The Immigrant’s Daughter

by Howard Fast

  “Go ahead,” she said, speaking clearly but lisping, recalling how the Mexicans at the winery would mock Castilian Spanish, and using every bit of Castilian pronunciation she could call to mind. “Shoot me. Shoot the wife of the Spanish ambassador — and how long will you live then? You pig, there won’t even be a trial. They’ll terminate you and they won’t even mark your grave. I am Señora Francesca Dolores d’AragÓn Isabella”— and then, to herself, Oh, God, give me the name of the Spanish ambassador. She had met him, but right now, in this interval of seconds, in this matter of life and death, she could not recall his name. So having invented four given names, she topped them off with an equally desperate invention — “Castilla,” which could be either a Christian name or a family name. “So,” she continued haughtily, disdaining to cover her bare breasts, “if you desire an international incident that will end God only knows where, rape me and kill Señor Abrahams. If you dare. Not even your children will know where your corpses lie. No, the dogs will eat them!” With that, she ran out of ideas, names, notions and bravado as well, and simply stood still and straight, trying to look as arrogant as possible, and fighting with every ounce of determination she could muster to refrain from covering her breasts and bursting into tears.

  Still the soldiers did not move, and the fat man stared at her thoughtfully. She was certain he was going to ask for her papers, and that would have ended everything, but he did not, and after a long, long moment, he said, brusquely, “I am sorry, but this happens. We are at war.”

  “I understand that,” Barbara said gracefully.

  “Can you drive?” he asked Abrahams, who was climbing painfully to his feet, his handkerchief pressed to the cut on his swollen cheek. “If not, I will give you one of my men to drive you.”

  “I will drive,” Barbara said firmly, now pulling her blouse together.

  “I am sorry for what my men did. They are pigs. But what can we do? We are pressed for recruits.”

  Abrahams had climbed into the jeep, Barbara getting in on the driver’s side. “I will try to lighten your punishment,” Barbara said, and Abrahams whispered to her, “Get us out of this bloody farce, and stop being Queen Isabella.”

  She turned on the ignition and put the car into gear. The soldiers were moving to get their car off the blocked road, but without waiting Barbara drove behind the wagon and then back on the road, resisting the impulse to go tearing away at top speed. But the road was so bad that she had to drive slowly and carefully.

  A few moments later, she asked Abrahams, “Have they gone?”

  “Off in the other direction. They’re about out of sight.”

  She put the car into neutral, pulled up the hand brake, and burst into hysterical tears.

  Abrahams watched her for a while, and then, rather impatiently, told her, “That’s enough, Barbara.”

  “We’re dead,” she sobbed. “We’re dead and buried.”

  “Not buried. I agree that we’re dead, but you’re not a nun and I’m not a priest.”

  “They only bury nuns and priests?”

  “That’s right. You and me, they leave us lying on the roadside in the rain. Now will you get this bloody car back to town before they remember that the ambassador’s wife is in Madrid?”

  “God Almighty, is she?”

  “I think so.”

  Barbara slammed the jeep into gear and sent it hurtling and swaying down the road to San Salvador. Her hysteria disappeared, and when Abrahams pleaded that she would kill both of them, the way she was driving, she hissed, “I hope so, you limey bastard. You put me right into that. Oh, yes! Here’s the Spanish ambassador’s wife. Suppose they had looked at my papers? I would be raped and dead because some smartass limey was creative!”

  “Creative, hell! That fat little bastard was going to kill me. So I took a chance. You know why I did it?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Because I admire you. Because I think you’re wonderful, because I think you can handle anything, and by God, you did. Oh, that was bloody wonderful! He wouldn’t dare ask you for your papers. You know why? Because those National Guard creatures are the lowest form of human life. They could give points to the Nazis. Yes, they’re bloody good when it comes to murdering nuns and unarmed men, but give them a proper tongue-lashing in a manner out of their own culture — if you can call it culture — and they’ll crawl. Anyway, odds are he can’t read, and every word I say is killing me, so please slow down and get me to a doctor.”

  But once in the city, Abrahams changed his mind. “No doctor,” he said. “I don’t trust any of them.”

  “Your office?”

  “No. It’s too late and they don’t have anything there. I don’t think my jaw or cheekbone is broken. Let’s get to your place. Do you have anything?”

  “I have a sort of Boy Scout first-aid kit.”

  In her suite, Barbara washed the cut with gin while Abrahams cried out in anguish. One whole side of his face was swollen, and the pain was so obvious that Barbara was filled with guilt. She had tongue-lashed him, her dear patient friend. She carefully squeezed antibiotic cream on the wound, which had now stopped bleeding, and she patched it together with two large Band-Aids. She assured him that it would hold through the night, but insisted that he see a doctor the following day. “There must be someone you can trust.”

  “Maybe Joe Felshun. He’s the dentist in town.”

  “A dentist?”

  “He’s better than most of the doctors, and at least he has an x-ray machine.”

  “I suppose so. He can tell whether any bones are broken. Are you hungry?” Barbara asked. “It’s almost seven, and we haven’t eaten all day.”

  “I can’t chew. Maybe some soup.”

  “I’m starved,” Barbara said. “Room service is no good. I’ll go downstairs and talk to your friend Angelo.”

  She decided to shower and change clothes. Her blouse was held together by the single button that had survived. It was incredible that she could stand here like this, washing, looking at her face in the mirror, reasonably calm, after having escaped death a few hours before through a childish ploy that was both improbable and ridiculous. Death without dignity was matched by escape without dignity, and both events had taken place in a sadistic, sweating madhouse of a country. Well, one brushed one’s teeth and changed one’s clothes and reflected on how very much the brushing of teeth had become a symbol of one’s bringing-up and of the bringing-up of millions of others, not an exercise of brotherhood or sisterhood or compassion or charity, but simply the brushing of teeth.

  After Barbara had changed her blouse and substituted a skirt for jeans, she remembered that she had aspirin, and brought out three tablets for Abrahams. He lay on the couch, his eyes closed, and when she asked in a whisper whether he was asleep, he said, “No — no indeed, love. I have been contemplating life and death. You saved my life, old girl. I can never properly thank you for that.”

  “What nonsense. You wouldn’t have been out there if I hadn’t talked you into it.”

  “No one actually talks anyone into anything. What do you have there, love?”

  “Aspirin. Three. Can you take three?”

  “Always do.”

  She gave him the aspirin and a glass of water. He grimaced as he opened his mouth.

  “I’ll go down now and pick up some food.”

  “Right-o.”

  “Just lie there and rest.”

  Downstairs, in the dining room, the Times man rose from a table where he was dining with three other men and intercepted Barbara. “I hear, Miss Lavette, that Cliff Abrahams has been badly beaten.”

  “We had a small accident in his jeep. Nothing very serious. I’ve patched him up and tomorrow we’ll see a doctor.”

  “You’re sure — nothing very serious? I heard his face had been badly mashed.”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that.”

  “If I can be of any help?”

  “Thank you.”

  Apparently there were no
secrets in San Salvador, and the waiter Angelo said to her, “He’s still alive, Señor Abrahams?”

  “Very much alive. A small accident. His mouth was hurt. Do you have any soup?”

  “Good black bean soup. Also, some mashed spiced avocado, soft and delicious. I’ll bring it up to your room. He’s there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And for you?”

  “Anything. Chicken. Whatever.”

  “I’ll bring it.”

  Back in her suite, Abrahams sat with his hands pressed to his forehead. “But I’m all right,” he said in response to her look of alarm. “Just a rotten headache.”

  When Angelo came with the food, Abrahams was at first unwilling to touch it, protesting that whatever appetite he might have had was now gone. Barbara insisted that he must taste the soup, and after the first mouthful, he continued to eat until the bowl was empty. He ate slowly and apparently painfully.

  “I can’t talk, old love,” he said. “I mean, it hurts like the very devil. So forgive me if I simply shut up.”

  “I understand,” Barbara said.

  He refused her offer of the bed. Instead, he took the couch and chair cushions and laid them out on the floor. Barbara, more exhausted than she could remember ever having been, crawled into bed and fell asleep almost immediately. Sometime during the night she awakened, disoriented, her body warmed by the pressure of another body alongside. Reaching out, she felt the skinny chest of Abrahams. He lay beside her, unmoving, giving no clue as to whether he was asleep or awake; and Barbara did not test this, feeling that she understood only too well his loneliness and his need. She fell asleep again, and when she awakened, she was alone in her bed, and the door to the bedroom was closed. The night had done little to slake her weariness, a kind of fatigue that was as much mental as physical. She bathed and then dressed. In the tiny living room of her suite Abrahams was reading a copy of La Prensa Gráfica and muttering, half to himself, “Lies, bloody damn lies.” He looked up at Barbara and attempted a smile, which made him wince. “Good sleep?”

  “Utter exhaustion. You?”

  He shrugged. He made no mention of being in her bed, nor did she bring it up. He pointed to a tray. “Pan dulcy and lousy coffee.”

  “Yes. They grow so much of it, you’d think they’d learn to brew it.”

  Again, he shrugged.

  “I’ll have just a mouthful, and then we’ll find the dentist. What did you say his name was?”

  “Joe Felshun.”

  “Good enough. Don’t talk anymore. Your shirt’s a sight, and I could wash it in the sink, but it would take hours to dry. No, don’t bother telling me you don’t give a damn. I seem to sense that you’re very angry, which is all right if you’re angry with me, but I think that to be angry down here invites trouble. Angry men are full of macho, and that never helps.”

  Joe Felshun was of the same mind. “Cool down, Abe. You’re lucky.” He was the only one she had ever heard call Abrahams “Abe.” “No bones broken. Who put on that weird bandage?”

  They had found Felshun at his office, a small stucco building in Escalón, located modestly between two high-walled estates. There was no wall around the small, whitewashed house, and alongside the door a polished brass plate bore the legend DENTISTA AMERICANA. The office was clean and neat and very modern. Felshun x-rayed Abrahams’ cheekbone, removed the bandage and replaced it with a more professional dressing.

  “Looks good,” he decided.

  He was a small birdlike man, sharp-faced, an old resident of San Salvador, “who stays alive,” he told Barbara, “because there’s no replacement. I’m the only man in this whole benighted country who can do a proper root canal or a decentinlay. Believe it or not, I was born here. My folks got here in ‘thirty-nine. Out of Germany and no other country they could get into. My English is rotten. Do you follow my Spanish?”

  “I do indeed,” Barbara said.

  “How did this happen?”

  Barbara hesitated, and Abrahams said, “You can trust him.”

  “Damn right!” Felshun said in English.

  Barbara told him about their experience the day before.

  “I don’t believe it. You mean you carried off a charade like that?”

  “We’re here.”

  “You’re here, but I’m afraid you haven’t heard the end of this,” he told Abrahams. “In your place I’d lay low a bit until the swelling goes down and it has a chance to heal. I’d say put a cold compress on it, but that’s a nasty cut and I’d like it to have all the healing it needs. Use a compress if the pain doesn’t stop.” He turned to Barbara and regarded her thoughtfully. “You’re a nice lady. What on earth are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same question.”

  Abrahams drove her back to the hotel, dropped her off and said, “Call me tomorrow. I’ll be at the office.”

  As she entered the hotel, the doorman said, “There’s a gentleman here to see you,” pointing to a tall, bearded man in a black jacket and striped trousers. Evidently, he recognized Barbara at the same time, and he approached her and introduced himself as Señor Raoul Domingo of the Spanish Embassy. “I am the ambassador’s secretary, as you might say. Could we sit down somewhere and talk? Perhaps a coffee in the lounge.”

  When they were seated, he made some small talk about the weather and then complimented her on her use of Spanish. “Both the ambassador and I were astonished at the fact that your accent must have been letter-perfect.”

  Then they knew about it. “It’s less my accent than the wretched Spanish of the soldiers.”

  His turn. She waited.

  “Of course,” he said, “the ambassador understands your action and the need for it. We both feel that it probably saved your lives, and we also admire the boldness and the wit that enabled you to carry it off. That pig of a National Guard officer was convinced that we would raise a frightful rumpus over his insult to the ambassador’s wife, and he stupidly went straight to the colonel in command of his unit and pleaded his case. You must never underestimate the stupidity of the National Guard, and never underestimate their viciousness. You have placed them in an untenable position, and the plain and simple truth of it is that if you remain here, they will kill you.”

  “Oh, no! No! I can’t believe that.”

  “Of course you can’t. But what I say is absolutely true. You have never encountered men like those who officer the National Guard. I have been here six years. I know. The ambassador knows. We both have great admiration for what you did. That is why I came here. You must leave immediately.”

  “I can’t. I have an interview with the American ambassador tomorrow.”

  “Do you remember how they walked into this hotel and gunned down the two American labor people?”

  “I saw it happen.”

  “The ambassador has reason to believe that the same thing will take place here tonight. It will be quite open. If the Englishman is with you, you will both die. If he is not, it will be you alone, while you are eating dinner. I am not trying to frighten you, señora. What is madness elsewhere is matter of fact here. I can only warn you. In your place, I would leave Salvador immediately.”

  He excused himself, bowed and left. Barbara sat where he had left her, unmoving, staring at a badly painted picture on the wall facing her. She sat unmoving for about ten minutes, and then she went to the desk and asked when the next plane for the States would leave.

  “About three o’clock, señora. But that is schedule. It might leave an hour later.”

  She checked out, paid her bill and then went up to her room and called Abrahams’ hotel. His room did not answer. With an increasing sense of panic, she called Reuters and drew a breath of deep relief when she was told that Abrahams was there. His pain must have lessened, because when he heard her voice, he said cheerfully, “Everything jolly at your end, love?”

  She repeated what the Spaniard had said to her.

  “Vastly exaggerated. On the other hand, you’d bett
er get out of here. There’s a plane this afternoon.”

  “I want you to come with me.”

  “Barbara, that’s impossible. I can’t just pack up and chuck my job. Believe me, love, I can take care of myself.”

  “No one can take care of himself in this place, and if you don’t leave, I won’t leave.”

  “Oh, that’s lovely — all I need at this point is a female Don Quixote. Now look, Barbara, you’ve been on my back since you came here. Go home. I swear to God that if you don’t, I’ll never see you or talk to you again. Leave me alone! Just don’t hang on and be a bloody pain in the ass to me!”

  She put down the telephone, her eyes brimming with tears, and it was not until she was on the plane, on her way back to California, that she realized it was the only way he could have persuaded her to go.

  Twelve

  The house on Green Street in San Francisco was untouched and exactly as Barbara had left it. She was always surprised, after any length of time away, to come home and find everything just as it had been, and this time she walked slowly and thoughtfully through every corner of the house, touching things lovingly. At the very top of the narrow wooden house, there were two windows from which she could see San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate. She could stand in front of one of the windows and watch the gulls swoop down to rest on rooftops just below her point of vantage.

  She had stopped for a day in Los Angeles to see Carson, who embraced her with a fierce tenderness that almost crushed her ribs. Then he held her firmly by her shoulders, at arm’s length, staring at her.

  “Thank God,” he said at last.

  “It was a little hairy, Carson, but I’m back and I’m all right and I wish I could have stayed at least another week.”

  “Did you have anything to eat? Did they feed you on that lousy plane?”

  “Nothing I wanted to eat.”

  “I have to talk to you, but not here. Do you want to check into a hotel? Or a late plane to San Francisco?”

  “A hotel — at least to get cleaned up.”