Homeland

by John Jakes

  “What have you done to your beautiful hair? It’s so dull. You’ve not cared for it properly.”

  “There are more important things—”

  “Than womanly beauty? Oh, how wrong. How wrong.” The stroking hand moved up and down, seductively. “Come home. Home to Chicago. I’ll make it shine again.”

  Terrified birds beat their wings in the cage of Julie’s breast. Be strong, be strong. Aunt Willis had again tried to encourage her when she paid a visit to Chicago last March. The moment Elstree met Willis he detested her, just as Papa had. Speaking privately to her aunt, Julie had confessed that her marriage was sham, and the only person she loved, or ever would, was Paul. She didn’t tell her aunt about her plan to leave Bill because at that time it was amorphous, nothing about it certain except her need to escape. By her mere presence Aunt Willis strengthened her. She drew on that strength now.

  “Juliette. Julie, my sweet baby—I insist you come home. You know I’m not well. I’m feeling short of breath this very moment—”

  “Mama.” Julie took her mother’s wrist in a gentle but firm grasp. She lifted Nell’s hand away from her hair. “I almost destroyed my own life by giving in to you. I think I have done enough for your health. More than any daughter should. It’s time I looked after my own.”

  “Juliette.”

  Nell’s mouth worked like that of a hooked fish, silently. Her ringed hand groped behind her for the table’s edge. She staggered, but she found the iron chair with uncanny accuracy. What a consummate actress. Julie had never thought of her mother that way before. She will have to find a new role, this play is over.

  She tried to remain solicitous; soft-spoken. “I’m sorry you’re ill, Mama. We have an excellent doctor in the village, Dr. Lohman. I’ll go in and telephone him at once.”

  She started for the French doors. Nell reeled into her chair, the horror of betrayal in her eyes. “I don’t want a doctor. I want an obedient daughter.”

  Julie stopped and turned around. She shook her head.

  “I am going to telephone the doctor. You sit there, Mama. Rest.”

  The physician arrived in his shay within the hour. By then Nell had called for her carriage, and her luggage, and left, with one parting thrust.

  “You have grown into a wicked woman. I don’t know how it happened. I gave you everything. All of my experience, all of my love. I suffered the filthy, unbearable pain of bringing a child into this world and this is how the child repays me. You must have fallen under the spell of sluts like my sister. I disown you. My door is closed to you forever. You will never see me again.”

  109

  Dutch

  MONDAY. TWILIGHT. PAUL AWOKE with a sense of someone standing near. Opened his eyes to a gleam of a golden star on a shoulder strap.

  The face surmounted by silver hair combed straight back was exactly as he remembered it from the moment he stumbled through the front door on Michigan Avenue, although tropic sun had reddened the skin. The mustache and imperial were typically neat. But the brown eyes held an uncharacteristic nervousness.

  “Paul. Mein lieber Neffe!” My dear nephew.

  “Uncle Joe—”

  “Will you allow me a short visit?”

  “Of course—certainly,” Paul said, not sure it was a wise reply. Savage feelings were already stirring. This was the moment he’d yearned for and, at the same time, dreaded.

  “Is this too great a surprise, my presence here?”

  “No, sir. I’ve known for some time that you’re attached to General Wheeler’s staff. I saw you from afar in Tampa.”

  “But chose not to make yourself known.”

  “Uncle Joe—please—sit. You’ll find a stool over there by the wall.”

  Eight other casualties were being treated in the room, all of them, like Paul, lying on the floor. Two of the men were awake, openly staring and listening. Uncle Joe noticed the attention. “Are you able to walk?” he said to Paul.

  “If I go slowly. I was up this morning for half an hour, sitting in the window watching the sea.”

  “Could we go outside and talk? I noticed a bench. Come, take my hand.”

  Paul grasped the strong fingers with his right hand, pushed with his left, and got up smoothly, though not without pain. “Lean on me. Put your arm across my shoulder.” Paul almost smiled; there was the old, unconscious tone of command. But he obeyed without objection. It made things easier.

  “It’s pleasant out here this evening,” Uncle Joe said as they left the malodorous house. “Quite warm—this way.” In a moment Paul was seated on the bench with his bare feet in the sand. The setting sun flamed on the sea and shore. Through the open windows of a second house a short way down the beach, women in gingham dresses could be seen moving back and forth with brooms, basins, trays. Another woman, middle-aged and thin, was outside, hanging wet sheets on a clothesline. He’d been told the women were American Red Cross volunteers, led by Miss Clara Barton, who was quite famous in the states. Dr. Winter and the other American surgeons refused to explain why the volunteer help was restricted to the Cubans.

  Lifting his sheathed saber out of the way, General Joe Crown seated himself next to his nephew. Paul asked, “How did you find me?”

  “Things have been hectic, as you might suspect. Only this afternoon did I have a few moments to look over the roster of our military and civilian wounded. I was astonished to find the name Paul Crown. This is the first moment I could get away from my duties to see if it really was you. On the roster you also have a middle name, in parentheses. Dutch.”

  “That’s mostly what I’m called anymore.”

  “You’re one of these moving pictures fellows, I was told. Like Mr. Bitzer from New York.”

  “Yes. I work for a company in Chicago.”

  “I want to hear all about it. I want to know everything that’s happened. But first, Paul, I must say this to you. I made a dreadful mistake. I wronged you by turning you out. I learned that in a very private and telling way. I’ll try to explain, if you wish, but before I do—”

  He broke off, sitting stiffly, shoulders squared. He was the perfect military man, save for the uncontrollable tears.

  “—I must ask your forgiveness. I won’t be surprised if you refuse me.”

  Paul looked at his hands. “It’s true I had terrible angry feelings for a long time after I left”—and I still have some—“but I never stopped being your blood relative, or forgot the many kindnesses you showed me. I have made mistakes too. We ought to forgive each other, I think.”

  Uncle Joe put his hand over Paul’s, holding tightly. Paul was near to crying himself. “Thank you,” his uncle whispered. “Thank you.”

  A salt breeze was coming off the water, refreshing after the rank smells of the hospital house. Uncle Joe composed himself. “This picture business. I remember you spoke of it before. Please tell me about it.”

  “It’s a profession I’ve come to love. Also, I seem to have a talent for it. I could never say that about anything else. I always wanted to draw, be an artist, you know. This fulfills that wish. With one difference. Now people can recognize the subject of my pictures.” His uncle laughed.

  As briefly as he could, Paul described Wex Rooney, and the instruction Rooney gave him in the art and craft of still photography. Next came Colonel R. Sidney Shadow III:

  “A profane man. Fraudulent in many ways. But I like him. From the colonel, who isn’t a colonel at all, I learned how to do what I’m doing now. It’s what I propose to do for the rest of my life.”

  “You learned this in the Levee district? How did you survive in that sink of iniquity?”

  “Very well, actually. I grew up in the streets of Berlin, remember.”

  The general stroked his beard. “I have heard of these living pictures, naturally. But I’ve never seen one.”

  “Very understandable, respectable folk don’t go to them. I’m convinced that will change. The living pictures can do much more than entertain. They can educate. B
ring the whole world to people who otherwise would never see it. Pictures can show great events like this war. Friday, before I was wounded, I filmed scenes near Las Guásimas. I’m not sure my film will survive the heat and damp, but if it does, the pictures will be shown at Pflaum’s Music Hall in Chicago.” He looked at his uncle. “I would like you to come see them. Perhaps you’ll change your mind about their worth.”

  “I will come.” Uncle Joe gripped his hand again. “I promise.”

  They continued to talk as the twilight shaded into dark, with thousands of stars alight over the Cuban coast. Paul asked many questions.

  “How are Fritzi and Carl?”

  “Fritzi is more insistent than ever about a stage career. Carl attends his private school in New York. He has learned to play the game of football. It isn’t a gentleman’s game in my opinion, not like baseball. But he is very good at it. He is not very good at his studies.”

  “And Cousin Joe? Do you know where he is?”

  “Alas, we don’t. He’s never come home, nor written. We’ve engaged Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency several times, but they can’t locate him. At intervals your aunt receives curious souvenirs in the mail, sent anonymously. Stalks of wheat. Little candies shaped like California oranges. She feels Joe Junior mailed them to her to say he’s all right. But the last one arrived months and months ago, with none since. She’s fearful something has happened.” Heavily, he added, “She has never gotten over the loss of Joe Junior. She never will. I bear the responsibility.”

  Carefully, Paul said, “You know, Uncle, Cousin Joe didn’t rebel against you to hurt you. He only wanted to be like you. Independent. Strong. His own person.”

  Steel came into the general’s voice. “He was not like me, Paul. He was a radical.”

  “But he truly loved you and Aunt Ilsa. He just got mixed up with some bad people, and bad ideas.” After a hesitation, he said the rest. “Did you never have an idea that was wrong? Not one? If you didn’t, you must be a saint.”

  “Oh yes, I’ve had many. Many! I finally confronted that fact in Tampa. You astonish me, Paul. You were a boy when you came to us in that terrible storm. Now you speak like a man.”

  Paul smiled. “I was twenty-one on the fifteenth of this month. I have lived like a man for a long time now.”

  Another silence. The surf purled. Horsemen galloped through Siboney, shouting.

  Paul said, “You spoke of an experience in Tampa—”

  “Yes. I learned many things, from a person you’ll never meet. A woman. On very short acquaintance, she saw me more clearly than I had ever seen myself. I told her about you, and Joe Junior, and she said I must have caused the trouble by attempting to play God, when there is only One who can do that. I believe”—the confession came hard, but when it came, it was firm—“I have been too insistent on authority. Control. Everything in place, perfectly correct. Correct as I saw it! This woman you’ll never meet—and your aunt will never know about, although nothing improper occurred—she helped me to see that I had been tearing myself apart, that I had torn our family apart, by continually seeking something that is unobtainable within a household or the world at large. I think I began my misguided pursuit because of what I saw in the Civil War. The horrible disorder. Death and cruel injury meted out solely by chance. I denied that part of human existence by trying to purge it from my own life. But reasons are not excuses. In my pursuit of some kind of rational order I went too far. I can’t escape guilt by saying it’s a common failing of Germans, passion for order, although it is. I must accept full blame for my mistakes and their consequences. I have. I do.”

  There was a long pause. Paul sat very still. Uncle Joe cleared his throat.

  “You will return to Chicago when the war is over, Paul?”

  “I will.”

  “Your aunt will be overjoyed. Your cousins, too. We will welcome you back to the family eagerly, if you’ll allow that. I will use my contacts to help you with this new career. I know a great many important and influential—”

  Paul interrupted. “I won’t be staying in Chicago, Uncle.” In a few sentences, he explained about Michael, and Lord Yorke, and London.

  “London? You intend to take a job there?”

  “If it’s offered.”

  “You’ll leave America?”

  “My profession lets me live anywhere.”

  “But America is your home now! You made it so.”

  And circumstances unmade it.

  Sensing Paul’s resurgent anger, Joe Crown said, “If this is because of me, I beg you once more to forgive me. I’ll do anything in my power to make amends.”

  “What happened between us isn’t the reason I’m leaving. I lost the one thing in America I wanted most. The one person.”

  “The Vanderhoff girl.”

  “Yes. I wanted to make a home with her but she married that rich man. It’s time I explore some other place. Some other country.”

  “What can I possibly do to change your mind?”

  “Nothing.” There was just the slightest edge in Paul’s next words. “The control of the matter is mine.”

  The general was stricken silent. Paul was tired; his wound was hurting badly. “I believe I should go in, Uncle.”

  “Yes, certainly, I’ve kept you too long.”

  Uncle Joe helped him to the stoop of the house. “I’m going to leave this place soon,” Paul said. “I must film more of the fighting.”

  “You have a few days yet, we’re still struggling to move men and materiel to forward positions. I’ll visit again, but if my duties prevent it, I’ll look for you in the field.”

  “I will do the same, Uncle.”

  “Excellent. Till then—”

  The general put his hands on Paul’s shoulders.

  “Please take care of yourself.”

  He gave his nephew a clumsy but fervent embrace and walked away quickly, striding up the beach with fine German precision. Paul watched until he disappeared in the dark.

  110

  Willis

  A YAWL TOOK THEM ashore in choppy sea Sunday morning. The harried doctor in charge of the Cuban house welcomed them warmly. In fact he almost wept when, through an interpreter, Clara described the supplies available from the ship, and said that she and the other women were willing to work without stint until the hospital house was clean and sanitary.

  It desperately needed their attention. Little piles of sand and debris clogged the corners of the dingy rooms. Mosquitoes hovered. The smells were vile. Pus, blood, urine, feces. Two dozen Cuban soldiers were scattered throughout the house. A few were fortunate enough to rest on scraps of blanket or on grimy pillows that had lost most of their down filling. The others had the bare wood floor. Willis identified three who were almost surely dying. All of them had torn white trousers that were uniformly filthy, but fewer than half of them had shirts. Their bandages were dirty rags. They were inmates of a little hell of suffering, and Willis was unbelievably glad to be in the midst of it. At last, the Red Cross unit was fulfilling its mission. Willis hadn’t seen a newspaper since they sailed, except for one old New York World with pages missing. She didn’t care, there was work to do. She got down on her knees with a soapy bucket and began to scrub floors, she and the other volunteer, Olive Shay.

  Miss Barton marched through the house like a field general, trailed by the grateful physician and the interpreter. “We have kerosene for lamps, we must use them to light these rooms. We have screen wire coming ashore, we’ll cover the windows so we don’t have all these flies and insects.”

  Two orderlies, ragged boys, were preparing to roll one of the wounded onto a blanket stretcher. The soldier was raving. His skin had the saffron tint of jaundice.

  “That man’s deathly ill, why are you moving him?”

  In a hushed voice the Cuban physician said, “Fiebre amarilla.” He rattled out several more sentences in Spanish. Scrubbing in the next room, Willis listened. She heard one phrase clearly. Vómito negro. She�
��d heard it before. The interpreter translated for Miss Barton. “Yellow fever. In the night he threw up blood. It’s a certain sign. He must go to the quarantine camp in the hills, he can’t stay here.”

  Clara Barton quickly inspected the young man. She shook her head in a sad way. “And he’ll go nowhere else.” She waved the orderlies on.

  Willis felt a cold wind of mortality brushing her. From the place where she was scrubbing, near a window, she could see the young boys carrying their burden through the deep sand to the camp, wherever it was. The death camp.

  She blew a straggly lock of graying hair out of her eyes and plunged the brush in the bucket. Soap smelling of disinfectant cascaded from the bristles. She locked both hands on the wooden back and scrubbed as if devils from hell were sitting on her bent back.

  Willis slept four hours on Sunday night. The women were organized to sleep in shifts, occupying three cots crowded into what had once been a pantry or storeroom. When Willis awoke, she washed walls. She changed bandages sodden with yellow pus and brown blood. She brought bottles or pans to the wounded and helped them while they relieved themselves; stood at the tiny iron stove in purgatorial heat, frying mush she served with a special concoction of stewed dried apples and prunes, a dish they called Red Cross Cider. She assisted with the amputation of a soldier’s mangled foot and only felt like throwing up once, and then just for a few seconds. Clara did no less than any of them. She led them by example.

  Despite the heat, and the insects, and the stenches, and the heartbreaking cries of the young Cubans, there was an exhilaration in being here; a sense of purpose and meaning Willis found missing from her life at other times. Even men couldn’t provide satisfaction to match it. To be happiest, she thought ruefully, she should have been born into some alternate universe of constant irrevocable disaster and suffering.

  Shortly after noon on Monday, Dr. Lesser brought a visitor, a slim man in a bedraggled uniform. On the collar tabs of his sweated blue shirt he wore small metal crosses; medical corps emblems already tarnished and pitted by the climate.