Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  “That seems like a praiseworthy aim!”

  “No, seriously, Scott! I mean it. Look, this is the way I see it: I’m fifty-two, and unless my health gets much worse, I think I can go on working till I’m sixty. Then I’ll cut down my workload, retire from banking, and just keep on with the Fine Arts Foundation and the charities—the ‘good’ things, if you follow me …”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I’ll turn the bank over to you. When I’m sixty you’ll still only be forty-nine. The only proviso I’d make would be that you’d pass the bank eventually to my grandsons, but that’s okay, isn’t it? You’ve got no sons of your own, and you can make them your heirs, just as I’ve made you my heir. I see you as a kind of benign caretaker during a Van Zale interregnum … but it’s the right solution, isn’t it? You approve?”

  “I approve. Your move, Cornelius.”

  The knight sprang forward and sideways. A pawn slipped forward to protect the queen.

  “The real truth of the matter is,” said Cornelius, “that although I wanted to quit directly after Sam died, it just wasn’t possible. You realized that, didn’t you? I had to get the best man to take care of the bank for my grandsons, but when Sam died, there was a power vacuum—he was the best man. And even when you emerged top of the heap in the ensuing maneuvers among the partners, my hands were still tied because there was no way I could pass over Sebastian without wrecking all my new happiness with Alicia. There would have been no problem if only he’d been a fool, but of course, as we both know, he’s not. He’s very competent and able. Until now I just haven’t had an excuse for passing him over, but now …” Cornelius made an insignificant movement with his rook. “… now it’ll be easier.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll keep Sebastian in Europe, give him a large expense account and a lot of freedom, and Alicia won’t even realize he’s been railroaded. In the end I can even give her the illusion he’s been promoted, but it’ll all take time, Scott, and that’s why I need these extra years so badly. I’ve got to be able to wrap up Sebastian securely before I can pass control to you. You will be patient, won’t you? It’s in your best interests as well as mine.”

  “Of course.”

  “You’ve been clever with Sebastian, Scott. I’ve noticed what care you’ve always taken to get on well with him. Your move.”

  “This may surprise you, Cornelius, but I genuinely like Sebastian.”

  Cornelius laughed good-naturedly at such a fantastic possibility, and said with affection, “God, Scott, you’re a smart guy!” I was aware of his fingers curling toward the palms of his hands as he stealthily waited for me to make the error which would give him the upper hand in the game.

  More time slipped away. Dawn broke over Central Park, and beyond the chink in the heavy drapes the sky changed from black to navy to azure, and finally to a very pale duck-egg blue. Cornelius’ fine delicate skin was faintly flushed with excitement; the light glinted on the silver in his hair and was reflected in his shining eyes.

  “Checkmate! I’ve got you, Scott!”

  “Shit!”

  Laughter. The king crashed sideways on the board.

  “The moment of truth!” said Cornelius gleefully.

  “Yes. ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.’ ”

  “I never did understand that story,” said Cornelius, uncapping two final bottles of Coke. “Tell it to me again. This knight Roland was on a quest, you say, although the reader of the poem is never told what the quest is. Now, isn’t it kind of annoying that we don’t know exactly what he’s after? Then he reaches the Dark Tower and he thinks: ‘This is it!’ and he sees his ex-companions watching him from the hillside, but they’re all dead. Which is kind of morbid, if you ask me. So he puts his horn to his lips and blows, and that’s that. But why does Browning end the poem there? I don’t get it at all.”

  “Roland met his destiny by raising the horn to his lips.”

  “But what was his destiny?”

  “Life or death. Perhaps death. When Galahad reached the end of his quest, he died. According to T.H. White, when you reach perfection you die because there’s nothing else left to achieve.”

  “Huh! More metaphysical garbage. You’re death-obsessed, Scott—that’s your trouble!”

  “Isn’t everyone, consciously or subconsciously? After all, as Spenser said, ‘All things do decay and to their end draw near.’ ”

  “And that’s a goddamned depressing thing to say! I don’t like it when you talk like that—it’s as if there’s someone else there who’s borrowed your voice … my God, listen to me! What a crazy thing to say—you must have infected me with that morbid streak of yours! Okay, Scott, we’d better both go and snatch some sleep now, but thanks again for coming, I truly appreciate it. So long.”

  “So long, Cornelius,” I said from behind Scott’s eyes, and as I left I thought of that future when I would call on Cornelius again, I the president of the newly incorporated Sullivan empire, he the retired senior partner hunched in his wheelchair, his grandsons sacked and scattered among the Wall Street unemployed. “Good morning, Scott,” he would say to me, but in his mind he would call me by my father’s name, for I would be my father’s ghost waiting to usher him from the lighted hall of life, and in his doomed future he would see the past I had rewritten, my father’s defeat transformed into a mighty victory and his own triumph erased by the fierce flames of a cataclysmic fire.

  IV

  The sunlight streamed through the hospital window onto the bed where Emily lay recovering from an operation for gallstones. Emily’s hair was wholly gray now, her face lined and bony through loss of weight.

  “Scott, dearest, how sweet of you to come all the way to Velletria for the weekend—I do appreciate it! I’m sorry I sounded so depressed to you on the phone before I went into the hospital. It was strange, but I had this strong premonition that I’d come here to die, but of course that was just me being silly because I do so hate being in the hospital … well, I mustn’t think about death anymore. Tell me your news. Dare I ask how things are in New York?”

  “Better. Sebastian’s left for Europe and Alicia seems to be accepting at last that there’s nothing she can do to patch up his marriage. Vicky’s decided she must have a home of her own, so she’s looking for an apartment big enough to house all the kids and staff.”

  “I wish I could do something to help that girl, but she seems to be beyond my reach nowadays, just like Cornelius. However, I mustn’t get depressed thinking of Cornelius. I’ve done my best for him, and there’s nothing more I can do. But I wish I could do more for Vicky … and for you too, Scott. Oh, yes! I often feel I failed you in the past.”

  “Failed me? You? I’ve never heard such nonsense in all my life!”

  “If only I’d been older when I married Steve, old enough for you to regard me as a mother! But you never saw me as a mother, did you? I was always the fairy-tale princess, just a few years your senior, and when Steve left, I was transformed overnight into the jilted heroine. I should have said something then, I should have talked to you, I should have sat down with you and had at least one honest conversation—”

  “Emily, please! Stop crucifying yourself!”

  “—but I said nothing. I left it all to Cornelius. I was weak and cowardly and self-absorbed with my own unhappiness, and I let Cornelius use you to fill the lack in his own life.”

  “Well, why speak of that as though it’s some great tragedy? It’s all ended happily enough.”

  “It hasn’t ended. It’s still going on, forcing you to lead this abnormal life. Oh, don’t think I don’t realize what’s going on! As soon as I read Tony’s letter—”

  “Oh, forget the letter, for Christ’s sake!”

  “But it made me realize just how you must feel toward Cornelius!”

  “I doubt that very much. Emily, my feelings for Cornelius are really very unimportant.”

  “You must forgive him, you must! Otherwise you’ll never
be at peace with yourself, never be able to lead a normal life …”

  “Emily, I hate to say this, but you understand absolutely nothing here.”

  There was a silence. Then she shrugged listlessly and turned her face to the wall. “If you can’t be honest with me, I guess there’s no use talking to you.”

  “It’s the truth. The driving force in my life isn’t a hatred of your brother. The situation’s much more complex than your simple reading of the facts would make it appear.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  There was another silence.

  “Can’t you explain?”

  The silence persisted.

  “Oh, Scott!” she said in despair. “How I wish you could talk to me! Is there no one you can talk to? I hate to think of you so horribly cut off and alone.”

  “But I enjoy my solitude!”

  “That’s not solitude,” she said. “That’s isolation. That’s a living death.”

  “Well, that’s your opinion, Emily, and I’m sure you’re entitled to it, but your opinion doesn’t happen to be mine. Now, please—why don’t we talk about something more cheerful?”

  V

  Emily died a week later of a pulmonary embolism, and there was a big family funeral in Velletria. Cornelius wept. There was no longer anyone alive now who was part of his remote past, and so it was as if a part of him too was being buried with Emily that day in the Midwestern suburb he had always detested.

  “Ashes to ashes,” said the minister. “Dust to dust.” Memories stirred, memories of a golden-haired, much-loved Emily transforming a desolate household long ago, happy memories, memories of times long gone but not long forgotten, when death was as remote as snow on midsummer’s day and all pain was obliterated by peace.

  The cold wind blew again. Scott’s eyes saw the sunshine of that cool day in early spring, but in my eyes it was dark and a great clock was striking noon. In Scott’s world the minister was reading the Christian service, but although I heard those words, they meant nothing to me for I was beyond them in time, far, far back in the remotest corner of the blueprint inherited from my father, and in my folk memory of forgotten summers I knew a different moral code. Blood calls for blood, violence for violence; Christianity is a mere veneer, civilization is only skin-deep, and beneath it all is the timeless chaotic ecstasy of the dark.

  Scott stood at the graveside, black-suited, head bowed, united with the other grieving mourners, but I was apart from Scott now, I was escaping from my grief, I was drifting away from him into that other world, the world of my solitude, the world of my dreams.

  VI

  I used to dream that I was the knight in Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal. The knight played chess with the hooded figure of Death on a beautiful deserted shore, and before Death could complete his inevitable victory, the knight begged him for additional time in which to live.

  I often felt that I too was begging Death for extra time. I was so afraid of dying before I could achieve my ambition—or before I could “complete my quest” as I used to say in my dreams once I had discarded the personality of Bergman’s knight and become the legendary figure of Roland, the hero of the poem which I had attempted to explain to Cornelius. Sometimes, even when I was awake, I would feel as if I were living out a myth, the myth of the medieval knight who devotes his life to the pursuit and attainment of some great spiritual goal, and although I kept my mythical vision of myself and my consciousness of my own reality in two separate mental compartments, I was aware of them meeting in my dreams, and I thought that perhaps one day they would meet and merge in my waking hours. Part of my fascination with Browning’s Roland could be attributed to my growing conviction that one day I would have to face my own version of Roland’s Dark Tower and would, like Roland raising the horn to his lips, be forced to make some grand gesture which would enable me to meet my destiny and complete my quest.

  But these were my fantasies, and the world of my solitude, the world of my dreams was a long way from the world of Scott Sullivan, the prosaic meticulous banker who carefully remembered his sisters’ birthdays, patiently listened to Cornelius worrying over Vicky’s increasingly checkered private life, and dutifully attended all the family reunions which took place on national holidays.

  “Hello, Scott, this is Alicia. Will you be joining us for Thanksgiving as usual this year?”

  “… joining us for Christmas …”

  “… Easter …”

  “… Fourth of July …”

  The holidays marched by. The years trudged on. The crisis of 1960, when Vicky had left Sebastian, was receding further and further into the past. 1961 dragged by. Then 1962. And in 1963 …

  “Hi, Vicky! How are you doing?”

  “Hi, Scott! How are you?”

  Empty words exchanged by two strangers distantly acquainted for decades. Looking at Vicky through Scott’s eyes I saw only Cornelius Van Zale’s daughter, a restless, discontented woman who had ruthlessly divorced the man who loved her and was now idling her life away in the smart nightspots of Manhattan. Cornelius had given up reading all newspapers which carried a gossip column, and recently, to my profound relief, had decided he could no longer discuss his daughter with me.

  “How’s Daddy?” she said. “I haven’t seen him lately.”

  “He’s just fine.”

  After several months of upheaval, Cornelius had moved to a triplex on the twentieth floor of a new apartment building on Fifth Avenue. He had made the move partly out of pique, because Vicky had refused to live with him in the Van Zale mansion, and partly because of a pragmatic recognition of the fact that it no longer made any economic sense to maintain a private Fifth Avenue fiefdom; I also suspected that Alicia had wanted a change and Cornelius had been anxious to appease her after the trouble created by Sebastian’s departure for Europe. The Van Zale mansion, now unoccupied except for the security guards, was being administered by the Van Zale Fine Arts Foundation and was shortly to be opened to the public. It was rumored that Mrs. John F. Kennedy was to preside over the opening.

  “I think Cornelius and Alicia have been enjoying fixing up the new apartment,” I said to Vicky.

  “Yes, but they’re bound to make a mess of it—Daddy’s taste is so frightful. Have you seen that appalling new chess set of his in which every pawn’s an astronaut? He specially commissioned it to commemorate the president’s speech about getting a man on the moon.”

  “I’ve not only seen the set, I’ve even played chess with it! Well, if you’ll excuse me, Vicky …”

  The party droned on, boring to a nondrinker, a waste of time and effort and money, but long after I had left, I still remembered Vicky laughing amidst a crowd of men as the host put yet another martini in her outstretched hand.

  Chapter Two

  I

  “IT AMUSES ME HOW Kevin keeps running off to Washington to pay court to the Kennedys in their latter-day version of Camelot,” said Jake Reischman, winding up the small talk which always had to precede our business discussions. “In fact, it amuses me to think of the Kennedys acting like royalty. I remember in my young days when Joe Kennedy was making the fastest buck on Wall Street—no, I ordered half a bottle of wine, not a full bottle, and bring another ginger ale for this gentleman here. What’s the matter with this restaurant nowadays? Can’t you get an order right? And these clams are tough—take them away.”

  It was a fetish of Jake’s to hold business lunches in the smart midtown restaurants where he had a wider scope for his tyranny than in his own partners’ dining room or in one of the clubs which were burdened with his membership. A fat, balding middle-aged man, he effortlessly succeeded in exuding an aura of icy discontent.

  “I see nothing strange in the Kennedys’ desire to inject a shot of culture into Washington, Jake. When the Celts get to power, they always turn to the arts. That’s why writers and artists have always had the highest status in a Celtic society.”

  “You mean I should be charitable and say what a wel
come change the Kennedys are from all the Anglo-Saxon philistines who have previously occupied the White House. Very well, I’ll be charitable. But in my opinion there’s nothing behind that carefully marketed Celtic image except a set of typical American preoccupations with wealth and power. And talking of the godalmighty dollar …”

  I prepared to settle down to business.

  “… I must tell you, Scott, that I’m seriously concerned yet again about the future relationship between our two houses. I’m referring, as you must know, to the activities of your London office.”

  Jake wore a suit as gray as the sky beyond the long windows of the restaurant, and his eyes looked gray too, although this was an illusion of the light; his eyes were normally a pale color resembling wet stones of a bluish sheen. His short ugly fingers were busy destroying a roll of bread as he spoke; his voice, butter-smooth with a steel edge, could make even a compliment sound threatening.

  “It’s three years now since Neil packed Sebastian off to London, and what’s happened? Sebastian hacks his way into the top spot—a maneuver stage-managed by Neil, I’ve no doubt, to keep Alicia happy—and then, before I know where I am, Sebastian’s doing his best to see my new London office has as many setbacks as possible! Well, you can tell your boss I’ve had just about enough of Sebastian Foxworth poaching my clients. I’m very angry.”

  “I agree there was one unfortunate incident—”

  “Don’t give me that crap. There’s been a whole string of catastrophes. You tell Neil I want Sebastian recalled to New York where he can be permanently muzzled. I know it’s useless expecting Neil to fire him. God, who would have thought Neil could turn into such a henpecked husband!”

  The maître d’ reappeared with half a bottle of wine and a glass of ginger ale, while a waiter ran behind him with a fresh dish of clams. Jake broke off his tirade long enough to sample the clams, but was unable to fault them; the maître d’ closed his eyes with relief and withdrew.