The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles

Chapter 1

Chapter 1The widow Schreiber was ravishing, intimidating-and

undeniably regal in both dress and manner. She was, in short, a

woman that a wretched Kansas scribbler such as I had nothing in

common with. At least that is what I thought as I settled into the

chair next to her for dinner at the captain’s table aboard the SS

China that first night at sea.

How wrong first impressions can be.

“Mr. Battles,” said Captain Kreitz, speaking

with a conspicuous German accent, “I am happy you can join us.

Allow me to present Frau Katharina von Schreiber, who is traveling

with us to Manila.”

I quickly stood up from my chair as the

widow Schreiber extended her hand.

“Ich freue mich, Sie kennen zu lernen,” I

said in my most courteous German, taking her hand in mine.

Captain Kreitz looked at me with obvious

surprise. “Aber Herr Battles, ich wusste nicht, dass Sie deutsch

sprechen!”

“I only speak a little German, I’m afraid,”

I responded, looking first at the widow Schreiber and then at

Captain Kreitz. “My mother grew up speaking German, and she passed

a few phrases on to me. I also studied the language at the

university.”

“Wie schön,” the widow Schreiber sniffed

mincingly while flashing me a fleeting and obviously contrived

smile. Her demeanor was noticeably patronizing. I looked away and

sat back down. It was then that I noticed the other people seated

at Captain Kreitz’s large round table. In addition to the captain,

the widow Schreiber, and me, there was Deputy Captain Partington

and another couple—a man and woman in their fifties whom Captain

Kreitz introduced as Stanley and Agnes Gladwell. Mr. and Mrs.

Gladwell were on their way to Yokohama, Japan, where he was to

manage an American trading company.

After Captain Kreitz made his introductions,

I inspected the first-class dining saloon, which was situated

amidships and occupied the SS China’s entire width. It was

about the size of a mid-quality hotel’s main dining room with

enough tables to accommodate perhaps one hundred fifty people. Six

miniature chandeliers adorned the room’s twenty-foot-high ceiling.

Mahogany walls were decorated with ornate carvings, bas-reliefs,

and gilt-framed mirrors. Large glowing stained-glass windows on

both sidewalls created a multicolored kaleidoscopic effect in the

room.

Stanley Gladwell noticed me taking in the

dining saloon. “Outsized magnificence, wouldn’t you say, Mr.

Battles?”

I nodded. “Quite a spread.”

“My, but we have quite the international

table, don’t we?” Agnes Gladwell said, her voice a reedy trill.

Mrs. Gladwell’s face was rubescent with close-set heavy-lidded

brown eyes. She was a short stumpy woman with mouse-colored hair

combed into a chignon. She looked like the archetypical aunt.

Stanley Gladwell nodded. He was, like his

wife, short; but unlike her, he was spare and bony. His gaunt face

was framed by bushy muttonchops and a full head of auburn hair that

made his head look too big for his body.

“Indeed, we do, Mrs. Gladwell,” Partington

said. “Two Germans, two Americans, an Englishman, and a Kansan.”

Partington, who was from Yorkshire, meant his comment as a friendly

jibe at me, but he and I were the only ones who seemed to

understand his intent.

“Why, Mr. Partington, I must correct you.

Kansas is part of the United States,” Mrs. Gladwell said

resolutely.

“Yes, I know,” Partington said smiling. “I’m

afraid I failed in my little jest with Mr. Battles.”

“Well, there are some folks who believe we

sand cutters and Jayhawkers—that’s what they call us pitiable

Kansans—are poor relations when it comes to American citizenship,”

I said, attempting to rescue Partington.

Before he could respond, the widow Schreiber

spoke up. “And I am not German!” she snapped, her words crisp and

frosty. “I was simply married to one.”

Mr. Partington, now sufficiently chagrined,

smiled weakly. “Perhaps I should keep my oral cavity closed. I seem

to be making a right bog of things.”

Captain Kreitz cleared his throat. “At sea,

nationality matters not. We are all citizens of the SS China

now.”

Mr. Partington quickly concurred. “There is

a saying that aboard ship we are all met on an equal footing. For

these few days and weeks, we shall all be weighed, not by what we

own or claim to be, but by what we really are.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Stanley Gladwell said

raising his wine glass and taking a sip. “No need for such

conventions on the high seas.”

But Kreitz was not finished. “Nevertheless,

I would be remiss if I didn’t reveal that Baroness von Schreiber is

the widow of the late baron Heinrich Rupert von Schreiber of

Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The baron was a well-known officer in the

army of the Königreich Preußen and a very successful

businessman.”

“Oh my,” Mrs. Gladwell blurted, “how should

we common persons address you then, dear?”

It was an apparent attempt at levity that

was lost on the widow Schreiber, and she regarded Agnes Gladwell

the way she might a loaf of bread or a wheel of Emmenthaler

cheese.

For a few moments, a deafening silence

embraced our table. Then Katharina von Schreiber spoke, and when

she did, it was as if another woman had suddenly occupied her

body.

“My dear Mrs. Gladwell, I certainly don’t

consider myself anything more than a widow—and certainly not a

baroness, even though that title was bestowed upon me by marriage.

I was born and reared in Chicago. I am as American as you are. So

you are welcome to keep your patrician titles to yourself.”

“Aber Baroness von Schreiber, Ihre Vorfahren

waren Deutsche,” Captain Kreitz insisted.

“Yes, Captain Kreitz, you are correct. My

roots are deeply German,” the widow Schreiber conceded. “My parents

are German, my maiden name was Messner, and the German language is

almost my mother tongue. But I am red, white, and blue through and

through.”

“Well, doesn’t that beat the Dutch!” Mrs.

Gladwell exclaimed. It was obvious Agnes Gladwell was a woman who

liked to chatter and was either impervious or insensible to the

overt slight just directed at her by Frau Schreiber. “Stanley and I

are from Chicago too! What part are you from, dear?”

“The north shore, near Lincoln Park,”

Katharina said flatly.

After she had answered, I regarded Katharina

Schreiber carefully and, for the first time, was able to scrutinize

her from the tip to toe. She looked to be about thirty. Her face

was delicately sculpted and radiant with luminous emerald eyes set

wide apart above a delicate aquiline nose and a full, sensual

mouth. She wore a royal-blue velvet and silk evening gown with a

low neck, short frill sleeves, a collar of pearls, and white suede

gloves. Her straw-colored hair was worn in the upswept bouffant, a

la Concierge style of the time—pulled to the top of her head and

pinned into a knot. She was, I thought, the most physically

beautiful woman I had ever seen, my late Mallie

notwithstanding.

I found it difficult to take my eyes off

her. I was finally able to as the conversation about Chicago

continued. I recalled that Mallie and I had taken a walk through

Chicago’s Lincoln Park and visited the zoo there during our trip to

visit the Columbian Exposition barely a year before. Immaculate

three-story brick row houses and impressive mansions filled the

neighborhoods near the park. Apparently, Katharina Schreiber came

from a family of means long before she married the baron Von

Schreiber.

“We’re from Hyde Park… on the South Side,”

Mrs. Gladwell said. “It’s in a bit of disarray now that all of

those Columbian Exhibition buildings are being razed. Stanley and I

are happy to be leaving the area. We are going to Japan… Oh, I

think Captain Kreitz already said that.”

Katharina nodded. I could tell she was not

eager to engage in more small talk, but Agnes Gladwell was far from

finished.

“How long have you been… uh, without your

husband, dear?” she asked. Then not waiting for the widow Schreiber

to answer, she appended another question that sounded more like an

indictment. “Are you traveling on your own responsibility… I mean

to say, unaided… alone?”

It was a query that Mrs. Gladwell already

knew the answer to, but one that she felt compelled to ask. Not

many women in the nineteenth century took month-long voyages to the

Orient by themselves, though many apparently did when traveling to

Europe.

Katharina Schreiber gave Agnes Gladwell an

exasperated look and replied snappishly, “I don’t see why women who

are single and independent should deny themselves the delights of

foreign travel just because, voluntarily or involuntarily, they are

without husbands or convenient male relatives to escort them. This

is 1894 after all, not 1794.”

Agnes Gladwell drew back in her chair as if

trying to make herself smaller. “My dear, I meant no offense… I was

only—”

“None taken, Mrs. Gladwell, I can assure

you,” Katharina Schreiber interrupted. “But I am always amazed that

women on their own are somehow always required by meddling women

who are not on their own to validate their decisions and

preferences in life.” Her voice was dispassionate and cold, but the

words were like hot embers smacking Agnes Gladwell’s face, which

promptly reddened either in mortification or in ire.

Conversation at the table froze. Captain

Kreitz and Mr. Partington cleared their throats nervously. Stanley

Gladwell clinched his fists and fixed the Baroness Von Schreiber

with a withering, disapproving stare—his way, I surmised, of coming

to the aid of his wife.

I smiled inwardly. Katharina reminded me of

Mallie when she used to get her back up.

“You sound like my late wife,” I said

quietly, looking at Katharina. “She did what she wanted, when she

wanted, and the devil take anyone who objected.”

“She sounds like a woman I would have

enjoyed knowing,” Katharina replied. “When did she pass?”

I cleared my throat, which was now knotted

with anguish. I still could not talk about Mallie without the pain

of her loss, causing my eyes to water and my stomach to harden.

Katharina noticed my grief. “Forgive me, Mr.

Battles… I don’t mean to pry—”

“Harrumph, unlike me I suppose,” quipped

Mrs. Gladwell, her tone steely and resentful. Stanley Gladwell

leaned over to his wife and whispered something sternly in her ear.

Whatever he said did not placate Mrs. Gladwell, who was still

glowering at Katharina.

I took a sip of the claret a waiter had been

pouring into our glasses.

“That’s all right,” I said. “It’s been only

about five months…” my voice trailed off.

“It’s been just over six months since my

husband passed away,” Katharina said.

Then, glaring at the Gladwells, she added in

a cloying voice, “And for those who may be wondering what I, a

helpless widow, am doing on a ship headed for the Philippines, I am

going to live with my brother who is in the business of exporting

mahogany, teak, and rosewood lumber from there.”

The table was silent for several moments as

everybody digested the information Katharina Schreiber and I had

shared. It was as if someone had thrown a shroud over the table.

Mrs. Gladwell, who was the apparent target of the widow Schreiber’s

vehemence, excused herself and walked swiftly into the ladies’

powder room. As she left, a string quintet at the other end of the

room began playing.

“Ahhh, Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca… one

of my favorites,” Deputy Captain Partington said, breaking the

gloom. The music filled the dining room and provided a welcome

respite from our gloomy table conversation and the dented

dispositions of Captain Kreitz’s guests.

When Mrs. Gladwell returned ten minutes

later, she did so with renewed vitality and vitriol.

“My, but it was nice to get some fresh air,”

she said, focusing on Katharina Schreiber. “It was getting rather

stale and oppressive in here, Captain.”

Captain Kreitz ran his hand through his

finely trimmed beard and scratched his cheek. “Make a note of that,

Mr. Partington,” he said flatly, looking at the deputy captain with

half-lidded eyes. “We need to open a few windows during

dinner.”

The rest of the meal was spent in small

talk, when there was a conversation at all. I recall saying a few

words to Katharina, and she responded politely. Mostly, however, I

spoke with Partington and Captain Kreitz about the SS China

and the kind of vessel she was. Both men enjoyed those exchanges

more than the type of chatter that had, as Mr. Potts, my steward on

the China once told me, “put people’s knickers in a

twist.”

I was especially amazed at the complexities

of getting a nineteenth-century ocean-going steamship under way. In

our case, Partington explained, because the SS China was due

to sail on the eighth of the month, stokers, firemen, and engineers

began firing up the boilers two days before on the sixth.

“Why, I had no idea,” Mrs. Gladwell

said.

Partington looked around the table. “I don’t

want to bore everyone to death with this, but if you are

interested, I will be happy to explain the process.”

“Please do, Mr. Partington,” Katharina said.

She seemed genuinely interested, which surprised me.

“Well,” Partington began, “first, the

boilers are filled with water, and then the furnaces are lit. To do

that, you must shovel in coal that is brought from the coal bunkers

by wheelbarrows. Once the fires are burning, you must feed them

more and more coal. The fires must glow entirely white hot.”

Partington paused. He didn’t seem sure if

his audience was still paying attention or wanted to hear more.

“Please continue, Mr. Partington,” Katharina

said languidly. “My father was an engineer, and I grew up hearing

all about steam engines. They are one of my favorite topics.”

I couldn’t tell if Katharina was being

facetious or not, but Mrs. Gladwell regarded her with what looked

like astonishment and whispered something to her husband.

“Well, if you insist,” Partington said. He

cleared his throat and continued, “As the heat builds up, the water

in the boilers begins to boil. This can take several hours, and

don’t forget lighting the fires already took many hours. Once the

water is boiling, it makes steam.

“Constant heat is needed to keep the steam

from cooling off and condensing again, so fires have to be kept lit

and stoked up at all times. Once the steam is produced, you have to

wait for steam pressure to build up. This can take a full day.

Steam power runs everything on the SS China—lights,

generators, etc., so if you don’t get the boilers fired up… the

ship doesn’t move and nothing works.”

Captain Kreitz jumped in before Mr.

Partington could go into further detail regarding the SS

China’s mechanical marvels. “Uh, thank you, Mr. Partington.

Indeed, an excellent clarification. But it looks like the first

course is about to be served, and I am sure we have all worked up

an appetite after so much conversation.”

Dinner ended about twenty minutes later. I

excused myself before dessert was served and took a walk on the

promenade deck. The night air was warm, and the sea looked like an

opened bolt of black silk. After several turns around the deck, I

settled into the chair Mr. Potts, my East End London cabin steward,

had acquired for me and placed before my stateroom.

As I sat there looking out at the black

expanse of ocean, a thin shaft of moonlight danced on top of the

flat, tranquil water, and I found myself thinking about Denver and

Mallie and Anna Marie and my mother. The guilt I felt at leaving

Denver and everybody I loved behind while I flitted off to the

Orient was still as strong as ever. It took all the mental energy I

could muster to keep it submerged in my subconsciousness. Alcohol

helped, and I yearned for a cigar—even though I didn’t use tobacco

as a rule. Maybe it was the sea air, or maybe it was just a sudden

craving to liberate myself from the predictable conventions of my

life.

The constant drone and vibration of the

China’s steam-driven engines along with the sound of the

ship slicing through the water was hypnotic. I took a blanket that

Potts had left under the chair, covered my legs and upper body with

it, and in a few minutes, I nodded off. I don’t know how long I

dozed before I heard voices and felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Sorry ter disturb yew, guvnor, but are ya

all right?” It was Potts, and just behind him were Partington and

Katharina Schreiber.

I blinked at Potts and rubbed my eyes. “I

guess I dozed off for a minute…”

“Not a good idea,” Partington said. “You

never know when a big wave might hit the ship at night and sweep

you off the deck.”

The widow Schreiber chuckled. “Good heavens,

can you imagine… what did you call yourself, Mr. Battles? A sand

cutter? Can you imagine a Kansas sand cutter adrift in the Pacific

in the middle of the night?”

Partington took the cue. “Not a pretty

sight, Mrs. Schreiber… not a pretty sight at all.”

I stood up from my deck chair a bit

unsteadily. As placid as the ocean was, I was still trying to

acquire my sea legs and found myself wobbling a bit. The four

glasses of claret I had consumed at dinner didn’t help with my

balance either.

“’Don’t ya worry none abaaht Mr. Battles

garn overboard,” Potts said. “E’s as moored as Buckingham Palace,

in’cha sir?”

“I wouldn’t take any bets on it, Mr. Potts,”

I replied.

Katharina chortled and said sarcastically,

“Well, at least we can all sleep well tonight knowing that Mr.

Battles is tucked up nicely in his cradle. Gute Nacht, Herr

Battles!”

I acknowledged her words with an ambiguous

nod, Partington gave me a hasty salute, and then he and the widow

moved on down the promenade. During the dinner, Partington had

offered to see Frau Schreiber to her cabin.

“Need any ’elp, sir?” Potts asked as I

opened the door to my cabin.

I shook my head and walked into my

cabin.

“Right then, good night, guvnor.”

I slept fitfully that first night at sea,

often climbing from my bed to pace the fifteen-by-fifteen-foot

cabin. Once, I sat down to compose a letter but fell asleep at the

small writing desk near the door. At 6:00 a.m., I was awake and

dressed and took another turn along the promenade deck. I noticed

that below the promenade and boat deck, there was another much

longer deck. That was the lengthier second-class passenger deck

where I could take a longer walk, and I decided to move down there.

As I approached the stairwell, a deck steward stopped me.

“Sorry, sir, but you are not allowed below,”

he said.

“What?” I couldn’t believe my ears.

“Company regulations prohibit passengers

from passing from one class to another,” he continued. Then he

pointed to a sign attached to the ship’s bulkhead. Written in large

black letters were the words:

Passengers are kindly requested to keep within the

confines of the class in which bookedTo make sure that the rule was followed,

spiked steel gates were installed at the top and bottom of all

stairwells that led from one deck to another.

I had no idea that ships enforced such a

rigid and archaic class system, and when I met Mr. Potts on the

promenade deck, I told him so.

“It’s no only ter keep fird- and

second-class passengers from usin’ the first class deck and uvver

facilities. We want ter discourage slummin’,” he said.

“Slumming?”

“Yes, the second- and fird-class passengers

are annoyed when superior-class passengers come ter the lower decks

ter survey their conditions in comparison ter ffeir own.”

It was my first lesson in steamship class

etiquette. Moreover, it wouldn’t be my last.