Homeland

by John Jakes

  “Blast,” Joe Junior said, stopping suddenly. “Broke my shoelace.” He looked down the street. “I can buy a new pair in Elstree’s.”

  He took Paul into an elegant four-story building on the corner of Adams and State. He bought laces at the notions counter, handing his five cents to a large lady who gave the boys a hard stare. In dusty clothes, exuding a powerful aroma of sweat, they hardly looked like typical customers of such a fine, well-lighted emporium. The clerk motioned to a floorwalker, who followed Joe and Paul to the State Street entrance.

  “Elstree’s started here, it’s a Chicago family,” Joe Junior said, speaking loudly to be heard above the clang of bells on horsecars and the general racket of the street. “Now they’re in New York, San Francisco, I don’t know where else. Last year there was a big scandal when the store sold some women’s coats and two customers died. Turned out the coats were sewn in a sweatshop infected with smallpox. No one prosecuted the Elstrees, naturally. That’s what I mean by exploiting poor people.”

  “Yes, I see. How do you know such things?”

  “Oh, certain people keep track, don’t worry.”

  Joe Junior consulted a clock in a jeweler’s window. “Hey, it’s half past four. Come on, we’ll hop a cable car down to Fifteenth and walk over to Prairie. After what we went through this afternoon, I’d say we deserve a peek at heaven.”

  “What are you talking about now?”

  “Someone really special. I’ll introduce you.”

  Paul asked who it was but his cousin was already running into the street, narrowly avoiding a speeding cycle with an enormous front wheel. The man perched on the high seat veered and nearly ran down two pedestrians.

  On quiet and shady Prairie Avenue, in a district of homes even larger and more splendid than the Crowns’, Joe Junior loitered by a hydrant near the corner of Fifteenth Street. “Our neighborhood’s okay, but this one is the real swank. Even though old man Palmer moved up to North Lake Shore Drive, there are still plenty of millionaires left.”

  He pointed to the mansion across the way. “That place belongs to Mr. Mason Putnam Vanderhoff III. Pork Vanderhoff, the packer. We aren’t waiting for him, we’re waiting for his daughter. Her name’s Juliette. She plays lawn tennis at three o’clock every Saturday if the weather’s warm.”

  “I thought your girl’s name was Rosie.”

  “It is. Julie’s my friend. She’s also the most beautiful creature you ever laid eyes on.”

  “And you meet her out here?”

  “Have to, old Pork hates foreigners, and Pop especially. Not sure why. Mrs. Vanderhoff’s on some committee of women for the Exposition, but she kept Mama off. She won’t speak to Mama.”

  “Then how do you know this girl?”

  “I met her last winter, at the public ice skating in Lincoln Park. We—hold on.”

  He dodged behind the trunk of a sycamore, which was hardly wide enough to conceal a fence rail. From the north, clipping along down Prairie, came a small driving wagon, shiny and black, with no top and a cut-down front for easy entrance. The driver was a young woman in a smart tennis dress, white linen with a narrow red stripe and great puffy leg-o’-mutton sleeves. She wore a vivid scarlet flannel tam at a rakish angle.

  As the stylish little vehicle approached, the wind snapped the young woman’s skirt and Paul caught an arousing glimpse of black stockings above pointed white linen oxfords. He noticed a tennis racquet on the seat beside her.

  Joe Junior jumped from behind the sycamore, stuck his two little fingers in his mouth and blew a piercing whistle.

  “Julie. Over here.”

  The girl swung the pony to the near side of the street and reined to a stop, raising dust. “Why, Joey Crown, what a nice surprise.” She flashed him a smile. Paul hoped he wasn’t gawking. He’d never been in the presence of anyone so supremely rich before. In Berlin, tennis was a game enjoyed only by a small segment of the elite. He supposed that was also true in America.

  “Just in the neighborhood,” his cousin said. “Thought I’d say hello. You going to skate again next winter?”

  “Of course, are you?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it. How was your tennis game?”

  “Fine, but I got very tired after two sets. Mama says that’s to be expected if you’re a girl, but I wish it weren’t so.”

  Now she was gazing at Paul, who stood in his cousin’s shadow, entranced by the girl’s striking looks. Miss Vanderhoff was about his age, and rather slightly built, with delicate fair skin and large luminous gray eyes. Her inky black hair beneath the scarlet tam was thick and shiny. She had fine even teeth, and, more important, her smile seemed warm and natural.

  Joe Junior noticed the looks passing between the two of them. “Oh, ’scuse me.” He executed a little bow that made her laugh. “Madam, may I introduce my cousin, Paul Crown? Paul, Miss Juliette Vanderhoff. Paul’s been living with us since Christmas. He’s from Germany. Guess he qualifies as a greenhorn.” There was the slightest pause. “He’s okay.”

  “How do you do, Paul?” The girl was reaching down to shake hands. He tingled at the cool dry touch of her fingers. He had trouble collecting himself to answer.

  “Very fine, thanks.” His voice sounded like a frog’s croak. Mortifying.

  She didn’t seem to notice. “Are you planning to stay in America?”

  “Definitely, I am making it my country.” He was aware of his accent: heavy, foreign. She probably found it comical.

  “Then welcome,” she said. “Do you ice-skate?”

  “Oh, yes. I don’t have skates here”—he had never owned a pair in his life—“but in Berlin I skated often, and very well.”

  He didn’t mean to lie and boast that way, he was just thoroughly addled by her beauty.

  “Then we’ll see each other at Lincoln Park when the lagoons freeze next winter—”

  “Miss Vanderhoff! Your mother is asking for you.”

  The shout made her jump. A manservant in livery was standing at the front door of the Vanderhoff mansion.

  With a sigh, Julie said to Joe Junior, “Mama probably recognized you.” To Paul: “Her upstairs sitting room is there, in front. I must go.”

  Julie turned the pony’s head into the street. “Happy to meet you, Paul. Till winter, Joe.” She waved.

  “Till winter,” he said, his hand raised. She might be just a friend, but Paul saw that his eyes were adoring.

  Joe Junior nudged him. “Didn’t I say we’d catch a glimpse of heaven?”

  “You’re right, she is beautiful.”

  “But completely out of bounds, so don’t get any ideas, kid.” His cousin was joshing him again. Yet there seemed to be a note of regret in his voice.

  As they walked south on Prairie Avenue, Paul realized that his mouth was dry and his pulse still racing. Something surprising and incredible had happened there in the shade of the sycamore.

  He was in love.

  “I can hear the old gears grinding in your head,” Joe Junior said. “What about?”

  “I am thinking about a job. I wish I had a job instead of a desk in that school. If I had a job, I could save some money. With money I could buy a pair of skates.”

  Joe Junior’s eyebrows shot up. His mouth started to curl. Before he could speak, Paul burst out, “If you laugh at me I’ll hit you.”

  Joe Junior slung his arm around Paul’s shoulder and gave him a brotherly squeeze.

  “I won’t laugh. I know how it feels. Unfortunately she doesn’t care two pins about me, except as a friend. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

  In bed that night, Paul had a troubling thought. Now that a friendship was developing between him and his cousin, he supposed he’d stepped across an invisible line. He had taken sides.

  Against Uncle Joe.

  Well, what of it? Uncle Joe was the one who’d sentenced him to that school. His cousin was treating him almost like an equal. That made the difference.

  19

  Joe Crown

&n
bsp; ONE AFTERNOON A WEEK before the opening of the Exposition, there came to Joe’s office one Oskar Hexhammer. Joe knew him chiefly by reputation, although they had been introduced once, by a mutual acquaintance, in the rooms of the exclusive Germania Club on North Clark Street, of which all three men were members.

  Hexhammer was about thirty, prematurely bald, with thick black hair that stuck out like wings above his ears. He was slender, wore eyeglasses, and projected an attitude of absolute authority.

  He had arrived in Chicago less than ten years ago, and had quickly set about establishing himself as a leader of the most conservative German element. Evidently he’d come to America with an inheritance, which he used to start the Chicago Deutsche Zeitung, one of the city’s many German-language newspapers. He was its publisher and chief editorialist.

  Joe didn’t subscribe to the paper. He found it parochial, one-sided, and dull. It seemed to survive chiefly on municipal advertisements, which the city government always placed in German as well as English. Its circulation wasn’t even close to that of Hermann Kohlsaat’s Abendpost or Anton Hesing’s Illinois Staatszeitung, a paper Joe read regularly. Fiercely abolitionist when it was founded, the Staatszeitung purveyed opinions that agreed with Joe’s. On the issue of the eight-hour day, it held that workingmen would be “happier” working ten hours, because they would otherwise have two extra hours to spend in idleness, which could lead to domestic disharmony and even to crime.

  Although Joe was annoyed by Hexhammer’s insistence on seeing him without an appointment, he shook the visitor’s hand and invited him to sit down.

  “Wie geht’s mit Ihnen, Herr Crown?” The visitor had a recognizable accent. Berlin. Snobbish Berlin, at that.

  “I prefer to speak English, Mr. Hexhammer. What can I do for you? I’ll appreciate your being brief, we’re always busy around here.”

  “I trust you can spare fifteen minutes in the furtherance of German Kultur.”

  Joe smelled a financial solicitation. He leaned back, touching the tips of his fingers together so as to partially hide his face. “Please be more specific.”

  Hexhammer polished his spectacles with a starched handkerchief. “Certainly. I am sure you’d agree with the premise that in the fatherland, where you and I were born, the people enjoy a more civilized, refined style of life than they do here in America.”

  Joe groaned inwardly. Here was yet another apostle of the notion of superiority of all things German.

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “I remember my homeland with great affection, but I prefer this country. I love its democracy, its energy, even its vulgarity. I love that it isn’t wedded to the past, but looks always to the future. I love the concept that all men stand on the same starting mark, with only their individual ability and ambition limiting how far they can go. I love the welcoming spirit of America. Just in December, my nephew—”

  Hexhammer interrupted. “You love the idea of mixing with Bohemians, or Poles? Dirty Irish—all the dregs of the earth?”

  Joe laughed. “I was told that you were a secret aristocrat. It’s true.”

  Hexhammer wasn’t amused. “Some would make a similar charge about you, sir. You decided that a home on the Nordseite, among your own, wasn’t sufficiently prestigious. You chose to move down to Michigan Avenue.”

  “Where I live, and why, is my affair. For your information, our first house was simply too small. My address does nothing to diminish my regard for my native country, her people, or her traditions.”

  Joe was outwardly calm. But he was upset by the suggestion that others might think badly of him because he’d moved from the heavily German North Side district five years ago. Joe’s good name mattered to him.

  “Let me be even more specific, Mr. Hexhammer. Our family belongs to St. Paul’s Lutheran Church at Superior and Franklin—you know it, I assume.”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s the oldest Lutheran church in the city; it goes back to 1848. Germans organized it and the congregation is still predominantly German. Some Sunday school classes are still taught in the German language. Further, my wife and I donate regularly to the hospital of the Alexian Brothers, founded by monks from Aachen, and also to the German Hospital on Lincoln Avenue. When I was first able to support charitable works, I gave all that I could to the Schwabenverein, to help that club erect the Schiller monument in Lincoln Park. Is that enough respect for heritage, Mr. Hexhammer?”

  “Certainly, excellent.”

  “Then what are we discussing?”

  The visitor cleared his throat. “Are you aware of the formation in the fatherland of the Pan-German League?”

  “I know a little about it. A band of superpatriots, isn’t it?”

  “Nothing so distasteful. Although a civilian organization, the League is a logical and highly important extension of our government.”

  “My government is in Washington. But go on.” Joe’s hand dropped to his vest. He began to tap and rub the polished boar’s tooth.

  “The League has very specific goals. It favors a higher state of preparedness for the army, a larger and more powerful navy with a global capability, an expanding domain of overseas colonies, and of course armed vigilance in regard to our mortal enemies, France and the British Empire.”

  Joe shook his head. “I can never understand why the Kaiser hates England when his own grandmother, Queen Victoria, reigns there. I was shocked when he said that his withered left arm was a taint from his British blood.”

  “A perfectly correct and appropriate remark, in my opinion. However, to return to the League—it is another of its goals which brings me here. The German diaspora is now worldwide. Wherever Germans are settled, the League strives to promote our language and culture.”

  “Back to German superiority, are we?”

  The visitor missed or chose to overlook the sarcasm. “For good reason, sir. We are the people of Beethoven, after all. The people of Wagner, and Goethe.” Hexhammer leaned forward; lowered his voice. “I am connected to the League’s overseas directorate. Closely connected.” What a pompous ass, Joe thought. Am I supposed to cower and tremble?

  “Mr. Hexhammer, before we continue this, please answer one question. If the Kultur of the fatherland is so consistently above that of America, why are you here instead of back there?”

  “I thought I made that clear, my friend. As Germans it is our duty to influence the political and social course of the country in which we reside. To do this we must begin with the children. To this end, the League is promoting formation of a totally new Turnverein, to be called the Kaiser Wilhelm Royal Turnverein of Chicago.”

  The last few words faded to an indecisive mutter; Joe Crown was regarding the visitor with a skeptical scowl.

  Hexhammer collected himself. “You do believe in Friedrich Jahn’s principles, do you not? A sound body and a sound mind?” Early in the century, in Germany, Jahn had created a movement, and a passion, for physical culture. It led to immigrants founding Turnvereine, gymnastic clubs, all over America.

  “Indeed yes, I’ve always encouraged my youngsters to play vigorously in order to stay healthy.”

  “Are they enrolled in a regular club program at present?”

  “No. They were in one when they were small.”

  “Then I suggest that you enroll them in our new club. With a founder’s donation of at least one thousand dollars. Your children will thus be part of an elite corps for the propagation of German values through physical training.”

  “Mr. Hexhammer,” Joe said, “I very much object to anyone coming to me and saying I must spend my money this way or that way. Furthermore, when I choose to make a contribution, I decide on the amount.”

  “But it’s your duty as a Ger—”

  “Please don’t harp on my duty. I know my duties. They don’t include contributing to this particular bit of jingo patriotism.”

  Hexhammer recoiled in his chair. Earlier he’d removed his gray gloves and laid them in his lap. Now he began t
o twist them savagely.

  “That’s a very curious attitude for a man who professes to love his native land. It’s a puzzling attitude for a businessman who—may I say it?—depends on the good will of German people.”

  He paused while that sank in.

  “Word travels quickly in this town, sir. I wouldn’t want your reputation blackened. Or your beer sales diminished.”

  Joe Crown rose. He walked slowly around the desk and stood over Hexhammer. “This conversation is over. Leave my office.”

  Hexhammer squirmed out of Joe’s shadow, sidestepping toward the door, twisting his gloves. “I think you’ll regret this. You are not a good German.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. I’m an American citizen, after all. Get out, please.”

  Hexhammer slammed the door. Joe sank back into his chair. He’d done the right thing but he was fully aware that the young publisher had a certain influence among the mossbacks in Chicago. The threat to brewery sales bothered him in one important respect. He held himself personally responsible for the welfare of every man on his payroll. That welfare depended on the success of Crown’s from week to week and month to month.

  Well, he would never lay off even one man because of falling sales, he had decided that long ago. He’d spend himself to bankruptcy first. He wasn’t being noble. A decent man just conducted his business that way.

  He feared he wasn’t finished with Hexhammer. More precisely, that Hexhammer wasn’t finished with him. He tried to put it out of his mind while he signed a stack of letters Zwick had typed that morning.

  20

  Paul

  ON THE GREAT DAY, a faraway roll of thunder woke Paul before dawn. He wanted to go back to sleep. He turned on his left side. He forced himself to yawn. He turned on his right side. No use; his mind was racing with thoughts of the Exposition. An entire day free of Mrs. Petigru!