Part 16 (2/2)
”Naturally not, he was a Buddhist. Now be quiet and let me think. Ssh, I need a composer-for G.o.d's sake go away. Why don't you take your game and find somebody on deck to play with-” for in an access of last-minute remorse over her arbitrary dissolution of the ENCHIRIDION, she had bought me a box of checkers and a board.
When I left her she was wavering between Stephen Foster and Wagner.
On the first-cla.s.s deck I dutifully set up the checkerboard in my lap and waited for a partner. A few pa.s.sengers, mostly in military uniform, strolled by, intent on the water or their cigarettes. Nearby a foreign-looking baby just learning to walk came hobbling between its mother's legs, holding her thumbs with its fists and dribbling onto its shoes; it might have been either male or female-its haircut and the s.h.i.+rt over its little pants gave no clue, the one being too short for a girl and the other too long for a boy. ”Volodya. Volodya,” crooned the mother, urging it on with gentle kicks of her knees. ”Okean,” she said, pointing beyond the rail, ”voda.”
In an unoccupied chair next to mine someone had forgotten his sungla.s.ses. I picked them up and looked through the wrong side of the lenses, with the ear-pieces standing out before my face, while the deck-boards turned dark green and the big jellying waves changed to gra.s.s. The black gra.s.s fled my gaze like a long, long field, s.h.i.+mmering and trackless. It was the middle of the night behind those gla.s.ses; I did not like it there, and leaned out to drop them down again upon their seat, but a bristly-knuckled hand reached out to intercept them, and upset the board. The checkers spilled out on my skirt and rolled away. One skittered across the deck and under the railing and into the sea, and one the baby caught on the way and put into its mouth. I had to go after them all, avoiding the legs of the walkers, who were glad enough of the diversion. There was nothing to do on the decks of that homeward-heaving s.h.i.+p but think where it was taking us: so the walkers walked, in the landlubber's illusion that the more they walked the sooner they would arrive. Only my mother, sticking to her cabin and missing Enoch, did not walk. It was as though she rode against the tide.
The baby cried when I opened its jaws to force out the checker; and to win it over I smiled at its mother and said, ”Is it a boy or girl?” The baby bawled louder and wider at the sound of my voice so close to its face, and inadvertently spit out the checker. ”Yes,” said its mother, grinning silver teeth-fillings back at me, ”that is you know true.” So I put the last checker, wet with the baby's spittle, into my box, and was about to close the lid: but the brindled fingers slipped a coin under the cover. ”That's half a dollar for you.”
”What for?”
”To use instead of the piece that went overboard. It was my fault it went in but I can't tell you how to fetch it out again. This isn't an admiral's suit, you see.”
I observed his b.u.t.tons with modified scorn; I knew perfectly well and at first glance what sort of uniform he wore. He was a colonel. On account of Enoch I had seen many colonels, and they all dressed alike.
”Don't you have to stay in Europe?” I wondered.
”Not when there's not a war,” he said, and hid behind his sungla.s.ses the froggy skin-scallops that circled his frog-eyes. Over his speckled scalp limp rows of white thread lay stretched, trained upward from where they grew at the side of his ear; they covered his skull like a very bad wig. He hinged the knees that were concealed somewhere in the long tubes of his military trousers and sat down in the deck-chair beside me.
”Are you being retired?” I asked, imagining the greyish pits in his skin to be the acc.u.mulation of very old age.
”Nope. Just going home to get some lawyers. Then I have to come right back to Nuremberg. Do you know any riddles?”
I said I did not.
”Okay, then why does a chicken cross the road?”
I said I knew that one.
”Never mind, I've got another. What didn't come into Noah's ark in pairs?”
I gave up.
”Worms,” said the colonel. ”They came in apples.”
”What do you need the lawyers for?” I said.
”To present the evidence. What has no legs and runs?”
”A train,” I ventured.
”Nope.”
”A ball.”
”Nope.”
”A watch?”
”Nope. Ice-cream cone on a hot day. Like that one?”
”It's all right,” I said politely. ”My stepfather had to go to Zurich. Is that near the place you said?”
”Different country. Your stepfather Army?”
”Nope,” I said, catching on. ”He sort of works for the Government.”
The colonel laughed. ”Don't you think the Army does too?”
”I don't know much about the Army,” I admitted, remembering the three English soldiers at the border, how they had carried back the cut-down giant, the big head dangling loose.
”Neither do I. You'd make a good colonel,” said the colonel. ”How about the five copycats sitting on a fence? One went away, so how many were left?”
”Four,” I said promptly.
”Nope. None. They all copied the first one, and that's all the riddles I ever heard of. Except the Riddle of Life. Your stepfather in refugee work?”
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