“Okay, come on over.”
“You’re the best girl in all New York. I’m on my way.”
III
I had met Teresa at my friend Kevin Daly’s house four months ago. Kevin’s annual Christmas parties had become the only occasion on which he, Jake Reischman, Cornelius, and I met under one roof; we were all a long way now from our summers as Van Zale protégés at Paul’s Bar Harbor home.
“The Bar Harbor Brotherhood!” Kevin had exclaimed exuberantly when the four of us had been reunited after the war. “Or should it be the Bar Harbor Mafia?”
It was true that the word “brotherhood” was too sentimental a description of the ties which still existed between us, and even the word “friendship” could no longer be used to describe our association accurately. Jake and I never met unless we had business to discuss, and since Jake had become head of his own investment-banking house, he preferred to deal solely with Cornelius. Cornelius saw Kevin regularly at meetings of the board of the Van Zale Fine Arts Foundation but seldom saw him socially, while I, having no interest in the arts, had all but lost touch with Kevin before I met Teresa. To an outsider it might have seemed that Cornelius and I were the two who were closest, but I often suspected Cornelius was closest to Jake. They met on equal terms. Cornelius was always ready to swear, particularly after a glass of champagne, that he regarded me as a brother, and he was always, even without the champagne, careful to soft-pedal his power over me by insisting how indispensable I was to him, but both of us had no illusions about our true status. It was the dark side of our relationship which we tacitly accepted but could never bring ourselves to discuss. No one is ever indispensable. I knew that just as I knew that Cornelius would always be the boss and I would—if I were sensible—always be the right-hand man, but I wasted no time dwelling on it. It was just a fact of life to be accepted sensibly without a fuss.
“You bankers!” said Kevin when we occasionally got drunk enough to reminisce to him about the less-publicized events of our shared past. He made no secret of his contempt for Wall Street but he followed our careers with the vicarious interest of a writer perpetually on the lookout for new material. In 1929, when Kevin had abandoned Harvard Law School to live in New York, he had intended to be a novelist, but only one novel had ever been written. For years now he had written plays, the early ones enjoyable, the later ones increasingly puzzling, and had long since left his fashionable Greenwich Village garret to live in a fashionable Greenwich Village brownstone west of Washington Square.
Kevin loved his house. Cornelius had once suggested that the house was a substitute for the family who had never forgiven Kevin for leading a life which they could only regard with disapproval, and even if this theory remained non-proven, there was no denying that Kevin had spent large sums of money on creating a showpiece home for himself. Hating to leave the house unattended, he even went to the trouble of converting the top floor into a studio apartment for a caretaker. His caretakers lasted about six months. Young, attractive, invariably blond, and always female, they were either writers or painters or sculptors; musicians were prohibited because they made too much noise. The girls were delighted to have a rent-free apartment and an uncomplicated relationship with an employer who had no interest in beating a path to their bedroom door, but the inevitable quarrel always came when Kevin refused to lend them money. Kevin could be tough. I heard young male guests had been ejected from the house with similar incisiveness, although Kevin seemed to prefer to live alone.
He was living alone—apart from the current caretaker—when he had invited me to his party the previous Christmas, and as it turned out, I was the only one of his three Bar Harbor friends who accepted the invitation. Jake was away in California, and Cornelius, who had not enjoyed the previous Christmas party, made some excuse not to go.
“Don’t know why you want to go and mingle with a bunch of queers,” said Cornelius, but I just laughed. Other people’s sexual tastes were of no interest to me, and besides, Kevin gave the best parties in town.
When I arrived at his house, about forty people were screaming elegantly at each other beneath the crystal chandeliers in Kevin’s large old-fashioned living room. Kevin served the usual cocktails to cater to conventional American taste, but the hallmark of a Daly party was that the guests had the opportunity to get drunk on champagne.
Unfortunately, a grateful client had given me a surfeit of champagne earlier that day at lunch. “I’ll take a Scotch on the rocks,” I said to the hired butler, and was just eyeing a dish of caviar when someone exclaimed behind me, “You must be jaded! What kind of a guy turns down free French champagne?”
I swung round. A plump young woman with wild curly hair, a large nose, and a wide mouth was smiling at me. She wore a scarlet dress which fitted badly, and a gold cross on a chain around her neck. Her eyes were very narrow, very bright, and very dark.
“You can’t be anyone from show business!” she added, laughing. “They always drink champagne!”
“No kidding, I thought they took baths in it. Are you an actress Miss …?”
“Kowalewski.”
“Pardon me?”
“Teresa. I’m the new caretaker.”
I was greatly surprised. This girl could hardly have been more different from the willowy well-educated blondes whom Kevin usually employed.
“What happened to Ingrid, the Swedish girl?” I asked, saying the first thing that entered my head.
“Ingrid went to Hollywood.” By this time she was looking at me with as much surprise as I was looking at her. “You’re not one of Kevin’s regular crowd, are you? Would you be his lawyer or something?”
“Good guess. I’m a banker.”
“A what? Jesus, the noise is awful in here! I thought you said you were a banker!”
“I did. And what’s your line, Teresa?”
“I paint. Gee, are you really a banker? You mean you stand in a teller’s cage all day long and dole out the dough?”
I was entranced by her ignorance. Later I realized she was entranced by mine.
“You’ve never heard of Edvard Munch? You’ve never heard of Paul Klee?”
“No,” I said, “but I’m more than willing to learn.”
After a couple of dinner dates I told her a little about my work.
“You mean I can’t come into your bank with a ten-dollar bill and open an account?”
“Our commercial bank, the Van Zale Manhattan Trust, deals with that kind of client. P. C. Van Zale and Company is an investment bank. We raise money for the big corporations of America by floating issues which the public can buy as an investment.”
“I don’t believe in capitalism,” said Teresa firmly. “I think it’s immoral.”
“Morality’s like mink,” I said. “It’s great if you can afford it.” And although she laughed, I did not mention my work to her again.
Meanwhile she was still refusing to tell me about her painting, and even when she eventually took me up to her studio, I found the canvases were stacked facing the wall because she felt they were too bad to be displayed. Once when she was taking a shower I nearly raised the cloth which covered the half-finished work on the easel, but I was afraid she might realize the cloth had been disturbed, and I liked her too much to put our new relationship in jeopardy. I liked her lack of pretentiousness and the way she always said what she thought. Although she was shrewd and by no means naive, she had managed to retain a simplicity which reminded me of girls I had dated long ago when I had been growing up in Bar Harbor. I wanted to take her out to the smart midtown nightclubs, but she said she preferred the little ethnic restaurants in the Village. I wanted to give a big dinner party so that she could meet my friends, but she said she preferred our evenings alone together. I wanted her to spend more time at my apartment, but she said the servants made her nervous. For some time I had postponed inviting her to my apartment because I found it hard to believe she was as indifferent to money as she appeared to be, but eventually in Februar
y I took the risk and invited her to hear some records from my collection.
We listened happily to the phonograph, watched our favorite television shows, and read the New York Sunday Times together the next morning.
“Imagine being ashamed of being rich!” she said affectionately when we went to bed again on Sunday night.
“I’m not ashamed of it. It’s my own money, I earned it and I’m proud of it, but I’ve met too many women who have ended up finding my bank account more attractive than they found me.
“Sam,” said Teresa, “no matter how often we start a conversation on an interesting subject, we always wind up talking about money. Have you noticed? I can’t understand it. I’m not even interested in money. Why do we keep talking about it?”
I smiled, apologized, and at last allowed myself to believe she meant what she said.
Teresa might not have been interested in money, but she had some strong ideas about earning it. Although she accepted my free dinners and the occasional modest gift, she refused my offers of financial assistance and said she had always believed in “paying her own way.” To provide herself with the bare essentials of life she used to take temporary jobs as a waitress and quit as soon as she had saved up enough money to keep herself for a few weeks. She seemed to have no interest in a regular job or a normal life, and yet despite this unabashed bohemianism (which fascinated me), she was still conventional enough to enjoy cooking, try her hand at dressmaking, and maintain her old-fashioned ideas about taking money from well-meaning men. This odd mixture of the conservative and the eccentric became increasingly beguiling to me; although I disapproved of her attitude toward a regular job, I respected her dedication to her painting, and although I could not approve of her place in the drifting population of the city, I admired her ability to fend for herself in New York and live by the rules she had set herself.
Eventually the moment came when I was unable to resist mentioning her to my friends.
“A new girl?” said Cornelius vaguely. “That’s nice. Why don’t you bring her to dinner with us?”
“She wouldn’t be interested in dining in a Fifth Avenue palace with a bunch of millionaires.”
“All women,” said Cornelius, “are interested in dining in a Fifth Avenue palace with a bunch of millionaires.” But when I just laughed, he decided my attitude sprang from the fact that Teresa was unpresentable, and after that he lost interest in her.
Cornelius himself had been married twice, first to a society hostess fourteen years his senior who had married him for his money before giving him something no money could buy—his daughter, Vicky—and second to a society beauty two years his junior who had married him for love and presented him with two stepsons, the children of her previous marriage. Vivienne, the first wife, now lived in Florida and I had not seen her for many years. The second wife, Alicia, I saw frequently in her role of Mrs. Cornelius Van Zale, wife of the well-known millionaire and pillar of New York society. There were no mistresses. Cornelius did not approve of an unconventional private life, and although he had never expressed the opinion that I should marry and settle down, I knew he would automatically disapprove of a bohemian mistress like Teresa.
By this time I was becoming increasingly annoyed by Teresa’s endearing but absurd refusal to accept money from me. I enjoyed giving presents; I had no sinister motives and I objected to being treated as if I had. I felt her attitude demeaned our relationship, particularly since all I wanted was to make our lives run more smoothly along their shared groove. Of course some cynic could have made an unpleasant comment on my offer to set Teresa up in a smart apartment only two blocks from my Park Avenue home, but the truth was, I was tired of creeping about Kevin’s house at all hours of the night and suspected Kevin was equally tired of this continuing nocturnal invasion of his privacy.
“Look,” I said at last to Teresa in yet another effort to persuade her that the situation needed improving, “we’re lucky! I have enough money to make our affair twice as enjoyable! It’s a bonus, not a millstone round our necks! Why fight it? Why suffer if you don’t have to? It’s illogical! It makes no sense! It’s an inefficient use of our precious leisure hours!”
I was glad when this had the desired effect of making her laugh, but I soon realized that ridiculing the situation was still not going to change it.
“I’ve nothing against living in a midtown apartment,” she said. “In fact, I sure hope I’ll live in one someday, but when I do, I’m the one who’s going to be paying the rent.”
I was so exasperated I wanted to slap her. I even lost control of myself sufficiently to accuse her of holding out in order to win an invitation to move in with me, but I knew this was nonsense even before she looked scornful and told me what I could do with my precious penthouse; I was well aware that she felt uncomfortable in my home and disliked going there. At first I had been hurt by this, but later I felt relieved. Despite my current frustration, I was neither infatuated nor ingenuous and I knew very well that a man in my position can hardly install his bohemian mistress in his apartment in full view of the world and still keep that world’s wholehearted respect. However, this inescapable truth only made me the more determined to keep her as close to me as possible in circumstances which my world could regard with its customary indulgent indifference.
I reconsidered my position. I was doing well, but obviously I had to do better if I were to extricate her from that house in Greenwich Village. I decided now was the time for a long weekend in some idyllic location. I knew from past experience that long weekends, introduced into the affair at the right moment, could prove highly successful, and feeling cheered by the prospect of success, I began to consider suitable destinations. Maine, Cape Cod, North Carolina, Florida … My mind ranged swiftly up and down the Eastern Seaboard and even made the trip to Bermuda before the obvious answer occurred to me: Europe. Teresa, daughter of Polish immigrants, had never been there and had always longed to go. Glamorous, romantic, irresistible Europe … two weeks … and everyone said Paris had been barely touched by the war.
Staging a candlelit dinner à deux in her favorite French restaurant, I ordered champagne and proposed that she should accompany me on my upcoming European vacation. I didn’t tell her my reservations had been made for hotels in Germany. Reservations could be canceled and itineraries could be reorganized. Besides, I had never talked to her about Germany beyond telling her right from the start that although I was a German-American I had no German connections. I had even lied and told her I had been born in the States.
“Paris!” breathed Teresa, greatly tempted.
I scented victory. “We can go first class all the way and have ourselves a ball!”
She sighed. “I’d sure like to go …”
“Great! Then it’s settled! I’ll call my travel agent!”
“… but I can’t. It’s no good, Sam. If I let you buy me once, you’ll buy me over and over again until before I know where I am I’ll be living in a penthouse overlooking the East River with a checkbook in my purse and a mink round my shoulders and a lover who owns me lock, stock, and barrel. Don’t get me wrong—I know you mean well and I appreciate it, but my independence means more to me than a dozen trips to Europe, and I’m not giving it up, even for you.”
“But I’d respect your independence, Teresa!”
“I wouldn’t if it could be bought.”
We quarreled. It was because I was so disappointed. I almost canceled my vacation, since I hated the thought of two weeks without her, but then I told myself I was behaving like an infatuated young kid and needed time on my own to cool off. I had a long serious debate with myself to decide whether I had fallen in love with her, but logically I didn’t see how I could have. Then I had another long serious debate with myself and admitted I had drifted into a situation where logic had no part to play; I was crazy about her and I would be crazier still if I tried to deny it.
Having the guts to face up to this disturbing reality certainly represented some
kind of a triumph, but my triumph was short-lived when I realized I was at another dead end with no idea what to do next. I couldn’t live with her publicly. Apparently I couldn’t even persuade her to live with me privately. My logical mind, still functioning sporadically despite such illogical circumstances, told me that left three further courses of action. I could give her up. I could preserve the unsatisfactory status quo. Or I could marry her.
Giving her up was unthinkable. Preserving the status quo was already exasperating me. Marriage was as impossible as living with her openly. Or was it? Yes, it was. Marriage wouldn’t work. The harsh truth, which I somehow had to face squarely if I wanted to preserve my sanity, was that Teresa would never fit into my world. If we married, either she would have to make some changes in her life or I would have to make some changes in mine, and I could hardly embark on a proposal which ran: “Say, I’d like to marry you but you’ve got to make a lot of changes before I lead you to the altar.” I did wonder if perhaps I might try to make some changes in my life, but I soon gave up that idea. I liked my world just the way it was, and any radical alteration was inconceivable.
But then I went back to Germany, and as I set foot again on my native land for the first time in ten years I forgot everything—Teresa, Van Zale’s, my entire American life—in the ordeal of my repatriation.
I had thought I was well prepared. I had read interminable reports and talked to people who had been there. I had waited four years after the end of the war because I had wanted to be sure I could accept whatever chaos I might find on my return, but when I did return I found not only that the reality was so much worse than I had imagined, but that I had no idea how to cope with it. No newspaper report, no photographs in Life magazine, no conversations with eyewitnesses could ever have prepared me for those ruined cities and my shattered illusions and the G.I. who had whistled “Lili Marlene.”
“How was Europe?” said Teresa brightly when I returned.
Sins of the Fathers Page 2
