by Howard Fast
“Then shut up for a while and just let me hold you.”
Stephan Cassala received his induction notice early in August, after his father had left the house for the city. When Anthony returned that evening and heard the news, Maria was gone.
“Well, where is she?”
“At church,” Stephan said.
“Since when?”
“Since this morning.”
“And you didn’t go for her? What were you doing? You didn’t come to work.”
“I was thinking,” Stephan said. “I had a good deal to think about and a good deal to do. Can’t you understand? I have to report tomorrow.”
“Where’s mama?”
“At church, I told you. Rosa went there. I telephoned Clair at Sausalito. Jake’s at Fort Dix in New Jersey.”
“Both of them go away all day, and you sit here!” Anthony shouted. Then his face broke and he clasped Stephan in his arms. “Papa, don’t cry,” Stephan begged him. “It’s all right.”
Then they drove to the church. Maria and Rosa were at the altar rail, Maria a tragic lump of black-clad suffering. Anthony went to her and lifted her up, whispering in Italian, “The blessed mother will watch over him, my darling. Come home now. Together, we’ll cook a nice dinner for everyone, like in the old days.”
She had been kneeling so long she could hardly walk. Stephan and Anthony put their arms around her, and, followed by Rosa, they led her out of the church.
PART THREE
Sons and Daughters
One day, in August of 1918, over the protests of Wendy Jones, the children’s nurse, Dan awakened his six-year-old son, Tommy, while Jean was still asleep. By seven o’clock, they were in Dan’s new Pierce-Arrow, heading south toward San Mateo, and by ten o’clock they were in Dan’s cutter working to windward out in the bay, and Dan was explaining to the excited child the virtues of the cutter design over the sloop, the great weight of lead in the keel, and how in the old days they were used by revenue agents to overtake smugglers. Tommy listened in delight, understanding very little of what his father said, but totally delighted with the fact that he had this enormous, exciting father of his entirely to himself, and thrilling to the rush of wind and spray.
At two o’clock, they were back at the berth, and then Dan drove to the Cassala house, where Maria served them with spaghetti and sausage, two delicious treats that had never been permitted on the Lavette table. Maria and Rosa fussed over the child, and the Cassala dogs, a pair of amiable collies, played with him and rolled him around on the lawn. Dan, meanwhile, telephoned his home with news that all was well, and since Jean was out, he had only Miss Jones to contend with. By eight o’clock that night, he walked into his home carrying a sleeping, dirty, and completely contented child.
He had expected a storm of anger from Jean, and was relieved when her only complaint was to the effect of his having a yacht that was berthed so far away.
“It’s more Tony’s than mine, and it’s just a small boat,” he said. “We can have one up here if you wish.”
She had come to dislike boats increasingly. “No thank you,” she said. “I have no desire for a San Francisco Bay complexion. But you ought to awaken me and tell me when the desire to kidnap your own child overtakes you.”
Still and all, she was in rare good humor, telling him that she had kept dinner and that if he would clean up and change, they could eat together. He stopped in at the nursery to look at his son, wondering as he so often did how this small, blue-eyed, golden-haired child could be his. Both children were asleep, both of them blue-eyed and fair-skinned, as if denying the heritage of a swarthy, black-haired father. “You mustn’t disturb them,” Miss Jones whispered to him, and he patted her behind amiably.
“Please, Mr. Lavette,” she complained, the prisoner of her whispers.
“You’re a fine figure of a woman,” he whispered back.
He was always amazed, surprised, flattered when Jean unbent. It did not happen often. She had become one of the leading figures in the New Art Society, an organization which proclaimed its intent to make San Francisco the leading art center of the United States, which had grown out of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915, and which had coalesced around the drive to save the Palace of Fine Arts and to preserve it for the future. She had made her place among the new elite of art and literature, and since Dan never denied her money and since she had ample funds of her own, she was constantly sought after as a patron and a sponsor of project after project, whether it was a piece of sculpture for the new city hall or a reception for Hamlin Garland, who might or might not be lured to San Francisco. These and other activities gave her a full life which apparently satisfied her. It was several years since she had taken to sleeping in her own bedroom, apart from him; and Dan accepted this not only as a rejection of any sexual advances on his part but also as a normal action in the habits of the rich, whose set of mores were still strange to him. He had fallen into an acceptance of a double life on his part, yet he was unable to cope with the thought that Jean might have a lover. Somewhere in his mind, hardly recognized, hardly dealt with, but there nevertheless, was the notion that Jean’s passion for him might reawaken. How he would react under those circumstances he did not know; if he was totally unaware of the woman called Jean Lavette, he was very much aware of the image, cool, tall, beautiful, and totally admired in the circles that knew her; and on those occasions that he was with her, he basked in the admiration, still unable to comprehend that this creature was the wife of a dago fisherman, a kid from the wharf.
Strangely, this feeling lived with his relationship to May Ling. Jean was the illusion, May Ling was the reality and the validity, and to a degree he understood this completely. May Ling nourished him, educated him, adored him, and gave him a sense of himself. If anything happened to Jean–well, life would go on. If anything happened to May Ling–that was a thought he could not deal with. Yet a simple matter of interest and kindness on the part of Jean–perhaps better called a suspension of coldness and hostility–drove the thought of May Ling from his mind. Only Jean could truly accept him as a nabob, sitting opposite him at the dining room table, wearing the jewels he had given her, a pale blue gorget draped from her regal shoulders, her skin so pink and white, her eyes the icy blue that the dark-skinned, dark-eyed races of the earth had regarded for so long as the symbol of beauty and authority. When he sat that way with her, accepted by her, it did not matter a damn that she had closed her thighs to him; she was still his wife, and deep inside of him this was the core of desire.
He was still full of the contentment of the good day with the little boy. “I want him to know how to sail,” he explained to Jean. “I sometimes think that’s all I can give him. All the rest he gets from you.”
“Oh, not at all, Dan. But you spend so little time with him.”
“I know.”
“I do try to find time for the children,” she said, “and I always manage a few hours a day. One must. And now we’re putting together a Keith memorial, and you can’t imagine how demanding that is.”
“Keith?”
“William Keith–lovely, dreamy landscapes, you know, very much in the style of George Inness. For heaven’s sake, Dan, we have one of his paintings in the living room.”
“Live Oaks,” he remembered. He had never made a connection between the painting and reality, and had looked at it only long enough to know what it was called.
“But what great new mountain are you climbing?” she asked him. “I’ve lost touch completely with the realms of high finance. All I know is that we seem to become richer and richer until it’s almost gross.”
“We’re still very poor compared to the Seldons,” he assured her.
“Still can’t accept the Seldons. Daddy’s very fond of you, truly.”
“No, that’s not it. It’s a question of what we want to do and how to do it.”
“Do what?”
“You know, we’re selling out to Whittier.”
> “No, I didn’t know that. I thought you detested him.”
“I mentioned it to you.”
“I couldn’t take it seriously.”
“Well, I’m not in love with Grant Whittier,” Dan said, “but he wants our ships and he’s willing to give us three million dollars for our fleet.”
“But why sell them?”
“It’s kind of complicated. Mark’s kid, Jake, is over there, and he’s been through Château-Thierry and Belleau Wood, and it’s been a pretty rotten bloody thing, and Mark can’t live with making any more money out of this war, and Stevie Cassala got a gut full of shrapnel and they shipped him home–six months in the hospital–and well, Whittier made us this offer–”
“Oh, really splendid,” Jean said. “We all think this way, and we just bow to the Huns and explain to them that we just can’t bear to make any profits, and therefore they can go ahead and take France and England and come over here too–”
“Come on, Jean, we’re not interfering with the shipping. We’re just transferring ownership. We’ve made enough money out of this war.”
“It’s just so typically a Jew thing. First he makes a fortune out of the war, and then the moment his son is in there, he begins to whine–”
“God damn it, how the hell can you say that!” Dan exclaimed. “There are no Seldons or Lavettes over there in France. I’m thirty–I could be over there. But I’m not.”
“You have two children, and your role is vital to the war interests.”
“Bullshit! I’m a millionaire, and I don’t sail the ships; I own them!”
“If you’re going to swear at me and talk Tenderloin, that finishes it.”
“Jeany, Jeany,” he said, “why do we have to get into a scrap every time we talk to each other? I’m sorry, believe me, I’m sorry. And what I said isn’t the full story, not by a long shot. There’s a very basic difference of opinion between Whittier and me.”
She stared at him coldly.
“Can I explain?” He reached across the table and touched her hand. “Please.”
“All right. I suppose I shouldn’t have said that about Mark. But he’s such a skinny, sniveling thing.”
She is your wife, Dan told himself. She doesn’t know any better. She is what she is.
“I know he’s very clever,” she added. “I know that. They are, you know.”
“Well, look,” Dan said. “Whittier thinks the war will go on for years. I don’t. I think it may end in a matter of weeks. And if I’m right and he’s wrong, then cargo ships won’t be worth the water they displace. They’ll be a glut on the market.”
“How can you say that, Dan? The Germans have been sinking everything.”
“No, they have not. Do you realize that this country has built over three thousand ships during the past year or so. There’s more cargo tonnage in the world now than ever in history.”
“But the hunger and the suffering in Europe–even if the war ends.”
“We’re not carrying food. That’s peanuts. We carry guns and munitions and oil and coal. We’re feeding a monster that’s going to drop dead, and that’s why I’m glad we’re out of it.”
“Then what will you do?” she asked nervously, as if she were suddenly about to be confronted by his presence for the first time.
“There’s enough to do.” He grinned now. “We bought Spellman’s Department Store.”
“Spellman’s? But what on earth for?”
“It makes sense. Mark talked me into it, but it makes sense. I think he wants something for Jake when Jake comes back. We’re going to rebuild it and turn it into the best and biggest department store west of the Mississippi.”
“But you in a store? You without a ship? I don’t believe it.”
“You’re right–don’t believe it. The store’s only part of it. I’m going to build the biggest damn passenger ship that ever sailed out of this bay. We’re going to open up the Hawaiian Islands and the whole damn Orient. She’s going to be thirty thousand tons displacement, as big as the Mauretania, a floating palace, Jean–the ship of the future. How about that?”
“I just don’t know what to say.”
“Only one catch.”
“Oh?”
“I still don’t know where the money’s coming from.”
“But you have so much money.”
“Not really. This may run to over ten million dollars.” He shook his head. “Well, if you play with expensive toys, it costs.”
She was watching him carefully, thoughtfully. “Why don’t you go to daddy?”
“I did once.”
“Things have changed. The Seldon Bank is the second largest in California. You know that.”
“I guess I do,” he said.
Roughly, the hole measured sixteen feet across, and it was about five feet deep at its deepest point, and nine men were crowded into it. It was raining lightly but steadily, and the bottom of the hole was a pool of mud and human vomit and nine mud-soaked men who were practically lying one on top of each other. On the lip of the hole was Lieutenant Matterson, or what remained of Lieutenant Matterson, who had been chopped nearly in half by bullets from a thirty-caliber heavy machine gun. For the past half hour his body had moved spasmodically as the German machine gunner let go bursts at the lip of the hole.
In the hole were seven privates, Corporal Jake Levy, and Sergeant Joe Maguire. It was nighttime. The nine men listened to someone shouting something, but it was not until a pause in the gunfire and the shellfire that they were able to make out the words. The voice came from another hole somewhere.
“Matterson!” the voice was shouting. “Where the hell are you?”
“Who’s that?” Maguire shouted back.
“Captain Peterson! Is that Matterson?”
“Matterson’s dead.”
“Who’s in command? What have you got there?”
“Sergeant Maguire! Me, Corporal Levy, and seven men!”
“Well, Jesus Christ, have you set up a fuckin’ rest home there! Get rid of that sonofabitch machine gun!”
Maguire looked at Levy; Levy looked at Maguire.
“Fuck him,” Jake said.
“Motherfuckin’ bastard,” said Maguire.
The German machine gun opened up again, and Matterson’s body leaped and twisted under the impact of the bullets.
“Maguire, goddamn you, I’ll have your stripes and your ass!”
“Fuck you,” Maguire said softly.
“What do we do?” Jake asked him.
Maguire looked from mud-caked face to mud-caked face. Levy was nineteen; Maguire was twenty; the other seven were mostly eighteen years to twenty years. The rain increased.
“Anyone want to try?” Maguire asked.
Another burst of fire dumped Matterson’s body down upon them. His face had been shot away, and his brains splattered on the men in the shell hole.
“Oh, my God, I shit in my pants,” one of the men whimpered.
Maguire and two other men pushed Matterson’s body up out of the hole. Levy yelled, “We’re pinned down, captain!”
“Who’s that?”
“Corporal Levy.”
“Well, you get that gun, Levy, you and Maguire!”
“We’re pinned down.”
“Shit, you’re pinned down! Now you listen to me, you sheeny bastard–you get that gun!”
“Sweet man, that captain,” someone said.
“All heart,” said Maguire, and yelled, “Give us some cover! Where the hell are the field guns?”
“You get that gun!”
“We can go out each side,” Levy said. “You take four men, I take three. That gun’s not fifty yards from here. Let’s try grenades, and then we’ll make a run for it.”
“Why?” Maguire asked hopelessly.
“God knows.”
“So help me God, you motherfuckers,” the captain’s voice came, “I’ll court-martial every last one of you!”
“Let’s start throwing,” Jake said, cro
uching, then pulling the pin and heaving the grenade. “Come on–throw!”
They clawed their way through the mud and out of the hole. The German machine gun opened up. Jake fell, got to his feet, ran clumsily in the mud, threw another grenade, and then as a star shell lit up the place, saw the five Germans crouched around their gun. Someone else heaved a grenade at them, and Jake was firing into the burst of flame and mud. Then he and another man flung themselves into the hole and insanely drove their bayonets into the single German who was still alive. They lay there in a tangle of dead, torn human flesh, and then Jake began to yell, “We got them, sarge! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
But he never saw Maguire alive again, nor anyone else who had been in the shell hole with him except Fredericks, who had plunged into the machine-gun nest with him.
Ever since their first beginnings in America, it had been a practice among many Eastern European Jews to christen–if indeed such a term can be applied to Jewish naming–their children in duplicate. In other words, the rabbinical birth certificate would bear a Hebrew or Biblical name, while the civil birth certificate would bear an Anglo-Saxon version or a name which might be considered American. Mark Levy, on his rabbinical certificate, was Moses Levy, named after his paternal grandfather. In naming his son Jacob, he abandoned the practice, although at Sarah’s insistence his daughter, Miriam, became Martha. For some reason, Sarah abhorred the name Miriam.
Rabbi Samuel Blum, who remembered Mark’s father as one of the founders of his small Orthodox synagogue, called Mark “Moishe,” which is the Hebraic pronunciation of the name Moses, and now he said to him, “It’s been a long time, Moishe. You’ve changed. And you’ve prospered. Tell me about Sarah and the children.”
“They’re well. Jacob’s alive and unwounded, thank God.”
“He’s in the army?”
“God help me, yes. Very much in it. Now he’s on leave in Paris. They gave him a decoration and a field commission of lieutenant, and God willing, this cursed war will be over before he goes back.”
