Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

March 6. Cornelius says, “Scott’s lunching with Jake today to straighten out that muddle over Pan-Pacific Harvester.”

  Something’s happened between Jake and Cornelius, but no one knows what it is. For various pragmatic financial reasons, Reischman’s and Van Zale’s still do business together, but anyone can see the old informal partnership is dying on its feet for lack of sentimental affection. Jake and Cornelius will no longer deal with each other in person, and whenever they meet by some unfortunate accident at a social occasion, they’re exquisitely quiet and polite, like two old Chinese mandarins. Rumor’s rife about the cause of the rift, but so far no one’s improved on my theory that the trouble began with my engagement to Elsa. The anti-Semitic talk that got flung around then had to be heard to be believed, and knowing the Reischmans I’ll bet there was plenty of unforgivable anti-Gentile talk being flung around at the same time.

  “Jake himself is having lunch with Scott?” I say to Cornelius. Jake, whose reputation as a difficult man increases daily on Wall Street, can be guaranteed to find fault with any of Cornelius’ deputies, and after a couple of meetings he always appoints deputies of his own to deal with them. The last I heard, he had refused to deal with Scott (appointed after Sam’s death to be the liaison man with Reischman’s) on the grounds that Scott was too young. Anyone would think Scott was a vacuous teenager, but Scott is almost thirty-nine, and very, very experienced. “I thought Jake had appointed Phil to deal with Scott,” I say, surprised.

  “Jake fired Phil.”

  “Tough on Phil,” I say laconically, picturing the head rolling into the basket. “What did he do?”

  Cornelius shrugs. Purges are of no interest to him unless he’s signing the death warrant.

  But he and Jake are a dying breed. Major private investment-banking houses are becoming an institution of the past because nowadays it pays to incorporate the firm for tax purposes, and although the new corporation president will try to be just as dictatorial as he was when he was senior partner, he’s held in better check by the board. People’s attitudes have changed, too; the war and a changing employment picture have encouraged a man to think twice before he places his career in the hands of an autocrat, and the board of a corporation offers not only a greater degree of security to the postwar banker but a bigger slice of the pie.

  “The point is,” Cornelius is saying, “that Jake’s obviously decided to give Scott a second chance. And not only that, he’s taking Scott to lunch and he’s suggested that you come along as well. He knows you’ve been helping Scott over this PPH mess.”

  “Okay,” I say, still laconic, but I’m excited, because Jake normally never lunches with anyone who’s not a full partner. This invitation is a big step up for me, and Cornelius knows it—he knows Jake would never have bothered with me, even though I’m his son-in-law, unless he believed I was worth bothering about.

  I decide it’s time to soft-pedal a few facts that Cornelius may have overlooked.

  “Jake knows I’ll be thirty next year,” I said. “He knows I’m not just a kid anymore.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Jake told me he was made a partner in Reischman’s on his thirtieth birthday.”

  “I remember it well!” Cornelius pretends to be nostalgic, but underneath, he’s thinking hard. “And that reminds me, Sebastian—I was planning on discussing this with you later, but since the subject’s come up …”

  I’m offered a partnership. I accept.

  “Well done!” says Scott, who’s ten years my senior and has been a partner for some time.

  He seems genuinely pleased, but what are you after, Scott? You’re just about the smartest guy in the bank, aside from me and Cornelius, and Cornelius likes you very much, far more than he likes me. I like you too, but there’s something strange about you, Scott Sullivan. It’s not just that you don’t drink, don’t smoke, and live alone in some hermit’s cell which no one is ever invited to see, and it’s not just that you’re so obsessed with medieval literature that you turn up your nose when I try to introduce you to a twentieth-century masterpiece like the Four Quartets. I’m not disturbed by your asceticism, because you’re never priggish enough to flaunt your questionable virtues, and I’m certainly not disturbed by your intellectual tastes, eccentric though they may be, because they make it possible for me to communicate with you. In fact, it’s a treat for me to talk to someone who’s not excruciatingly dumb, but much as I like you, I’m becoming increasingly aware that there’s something about you that doesn’t add up. For instance, you sit around talking garbage about chastity giving a man superhuman strength, but you never explain the root of this unhealthy fascination with abstinence, never explain why you feel this superhuman strength is so necessary to you. Anyway, I don’t believe you’re chaste. I think that when you go on your vacations to Mexico, California, or Alaska you let off steam in the biggest possible way. Do I believe this just because I myself find celibacy inconceivable? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I notice the spark in you when you return from your vacations, and I doubt if that’s solely generated by lying in the sun.

  But what does all this mean?

  I don’t know, but I do know that I’ve begun to watch you, Scott Sullivan. I’m watching you, and I’m going to find out.

  Easter, 1958. Something’s going on between Mother and Cornelius. They keep touching each other and exchanging little smiles. If the woman was anyone else but Mother, I’d say Cornelius was getting a piece of some very exciting action. Can two people pushing fifty who have been married for nearly thirty years possibly have anything approaching an exciting sex life—or indeed any sex life at all? It seems incredible, but what am I to think? There he goes, smiling at her again as if she’s the sexiest woman since Mae West batted her eyelashes at Cary Grant, although God knows my mother is the last person to remind me of Mae West. Mother looks as if men’s genitals might possibly be a good invention after all. How inconceivable it is to think of one’s parents having sex. Surely Mother must be frigid, but now I’m probably the one who’s being Freudian, playing Oedipus to Mother’s Jocasta—or should it be Orestes to Mother’s Clytemnestra? At least when Oedipus got so screwed up he didn’t know Jocasta was his mother. I must get hold of a translation of Aeschylus and reread the Oresteia, along with the Theban plays of Sophocles. I might learn something.

  Vicky’s a bit out in the cold because of this raging love affair which is going on between our parents. She’s quiet, probably appreciating the chance to relax. I took a look at her kids as the Easter celebrations roar on round us. There’s a very cute little girl called Samantha whom everyone spoils shamelessly. The other girl, Kristin, is plain like Sam but cheerful. The two boys, who arrived back in the States too shy to say a word, are now noisy and ill-behaved, but Cornelius seems to think they should be allowed to scuffle in corners, break precious porcelain, and eat with their fingers at table. “Boys will be boys!” says Cornelius cheerfully. He never said that when Andrew and I knocked one of his Kandinskys off a wall during a fight. I wonder if he’s going to be silly about these grandsons, so silly that he’ll act out of his shrewd tough character. No, I’ll pay Cornelius the compliment of saying that it would be impossible for him to be really stupid where the bank’s concerned. If the boys are a dead loss, he’ll write them off.

  What are the boys like? Impossible to tell. They ought to be bright if heredity means anything. Eric might make the grade; the blond curls give him a vague resemblance to Vicky. But Paul might be smarter. Have to wait and see.

  Vicky’s having another baby, Mother says. Damn. That means Vicky will be wrapped up in reproduction till the end of summer. But maybe that’s okay; it means it’ll be considered harmless for me to take her out. Nobody goes around seducing pregnant women—except Cornelius, of course, when he took Mother away from Dad, but then, we all know Cornelius is capable of anything.

  Easter isn’t usually such a big family scene as Thanksgiving, but this year Andrew’s got extra leave for some reason, so he and Lo
ri have brought the kids east again for a vacation. The kids are all happy and normal, just like Andrew, and Lori’s normal too, discussing fashion with Mother and telling her about the course she’s taking in French cooking. Can people conceivably be that normal? Apparently.

  “How are you doing?” I say skeptically to Andrew after everyone’s stuffed themselves with roast turkey at lunch on Easter Sunday and heaved themselves out of the dining room.

  “Swell. There’s this fantastic new plane …”

  God, Andrew’s boring. He probably thinks I’m boring too.

  “And how are you doing, old buddy?” he says cheerily, clapping me on the shoulder. “Still bumming around counting nickels and dimes?”

  Andrew’s grown up in this celebrated banking family and yet I do believe he still thinks Van Zale’s is a commercial bank. There is a commercial Van Zale’s, the Van Zale Manhattan Trust, and the two banks work hand in glove, but I’m an investment banker channeling the public’s capital into long-term investment for the benefit of the great corporations, not a teller cashing checks for some two-bit client on a weekly wage.

  “I’m okay,” I say to Andrew. What can one say to someone so dumb? How does one communicate with such mindlessness?

  He starts talking about some Foxworth cousins of ours. All the Foxworths love Andrew. I guess Andrew takes after Dad, and that’s why he fits in so well with Dad’s family. Dad must have been a fool too, giving up banking for politics, exchanging the fascinating world of economics for the plastic world of vote-catching in pursuit of a power that is largely illusory. Power attracts me, I have to admit it, but not a politician’s power. That kind of power is puny when compared with the power wielded by the top members of the financial community who run this country’s economy.

  However, I’m not in banking just for the power, like Cornelius, and I’m certainly not in it just for the money and social status, like Sam Keller. My maternal grandfather left me a pile of money and I was born into what used to be described as the Yankee aristocracy. I’m in banking because I like it. I like figures. I like the challenge of working out a complicated deal. And I’m good at it. I may not have Sam Keller’s synthetic charm or Cornelius’ brutal streak, but I have something which I suspect neither of them ever had, a true financial brain.

  If I say I like money, that conveys the wrong impression; one thinks of a miser hoarding coins under the bed or some materialistic hero of our modern culture chasing the godalmighty dollar, but I like the abstract nature of money and its mathematical properties, I like the absorbing variations of economic theory, and last but not least I like the challenges which few people in our rich plastic society care to confront: the endless confrontations between money and morality, battles which can only increase one’s philosophical speculations on the ultimate value, purpose, and even reality of immense wealth as it exists today in the black chaotic doomsday world of our appalling twentieth century.

  I’m not a philosopher. But philosophy interests me. (Only people like Cornelius call it a parlor game for eggheads.) And I’m no dehumanized ape. I’m tired of watching billions of dollars being spent on ways to make people die. I’m tired of watching the privileged citizens of the richest country in the world wallowing in mindless luxury while millions live in a poverty-stricken hell. I wouldn’t say so out loud, of course; people would call me an “idealist,” class me as “irresponsible,” and ensure my career ended “tragically” (generous severance pay after inevitable nervous breakdown), but sometimes I dream of being president of a bank which tries to channel wealth not only into the poor countries but also to the people below the poverty line right here in America, my America, the America I love all the time I’m hating it, the America I care for enough to criticize, the America not of the A-bomb and I Love Lucy but the America of the Marshall Plan.

  “My, you’re quiet today!” says my noisy brother, clapping me on the back jovially again as if he were a candidate in an upcoming election and I were a recalcitrant voter. Again I’m reminded of my father. I guess my father was fond of me, but primarily he only made such a fuss about getting custody because he wanted to pay Mother back for running off with Cornelius, and he used to get irritated when I missed her so much. Mother loved me when no one else did, I’ll say that for her. I love Mother too, deep down, but she drives me crazy. Mothers should guard against becoming obsessed with their children, but poor Mother, I can’t get angry with her just because she uses me to fill some emotional lack in her life. Marriage with Cornelius can’t always be a bed of roses. Mother thinks she understands me, but she doesn’t, and I don’t truly understand her either, although I sense she’s often unhappy and that makes me automatically mad at Cornelius. Mother and I aren’t alike, although once she said I did take after her side of the family. She said I reminded her of her father, Dean Blaise, who was once head of the investment-banking firm of Blaise, Bailey, Ludlow, and Adams. He died when I was six, but I remember him clearly. He used to sit glowering at his dinner guests, and if anyone was reckless enough to make some dumb remark, he would growl, “Damn stupid hogwash!” He was a big man on Wall Street. They say he was one of the few men who could give Paul Van Zale as good as he got. A tough guy. Smart. Hope I’m like him.

  “So when are you and Elsa going to have number two?” Andrew’s saying brightly.

  “Mind your own business.”

  “Okay, okay, okay! Jesus, you’re as prickly as an old grizzly! I just wanted to show some interest, that’s all. Say, isn’t it great being a father? I just love it! I like playing cowboys and Indians again and fixing up Chuck’s train set …”

  Scott comes to rescue me. He’s part of the family as Aunt Emily’s stepson, and he always takes at least one main meal with us during these family gatherings.

  He talks to Andrew. He asks Andrew how he feels when he’s cruising at twenty thousand feet.

  “Great!” says Andrew happily. “I look at the ground and think, gee! Somewhere down there Chuck’s playing with his train set and Lori’s preparing some wonderful French meal, and Nurse is changing the baby’s diaper …”

  Scott somehow manages to keep the conversation going. How he does it, I don’t know. God, Scott’s a smart guy.

  “You ought to get married, Scott!” says Andrew with enthusiasm. “It’s just wonderful!”

  Mother, slinking up behind him, stands on tiptoe to give him a kiss. “It’s lovely you’re so happy, darling!”

  They stand there, thinking how wonderful marriage is, while I wonder again what the hell’s happened between her and Cornelius to trigger this marital renaissance. I wish Mother wouldn’t dye her hair.

  Elsa joins us with the baby. Poor Scott must be feeling wiped out by all this marital bliss.

  “Hi,” I say to Elsa, giving her a reassuring smile. Easter at the Van Zale mansion makes Elsa feel like an outsider, so I try not to feel irritated when she follows me around as if she’s terrified to let me out of her sight. “Hi, Alfred!” I add, giving him my finger to clasp. Alfred’s seven months old and he flays around making noises as he attempts to get what he wants. Alfred’s trying to communicate and he’s discovered how dumb most adults are. It must be hell to be a baby. Everyone thinks it must be so wonderful to do nothing except eat, sleep, and play, but think how traumatic it must be when you have so much trouble making yourself understood.

  Alfred’s wriggling in Elsa’s arms. He pushes my fingers away.

  “Put him down, Elsa. He wants to be free.”

  Alfred tries hard to crawl away across the floor.

  “Boy, he’s cute!” says Andrew good-naturedly.

  Cute! Alfred’s smarter than all Andrew’s kids put together.

  Vicky’s sitting on the couch at the far end of the long room, well away from all the kids who are running around trying to kill each other. I stroll over to her just as Mother tells the nurses to remove everyone under ten to the nursery.

  “Getting sick of the big family occasion?” I say.

  Vicky loo
ks up. Suddenly she smiles. My guts feel weak, as if I were responding to some folk memory of King Alfred’s uncertain bowels. “Of course not!” she says. “It’s lovely to see the family together.”

  She means just the opposite. It’s exhausting, boring, and irrelevant to the true meaning of Easter. She knows that as well as I do, but she’s locked up in the classic social dilemma of feeling obliged to say one thing while she privately thinks another. I try to bust through her psychological shackles by saying, “I’ve got tickets for Kevin’s new play. It’ll do you good to get out of this place and defrost those brains you’ve been keeping on ice for so long.”

  She smiles uncertainly. “Maybe it would. Thanks. Daddy said only the other day that it would do me good to get out—he even asked me to join him and Alicia for dinner at the Colony, but I didn’t want to go. I felt it would be … well, an intrusion.”

  “Noticed, have you?”

  “Of course! It’s so obvious. But why do I also feel it’s so bizarre?”

  “I’m just rereading Sophocles and Aeschylus to find out. Have supper with me after the theater and I’ll tell you why we can’t stand the sight of our parents frolicking around as if sex had just been invented.”

  She laughs. My guts feel weaker than ever.

  “Okay,” she says. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

  The play interests me. It’s about an Irish-American political boss at the turn of the century, and I guess it must be based on Kevin’s father, who pulled a lot of political strings in Massachusetts in those days.

  Luxuriating in the trappings of power, the boss is appalled to discover that the road to power is the road to isolation—and finally to a death of the spirit, a death in life, the ultimate human hell. This guy can only communicate through exercising his power, but paradoxically, the exercise of his power precludes true communication. He loses his friends, his wife, and eventually the election. The last scene shows him with his mistress and ends not with words but with silence.