by Howard Fast
“No–no, I can’t say that I do.”
“Why not?”
“I wouldn’t dare. Wendy Jones would hand me my head.”
“But they’re still your children, Dan.”
“Jean’s children.”
“Danny, what kind of a life are you living? You’re the father of two children, and you don’t even dare play with them. You live with a woman you haven’t had sex with in years, without love and without companionship. I don’t want to nag you, Danny, and you know that I haven’t mentioned this for months–yet you’re so filled with guilt and fears that you don’t even share my bed for the night. And what kind of a woman is she that she doesn’t care?”
“Baby, just give me a little time.”
“For what, Danny?”
“I am going to leave her. I told you that, May Ling.”
He bought an enormous doll, with eyes that opened and closed and a head of silky yellow imitation hair, and he brought it into the nursery with the determination to conquer the small, gray-eyed child who always greeted him with an air of bewilderment. Barbara was in bed already, and her face lit up at the sight of the doll; but Wendy Jones interposed herself.
“Well, not now, Mr. Lavette, really. Not at bedtime.”
“Why not? I brought a doll for her.”
“And the excitement will keep her awake for hours.”
“Why?” His voice became hard and cold without his realization. This bitch, he thought to himself. Christ, how I hate her!
“Because she’s a child.”
He pushed Miss Jones aside roughly, and the smile vanished from the child’s face. He held out the doll. It had gone wrong, it always went wrong. “Don’t you like it?” he asked Barbara. Miss Jones stood there, her face tight with anger, and Barbara began to cry. He laid the doll down beside her, stood there irresolutely, turned to look at Miss Jones, and then stalked out of the room. Downstairs in his study, he dropped into a chair and sat there, asking himself why–why were there walls between these two children and himself? He had thought about the doll and the way he would present it; he had worked the whole thing out in his mind; and then that Jones bitch had destroyed it. Or had she?
“God Almighty,” he whispered, “what am I doing here? I’m in Seldon’s house. I’ve always been in Seldon’s house.”
About the same time that the Congress of the United States was overriding President Wilson’s veto of the Volstead Act and making Prohibition the law of the land, Lieutenant Jacob Levy disembarked from a ship in Hoboken. Two days later, he was mustered out of the United States Army, and on the first day of November in 1919, he stood on the deck of a ferry, crossing from New Jersey to New York. People who noticed him would hardly have believed that he was still weeks short of his twenty-first birthday. His face was lined and drawn, the bright blue eyes–so like his mother’s–sunken, his whole frame lean and spare. The ferry was crowded with servicemen, but he stood alone, silent and unsmiling, turned in to his own thoughts and memories. Yet he was intrigued with the great river, the shipping, the mighty bulk of the city, the sound and sight and energy of this place that was the near edge of his native land, the smell of the salt spray, the screaming of ships’ horns and the great skyscrapers reaching up to the sky.
A few hours later, he boarded a train in Grand Central Station and began his journey westward. He had written briefly to Clair when his orders first came through in Europe, but not since then. There had been too many letters; he had no more to write or say in letters. In Chicago, there was a five-hour layover, but he felt too dulled and depressed to go out into the city and spent the time in the railroad station with his luggage, reading newspapers and magazines. But westward from Chicago, he began to experience the land and a sense of homecoming, especially when the plains gave way to the mesquite-covered hills. The emotion welled up in him, and now his apathy turned into a consuming eagerness. He counted the miles and the hours. He found himself smiling and talking politely to people who desired to show their respect and admiration for his uniform–instead of ignoring them and turning away. His sense of separation from and annoyance with these men and women who talked so glibly of war and who had not the faintest notion of what war was ebbed away; and he began to accept the fact that to chatter nonsense with neither knowledge nor perception was the ordinary manner of mankind. He listened to platitudes without disgust, and he began to create conversations with Clair in his mind.
Strangely, it was hard to form a picture of her. He could define her, her long legs, her freckled skin, her red hair, but the woman eluded him. His desire for her grew like a sickness, and in the last stage of his journey, motion reduced itself to a frustrating snail’s pace. It seemed to Jake that he had been traveling forever, through Germany into France, through France to Cherbourg, from there to Southampton, and then eleven endless days across the ocean to Hoboken, and then time without end across the country, and now in a ferry that was taking an eternity to cross over from San Francisco to Sausalito. He had no eyes for the wild beauty of that morning, the fog licking through the Golden Gate, a splendid wand of sunshine striking down onto the bay, the blue water choppy and dancing with whitecaps, and ahead of him, Marin County, which he and Clair had specified so often as the most beautiful place on God’s earth, its dark hills thrusting up above the fog–all of this was meaningless because inside him was a whimpering, forlorn plea to be home.
A rattling, creaking taxicab drove him from the ferry landing to the Spanish Colonial house, high on the hillside, and again the few miles seemed to take forever. He paid off the cab and it drove away. He stood there, his luggage on the ground next to him. Where were they?
Then he heard her cry, and Clair burst out of the house, ran to him, and clutched him in her arms. It was all as he had dreamed and prayed it would be.
Thomas Seldon asked his daughter to come to dinner at his home. He was very specific about Dan accompanying her. Whatever rumors of their relationship reached him, it was not anything that he discussed with either of them; yet he made the point that he wanted them both present and that he had matters of importance to discuss with Dan. After his wife’s death, his sister, Virginia Carter, a widowed lady in her middle fifties, had moved into the house on Nob Hill, taking over the duties of housekeeper and hostess, and when they sat down to dinner, there were only the four of them, Dan and Jean and Seldon and his sister.
Mrs. Carter was properly shocked at Jean’s appearance, and she minced no words in stating that in her opinion Jean’s costume passed the boundaries of propriety. Jean smiled with delight and accepted it as a compliment. She wore a Directoire, high collar suit jacket of burgundy velvet, a transparent georgette blouse, a black cravat, and a braided skirt that fell to just below her knees. With velvet pumps and black stockings, the effect was such that her father shook his head and muttered that she was just too damn beautiful.
“How can you permit it, Daniel?” Mrs. Carter asked him.
“My dear Virginia,” Jean said, “Dan neither allows nor disallows. And if a woman’s leg is shocking, then San Francisco will simply have to be shocked. This is a Pierre Lazai creation, and in Paris they’re all wearing skirts this length.”
“I think it’s horrible,” Mrs. Carter said.
Dan voiced no opinion. A part of him was totally servile to her beauty, and he agreed with Seldon that she had never appeared more lovely than this evening. He never escaped the enormous badge of permission; whatever she thought of him, whatever distaste she had for his body and his manners and his self, she permitted his position as her husband, and that permission was in part ownership. A man was judged by his ownership; his property was more than he was. He would never set foot in one of the great homes of San Francisco with May Ling at his side; he would never take her to the Fairmont or the opera or the theater. These were the places of ownership, of possession and permission.
When Hemmings, the butler, almost seventy now, had removed the dessert plates and brought the brandy, Seldon suggested t
hat the ladies might leave him and Dan to themselves.
Smiling as she rose, Jean said, “Soon, dear daddy, this antique custom of yours will go the way of the ankle skirts Aunt Virginia so adores. We shall play the victrola. I trust the music will not disturb you.”
The women left, and the two men sat down and lit their cigars. “I have twenty cases of that brandy in my basement, Dan,” Seldon said, “so don’t hold back. What do you think of this Prohibition idiocy?”
“Idiocy. They’ll knock it out in a year.”
“Who knows? Well, nothing’s changed. Except that now they telephone and plead with me to buy good rye whiskey by the case. Do you suppose they’ll ever try to enforce that damn law?”
“How? It would take an army. I’m not much of a drinker, but Jean’s friends are putting it down like camels. Where we used to buy a case, we now buy four.”
“Jean’s friends–well, that’s nothing I want to talk about tonight. I want to talk about those ships of yours.”
“Oh? Has Jean been telling you?”
“Of course she has. And Alton Jones is a member of our club. He’s been working on your plans for over a year now.”
“On and off–yes.”
“What is he charging you? Or shouldn’t I ask?”
“An arm and a leg. More than I paid for the Oregon Queen, and these are just blueprints.”
“Well, you’ll never see a nineteen fourteen dollar again. This damned inflation will never stop. By the way, you know that you just about destroyed Grant Whittier?”
“Come on now. I didn’t twist his arm. He was so eager to buy our ships that I couldn’t fight him off.”
“Well, they’re worthless today. You can’t give away cargo ships of that tonnage. Who would have dreamed that the bottom would fall out of cargo shipping like this?”
“I dreamed it would.”
“Yes, you did. Well, I won’t weep over Whittier. Let’s talk about these luxury liners of yours. Tell me about them.”
“It’s not a small thing,” Dan said.
“No, I don’t expect anything small from you.”
“We’re drawing plans for two liners, each about thirty thousand tons of displacement. I’ve drawn up a schedule that takes in half the world, New York to Europe, New York to California via the Panama Canal, and San Francisco to the Hawaiian Islands. The whole world’s changing now that the war’s over. There’s been no European travel since nineteen fourteen, and I estimate that this new canal in Panama will open up California in a new way. We’ll sell cruises where the ship itself will be a floating hotel, swimming pools on the ship, the best food, the best accommodations. There’s a whole army of bloated rich out of this war, and we’ll give them a way to spend their money. As far as Hawaii is concerned, my idea is to build a luxury hotel on Waikiki Beach and to tie in the hotel with ship schedules. We’ll want docking space in New York as well as here, and I suppose we’ll have to open offices on the East Coast. What I’ve said is just the sketchiest outline of the whole thing, but I think it gives you an idea of what we’re after.”
Seldon shook his head and smiled. “You’re an interesting man, Dan. Here we are in a total shipping depression. There wouldn’t be an American cargo vessel afloat if not for government subsidies, and God only knows what the future of American shipping will be. And you come up with a scheme like this.”
“I know where I can buy a five-thousand-ton-gross cargo-capacity Hog Island freighter for five thousand dollars. Two years ago, it would have cost almost a million. All it means is that there are too many cargo ships. But there aren’t any passenger ships–I mean there are, but nothing like the cargo situation. Ship-building costs went up five hundred percent during the war; now they’re going down. This is the time to build.”
“All right–suppose I go along with you. How much will you need?”
“In terms of a credit line? Fifteen million dollars. Now a lot of that will be transferable into first mortgages, but that’s the kind of backing I need. I have a thirty-seven-page financial prospectus that Feng Wo, my manager, put together.”
“Fifteen million. That’s not small. Does it include the Hawaiian hotel?”
“Yes. I’m going there next month. The Bishop Bank there is interested in the hotel, and I could probably get considerable backing on the Islands. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to.”
“What about Cassala? You’ve been banking with him.”
“It’s too big for Tony. You know that.”
“Yes, I suppose so. And the Crocker Bank?”
“They’ve put out some feelers. I haven’t spoken to them yet.”
“You’re still rankled about that meeting with my board, aren’t you?” Seldon asked.
“No, I’ve gotten over that.”
“Send me the prospectus and let me think about it,” Seldon said. “And now, let’s join the ladies.”
The fact that Feng Wo now earned a princely wage of fifteen thousand dollars a year and that he supervised the work of fourteen men and women in the offices of L&L Industries, located on the entire top floor of the L&L Department Store, and that he was the source of the mathematical-financial glue that held the growing Levy and Lavette empire together had not changed his style of living. He still occupied the same small flat in Chinatown. He still walked to work each day, carrying a briefcase that he took home each evening, and he still wore suits of black worsted and white shirts and a black felt hat. So-Toy, his wife, had progressed to the point where she could make herself understood in English, but in all truth she had little interest in mastering the language. The conversations she valued were held with her husband and her daughter, and as far as her shopping went, she could meet all her needs at places where Chinese storekeepers had at least a smattering of Shanghainese.
She never thought of her life as being unduly restricted or unfulfilled. She was married to a man who in her eyes was wise and understanding beyond her comprehension. They had become wealthy beyond her wildest dreams, indeed beyond the wildest dreams of any person in the tiny village where she had been born. She still shopped carefully, saving pennies on the food she purchased, but this was only a matter of habit. She knew that they could afford any food she wished to buy, any quality, any delicacy. Her own needs in clothing were very simple, and her only extravagance was in the gifts she purchased for May Ling. She still suffered a certain amount of guilt and remorse over the fact that she was able to bear only a single child for her husband, and that child a girl; and she often recalled her own trepidation when Feng Wo decided to call the infant May Ling, which means “beautiful” in the Mandarin language. Yet all in all, her happiness was marred only by the curious and alien position of her only child.
When she raised this question with her husband, he would respond with irritation or silence; and then weeks would go by before she spoke of it again. And when she did, the talk came to no satisfactory conclusion. Thus it was with some apprehension that she informed him one morning that it was his grandchild’s second birthday, and that May Ling and little Joseph would be at their home for dinner that evening and that if possible he should not be late from work.
“I’ll be home no later than seven,” he agreed.
“I had a thought,” she ventured timidly.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Lavette has not been to our home since that evening so long ago. Would it not be pleasant to ask him to attend this small celebration?”
“No.”
“But why not?”
“You know that it annoys me to discuss this. I prefer not to.” In any case, Feng Wo felt awkward in the Shanghainese dialect. It was difficult for him to express subtleties of behavior, to explain things that he might well be able to explain in English.
“He is the child’s father,” she persisted woefully. “He is a good man. You tell me that.”
“He is not married to our daughter. We are Chinese. May Ling is Chinese. I have tried to explain this to you before, many times.”
/> “I know. I understand.”
“No, you don’t understand,” he said with some asperity. “I try to explain but you don’t understand. You know what a concubine is. Let me be blunt. My daughter is a concubine.”
“No, no, no. There are no concubines in America.”
“Unfortunately, there are. I am not indicting Mr. Lavette. Our debt to him is too great.”
“But he loves her. He gave her a house. He gives her everything.”
“Everything except his name. I don’t want to discuss this because it gives me pain. I am torn sufficiently. You must take my word for it. We cannot invite him here to our house. There are rules about such things. There is a situation which I must pretend does not exist. I have never spoken about it–not to him, not to Mr. Levy, not to any human being. Now let that be the end of it. I must go to work now.”
Then he stalked out of the house. But when he returned that evening, his arms were loaded with toys for the child–whom he loved more than he could say, who had become the center and focus of his own existence.
Sarah warned Mark about Jake. “Go slowly,” she said to her husband. “This man who came back is not the boy who went away. Something happened to him, something terrible.”
“What?” Mark demanded. “What happened to him that didn’t happen to the other kids? He wasn’t wounded. He was in a war. Well, millions were in this war.”
“You don’t know anything,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “You know about money, and you don’t know anything else. You don’t know about your son, or your daughter or your wife, and you don’t want to know either.”
“Oh, wonderful, wonderful!” Mark exploded. “I break my back trying to make a decent life, and this is what I get in return. I dream of creating something for my son, something that will be a source of pleasure and reward for him, and this is what I get–a wife who tells me I’m a sonofabitch.”
“I didn’t tell you that.” She sighed and said, “All I’m asking is for you to leave him alone for a while, let him find himself. That’s all I’m asking.”