The Prisoner's Dilemma (6 page)

Sophie stood in silence, absorbing the impact of what she'd just been told. There was little she could say and the two of them stayed quietly entwined for a few more minutes as her mother regained some composure and with it a measure of her lost strength. Sophie let go of her and gently wiped her face.

‘We'll be all right, Mama. We shall see.'

Shortly afterwards the door opened and her father emerged, followed by Zweig. Again the captain bowed deeply to the two women but if he'd noticed any change in them he gave no sign of it. He picked up his hat from the table and walked in his strange, deliberate manner towards the door. As he did so, Sophie glanced towards her father and was shocked to see how he quickly looked away from her.

The door closed and silence returned to the house. Johann Kant stood still, waiting for the maid to go about her business.
Once she'd left, he lifted his eyes from the high polish of the floor and quietly muttered to his wife in a laboured, broken voice.

‘Mother, we must speak. Sophie, will you find Immanuel please and join us in my study in five minutes.'

Sophie was about to object when she saw her mother give a quick nod of agreement. She turned and hurried up the stairs, heading towards where she knew her brother would be, as he always was, with his nose in a book. As she reached his room and rushed into the cramped library he'd made for himself in a far corner he barely raised his eyes. But one glance at her tense, shocked face was enough for him to urgently put his reading down.

‘Why Sophie, you look terrible. Whatever's the matter?'

Sophie suddenly realised that she hadn't given any thought to how she would break the news of her father's downfall and now, as she looked down on her brother's anxious face, her heart began to fail her.

Immanuel was twenty-one, only two years less than herself, but he had always seemed so childlike and so very much younger than she was that the difference in their ages seemed far greater. His bookishness was already legendary and from an early age he'd been removed from the demands of normal life. He had enrolled at the university when only sixteen and, to nobody's surprise, he'd already decided that he would make his life there. He was quite different to his sister and in place of her spirited personality and fierce, quick intelligence he was already settling into a life of withdrawn eccentricity into which a strict routine and an unbreakable timetable ruled his days.

She braced herself to tell him the news but even as she did so her mind raced forward with a sinking depression. Who, she now began to panic, would look after this introverted and unworldly soul when their fortunes fell?

There was nothing to be done but repeat what she'd just heard. Immanuel listened hard and then turned to look at the
wall.

‘Poor Papa,' he muttered more to himself than to Sophie, ‘he will take this very hard. How cruel the world is. Perhaps we shall all go hungry now?'

Sophie gave a brave smile. She leant over towards him and they embraced.

‘We must go down,' she said softly, and Immanuel closed his book and together they descended the staircase. Sophie looked at him as he went ahead of her – so young and so naïve, she thought to herself, really, he's just a child. What would become of him?

They came to the hall and Sophie knocked on the door of the study. There was no answer and she gently pushed it open and peered around its edge to see if they could enter. As she did so, her mother caught sight of her and rushed across the room, her arms outstretched.

‘Oh, Sophie, Sophie. Only you can save us.'

Sophie took a step into the room in alarm.

‘What do you mean, Mama? Save you? Papa, what is this? What does she mean?'

Sophie looked towards where Herr Kant was standing by his desk but instead of meeting her eye he glanced quickly away and gazed down at his hands. He drew a deep breath. Then, slowly and in the grip of much wretched stuttering, he explained the story of his ruinous agreement with Zweig, of his insane gamble and of its terrible outcome. As he finished he turned away and spoke in a bitter, despairing gasp.

‘In short, I am due for the cost of the hides, the ship and the loss of income that Zweig has suffered. I have only one week to find the money. You saw that he came here earlier to press me for payment.'

He looked away and his chest rose and fell in heavy, anguished panting. Sophie continued to wait for an answer to her question. Her father came out of his thoughts and squared his shoulders.

‘But he came also to give me an alternative. He has put a proposition to me that …' Kant stopped speaking for a moment and put his hand on the surface of the desk. He seemed to stare at it now as if he had never noticed it before, but then looked up, frantic and tense, and blurted out his news.

‘Oh, Sophie, it is like a dagger in the heart, my dearest. He has proposed a way out that only you can fulfill. It …it seems he has fallen in love with you. He says he knew it from the first moment he ever set eyes on you. And he has …he has asked for your hand in marriage …and in place of a dowry he will forgive the debt. There, it is out. I have said it.'

He looked up at Sophie with his head half lowered and he smiled at her in a way she had never seen before. It was part embarrassment, part shame and, she noticed with a sick realisation, part pleading.

Never had the words of the great Prussian poet, Dieter Goehren, been more apt.

‘How narrow is the path of the human mind,' he had famously written, ‘the smallest step and we cross from one side to the other.'

Sophie now took just such a step. In an instant she saw how deeply foolish she had been in her regard for Zweig and how utterly misled she had been by the blind delusion of her heart. What she had taken for careful thoughtfulness in him she now saw was simply the worst kind of low cunning. Now, too, she saw that his great and seemingly sincere courtesy was little more than an elegant arrangement of bait for the unwary. And his natural authority, that sense of command that had so intrigued and attracted her, well, it was nothing other than the need to bully and oppress. She saw him clearly now; she saw him stripped to the baseness of his motives, the fine clothes he had cloaked them in removed and discarded. Why, he was no different from any other money-grabbing trickster. Worse in fact, he was a tyrant, a monster!

‘How disgusting, Papa. What a disgusting proposal!' she cried. But, even as she did so, she saw a twisted, pleading look come into her father's face. She persisted, hoping against everything she was seeing that her father would not abandon her.

‘How could he hold you to ransom like that? I don't even know him. How can he suggest such a thing – it's despicable!'

Her parents glanced at each other and her mother took a step forward.

‘But, Sophie, my dearest, you are wrong. He is a good man. Everyone says so. A powerful man, it's true, but good. Dearest, we are on the street if you refuse him. We shall starve. You alone can rescue us.'

Sophie took a step backwards and her hand went to her mouth, horrified to see how quickly Zweig had travelled in her mother's opinion from someone who wished to have them finished to being a good man.

Worse to see was the way her father nodded his agreement with his wife's views. His earlier reluctance and stammered embarrassment seemed to have evaporated.

‘Please say you will accept him, Sophie. Or at least say that you will consider his proposal.'

‘I can't believe you are asking this of me,' said Sophie, frantically. ‘How can you?'

Her father spoke quietly and firmly.

‘Sophie, with Zweig we can rise again. Without him we fall. He leaves in three days on a journey that he says will make him a greater fortune than all his others. When he returns in a few weeks, he will be one of the richest men in Königsberg. Please let me take your answer back to him. Please let it be your agreement.'

Sophie was silent as she struggled to take in what she was hearing. Then, from nowhere, she was struck by a thought.

‘But if your ship was lost in these awful storms, why is he taking the same risk in the same weather? What if this voyage
should see this ship founder as well?'

Kant returned in an instant to his business-like self.

‘I asked him that myself and together we have reached an agreement. The journey should take no more than two months. We added more days to account for a setback. But, if the captain does not return within a hundred days then the debt will be cancelled.'

‘A hundred days!' Sophie repeated. ‘Then we must pray that he fails. And count the days.'

Her father looked down at his desk again, his negotiating position appearing to stall before his eyes.

‘I fear there is another condition, my dearest. I am so sorry. He is insisting that you go with him on the voyage. He says that he would not want you to marry him without seeing him as he is. He wishes you to get to know him better. I'm sorry. He was unmovable on this point.'

Anger rose in Sophie again.

‘So, I am to be sent off into this awful winter weather, which has already claimed one ship and with it our livelihood. To be with that loathsome man?'

She looked at her parents' exhausted, yearning expressions and could take no more. She fled from the room and ran, weeping, up the long staircase to her room. There she stayed, refusing all food or company, despite the protestations and pleading of her mother that came from beyond the locked door. But two days later she softened, exhausted, thinking of her poor little brother and his strange unworldliness, and of her mother's terrible anguish. She unlocked the door and sat back down on her bed. Frau Kant turned the handle and came into the room, tense and red eyed.

‘There is no way out,' said Sophie flatly, her gaze fixed on the wall. ‘I shall have to go. Oh, Mama. What can I do but go? Who would ever care for you or Immanuel if we were to lose everything? How can I ever have anything but contempt for Zweig
after this but …' and she looked away with such fear on her face that her mother instinctively gasped ‘…if, …if I survive, I shall be able to say I now know him, know everything about him, and still feel nothing but disgust.'

Her voice rose as her spirit returned.

‘Let him want to marry me then! If he dare. And who knows, he may be so rich by the time he comes back that he'll have lost interest in having a viper like me at his throat. Come, Mama, we must find clothes for a sea voyage.'

Later that night Zweig stood at the stern of his ship and watched as the cargo was loaded. There were few people about the quay other than a scattering of dockside idlers and some of these muttered to each other as they observed the air of secrecy that seemed to be surrounding the operation. A couple of them, huddled together, speculated in hushed tones about what kind of commercial rabbit the captain would be pulling from his hat this time. The crew worked steadily on and orders were given yet again that time was of the essence.

Suddenly from out of the gloom came a low voice.

‘Captain Zweig?'

‘Yes, who's that?'

‘My name is Schwerin, sir. I come with information about a lady.'

‘Up here. Brunner, let him through.'

Schwerin nodded to the quartermaster as he came aboard.

‘I thought you might be interested, sir,' he said as he reached Zweig, ‘I am on friendly terms with the Kant household, well, with one young lady's maid in particular.' Zweig waited in silence for the man to continue. ‘I understand there has been some hesitation. But the lady in question has now decided to see foreign lands. I thought you would wish to know.'

Zweig looked at the man's smirking face with dislike and then moved to gaze over his shoulder to where half a dozen of the crew were moving the arm of a derrick, hoisting on board some particularly large barrels.

‘Take great care with those barrels!' he called out in a fierce whisper. ‘Brunner, tell the men to be more careful. They are not to be dropped at any cost. Not if you wish for a share of the voyage. And you …' he dropped his voice as he turned back to Schwerin and passed him a coin, ‘…on your way now. And not a word of this ladies' gossip to anyone.'

* * * 

By the next morning the work was complete. The ship stood ready to depart as a bitter wind hurtled across the dockside, shrieking in the rigging of a hundred or more vessels that fretted and leapt at their moorings like so many head of cattle before the slaughterhouse gate. Sleet slashed down from the north, and the mouth of the river was shrouded in a mist so dank that it chilled the blood. The misery in the weather, however, was as nothing compared to the blackness that had descended on the little party that approached the quayside. At its centre was Sophie Kant, holding her father's arm as she leant on him for support.

To her horror she saw the ship's crew lined up on the deck, dressed in their best uniforms and with flowers in their hats as if for a wedding. Their honest sailors' faces seemed to beam at the prospect of their captain's happiness. From his position aft, Zweig had seen the party arrive and he now came towards them in delight.

‘Welcome. Welcome to the Schwarzsturmvogel,' he called down. ‘Sophie, how wonderful it is to see you, you have made me very, very happy. And you have never looked more fine than you do today. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for agreeing to come on our voyage. Herr Kant, Frau Kant, you will be worried for her, of that I do not doubt. But you have my word that I shall bring her home safe and happy. I shall protect her with my life, you may rely on that, with my life I say.'

Sophie looked again at the sailors and their flowers.

So, they know, she thought, and if they know then the whole world will know. Now, more than ever before, she realised that she should never have come – how could she have relented? Even if she returned and somehow managed to reject Zweig she would always be the woman that had sailed away with him, unmarried and unaccompanied. Her shoulders sagged at the thought and she gave a deep groan. Bitterly, she saw the future: if she returned
then she would have no reputation left to her - or rather, she would have the very worst of reputations. And if she did not? Then she would have died, and died alone.

As the full enormity of the step she was taking fell on her, her courage finally failed. She sank again onto her father's arm and the tears that she'd been holding back for so long now poured out unchecked. The little family gathered around and it was only when Immanuel stroked her arm and murmured that he would see her again in as little as two months that her resolve stiffened. She gave a small nod of her head to a waiting sailor. He picked up her cases and, without a backward glance, she walked up the gangplank towards the Schwarzsturmvogel's deck.

* * * 

Three days later Sophie had still not left her cabin.

At around eleven o'clock on the third of these, there was a soft knock on her door. The handle turned and Zweig's great frame filled the tiny doorway.

‘Sophie. Good morning. I trust you are well,' he said brightly. ‘I had feared that you were seasick but I'm told you are a natural sailor.' There was no answer but he continued to smile down at her as she sat by her berth. ‘I was looking forward to showing you the ship, he continued, I know of your scientific interests and I thought you would like to see how we navigate our position and work the sails.'

Sophie continued to stare bitterly down towards the slatted flooring of the cabin, refusing to answer or even acknowledge his presence.

‘Please don't stay shut away in here,' Zweig said, now more quietly, ‘the men are worried for you. And, you must know, I wish for nothing but your happiness.'

Whilst he said this Sophie had not taken her eyes from the decking. Now she lifted her head and rose from the chair to look
Zweig full in the face.

‘If you do not know why I am here then you must be a madman.' She whispered this quickly in a low, hoarse voice but her tone rose as the anger mounted in her. ‘Yes, a madman. You think I'm here for my happiness? You think I want to be with you? You come to my father's house with your disgusting blackmail; you do not so much as look at me, never even a word. Then you take me as a hostage for your debt, a debt so deceitfully arrived at that you should be in prison for it. And now you think I can make all this disappear in the name of your one sided love! Be clear Zweig. I see through you. I see through your schemes. How dare you presume that I should ever feel anything for you but contempt. Happy? Leave me alone.'

Zweig listened to this torrent in silence, his look downcast. There was an air of immovable dignity in his manner as he heard Sophie out. Of understanding, but not without sadness. Now he replied in a soft and measured tone.

‘Sophie. You must know this. I have loved you from the first second I saw you. For weeks afterwards I thought of nothing but you. I had no rest, I moved about as if in a dream. Then I saw you again at that bear garden in the Rathaus. We spoke and I knew then that my soul would never be complete as long as we were apart. I had no idea how to proceed. But fate intervened. Your father fell into debt with me and I knew he would be ruined if I insisted on repayment. Then I saw that some good could come of it. There was no blackmail, it was just my destiny that I saw before me. The money means nothing to me. My life will be unchanged without it. But my life would be destroyed without you.' He paused for a moment to look at her. ‘I see how you feel about me now but I hope and pray that you will come to view me in a different light in time. Sophie, you know it all now.'

There was a silence. Sophie continued to stare coldly back at him in reply and he knew there was nothing more to be said. He gave a quick nod of quiet respect and took a step back, gently
closing the door as he did so.

* * * 

For two days more Sophie endured the suffocation of her tiny cabin. The weather had been kind to them in the Baltic as they'd travelled west towards Kiel but now as Zweig altered course north towards the Kattegat the vessel beat into the vicious headwinds that hurtled down the length of the Storebælt. Progress had been painfully slow for thirty hours or more and the troubled seas had exhausted the crew as they'd fought for every inch of headway. At last they'd reached calmer waters as they rounded the top of Sjælland and, as the wind veered round, Sophie decided that facing Zweig again was preferable to the insanity that threatened her if she spent another day in her cot.

As she emerged from below deck two sailors passed her and knuckled their foreheads. She ignored them and walked aft towards where Zweig stood looking out from the stern rail with his sailing master. The two men were deep in discussion as they prepared to let out a thin line with a log attached at the head and knots at regular intervals. She saw them work and watched in absorbed fascination as Zweig threw the log to trail behind the ship and the Master turned over a measuring glass. As the sands ran through, Zweig marked the distance by counting the knots in the line. The two of them then conferred, their heads close together, huddled over a compass and frequently turning to consult the wind and current conversion tables they had with them.

Sophie had not moved, astonished that this was the way they must be navigating. She'd had no idea that their methods would be so crude and she saw at once why so many ships could be lost at sea.

A sailor moved towards the two men and coughed. Zweig glanced up and, seeing the sailor's pointed nod, looked beyond
him to where Sophie stood watching them. With a delighted smile he immediately passed his calculations to the Master.

‘Sophie!' he called out. ‘How good it is to see you on deck.'

He began to walk towards her but before he had taken a dozen steps disaster struck. High above them, a tar called Burkhardt was shaking out a furl in the topmast staysail when he glanced down towards the deck and saw his captain striding up to Miss Kant – the Miss Kant they had all been discussing. So, she'd decided to face him again, he thought, more than interested to see what happened next. In spite of the strong blow that was keeping the topmast crew glued to the arm he whistled excitedly and called to the next man outboard on the ratline, a high spirited, freckled boy who was known, inevitably, as Schnapps.

‘Schnapps! Look below. The captain's beauty is out!'

Schnapps was little more than a child and barely two weeks into his topmast time. Anxious and eager to please, he grinned at Burkhardt and his attention shifted as he looked quickly downwards to where the man was pointing towards the deck. Many were the times that Burkhardt had told him the priorities of safety but in his excitement the rules were forgotten. A wicked yaw threw the vessel sideways and as the masts came over the boy, his concentration lost, slipped his handhold. Too late he tried to save himself, grasping desperately at nothing and then clawing the air as he tumbled towards the sea, shouting for help as he fell.

Zweig heard Schnapps scream out and immediately ran to the rail as the boy hit the water. He saw his hand come up and as the boat righted and surged forwards again, he grabbed a wooden raft and threw it out as far as he could in the boy's direction. He then turned and shouted an order to the sailor that was standing next to him, staring down into the water.

‘Mark him with your arm! Point now.'

Zweig wrenched his jacket off. He stood on one leg as he pulled at first one and then the other of his boots. He glared at
where Sophie was standing, looking anxiously into the sea.

‘Point at me in the water. Never let your arm drop!'

With a fierce last look at her he turned and bellowed at the Master.

‘Figure eight!'

Zweig then sprang up on the rail and hurled himself into the blackness of the cold waves. Sophie saw him surface and strike out powerfully towards where the boy had last been seen. She had no idea why she'd been told to point but she knew that if the boy's life depended on it then she must do as she'd been told. As the ship pitched and rolled in the swell she'd see and then lose Zweig in the waves and she now saw why she and the sailor had been ordered to point – if they had not the two men would very quickly have been lost against the darkness of the background.

‘About!' yelled the Master as he helped the helmsman push the wheel hard over to bring the ship's head through the wind and back to the men in the water. Sophie, unused to the maneuver suddenly found that she had to run to the other side of the ship, her arm still outstretched. For long seconds it seemed as if she'd lose Zweig's head in the blackness of the sea and a terrible temptation surged through her to drop her arm or point away. She was quite sure that if she did, she could be rid of him in an instant. But then she saw his head break surface and she knew that she had to see the boy saved.

Zweig looked towards the ship, seeing where the two arms pointed and quickly estimating where Schnapps was. He struck out strongly once more and soon came alongside him. He swam behind the boy and cupped his head in his hands, just as his wild thrashing was coming to an exhausted end. Zweig then waved with his free hand to the watching helmsman.

The ship passed them on its return and the Master swung the wheel again to bring its head into wind. Slowly it turned and came to a stop alongside the men as the sails flapped hectically, all sheets loose. The crew flung rope ladders over the side and
sailors jumped down to manhandle the exhausted pair up on deck.

Poor Schnapps couldn't stand and his eyes rolled back as strong hands helped him below. But Zweig climbed over the rail and waved away the offer of a cloak, his clothes clinging to his colossal frame and his chest heaving as he struggled to recover his breath. In spite of her anger Sophie had to fight to hide the admiration that arose in her.

Zweig stood panting for a few moments before he moved towards where he'd left his boots. As he passed he stopped by Sophie and turned to look into her face.

‘Thank you,' he said simply.

‘For what? she spat back. ‘I did nothing.'

Zweig smiled.

‘But you did. You chose to save me. You decided I shouldn't die.'

Sophie felt her colour flare.

‘No, I didn't. I saved the boy,' she replied flatly, and turned to return to her cabin.

* * * 

Mona McLeish sat on a large stone outside her cottage as she washed clothes in a tin basin. James stood near her, looking out to sea. Since Alistair had died he didn't like to leave his mother on her own and he frequently found excuses now not to go out with the Dunbeaton fishing fleet when it sailed.