Homeland

by John Jakes

  The club performances are given at the Royalty, a splendid little venue on Dean Street, in Soho. They are always on a Sunday afternoon so that theater people can attend. Of course there are other subscribers. One of them chanced to be sitting in the seat next to mine in the stalls. She remarked on the absence of its usual occupant. I remarked on his indisposition. I introduced myself as Michael. She introduced herself as Cecily. She was smartly but plainly dressed. Far from a beauty.

  My new acquaintance was pleasant but rather shy. She grew quite flushed when I invited her to accompany me to the stalls bar at the interval. She drank a lemon squash and said little. After the performance we strolled a short way together. As we were shaking hands, exchanging farewell pleasantries, I impulsively invited her to refreshments at the J. Lyons tea shop in Piccadilly. Mind, I knew nothing about her beyond her first name, Cecily. I was simply lonely. No, suffering! I hadn’t been with a woman in four or five days.

  The second invitation produced no false modesty. She came, without hesitation. I would have preferred to swank it at the Café Royal, but I barely had enough cash to pay for a pot of Lapsong Suchong and a plate of scones. We had a lengthy chat about theater, books, political issues. She was obviously well educated and very pleasant company, actually. As we stepped out of J. Lyons, another impulse seized me. I invited her to my bed-sitter in the Brompton Road.

  Again, she came. And not unwillingly. She had her knickers off in a trice. At approximately half past seven in the evening, I took her virginity. Thirty-one years old and still untouched, can you imagine? Overprotectiveness will damage a woman far more than riotous sex, that’s my opinion.

  We indulged ourselves a second time. We dressed and I escorted her downstairs to search for a cab to take her home. It was a nasty night. Thick fog. She took me in her arms and kissed me, then she told me her full name. Cecily Hartstein.

  Not the Hartstein? Oh, yes, the same. I hid my wonder and terror as best I could, saw her into the hansom, and prepared to flee the country.

  I didn’t move with sufficient dispatch. Late next morning a messenger brought a curt letter from her father, commanding me into his presence at eight o’clock that night. A driver would be sent. With manacles and other devices of persuasion in case I balked, no doubt. The poor, silly, grateful young woman had blathered all to papa.

  I thought of doing a bunk right then, but it was too late. I felt sure her father would have legions of thugs watching the railway stations to thwart any such attempt. I was in such a state, I forgot to ring Claridge’s to inform them the Monday night dishes would have to be washed by others. I said to myself, it is the end of Rhukov.

  Of course it turned out that it was not the end.

  Otto Hartstein … Otto Hartstein is a Jew from Dublin. Talk about a minority! Father a rag-and-bone man. Real Dickensian stuff. Grubbing around with trash and old marrow bones was all right for people in novels, but not for little Otto. Little Otto wanted better. I gather he was a lonely lad, his only real companions the books he could borrow or steal. He left the family business at a tender age, sailed across the Irish sea, and went to work as the floorsweep in some provincial newspaper in the Lake District. Within nine years he owned it. He was twenty-two. The rest, as they say, is Fleet Street history.

  Lord Yorke’s minions arrived on the dot. No weapons visible. All very civilized—for the nonce. I was hauled out of West London, eight or nine miles into the country, to this magnificent domicile with a crest on the iron gates and a name carved in the granite lintel of the front door. Claddagh House. Claddagh—in Gaelic, friendship. Precious little friendship I’ll get here, I thought. Probably a heated poker up the arse, followed by submersion in his duck pond in a weighted sack.

  I was conducted to a dark, dank hall lit only by a hearth that would sleep six. The butler retired and His Lordship looked at me a long time. Then he said, “Brandy?” To my astonishment I heard myself say, “Surely.”

  The drink settled me. Put my mind, what was left of it, back on the path of reason. As I saw it, Papa had three choices. One, he could kill me or have me killed or, perhaps worse, permanently maimed, but I didn’t think he was completely out of his mind; thus I reasoned he would reject that alternative.

  Next, he could pay me off, which he attempted to do. It was a staggering sum. But I remembered Cecily’s ardent groans of joy in my cheap little bower of love. So I looked the old man in his cocked eye—I didn’t know which was the right one, and found later I’d picked wrong—and I said, “Lord Yorke, there are not enough pounds sterling in creation to reduce me to such base behavior. I refuse your indecent bribe. You never uttered it, I never heard it.”

  “You’re a foreigner,” he said. “Are you a Jew, like me?”

  “No,” said I. “Russian originally, but I have written for newspapers and periodicals all over the world, what’s it matter?”

  From that moment, I had him. Hartstein is a fierce old bird, but no fool. After all, no one had as yet taken his only child off his hands, and here was someone who might. And he was a journalist!

  So there it was. He could kill me, buy me, or embrace me in the bosom of the family.

  He embraced me.

  It’s worked out remarkably well. Cecily is a plain creature, but she has a handsome full figure, always something I like in women, and she has a sharp intellect. She’s kind, runs an excellent household, and she is forgiving. With a man like me, forgiveness is important.

  Of course there were a few strings the pater tied on me. No philandering in London. Attention to better grooming and tailoring. Less use of what he terms indecent language. Importantly, a new name, on the Anglo-Saxon side.

  His Lordship deposits forty thousand pounds per year in my personal account. I work for his flagship paper. My title is reporter, but I’m treated like the little prince. I still write the occasional authentic Rhukov piece, bile and brimstone, but now they pay attention. The earls and viscounts and their sweet-smelling mistresses, the Whitehall hacks and their dull wives, the diplomats who take the credit and their clerks who do the work—I have discovered they don’t run the other way if you speak well, dance well, have a proper wife with the proper connections. They read you! They haul you into the study for brandies and a closed-door tête-à-tête. They ask your opinion on armaments, or tariffs, or the opposition candidate. Who’s lumbering whom? Who’s bedding what bit of fluff? Who is dealing secretly, and will it possibly cause a war? I sold out for all that.

  And I adore it.

  Doors swing open without my touching them. I see dazzling possibilities for the future. Management of my own paper. Many papers! But underneath—Dutch, you’re sworn to secrecy now—I am still the same vicious, sarcastic, distrustful reprobate I always was. Isn’t that a magnificent arrangement?

  Don’t scorn me too severely. You’re no innocent yourself. You’re smoking cigars. You’re in a disreputable trade.

  I saw the way you looked at Luisa’s lovely bare ass.

  After Michael finished and put on a shirt because it was growing cool in the shadowy room, he asked Paul for equivalent information about himself; the intervening years since the Exposition.

  Paul held nothing back. He tried to speak calmly, factually, but it was hard; there was too much disappointment. He told Michael of his hopes for a permanent home in America, with the Crowns. He told of being cast out; of finding and then losing Julie. An emotional story, it was a little tangled in the telling. But Michael understood, nodding from time to time. At every mention of Uncle Joe, he looked disturbed. Paul couldn’t imagine why.

  At the end, he spoke of the baker of Wuppertal, whose words now seemed prophetic.

  Michael shook his head, said quietly, “Such dreams … crushed by two fierce blows, the girl and your family. Possibly the girl couldn’t help what happened. But your own family? Throwing you out like a dog that misbehaved on Mama’s carpet—”

  “I would say it was my uncle’s carpet.”

  There came the curious
disturbed look again.

  Paul stared out the window. A soft tropical dusk was descending, purple clouds shot through with amber lights. A sudden flash of green filled the sky, Ybor City, the darkening room. A moment later, everything normal again, Paul couldn’t imagine it had been real.

  “You were so happy when I saw you in Chicago,” Michael said. “I’m truly sorry. You didn’t find everything you hoped for in America.”

  “No. Only a little. Well, I was warned. By a man I met on the pier in Hamburg. He’d been here for ten years. He was going home in disgust. I can’t deny I’ve met some wonderful people—” He thought of Aunt Ilsa and Wex Rooney; Fritzi, Carl, Cousin Joe. The cheerfully dishonest Shadow and his Mary …

  His uncle’s face appeared. He banished it.

  “Julie most of all,” he said.

  Another pause. “Going to stay?”

  Paul looked up; accepted another cigar from the glass. He snipped it with Michael’s gold cutter and struck a match on the sole of his boot. A cool detachment seemed to come with the flavorful smoke. It was the first time anyone had asked the question.

  “I don’t know. I have learned a splendid trade here, one that I love. But I do read the journals, I know the pictures are a growing business in many countries. I think making pictures will take me all over the world someday. I could live in many places.” He hadn’t expressed that thought before, either.

  “Even your homeland.”

  “Yes, why not? It would probably be no better, but it would be familiar. Truthfully, I’ve not thought much about it till this moment.”

  But he knew he would be thinking about it more. In the unlikeliest of places, Ybor City at dusk, a seed had been sown.

  He stood up. “I should go.”

  “Yes, Luisa’s probably irked with me. I asked her to sit and wait in the Flores Cantina just up the street. On the other hand, she may have earned a few dollars in the interim, she’s enterprising. I’ll go a block or two with you.” He slipped into a pair of rope sandals, opened the door of a chifforobe in the corner and pulled out a thick, knob-headed walking stick. “Luisa taught me that a solitary stroll in Ybor in the evening can be dicey if you chance to meet the wrong people.”

  All the electric lights were burning in the grocery on the corner. Tomaso was once again brooming the dirt-free sidewalk. He waved to Paul and Michael. Michael saluted him with the walking stick. A brindle dog was jumping in circles in the street, chasing sores on its tail.

  “I’m very glad we met again, Pau—Dutch, forgive me. I shan’t forget your name too many more times, I promise. And we’ll definitely see each other. Crane telephones the grocery if there’s anything I should know. Also, I may sneak back to the hotel for a personal look around. I can’t deprive my editors of cabled copy for too long. And you and I can have a serious chat on what this war is about. If anything.”

  On a dusky corner he offered his clean, pale, manicured hand. “I’ll turn back. Here’s to Cuba.”

  “To Cuba. I am very happy for you, Michael. I like this new personage you’ve become. But meeting him for the first time—it was a shock.”

  Soberly, Michael said, “You might prepare yourself for another. Are you familiar with the high-ranking American officers?”

  “General Shafter. General Wheeler. I don’t know them all. I haven’t filmed them, they are always attending meetings. Besides, I don’t know any way to make such a picture interesting.”

  “I’ve studied the whole staff roster. My friend, you need to be aware of something.” He laid a hand on Paul’s shoulder.

  “There is a brigadier general from Chicago. Undoubtedly he’s stopping at the hotel. He volunteered his services just as Wheeler did. Crane told me he’s a brewer. His name is Joseph E. Crown.”

  91

  The General

  HOW QUICKLY IT ALL came back. the salutes; the protocol; the familiar bugle calls sorting each day into a series of small, manageable boxes. Ordnung. Comfortable, pleasing—the essence of his German soul.

  The disorder in Tampa did not please him. It infuriated him. True enough, most of it originated in Washington. But its consequences were felt cruelly by those trying to organize the largest military expedition ever sent outside the United States.

  The tangle of freight cars remained an enormous headache. Separate components of one man’s individual field ration—tinned meat, hardtack, bread—had to be found in separate cars miles apart, identified only with that legend Joe and all the others on the staff came to hate. MILITARY SUPPLIES—RUSH!

  The commercial ship lines leasing transports to the War Department wanted a top dollar for vessels stripped down so drastically as to be almost unlivable. The owners argued that this was necessary to reduce the cost of repairs and refurbishment once the war was over. Secretary Alger’s men in Washington had done the negotiating and contracting, but it was the Army that had to wrangle with individual captains.

  General Shafter’s strategy was summed up in one word. “Hurry.” He wanted to strike into Cuba, overrun as many Spanish positions as he could before rain and yellow fever became significant threats. Secretary Alger seemed to do everything possible to nullify the strategy. A telegram from Washington changed the general orders every day or so:

  First the Army was to land in force at Cape Tunas, on Cuba’s south coast, resupply the rebel forces of General Máximo Gómez, and return to the ships. This was quickly countermanded in favor of a major landing at Mariel, its objective the capture of Havana. Then Commodore Winfield Scott Schley’s Flying Squadron found Admiral Cervera’s flotilla in the harbor of Santiago de Cuba. Commodore Schley reported three armored cruisers, three destroyer torpedo boats, and the battleship Cristobal Colon trapped at their anchorage. This produced more telegrams, and a new objective—Santiago harbor, its forts, and the town. Attacking Havana would be delayed until the autumn.

  Next the Army command was confronted with the problem of capacity. It was discovered that the War Department hadn’t contracted for enough ships. No more than twenty thousand men could be transported, instead of the planned twenty-five thousand.

  “Do you know what this means?” Wheeler fumed when he conveyed the news to Joe. “They’ll transport mules for the wagons, horses for the artillery caissons, and enough mounts for officers. But the troops in our division will have to fight dismounted. Roosevelt was just in here, shouting and cursing, I thought he’d chew the carpet before he was through.”

  Joe shook his head. “What an infernal mess.”

  “You can thank Alger’s damn Yankee procurement clerks. They are experts, all right. At stupidity.”

  So all during the last days of May, frantic conferences were held, orders were written and rewritten, papers were shuffled and reshuffled, telegrams contradicting the telegrams of yesterday—which contradicted telegrams of the day before—were posted nightly on the rotunda bulletin board.

  The furious and often futile activity soon exhausted Joe and put him in ill temper. He would snatch a meal in the dining room if the workday ended before eight, or have a cold snack and a bottle of the abysmal local beer sent to his room if it ended at ten or eleven, or later, as it frequently did.

  He avoided the public rooms where the officers gathered to drink and argue. The German attaché had developed a leechlike attachment, continually trying to corner him to spout the latest gospel from the Chancellery on Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin. “Napoleon taught a great lesson. A nation that is proud of its nationhood is a nation that conquers.” “Creation of the new unified Germany is the most important political event of this century.” “Formerly, the fatherland was merely a stage. Now it is the principal actor.” And on and on. Joe detested the thought of his native land falling into the hands of men such as von Rike and the Kaiser, who was proving himself a headstrong, arrogant, potentially dangerous leader.

  One day, on horseback, Joe rode to the encampment of the 1st Volunteer Cavalry. It adjoined Division Headquarters on the hotel road. As he neared the camp e
ntrance, he saw a man crouching behind one of those newfangled motion picture cameras, cranking away to photograph a squad of soldiers. In front of some coconut palms, the soldiers were demonstrating the manual of arms. Rather sloppily, too.

  Joe touched his boot heels to his mount and moved closer. He reined up near the coconut palms. The corporal in charge of the squad fell all over himself to salute. Joe snapped off a return salute and barked at the man bent over the camera.

  “You, there. What’s your name?”

  The cameraman turned around. He was young, and wearing a checked cap with the bill backwards. Joe had never seen him before. Pulling a card from the pocket of his duster, the cameraman said, “Billy Bitzer. American Biograph, New York.”

  Joe reached down from the saddle and took the card. “Well, Bitzer, this area is the camp of Colonel Wood’s regiment. The colonel has issued specific orders—no cameras allowed anywhere near the Rough Riders. It interferes with drill.”

  “I heard that. I don’t like it much,” Bitzer added with a cheeky smile.

  “Doesn’t matter. You’ll obey the order. Carry on, Mr. Bitzer.”

  Joe reined his horse around and cantered up the sandy road. The Army didn’t need such men hanging around. Didn’t need its deficiencies paraded on screens in low-class variety theaters. Things were bad enough without that.

  Joe had now been in Tampa for two weeks. The initial excitement of returning to uniform was fading somewhat, though he continued to enjoy hearing subordinates address him as general. He liked the impressive sound of it.

  He rediscovered aspects of Army life he’d forgotten in the glow of happier memories; the inflexible military mind, for one. He came up against this in an officer on Shafter’s staff, Major Rollinson Gilyard. Gilyard was a career soldier, with experience on the Plains. But he hadn’t gone to West Point. Behind his back, brother officers said this drove him to excess. Gilyard constantly whittled a point on perfection, and every man under him felt its jab.