Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  “Hello,” I said warily. “Come on in.”

  He ambled across the floor, folded himself into a chair on the other side of my desk, and regarded me gloomily. His expression, half-sullen, half-mutinous, indicated that his mood had returned to normal after his lunchtime euphoria. He said dourly, “Thanks.”

  “What? Oh, yes, that’s okay, Sebastian. I do sincerely believe this marriage is the right thing for you.”

  The usual awkward pause ensued. Making a desperate effort at conversation, I said lightly, “I didn’t know you were an I Love Lucy fan!” and I at once suffered a pang of guilt. I felt I should have known.

  “Yeah, Lucy’s great.”

  Silence fell again. He shifted in his chair. “Cornelius …”

  “Yes?” I said, willing myself to be patient.

  “I’m sorry.” He swallowed. “Truly sorry.”

  “Uh …” I tried to figure out why he was apologizing. “That’s all right, Sebastian,” I said hastily. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I know Mother never would.”

  For a second I was back on the terrace with the little bird trilling sweetly on the balustrade. I sat motionless in my chair.

  “I was just so mad at her,” said Sebastian, “calling Elsa a plain fat Jewish girl with no poise or charm. That was bitchy.”

  “It was certainly tactless,” I said cautiously, “but don’t forget your mother had had a big shock. Sebastian … just out of interest … what exactly prompted you to make that extraordinary remark about your mother and Jake?”

  “It was nothing. I just found them having a drink together one evening when you were away, that’s all.”

  “Yes, your mother mentioned that. She even told me about it at the time. But what made such an unremarkable incident so unusual that you not only remembered it but served it up with such a twist months later?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sebastian. He drew his eyebrows together and looked contemplative, like the little plastic figures in novelty stores of apes looking at human skulls, and then, just as I had decided it was useless to expect a logical explanation of such illogical behavior, he said suddenly, “I guess it was because Mother was drinking Scotch.”

  Chapter Six

  I

  THE ROOM WAS SILENT, but in my memory I heard my voice from the recent past ring in my ears: “For Christ’s sake, why the hell are we all wasting time discussing Alicia’s drinking habits?”

  The memory expanded. It was automatic, unstoppable. The small trivial incident reran itself effortlessly before my eyes.

  “Alicia doesn’t drink Scotch, Jake.”

  “I do now, Cornelius.”

  “You were drinking Scotch when I arrived. I assumed—”

  “Oh, yes, of course, Jake …”

  I saw them as actors, Alicia fluffing a cue, Jake prompting her with the right line, Alicia glossing over the error so quickly that I, in the audience, enrapt by the drama unfolding offstage, had paid no attention to the hidden drama flashing briefly before my eyes.

  I stared at Sebastian. He was talking again. I struggled to concentrate on what he was saying, and all the while part of my brain said: Not true, can’t be true, jumping to conclusions, being neurotic, don’t believe it, can’t believe it, won’t believe it, sick fantasy, going out of my mind.

  “Yes,” Sebastian was saying meditatively, “that was probably it. You know Mother’s got all those funny old-world ideas about what women should drink. You know she never drinks anything except sherry—unless there’s a crisis like that time at Bar Harbor when Andrew broke his leg and you fixed her a martini. Well, when I looked into the Gold Room that evening and Mother asked me to join them for a drink, I noticed right away that Jake was drinking Scotch. I particularly noticed because there was a bottle of some very good Scotch, Grant’s or something, no, Johnnie Walker Black Label, on the table by the ice bucket, not that plebeian stuff you yourself like, and I was tempted to have some. Then, to my astonishment I saw that there wasn’t a sherry glass in sight and Mother had the same drink as Jake. Well, I guess there’s no reason why Mother shouldn’t take to Scotch in her old age, but that’s probably why the scene stuck in my mind, because I thought: Gee, that’s fast living for Mother, swilling Scotch with a man who’s not her husband! Stupid, wasn’t it? I mean, if there’s one thing we all know about Mother, it’s that she never would.”

  “Yes. Right.”

  “Christ, I never realized how anti-Semitic she is!” He heaved himself out of the chair and plodded off to the door. “Guess I’d better be going. ’Bye, Cornelius. Thanks again.”

  “Good night, Sebastian.”

  He left. I went on sitting at my desk. Then it occurred to me that there was probably a very simple explanation and that if I were to ask Alicia what it was, she would tell me and I would feel much better. I tried to phrase the question. “Excuse me, Alicia, but how come you’ve been drinking Scotch in secret for months and Jake is fully aware of this habit while I’m not?”

  Absurd. Foolish too. Once I revealed to Alicia that I knew, she would be sure to pity me, and our relationship, nowadays so tranquil, would immediately grind into an awkwardness so horrific that my mind refused to contemplate it. Whatever happened, neither she nor Jake must find out that I knew.

  And what did I know anyway? It was no big deal. Six years ago in 1949 I had told my wife to take a lover, and sometime during those past six years she had taken one. That was very sensible of her and fully in accordance with the agreement we had worked out. She had even chosen the one man in all New York who could be totally trusted to keep his mouth shut and not use his victory to laugh at me whenever my back was turned. I marveled at her good sense. I sighed with relief at the thought of Jake’s perfect discretion. I told myself what a practical man I was, effortlessly sanctioning pragmatic solutions for life’s more awkward problems. All three of us were so civilized and sophisticated. Everything was going to be just fine.

  There was a photograph of Alicia on my desk, and after a while I realized I was looking at it. I saw her smooth shining dark hair and her gray-green eyes slanting above her cheekbones, and suddenly I was remembering with searing clarity her unblemished skin, her small round firm breasts, her …

  I wanted to kill him.

  Blundering to the liquor cabinet, I slopped something into a glass, I don’t know what it was, it tasted of nothing, all my senses were numbed, I was blind, deaf, and dumb with the pain. I tried to pull down the shutters as usual over such unendurable consciousness, but the shutters were jammed, I couldn’t get a grip on them, I couldn’t block that pain out. It streamed through my shattered mind and shaking body, and all I could think was: I can’t bear such pain, I can’t live with it, I don’t have the power to live with it. … And the word “power” ripped through my torn consciousness until I felt I was bleeding to death.

  There was a knock on the door.

  I was standing by the liquor cabinet with an empty glass in my hand. A bottle of Canadian rye was uncapped. I picked it up and poured myself another measure.

  “Yes?” I said.

  The door opened. “Cornelius …”

  I couldn’t look at her. I picked up my glass and drank. My hands were still shaking.

  “Excuse me, but I just wanted to make sure Sebastian stopped by to apologize before he left.”

  “He did. Yes.” I kept my back to her as I returned to my desk. My cost projections lay where I had left them, like an archaeological relic from a lost world.

  “Good. Oh, Cornelius, I’m so depressed about this marriage! I know I must pull myself together and be a reasonable mother-in-law, but it’s very hard to be reasonable when I just don’t understand what Sebastian can possibly see in that girl.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, can you understand what he sees in her?”

  “No.”

  There was a pause. “Cornelius, is anything wrong?”

  “No. How long have you been drinking Scotch?”
/>   “What?”

  “I said, how long have you been drinking Scotch?”

  “Oh …”

  I found I was looking at her, although I had no memory of turning around. But she was no longer looking at me. Her eyes had a remote inward look, as if she were peering back into the distant past.

  “Some while,” she said at last. “I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d be upset. I know you always liked my old-fashioned ideas about liquor.”

  She looked at me directly for no more than two seconds, but in that one brief glance the truth stood revealed between us. When two people have lived together for a long time and loved one another deeply, there are certain circumstances where no concealment is possible.

  “Well, you go right on drinking Scotch,” I said. “What right have I to stop you?”

  She thought for a moment. Then she said, “I no longer have any desire for it,” and walked quickly from the room.

  II

  I spent all night trying to figure out how I could reopen the conversation with her, but of course this proved impossible. There was just no way the subject could be discussed. She was polite toward me but kept her distance. Once I almost shouted at her: “We’ve got to talk about it!” but I didn’t. I was too afraid of what I might hear, and gradually I realized she too was afraid of where such a conversation might end. So we went on alone together, two people living in terror of wrecking the slender thread which still linked them, both mouthing courtesies, both clamping down on all emotion, and the pressure in me began to mount until I didn’t see how I was going to avoid some violent, disastrous explosion.

  III

  “… so it’s going to be a very big issue,” said Jake, sipping his wine. “Not, I agree, as big as the General Motors spree last January, but still very sizable. There’ll be a syndicate of two hundred and fifty investment-banking firms coast to coast. The big question—as usual—is how far the major stockholders will exercise their options.”

  “Sure.”

  We were having lunch at L’Aiglon two days after Sebastian had announced his engagement. Jake preferred to lunch midtown even though he knew I would have settled for a quiet corner of the partners’ dining room; for the past twenty years he had refused to deviate from his opinion that it was impossible to find passable European cuisine south of Canal Street. That day he had ordered escargots, filet de sole amandine, and a bottle of French Chablis. I had prodded at half a grapefruit and was now looking at some plain poached bass. A waiter paused to refill my empty glass of wine. I had already drunk two martinis before leaving my office that morning.

  “The biggest stockholder in Hammaco nowadays,” said Jake, “is Pan-Pacific Harvester. Did you know that? I thought it was a rather intriguing piece of information. Apparently they own ten million shares, and assuming they exercise their options, they would have to pay out about forty million dollars—and of course that’s a lot of money in any language.”

  “A lot, yes.” Finding myself unable to look at him, I glanced around the restaurant at the smart clientele, the immaculate waiters, and the elegant room. Jake had been talking business ever since I had picked him up at Reischman’s in my new mint-green Cadillac; we took it in turns to share the transport uptown.

  “Right now we’re building up the book of dealer-customers who’ll take up the slack if Pan-Pacific Harvester drops out. Of course, it’s a huge issue, but not, I think, unrealistic. It’s very natural that Hammaco should seek to raise a hundred and twenty-five million to meet their additional plant needs. … Neil, are you listening to this?”

  “Yes. One-twenty-five million. Additional plant needs.” I managed to look at him. He was wearing a plain gray suit, and as always he exuded an air of low-keyed but elaborate self-confidence. It was hard to believe his great-grandfather had started life in America as a peddler. Devoid of that stereotyped, distorted image of Jewishness promulgated by the more ignorant Gentiles, his features still remained unmistakably Jewish to me. He had that fine-drawn, arresting elegance produced by considerable intelligence mingled with a highly controlled sensuality, a combination one sees sometimes in the old portraits of Sephardic Jews, although as far as I knew there was no Sephardic blood in the Reischman family. I had always accepted without question that he was attractive to women; certainly it was an image he had always taken care to promote.

  “… Rosenthal of PPH said he was worried about the market, but how he can be worried when steel’s obviously going to hit a new peak in production, I just don’t know.”

  I could not eat my fish. I motioned to the waiter to refill my wineglass.

  “… and then he started talking about the effects of consumer credit on the economy, and … Neil, is something wrong with that fish?”

  “No. Nothing’s wrong. I’m just bored with talking about business, that’s all. Why do we always, always have to talk about business? Why can’t we get personal for a change? I want to get personal. I think it’s time we got personal.”

  Jake’s fork hesitated for a second above his plate. “What do you mean? Is there some private matter you want to discuss?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact there is. Just how long have you been fucking my wife?”

  The conversation droned on around us. A waiter nearby had embarked on the ritual of cooking a crepe suzette, and out of the corner of my eye I could see the flames leaping in the pan. My fingers tightened around the medication in my pocket, but my breathing was even, in, out … in, out, and my heart was pumping effortlessly in my lungs.

  Jake put down his fork.

  “Obviously there’s been some mistake,” he said, an aristocrat being forced to deal with some crude hobo who clearly had no idea how to behave in civilized surroundings. “I admire your wife very much, but she’s always been entirely devoted to you.”

  “Who taught her to drink Johnnie Walker Black Label?”

  Jake took a sip of wine, just a little sip, not because he wanted to drink but because it was necessary for him to make some fastidious gesture to show how utterly he disapproved of such boorishness. His face was very white.

  “Oh, that,” he said: “That was a very long time ago, a private joke between us. I’d almost forgotten it.”

  “Why, you—”

  “I think we’d better leave,” said Jake, signaling to the maître d’.

  “I know what’s going on! Why keep up the pretense? How dumb do you think I am? How long do you think I can be fobbed off with lies?”

  “The check, please,” said Jake to the maître d’.

  “I’m so sorry, sir, was the meal not to your liking?”

  “The check.”

  “Yes, sir, of course.” He hurried away.

  “I guess she told you all about our problems,” said my voice. “I guess she told you everything. I guess there’s nothing you don’t know.”

  “I know nothing whatsoever,” said Jake. “Nothing, nothing, and less than nothing.”

  “Your check, Mr. Reischman.” The maître d’ was hovering anxiously, still upset by our half-finished meal.

  Jake signed his name. He managed to do that, but made a mess of adding the tip. He scratched out the figures twice, and he was still writing when I got up and walked out. My Cadillac was at the curb, but I paid it no attention. I just waited on the sidewalk, and when Jake emerged from the restaurant, I said tightly, “You leave her alone. You lay one finger on her again and I’ll—”

  Without warning, his nerve snapped.

  “Fuck off!” he said in a low voice which shook with rage. “I’ve had enough of your shit! You’ve got the most wonderful wife in the whole damned world, and what do you do? You tell her to take a lover! And when she does take a lover—to salve your conscience—can you take it? No, you can’t! Not only are you not man enough to make love to your wife, you’re not man enough to face up to the consequences!”

  For one long moment we stood there, the great-grandson of a German peddler facing the great-grandson of a poor dirt farmer
from Ohio, and then three generations of education, culture, and refinement streamed right out of our blood into the gutter.

  I went for him. I drove my fist into his face so hard the skin broke over my knuckles, but when he tried to hit me back my bodyguard stepped between us, and restrained him. I moved in for another blow. I felt as if I were moving in a hot mist. There were tears in my eyes. My breath was coming in great sobbing gasps.

  “Take it easy, sir,” said my chauffeur, catching me by the wrist. “Take it easy.”

  I tried to fight him instead. When my bodyguard gently detached me, I turned on him too. I wanted to fight everyone, the whole world.

  “Break it up, fellas! What the hell’s going on round here?”

  It was a cop. A crowd had gathered, and above us the sky was a steaming hazy blue, like that day long ago in 1933 when my dreams of a large family had come painfully to an end.

  Another world had ended now. It was the end of an era which had begun in the nineteenth century when Paul Van Zale had applied for a position at the House of Reischman, and as I looked at Jake wiping the blood from his mouth, I saw also the last link severed with my precious Bar Harbor past.

  There was blood on my hands, blood on my clothes, blood on the sidewalk. I stared at it dumbly. So much blood. I looked down at my hands again in bewilderment. Where had all the blood come from? How had it happened? How could I possibly have ended up in such a devastated arena? I felt as if I were choking on the blood. I wanted to vomit, but although I retched, nothing happened.

  “This way, sir,” said my bodyguard, easing me into the Cadillac as if I were severely disabled. My chauffeur had already slipped back behind the wheel.

  “Hey, you!” called the cop. “Just you wait a minute!”

  My bodyguard produced a fifty-dollar bill, the one he always kept for emergencies, and the last thing I saw as the car drove away was the cop’s delighted face as he stowed the bill safely away in his uniform.