by Howard Fast
“Oh, no! How terrible!”
“I expected it. Jesus, we’ve been lucky. Hammond lost three ships. Whittier lost two. This is the first one, and it had to be the Oceanic. Why this way? Other ships go down and the crews are saved. Why did ours have to be a slaughter? According to Mark, we’re murderers.”
“Oh, no. He didn’t say that, I’m sure.”
“Well, that’s how he made me feel. God Almighty, May Ling, I know what’s going on. I’m a stinking millionaire out of this war. We pick up a cargo of powdered milk, so the kids in England and France won’t die, and the cost of the milk is five cents a pound and the freight charge is twenty cents a pound, and the demented part of it is that Mark and me, we’re caught in the trap, we don’t set the rates, and the government pays the charge and writes it off as loans to the Allies, and they pay the overage on the insurance, and I get rich, and every lousy bastard who’s doing the same thing, making the shells or the oil or whatever and shipping it–they’re all becoming rich as God, some crazy lunatic God who’s running that slaughter in Europe–and me too, me too, and damn it all, when I left the office I found myself stopping to look at our balance sheet–god damn it, the Oceanic sinks and Jack is dead, and I look at the balance sheet!”
“Danny,” she said gently, taking his hand, “Danny, come with me.” She led him into the parlor. “Sit here. I’ll make you a drink, and we’ll talk about this.”
He sat in the single comfortable leather chair among the tufted black horsehair Victorian pieces with which she had furnished the parlor. He was drinking a whiskey and soda, May Ling facing him.
“Danny,” she said, “we are going to talk about this. We never have before.”
“I thought we talked about everything.”
“Not about this, Danny. You know, people become rich out of war, some people, other people become poor and other people die. This is not new. It’s as old as war, and you have become richer because of the war. You would have been a rich man anyway, because I think you wanted it so much, and I sin not making any moral judgments. I have taken all the things you have given me, so I have no right to make any moral judgments. But now you are trapped in a moral judgment, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” he said uneasily. “Maybe I’m just whining.”
“Perhaps. We’ll both try to be truthful with each other. Are you really a millionaire? I never asked you that before.”
“I suppose so, if we liquidated. If I sold the stock and whatever property I have, it might be a couple of million. But there’s no way to do that.”
“Why?”
“Well, there’s Mark–”
“You’re stronger than Mark. You always have been. And from what you say about his feelings, he’d go along with you.”
“May Ling, what would I do?”
“Danny, you’re not even thirty years old. I’m twenty-one. We have our whole lives ahead of us.”
“Baby, darling, you don’t understand. I have no life apart from ships.”
“We, you and me–we’ve a life apart from ships.”
“No, I mean something else. I was out with my father in his fishing boat when I was five years old. You got to understand, May Ling–listen to me. This was going to be a surprise. I bought a cutter, a beautiful thing, thirty-two feet–for you and me. It’s being shipped to the marina at San Mateo–”
“Danny, where are you?” she said sharply. “The fact that you bought a boat has nothing to do with this. I’m talking about you and me and Jack Harvey’s death and the war in Europe, and the fact that any day now we will be in that war.”
“Oh, Christ,” he said, “it’s all so rotten complicated.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“I’m married. We always forget that.”
“I never forget it.”
“And you want me to wash my hands of everything.”
“No. Only of what hurts you.”
“And what about Jean?”
“Tell me, Danny. What about Jean? When did you last make love to Jean–if you ever did?”
He sat there, silent, staring at her glumly.
“God help me for what I’m going to say, Danny, but it’s the truth. Do you know why you don’t divorce Jean–not because you’d have to give her everything or half of everything, or whatever the price would be, no indeed, but for the same reason you can’t see a life with me instead of those ships of yours–because this San Francisco sickness is in your blood and you can’t think of yourself married to a Chinese woman.”
“No, god damn it, no!” he shouted. “That’s not true! I love you! Don’t you understand how much I love you?”
“I know you love me, Danny. And I love you, oh, so much, so much, and I don’t know why I said all this–unless it’s because I’m pregnant.”
“What!”
She nodded at him, trying very hard to smile and then giving way to tears. He knelt in front of her, his head in her lap, clutching her; and then she began to giggle through her tears at the sight of his enormous bulk in that foolish position. She stroked his black, curly hair, telling him that it would be all right. “We’ll work it out, Danny, some way.”
When Mark reached his home in Sausalito that afternoon, he was met by his son, Jacob, and before they saw anyone else, he told him about the sinking of the Oceanic, asking him where Clair was and how he thought they should break the news to her.
“She’s in her room. But let me tell her, pop.”
“I thought your mother should.”
“No–no, I must. Do you know about Clair and me?”
“What is there to know?”
“We love each other. Some day we’ll be married.”
“Just like that?” Mark said.
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘just like that.’”
“When did this happen?”
“It didn’t happen. It was there all the time, from the first day you brought her here.”
“All right. Go ahead and tell her. We’ll talk about the other thing later.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Jacob said.
Mark went into the kitchen where Sarah and Martha–who was almost thirteen now–were setting the table for dinner. The kitchen was a large room, with floors of red Mexican tile and walls of blue tile, all of it brought by ship from Guadalajara. This was their favorite room in the house, full of light and color. Sarah glanced up, saw her husband’s face, and asked him what had happened.
“We got a cable,” he said. “The Oceanic was torpedoed and sunk. No survivors.”
“You mean Jack is dead?”
“Jack–the whole crew.”
Martha, listening, her eyes wide, suddenly burst into tears. Sarah went to her and held her close. “Does Clair know?”
“Jake wanted to tell her.”
“Yes.” She held Martha closer. “No hope?”
“It was observed by a British destroyer and they searched the area. Come outside with me for a moment.”
They went out of the kitchen door onto the long, columned gallery that ran the length of the house. At the other end of the gallery, Jacob and Clair came out of the house and walked away through the garden. Jacob’s arm was around her waist. She was a tall girl, almost as tall as he.
“Poor child,” Sarah said.
“Did you know that he and Clair think they’re in love with each other?”
“They don’t think so, they are,” Sarah said, tears running down her cheeks.
Mark gave her his handkerchief. “You mean you knew about this?”
“Of course I knew.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why? Why? Why don’t you open your eyes? You’re as bad as Dan with those filthy ships.” She struggled to control her tears. “If you were here sometimes–”
“I am here.”
“Oh, yes, yes.” She swallowed and took a deep breath. “Do you remember when you brought Jack here, when he was so drunk?”
“Yes?”
“He was here for three weeks. We used to sit in the kitchen and talk–we’d talk for hours. I think he was the loneliest, saddest man I ever knew. I told him to find a good woman and marry her, and he said that for a sailor to get married was just dumb and asking for trouble, and that anyway the only woman he could imagine wanting was me–”
“He said that?”
“Why not? I’m not an old frump.” She was sobbing now.
“You’re beautiful.”
“How do you know? You never look at me.” She wiped her eyes again. “And one day, he tried to make love to me. It breaks my heart to think about it. He was like a kid.”
“What happened?” Mark asked.
“Nothing happened, you idiot! But I wish something had–yes, that’s what I wish!” And with that, she ran back into the house, leaving him confused and bewildered.
Clair and Jacob sat on the ground under an old, twisted eucalyptus, a vantage point and a favorite place, with a long view across the glistening bay. He held her hand, and for almost half an hour they sat there in silence. Finally, Clair said, “I’ll cry later. I have to be alone to weep.”
“I understand.”
“Anyway, Jake, I always knew it would happen like this. Every time he went up the coast in one of those little redwood schooners. They used to lose one in six. They’d pile up on the rocks. I was just a little kid, and I could never understand why men should risk their lives for some lousy lumber, and I lived my life that way, always sure he was dead and I was alone in the world, and I was so afraid, so afraid. But then I must have realized that I had to stop being afraid and that I would somehow survive even if he never came back. Only I can’t feel that he’s dead. He’s just not coming back–across the whole world. It’s so far away.”
“You don’t have to ever be afraid, not anymore.”
“Jake, he was like a big kid. He wasn’t like your father. I don’t mean Mark’s not great. He is. But Jack was like a kid, always. He used to take me to fairgrounds and amusement parks, and he’d eat the cotton candy with me and stuff himself with hot corn and frankfurters, and he’d go on all the rides with me, and I swear he had more fun than I did, and then on the Fourth of July, if he hadn’t shipped out, he’d find someplace where they were doing fireworks and take me there, and fireworks always bored me to death, but he loved them, and even when I was a little kid, I’d say to myself, All right, he likes it. I don’t mean he was dumb. He read books, my goodness, he read every book Jack London ever wrote, and he read The Sea Wolf at least five times, and he got me to read Moby Dick when I was ten years old and I didn’t understand a word of it but he made me read the whole thing–oh, my God, you better take me back to the house now, Jake, because I want to sit in my room in the dark and cry. I want to cry the whole thing out of me, please.”
It was about seven o’clock that evening when Dan got to his home on Russian Hill. The house was crowded with people. He remembered vaguely that Jean had said something about a reception for Calvin Braderman, who had just completed a mural in a new post office or hotel or some such place. Dan pushed through the crowd, some of whom he knew and others of whom were complete strangers to him. Jean was nowhere in sight. Suddenly, he was confronting a dark, voluptuous, handsome woman, who told him, with a heavy Russian accent, that he must be Daniel Lavette.
“I am Manya,” she said. “I am friend of Jean, model for Braderman, worshiper of art, and dying to meet finally the romantic Daniel Lavette.”
“Yes. How do you do.”
“That is all? You are legend in San Francisco, but indifferent to women. That is so sad.”
He was trying to control himself. A dozen times, May Ling had said to him, “At least try to understand Jean and who she is and the people she likes and why she likes them–not to make her love you but at least to live without hate.” It was all very well for May Ling to be cool and objective, but whatever he promised her, when he came into the situation his hackles rose and he was tied up in knots of frustration and anger.
Now Jean appeared. “Have you met my husband?”
“We met.” Manya shrugged.
Tall, lovely, sheathed in blue silk that matched her blue eyes, Jean moved in command. Eyes followed her. Even in this situation, culminating all that had happened this day, Dan felt his stomach tighten with a kind of desperate wanting at the sight of her. He drew her away from the dark woman and said, “I must talk to you alone.”
“Dan, I can’t leave my guests.”
“For just a moment. It’s important.”
She sighed and followed him into the library. “Now what is it?”
“Jean, I don’t want to screw up your party, but it’s been a bad day. We got word that the Oceanic was torpedoed off the British coast.”
It took a few moments for her to assimilate the facts, to put them apart from where she had been before, and then she said, “How wretched, Dan. I’m sorry. But you are insured, aren’t you?”
“There were no survivors. Jack Harvey went down with the ship. I must go to Sausalito tonight. His daughter’s living there with the Levys.”
“Yes, I suppose so. But Mark is there, isn’t he?”
Dan stared at her in amazement.
“Don’t look at me like that, Dan. Am I supposed to burst into tears? I don’t even know this Jack Harvey of yours. I think I met him once–he was the captain, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he was the captain.”
“Well, there is a war, you know.”
“Yes. Well, I must go to Sausalito.”
“Of course you must. And if it weren’t Sausalito, you’d be launching a new ship or spending the night trying to find a crew or out on the pilot boat or at an emergency board meeting, so don’t stand on ceremony. Just go.” With that, she walked out of the room, leaving him there.
A week later, President Woodrow Wilson addressed a special session of Congress, saying, “With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my Constitutional duty, I advise that Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German government to be nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States . . .”
A few days later, on the sixth of April 1917, the President signed the declaration of war that Congress had passed, and a little more than a month later, Congress passed the Selective Service Act and the draft began.
It was the beginning of summer and early on a Saturday morning when Jacob Levy received his induction notice. The family was at breakfast in the kitchen and Martha ran out when she heard the mail wagon. Jacob opened his letter and read it to them. Then there was silence, his mother and father and Clair and Martha staring at him, Sarah’s face twitching as she fought to control herself.
Then Clair said firmly and quietly, “Jake, I don’t want you to go.”
“I’ve got to go.”
“You don’t have to do a damn thing,” she said bitterly. “You can hide. You can take off. You can become a seaman on one of Mark’s ships and stay on the run from here to Hawaii. I don’t want you to go.”
No word from the others. Sarah, Mark, and Martha simply sat in silence and listened.
“No, my darling,” Jacob said, just as quietly and firmly. “I have to go.”
“This war stinks. It stinks. It’s a lousy rotten blood bath and there are no good guys and no bad guys, only a stinking lot of lice who feed kids into the slaughter.”
“I know that. I know it only too well. The bread I eat was fertilized with the slaughter.”
“That’s a hell of a thing to say!” Mark exclaimed.
“It’s true.”
“It is not true,” Mark said. “Can’t you see that Clair is right? We can put you on a ship, and that will get you an exemption. You’ll still be serving.”
“Serving what? Levy and Lavette? The hell with that!” He leaped to his feet and stormed out of the house.
“Oh, my God,” Sarah said, choking over the words. “Is this what we ran away from Russia for? First her father, and now Jake.”
“Go out and talk to him,” Mark said to Clair. “He’ll listen to you. You’re the only one he’ll listen to.”
“He’s ready to start college,” Sarah whimpered. “He’s just a boy. Why are they doing this?”
“Talk to him,” Mark said.
“All right,” Clair agreed, “I’ll talk to him. But I know him.”
She found him sprawled under the eucalyptus tree, and she stretched out next to him, her head cradled in his arm. He loosened her hair, laying the thick red folds over her face.
“You know how long it takes me to comb it out,” she complained.
“I know. You just got to suffer.”
“Same as you, you’re such a stinking martyr. You think you’re going to atone for Levy and Lavette. Well, thank God I can talk freely out here. That’s bullshit. Dan and Mark didn’t make this war and they’re no different from anyone else. There are maybe ten million people in this country who bring home money every week that’s decorated with blood, and maybe it would be worse if the ships weren’t getting through. Who are you to say?”
“I’m what I am.”
“Oh, Jesus, why did I have to fall in love with a crazy Jew? You’re all so convoluted and twisted you don’t know your ass from your elbow.”
“That’s some sentence.”
“Your guilts are so goddamn precious. Sarah runs the place with guilt and you run your life with guilt–and what about me?”
“What about you?”
“Jake, I love you so much that I swear, I swear to God that if anything happens to you, I’ll slit my wrists. So if you want guilt, just wear that around your neck, and if you have to put on that lousy soldier suit to live with yourself, then for Christ’s sake become a medic or a clerk or something like that, because if anything happens to you, I’ll never forgive you, never, I’ll just remember you as the worst unfeeling sonofabitch that ever lived.”
“You got a remarkable vocabulary for a sweet young lady.”
“I’m not a sweet young lady, Jake. I’ve been deposited for safekeeping in more saloons than you could shake a stick at, and I had baby sitters who were hookers when I was still teething. So don’t think I don’t mean what I say.”
