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Christopher and Columbus by Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

C >> Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim >> Christopher and Columbus




"First of all," said Anna-Rose promptly, for she prided herself on the
readiness and clearness of her explanations, "America will like us,
because I don't see why it shouldn't. We're going over to it in exactly
the same pleasant spirit, Anna-F.,--and don't you go forgetting it and
showing your disagreeable side--that the dove was in when it flew across
the waters to the ark, and with olive branches in our beaks just the
same as the dove's, only they're those two letters to Uncle Arthur's
friends."

"But do you think Uncle Arthur's friends--" began Anna-Felicitas, who
had great doubts as to everything connected with Uncle Arthur.

"And secondly," continued Anna-Rose a little louder, for she wasn't
going to be interrupted, and having been asked a question liked to give
all the information in her power, "secondly, America is the greatest of
the neutrals except the _liebe Gott_, and is bound particularly to
prize us because we're so unusually and peculiarly neutral. What ever was
more neutral than you and me? We're neither one thing nor the other, and
yet at the same time we're both." Anna-Felicitas remarked that it sounded
rather as if they were the Athanasian Creed.

"And thirdly," went on Anna-Rose, waving this aside, "there's L200
waiting for us over there, which is a very nice warm thing to think of.
We never had L200 waiting for us anywhere in our lives before, did
we,--so you remember that, and don't get grumbling."

Anna-Felicitas mildly said that she wasn't grumbling but that she
couldn't help thinking what a great deal depended on the goodwill of
Uncle Arthur's friends, and wished it had been Aunt Alice's friends they
had letters to instead, because Aunt Alice's friends were more likely to
like her.

Anna-Rose rebuked her, and said that the proper spirit in which to start
on a great adventure was one of faith and enthusiasm, and that one
didn't have doubts.

Anna-Felicitas said she hadn't any doubts really, but that she was very
hungry, not having had anything that could be called a meal since
breakfast, and that she felt like the sheep in "Lycidas," the hungry
ones who looked up and were not fed, and she quoted the lines in case
Anna-Rose didn't recollect them (which Anna-Rose deplored, for she knew
the lines by heart, and if there was any quoting to be done liked to do
it herself), and said she felt just like that,--"Empty," said
Anna-Felicitas, "and yet swollen. When do you suppose people have food
on board ships? I don't believe we'd mind nearly so much about--oh well,
about leaving England, if it was after dinner."

"I'm not minding leaving England," said Anna-Rose quickly. "At least,
not more than's just proper."

"Oh, no more am I, of course," said Anna-Felicitas airily. "Except
what's proper."

"And even if we were feeling it _dreadfully_," said Anna-Rose, with a
little catch in her voice, "which, of course, we're not, dinner wouldn't
make any difference. Dinner doesn't alter fundamentals."

"But it helps one to bear them," said Anna-Felicitas.

"Bear!" repeated Anna-Rose, her chin in the air. "We haven't got much to
bear. Don't let me hear you talk of bearing things, Anna-F."

"I won't after dinner," promised Anna-Felicitas.

They thought perhaps they had better ask somebody whether there wouldn't
soon be something to eat, but the other passengers had all disappeared.
They were by themselves on the gloomy deck, and there were no lights.
The row of cabin windows along the wall were closely shuttered, and the
door they had come through when first they came on deck was shut too,
and they couldn't find it in the dark. It seemed so odd to be feeling
along a wall for a door they knew was there and not be able to find it,
that they began to laugh; and the undiscoverable door cheered them up
more than anything that had happened since seeing the last of Uncle
Arthur.

"It's like a game," said Anna-Rose, patting her hands softly and vainly
along the wall beneath the shuttered windows.

"It's like something in 'Alice in Wonderland,'" said Anna-Felicitas,
following in her tracks.

A figure loomed through the mist and came toward them. They left off
patting, and stiffened into straight and motionless dignity against the
wall till it should have passed. But it didn't pass. It was a male
figure in a peaked cap, probably a steward, they thought, and it stopped
in front of them and said in an American voice, "Hello."

Anna-Rose cast rapidly about in her mind for the proper form of reply
to Hello.

Anna-Felicitas, instinctively responsive to example murmured "Hello"
back again.

Anna-Rose, feeling sure that nobody ought to say just Hello to people
they had never seen before, and that Aunt Alice would think they had
brought it on themselves by being conspicuous, decided that perhaps
"Good-evening" would regulate the situation, and said it.

"You ought to be at dinner," said the man, taking no notice of this.

"That's what _we_ think," agreed Anna-Felicitas earnestly.

"Can you please tell us how to get there?" asked Anna-Rose, still
distant, but polite, for she too very much wanted to know.

"But _don't_ tell us to ask the Captain," said Anna-Felicitas, even more
earnestly.

"No," said Anna-Rose, "because we won't."

The man laughed. "Come right along with me," he said, striding on; and
they followed him as obediently as though such persons as possible _boese
Buben_ didn't exist.

"First voyage I guess," said the man over his shoulder.

"Yes," said the twins a little breathlessly, for the man's legs were
long and they could hardly keep up with him.

"English?" said the man.

"Ye--es," said Anna-Rose.

"That's to say, practically," panted the conscientious Anna-Felicitas.

"What say?" said the man, still striding on. "I said," Anna-Felicitas
endeavoured to explain, hurrying breathlessly after him so as to keep
within reach of his ear, "practically."

"Ah," said the man; and after a silence, broken only by the pantings for
breath of the twins, he added: "Mother with you?"

They didn't say anything to that, it seemed such a dreadful question to
have to answer, and luckily he didn't repeat it, but, having got to the
door they had been searching for, opened it and stepped into the bright
light inside, and putting out his arm behind him pulled them in one
after the other over the high wooden door-frame.

Inside was the same stewardess they had seen earlier in the afternoon,
engaged in heatedly describing what sounded like grievances to an
official in buttons, who seemed indifferent. She stopped suddenly when
the man appeared, and the official took his hands out of his pockets and
became alert and attentive, and the stewardess hastily picked up a tray
she had set down and began to move away along a passage.

The man, however, briefly called "Hi," and she turned round and came
back even more quickly than she had tried to go.

"You see," explained Anna-Rose in a pleased whisper to Anna-Felicitas,
"it's Hi she answers to."

"Yes," agreed Anna-Felicitas. "It's waste of good circumlocutions to
throw them away on her."

"Show these young ladies the dining-room," said the man.

"Yes, sir," said the stewardess, as polite as you please.

He nodded to them with a smile that developed for some reason into a
laugh, and turned away and beckoned to the official to follow him, and
went out again into the night.

"Who was that nice man?" inquired Anna-Rose, following the stewardess
down a broad flight of stairs that smelt of india-rubber and machine-oil
and cooking all mixed up together.

"And please," said Anna-Felicitas with mild severity, "don't tell us to
ask the Captain, because we really do know better than that."

"I thought you must be relations," said the stewardess.

"We are," said Anna-Rose. "We're twins."

The stewardess stared. "Twins what of?" she asked.

"What of?" echoed Anna-Rose. "Why, of each other, of course."

"I meant relations of the Captain's," said the stewardess shortly,
eyeing them with more disfavour than ever.

"You seem to have the Captain greatly on your mind," said
Anna-Felicitas. "He is no relation of ours."

"You're not even friends, then?" asked the stewardess, pausing to stare
round at them at a turn in the stairs as they followed her down
arm-in-arm.

"Of course we're friends," said Anna-Rose with some heat. "Do you
suppose we quarrel?"

"No, I didn't suppose you quarrelled with the Captain," said the
stewardess tartly. "Not on board this ship anyway."

She didn't know which of the two she disliked most, the short girl or
the long girl.

"You seem to be greatly obsessed by the Captain," said Anna-Felicitas
gently. "Obsessed!" repeated the stewardess, tossing her head. She was
unacquainted with the word, but instantly suspected it of containing a
reflection on her respectability. "I've been a widow off and on for ten
years now," she said angrily, "and I guess it would take more than even
the Captain to obsess _me_."

They had reached the glass doors leading into the dining-room, and the
stewardess, having carried out her orders, paused before indignantly
leaving them and going upstairs again to say, "If you're friends, what
do you want to know his name for, then?"

"Whose name?" asked Anna-Felicitas.

"The Captain's," said the stewardess.

"We don't want to know the Captain's name," said Anna-Felicitas
patiently. "We don't want to know anything about the Captain."

"Then--" began the stewardess. She restrained herself, however, and
merely bitterly remarking: "That gentleman _was_ the Captain," went
upstairs and left them.

Anna-Rose was the first to recover. "You see we took your advice," she
called up after her, trying to soften her heart, for it was evident that
for some reason her heart was hardened, by flattery. "You _told_ us to
ask the Captain."




CHAPTER IV


In their berths that night before they went to sleep, it occurred to
them that perhaps what was the matter with the stewardess was that she
needed a tip. At first, with their recent experiences fresh in their
minds, they thought that she was probably passionately pro-Ally, and had
already detected all those Junkers in their past and accordingly
couldn't endure them. Then they remembered how Aunt Alice had said, "You
will have to give your stewardess a little something."

This had greatly perturbed them at the time, for up to then they had
been in the easy position of the tipped rather than the tippers, and
anyhow they had no idea what one gave stewardesses. Neither, it
appeared, had Aunt Alice; for, on being questioned, she said vaguely
that as it was an American boat they were going on she supposed it would
have to be American money, which was dollars, and she didn't know much
about dollars except that you divided them by four and multiplied them
by five, or else it was the other way about; and when, feeling still
uninformed, they had begged her to tell them why one did that, she said
it was the quickest way of finding out what a dollar really was, and
would they mind not talking any more for a little while because her head
ached.

The tips they had seen administered during their short lives had all
been given at the end of things, not at the beginning; but Americans,
Aunt Alice told them, were in some respects, in spite of their talking
English, different, and perhaps they were different just on this point
and liked to be tipped at both ends. Anna-Rose wanted to crane out her
head and call up to Anna-Felicitas and ask her whether she didn't think
that might be so, but was afraid of disturbing the people in the
opposite berths.

Anna-Felicitas was in the top berth on their side of the cabin, and
Anna-Rose as the elder and accordingly as she explained to
Anna-Felicitas, needing more comfort, in the lower one. On the opposite
side were two similar berths, each containing as Anna-Felicitas
whispered after peeping cautiously through their closed curtains,--for
at first on coming in after dinner to go to bed the cabin seemed empty,
except for inanimate things, like clothes hanging up and an immense
smell,--its human freight. They were awed by this discovery, for the
human freight was motionless and speechless, and yet made none of the
noises suggesting sleep.

They unpacked and undressed as silently and quickly as possible, but it
was very difficult, for there seemed to be no room for anything, not
even for themselves. Every now and then they glanced a little uneasily
at the closed curtains, which bulged, and sniffed cautiously and
delicately, trying to decide what the smell exactly was. It appeared to
be a mixture of the sauce one had with plum pudding at Christmas, and
German bedrooms in the morning. It was a smell they didn't like the idea
of sleeping with, but they saw no way of getting air. They thought of
ringing for the stewardess and asking her to open a window, though they
could see no window, but came to the conclusion it was better not to
stir her up; not yet, at least, not till they had correctly diagnosed
what was the matter with her. They said nothing out loud, for fear of
disturbing whatever it was behind the curtains, but they knew what each
was thinking, for one isn't, as they had long ago found out, a twin for
nothing.

There was a slight scuffle before Anna-Felicitas was safely hoisted up
into her berth, her legs hanging helplessly down for some time after the
rest of her was in it, and Anna-Rose, who had already neatly inserted
herself into her own berth, after watching these legs in silence and
fighting a desire to give them a tug and see what would happen, had to
get out at last on hearing Anna-Felicitas begin to make sounds up there
as though she were choking, and push them up in after her. Her head was
then on a level with Anna-Felicitas's berth, and she could see how
Anna-Felicitas, having got her legs again, didn't attempt to do anything
with them in the way of orderly arrangement beneath the blankets, but
lay huddled in an irregular heap, screwing her eyes up very tight and
stuffing one of her pigtails into her mouth, and evidently struggling
with what appeared to be an attack of immoderate and ill-timed mirth.

Anna-Rose observed her for a moment in silence, then was suddenly seized
herself with a dreadful desire to laugh, and with a hasty glance round
at the bulging curtains scrambled back into her own berth and pulled the
sheet over her mouth.

She was sobering herself by going over her different responsibilities,
checking them off on her fingers,--the two five-pound notes under her
pillow for extra expenses till they were united in New York to their
capital, the tickets, the passports, and Anna-Felicitas,--when two thick
fair pigtails appeared dangling over the edge of her berth, followed by
Anna-Felicitas's head.

"You've forgotten to turn out the light," whispered Anna-Felicitas, her
eyelashes still wet from her late attack; and stretching her neck still
further down till her face was scarlet with the effort and the blood
rushing into it, she expressed a conviction to Anna-Rose that the human
freight behind the curtains, judging from the suspicious negativeness of
its behaviour, had no business in their cabin at all and was really
stowaways.

"German stowaways," added Anna-Felicitas, nodding her head emphatically,
which was very skilful of her, thought Anna-Rose, considering that it
was upside down. "_German_ stowaways," whispered Anna-Felicitas,
sniffing expressively though cautiously.

Anna-Rose raised herself on her elbows and stared across at the bulging
curtains. They certainly were very motionless and much curved. In spite
of herself her flesh began to creep a little.

"They're men," whispered Anna-Felicitas, now dangerously congested.
"Stowaways are."

There had been no one in the cabin when first they came on board and
took their things down, and they hadn't been in it since till they came
to bed.

"_German_ men," whispered Anna-Felicitas, again with a delicate
expressive sniff.

"Nonsense," whispered Anna-Rose, stoutly. "Men never come into ladies'
cabins. And there's skirts on the hooks."

"Disguise," whispered Anna-Felicitas, nodding again. "Spies' disguise."
She seemed quite to be enjoying her own horrible suggestions.

"Take your head back into the berth," ordered Anna-Rose quickly, for
Anna-Felicitas seemed to be on the very brink of an apoplectic fit.

Anna-Felicitas, who was herself beginning to feel a little
inconvenienced, obeyed, and was thrilled to see Anna-Rose presently
very cautiously emerge from underneath her and on her bare feet creep
across to the opposite side. She knew her to be valiant to recklessness.
She sat up to watch, her eyes round with interest.

Anna-Rose didn't go straight across, but proceeded slowly, with several
pauses, to direct her steps toward the pillow-end of the berths. Having
got there she stood still a moment listening, and then putting a careful
finger between the curtain of the lower berth and its frame, drew it the
smallest crack aside and peeped in.

Instantly she started back, letting go the curtain. "I beg your pardon,"
she said out loud, turning very red. "I--I thought--"

Anna-Felicitas, attentive in her berth, felt a cold thrill rush down her
back. No sound came from the berth on the other side any more than
before the raid on it, and Anna-Rose returned quicker than she had gone.
She just stopped on the way to switch off the light, and then felt along
the edge of Anna-Felicitas's berth till she got to her head, and pulling
it near her by its left pigtail whispered with her mouth close to its
left ear, "Wide awake. Watching me all the time. Not a man. Fat."

And she crawled into her berth feeling unnerved.




CHAPTER V


The lady in the opposite berth was German, and so was the lady in the
berth above her. Their husbands were American, but that didn't make them
less German. Nothing ever makes a German less German, Anna-Rose
explained to Anna-Felicitas.

"Except," replied Anna-Felicitas, "a judicious dilution of their blood
by the right kind of mother."

"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "Only to be found in England."

This conversation didn't take place till the afternoon of the next day,
by which time Anna-Felicitas already knew about the human freight being
Germans, for one of their own submarines came after the _St. Luke_ and
no one was quite so loud in expression of terror and dislike as the two
Germans.

They demanded to be saved first, on the ground that they were Germans.
They repudiated their husbands, and said marriage was nothing compared
to how one had been born. The curtains of their berths, till then so
carefully closed, suddenly yawned open, and the berths gave up their
contents just as if, Anna-Felicitas remarked afterwards to Anna-Rose, it
was the resurrection and the berths were riven sepulchres chucking up
their dead.

This happened at ten o'clock the next morning when the _St. Luke_ was
pitching about off the southwest coast of Ireland. The twins, waking
about seven, found with a pained surprise that they were not where they
had been dreaming they were, in the sunlit garden at home playing
tennis happily if a little violently, but in a chilly yet stuffy place
that kept on tilting itself upside down. They lay listening to the
groans coming from the opposite berths, and uneasily wondering how long
it would be before they too began to groan. Anna-Rose raised her head
once with the intention of asking if she could help at all, but dropped
it back again on to the pillow and shut her eyes tight and lay as quiet
as the ship would let her. Anna-Felicitas didn't even raise her head,
she felt so very uncomfortable.

At eight o'clock the stewardess looked in--the same stewardess, they
languidly noted, with whom already they had had two encounters, for it
happened that this was one of the cabins she attended to--and said that
if anybody wanted breakfast they had better be quick or it would be
over.

"Breakfast!" cried the top berth opposite in a heart-rending tone; and
instantly was sick.

The stewardess withdrew her head and banged the door to, and the twins,
in their uneasy berths, carefully keeping their eyes shut so as not to
witness the behaviour of the sides and ceiling of the cabin, feebly
marvelled at the stewardess for suggesting being quick to persons who
were being constantly stood on their heads. And breakfast,--they
shuddered and thought of other things; of fresh, sweet air, and of the
scent of pinks and apricots warm with the sun.

At ten o'clock the stewardess came in again, this time right in, and
with determination in every gesture.

"Come, come," she said, addressing the twins, and through them talking
at the heaving and groaning occupants of the other side, "you mustn't
give way like this. What you want is to be out of bed. You must get up
and go on deck. And how's the cabin to get done if you stay in it all
the time?"

Anna-Felicitas, the one particularly addressed, because she was more on
the right level for conversation than Anna-Rose, who could only see the
stewardess's apron, turned her head away and murmured that she didn't
care.

"Come, come," said the stewardess. "Besides, there's life-boat drill at
mid-day, and you've got to be present."

Anna-Felicitas, her eyes shut, again murmured that she didn't care.

"Come, come," said the stewardess. "Orders are orders. Every soul on the
ship, sick or not, has got to be present at life-boat drill."

"Oh, I'm not a soul," murmured Anna-Felicitas, who felt at that moment
how particularly she was a body, while the opposite berths redoubled
their groans.

"Come, come--" said the stewardess.

Then the _St. Luke_ whistled five times, and the stewardess turned pale.
For a brief space, before they understood what had happened, the twins
supposed she was going to be sick. But it wasn't that that was the
matter with her, for after a moment's staring at nothing with horror on
her face she pounced on them and pulled them bodily out of their berths,
regardless by which end, and threw them on the floor anyhow. Then she
plunged about and produced life-jackets; then she rushed down the
passage flinging open the doors of the other cabins; then she whirled
back again and tried to tie the twins into their life-jackets, but with
hands that shook so that the strings immediately came undone again; and
all the time she was calling out "Quick--quick--quick--" There was a
great tramping of feet on deck and cries and shouting.

The curtains of the opposite berths yawned asunder and out came the
Germans, astonishingly cured of their sea-sickness, and struggled
vigorously into their life-jackets and then into fur coats, and had the
fur coats instantly pulled off again by a very energetic steward who ran
in and said fur coats in the water were death-traps,--a steward so much
bent on saving people that he began to pull off the other things the
German ladies had on as well, saying while he pulled, disregarding their
protests, that in the water Mother Nature was the best. "Mother
Nature--Mother Nature," said the steward, pulling; and he was only
stopped just in the nick of time by the stewardess rushing in again and
seeing what was happening to the helpless Germans.

Anna-Rose, even at that moment explanatory, pointed out to
Anna-Felicitas, who had already grasped the fact, that no doubt there
was a submarine somewhere about. The German ladies, seizing their
valuables from beneath their pillows, in spite of the steward assuring
them they wouldn't want them in the water, demanded to be taken up and
somehow signalled to the submarine, which would never dare do anything
to a ship containing its own flesh and blood--and an American ship,
too--there must be some awful mistake--but anyhow they must be
saved--there would be terrible trouble, that they could assure the
steward and the twins and the scurrying passers-by down the passage, if
America allowed two Germans to be destroyed--and anyhow they would
insist on having their passage money refunded....

The German ladies departed down the passage, very incoherent and very
unhappy but no longer sick, and Anna-Felicitas, clinging to the edge of
her berth, feeling too miserable to mind about the submarine, feebly
wondered, while the steward tied her properly into her life-jacket, at
the cure effected in them. Anna-Rose seemed cured too, for she was
buttoning a coat round Anna-Felicitas's shoulders, and generally seemed
busy and brisk, ending by not even forgetting their precious little bag
of money and tickets and passports, and fastening it round her neck in
spite of the steward's assuring her that it would drag her down in the
water like a stone tied to a kitten.

"You're a _very_ cheerful man, aren't you," Anna-Rose said, as he pushed
them out of the cabin and along the corridor, holding up Anna-Felicitas
on her feet, who seemed quite unable to run alone.

The steward didn't answer, but caught hold of Anna-Felicitas at the foot
of the stairs and carried her up them, and then having got her on deck
propped her in a corner near the life-boat allotted to the set of cabins
they were in, and darted away and in a minute was back again with a big
coat which he wrapped round her.

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We do not know the women's names, but their voices are quite distinct. All are pregnant. But while the first woman awaits the birth of her baby with a moon-like serenity, the other two are not so lucky. One, whose previous pregnancies have failed to go to term, is experiencing a heartbreaking late miscarriage; the other is a young student whose accidental pregnancy will end in her child being put up for adoption.

Sylvia Plath's only play was never intended for the stage, being broadcast instead on BBC radio in August 1962. Less than six months later, Plath killed herself, but not before the burst of astonishing creative energy that produced her extraordinary, terrifying Ariel poems.

Anyone who knows Plath's poetry will see the connection between Three Women and Plath's subsequent poems, particularly in the way she talks about the agony of childbirth, the rush of love for this tiny alien being, and both the wonder and wounded rawness of motherhood. It is a beautiful piece, full of startling imagery that draws you in through the sheer intensity of its femaleness, and because it so precisely articulates the emotions that are often thought but seldom voiced by women - certainly not in the early 1960s - about men, motherhood and our relationship to our bodies.

It's been 20 years since there has been an attempt at a professional stage version and - in a theatre world that happily accepts the poetic offerings of Sarah Kane and Debbie Tucker Green, or the staged possibilities of The Waves, one of Plath's own inspirations for the piece, I see no reason why it shouldn't be brought to life. Sadly, it doesn't breathe here, in a production by Robert Shaw that is clearly a labour of love, but which never finds a way to give the internal a physical reality. Plath's poetry, like most babies, is more robust than it appears - and won't break if treated with a little less reverence and considerably more grit.

Instead, what we are offered is tinkling piano music, mournful mood lighting, an innocuous pale setting, as well as three perfectly good but indisputably ladylike performances that capture none of the wounded redness of Plath's poetry, and do her the disservice of making her sound bleached and somewhat prissy. It's a pity. What might have been a wonder ends up a mere curiosity.

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