Homeland

by John Jakes

  “She must have gone with him for convenience.”

  “I wish it were so, Dutch. I made a few discreet inquiries about that, too. I wish I hadn’t.”

  “Tell me the rest. You must.”

  “The young lady’s being seen with Elstree at concerts and levees more or less regularly. I have one exposed plate showing them together.”

  “Oh my God. What happened? What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t want to tell you. Wouldn’t hurt you for anything. Wouldn’t have said a word, but it struck me that you had to know. Maybe—” He flushed, then finished while looking in the other direction:

  “Maybe you should stop thinking about her. It looks like the young lady has sailed off on some new course.”

  A few minutes after eleven, Paul walked out of the darkroom with a developed glass plate. He examined it by electric light. Once a negative image had seemed strange and foreign to him. Now it was as familiar as the taste of beer or the texture of black bread; his eye and mind instantly translated the spectral reverse images. Tones of gray in her dress; the skeletal white of his dark formal suit. The man had his arm around her. Each of them held a fluted glass with something in it. Paul tilted the plate, studying her black teeth.

  She was smiling. He hurled the plate across the room.

  It struck the stove and shattered loudly, raining down its daggers and chips of glass. Paul wiped his hands on his canvas apron as Wex bounded from the darkroom. He saw the damage and groaned.

  “It slipped out of my hands.”

  “Which one was it?”

  “My girl.”

  Wex gave him a long stare, eyes red and huge behind his spectacles. “All right, can’t be helped. Accidents happen.”

  “Yes, they do,” Paul said. He’d never felt such pain, not even when his own family turned him out.

  Wex went to bed at midnight. Paul pried the crown off a new bottle of his uncle’s beer and sat under the kitchen light, drinking. He drank another bottle after that, and another. Trying to solve the riddle.

  What had caused her to change? Had she lied to him all along? Tricked him? How could that be, after all their declarations of love, hers just as fervent as his? How could it be after their pledges of undying devotion? And that night at Radigan’s … did he mean no more to her than a one-night experiment?

  “It looks like the young lady has sailed off on some new course …”

  How could it be?

  He telephoned the Vanderhoff mansion next morning. He asked for Miss Vanderhoff. “Who is calling, please?” He gave his name to the male servant. “She is not here.” He asked to leave a message. “Sorry, that is not possible.” The servants had been rehearsed. The wall was up.

  68

  Joe Crown

  IN NOVEMBER JOE HAD the misfortune to encounter Oskar Hexhammer again, this time at the rathskeller of the Germania Club. The rathskeller was a large, dark, comfortable room with oak paneling and white tablecloths. All around the walls, stuffed and mounted heads of bison and boars and stags with splendid antlers contemplated eternity with glass eyes.

  When Hexhammer walked down the stairs, the place was empty save for Joe, who was waiting for his hops supplier; he’d scheduled a noon meeting while they ate. A full stein of dark Heimat beer sat on the bar in front of him.

  He was in a foul mood. His supplier was already fifteen minutes late. While waiting, Joe had been mulling his dissatisfaction with the brewmaster he’d hired after Fred Schildkraut’s death. Heinz Freising was competent but riotously disorganized, which Joe blamed on his Bavarian upbringing. Freising was always cracking jokes around the brewery. Joe had nearly decided to replace him.

  Now here was Hexhammer, making straight for him. He was still publishing his Chicago Deutsche Zeitung, which lavished praise on anything emanating from the fatherland or the lips of the Kaiser. He’d made no further editorial attacks on Joe or his brewery. The two men saw each other occasionally at this club, German restaurants, social functions, but always at nodding distance. Joe was customarily the one who nodded first, out of politeness. Hexhammer always accompanied his nod with a smirk, as though expressing some fancied superiority. The damned ass.

  “Well, Joe. Wie geht’s mit Ihnen?”

  “Fine, Oskar. You?”

  “Oh, splendid. How’s business?”

  “We’re shipping at record levels. We expect to close out the year at seven hundred and forty thousand barrels.”

  “Ah.”

  Joe was silently amused. He hadn’t realized a single syllable could carry so much disappointment. “Buy you a beer, Oskar?”

  “Is it yours?”

  “Naturally.”

  “How dare I refuse?”

  Joe signaled. “Carlo, draw one for Mr. Hexhammer.” He wished his supplier would appear. Two other men he knew slightly came down the stairs, laughing and talking. Joe felt all the more trapped.

  He tried to steer the conversation to neutral subjects. The talented Baltimore team that had won the National League pennant in the fall. Hexhammer said he knew nothing about baseball, it was a crude American game. Young Mr. Crane’s remarkable Civil War novel, then? “I read it but I loathed it. English is such an ugly language. The classic poetry in the language you and I were raised with—that is true art.”

  Joe’s annoyance grew. He fingered the boar’s tooth on his watch chain; pulled out his watch and snapped it open. The damned supplier was now twenty-two minutes late.

  Hexhammer then began to praise Kaiser Wilhelm’s statesmanship, especially his decision to force Bismarck out of office a few years ago. The chancellor had opposed the buildup of a two-ocean navy, which the Kaiser craved, having read and reread Admiral Mahan’s book on sea power like some new holy writ. The Kaiser in turn hated the treaty Bismarck had secretly negotiated with Russia in 1887. So did Hexhammer:

  “In eighty-seven, when Bismarck addressed the Reichstag, he made a magnificent statement: ‘We Germans fear God and nothing else in the world.’ Then he spent an hour justifying that damned cowardly treaty.”

  Joe looked again toward the empty stairs. “Cowardly? I saw it as a shrewd move to promote peace. Russia standing with France—two of Germany’s traditional enemies allied—that would be very dangerous.”

  “Nonsense. Bismarck became an old lion, Joe. Openly opposing his sworn leader. The Kaiser had a duty to discharge him.”

  “And that was his reward for serving twenty-eight years, steadfastly, according to what he believed best.”

  “He spread dissension! He looked backward, like every old man. The Kaiser looks to the future. Creation of a new German empire. Peacefully, one hopes, but if not, then forcibly.”

  “Oskar, you sound like a warmonger. Whatever you think of Bismarck’s policies—and as an American, I disliked many of them—”

  “Yes, we all know where your loyalties lie.”

  Fuming, Joe plowed on. “—he was and is one of the great men of Europe. One of the great men of this century. A colossus.”

  “No, no—an old lion. There’s a new generation rising in the fatherland that devours old lions. It’s lucky you’re in this country. I think you became an old lion some time ago.”

  Joe nearly threw his beer in the man’s face. Fortunately, at that moment his supplier came tramping into the rathskeller, hailing him. Joe signed the chit for the beer and swiftly left the bar to greet his guest.

  The encounter with Hexhammer stayed with him, vastly upsetting. In the final moments of the argument his head had throbbed. He was losing control. Control of himself, his family, his whole ordered existence. What it augured for the future—the unforeseeable dangers, failures—frightened him.

  How could he regain control? Fire the brewmaster? That was a start, but it wasn’t enough. What, then? Where and how could he take command of events in a demonstrable way, so as to shore up his crumbling faith in himself?

  69

  Paul

  PAUL STRUGGLED TO LAY a waterproof co
ver on the laundry hamper. Wind whipped his scarf back and forth across his face. The delivery wagon was tied near the service entrance of the Sherman House, on the Clark Street side. Someone in a cap came rushing around the corner from Randolph, head down against the rain. He bowled into Paul. Handbills flew.

  Paul dove to retrieve some from under the wagon horse. “Never mind, nobody wants any today.”

  The mournful statement made him look up. He recognized the hangdog face under a dripping bill cap. “Hello, remember me? We met at the racetrack and at Colonel Shadow’s arcade.”

  “Yes.” Lew Kress stuffed wet, bedraggled handbills in the pockets of his wool coat. He stepped into the lee of the laundry wagon and blew on his bare hands. The November rain was cold, falling hard.

  Paul said, “A poor day to advertise moving pictures, it seems.”

  “Isn’t it. I hate this damn job. I hate this town. I should go home.”

  Paul focused instantly on what Lew Kress had just said. “Home, where is that?”

  “Little town in South Carolina. Branchville. Never heard of it, have you?”

  “No, I have not. I’m sure it’s pleasant. Why don’t you go?”

  “I’ll tell you why. I can’t afford a train ticket.” He stepped against the building, turned up the collar of his shabby coat, looking miserable. “Money’s like water to me. I can’t hold on to it. I have this—terrible passion for the whores. I spend every cent on them.”

  “And it’s only the rail fare that keeps you in Chicago? What is the amount?”

  “Second-class, it’s eleven dollars and fifty cents. More than I’ll ever be able to save. Look, I’m soaked and frozen, I’m going.”

  Paul grabbed his arm. “I’ll get it.”

  “What? What did you say?”

  “I said I will get the money for your ticket. It will take a while, but as soon as I have it I will find you at the arcade.” Paul drew a breath. “I want your job.”

  “This job? You’re crazy.”

  “No, the job will suit me.”

  “Shadow can be a son of a bitch. A slave driver. Do you know what that means?”

  “I think so.”

  “And that Jim, he has a mean streak, I’d never turn my back on him.”

  “Even so, I want the job. I want to learn about the living pictures. I will pay your way to South Carolina.”

  “Why, good Lord—” Skepticism gave way to a kind of joyous babble. “You’re a real gentleman, you are. Straight talker, too. All right, it’s a bargain.” They shook right there in the downpour. “You come ’round as soon as you’ve got the money, hear? Can’t be too soon to suit me.”

  He waved as he rushed off. For the first time in weeks, Paul forgot the terrible shock, the terrible sense of defeat caused by the news about Julie. He laughed and did a little capering step on the sidewalk.

  Chicago was a crossroads; everyone of importance came through, rushing between the oceans. Men with new political ideas, new business schemes, new inventions. That was why Paul and Wex found themselves shivering on the street on another miserable day, the twenty-ninth of November; the day after Thanksgiving.

  The night before, a near blizzard had blown through. High snowdrifts lined both sides of Michigan Avenue; wagon traffic had churned the center to brown slop. Low-hanging clouds laid a gray murk over everything, including the few spectators scattered along both sides of the avenue.

  “Why are we doing this?” Wex asked rhetorically. He crossed his arms and slapped his ribs with hands encased in patched mittens. He didn’t smile, didn’t seem himself of late, and had offered no explanation.

  “We want to see the race. You told me it was the first such race to be held in North America.”

  “I’m sure there’ll be another. In better weather.”

  Paul smiled, though his face was stiff. His nose was numb, his shoes were soaked; his socks felt like wet rags. They’d been waiting more than an hour. Several of the new “motor wagons” were scheduled to race north from Jackson Park over a fifty-four-mile course. The storm had obviously delayed everything.

  Another half hour passed. Wex said he needed a drink to warm up, nothing was worth this kind of torture. Overlapping the end of his complaint, Paul heard a faint noise. “They’re coming!”

  To the south, a strange vehicle came chugging out of the mist, followed by another. “Motor wagons.” They resembled horseless buggies with small engines mounted in the rear. The second was nearly a block behind the first. On they came, weaving and sliding on the treacherous ice underneath the slush. Two more vehicles appeared. All four drivers were muffled to the eyes. There was a spatter of applause from both sides of the boulevard.

  Paul spied a small German flag painted on the second motor wagon. “Benz!” he yelled. “Come on, Benz!”

  Wex exclaimed, “My God, they must be doing eight or nine miles an hour, can you believe it?”

  The second motor wagon passed by. The engine noise from the two laggards grew louder. Wex identified one as an Electrobat but didn’t recognize the other. “The papers announced eight or nine entries. The snow must have knocked out the rest.”

  Just then, across the street, Paul spotted a familiar figure; a young man wearing knickerbockers, a heavy coat, a bright red watch cap and matching mittens. Paul waved. “Carl! Over here!”

  Carl Crown dashed across Michigan in front of a police wagon flinging up slush from its wheels. He snatched off his cap, his cheeks were nearly as red. Paul introduced Carl to Wex, who shook hands, then started trotting in place to warm his feet.

  “You’ve gotten so tall, Carl. How old are you now?”

  Carl was grinning, genuinely happy to see Paul. “I was thirteen this month. I’m home for a week’s holiday. I’m in school in New York. Damn far away. The headmaster’s a damn old son of a bitch.”

  Paul chuckled at Carl’s new worldliness. “Otherwise it’s all right?”

  “Oh, not the studying. But I’m learning football. I love that. What about you?”

  “Oh, things are excellent. I have a good job. Mr. Rooney is teaching me photography. Next I want to learn about the living pictures. The flickers.”

  “I heard they’re dirty. Mama said Pastor Wunder preached about them. A real hellfire sermon.”

  Slapping his sides, Wex said, “The living pictures are a new, vital part of photography, and photography is the art and science that can enrich the world. Thrill and entertain millions. Educate them—”

  Carl was obviously nonplussed, so Paul interrupted the lecture. “Tell me, how is Fritzi?”

  “You know her, Paul. Crazy. Right now she thinks she’s the lady of the camellias. She saw some foreign actress—”

  “Helena Modjeska,” Wex said. “She played Chicago last month.”

  “That’s the one. Fritzi imitates her all the time. Every night she dies nine or ten times at least. It’s sickening.”

  “Have you heard from your brother?”

  Carl shook his head. “No one can find him. I guess he’s gone for good. Sometimes when his name just comes up by accident, everybody stops talking and Mama looks ready to cry.” He touched Paul’s arm. “I wish you’d never left.”

  “I do too. Sometimes. I hadn’t any choice.”

  Carl tugged his cap on. “Guess I better go home. Pop gave strict orders I shouldn’t stay too long.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me,” Paul said. He and Carl hugged each other.

  “Luck, Paul.”

  “To you also. Study hard, you need to be smart in this world.” Carl jumped the curbside snow pile and was soon lost in the dark gray mist of morning.

  “Big lad,” Wex said. He took off his spectacles and wiped away condensation. “I’m definitely leaving. I need a whiskey.”

  “But how will we find out who wins the race?”

  “I know someone at the Tribune. I’ll telephone later.”

  They walked west from Michigan to a small tavern with fogged windows. They went into a vestibule, war
mer than the street. There Wex paused, his nose shining like a glass strawberry. “Listen, I just want to say this so you’re clear about it. I know you’re keen to learn about the flickers. You’re free to move out anytime there’s an opportunity. I encourage it, I won’t feel bad. I take that back, I will, you’re good company. Let’s go in, warm up with drinks, I need to talk to you about something else.”

  “What?”

  “Why—ah—” His gaze darted away from Paul’s. “Never mind, it isn’t important.”

  With the inner door open and soothing warmth flowing out, Wex again stopped abruptly. “Do you have any money on you?”

  “Forty cents.”

  “Good, I’m temporarily short.”

  With a worried expression Paul followed him into the tavern.

  That night, shivering under two thin blankets in the loft, he couldn’t sleep. His thoughts fixed on Shadow, Lew Kress, his own financial predicament. He had no money saved, he’d loaned it all to Wex. What could he do about that ticket?

  In the weeks that followed he found no ready answer to the question. Then, on Monday night before Christmas, he returned home from the Steam Laundry as usual and found a wagon parked in front of the Temple. Two draymen were carrying out furniture and equipment and loading it in an open wagon.

  It was a cold sparkling night of stars and wind. Wex stood in the street, bareheaded, hands in his pockets, gazing up at the Temple sign. Paul hurried to him. “Wex, what’s going on here?”

  Wex wouldn’t look at him. “Eviction. My things are going into storage. The locks will be changed tomorrow morning.”

  “But why?”

  “Because the rent is once more in arrears. Four months this time. The landlord called in person. Told me he had a new tenant with good credit. Tore up my lease right in front of me.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “It’s legal when I can’t pay for a lawyer to fight it.”

  “What about Mr. Coughlin’s insurance fund?”

  Wex shook his head. “The Bath said he was sorry, but the fund’s for people in trouble with the law. He sent me to a man who makes loans at usurious rates. I signed a paper that’ll bleed me till I’m a hundred. It was the only way I could pay to move the goods and store them.”