb protruded from the back pocket of her jeans. It was simply the waiting that forced me to look at her. She must be very young – the down on her neck, her movements, her little ears which went red when the steward made a joke. She merely shrugged her shoulders; she didn’t mind whether it was first or second service.
She was put in with the first, I with the second.
Meanwhile the last stretch of the American coast, Long Island, had also disappeared; now there was nothing but water all around us. I took my camera down into the cabin, where I saw my fellow-passenger for the first time, a young man as strong as a tree, Lajser Lewin, an agriculturist from Israel. I let him have the lower bunk. When I came into the cabin he was sitting on the upper one, as stated on his ticket; but I think we both felt better when he sat on the lower bunk to unpack his belongings. An avalanche of a man! I shaved, as I hadn’t had a chance to do so in the rush that morning. I plugged in my shaver, the same one as yesterday, and it worked. Mr Lewin had been studying Californian agriculture. I shaved, without talking much.
Afterwards I went up on deck again.
There was nothing to see, water all around, I stood and enjoyed being out of reach – instead of getting hold of a deck-chair.
I didn’t know about that sort of thing yet.
Gulls were following the ship.
I couldn’t imagine how I was to pass five days on this ship, I walked up and down with my hands in my trouser pockets, at one moment pushed by the wind, almost flying along, at another against the wind, laboriously, so that I had to lean forward with my trousers flapping. I wondered where the other passengers got their chairs from. Every chair was marked with a name. When I asked the steward, there weren’t any deck-chairs left.
Sabeth was playing ping-pong.
She played magnificently, tick-tack, tick-tack, the ball simply flew this way and that, it was a joy to watch. I hadn’t played myself for years.
She didn’t recognize me.
I had nodded…
She was playing with a young gentleman. Possibly her boy friend or fiancé. She had changed her clothes and was now wearing an olive-green corduroy frock with a flared skirt, which I thought suited her better than her boyish trousers – assuming it was really the same person!
At all events, the other was nowhere to be found.
In the bar, which I discovered by chance, there wasn’t a soul. In the library there were nothing but novels and elsewhere card tables, which also looked like boredom – outside it was windy, but less boring because at least we were moving.
Really it was only the sun that moved.
Occasionally a cargo boat appeared on the horizon.
At four o’clock tea was served.
Every now and then I stopped by the ping-pong table, surprised every time I saw her from the front, forced to ask myself whether this was really the same person whose face I had tried to guess while we were waiting for our table tickets. I stood by the big window of the promenade deck, smoking and pretending to look out at the sea. Seen from behind, from the reddish pony-tail, it was unquestionably she, but from the front she looked strange. Her eyes were the water-grey that so often goes with red hair. She took off her woolly jacket, because she had lost the game, and rolled up the sleeves of her frock. At one point she almost crashed into me as she ran for the ball. Not a word of apology. The girl didn’t even see me.
I moved on.
On deck it turned cold, and even wet, because of the spray, and the steward folded up the chairs. The waves sounded much louder than before, but I could still hear the ping-pong from the floor below, tick-tack, tick-tack. Then the sun went down. I shivered. On my way to the cabin to fetch my overcoat I had to pass through the promenade deck again – I picked up a ball for her, without making a nuisance of myself, I think, she thanked me briefly in English (in general she spoke German) and soon afterwards the gong went for the first service.
I got through the first afternoon.
When I came back with my overcoat and camera to film the sunset, the two ping-pong bats were lying on the green table…
*
What difference does it make if I prove that I had no idea, that I couldn’t possibly have known? I have destroyed the life of my child and I cannot make restitution. Why draw up a report? I wasn’t in love with the girl with the reddish pony-tail, she attracted my attention, that was all, I couldn’t have suspected she was my own daughter, I didn’t even know I was a father. How does providence come into it? I wasn’t in love, on the contrary, she couldn’t have seemed more of a stranger once we got into conversation, and it was only through an unlikely coincidence that we got into conversation at all, my daughter and I. We might just as well have passed one another by. What has providence to do with it? Everything might have turned out quite differently.
*
On the evening of the first day, after I had filmed the sunset, we played ping-pong, our first and last game. Conversation was hardly possible; I had forgotten that anyone could be so young. I explained my camera to her, but everything I said bored her. Our ping-pong went better on my part than I had expected; I hadn’t played for decades. Only her service was snappier, it spun. She spun the ball whenever she could, but not always successfully; I kept my end up. Ping-pong is a matter of self-confidence, nothing more. I wasn’t as old as the girl thought, and it wasn’t quite so much of a pushover as she had obviously expected; I gradually found out how to deal with her shots. I’m sure I bored her. Her opponent of the afternoon, a young man with a toothbrush moustache, naturally played a much more impressive game. I was soon red in the face from bending down, but the girl also had to take off her woolly jacket, and even roll up the sleeves of her frock, in order to beat me; she threw back her pony-tail impatiently. As soon as her friend with the moustache appeared and stood watching with a smile on his face and his hands in his pockets, I gave up my bat – she thanked me, but didn’t ask me to finish the game; I thanked her, too, and picked up my jacket.
I didn’t run after her.
I got into conversation with all kinds of people, particularly Mr Lewin, by no means only with Sabeth, even with the old spinsters at my table, stenographers from Cleveland who felt it their duty to have seen Europe, or with the American clergyman, a Baptist from Chicago, but a jolly fellow.
I’m not used to doing nothing.
Every night before turning in I strolled around all the decks for a breat
h of air. When I came across her – by chance – arm in arm with her ping-pong friend, she pretended not to notice me; as though I wasn’t under any circumstances to know she was in love.
What business was it of mine?
As I said, I was merely going for a breath of air.
She thought I was jealous.
The following morning, while I was standing alone by the rails, she came over to me and asked where my friend was. I wasn’t interested in whom she took for my friend, the Israeli agriculturist or the Chicago Baptist, she thought I was feeling lonely and wanted to be kind; she stuck at it until she got me chatting – about navigation, radar, the curvature of the earth, electricity, entropy, which she had never heard of. She was anything but stupid. Not many people to whom I have explained the so-called Maxwell’s demon understand as quickly as this young girl, whom I called Sabeth, because Elisabeth seemed to me an impossible name. I liked her, but I didn’t flirt with her in the slightest. I feared I must be talking like a teacher, when I saw her smile. Sabeth knew nothing about cybernetics, and as always when you talk to laymen about it, I had to refute all sorts of childish notions about robots, the human resentment towards the machine, which annoys me because it is so short-sighted, and her hackneyed complaint that man isn’t a machine. I explained what modern cybernetics means by INFORMATION – our actions or impulses as responses to information, automatic responses that are largely independent of the will, reflexes that a machine can carry out just as well as a man, if not better. Sabeth creased her forehead (as she always did on hearing jokes that she didn’t really like) and laughed. I referred her to Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, 1948. Of course I wasn’t referring to the robots depicted in illustrated papers, but to the lightning calculating machine, also known as the electronic brain, because it is controlled by vacuum electron tubes, a machine that far surpasses any human brain. Two million additions or subtractions a minute! It does an infinitesimal calculus in the same time, it converts logarithms faster than you can read off the result, and a sum that would previously have taken a mathematician his whole life to work out is calculated in a matter of hours and calculated more reliably, because the machine cannot forget anything, because it has a greater power than the human brain to grasp information and assess its probability value. Above all, however, the machine has no feelings, it feels no fear and no hope, which only disturb, it had no wishes with regard to the result, it operates according to the pure logic of probability. For this reason I assert that the robot perceives more accurately than man, it knows more about the future, for it calculates it, it neither speculates nor dreams, but is controlled by its own findings (the feedback) and cannot make mistakes; the robot has no need of intuition…