by Howard Fast
Clair Harvey had come into ten thousand dollars’ insurance money when her father died. She had not known about the insurance, a company plan which Dan and Mark had instituted; as for savings, Jack Harvey had none. He spent what he earned, easily, sometimes grandly, often eloquently. When Clair first came to live with the Levys, she sought work in Sausalito. Until she found a part-time job at Grundy’s Hardware Emporium, she tried to do enough cleaning and chores around the place to pay for her keep–resisting all of Sarah’s arguments that simply to have her there was reward enough. When the insurance was paid, she gave up the job at Grundy’s, which she disliked intensely, and after much argument persuaded Sarah to accept ten dollars a week for her board. She and Sarah were both strong-minded women, and both of them became somewhat hysterical before the matter was settled. Sarah’s rationale was to put the money in a jar–whence it would some day be returned as a gift.
Clair, however, was far from idle. Not only did she continue to help with the housework, but she dedicated each day to the preparation of a history, anywhere between five and ten pages, of the past twenty-four hours, both in and out of the Levy establishment–a history that was folded, addressed, and dispatched to France the following morning. When this was finished, she had sixty-one letters from Jake, to be read and reread. While occupied thus, she had the adoration of Martha Levy, who at age thirteen was being transformed by the action of numerous ductless glands from a chunky child into a round-limbed, lovely, and gifted young lady.
There was a process in those times called “elocution,” which along with music and dancing lessons constituted the extracurricular activity of each properly raised young lady. It consisted of a technique of dramatic recitation, with much expression, of selections ranging from Shakespeare to William Cullen Bryant to Eugene Field and including such gems as “Oh, Captain My Captain” and “Spartacus’ Last Address to His Men.” Martha reveled in it, and Clair’s necessary return for Martha’s interest in her letters was to listen admiringly to the current recitation. For all that, the two had become very close. Clair allowed Martha to read some of Jake’s letters, and in turn Martha would listen raptly to Clair’s current news report to Jake, as for example: “Dan says that the people who run the Overseas Shipping Company are out of their minds because they have just built and launched a ship made of concrete. Martha’s cat died.”
“Put in his name,” Martha said.
“The cat’s name was Frederick. Did you know that street cars are now running through Twin Peaks Tunnel? And speaking of cats, this weekend Martha and I are going to caulk and paint your catboat. Yellow with a black horizontal stripe. Billy Adams put it in the sling and took it out of the water for us. I have been reading Spoon River Anthology. It’s beautiful, and I sent you a copy yesterday, but who knows whether you will ever receive it. Dan saw Steve Cassala at San Mateo, and he says that he, I mean Steve, is all right now with his wounds all healed except that he still has trouble with his stomach. Sunny Jim (you know I mean Mayor Rolph) came over to Marin County yesterday for a meeting with Mark and Dan. I don’t know why they couldn’t all meet in the city, but Mark says that Sunny Jim likes Marin County and he likes to ride the ferry every chance he gets. I think he likes tugboats most because that’s all they talked about–according to Sarah–when they were in the kitchen eating. She made them gefilta fish, but I don’t think I am spelling it right, and Dan who hates fish so much ate it anyway. It’s the only fish he will eat–”
“Do you think he likes all that junk, the way you mix it up?” Martha asked. “It’s very nice, Clair, but I don’t know.”
“He seems to like it. I used to tell him how much I loved him, but that made him feel rotten. It’s only natural.”
“Why?”
“Because we can’t do anything about it, and it just makes him feel rotten. I still tell him, but not as much.”
“I suppose you know what you’re doing. Can I practice now?”
“Which one?”
“The quality of mercy.”
“O.K.” She stretched out on the bed. “Give it a lot of zip.”
“It’s better if you watch.”
“I’m watching. Look. I’m propped up.”
“Is anyone downstairs? I want to be real loud. Dameon says that if the second balcony can’t hear it, it’s no good.”
“Who on earth is Dameon?”
“Dameon Fenwick. He’s our dramatic teacher. He’s beautiful.”
Clair was convulsed with giggles.
Hurt, Martha said, “I don’t think it’s funny.”
“But darling, no one has a name like Dameon. Dameon Fenwick, it’s just impossible.”
“You just wait until you meet him. You’ll swoon. He says I have talent.”
“So do I. The second balcony?”
“That’s where the important people are, the people who don’t have any money but love the theater. They must hear every word.”
Clair rose and closed the door to her bedroom. “Right. Now go to it. The Quality of Mercy, by William Shakespeare.”
“That’s not the name of the play. That’s Portia’s great speech in The Merchant of Venice.”
Coming into the kitchen one day, Clair found Sarah in tears, a letter in her hand. Clair had missed the post, and since the letter in Sarah’s hand was obviously from overseas, Clair experienced an electric shock of terror. “What happened?” she cried out. “What happened to Jake?”
“He’s safe. No more fighting. They made him an instructor, and he’s been transferred to a training base near Nantes. Can you imagine? He’s out of it. Oh, thank God, thank God!”
The two women embraced. “You frightened me so,” Clair said. “My heart stopped. Why do you cry when you’re happy? That’s a terrible thing to do.”
“I know, I know. Sit down, darling, I’ll make coffee. Tell me, where is Nantes?”
“I’ll get the atlas.”
She ran for the book, while Sarah put the coffee on to boil, and then they pored over the map of France. “Here,” Clair cried. “Oh, good, good. It’s miles and miles from the fighting. They must keep him there, they must. Let me read it.” The letter was disconnected, full of passages the censor had inked out. “He doesn’t like being an officer. Well, I like it. He feels guilty. Oh, Jake, you’re such a fool!”
“Who is this man Maguire?” Sarah asked her.
“Do you know, I think they find the stupidest men in the army and make them censors–or generals. Maguire was his sergeant. He was killed. Jake didn’t go into any details, but he writes a lot about Maguire.”
“If they only keep him there.”
“Sarah, Dan had lunch with General Oglethorpe at the Presidio and the general says that all the very smart gentlemen in Washington say the war will be over in another month. He even let drop some hints that the Germans had put out peace feelers.”
“God willing.” She poured the coffee. “And when Jake comes back, you’ll be married?”
“If he still wants to.”
“What nonsense!” She paused and Clair looked at her inquiringly. “Well, I don’t know how to say this. Mark is becoming Jewish again, ever since Jake went to France.”
“Wasn’t he always?”
“Yes and no. You know, I was born in Russia, in Kiev. I came here when I was seven years old, to New York. My marriage to Mark was arranged by his father before I ever saw him–well that’s the way they used to do things. It worked out all right. I suppose it might have been better but it also could have been a lot worse, believe me. Anyway, I grew up Orthodox, which means all kinds of rules and rituals which I won’t bore you with–”
“I know,” Clair said. “Kosher food and that kind of thing.”
“Yes. Well, when we were first married, I used to argue with Mark and I was hurt and frightened by the way he ignored everything religious. A lot Mark didn’t know and mostly he didn’t care. His father came to America from someplace in Poland in eighteen sixty-nine, and he got a job with a wanderin
g peddler. Would you believe it, just with a wagon and a mule, he and his wife wandered across the country from New York to San Francisco? It took them two years, just buying and selling pots and pans and cloth and anything else you could think of, and finally they ended up here. Mark’s father still had some feelings about being Jewish, and he was one of the people who started a synagogue in San Francisco, but Mark let go of it all until now, and now he’s decided that he’s Jewish again. Which is all right, you understand–”
“But he doesn’t like the notion of his son marrying a Christian?” CIair said softly.
“Mark loves you. You know that.” She looked at Clair curiously. “Darling, I never asked you before. What is your religion?”
“Heaven only knows.”
“But you must know.”
“Sarah, the truth is that I don’t. Oh, I’m sure I’m some kind of Protestant. Jack never spoke about my mother, and as far as Jack was concerned, he hated preachers so much he used to froth at the mouth when he met one. He would never set foot in a church. Poor darling, he told me once that when he died he was to be cremated and have the ashes scattered up the Redwood Coast, because that’s where all his buddies were.”
“Didn’t it ever bother you, not being anything?”
“No, because I’m myself.”
“Do you believe in God?”
“Sarah, I never gave it much thought. Oh, when Jake and I would be out on the bay in the catboat, with the wind blowing and the sun in the sky, then I’d just feel that everything was all right and the way it should be, but with this lousy war–do you believe in God, Sarah?”
She nodded. “Not that I don’t get angry with Him. I’m just not clever enough to understand how He does things. Clair,” she said, “if we asked you to become Jewish, would you?”
Clair thought about it for a while, her brow furrowed. Then she shook her head. “No.”
“But why not–if you’re not anything else that’s important?”
“Because I have to be what I am, whatever it is. Jake and I talked about that, about what we are. It never made any difference to me that Jake was Jewish. I hate to say this, Sarah, but I don’t think you and Mark understand Jake one bit. Mark thinks that Jake will come into that big department store that he and Dan are building, but you know that he won’t. It wouldn’t make any difference to me if I did what you and Mark want, but I think it would make a lot of difference to Jake.”
“How? How could it make a lot of difference to Jake?”
“I can’t explain that. I wasn’t just keeping company with Jake when he went overseas. We’re like one person. I have to be what I am. He has to be what he is. That’s the only way I can explain it.”
In October of that year, with an appetite whetted but not satiated by the endless slaughter in Europe, death went to work with something called influenza, for want of a better name. In the army, more men died of influenza than in battle, and in the cities the undertakers, until now separated by an ocean from the windfall of death, began to reap their share of the bloody harvest. The hospitals filled to overflowing, and day after day weary horses dragged the hearses up the steep hills of the city. Without justice–explained by the physicians as the action of a thing called antibodies–some were chosen and some were spared. In the house on Russian Hill, good health prevailed, but one day in his office, Dan received a frantic call from May Ling.
“Please come as soon as you can.”
When he reached the little house on Willow Street, the doctor had just departed, shrugging his shoulders wearily and telling May Ling, as she informed Dan, that she must keep the child cool with damp compresses and try to get him to drink as much liquid as possible. All the rest of that day and through the night, the boy’s fever rose, reaching one hundred and six degrees, while May Ling and Dan sat by the bedside and prayed and waited. Dan watched May Ling weep. That had never happened before. They sat there, wordlessly, helplessly observing the agony of an eleven-month-old bit of human flesh named Joseph, something out of their loins and love, dying, as they saw it. They touched hands. When they embraced, it was because in the dark terror of the night, they had been reduced to nothing, impotent specks in a gigantic, senseless universe. And then, as the first gray image of dawn appeared through the windows of the child’s room, the fever broke.
Dan went downstairs, mixed himself a stiff drink, tasted it, and pushed it away. An hour later, the nurse Dan had found arrived, and May Ling was able to leave the child and come downstairs.
“Do you want some breakfast?” she asked Dan.
He shook his head.
“I think we should both eat something,” she said. “It will help nothing if we get sick. Joey will be all right now. The nurse says that’s the pattern it takes. She says children take it better than older people. You’ve been away all night, Dan. Should you telephone them?”
“The hell with it.”
“You have a family and children.”
“Have I? I think I only have you and that kid upstairs. That’s the whole world. The rest of it can fuck off and be damned.”
“You’re all right now.” She smiled. “But no such language in front of the nurse. She’s a prissy little lady.”
May Ling went into the kitchen, and a little later Dan’s nostrils were awakened to the smell of frying bacon. He ate hungrily, three eggs, six strips of bacon, buttered rolls, and two cups of coffee.
“You know,” May Ling said, “you’re putting on weight.”
“First you beg me to eat–”
“If I don’t tell you, who will?”
“I put on a few pounds. I’m two hundred and ten. I’ll take care of it.”
“Do you know, Danny,” she said, “do you know what I thought about mostly last night?”
“What I thought about.”
“No. Well, yes, I thought that he would die, and that was like a hot iron cutting into my heart. But more than that, I kept thinking about how much I love you. Danny, here is something I promised myself I would never say. I’m going to say it. Never leave me–never leave me, Danny.”
“Now don’t cry again.”
“I won’t. I’m not. I’m so tired.” She was falling asleep at the table. Over her protests, he picked her up in his arms and carried her up to the bedroom and laid her on the bed. She was asleep as he pulled off her shoes. Then he went into Joseph’s room.
“How is he?”
“He’ll be all right,” the nurse said.
“My wife is sleeping. Let her sleep as long as you can.”
“That Chinese lady is your wife?”
“Yes, ma’am, she is.” Dan took out a roll of bills and peeled off fifty dollars. “This is a bit extra–for you. The kid means a lot to us. Take good care of him.”
Lying came easily, or was it a lie? In his own mind, May Ling was his wife. Then, God help me, he would ask himself again and again, what am I doing with Jean?
He left Willow Street and came home. It was ten o’clock in the morning and he had not slept; he was unshaven, and his clothes were wrinkled. A single day without shaving brought a blue-black mask to his face, and when he came into the house on Russian Hill, Jean regarded him with a mixture of disgust and anger.
“You bastard, where have you been?” she exploded.
“In Oakland. We had trouble at the pier there. A cargo net broke, and two of the men were injured.”
“And you never thought to call?”
Lies, lies, lies–it screamed in his mind. What in God’s name am I doing? “I sat all night with death,” he said slowly, his face contorted with his inner agony. “I tried to push it away.”
The statement was unlike him, not his words nor any way of thinking Jean had ever known him to engage in; it was as if he were quoting. Her anger washed out. “Mother is very sick,” she said. “I’m sorry I got so mad. You should have called.”
“I should have. What is it, the flu?”
“Yes. I’m going over there now.”
“
I think I have to sleep,” he said, very slowly. “I’m tired. A few hours.”
“I’ll call you later,” Jean said, and then she left.
Stretched out on his bed, Dan slid into a nightmare. First he tried to remember what he had just said to Jean. His lies were becoming so thoughtless and facile that the moment after they were spoken they slipped away. He had completed the deal with Whittier a week ago. Did Jean know that the ships were no longer his? What did he tell her? A cargo net had broken. Well, it would still be his responsibility; the agreement said that Whittier would take possession only after the ships discharged cargo at New York, Newark, or San Francisco; but was there a ship due in at Oakland? He thought so, but his mind refused to function properly. The Anacreon was due in from Hong Kong. To hell with it! Let her find out. He dozed off trying to remember what the name Anacreon meant, if it meant anything. Then, in his dream, he was on the dock, under a bulging cargo net, and it broke. A warning bell was clanging in his ears, but it was too late, and slowly as if they were held in transparent molasses, the great crates were descending on top of him.
The telephone awakened him. It was Hemmings, the Seldons’ butler, and he asked whether this was Mr. Daniel Lavette.
“Yes, yes.”
“Mrs. Lavette asked me to telephone, sir. I bear unhappy tidings. Mrs. Thomas Seldon has just passed away. Mrs. Lavette will remain here until you arrive.”
Dan stripped and showered and shaved, angry at his own lack of pity or grief or remorse. But then, he had hardly known his mother-in-law. During the seven years of his marriage, she had remained safely behind her rigid barrier of class and family pride, never forgetting for a moment that while she lived in California her family, the Asquiths, were from Boston and could claim relationship with the Adamses and the Lodges. He could count on one hand the times he had been suffered to kiss her cool cheek, and while she had never been nasty to him, he could not recall that she had ever been kind.
Thomas Seldon opened the door of his home for Dan, and said chokingly, “Good to see you, my boy. You’ll have to take care of things. I’m in no condition to think, and poor Jean is devastated. The whole world breaking up–she was too young, too young.”
