The Immigrants

by Howard Fast

  “Danny, I don’t know. I’m just happier and sadder than I have ever been in all my life.”

  In the big tile kitchen of the house that to Clair was always the hacienda, the five of them were seated around the redwood table, Sarah and Mark and Martha and Jake and Clair. Mark was a millionaire, but Sarah would not have a servant living in the house. A gardener, yes, and a woman in to help with the cleaning, but she would do the cooking herself; and now they had eaten her soup and chicken and vegetables, and Jake told them that he and Clair were married. He told it flatly, because he knew of no other way to tell it. Then there was a long, painful silence, until Sarah burst out, “Why? But why?”

  “Because we had to do it our way,” Jake said.

  “When?” Mark demanded.

  “Yesterday. The justice of the peace over in Napa married us.”

  “God damn it!” Mark shouted.

  “That was a stupid thing to do!”

  Sarah looked at him, her blue eyes cold as ice. “Just keep quiet, Mark. Whatever you say now will be wrong.”

  “Why?”

  “If I could tell you why, you wouldn’t be what you are.”

  “And what am I, some animal to be treated this way?”

  “Please,” Clair said, “I love both of you. Try to understand that we had to do what we did the way we did.”

  Mark breathed deeply and managed to control himself. “All right. You’ve been like a daughter to us, Clair. Don’t you think I knew that you and Jake would be married some day?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Have we ever mistreated you?”

  “Stop that!” Sarah said. “Leave it alone. They’re married. You should thank God. There’s nobody in the world I’d rather have for a daughter.” Close to tears, she rose and went to the stove. “I’ll give you coffee and dessert. I have an apple pie. And then we’ll talk about this like civilized people.”

  “Well, I’m glad,” Martha said. “I’m glad. I think you’re all dumb about this. I’m glad.” She got up, ran over to Clair, and threw her arms around her. “You’re the best person in the world, and Jake’s just lucky.”

  Choking, fighting the tears as she cut the pie, Sarah said, “Only, I don’t know what else this big house is good for except for a wedding. I always thought it would be.”

  “It still can be,” Mark said. “So I got excited–with reason. Well, it’s done. But who says you can’t be married again–this time with Rabbi Blum.”

  “The rabbi can’t marry them,” Sarah said. “For heaven’s sake, Mark, don’t start in with that again. Clair’s not Jewish, and the rabbi can’t marry them. That’s the Law. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it has to be”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way,” Mark said stubbornly.

  “Dear Mark,” Clair said, “I can’t become Jewish.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she is what she is!” Jake cried. “Can’t you understand what that means?”

  “Don’t talk to me like that! I’m your father.”

  “Please, Jake,” Clair said, “let me try to explain.”

  “No, let him explain,” Mark said hotly. “It’s time he did some explaining. He’s been back two months now, and I can’t talk to him. I built that store for him, the biggest goddamned department store in this state, and he won’t even look at it.”

  “It’s not for him,” Clair pleaded. “Mark, we’re not ungrateful, but–”

  “I’m ungrateful,” Jake interrupted. “It’s time I said it. You built your damned L and L empire on blood, and it stinks.”

  “Don’t!” Sarah cried. “That’s not fair.”

  “Like hell it stinks!” Mark shouted. “Without the supplies we carried, you all would have died over there. What are you telling me? That we’re rotten because we were patriots? That we’re no good because we wanted this country to survive, because we wanted France and England to survive? We didn’t sink the ships! That was the same bastards who tried to kill you over there. The same Huns. And then you talk like that to me! What gives you the right?”

  Jake leaped to his feet and stalked out of the room. Sarah wept. Martha sat frozen, her mouth open. Mark sat there, his hands trembling. Clair ran over to him and put her arms around him.

  “Mark–dear Mark, we love you, both of us. Jake’s upset. He’s been upset since he came back, terribly upset. You have to understand that.”

  “What did I do to him?” Mark asked, his voice almost a whimper. “What did I ever do to him? Was I ever mean, nasty to him? What did I ever do that wasn’t for him? He’s my son.”

  “It will be all right,” Clair said. “Just give him time. We both love you, Mark.”

  “Go outside to him,” Sarah said.

  Now Martha burst into tears and ran from the table. Clair followed her. When they were alone, Sarah said to her husband, “Do you know how far I am from home, my husband? From a place called Kiev, in Russia? Maybe eight, nine thousand miles–here in this strange land on the other side of the earth. I’m a lonely Jewish woman growing old. Did that ever occur to you? You want her to be Jewish. You want Jake to be Jewish. But you stopped being a Jew twenty-five years ago. Go to Rabbi Blum and tell him to convert you before you try to convert my daughter. I don’t know who makes wars and who makes money, but I know the best thing that ever happened to us is that wonderful girl he married.”

  Jean Lavette had often felt–though she would have hardly articulated it–that one of the desirable goals of wealth was an indifference to money. The difference between such a condition and extravagance was subtle but nevertheless real; and her own background was too close to the placer mines and too compatible with banking to achieve true indifference. Dan was openhanded, but hardly indifferent. Alan Brocker was indifferent, in a manner that reminded her of the New York City society heroes in the stories of Richard Harding Davis she had read so avidly in her schoolgirl years. It was not that Brocker was wealthier than the Seldons–although in terms of liquid assets he was a good deal wealthier than the Lavettes–but rather that his wealth was there without compulsion on his part, managed by others and increasing, swelled by the war which he had hardly paid lip service to. Now he paid thirty-seven thousand dollars for a custom-built Leyland touring car. It was unique, the only one of its kind on the West Coast, the first British touring car with an eight-cylinder in-line engine.

  The day after Dan departed for Hawaii, Alan turned up at the house on Russian Hill, driving his new mechanical wonder, which could climb any hill in the city at a gallop, dangling in front of Jean an invitation from Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford to visit them at their home, Pickfair, in Los Angeles and to watch their current movie being filmed. Alan knew everyone and had been everywhere, and as he pointed out to Jean, Los Angeles was neither Venice nor the South of France, but only two days’ journey south by car.

  “We’ll stay over at Carmel,” he said. “I know a delightful little inn there. It will be a great adventure.”

  “I am much too old for adventures,” Jean protested.

  “What nonsense. I’ll tell you something else. Let a director look at you once, and he’ll be on his knees pleading for a new star–namely, Jean Lavette.”

  “That kind of flattery is idiotic.” And then she added, “What will you tell your friends the Fairbanks–that I’m your mistress?”

  “If you wish.”

  “I do not wish,” she said firmly. It was the first time she had ever used the word mistress, even in her own mind, and it left a raw, nasty taste on her tongue. Yet she agreed to go with him, making arrangements with Wendy Jones for the children.

  The trip started poorly. She disliked the sun and the wind on a complexion she cherished, and they argued about putting up the top. Finally, she prevailed, discovering that he was so inept with his hands that she had to get out of the car and help him. The road was lumpy and bad, and she prayed that they would not have a flat tire, but her prayers were to no avail, and on an empty stretch of
bad road, just south of Davenport, they blew a tire. There was nothing in sight but the rocky beach and the broad, dazzling sweep of the Pacific.

  Swearing softly under his breath, Alan got out, removed his pale blue sport jacket, walked around to the back of the car, and opened the tiny boot.

  “Do you know,” he called out to her, “there’s no jack here.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Well, come and see for yourself.”

  “I don’t have to see. If it’s not in the boot, it’s somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “How do I know?” she shouted at him. “I’ve never seen one of these ridiculous cars before. But if you were stupid enough to pay thirty-seven thousand dollars for a car that has no jack, then you deserve whatever happens.”

  “That’s cheering,” he replied, giving up on the boot and coming over to where she sat. “You’re a real love.”

  “Do you want me to get out and find the jack?”

  “There is no jack.”

  She leaned out and pointed to a leather box strapped onto the running board. “What’s in there?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Well, why don’t you stop being absolutely stupid and look?”

  “Thank you!” he snapped. He opened the leather box, and there was jack and lug wrench. He stood and stared at the tools. “I can’t change a tire,” he said finally.

  “What?”

  “It’s not as simple as you think. You have to get the old one off the rim, put on the new one, and inflate the inner tube. I can’t do it. I’m not a damn mechanic.”

  “No, you certainly are not.”

  “Well, what would you want me to do? I’m wearing white flannels.”

  “So you are. Well, we passed a garage about three miles back. I suggest you walk there.”

  “Three miles? In this sun?”

  What would have come of the argument, Jean never knew, for at that moment a car driving north pulled off the road behind them, and a neatly dressed young man in his twenties got out.

  “Trouble?” he asked. “That’s a real beauty,” he added, admiring the Leyland but looking at Jean.

  “I have a flat.”

  “I’d help you, but I’d hate to try it on that car. Never saw one of those before.”

  “If you could run me up to the garage? It’s about three miles north of here.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “I’m not staying here alone,” Jean said.

  “For a half-hour?”

  “No.”

  The result was that Alan remained with the car, and Jean rode off with the neatly dressed young man, whose name was Fritz Alchek, who drove a Ford, who carried a line of men’s haberdashery, and who was on his way to San Francisco. At the garage, the owner demanded ten dollars in advance before he would close up and go down the road. Jean paid him the ten dollars and then said to the young man, “Would you mind taking me to San Francisco?”

  “My pleasure.” He was eager but not inventive.

  They were at least five miles north of the garage before Mr. Alchek put his hand tentatively on Jean’s knee. “Mr. Alchek,” she said quietly, “I’m as tall as you are and quite strong. The next time you put your hand on my knee, I’ll break it for you.”

  At San Gregorio, he pulled up and told her to get out.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s my car, you bitch.”

  The local garageman at San Gregorio charged her twenty dollars to drive her home, and three days later her suitcase was delivered by messenger. Curiously enough, the whole experience excited rather than depressed her, and the result was a restless urgency to get out of San Francisco on her own. She wrote to Dan in Hawaii, telling him what she had decided to do. Then she went to Cook’s and made all the arrangements. Her mother’s younger sister had married an Englishman, a tea merchant named Vincent Cumberland who lived in London. There was an exchange of cables, and ten days after the incident with the Leyland, Jean, Wendy Jones, Barbara, age seven, and Tom, age nine, were on a train to New York to take ship for England. It was time, she decided, that she overcame her dislike for ocean travel.

  On their second trip to Higate, in the Napa Valley, both Clair and Jake had the sensation of returning to a place they knew very well indeed, a place that was familiar, that knew them as they knew it. Jake left the motor of his old car running, while he opened the creaking, rusty iron gates; and then they drove up the rutted dirt road to the house. It was midday, the air undulating gently in the heat, butterflies floating like fat, lazy drops of gold, a saucy lizard sunning itself in the sand. Two white hens scratched at the soil, and as they got out of the car, Mike Gallagher came around the house, leading a milk cow.

  “I’m a bloody rotten farmer now,” he said. “Hello, kids–you back for the night?”

  “If you’ll have us,” Jake said.

  “We’re ready to eat, so why don’t you join us. Go inside. I’m just putting Bessie out to scrounge, and I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

  Lunch was homemade sausage meat, fried eggs, boiled potatoes, and fresh milk as thick as cream, and with it Mary Gallagher’s home-baked sour bread and home-churned butter. Jake and Clair ate until a sense of shameful gluttony put a stop to it; and then Gallagher poured glasses of a clear amber sweet wine of his own making. “A bit of dessert drinking,” he explained, “and a wee opportunity to flout their cursed Prohibition.”

  The wine was delicious. “You make it?” Jake asked.

  “We did,” Mary Gallagher said.

  “And now the stinking government agents are all over us. I am at the end of my rope, kids, and I’ll not make it out of renting a room to a lad and a lass once a month.”

  “Have you ever thought of selling the place?” Jake asked innocently.

  “Oh? And who the hell would buy this turkey?”

  “We dream of selling,” Mary Gallagher said. “My sister lives in Santa Barbara, and she begs us to come down there. They got a nice little dry-goods store and we could buy into it. We’re too old for this kind of thing.”

  “What have you got here?” Jake asked. “I mean how much land?”

  Gallagher regarded him shrewdly. “Ah–are you making conversation, boyo, or are you interested?”

  “We’re interested,” Clair said, smiling. “That’s why we came back.”

  “Well, both buildings are stone. You saw them last time. Oh, I admit they are run-down, and the plumbing ain’t what it should be. Roof needs some work. But the buildings are sound. Counting the kitchen, there are nine rooms in this one–not that we use them, but you’re both young and healthy, and God willing, you’ll plant a few seeds. You’ve seen the other building. It ain’t a modern plant, but it’s good. Them fermentation vats and them aging barrels are all good German oak, worth their weight in gold if this country should ever get over this insanity. Now I couldn’t give them away. The presses are good. I got a thousand or so bottles–” He spread his hands hopelessly. “Never made fancy wine, just good white table wine. I’m a small man, Jake, that’s the truth of it. Well, it’s all there. It ain’t worth a tinker’s damn today, but it’s there. The well is good, and it’s never gone dry. You can take out a thousand gallons, and it won’t go dry. As for the land, I got nine hundred acres, sixty acres in vines, and they’re choking with weeds. It’s a sorry thing to watch it all perish, believe me.”

  “Can’t you market them for table grapes?” Clair asked.

  “Hah! You seen the price of table grapes? They’re a glut on the market. I want to be honest with you. I can’t afford no labor, and I ain’t got the strength to pick them and crate them and market them even if it was possible. Oh, no, kids, they done us in proper. They put a knife in my heart, the lousy bastards, just as if the good Lord Himself didn’t lift His glass of wine. And what did they drink at the Last Supper–water? Like hell they did!”

  “Oh, don’t carry on like that, Mike,” his wife said. “You’ll have yourself a stroke.�
��

  “And good riddance. Now wait a minute, kids,” he said, “your name’s Levy. You’re Jewish?”

  Jake nodded.

  “Ah. Well, it’s the damned Baptists and the damned Methodists that did this shameful thing to us. I never had no rancor in my heart against the Protestants, but it’s a shameful thing they have done, a shameful thing.”

  “We’d like to walk over all the land,” Jake said, “and we’d like to look at the buildings again. Then we can talk about it.”

  “Sure, so long as you realize I’m not trying to cheat you. I’ve told you the truth.”

  As Gallagher led them over the great spread of the nine hundred acres, Jake and Clair’s excitement grew in leaps and bounds. High up on the hillside was a thick copse of live oak and mesquite. In one place, a dry, rocky bed cut a ravine.

  “It runs like the devil himself when the rains come.”

  “Have you never thought of damming it for irrigation?” Jake asked.

  “Sure I’ve thought of it. Strength and money, lad, strength and money. You could put five hundred of these acres into vines with the proper irrigation. This is the finest wine country in the world, and some day the world is going to discover that–if we ever rid ourselves of this lousy Volstead thing.”

  They poked through the old winery. “Oh, I love the smell,” Clair said.

  “I make a bit of squeezing for us, but you got to be careful. Look at these walls. A foot thick. It can be hot as hell outside, and just so cool and pleasant in here. Breaks my heart to look at it.”

  They went back to the kitchen, where Gallagher poured glasses of a clear, white, dry wine.

  “My God, this is good!” Jake exclaimed. “This is as good as anything I ever drank in France.”

  “Better, boy, better. Truth is, I bought them vines out of a French dealer almost thirty years ago, but there’s no weather in France like this and no soil either.”