One of Them!

"Are you carrying anything prohibited?"

A question on the margin, put by the customs inspector to every traveler as he makes his rounds, completing the official travel formalities, before the traveler takes his place on the ship's deck.

"No..." and the traveler passes on...

The official asked me his routine question as he asked the others, and we all passed through in peace; but we turned around when we heard him order one of the women to stand for a search.

She was a pretty blonde at the gates of twenty; one did not need to exercise any powers of discernment to realize that she was one of those artistes who work in the many performing troupes that come to the island.

Her protests poured out in English, spoken with a German accent.

The customs officer paid no heed to her fury, but handed her over to a woman to carry out the search...

I contented myself with this much of the scene and went down to the launch that carried me to the ship that was to sail with me from Limassol to Beirut.

It was late afternoon... I withdrew into myself in my cabin, passing the time in reading, until, when evening came, I went up to walk about on the ship's deck... Darkness had fallen, but for those lights coming from the cabins...

As for the passengers, they had gathered in the saloon playing cards, and some had circled around the jazz band, dancing and making a merry din.

I leaned on the ship's rail for a while and cast my gaze downward, watching the boiling foam breaking against the hull of the huge steamer... Then I tired of standing and went walking toward the other end of the ship, when a figure brought me up short—resting her head against the wooden wall... I peered a little, and saw the blonde German artiste, weeping...

Her case perplexed me, as I was perplexed at my own... Should I ignore her and go on without a backward glance? Should I intrude upon her?... when I was not even sure she would accept my meddling?... Should I?... I took a step forward, but then stopped, for I felt a strange pity for her, and saw myself bound to do something for her... I drew near her, and she opened two large eyes in which the tears glistened, and said...

"What do you want?"

I answered in confusion... "No. No... not at all... it's nothing... You... you are crying? Isn't that so?"

She said, "Yes, I am crying—is that any business of yours?"

I said, "No. Of course not... but I cannot bear to see anyone cry."

She turned her face away and went on with her weeping, and I stood frozen in my place like a simpleton, waiting... Then I found myself moving closer to her, raising my hand to her with a handkerchief in it... then offering her a cigarette, which she took, drawing long, nervous puffs from it, and she said...

"And what is all this to you..."

I said, "Nothing... a human duty, no more..."

She laughed a mocking laugh that bewildered me, and said...

"Ah... I had forgotten that in people's dictionaries there is a word they call humanity... A human duty, eh?"

And she laughed again...

But I got hold of myself and asked her once more...

"Did some trouble meet you at the customs?"

She was silent, and I repeated my question...

She retorted sharply:

"You are a busybody... Very well then, listen... Yes—everything I had has flown away. They took it from me... four hundred gold liras."

"And why did you get yourself entangled in carrying them...?"

She said, "Jenny drove me to it—one of the Italian girls of the troupe. She said she had often carried gold on her journeys, and that a little pleasantness with the customs officers was enough to settle the matter and hush up the smuggling. But things went contrary to what I wished, and they seized the sum... and they nearly barred me from sailing, had not the troupe's manager appealed to one of the men of consequence in the country..."

I made no comment on the news, so she flared up and cried out nervously:

"What is the matter with you, saying nothing... Perhaps, like the others, you believe that money runs like water between our fingers, gained without toil or effort... or that we scoop gold out of mines... or..."

"I said nothing of the kind."

She returned to her calm for a few moments; then the tears came again, washing her eyes. A woman appeared, stepping toward us, and she sprang up nervously and shouted at her:

"What do you want... Away from me, you face of ill omen!"

The other's answer to this outburst was a loud, cheap laugh.

The woman turned toward me, saying... "That is Jenny... the vilest creature I have known on the face of the earth... an Italian—a pit of rot... I am convinced she pushed me into carrying the liras so as to spring the trap on me... She is jealous... the most jealous of them all..."

And I asked her, "Is she not your colleague?"

"My colleague? Ha—yes, she is my colleague. This troupe—it is the wonder of wonders... with the human specimens it contains... I have realized at last that I entangled myself by joining it... It would have profited me more to stay in Germany and suffer what my grandmother and my brother Karl suffer... and that young man who was my sweetheart..."

"And why did you leave them...?"

She opened her wide gray-blue eyes to their fullest and answered:

"No—I will not pretend to you that it was the fever of art, as all the women of the troupe say; nor will I say it was a man's deception that shut all the doors of life before me except this one door. No—that is a tale every one of them knows by heart... and few, only a few, admit that destitution and want drove them to this fate. The motive is simpler and stronger than all of that. We had to eat... my grandmother and Karl and I... or else waste away as thousands of others imagine wasting away. And my stomach could not endure hunger.

"My feet were all but torn to pieces without shoes. We sheltered in a house that had, of the semblance of a dwelling, tottering walls and a roof in which the bombs of the war had left more than one gap. My grandmother was an old woman, and my brother a small, upright boy who did not know how to steal food from the camps of the American army... so there was no one but me. And what, pray, was I expected to become?? There was nothing before me—and before dozens of others—but this fate, and we flung ourselves upon it in the name of art. And what art!... I signed a contract with Bruno, the Italian manager of the troupe, and I toured with his troupe through Greece and Turkey and Egypt and Cyprus and everywhere... And here I am... I was told at the beginning, You will grow rich... a year... two years—or thereabouts—and you will go home with a fortune... And now a year and a half have gone by, and I have nothing but these many loathsome clothes that I don't know what to do with... Not all of them are like me, of course... the hands of others sag under jewels and trinkets, and their pockets bulge with money... I was told that I am a fool who has not mastered the arts of opportunism. That is what I am in their eyes; but in my own eyes I am a human being holding fast to a remnant of dignity, one that scorns to clean out the pockets of every swine whom circumstance tosses into her path. At first I used to quarrel with Bruno whenever he prescribed for me a certain conduct with one of those old men who drag their humanity in the dust at our feet... How I despised them, how they revolted me—careless of Bruno's threats to throw me out... I knew I was the best face in the troupe... and the first to turn the heads of its foolish customers with their red eyes and their sagging paunches... Isn't that hideous...?

"In this milieu the world opened itself to me a great deal... strange sorts of people, whose souls I came to know stripped bare of those veils they labor to manufacture—for they are betrayed by those moments when their natures desert them, and they appear as nothing more than animals... in one great pen.

"I came to know everything—except riches. And I woke to this frightful truth... What lies behind my life? Have I taken the price of what I gave? No. A losing trade, in which I spent my dignity and my health and my spirit... and came out with nothing... nothing at all, except a great hatred of life.

"And I asked myself... why should I not be like Jenny—a drain that is never filled... why not live in that spirit for a year, or two, or three, then go back with a fortune to my grandmother and to little Karl—and look about for some foolish young man willing to tie his fate to mine, now that the first one has flown from me?

"And I hunted my victims. Fools. Old men clinging to the fringes of youth with a laughable stubbornness... The last of them was a rich man who drowned me in everything I desired. Clothes. Jewels. Money. In two months only, I gathered from him these accursed gold liras... For their sake I endured his heaviness and his dullness and his insistence that I look at no one but him—just as he endured from me my contempt and my whims and my persistence in humiliating him... And I would remember my purpose, and draw back, and soften, and make peace.

"I had to come out with something. I was done with him, and I carried off my harvest—and then it was scattered. My money was confiscated to the last lira. And I am left poor, carrying my misery to every place—and spitting out my vileness—yes, for I have become vile like the others—at every man. How horrible this is... how horrible, to go back to the starting point, and to live forever, an animal in this great pen..."

The woman's tongue ceased its speech, and her tears began again to well from her eyes, her body trembling nervously... And I stood at a loss what to say... for a word from me would not give back to this wretched creature her faith in the justice of life.