Homeland

by John Jakes

  Ilsa was sure her husband and son loved each other, although in moments of heat they might seem irreconcilable foes. What worried her now, to the depths of her heart, was the feeling that a wider chasm had opened between them tonight. So wide that father and son might never be able to build a bridge, reach one another, let love rule again.

  In the night, she found herself turning on her side, toward Joe, as each had a habit of doing for comfort. Her hand stole out and touched the hair over his left ear gently, brushing it with the lightest of caresses.

  “Joe, Joe,” she whispered. “Bitte—bitte! Lass nichts schlinm geschehen.” For a second or so she didn’t realize she’d resorted to her native language.

  The plea was not to him alone; it was an appeal that flew far beyond the walls of the bedroom; rose up high to something unseen, unknowable, in which she still believed. It was a spoken prayer; a reflection of the deteriorating state of the family; a measure of her desperation.

  Please, please! Don’t let anything bad happen.

  28

  Paul

  PAUL WAS SHAKEN BY the overt enmity between his uncle and his cousin. He’d known it was there, but never guessed how frightening it was in its ferocity.

  On Saturday morning when he went into the kitchen for a refill of his breakfast coffee, Aunt Ilsa was working with bread dough again, pounding and kneading it with violent blows and pokes. Her expression upset Paul. She was not someone who scowled often.

  About eleven, Mr. Mars called, for his final wages.

  He and Paul walked in the garden, where one path led through the outer wall of shrubbery to the side yard. Carl was romping with some new gadget, a stick with a string and a four-blade rotor on top. Paul and the tutor watched Carl wind the string on the stick, then give it a yank. The rotor and stick lifted into the air and hovered for a few seconds, defying gravity. Then the toy fell.

  “The Pénaud helicopter,” Mr. Mars said. “Twenty-five cents. There are millions in the toy boxes of American children. They were invented in France, didn’t you have one?”

  “I didn’t have store toys, mine were carved or made at home.”

  Carl wound the rotor and released it again, clapping as it flew higher this time. Just an hour before, Aunt Ilsa had punished him for tinkering with her Black Forest cuckoo clock. Carl had removed it from the wall and taken it apart to see its workings. He put it back together but it no longer ticked or said “Cuckoo.” For this Aunt Ilsa had given him a new list of chores, without pay. It didn’t seem to dampen his enthusiasm. Paul wished he could recover from trouble as quickly.

  Mr. Mars walked to the praying angel and sat on the nearest stone bench. He fanned himself with his broad-brimmed felt hat. “This is a sad day for me, Paul. I will miss tutoring you. You’re industrious, and smart. If the subject interests you,” he added with a wry smile. “I predict you’ll do well when you find your calling in life.”

  Resentfully, he thought, I found it. Uncle Joe said it didn’t amount to anything.

  “What will you do, Mr. Mars?”

  “Aye, me. Continue as before. Tutor the bratty little daughters of pretentious nabobs. Teach them French. Teach them poetry. Teach them—and know they’ll forget every bit of it.”

  “I won’t forget. I am thanking you, I have better English now.”

  “Well, let’s not exaggerate. You have English which is improving. I won’t forget you either.”

  They shook hands. Paul stood on the street corner watching Mr. Mars hurry away, the hem of his long green and blue plaid coat flapping in the summer air.

  Outside the schoolhouse Paul said goodbye to Leo. He’d arranged the meeting by leaving a note on Friday, the last day of school. The principal’s assistant, a homely young woman, had been very nice about it. She made no reference to his expulsion.

  The schoolyard was empty, scoured by a summer wind that bounced a tin can noisily over the gravel and blew Paul’s uncombed hair to and fro. The tail of his striped summer shirt hung out. He ran toward Leo when he appeared at the corner with Flash, and explained about going to work at the brewery.

  “So we say goodbye for now, Leo. But I will see you again. I’ll come to your flat, you gave me the address.”

  Leo blushed. “Don’t come, we’re moving. Pop got fired. Nobody’s buying corsets, I guess. Pop’s pretty busted up about it …”

  Sad-faced, he scratched Flash behind the ears. “I’ll send you a new address when we get one.”

  “Good, it’s a promise.”

  They hugged each other.

  Leo never sent the address.

  Late in the day Paul stood in front of the window of the shop on North Clark Street. He put his nose against the glass again. Dark, empty space. He couldn’t believe it. On the glass in thick red tempera, someone had painted FOR RENT.

  On a stepladder, a man with a toothpick in his mouth went about his work, unhooking chains that held a faded sign, ROONEY’S TEMPLE OF PHOTOGRAPHY.

  “But where is he?” Paul asked, holding out the card.

  The man took the toothpick out of his mouth, leaned the other way and spat a big squirt of tobacco juice on the sidewalk. “Who gives a damn? He was a lousy tenant, Rooney.”

  “When did he move?”

  “He didn’t move, I threw him out. Tuesday. Christ, he was five and a half months in arrears, I carried him long enough.”

  “But please tell me, where has he gone?”

  “Try a park bench. Try Cook County Jail. The little son of a bitch had a swarm of creditors chasing him. Rooney don’t pay his bills. Not regular, anyway. He can’t leave off with the ponies, that’s his trouble.”

  Paul didn’t understand the reference to ponies. As he turned away from the painted window, the man unhooked one chain on the sign. Paul stepped to the curbstone, crushed the card and flung it in the gutter with the other trash.

  On Monday he woke early, long before daylight. Like the morning he went to the rail yards to see Buffalo Bill’s train, or the opening day of the Exposition. He’d slept restlessly.

  As he lathered his face and shaved and dressed, he was conscious of the need to hurry. He was to see the brewmaster, Mr. Friedrich Schildkraut, at six sharp. In any fine brewery, the brewmaster was God, and that was true at Crown’s. Uncle Joe had emphasized this when he lectured Paul at Sunday night supper:

  “We are a successful business in large part because of Fred Schildkraut. There is no one else I would trust with his job—I was brewmaster myself until my other responsibilities got too large. I hired Fred away from Pabst in Milwaukee at three times his old salary. He understands many things about brewing far better than I do. Mechanical refrigeration, for one. In the early days a brewmaster wasn’t much more than a superior cook, but now he’s the keystone of the whole enterprise. The brewery is Fred’s life, which is good for me, but bad for his wife and four boys. When we’re in a peak period, or he’s confronted with a problem, Fred will stay two, three, four nights without going home. I try to persuade him to leave, he refuses. He works all night until he falls asleep at his desk. Fred expects you at six o’clock. I’d be punctual. I’d be a few minutes early. Fred is a Catholic. Very devout. Don’t use any bad language in front of him.”

  Cousin Joe wouldn’t be going with him to the brewery this morning. His case of grippe had grown worse on Sunday. Aunt Ilsa put him to bed with fever. So Paul had to tiptoe through the slumbering house alone, to the dark kitchen where he picked up the lunch in a paper sack Louise had left for him.

  A horsecar took him within two blocks of the brewery. He felt sleepy and gritty-eyed. His face was raw from the razor; shaving was still a relatively new experience.

  It had been drizzling for ten minutes. The deserted streets glistened. A light mist or fog was congealing in the damp air as he walked to the employee gate at the south end of the brewery block. A cobbled alley ran from the gate, parallel with Larrabee Street, into the heart of the brewery. The mist coiled slowly along the ground, hiding the foundations
of the fortresslike buildings. Somewhere machinery clanked; steam hissed. There was not another workman in sight.

  An old watchman sat in a small booth, reading a paper by lantern light. Paul knocked on the glass. The watchman shuffled out.

  “Hello, my name is Paul Crown. I am to work here.”

  “Yes, I was told. Pass on.”

  “I am to see Mr. Schildkraut.”

  “Second floor, front building. Down the alley, turn right. The door to the Bierstube should be unlocked, Fred came in half an hour ago.”

  He walked away from the booth into the dark maw of the alley, the black buildings rising like medieval keeps on either side. This was to be his life now. His entire life. He had no purpose, only this job pushed on him by his uncle.

  Bad feelings buffeted him as he trudged over the cobbles. Uncle Joe had no sympathy for his wishes, all he cared about was numbers, sales, having things his way. He’d found work he might do, enthusiastically, as a career and Uncle Joe scoffed at it. Paul understood Cousin Joe’s rebellion.

  He stopped and gazed up at the brewery buildings. A few lonely lights gleamed behind opaque windows. The machinery clanked. The air smelled rich with brewery smells, not at all appetizing. God, why was he here? Maybe he didn’t belong in America. How the baker of Wuppertal would laugh if he saw him now.

  Calm down, it may not be forever, this job. There’s one advantage. A very important one. When winter comes you will certainly have ice skates.

  Concentrating on a vision of Juliette Vanderhoff’s face, he walked on into the brewery.

  Friedrich Schildkraut’s office was a corner space like Uncle Joe’s, but at the rear, overlooking the alley and the manufacturing buildings. Light showed beneath the closed door. Paul ran a palm over his unruly hair and knocked.

  “Come in, young man.”

  The office was darker than Uncle Joe’s, and more disorderly, strewn with flasks and thermometers, little muslin sacks of grain and hops, diagrams, blueprints, technical papers in German. Amid the litter, a small gold-lettered sign confronted the visitor. F. SCHILDKRAUT, BREWMASTER.

  On the wall behind the desk, a bleeding Christ hung from a wooden cross. Nearby was a framed photograph of a bearded man. Schildkraut noticed Paul studying it.

  “Louis Pasteur. A great friend of beer, as it turned out, although Pasteur began his researches principally to aid the winemakers in France. So they might compete with German brewers.” Schildkraut’s lips twitched; it could hardly be called a smile. “Sit down, please.”

  As soon as Paul sat, the brewmaster stood up. He was a tall, austere man, about forty, with a long jaw that tapered to a blunt chin, and thick hair yellowing to gray. His left arm ended at the elbow; sleeve and cuff were neatly pinned up with a safety pin. As a young man, Uncle Joe had told Paul, Schildkraut lost his arm in a dust explosion in a malthouse.

  The pendulum of a wall clock ticktocked noisily. From his intimidating height, the brewmaster looked down at Paul. “What do you know about beer? Do you know what this is?” Schildkraut said, without giving him a chance to answer the first question. From the desk he snatched a funnellike metal device, badly dented.

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “This is what we call a swimmer. Filled with ice, it went into the beer to control the fermentation temperature. That was before refrigeration. In the days of underground cellars, and cooling caves. The days when lager couldn’t be brewed all year round, but only as long as a supply of river ice lasted.” He tossed the swimmer on the desk.

  At the window, he scowled at something he saw below. He pivoted suddenly and barked at Paul like an army drillmaster. “Do you know where the term ‘lager’ originated?”

  “From the German lagern?”

  “Of course. Lagern. To lay down. Deposit. Store. After fermentation, lager rests in a cool place for two to three months. Do you know whether lager is bottom or top fermented?”

  “No, sir.”

  “The bottom—unlike English brews. It was never possible to brew lager in America until the early decades of this century. Before that, legend has it, every yeast culture died before it completed the long journey across the Atlantic. Then came clipper ships, making the trip in three weeks or less. The yeast survived. I see we shall have to teach you almost everything. Especially since your uncle indicated to me that you might make a career of it.”

  Paul’s neck prickled. “Sir?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? Your uncle said you might develop an interest in brewing as a life’s work. We have tried to direct young Mr. Joe that way, without success. I am very happy to hear there may be another opportunity for—”

  Paul interrupted by standing up. The brewmaster scowled.

  “You wish to say something?”

  “I do, Mr. Schildkraut. My uncle was kind to get me this job, it is time I had one. But I have never said I wish to be a brewer all my life. I am not certain.”

  That was a lie. A necessary and politic lie, but a lie all the same. He was certain he didn’t want to be a brewer. He’d seen the elephant dancing …

  “The truth is, sir, I came to America to decide what I want to be, not—well, not to be told what I must be. People in America, they are free to choose. That is the reason I came here.”

  Slowly Friedrich Schildkraut lowered his right hand to the back of his swivel chair. He gripped it with long tapering fingers. He leaned forward. He is furious, I will be discharged before I start.

  “Good! You have backbone. There is no place for a weakling in a brewery.” Schildkraut actually smiled. “We’ll do our utmost to convince you it’s a worthy profession. I don’t mind telling you that Mr. Crown feels you have a lot of promise.”

  Schildkraut was far more relaxed all at once, less forbidding. “We’ll teach you everything. We’ll start where the beer starts, in the malthouse. We do our own malting, we don’t buy from outside. Some of your tasks will be onerous and exhausting. Our mash vessels are direct-fired, not heated by steam. You’ll spend several months stoking the fires. You’ll clean equipment. You’ll go home so tired you’ll want to weep. But you’ll learn a noble trade. Just don’t fall in with the wrong crowd here.”

  Schildkraut circled the desk and laid his good hand on Paul’s shoulder. “We have at least one employee who belongs to the exalted, glorious National Union of United Brewery Workmen of the U.S., A.F. of L. Mr. Benno Strauss.” He spit into a desk-side cuspidor.

  “Benno and his friends are agitators. Don’t listen to them. Young Master Joe has a tendency to do that, it’s leading him astray. The fact is, while there’s breath or strength in your uncle, or in me, we won’t permit a socialistic trade union at Crown’s. Or the devil-inspired eight-hour workday. Men who are idle an extra two or three hours a day are susceptible to extra temptation. We’ll never have it. Never.”

  Light sweat had popped out on Schildkraut’s forehead. But his grip relaxed. “This way,” he said, stepping toward the door with the bearing of a soldier. “I’ll take you personally to the malthouse and get you started.”

  Paul nodded compliantly, but he was churning inside again. What had he gotten into? Was this a brewery, or a battleground?

  Part Four

  Julie

  1893-1894

  We advocate the thorough education and training of woman to fit her to meet whatever fate life may bring. Not only to prepare her for the factory and the workshop, for the professions and the arts, but more important than all else, to prepare her for presiding over the home. It is for this, the highest field of woman’s effort, that the broadest training and preparation are required.

  1893

  Mrs. POTTER PALMER at the dedication of the Exposition Women’s Building

  29

  Julie

  ON THE FIRST SATURDAY morning of September, Mrs. Vanderhoff was combing her daughter’s hair.

  This weekly ritual took place in Julie’s dressing room. Julie’s unbound hair hung below her waist. Hair the color of coal. Hair shiny as a
pool of spilled ink. Hair that was Juliette Vanderhoff’s pride and glory, because her mother had taught her it was so. Mrs. Vanderhoff had taught her daughter many things about women, their dispositions and afflictions, their duties as refined young ladies, then prospective brides, then mothers, then great hostesses.

  Nell Fishburne Vanderhoff, younger of two sisters born in Lexington to the Kentucky Fishburnes, was five feet tall and compactly built. Once, youthful and blooming, she might have had the charm of a bisque doll. Now, in her forties, she merely looked breakable. Lines of exhaustion were scribed deep in her face. Great brown shadows surrounded her eyes. Her skin resembled pale yellow marble with blue veining. Her hands often trembled, though not this morning.

  Julie had observed her sixteenth birthday on May 28. Her figure had matured sufficiently for her to wear women’s fashions, such as this morning’s expensive gown of peach silk. It had been cut and sewn at Redfern’s, the New York City branch of the fashionable London couturier.

  She sat motionless, gazing at herself in a large oval mirror while Nell plied the comb and brush. She couldn’t enjoy the ritual as she once had. She felt too old. Again this morning, a tantalizing memory of the boy she’d met months ago disturbed her composure. Joey Crown’s cousin; the German boy.

  Their meeting on the street had been brief, yet she remembered him. His broad shoulders and strong, honest face. His brown eyes, large and shining with a curious liquidity that left her seething with improper thoughts, emotions, to which she dared not put words. He had a perfectly terrible accent, but his smile flashed quickly, and it was genuine. There was about him a forthrightness, a lack of pretension she never found in young men of her age and social class.