Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  “Thanks a lot, pal.” Teresa was still scraping furiously at the burned rice at the bottom of the pot. “Do you want a salad?”

  “Lovely, darling. Well, as I was saying … Sam, why are you getting up? You can’t possibly waste all that gin I’ve just lavished on your glass! What do you want to run away for?”

  The front doorbell rang.

  “Now, who can that be,” mused Kevin, casually adding a dash of vermouth to my glass. “Maybe it’s one of the actors stopping by to apologize for the attempted rape of my play.”

  “Can someone please answer the door for me?” said Teresa, who was looking more harassed than ever. Having billowed out of the pot, the rice had stuck fast to the stove.

  Jake looked around as if he were surprised there was no butler—or at the very least a uniformed maid—to attend to the door.

  “Teresa,” said Kevin, “don’t we have any olives for Sam’s martini?”

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Will one of you goddamned millionaires get off your backside and answer that door!” shrieked Teresa.

  For the first time Jake looked at her with considerable interest, but I was the one who left the room as the bell rang for the third time.

  Confused thoughts slowed my progress down the hall. Why had I tried to leave? Of course I had to stay. I could hardly leave my conversation with Teresa on such an unfinished note. If there were problems, they had to be talked out. The work could surely wait until the problems were solved … but what kind of problems were they? And was Teresa right in saying I just didn’t begin to understand?

  In a haze of exhaustion and acute anxiety for the future I pulled open the front door and found Cornelius on the doorstep. We stared at each other in disbelief.

  “What are you doing here?” I said stupidly.

  “I thought Kevin might be the one person in all New York who could cheer me up. What are you doing here? I thought you and Kevin hardly ever met nowadays!”

  “I had a date with Kevin’s caretaker.”

  The kitchen door swung open as Teresa glanced down the passage.

  “Bring him in, Sam, whoever he is, and maybe he’ll eat some rice. I seem to have made enough to feed the entire Allied forces in Europe.”

  For lack of anything better to say, I replied, “Teresa, I’d like you to meet Cornelius Van Zale.”

  “Hullo,” said Teresa. “Do you like rice? Come on in and have some Wild Turkey bourbon.”

  “Some what?” Cornelius whispered to me as Teresa retreated.

  “Southern liquor.”

  “Good God. Is it very strong?”

  “I believe it’s about a hundred and one proof.”

  “That sounds exactly what I need.”

  We went into the kitchen. Enthusiastic greetings followed, coupled with tactful inquiries about Vicky.

  “I would have called you yesterday when you arrived home with her,” said Jake, “but I figured that if you wanted to talk, you’d call.”

  “Thanks, Jake, but I was beyond speech. I couldn’t even get to the office today until noon.”

  I was moving around the edge of the room to the stove, where Teresa was stirring the jambalaya, but before I could reach her, Kevin raised his glass and said, laughing, “Well, it’s not often all four of us are together in one room! Let’s drink to the Bar Harbor Brotherhood. May we continue to prosper by worshiping at the altar of Mammon just as our great benefactor—ah, Mephistopheles!—would have wished!”

  I reluctantly picked up the drink I did not want just as Cornelius retorted acidly, “Forget the altar of Mammon. As anyone who’s ever been rich knows, money doesn’t guarantee you one damn thing except problems. Do you think this disaster with Vicky would have happened if she hadn’t been heir to the Van Zale fortune?”

  “It might have,” said Kevin. “She’s very pretty. Incidentally, what happened to the beachboy who caused all the trouble?”

  “I paid him off, of course.” Cornelius was drinking his bourbon almost as fast as his host.

  “How much?” asked Jake with interest.

  “Two grand.”

  “For a beachboy? You were too generous!”

  “They didn’t quite make it to Maryland, did they?” said Kevin, more interested in the unsuccessful elopement than in its financial consequences.

  “The police picked them up at the state line.” Cornelius drained his glass, which was promptly refilled.

  “The press coverage was disgraceful,” said Jake. “What kind of aides do you have? Couldn’t they have bought off the editors and issued a single dignified press release?”

  “I’ve fired my chief aides.”

  “I should think so, too! When you hire people to pick up after you, you don’t expect to be deafened by the noise of the bricks they drop.”

  Teresa was no longer making a conscious effort not to look at me. She had forgotten my presence. I saw her listening round-eyed, the unshredded lettuce poised in her hands.

  “What do you think of all this, Teresa?” Kevin said kindly, drawing her into the conversation. “You’re the only one of us who’s had practical experience of running away from home at eighteen.”

  Teresa looked shy again, as if she had peeked through the curtains of a lighted room and glimpsed an obscene yet titillating tableau. I had a moment of immense anger and automatically took a large mouthful of my martini.

  “Well,” she said awkwardly with an embarrassed glance at Cornelius, “I’d say Vicky was lucky that she had a father who cared enough to run after her and bring her back.”

  Cornelius looked shocked, as if it had never occurred to him that some fathers might sanction their daughters’ elopements. “But what happened to you when you left home?” he demanded with the air of a man who feels compelled to ask a question no matter how little he wants to hear the answer.

  “I went to a big city—New Orleans—met a man I liked, moved in with him, and started to paint.”

  “Jesus Christ!” said Cornelius.

  “Oh, the guy wasn’t keeping me!” said Teresa hastily. “I got a job waitressing and we shared the household expenses fifty-fifty. Of course I’m not suggesting your daughter should follow in my footsteps, but—”

  “—but a little sex never did anyone any harm,” said Kevin comfortably.

  “I categorically disagree one hundred percent,” said Cornelius, very pale.

  “Hell, it never seemed to do you much harm! When I think of those wild parties you and Sam used to give back in 1929—say, Sam, do you still have that great record of Miff Mole and his Molers playing ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’?”

  “You’re missing the point, Kevin,” said Jake. “I’m with Neil all the way on this one—every man wants his daughter to be a virgin till she marries. You’d better get Vicky married off as soon as possible, Neil. Surely you can arrange something? It doesn’t matter if it only lasts a couple of years. Even a short marriage would give her the experience to cope with the fortune hunters who’ll close in after the divorce.”

  Cornelius immediately assumed his most neutral expression and took care not to look in my direction.

  “You’re missing the point too, aren’t you, Jake?” said Kevin. “If Vicky’s no longer a virgin, why should Neil bother with this antiquated solution to the pragmatic marriage? Why not just let her go her own way, make her mistakes, and learn from them?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Jake. “How can you possibly let a girl go her own way when she’s heiress to several million dollars? It would be criminal negligence! And who said Vicky was no longer a virgin? She thought she was going to be able to marry the beachboy after twenty-four hours in Maryland, didn’t she? Of course she would have saved herself for her wedding night!”

  “Well, if you believe that,” said Kevin, “you’ll believe anything.”

  “Stop!” shouted Cornelius so suddenly that we all jumped. “This is my daughter you’re discussing, not a character in one of Kevin’s plays! Of course Vi
cky’s still … well, there’s no question about it, none whatsoever.” He pushed away his empty glass and levered himself to his feet. “I’ve got to get home. Kevin, can I use your phone to tell Alicia I’m on my way?”

  “Sure, use the extension in my study.”

  “Gee, he was real upset, wasn’t he?” said Teresa in a hushed voice after Cornelius had left the room. “I almost forgot he was a famous millionaire. He was just like a regular guy.”

  I was at once immensely angry again. I also could not understand why Teresa, normally unimpressed by wealth, should have been so entranced by this fleeting glimpse into a rich man’s muddled domestic life, and I felt humiliated on her behalf when I saw how amused Jake and Kevin were by her naiveté.

  “I can see you don’t know much about millionaires, Miss Kowalewski!” said Jake, suddenly producing a social overture so polished that it was hard to believe any woman could have found such artificiality attractive. “Let me buy you a drink sometime and widen your horizons!”

  “Forget it, Jake,” said Kevin. “Sam’s been teaching Teresa all she needs to know about millionaires. Teresa, how’s that old Lebanese goat in the pot shaping up? Jake, stay and have some jambalaya with us!”

  “Unfortunately, I’m dining out tonight, so like Neil, I must be on my way. … Good-bye, Miss Kowalewski—no doubt we shall meet again. Good night, Kevin—thanks for the drink.” He turned to me, old money facing new riches, a Fifth Avenue aristocrat confronting a provincial immigrant, one German-American facing another German-American across six million Jewish corpses and Europe’s six years of hell.

  “Auf Wiedersehen, Sam,” he said.

  I experienced an unbearable longing for something valuable which had been lost, and for a second I saw not the remote head of the House of Reischman but the friendly youth who had exclaimed to me with such enthusiasm long ago at Bar Harbor: “Come and stay with us—we’ll make you proud to be German again!” And I remembered how I had felt when I had visited his Fifth Avenue home; I remembered how I had drunk German wine and heard his sisters playing German duets on the grand piano and listened to his father talking to me in German of German culture in the golden days before 1914.

  “Jake …” I said.

  He stopped and looked back. “Yes?”

  “Perhaps sometime we might have lunch … I’d like to talk to someone about my vacation, someone who would understand. … You know how impossible Neil is about Europe.”

  “I’m afraid Europe has no interest for me at the moment,” said Jake politely. “Paul Hoffman’s been trying to recruit me for the ECA, and I had to tell him frankly to look elsewhere. Unlike people such as yourself, who preferred not to fight Hitler, I was away from home for four years and now all I want to do is stay in New York and let other people sweep up the European mess. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I really have to be going. Kevin, I’ll see you at the next board meeting of the Van Zale Fine Arts Foundation—or the first night of your new play, whichever is sooner.”

  “That’s assuming I survive rehearsals! I’ll see you to the door, Jake.”

  They left the room. I finished my martini in a single gulp and waited. I didn’t have to wait long.

  “Christ Almighty, Sam!” whispered Teresa, shocked. “Were you a Nazi sympathizer?”

  I threw my empty glass at the wall. Of course I had had too much to drink. I realized that as soon as the glass shattered, and taking a grip on myself, I said rapidly, “I’m sorry, I’m not mad at you—I’m mad at Jake. Back in 1933 I visited Germany and was impressed by the way Hitler was pulling the country back onto its feet. A lot of people were similarly impressed at the time, and yet just because I made one casual pro-Hitler remark, Jake immediately turned against me and spread the story that I was a Nazi from one end of Wall Street to the other. I’ll never forgive him for that. I’m a loyal American. I totally reject the propagandist view that any German who wasn’t Jewish was automatically pro-Nazi. I was rejected from the services because of my eyesight, not because I was a fascist fanatic with a load of swastikas in the closet!”

  “It’s all right, Sam,” said Teresa, embarrassed. “It’s okay. I understand.”

  But I was unable to let the subject rest. “I know I was opposed to America getting into the war before 1941,” I said, “but so were a lot of other good loyal Americans—and I am an American. I’m not a German. I’m not a Nazi. I never was. Never.”

  The door opened as Kevin returned to the room. “Well, that’s that,” he said. “Jake’s purred off in his Rolls, Neil’s swooped away in his Cadillac, and we’re all back to normal again—or are we? Sam, you look as if you could use another drink. What on earth possessed you to bring up the subject of Germany with Jake? Hasn’t it been patently obvious ever since Jake returned home in 1945 that he’s even more mixed up than you are about the goddamned war?”

  I stood up unsteadily. “I’ve broken one of your glasses. You must let me replace it. I’m real sorry about all the mess.”

  “Oh, stop talking bullshit and sit down again, for Christ’s sake. Teresa, I’ve got two scenes to rework, so if you’ll serve me up some of that old goat on a tray, I’ll retire to my study and leave you two free to make love on the kitchen table or do whatever you feel is necessary to exorcise all the heavy Teutonic angst.”

  “Sam won’t be staying, Kevin,” said Teresa. “I just have to work tonight. Nothing went right for me today.”

  “Teresa …” I could barely speak. “Sam, I’m sorry. I did try to explain—”

  “You explained nothing!”

  “Oh, stop arguing with me, stop persecuting me, just stop, stop, stop!”

  “Okay. Sure. Sorry. I’ll call you.” I hardly knew what I was saying. I groped my way toward the door. “So long, Kevin. Thanks for the drink.”

  When I was halfway down the hall I heard Kevin mutter to Teresa, “Go after him, you fool! Can’t you see he’s at the end of his rope?”

  “He’s not the only one,” said Teresa.

  The front door banged shut behind me and I stumbled down the steps into the street. For a moment I stood still while I wiped the mist from my glasses, and then I began to walk blindly uptown.

  II

  As a result of a strike, over half the city’s cabs were off the streets, and on Sixth Avenue I boarded a bus for the ride north. The rigors of the subway were more than I felt prepared to endure.

  Behind me two businessmen began to discuss Germany, and I wondered in despair how long I would have to wait before Germany ceased to be a topic of obsessive interest. Even now, four years after the war, Germany prostrate seemed to fascinate Americans as much as Germany rampant.

  “Even if they lifted the prohibitions against investing in Germany, who would want to invest? The country’s still occupied, there’s nothing back of the German currency, and besides, there are too many open questions—the Ruhr, for example. If the Ruhr industries are dismantled … yes, I know the ECA are against dismantling, but just tell that to the French. Keep the German bastards on their knees, they say, and who can blame them?

  Unable to stand the conversation a second longer, I left the bus and started to walk. I cut crosstown to Fifth and past Madison to Park, and all around me I sensed rather than saw New York, rich, gleaming, intact, a world away from those other cities with their shabby ruined streets. Memories flickered through my mind, the smoky cafe in Düsseldorf where the rouged hostesses had danced with the black marketeers while the band played “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön,” the American soldiers chewing gum in the wrecked streets of Munich, the English tourist who had got drunk with me and said, “Let me tell you where I went sightseeing today. …”

  I suddenly realized I had reached my apartment building. It was eight-thirty. Behind me traffic was still roaring down Park Avenue, and in front of me the doorman was holding open the door for me with a smile.

  “Good evening, Mr. Keller. … Sir, there’s a lady waiting in the lobby for you.”

  I was still so deep in
thought that I only stared at him blankly, but before he could speak again a voice from the past called, “Sam!” and when I spun round I saw a petite, voluptuous, well-remembered figure tip-tapping across the lobby toward me. Jet-black hair (formerly chestnut-brown) cascaded softly around a perfectly lifted face; sparkling blue eyes regarded me with an unabashed interest which failed to hide the air of desperation.

  “It is you, isn’t it, Sam?” she said, hesitating unexpectedly, and I realized that I had probably changed far more than she had in the eighteen years since she had divorced Cornelius.

  “Vivienne!”

  “Darling! You remembered!”

  “How could I ever forget?” The doorman, who had been listening to this inane dialogue with approval, gloated as Vivienne glided into my arms.

  “Darling, how perfectly heavenly to see you again after all these years! Now, Sam sweetie”—I was released after an accomplished kiss—“forgive me for waylaying you like this, but—”

  “Is this about Vicky?”

  “You bet it’s about Vicky! That little bastard Cornelius has given orders that I’m not to be admitted to his Fifth Avenue shack, but I’m telling you, darling, I’m telling you here and now that I’m not leaving town until I’ve seen my daughter, and if that son of a bitch of an ex-husband of mine thinks I’m going to stand by doing nothing while he mismanages Vicky’s entire life …”

  I saw the doorman’s hypnotized expression and automatically attempted to silence Vivienne by steering her toward the elevator.

  “You’d better come up,” I said with reluctance, and was at once whipped back into the maelstrom of the Van Zale family’s domestic problems.

  III

  My penthouse was on the twenty-eighth floor. It was too big for me but I enjoyed the views south past the Chrysler, the Empire State, and Metropolitan Life to the misty towers of downtown Manhattan. The forty-foot living room was useful for parties, the dining-room table could effortlessly accommodate sixteen, and the servants’ rooms were comfortable enough to ensure I had no trouble keeping a first-class couple to act as my housekeeper and chauffeur.