“YOU’RE A PERFORMER?” Enid shouted.
“Signe was a special entertainer,” Mr. Söderblad said hastily.
“Those Alpine resorts can be terribly overpriced,” the Norwegian woman, Mrs. Nygren, observed with a shiver. She had large round eyeglasses and a radial distribution of face wrinkles which together gave a mantislike impression. Visually she and the burnished Söderblad were mutual affronts. “On the other hand,” she continued, “it is easy for us in Norway to be choosy. Even in certain of our city parks the skiing can be ‘top-notch.’ There is really nothing like it anywhere.”
“Of course a distinction must be made,” said Mr. Nygren, who was very tall and had ears like raw veal chops, “between the Alpine type of skiing and the cross-country, or Nordic, variety. Norway has produced outstanding Alpine skiers — I mention the name Kjetil Andre Aamodt with some confidence that it will ‘ring a bell’—but it must be admitted that we have not always competed at the top level in this area. However, the cross-country, or Nordic, variety is quite a different story. There it is safe to say that we continue to gain more than our fair share of distinctions.”
“Norwegians are fantastically boring,” Mr. Söderblad said hoarsely in Enid’s ear.
The other two “floaters” at the table, a handsome older couple named Roth from Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, had done Enid the instinctive favor of engaging Alfred in conversation. Alfred’s face was flushed with soup heat, the drama of a spoon, and also perhaps the effort of refusing to glance even once at the dazzling Söderbladian décolletage, while he explained to the Roths the mechanics of stabilizing an ocean liner. Mr. Roth, a brainy-looking man in a bow tie and eye-bloating horn-rims, was peppering him with discerning questions and assimilating the answers so raptly he appeared almost shocked.
Mrs. Roth was paying less attention to Alfred than to Enid. Mrs. Roth was a small woman, a handsome child in her mid-sixties. Her elbows barely cleared the tabletop. She had a white-flecked black pageboy and rosy cheeks and big blue eyes with which she was staring at Enid unabashedly, in the way of someone very smart or very stupid. Such a crushlike intensity of looking suggested hunger. Enid sensed immediately that Mrs. Roth would become her great friend on the cruise, or else her great rival, and so with something like coquetry she declined to speak to her or otherwise acknowledge her attention. As steaks were brought to the table and devastated lobsters taken away she repeatedly thrust and Mr. Söderblad repeatedly parried questions concerning his occupation, which appeared to involve the arms trade. She soaked up Mrs. Roth’s blue-eyed gaze along with the envy that she imagined the “floaters” were provoking at other tables. She supposed that to the hoi polloi in their T-shirts the “floaters” looked extremely Continental. A touch of distinction here. Beauty, neckties, an ascot. A certain cachet.
“Sometimes I get so excited thinking about my morning coffee,” Mr. Söderblad said, “I can’t fall asleep at night.”
Enid’s hopes that Alfred might take her dancing in the Pippi Longstocking Ballroom were dashed when he stood up and announced that he was going to bed. It wasn’t even seven o’clock yet. Who ever heard of a grownup going to bed at seven in the evening?
“Sit down and wait for dessert,” she said. “The desserts are supposed to be divine.”
Alfred’s unsightly napkin fell from his thighs to the floor. He seemed without inkling of how much he was embarrassing and disappointing her. “You stay,” he said. “I’ve had enough.”
And away across the Søren Kierkegaard broadloom he lurched, battling shifts in the horizontal which had grown more pronounced since the ship left New York Harbor.
Familiar waves of sorrow for all the fun she couldn’t have with such a husband dampened Enid’s spirits until it occurred to her that she now had a long evening to herself and no Alfred to spoil her fun.
She brightened, and brightened further when Mr. Roth departed for the Knut Hamsun Reading Room, leaving his wife at the table. Mrs. Roth switched seats to be closer to Enid.
“We Norwegians are great readers,” Mrs. Nygren took the opportunity to remark.
“And great yakkers,” Mr. Söderblad muttered.
“Public libraries and bookstores in Oslo are thriving,” Mrs. Nygren informed the table. “I think it is not the same elsewhere. Reading is mostly in decline around the world. But not in Norway, hm. My Per is reading the complete works of John Galsworthy for the second time this autumn. In English.”
“Nooo, Inga, nooo,” Per Nygren whinnied. “Third time!”
“My God,” said Mr. Söderblad.
“It’s true.” Mrs. Nygren looked at Enid and Mrs. Roth as though anticipating awe. “Each year Per reads one work by every winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and also the complete works of his favorite winner from his previous year’s reading. And you see, each year the task becomes a bit more difficult, because there has been another winner, you see.”
“It is a bit like raising the bar in a high jump,” Per explained. “Every year a bit more challenging.”
Mr. Söderblad, who by Enid’s count was drinking his eighth cup of coffee, leaned close to her and said, “My God these people are boring!”
“It is safe to say that I have read more deeply into Henrik Pontoppidan than most,” Per Nygren said.
Mrs. Söderblad tilted her head, smiling dreamily. “Do you know,” she said, perhaps to Enid or to Mrs. Roth, “that until one hundred years ago Norway was a colony of Sweden?”
The Norwegians erupted like a batted hive.
“Colony!? Colony??”
“Oh, oh,” Inga Nygren hissed, “I think there is a history here that our American friends deserve to—”
“This is a story of strategic alliances!” Per declared.
“By ‘colony’ what is the exact word in Swedish that you are groping for, Mrs. Söderblad? Since my English is obviously much stronger than yours, perhaps I can offer our American friends a more accurate translation, such as ‘equal partner in a unified peninsular kingdom’?”
“Signe,” Mr. Söderblad observed wickedly to his wife, “I do believe you’ve hit a nerve.” He raised a hand. “Waiter, refill.”
“If one chooses as a vantage point the late ninth century,” Per Nygren said, “and I suspect that even our Swedish friends will concede that the ascension of Harald the Blond is quite a reasonable ‘hopping-off place’ for our examination of the seesaw relationship of two great rival powers, or should I perhaps say three great powers, since Denmark as well plays a rather fascinating role in our story—”
“We’d love to hear it, but maybe another time,” Mrs. Roth interrupted, leaning over to touch Enid’s hand. “Remember we said seven o’clock?”
Enid was only briefly bewildered. She excused herself and followed Mrs. Roth into the main hall, where they encountered a crush of seniors and gastric aromas, disinfectant aromas.
“Enid, I’m Sylvia,” said Mrs. Roth. “How do you feel about slot machines? I’ve had a physical craving all day.”
“Oh, me too!” Enid said. “I think they’re in the Stringbird Room.”
“Strindberg, yes.”
Enid admired quickness of mind but seldom credited herself with possessing it. “Thanks for the — you know,” she said as she followed Sylvia Roth through the crush.
“Rescue. Don’t mention it.”
The Strindberg Room was packed with kibitzers, low-stakes blackjack players, and lovers of the slot. Enid couldn’t remember when she’d had so much fun. The fifth quarter she dropped brought her three plums; as if so much fruit upset the bowels of her machine, specie gushed from its nether parts. She shoveled her take into a plastic bucket. Eleven quarters later it happened again: three cherries, a silver dump. White-haired players losing steadily at neighboring machines gave her dirty looks. I’m embarrassed, she told herself, although she wasn’t.