The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  “All right!” he said shortly. “I have had a talk with Mr. Enreich this evening.”

  “Ach,” said Heinrich, with mingled pleasure and apprehension. “One can always be certain that the Herr Manager never speaks lightly.”

  “Not when it comes to profits for himself,” Edward agreed, sullenly. He drew a deep breath. Now he addressed his mother alone, and he talked for a full ten minutes without interruption. The gas hissed in its yellow globes; the spring wind felt along the edges of the windows. Maria knitted inexorably. Heinrich’s face began to take on a look of shock and disbelief and terror. He kept on moistening his full pink lips and sometimes, frantically, he chewed on a hangnail. But he never glanced away from his son; he gazed at him as one gazes at a fascinating and appalling spectacle.

  There was a long silence when Edward had finished, broken only by the click of Maria’s needles, the hiss of the gas, the restless rising of the night wind, and the creakings of the little old house. Heinrich suddenly leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes on a faintness. It was not possible that his son Edward was proposing this, in such a hard and implacable voice. It was a dream; one had only to keep quiet and one would awake.

  Then Maria was speaking, without raising her tone and almost dispassionately. “You have considered your father’s health, no doubt.”

  “I’ve told you,” said Edward. “He keeps his clerks; I will supervise. In an emergency I will be there. After all, I’m not going to the moon.”

  Maria put down her knitting and folded her hands in her lap. She regarded Edward with cool and detached curiosity. Inwardly she smiled, recognizing her own irresistible force of character in Edward. “You will say that this new—venture—will increase the fund for the others. Yes, I admit that. If Herr Enreich believes in it, then it cannot fail. In reality, however, you are separating yourself from us. You are like the eagle who, though preserving its nest and what lies in it, is unrestrained in the unreachable air, a flying shadow on a mountaintop, always hovering, always alert, but free in itself.” Ah, yes, she thought, and that was I, too, but I did not know until it was too late.

  Heinrich came to himself. He was aghast at his wife, appalled at his son. The old awful loneliness came to him again: I have lost my Eddie. He was more shaken at this than at Edward’s proposals or decisions.

  “What are you saying, Maria?” he cried. “You are not agreeing to this?”

  His wife slowly turned her head to him and considered him. “Agree?” she asked. “I believe we have no other alternative but to agree. As that man, Goeltz, has no other alternative.”

  “I can’t see the comparison between us and Goeltz,” said Edward, and he flushed.

  “Can you not?” said Maria, with cold surprise. “But then perhaps it is fortunate that we are your family, unlike Herr Goeltz. We shall not suffer; we shall profit. That, I know. But still Herr Goeltz and your father and I have much in common.”

  Edward was deeply angered.

  “There was a time,” Maria continued, “when I considered you, Edward, incapable of hatred. That was unwise and stupid of me. It was latent in you from the beginning. I have nothing against hatred when it is righteous and directed against evil. But it is a dangerous thing when one hates humanity and not evils.”

  “Eddie was always so loving,” said Heinrich feebly. “I do not understand—” He wiped his face, as if perspiring, but in reality it was only a cover to dry his stinging tears.

  Maria nodded. “True. But he has not found love yet.”

  She picked up her knitting again. “You have not told us all, Edward.”

  “No,” said her son. “I have not. And when I do, you will not be so sure that I hate my family.”

  Maria smiled faintly. She again lifted her eyes and scrutinized the young man. “Did I say you hated your family? No. It is you who have suggested it.”

  Edward furiously thought of all that he had done, in benefits not only to his family but to many others. However, there was no use arguing with his mother. She had what Mr. Faure called an “idée fixe.” Let a fellow think of himself occasionally and she immediately accused him of “hating” his family! But it was like her to be unjust and narrow. He was tired of being accused, of being put on the defensive, of having motives ascribed to him which had never entered his mind! An eagle, God damn it! A German couldn’t speak without getting poetic.

  “Coming back to your allegory about the eagle and the nest,” Edward said contemptuously. “Very good. And now I want to tell you that this nest, right here, this house, doesn’t suit me any longer. We live like beggars, when we are rich. I’ve been thinking of building a house. Herr Enreich has offered me eighteen acres three miles outside of this town, at only forty dollars an acre. A manufacturing company, beer, I think, has offered him one hundred fifty dollars an acre for the land. I am going to buy that property.”

  Now Maria was disturbed for the first time, and Heinrich was speechless, looking at his son with his mouth dropping open idiotically.

  “And,” said Edward, inexorably, “we are going to think about building on it. Perhaps not this year or next, or even in the next five years. But we are going to have a decent home, an estate.”

  For an instant Maria thought of her family’s Schloss and she was struck with nostalgia. Then she said, “On the profits of the shops, I assume.”

  “No. That would be impossible, then, for a long time. I am going to invest in some of the stocks and bonds Herr Enreich has suggested. I am going to put considerable of my own profits into them. A man cannot get rich merely by working. And I am going to be rich.”

  “Stocks? Bonds?” exclaimed Heinrich, with the despair of one confronting a madman. Horror distended his eyes. “Do you mean, Eddie, Wall Street? Wall Street! Have I not taught you about Wall Street? That bloated organization of wicked men, who exploit the wretched and driven and starving masses for the benefit of a few greedy families?”

  Edward looked at him in contempt. “Socialism, again. Accursed industry, again. Haven’t you ever learned what the Industrial Revolution has done for what you call the masses, and what it will continue to do as it expands? It’s made life tolerable, and even easy, for the masses, given them access to mass-produced goods, rescued them from the famine of an old aristocratic oligarchy which once ruled the world. It’s given them work in factories and mills, a wage, freedom, roofs over their heads. It’s released them from services, the meanest, drudging and starving services to nobility and royalty. It’s abolished serfdom. Certainly that wasn’t the original idea of the industrialists, but it has happened, and is happening. The masses have only just begun to prosper in this country, and you can talk all you want about exploitation and long hours and low wages. They’ll go, too. It’s in the nature of things. And I’m going to buy those stocks and bonds with every penny I have left for myself.”

  Maria listened with deep interest. She did not share her husband’s fetish about Socialism. Her eyes softened with a dreaming expression. She did not like, in particular, those whom her husband called the masses. In fact, she did not believe in their actual existence. America was in a state of flux, the “classes” constantly changing. One had only to think of Rockefeller and Carnegie. In Europe these men would not have had their opportunities. They would have remained servants or farmers or unresisting employees of small factories and mills and mines, without hope. In America, one had to admit, there was no limit a determined man could draw for himself. However, if Socialism ever came to America, as it had come to a few other nations, then the power of America would die and the “classes” would actually come into existence.

  Socialism, she said to herself, was only the revenge the inadequate could inflict upon the strong. She spoke with more warmth than usual. “Let us have no foolish discussion about what does not exist. Wall Street is merely a trading place, a marketplace. I have no doubt that shrewd men can profit there, though I know so little about it. However, if Herr Enreich is committed there, then it cannot be a st
upid thing to do.”

  Ach, if they would only read! Heinrich wailed in himself. He thought of his many books on Socialism. Only Gregory had shown any interest in them and had listened to his father. Gregory would be the great writer, the great novelist, about Socialism! Heinrich glowed for an instant.

  The masses, to Heinrich, did not include his own employees. These masses were an amorphous mass, a heroic mass, which lived in some mysterious Götterdämmerung of the theorists, full-throated, brown-armed, strong-faced, the illuminated air resounding with their voices, which were like the voices of a multitude of Siegfrieds. Heinrich, in his vague fashion, believed himself, but not his employees, one of this invincible, volting host. Bemused by his valiant dream, he only slowly became aware that Maria was watching him with an odd smile, and that Edward’s smile, if it was like Maria’s, did not carry her own compassion.

  Though he had been steadily losing to Edward over the past few years, Heinrich stubbornly tried again to exert his authority over this granite-eyed young man. “I cannot permit the gambling, the Wall Street gambling, over the lives and souls of oppressed humanity,” he said, raising his voice futilely as a wave lifts against a cliff. His throat trembled; he clenched his small fists on the arms of his chair. “And I shall give long consideration, my Eddie, to your other proposals. I cannot guarantee,” he added, shaking his head, “that I will accede.”

  “Certainly you will,” said Maria. “You have no other choice, my husband. Let us not be absurd. As for the stocks and bonds, Edward is to be the judge about his own money.”

  Edward was not grateful to his mother for her practicality. He thought, with cynicism, She always knows where her own advantage lies. As for Pa, I don’t have to consider him. All I need to do is to show him the bankbooks and stop him from trying to reduce the clerks’ wages and get more than a decent amount of work out of them.

  Edward, with more than a youth’s arrogance and more than a youth’s ardent and uncompromising simplicity, did not understand that men were often more, or less, than they seemed, and that they had a secret and powerful existence of their own, locked in the yellowish cell of their skulls and in the dark corridors of their hearts. He was not even aware of these things in himself. He thought of himself only as a driving force, single-minded and uncomplex.

  He was getting ready for bed when his mother, puffing from her ascent up the attic stairs, knocked on his door. He admitted her grudgingly, and she sat down, without invitation, and fanned herself with her handkerchief. Edward snapped off his tie, ignoring her, though he wondered why she had come. He could feel her eyes on his back, and finally, as he unbuttoned his shirt, he was irritated and uneasy. “Well?” he demanded. “What more is there to say?”

  Maria fanned herself. “Much. But I am wondering how to say it. No,” and she lifted her hand. “Do not frown, my son. I am not here to discuss the conversation of this evening. I should like to talk with you about your brothers and sister.”

  “Don’t you think I can get tired of the subject?” he suddenly shouted in English. “What more do you want of me than what I’m doing?”

  Maria folded her damp handkerchief neatly and put it into her sleeve before replying. Then she fixed her pale blue eyes on her son’s. She saw that Edward’s eyes seemed full of sparkling steel fragments. She began to speak, slowly. “I have had some experience in the world; I have not lived a cloistered life. When I say my children are—talented—it is not vanity which makes me say so. It is a fact. I am only wondering if we could possibly have misunderstood something. It is very possible that they are talented in another direction.”

  “What!” exclaimed Edward, wrathfully. He clenched his fists at his side. “What are you talking about? Isn’t Dave a musician? Isn’t Sylvia gifted in the theater arts? Isn’t Gregory a writer? Isn’t Ralph an artist?”

  Then even Maria was amazed, for she saw stark terror on Edward’s face, and a powerful rage. What is my son afraid of? she asked herself. What does he fear to lose? For, surely, he is frightened that he is about to lose something. She shook her head, dismayed. It would be impossible to explain to a frantic man so he could understand and be reasonable. How could she say, “My children are showing a puny mastery of what they are doing. They are desperately unhappy; I see this now. Out of mercy, let us discover what it is they are really fitted for, so they will not hate you and in their hatred try to destroy you. It is you, my Edward, who occupies my thoughts. Your life is dedicated to the less strong, yes; but still, there is your life. Even the strong should live, and not only for the weak. I must beg your forgiveness; in your childhood I did not lift a voice to prevent your exploitation, but now I comprehend many things. I do not believe in adjustment for adjustment’s sake; there is the coward’s way, the bloodless way, the way of the feeble. But there are inevitabilities, few but inexorable, which we must accept. Let us explore now, for your sake, what your brothers and sister need and where their greater talents lie. After all, art goes through phases until it finally is crystalized into its final form.”

  But that, she considered, would make Edward’s past life meaningless to him, and one does not destroy a man’s past without destroying a vital part of him, perhaps forever, perhaps even crippling his future. The future could not be crippled. The family needed Edward’s strength as never before, and would need it with greater emphasis in the years to come. The Strong One must never be shown that even once his strength had been wasted, that even one step had been out of the way, and futile.

  But then the others must be sacrificed to some extent. Maria sighed with despair. This was an inevitability that she herself must face. Her face became stern. She prayed inwardly that her other children would find their own way, at last, out of the iron mold of Edward’s conviction—and grim determination. There were so many things which one could not say.

  She stood up. “You are quite right, Edward,” she said. “I had only thought that perhaps your brothers and sister might develop talents—in addition—in addition to what they have.”

  “You can’t scatter yourself,” said Edward, angrily, but the terror subsided on his face, leaving it with an ebbed and relieved expression. “No,” said Maria, turning to the door. “You can’t scatter yourself, my son.”

  “And they are geniuses,” Edward called after her, and there was power in his voice. “They had better be!”

  Edward and William Montgomery Percival Chauncey MacFadden were alone in the glistening and glittering shop. Heinrich had felt “unwell” today, he had piteously pleaded that morning. He had stayed home, to recover from his “shock.” The clerks scuttled home to their suppers; they would not be needed tonight, for the shop now closed on Wednesdays at six.

  The spring evening was still light, a study in luminous grays. Even the houses opposite were washed with that mute warmth. Through alleys the western sky could be seen as a rosy-grisaille, quiet as thought. Few people passed the lighted shop, and these few walked as if musing. Far in the distance a trolley clanged and rang its bell, but it only increased the evening silence. For some reason this air of expectant contemplation, this gentle call for creative communion, only depressed Edward.

  He looked at William irritably. “Don’t polish that nickel too much,” he said. “You’ll rub off the plate.”

  William, clad in a striped pink shirt which was pushed up to the elbows, and with the neckband unfastened about his lean, foxlike throat, rubbed his hands on his long white apron. He turned with a smile and an inclination of his head. “Always did like things neat, laddie,” he murmured. “By the way, did you tell your dadda I’m on the employed list?”

  “Yes,” said Edward, and his depression lifted a little as he grinned. “He had a conniption. I had to promise to pay your wages out of my own pocket until we move into my own store. I gave him that concession. After all,” and he paused.

  William nodded, as if all was explained, and in fact it had been explained to him by intuition. “You can sleep downstairs until you get your first p
ay or you can get an advance from me and find a room of your own at once,” said Edward.

  “I’d prefer to save my first few wages,” said William, loftily. “I have reached the age of discretion. I will provide for my elderly years. I will become a solid citizen and wear a white linen weskit on Sundays. I will buy a cane and, eventually, spats. I will consider concerts again. You have concerts in this benighted town, don’t you?” He looked at Edward with the eager expectancy of the animal he so resembled.

  Edward laughed. “We have band concerts in the park on Sundays in the summer. Fine banging, smashing, thundering Wagner, mostly, and Sousa. Heavy on the brass. ‘Wedding March’ from Lohengrin. ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ And waltzes. Of course no one can dance on Sunday.”

  William shuddered. “Victoria!” he exclaimed. “You should visit the Continent very soon and learn how the civilized half lives. Or, perhaps, Catholic Canada. ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,’ he piously quoted. He leaned against a counter dreamily and crossed his neat ankles. “How well I remember Paris Sunday evenings in the spring! I’ve frolicked there, boyo. Even Berlin is gay then. And Vienna! A man hasn’t lived until he has spent a spring in Vienna. But London!” He shuddered again, crouched, made himself a sanctimonious ball, shuffled his feet quietly, pulled down his face into a long and sniveling mask. He held his hands before him as if holding an edifying book. He sniffled loudly, and twisted his pointed nose, and hollowed his eyes. Edward watched him, entranced. William straightened up and shivered. “If there is a hell, surely it is London on Sunday. The abomination of desolation, as spoken of by Daniel the prophet. How do I know? I was once a Sunday-school teacher. I can quote scripture with the facility of the Devil, though why he should, when there is much more engaging literature, I don’t know.”

  “The Bible has some pretty spicy stuff in it,” said Edward. “At least I remember some of it when I was a kid.”

  “But no finesse! A sinewy, masculine, brutal sort of ‘spicy stuff,’ as you say. No subtlety. No titillation. No awakening of ardor, of curiosity. Here is the bed, here is the whore, here is the pit, says the Bible. No details, if you gather what I mean. It would deter a man, and not arouse him, and I fancy that’s the whole idea, though I imagine the old boys licked their lips when writing all about it.”