Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  I said noncommittally, “Maybe some European finishing school would be more suitable.”

  Alicia shuddered, though whether at the thought of Europe or of a finishing school was hard to tell. “Possibly,” was all she said, “but at best it could only be the most temporary solution to the problem of Vicky’s future.” With the glass of sherry in her hand she moved to the phone. “I’d better call Emily—excuse me using your phone, Sam, but I feel I have to talk to her without Cornelius trying to listen in on an extension. … Hello? Operator? I want to call Velletria, Ohio, person to person to Mrs. Emily Sullivan. … Thanks.” She gave the number and then sat sipping the sherry fastidiously, like a cat sampling cream from an unfamiliar bowl. Her green eyes, which slanted over high cheekbones, accentuated this feline impression. Although she was thirty-nine, her smooth pale, unblemished skin made her look younger, and her slender figure reminded me of the photographs on the fashion pages of the New York Times.

  “Of course,” she said as she waited, “it would all be easier if only Cornelius wasn’t so hopeless with her, but as you and I well know, he’s spoiled her ever since she entered the world. I’ve done my best to introduce some sort of normality into our family life, but I never got total care of Vicky till she was ten, and that mother of hers was a disgrace—she even let Vicky wear lipstick at eight! Obscene! Poor little girl. Anyway, I’ve tried to be a good mother to her, God knows I’ve tried, Cornelius knows I’ve tried, I know I’ve tried, but … Hello? Emily? This is Alicia. Emily, can you please come to New York as soon as possible? I hate to sound as if I’m passing the buck, but I just can’t cope anymore, and of course the situation’s quite beyond Cornelius. … Bless you, Emily, many, many thanks, how soon can you … you’ll come right away? Emily, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this—look, let me call you back to discuss the details. I’m at Sam’s place at the moment, and … No, she’s not here, but when I get home and call you back, of course you can speak to her. All right. … Thank you, darling. … ’Bye.”

  She replaced the receiver. “Thank you, too, Sam. I hate to involve you in all our sordid trials and tribulations. Can you please give me another glass of sherry? I feel I must sit down for a moment before I go out to the car. I feel totally exhausted.”

  I took her glass and moved back to the cocktail cabinet. Although I was more than willing to be supportive, I was beginning to feel uneasy. In all the eighteen years since Cornelius had married his second wife, Alicia and I had remained no more than polite acquaintances, and I suspected that once she had recovered her customary reserve, she would regret having been so frank with me. Our formality did not mean we disliked each other; on the contrary, I admired her looks and her style and respected her unquestioned fidelity to Cornelius, particularly since fidelity was not common in the society in which the Van Zales moved, but Alicia’s reserve was intimidating, and the iciness of those severe, expensive, well-bred good looks was sufficient to preclude all thought of a less formal friendship. Even if she had had no connection with Cornelius, it would never have occurred to me to go to bed with her.

  I had often speculated to myself about the Van Zale’s intimate life, just as one so often speculates idly—and futilely, since such facts are ultimately unguessable—about the private habits of people one knows well, but could reach no obvious conclusions beyond the fact that since their marriage had lasted eighteen years with no hint of infidelity on either side, they had to be doing something right. I often wondered what it was, for I sensed that the marriage was not always happy, but Cornelius never spoke to me of any difficulties, and I, of course, never asked. When we had been young men sowing our wild oats, he had often discussed his women with me, just as I had discussed mine with him, but with his second marriage that sort of conversation came to an end, so that now, years later, I would no more have dreamed of discussing Teresa with him than he would have dreamed of discussing Alicia with me.

  “Now, Sam,” said Alicia, as if uncannily sensing my thoughts, “I know we’ve never been more than polite acquaintances, but I’m so desperate I’m going to ask you to level with me. Has Cornelius discussed his plans with you?”

  I looked suitably blank. “Plans?”

  “For Vicky. Oh, God, of course he must have discussed them with you—he’s probably been pouring out his heart to you ever since the elopement! You must know he thinks the only hope of avoiding disaster is for Vicky to marry as soon as possible!”

  “Hm,” I said. “Well …”

  “The truth is,” pursued Alicia, barely listening, “that I can’t help feeling ambivalent about the idea. I do agree that marriage is the only solution, but on the other hand, I’ve had firsthand experience of marrying young and living to regret it. I was only seventeen when I married my first husband, and Vicky’s no more mature now than I was then. I believe she should wait until she’s at least twenty-one before she attempts to cope with the demands and responsibilities of marriage, but the trouble is, I don’t think Cornelius and I can take another three years of this. We’ve hardly begun yet, Sam! This is just a little episode over a beachboy with the brains of a louse, and look at us, we’re in pieces. What’s going to happen when the first really smart playboy comes along? The entire prospect’s a nightmare.”

  I made several rapid deductions. Alicia might want Vicky to marry her son Sebastian, but Sebastian himself was only twenty and probably no more ready for marriage than Vicky was. Obviously Alicia preferred the idea of a mature twenty-one-year-old Vicky marrying an eligible twenty-three-year-old Sebastian who had graduated from Harvard and was safely launched on his career at the bank. Meanwhile Cornelius was busy pushing the idea that a three-year wait would be disastrous and suggesting that I could save everyone from a nervous breakdown by arriving on the scene with a wedding ring in my hand. Alicia’s dilemma seemed clear; torn between her natural desire to champion Sebastian’s cause and her natural dread of future crises centered around her stepdaughter, she was now anxious to hear my views on the situation in the hope that they might help her see a clear solution to the problem.

  I wondered what line to take. Logically I should combine forces with Alicia to champion Sebastian’s cause; anyone who favored an alternative husband for Vicky should be encouraged. But it was impossible for me to forget Vicky’s revulsion toward Sebastian, and I was convinced she would never marry him. Or was I? Young girls did change their minds. And Alicia could make a useful ally. …

  Expediency triumphed. I took a deep breath. “Well, Alicia,” I said with care, “I certainly sympathize with your situation; it’s a big problem. But whether Vicky marries now or later, the job of looking after her is going to be no marital sinecure, and frankly, as I’m going to have to tell Neil, it’s not a job I’d care to handle.”

  Her eyes widened. I felt as if I were riding in a plane that had just hit an air pocket—or as if the mire into which I had been floundering since my interview with Cornelius that afternoon had finally closed over my head.

  “You?” said Alicia incredulously. “Cornelius suggested that you should marry Vicky?”

  Too late I saw that Alicia’s dilemma was not whether Vicky should marry Sebastian. She had merely been unable to make up her mind whether they should marry now or later. I said rapidly, “Neil was just exploring various possibilities. Of course we both realize Sebastian’s far more suitable.”

  Alicia put down her glass of sherry and began to pull on her gloves. Her face was ivory smooth. “Cornelius has never cared for Sebastian,” she said. “I might have guessed he’d try to double-cross me like this.”

  “Alicia—”

  She whirled round on me. “You’d do it too, wouldn’t you?” she said, her voice trembling. “You’d marry her! All Cornelius has to do is make sure he cracks the whip hard enough—but on second thought, no, why should he need to crack a whip? You’re being offered a beautiful young girl, access to the Van Zale fortune, and the prospect of your children having all the social advantages you never had! It
would take a better man than you, Sam Keller, to turn that kind of offer down!”

  I felt the heart throbbing behind my skin, but I kept my temper. I said in my politest voice, “I’m in love with someone else and I plan on marrying her soon. Vicky has no appeal for me, Alicia. Other people may see her as the most eligible heiress on the Eastern Seaboard, but to me she’s just a mixed-up little schoolgirl who calls me Uncle Sam.”

  “So Cornelius will have to crack the whip after all. What does it matter? The end result will be the same. You’ll marry her,” said Alicia, and walked out, slamming the door in my face.

  For a moment I stood listening to the distant whine of the elevator, but at last I wiped the sweat from my forehead, returned to the den, and removed the Glenn Miller tape from the silent machine.

  III

  I wanted to call Teresa, but I was too afraid of interrupting her work and making her even angrier than she had been earlier. I wanted to drink to numb the sexual tension that was making me restless, but I knew I had already had too much to drink that evening. I wanted to stop thinking of the life I might have had if Paul Van Zale had passed me by, but I was so depressed that for a long time I could only sit slumped on the couch while I wallowed futilely in my dreams of provincial domesticity.

  I told myself I sentimentalized domesticity because I was a bachelor, but that very obvious explanation did not make my dreams less attractive. Then it occurred to me that I might be sentimentalizing domesticity because I was a German, and at once the dreams lost their power to charm. I reflected how odd it was that different nationalities picked different subjects to sentimentalize. The British were sentimental about animals. The French were sentimental about l’amour. The Americans were sentimental about violence, glorifying the Wild West and now World War II in a steady stream of Hollywood movies and Broadway shows. I thought of Rodgers and Hammerstein unerringly touching that sentimental streak in the vast American subconscious by producing first Oklahoma! and now—starting tomorrow—South Pacific.

  I made a mental note to look for the tickets I had bought long ago for the coming Saturday night. I had planned to surprise Teresa. I would still surprise her. My depression began to lift at last. After all, everyone knew that a successful love affair was seldom one long upward curve on the graph of happiness, but tended to fluctuate, like the stock market; just because the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped occasionally, nobody automatically assumed the economy was heading for disaster.

  I was just planning how I would propose again to Teresa over a champagne supper following a show-stopping performance of South Pacific, when the phone rang.

  I grabbed the receiver. “Teresa?” I said breathlessly.

  “Who? No, this is Vivienne. Is there any news, Sam?”

  I was amazed by how completely I had forgotten her. “Vivienne!” I said. “Gee, I was just about to call you. Yes, Vicky’s fine—she’s back home again now, so there’s no need for you to worry anymore.”

  “Has anyone told Vicky I’m in town?”

  “I told her myself, but she doesn’t want to go to Fort Lauderdale right now—she’s set her heart on going to Europe with Emily. I’m sorry, Vivienne, I did my best to push your cause.”

  “There’s only one cause you push, Sam Keller,” she said bitterly, not believing me, “and only one master you and your hatchet serve!” And she slammed down the phone as violently as Alicia had slammed the door in my face.

  I went to bed and dreamed of a world in which I was my own master. I went to bed and dreamed of a world without Cornelius. I went to bed, and in my dreams I moved back through the looking glass to the blue skies and bluer seas of Bar Harbor. I went to bed and dreamed …

  IV

  I dreamed the nightmare which had disrupted my sleep at regular intervals since the outbreak of war in 1917. It had changed over the years to encompass certain new experiences, but it always began with the same true incident from my past: at the age of nine I had walked into my school classroom to find that someone had written on the blackboard: “HANS-DIETER KELLER IS A NO GOOD GERMAN PIG.” Then a gang of older boys had beaten me up and I had run crying all the way home.

  At this point in my dream the truth and I parted company and fantasy began. The fantasies varied but the theme remained the same; I accepted Nazism in order to have my revenge on those who had hurt me, and then I rejected it for destroying so much that I’d loved. The rejection scenes were always accompanied by violent images, swastikas stained with blood, bulldozers shifting mounds of corpses, cities incinerated by fire-bombing, but that night as all the familiar appalling pictures streamed through my mind, my dream led me down a terrible new path. Without warning I was walking again across the polluted earth near a small town in Germany, and as I thought again of all those who had died, I heard the G.I. at my side whistling “Lili Marlene.”

  I awoke gasping, switched on all the lights, and groped my way to the den. My fingers somehow managed to put a record on the phonograph. I had to play a tune from the past to negate the end of that nightmare, a happy tune from a happy past, so I picked the record which recalled all my most carefree memories of the summer of 1929, when Cornelius and I had given wild parties together and celebrated our twenty-first birthdays with illegal champagne.

  Miff Mole and his Molers began to play “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”

  After I had played the record three times I felt calmer, calm enough to recall the past truthfully without emotion. Anti-German sentiment had been common in 1917 and my family had probably suffered less than other German-American families, since my father had refused to be intimidated. After the incident in the classroom, he had hung a large American flag on our front porch and announced to the principal of my school that my constitutional rights as an American citizen would be violated unless steps were immediately taken to reprimand my assailants. The principal, a fair-minded man, had responded satisfactorily and the rest of my schooldays had passed without incident. It was my father who had suggested that it would be better if I had an American name. He had favored Hank, since it was similar to Hans, but I had insisted on Sam, the cowboy hero of a popular comic strip.

  I devoted the following years to becoming thoroughly American. My father insisted that there need be no conflict in my conscience, since Germany had done nothing for us while America had given us everything. His remaining family in a small town near Berlin had been wiped out in 1918, but he refused to speak of his loss. My mother lost two brothers in the war, but one sister in Düsseldorf survived to remarry in 1920, and I often had to make secret journeys, not to the post office in Bar Harbor, but to the post office in Ellsworth, in order to mail food parcels to Europe. Once it took me ten minutes to summon the nerve to enter the post office because I was so ashamed to betray any Germany connection.

  I became a very good American. I got straight A’s in high school and took the prettiest girl to the junior prom and I figured out a way to work my way through law school by doing summer gardening on the Bar Harbor estates. I ate turkey with cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving and set off fireworks every Fourth of July and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” louder than anyone else on every patriotic occasion. I even started speaking English when my parents and I were alone together, but my father put a stop to that because he said it was a great advantage to be bilingual and that I must on no account let my German lapse.

  He did not like his employer, Paul Van Zale, but being a practical man, he had no trouble accepting the benefits which Paul could offer his employees. My parents were well-paid in their positions as gardener, housekeeper, and caretakers at the Van Zale summer home, and when Paul selected me to be his protégé, my father was the first to shake my hand.

  “This is what being an American’s all about, Sam,” he said to me. “This is your big opportunity. This is every immigrant’s American dream.” And he told me I should go down on my knees and thank God I was a citizen of the finest country in the world where even the poorest man could become rich and succe
ssful.

  I became rich. I became successful. I lived on Park and dined on Fifth and dealt daily with the Eastern Seaboard aristocracy who inhabited that palace at Willow and Wall. And then one day in 1933 I stepped out of the all-American world of my all-American dream, and later, when I stepped back, nothing was ever the same again.

  I went back to Germany. I saw my native land again for the first time since I was two years old, and I found an odd little Austrian with a toothbrush mustache saying it was no shame to be German. I found too that Germany was beautiful, more beautiful than I had ever imagined, and far more beautiful than my parents had ever dared to tell me in their efforts to abort their homesickness and bring me up as a good American. By the time I found my German relatives who had survived the war, America already seemed far away, a view glimpsed fleetingly through a thickening mist, and all the time the funny little Austrian was telling me I should be proud to be German, until at last—at long last—I was proud.

  People probably think me such a practical, down-to-earth, hardheaded businessman; they probably never realize that despite my iron grasp of reality—or perhaps because of it—I have to have my dreams, my American dream, my German dream, even my sentimental dream of domestic bliss. War propaganda has fostered the image that the Germans are mindless machines, but no machines built those fairy-tale castles in Bavaria and no machines wrote some of the world’s finest literature and no machines cheered the Berlin Philharmonic over and over again in the thirties whenever they played Beethoven’s Ninth. I shall never be the fascist robot my enemies want to believe I am, never. My dreams are too important to me. Even now, when my German dream was dead and my American dream was dying before my eyes, I had still managed to find a European dream to sustain me. Once more I pictured working for the ECA, and my last coherent thought before I fell asleep was: thank God it’s not too late to start again.