Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  “At first I couldn’t believe I’d been rejected. Then I was very hurt, but finally I realized that the only thing to do was to be very debonair and say ‘So what?’ Sometimes I think I’ve been acting debonair and saying ‘So what?’ ever since.

  “God, how I hated Your Crowd.

  “Then Paul came into my life and everything changed. You know Paul’s background—you know he was a Yankee aristocrat who had been trained in a Jewish banking house. He spanned both worlds. He and my father were as close as Sam and Neil are today. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know Paul, but I never knew him well because most of the time I was just a kid, and children didn’t appear at the extraordinary social occasions when my parents entertained the Van Zales at dinner. But Paul must have noticed me, because he invited me to Bar Harbor that summer when I was seventeen.

  “I was very nervous. I admired Paul but I was in awe of him. I was also scared of the three Gentile boys he had invited to his summer home, and I was scared too of Bar Harbor, the haven of all the most blue-blooded Yankee aristocrats who thought Newport had gone down in the world and who believed all the Jewish resorts on the New Jersey shore were far beyond the pale. So when I arrived for the start of my vacation, I was very, very debonair and very, very grand, and the first two days were hell.

  “Then Paul dragged us all out of our shells, and I realized with amazement that the others were just as nervous as I was. He used to make us debate set subjects after dinner, and the first subject he chose was what it meant to be an American. Of course it meant something different to each one of us. I had to explain what it was like to be a Jewish boy from Fifth Avenue, Kevin had to explain what it meant to come from an Irish-American Catholic family heavily involved in politics, Sam had to tell us what it meant to be a German immigrant, and Neil had to tell us what it was like to be a cloistered Midwesterner from a Cincinnati suburb. Paul forced us to know each other, and once the barriers were down, we saw how alike we were, four bright ambitious boys, perfect material for Paul to influence as he pleased.

  “I stress this Bar Harbor experience because I want you to understand what a turning point it was in my life; I want you to understand what I owed to Paul, and why, when the time came, I let myself be influenced by him. Paul did for me what the gods of Groton had refused to do: he introduced me to that other world, and it was a gold-plated introduction, because as Paul Van Zale’s protégé I found all kinds of doors were immediately opened to me. But Paul did more than that. He treated me exactly as he treated the others, and the others, taking their cue from him, treated me as an equal. It was an environment devoid of prejudice, and it gave me the self-confidence I so badly needed.

  “That was the positive side of the Bar Harbor experience. But there was a negative side, too. It’s debatable how far a cynical man of the world like Paul Van Zale should be allowed to take over a bunch of adolescent kids, particularly kids who were not only insecure, but mixed up—and I was feeling very mixed up at the time, because I’d just realized I didn’t want to be a banker.

  “Of course, I hadn’t dared tell my father. My father was a tyrant, and we were all terrified of him. Like your father, he was absorbed in his work, so to our relief we didn’t have to see him much. It was true he was indulgent with my sisters, but with my brother and me … Did you know I once had an older brother? He could never measure up to my father’s standards, poor bastard, and my father kept beating him and beating him until one day he just ran away and never came back. He died in an automobile accident in Texas in 1924. God knows what he was doing down there, and nobody ever dared find out. My father said his name was never to be mentioned again, and meanwhile, of course, I’d become the son and heir. …

  “During the second summer I spent at Bar Harbor—the summer of ’26, when Paul was killed—I finally nerved myself to seek Paul’s advice. But when I confessed I couldn’t face telling my father I didn’t want to be a banker, Paul just said, ‘If you really hated the idea, you’d tell him.’

  “I couldn’t help wondering if the situation was that simple, but Paul told me in no uncertain terms to pull myself together. He said, ‘You’re ambitious, aren’t you?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ Then he said, ‘And don’t you want to spend the night of your fortieth birthday thinking how successfully you’ve doubled your father’s fortune?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I do—but shouldn’t there be more to life than mere worldly success?’

  “He just laughed. He patted me on the shoulder as if I were some pathetically innocent small child and said kindly, ‘For God’s sake, go into the bank or you’ll spend the rest of your life regretting your lost opportunities!’ And he added, ‘You’re at an idealistic age, but when you’re older you’ll see more clearly that ideals are nothing but a millstone around a man’s neck. The moralists may decry worldly success, but the truth is, mankind is so vain and so petty that it finds worldly success the only kind worth chasing. If you want to get on in life, Jake, you won’t waste your time worrying about the way things ought to be. You’ll concentrate on learning to deal with the way things really are.’

  “Well, I went into the bank, and I doubled my father’s fortune, but I didn’t have all those happy self-satisfied thoughts on the night of my fortieth birthday. I took my wife out to dinner and tried to pretend I had something to say to her, and then, after I’d got rid of her at home, I went out again to a woman I kept—no, not here, it was over on the West Side—and I got drunk and when I awoke next morning with my hangover, all I could think was: I wonder what it would have been like if I’d stood up to my father. I wonder what it would have been like if I’d never listened to Paul Van Zale.

  “My secret dream had nothing to do with making money on a large scale—nor, to tell the truth, with any idealistic vision of serving mankind. It was just something I wanted to do. I wanted to own a hotel—oh, a grand hotel, of course! Five stars in all the best guidebooks! I wanted to own a hotel in Bavaria. Just as well I never did. God, that animal Hitler. I can’t describe how I felt when I got back to Germany in 1945 and saw where the Nazis had led the country. …

  “I was one of the interpreters when they started interviewing the war criminals. I couldn’t take it, but when I angled for a transfer, I ended up in Munich just as they were sorting out Dachau. There were sights I saw—things that can’t be spoken about, and yet they must be spoken about, they must, or people will forget. … Eventually I managed to get home, get away from all those ruins—yes, it was the ruins I couldn’t bear, the ruins and the G.I.s swaggering around chewing gum—it was all such a nightmare, like watching a multiple rape with Germany the victim and everyone, the Nazis, the Allies, just everyone, doing nothing but ravage, brutalize, and destroy. … And Germany was lovely, so beautiful. I’ll never forget how much I wanted to live there long ago before the war.

  “My wife never felt at ease in Germany, although her family is just as German as mine. She won’t speak German either, and pretends she’s forgotten it. I can’t think why I married her—no, that’s not true. I know. I was dating this Gentile girl—not seriously, but I was twenty-five, and I guess my father thought he’d turned a blind eye long enough. He said he thought it would be a good idea if I started seeing Amy occasionally. He was mild about it, but I knew an order when I heard one. Amy was very suitable, naturally, one of Our Crowd, nineteen years old, brought up like my sisters to be a lily of the field … but she was prettier than my sisters. At first I thought she was cute. God, it’s a terrible mistake to marry when you’re only half in love. …

  “I’m fond of my kids and I’d fight to the death to protect them, but I never know what to say when we’re together. I don’t see them much—too busy at the bank—and I know now that this is exactly the situation I wanted to avoid when I was eighteen, the whole cycle repeating itself with me standing in my father’s shoes. I never wanted to end up like my father. But I have, and there’s nothing I can do about it now—except, perhaps, not to stand in my son’s way if he decides he can’
t face the future I can’t resist planning for him.

  “Yet if David rebels and decides not to go into the bank, it’ll be the end of Reischman’s as we know it, and I can’t help feeling sad about that. The Reischman family’s dying out too. Demographers never seem able to explain why families rise and decline, but it must surely be part of a built-in biological pattern. My great-grandfather came to America with three brothers, and they produced twenty-one sons, yet now, three generations later, David is one of only two male Reischmans in his generation. If he doesn’t go into the bank, I’ll incorporate it to preserve the name and retire as chairman of the board, but it seems a pale anticlimax of an end to a colorful family history. Probably we won’t even be living on Fifth Avenue by that time either—the real-estate speculators seem to think of nothing nowadays except tearing down as many private houses as they can get their hands on in order to build apartment houses and stores. The old order changes, as Tennyson pointed out, and gives way to the new.

  “But I don’t like the look of the new order. It seems to render my order not only obsolete but meaningless. Yet what can I do? Do what I’ve always done, I guess: act debonair and pretend I don’t give a damn. But I do. I care very much. I live in my family home knowing its days are numbered; I work in my family firm knowing that too will probably come to an end as a private banking house; I live with a woman I don’t love for the sake of children I can’t talk to and rarely see; I have mistress after mistress, but any idea of love seems increasingly remote. And what does it all mean? What’s the point? I guess the point must be that there’s no point. I tried to talk about this to Neil not long ago, but he refused to discuss it seriously. Perhaps I scared him by raising issues he himself isn’t yet able to face, but he’ll have to face them one day—one day he’ll have to say to himself: ‘Just what the hell am I doing, and what’s the goddamned point?’ and then I’d like to know what kind of answer he’s going to dig up to soothe himself.

  “Yet Neil’s very different from me. He’s got this wonderful trick of seeing everything in black and white and believing firmly that God’s always on his side—a masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon self-deception! Or does he really think that? Can anyone with Neil’s brain—and he’s certainly no fool—possibly be that simple? Sometimes I think he puts up that Anglo-Saxon front to protect himself. Sometimes I think he’s too frightened to contemplate a world where God doesn’t exist or a world where God, if he exists, is hostile. … But now I’m getting too metaphysical—I must stop. Have you understood what I’ve been trying to say, Alicia, my dear, or have I merely been talking gibberish?”

  I poured us both some more Scotch, took his hand in mine, and said gently, “Tell me more about your beautiful hotel.”

  V

  It was on the morning after this conversation that Vicky came to see me. I had finished glancing through the day’s mail and had handed it to my secretary to be answered; I had approved two menus which my housekeeper had submitted for coming dinner parties, and I had written my weekly letter to Sebastian. After ordering coffee to be brought to the upstairs sitting room where we kept the radio and television, I finished my flower arrangement in the Gold Room and prepared to relax for half an hour with a daytime serial.

  The footman admitted Vicky as I was crossing the hall.

  “Alicia!” she exclaimed. “Are you busy? I just thought I’d stop by.”

  She looked lovelier than ever. Her hair had been freshly set and she was wearing a new blue coat which I had not seen before. There was a faint flush to her cheeks. Her gray eyes sparkled with happiness. I suddenly felt old and drab.

  “Why, how nice to see you, dear!” I said. “You’ll have coffee, won’t you?” I turned to the footman. “I’ve just ordered coffee—see that there’s enough for two, and bring it to the Gold Room, please.”

  “I was going to save the news till this evening when Daddy came home,” Vicky was saying buoyantly, “but I just couldn’t wait! So I called Daddy at the bank and told him, and he was just thrilled to pieces, but one of the first things he said was: ‘Sweetheart, do call Alicia—she’ll be so pleased!’ So I was going to call you, and then I thought, no, I’ll go over to Fifth Avenue and surprise you …”

  I wondered what was happening in my daytime serial. Would the heroine’s sister’s pregnancy finally be established today, and would the paternity of the heroine’s own baby be confirmed beyond all possible doubt? It occurred to me dimly that real life was so much less interesting. Girls always seemed to know exactly when they got pregnant, and the proud father was usually all too easy to spot at fifty paces.

  “… so anyway, I just rushed out of the house and zoomed into a cab …”

  As we entered the Gold Room I noticed that the Sèvres clock had stopped again. I felt annoyed. I had particularly instructed Carraway to remind the new footman to wind it daily.

  “This all sounds very exciting, darling,” I said. “Am I to understand …?”

  “Yes! I’m having a baby! Oh, Alicia, isn’t it just the most wonderful news you could ever imagine!” said my radiant stepdaughter, and flung herself into my arms.

  “That’s lovely, darling!” I looked at the silent clock. Time was rushing forward for Vicky in a heady pulsating whirl, but for others time had stopped long ago and the world was quiet beneath the glass case which protected them from dust. “I’m so pleased,” I said. “Congratulations! When …?”

  “Next April!”

  “Perfect! Spring christenings are always so nice. I must look for the family christening robe.” I thought I was saying all the right things, but it was hard for me to be sure, because I could no longer think clearly. “And how’s Sam?” I said, just remembering him in time.

  “Thrilled! In the seventh heaven!”

  “Yes, of course. Yes, he would be.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Carraway himself entering with the coffee. “Carraway,” I said. “The Sèvres clock has stopped again. I’m very displeased.”

  “Stopped, madam? I shall attend to it personally at once. Perhaps a slight overhaul or cleaning …”

  “Winding’s all it needs, Carraway, as you well know. No, don’t do it now. I’m busy with Mrs. Keller. Come back later.”

  “As madam wishes.” Carraway withdrew with an air of worldly resignation, as if he were missing the British aristocracy he had served in England before the war. I despised myself for such a petty display of anger, but fortunately Vicky hardly noticed; as usual she was totally absorbed in herself.

  I drank my coffee, listened to her chatter with a smile, and tried not to think of those magic times long ago when I had been someone special, Alicia Blaise Foxworth, talented, successful, unique. But of course I thought of them. The pain was suddenly as sharp as a butcher knife. I hated myself for not being able to keep the knife sheathed, and the more I hated myself, the more unbearable the pain became.

  “Darling, I hate to rush off,” I said. “I’d just love to talk to you for ages, but I have a lunch date.”

  Vicky jumped up readily. “Oh, of course! I only intended to stop by for a few minutes anyway, but please … come over this evening with Daddy and let’s all have a very special family dinner together!”

  “Thank you, dear, that would be lovely. About seven?” I had no idea what Cornelius and I were supposed to be doing that evening, but I could sort that out later. My most important task now was to get rid of Vicky before she could think I was cold or uncaring, and after walking with her to the front door, I gave her the warmest embrace I could manage.

  “Good-bye, dear. … Thanks so much for stopping by … I’m so happy for you … thrilled …” My voice broke. I turned away.

  “Why, Alicia …” Vicky sounded both awed and amazed. With relief I realized she had diagnosed my emotion as sheer feminine sentimentality and was touched.

  “Till this evening.” I was already running up the stairs, and although she called something after me, I did not look back. Somehow I managed to shut myself in my room before I burs
t into tears, but the more I cried, the more I despised myself, and the more I despised myself, the faster the tears flowed. My only thought as I struggled for self-control was that if anyone were ever to guess how disgracefully jealous I was, I would surely die of shame.

  But no one would find out. No one came near me anymore. I was a relic from a dead world, like the Sèvres clock, a relic which people admired occasionally but never touched, a relic separated from the world beneath a glass case which nowadays no one ever bothered to remove.

  I looked around for a hammer to smash the glass, and saw the telephone by the bed.

  My tears stopped. Dragging the phone directory from the drawer of the nightstand, I hunted through the pages for the letter R.

  Reischman & Co. 15 Willow.

  I dialed the number. I was calm now. My cheeks were dry but stiff, a sign that the tears had mingled disastrously with my makeup.

  “Reischman and Company. Good morning, may I help you?”

  “I want to speak to Mr. Reischman.” I was peering into the mirror to see the extent of the damage. All my mascara had run.

  “Mr. Reischman’s office … good morning.”

  “Is he there, please?”