Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  “Yes, but …” Kevin pushed back his hair in a distracted gesture. “There’s a lot I still don’t understand about this,” he said finally. “We now know Neil had certain unspecified personal problems which made him act out of character, but what we still don’t know is why Teresa acted out of character—why she ditched you in the worst possible way by two-timing you with your best friend. I just don’t understand that at all.”

  I was so exhausted I could barely shrug my shoulders. “Neil can talk art to her. He’s better-looking than I am. Isn’t it just a question of trading in last year’s automobile for a newer, more exciting model?”

  There was a slight pause before Kevin said gently, “Sam, are you sure you’ve ever really known Teresa? She’s not just a facile girl who’d carelessly trade you in for a better-looking partner who can talk art with her! She’s a complicated woman who’s apparently decided—for reasons I can’t begin to fathom—that Neil can help her sort out her problems better than you can.” He set down his glass and moved toward the door. “You go to Germany, Sam,” he said, still speaking gently but no longer looking at me, “and you find one of those famous women who think of nothing but Kinder, Kuche, und Kirche. Believe me, you’d never be happy with someone like Teresa. You can’t recognize the conflicts arising out of her work, and even if you could, I doubt if you could cope with them. … Come on, Neil, let’s go. I think it’s time we gave Sam a chance to recover.”

  Cornelius lingered in the hall. “Sam, we’ll get over this won’t we? I know it’s a terrible thing to have happened but—”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, get the hell out and leave me alone!

  Cornelius trailed away, a small forlorn figure with a pinched expression.

  When they had gone, I remained in the hall until I heard the whine of the elevator descending to the lobby, but at last when the ensuing silence became too great to endure, headed blindly back to the brandy bottle to put myself beyond the reach of my pain.

  V

  She came to see me the next day. She wore a neat black coat and skirt, a frilly white blouse, and a little black hat with a feather in it. I hardly recognized her.

  I was hung over and not thinking clearly. When I heard her voice on the intercom, my first thought was that she wanted me back. It was only when I saw the formality of her clothes that I realized the affair was not to be resurrected from the grave.

  “Hi,” she said awkwardly, her hands twisting the strap of her purse. “It was nice of you to let me come up. I promise this won’t take long.”

  Unable to speak, I opened the door wider, and as she passed me I had a strong urge to take her in my arms. But before I could move, she said in a low voice, “I came because I owed you two things: an apology and an explanation.”

  I pulled down the shades of my personality so that my pain would remain private, and suddenly I saw my so-called “professional charm” for the defense that it was, a suit of armor protecting me from the rigors of the life I had chosen for myself. I tried to discard the armor, but no discarding was possible. It was as much a part of me as a skin graft, and if I tore it away I knew I would bleed to death.

  “Well, I guess I could use an apology!” I said, smiling at Teresa good-humoredly. “Thanks!”

  Teresa said in a polite voice, “I wasn’t going to apologize for sleeping with Cornelius.”

  No suit of armor is impregnable. I turned away in retreat “Come into the living room and have a seat,” I said, somehow keeping my voice calm and courteous. “Excuse me looking like a hobo—I’ll have to start getting up earlier on Sunday mornings! Can I fix you some coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  We went into the living room and I lit our cigarettes with a steady hand. Outside, rain was falling again. I could see my plants gleaming wetly on the terrace and swaying in the cold wind gusting up Park Avenue.

  “I was going to apologize for not leveling with you,” said Teresa. “I wanted to apologize for fobbing you off with excuses instead of telling you the truth. I was such a coward, Sam. I’d like to think I couldn’t face telling you because I was genuinely fond of you and I knew you cared so much. That was certainly one of the reasons for my cowardice. But there was another reason. I couldn’t face the truth about myself. We all live with our little illusions, don’t we, and sometimes it’s not so easy to cast aside those defenses and face the world stark naked.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you? I wonder. This is where we get away from the apologies and into the explanations. It would be so easy to say: ‘Oh, you’ve never understood me!’ but the situation’s not as simple as that. I think in theory you understand me very well—the problems of a European-immigrant, blue-collar background, the drive to make it in New York, the continuous pressure to compromise one’s principles in order to get ahead …” She checked herself before continuing levelly, “You understand all that. But you’re like a child trying to do a sum before he’s been taught math. You can recognize all the figures but you can’t add them up.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you.”

  “Let me give you an example. You know in theory how important my work is to me. Yet in practice you continue to treat me as if I’m capable of leading a normal life, and you’re quite unable to accept me as I am. When you proposed marriage, you weren’t proposing to me—you were proposing to the woman you were determined I should become.”

  “But that’s not true! I would never have tried to change you, Teresa, I would never have asked you to give up your painting! I’ve always respected your career!”

  “Oh, you say that so glibly, Sam, but Jesus, you just have no idea what that means! You respect my career—oh, sure! But it would always have to take second place to your career and what you wanted and what you thought would be best for our marriage!”

  “Well, naturally, in any marriage there have to be certain priorities …”

  “I only have one priority, Sam. My work. That’s why I’m not interested in living with anyone or being domestic or trying to put a husband’s interests first as a good wife should. Perhaps you can have some idea of what I’m trying to tell you if I say that my drive to work is stronger than my drive for sex. I like sex—there’s no substitute for it, and I’d certainly miss it if I didn’t have it, but if I had to be celibate I’d survive somehow. But I couldn’t survive without my work. That’s why I’ve been so miserable lately. I’ve been so confused about my personal life that I’ve been unable to work—I find it impossible to be creative if I’m in a state of mental disorganization. But I’ve straightened myself out now by facing up to the kind of person I really am—and don’t think it was easy. It wasn’t.”

  “I don’t understand. Are you saying—?”

  “I’m saying it’s easier to conform and pretend one’s just like everyone else, marking time until Mr. Right comes along to ring the wedding bells and wave the magic wand which will make everything take second place to married bliss—I’m saying it’s much easier to pretend one’s potentially as sweet, selfless, and domesticated as the ideal woman’s always supposed to be. But I’m not sweet, selfless, and domesticated, Sam, and what’s more, I never could be. I’m not going to change, and once I’d faced up to that truth, I had to accept that I just didn’t want someone like you. I thought I did. I wanted to want you. But I can’t cope with a nice guy with normal domestic inclinations. I need someone who recognizes that he’ll always take second place to my work, someone who already has a wife to give him the family life I can’t provide, someone who’ll offer sex, but on a strictly part-time basis, someone, who’s just as selfish as I am. I need someone like Cornelius.”

  After a long while I stood up and went to the window. The rain was still streaking down, and clouds obscured the summits of the skyscrapers. Staring through the mist toward Wall Street, I said at last, “I want to know exactly what happened.”

  “I don’t think I can discuss Cornelius with you.”

  “I’m not interested in his
performance in bed. I just want to know how you arrived there.” I took off my glasses and started to polish them. “You and I may be finished,” I said, “but I’ve still got to come to terms with this situation before I can move on to someone else, and I can’t come to terms with it unless I know the whole truth. I’m beginning to believe what happened was inevitable, but I’ve got to be sure, can’t you see? Please … I wouldn’t ask you to speak of it unless I felt it was important.”

  “Well, I … can I have a drink?”

  “Sure.” I checked the clock and was surprised to see the hands pointing to noon. “What can I get you?”

  “You wouldn’t have any Wild Turkey bourbon, would you?”

  We laughed politely, two strangers sharing a distant memory.

  “How about a martini?”

  “Okay.”

  I fixed two Beefeater martinis, very dry, with plenty of ice and three olives apiece. I had no inclination to drink, but I knew it would be the best cure for my hangover, and I wanted to think clearly.

  “You remember I refused to invite you up to the attic last Wednesday evening,” said Teresa.

  “I remember.”

  “Well, after you’d gone, I did go back upstairs and try to work again, but it was useless. Finally I gave up and went down to clear up the mess in the kitchen, but as I struggled with the cleaning up, I just felt worse than ever. I sat down and thought: Here I am, twenty-five years old, penniless, going nowhere. I couldn’t even claim I was starving for my art, because the truth was that although my savings had run out, I was being temporarily kept by Kevin. That morning he’d given me two weeks to get a job and pay my own way, but the fact remained that at that particular moment I was living off him. It made no difference that he was homosexual. If anything, it made the situation worse, since I was taking money from him and giving nothing in return. And I thought: What a fraud I am! What a hypocrite, boasting to you of my independence but taking money from Kevin whenever your back was turned. … And I despised myself.

  “Then Cornelius arrived. It was kind of late by that time, but when I told him Kevin had gone to bed he said it didn’t matter and could he please have a cup of coffee in the kitchen. I couldn’t figure him out at all. He seemed to be in some sort of emotional state which prevented him from speaking—he just sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee. It was eerie. In normal circumstances I’d have been embarrassed, but I was so upset I just thought: Oh, screw him, and I didn’t bother to make conversation. Then, right out of the blue he said, ‘Do you like that Braque Sam keeps in his living room?’ and I said, ‘I’ve seen better.’

  “We talked about art for a time. I don’t know why Kevin has this idea that Cornelius is a philistine, because although Cornelius may be incapable of holding a paintbrush, he seems to have a good eye for art—he certainly talks more sense about it than most people one meets. Anyway, eventually he asked about you, and I said—admitting out loud for the first time—that it was useless and I intended to break up with you.

  “Then he said, ‘Great! Can I see your pictures?’ and we both laughed because of course it was such a cliché, a variation on the old line about etchings. When I told him he wouldn’t like my paintings, he said, ‘Try me.’ I can’t describe how he looked, but suddenly I had this intuition that he was just right for me, so I said, ‘Okay,’ and took him upstairs. I was talking all the time because I was so nervous, but he wasn’t fazed at all, and then I realized that the feeling was mutual, that he—for whatever reasons—had decided I was just right for him.

  “He was nice about my paintings … very nice. I … it’s hard to explain, but he was honest. I couldn’t have taken it if he’d been insincere.”

  After a moment I said, “I see.”

  Crushing out her cigarette clumsily, she stood up. “There’s nothing more to tell and I’ve got to be going. … Forgive me, Sam. I know I’ve treated you badly and I’m very sorry that I’ve hurt you like this. I hope you find someone else real soon.”

  I stood up too to escort her to the door. “I’d like to ask you for a parting favor,” I said evenly. “May I buy one of your pictures? I’d like the one of the street with the slag heap in the background and the little white church on the hill.”

  The silence was absolute. Turning to look at her, I saw she was motionless, and I thought dispassionately how odd we must have looked together, she so tidy in her trim black suit, I so uncouth in my crumpled bathrobe.

  Suddenly she began to cry. The tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, but she didn’t speak.

  I said, “Is it sold?”

  She nodded, scrabbling for the handkerchief in her purse.

  “How many did he buy?”

  “All of them.”

  “When’s the exhibition?”

  “In the fall … his gallery … he’s getting together a collection of American primitives.”

  “Uh-huh. Congratulations.”

  “Oh, Sam … honey …”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “I won’t ask if he promised you the exhibition before or after he’d gone to bed with you. Goodbye, Teresa. We may not both have ended up in the same bed, but we’ve certainly ended up in the same boat. If the sea gets too rough, just give me a call and I’ll do what I can to help. Believe me, anyone owned by Cornelius Van Zale needs all the help they can get.”

  VI

  He had bought her.

  I showered, shaved, and dressed carefully in my best gray suit, a crisp white shirt, and my favorite dark blue tie.

  I could have forgiven him if the relationship had been triggered by some unexpected mutual compatibility, such as their interest in art. I could have forgiven him if he had been overtaken by an improbable but not impossible catastrophe such as love at first sight. I could even have forgiven him if he had discovered some magic formula not available to him elsewhere for happiness in the bedroom. But Cornelius was rich. He was handsome. He could have had any woman he wanted to gratify a sexual impulse which his wife was apparently unable to satisfy. There was no need for him to have taken Teresa, smashed the standards which had made her so special, and transformed her into an awkward embarrassed woman in black whom I hardly recognized.

  The truth was, he had seen her, she had amused him, and he had acquired her, much as he had acquired the Kandinsky painting which hung over the mantel in his office. I was reminded of Paul Van Zale, satisfying his obsession with power by writing his cynical opinions on the blank slates of his protégés’ impressionable young minds, and I saw then what a fool I had been, drawing her into Paul’s tainted world and expecting her to remain unchanged. It was ironic to remember that for a long time I had been unable to consider marrying her because I had felt she could never fit into that world. Now, thanks to Cornelius, she fitted in far, far too well.

  I knotted my tie. I brushed my hair, parting it to make the best of my hairline, and when I had finished, I surveyed myself carefully in the mirror. I was perfectly dressed, perfectly groomed, in perfect harmony with my perfect penthouse, and leaving the bedroom, I returned to the living room to finish my drink.

  It had stopped raining. The clouds had lifted from the shining spire of the Chrysler Building, and for a moment I stared out of the window as if I were staring backward into the past for a glimpse of the young man I had been once at Bar Harbor. But the young man had been lost long ago, my early life was just an imperfect memory, and the road back to my other world was wholly blocked by the filth I had waded through in the pursuit of my American dream. The past could never now be recaptured. I might have recaptured it with Teresa, but Teresa was gone, swallowed up in the filth, and I knew at last beyond any doubt that no matter how many times I returned to Bar Harbor in the future, I would never go home again.

  The past was sealed, like a tomb. That left the future.

  I had one thought, and one thought only. I said aloud to the Chrysler Building, “He’s not going to get away with this.” And to myself I said, “I’ll make him pay.”
>
  Germany could wait. I’d get to Germany in the end, and I’d make amends for the past, just as I knew I must, but I wouldn’t turn to the ECA to underwrite my dreams; I’d turn to Cornelius Van Zale.

  I thought of Cornelius declaring on numerous past occasions: “When dealing with an enemy, always aim for the Achilles’ heel.”

  I thought of Cornelius’ Achilles’ heel. I thought of it for some time.

  Of course I wouldn’t hurt her. How could I? It would be a pleasure to look after someone so cute and pretty and sweet-natured, and I would do everything in my power to ensure she was the happiest little girl in New York. She could have a beautiful home, plenty of servants, a charge account at Tiffany’s, and a baby every other year, and everything would be moonlight and roses. It would be good to be married at last, and with a young wife like Vicky I’d be the envy of all my friends. I pictured my mother’s expression when she saw her first grandchild for the first time. I pictured a honeymoon which I took infinite care to ensure was idyllic. I pictured dining by candlelight every year with my wife on our wedding anniversary, and giving her diamonds and furs and everything she could possibly want. …

  I stopped, reminded myself that I was a practical man, and surveyed the situation from a more detached point of view, but the conclusion I reached was the same. I had had enough filth in my private life. I had had enough of women who left me, sold out, and slept with other men. I wanted innocence now, I wanted purity, I wanted a decent normal happy home with a pretty young wife, four bright promising kids, and a beautiful home in the suburbs—first the New York suburbs, then the suburbs of Bonn. …

  Cornelius would hate it, of course, but what could he do? I’d write my own ticket. I’d have him by the balls.

  I moved to the phone, and when the English butler picked up the receiver in the Van Zale mansion, I never hesitated.