The Immigrants

by Howard Fast

“I know. That’s why I never said anything or did anything. I think it began at my wedding. That stinks, doesn’t it, to say that all I could think about at my wedding was another girl? But I didn’t love my wife. I never loved her, and the funny thing is that I don’t know why I married her. It just seemed to be something that everyone wanted and I didn’t have enough guts not to go along with it. I didn’t sleep with her for years–oh, Christ, why am I saying all this? I feel like a fool, an idiot, and a louse.”

  “Poor Steve.” She leaned forward and kissed him. “Steve, I think you’re the kindest, sweetest man I ever met.”

  “Will you keep this?” he asked, holding up the pendant. “Please. Don’t show it to your folks. But keep it, please. I’m not asking for anything else. You’re going away. God knows when I’ll see you again. I can accept what you say about your feelings for me. I have to. But what harm will it do if you take this, and then at least I’ll know that something I got for you is with you.”

  “It’s beautiful, Steve.” She looked at him. His dark, sad eyes pleaded with her, and then she nodded and smiled and said, “All right, Mr. Cassala. I’ll keep it, and you must think of me as a little gold digger, and that will break down all your silly notions about how great I am and you’ll stop being in love, and then we’ll be good, dear friends forever and ever. Agreed?”

  “We’ll be good, dear friends–be sure of that.”

  Thomas Seldon had aged quickly in the years since his wife’s death. His hair had turned white, and at the age of seventy-three, he showed signs of feebleness. Going into his club with Dan, he walked slowly and carefully, and when he was greeted in passing by John Whittier, he looked at him blankly. “Who was that?” he asked Dan.

  “Grant Whittier’s son, John.”

  “Of course. I saw him only last week. What will he think?”

  “It’s all right,” Dan said. “He probably thought nothing of it.”

  “Well, it gets worse. Forget names, faces–only the old days are clear and bright. I keep thinking about the city, the way it was when I was a kid. Clipper ships as thick as fleas in the harbor, board sidewalks, muddy streets–by golly, I remember the vigilantes, and that goes back a while. Saw a public hanging once, right there on the Market Street wharf. You know, I rode the first cable car on California Street–well, maybe not the very first but it was the first day. The Eighth Wonder of the World. But it’s all like a dream. You look at the city now, and it’s all like a dream.”

  Seated in the high-ceilinged dining room, with its paneled oak walls, its white tablecloths, and gleaming silver, among those who in Dan’s youth had been called the nabobs and pashas and who were now simply men of distinction and power, Dan felt that his own beginnings were equally dreamlike.

  Seldon was wandering again, remembering how the cart horses labored on the hills. “The teamster would get down and put his own shoulder to it, and then the kids would come running. Did it myself–oh yes. We’d all put our shoulders to the cart, and the teamster would shout, ‘Gee! gee!’–can’t believe it today. Where’s Mark? Wasn’t he to be here?”

  “He’ll be here any minute,” Dan assured him.

  “Good man, Mark. Good man. Good heavens, when I think of it. Twenty years ago neither of you had a nickel–and today. But this, Dan, this airplane business. I don’t know. Never been up in one and I never intend to go up in one. If the good Lord intended us to fly–”

  “Tom, you could also say that he would have given us wheels if he intended us to ride in trains.”

  “That’s good. I’ll listen. Say your piece, and I’ll listen.”

  Mark joined them then, and the waiter came to take their order. “If you want a drink,” Seldon said, “I can swing it. The committee disapproves, but they keep a few bottles of good stuff on hand. They serve it in coffee cups, a degrading way to treat fine whiskey, but if you want it–”

  They passed on the drinks. “How’s that pretty wife of yours?” Seldon asked Mark.

  “Fine, Mr. Seldon. Just fine.”

  “You know, Mark, I kept a bit of company with a Jewish girl once. Oh, she was a beauty. Her father ran a three-card faro game in the Tenderloin. Did well, too. But when my daddy found out about it, he took my head off–”

  Dan steered the conversation to his own point, troubled by how easily Seldon’s mind wandered. “The basic thing is the airport,” he told Seldon, “and now that the Municipal Airport has opened at Mills Field, the future is clear. Mark has been out there, and we bought the franchise. We’ve rented space for two hangars and office facilities and waiting room. As we see it, the first step is regular passenger service between here and Los Angeles, and we’re making arrangements at the Los Angeles airport. I’ve had a statistical prognosis done, and according to the figures they give me, the growth in Los Angeles will be enormous. Mind you, Tom, we’ve put all this together in a complete projection. Mark has several copies with him, and we’ll leave that with you. Now I just want to fill you in and answer any questions you have.”

  “The first question is who’s going to use this service of yours? I wouldn’t.”

  “Don’t be too sure of that.” Dan smiled. “You’ll have a company pass in any case.”

  “I’m damn sure. I’d have to have my head examined to climb into one of those stick and fabric contraptions.”

  “So you would,” Dan agreed. “We’re not going to run any stick and fabric contraptions. I’ve made three trips to Detroit, and I’ve had hours of conversation with Henry Ford, his son, Edsel, and Jim McDonnell. Mostly with McDonnell, his designer and engineer. They’ve designed and produced a thing called the Ford Trimotor, and it’s going to revolutionize the whole industry. And it’s no contraption of sticks and fabric. It’s metal–a whole airplane out of metal.”

  “Metal? Iron? Dan, do you mean to tell me you can make an airplane out of iron and get it off the ground?”

  “Not iron, no. The Ford Trimotor is built out of high-strength Duralumin. That’s a light, strong metal, and they coat it with aluminum to prevent corrosion. It’s an incredible plane, Tom. It’s fifty feet long, with a wingspan of seventy-four feet. The cabin is sixteen feet long. Think of that, sixteen feet, and you can stand up in it and walk around. There are seats for twelve passengers, and it’s just about the safest plane in the world. It can take off in not much more than a hundred yards, which means we can go into almost any airport–San Diego, Reno, Tacoma–when we’re ready. It’s something out of the future. There’s never been anything in the world like it. And it will fly at a hundred miles an hour–three motors–and it can land with two of them.”

  “Dan, a train will go eighty miles an hour.”

  “Not between here and Los Angeles. That’s nine hours, and we can cut the time in half. Leave San Francisco at seven in the morning. You’re in Los Angeles in time for lunch. Leave Los Angeles at four and you’re back here in time for dinner. No train can come near matching that. We go as the crow flies.”

  “And what will this cost?” Seldon asked, shaking his head dubiously.

  “A million and a half to start the ball rolling–more as we expand. We’ve taken the first step already and put in the order with Ford for five planes. Tom, you backed us on the ships and other things, and it’s worked. Believe me, this is the beginning of something bigger than anything we ever dreamed of.”

  “What are you into us for now, Dan?” he asked bleakly.

  “Mark?”

  “Thirteen million, two hundred and twenty thousand. We’ve been reducing the principal at the rate of ten thousand a month–and we’ve never been a day behind on the interest. I think that’s pretty damn good,” Mark answered.

  “How’s the store doing?”

  “We should run a net profit of eight hundred thousand by the end of the fiscal year. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I’m not complaining about how you run things, but how much are you going to run? Three ocean liners, the store here, the hotel in Hawaii, and I hear you b
een buying land.”

  “Some day that land’s going to wipe out every penny of indebtedness we have. You can see how this city is expanding. The land we’re buying on the peninsula and in Marin County will be worth a fortune some day. When they build a bridge across the Golden Gate–”

  “Son,” Seldon said, “I’ve heard that bridge talk for twenty years. They’ll never do it. You say you’ve put this all down on paper? Let me study it and think about it.”

  After they had left Seldon, Mark said to Dan, “I think we’re making a mistake. Putting everything in one basket, I mean. Why don’t we go to Tony Cassala with this? He can handle a million and a half.”

  “Because, old chum, a million and a half is only the beginning. It’s only a hook. That operation you laid out in our prospectus can’t work the way it is, and I’m glad it can’t. We have to go up the coast to Portland and Seattle. This is only the beginning. We’re going to build us the biggest damn airline west of the Rockies, and that’s only the beginning. McDonnell says that in two years, they’ll have something that can take the Rockies and in five years the airplane’s speed will be two and a half times what it is today. Two hundred and fifty miles an hour, and we’re in at the ground floor.”

  “Listen, Dan,” Mark said, “even if your dreams are real, we’re doing the wrong thing, hanging it all on bank loans.”

  “What other way do you suggest?”

  “I was talking to Sam Goldberg, and he says now is the time to go public, to issue stock and get a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. He says that if we put out half a million shares at twenty-five dollars a share–”

  “Hell, Mark, what we’ve got is worth more than twelve and a half million, a damn sight more, and you know that.”

  “Let me finish. I’m talking about half the issue. We keep fifty percent We still have control, and we got a working capital of twelve and a half million dollars. Goldberg says that in this market the shares could double and even triple in a matter of weeks–months at the most.”

  “No, sir! God damn it, Mark, we built this thing ourselves. It’s ours. We’ve talked about this before. I’m not going to hand it over to the public.”

  Mark spread his hands hopelessly. “No matter how much we talk about this, I don’t seem to get through to you. We’re not giving away one damn thing. We pick up twelve million on the issue, and the fifty percent of the common stock we retain is worth another twelve million–that is at the date of issue. Suppose it triples, and with our earnings, it’s got to triple in this market. They’re selling garbage at fifty dollars a share. We’re giving real value. But if it triples, we’re sitting on thirty-six million dollars.”

  “Which we can’t touch without relinquishing control.”

  “Dan, that’s absolutely wrong. Sam Goldberg has been in corporate law for years. Hell, we’ve known him twenty years. According to him and his partner, we can retain control with twenty percent of the stock. But I’m not advocating that. I’m only saying that if we can lay hands on twelve million, we should grab it. We can pay out what we now pay in interest as dividends, or half of it, or nothing at all if we’re pressed.”

  “Mark, I just don’t like it.”

  “Do you realize that we pay Seldon over a million dollars a year for the use of his money. What in hell sense does that make? And suppose he should call his loans?”

  “Hell, if he calls, we cover it somewhere else. We could go to Crocker or Wells Fargo. Even Tony could come up with five million if we had our backs to the wall. I’m not worried about that. The old man likes me. He always has. If you want to take a hundred thousand dollars and play this crazy market–O.K. But our own issue–”

  “Will you at least give it some thought? Will you at least meet with Goldberg and listen to what he has to say?”

  “I’ll listen. Why not.”

  “Good. Now what about the old man? Will he come up with the million and a half?”

  “He’ll come up with it. Never forget a thing called community property–the curse or blessing of California, depending on how you look at it. Half of whatever I build belongs to Jean. And the old man’s absolutely nuts about his grandchildren.” He grabbed Mark and swung him around. “Marcus, my lad, you know what’s going to run this country some day? The airlines, lad. The railroads had their day. Next, the airlines. And laddie, do you know who’s going to run the airlines? Marcus Levy and Daniel Lavette. We’re just beginning to crawl onto the top of this golden shitpile they call big business, and once we get there, we’re going to stake it out. Placer mining? Shit, lad. That’s where the real gold mine is–out there.” And he swept his arm around to include the city and the bay and the mountains in the distance.

  Of all the things May Ling had to bear, the most painful was to see her father’s spirit broken, to watch him grow old and bent before her eyes. Day after day, week after week, he left the house each morning to look for work. He had never learned to drive a car. First, on foot, he exhausted the possibilities of Hollywood; then, still on foot, he exhausted what opportunities might have existed in Beverly Hills; finally he made his way by trolley downtown. He was skilled and he was educated. He knew more about the management of a business than most of the businessmen in Los Angeles and more about accounting than most certified public accountants. He knew more about the financial complexities of a functioning department store than Marcus Levy and more about the financial complexities of shipping than Dan Lavette; but in the City of Los Angeles, in the year 1928, there were only three kinds of jobs open to Orientals: they could be gardeners, they could clean latrines, or they could work in the kitchen of a restaurant. This at least was the knowledge accumulated by Feng Wo in his search, and each evening he returned home more defeated, more hopeless.

  Until one day when he announced to his family at dinner that he had found a job. But there was no joy and no note of triumph in the announcement, and May Ling regarded him suspiciously.

  “What kind of a job?” she asked him.

  “It’s a job. What does it matter, so long as I work?”

  “Because we are not starving. We have enough money. We have savings. So tell me, father, what kind of a job is this?”

  “The dignity is in the worker, not in the job. The job is to wash dishes in a Chinese restaurant.”

  “No!” It came out of May Ling like a cry of pain. “No, you will not!”

  “My dear daughter,” Feng Wo said gently, while his wife, So-Toy, and his grandson, Joseph, sat wide-eyed and silent, “when I was a young man, before I met Daniel Lavette, and you were a little child, I did work that you would consider unspeakable. I cleaned toilets. I shined shoes. I picked up the droppings of the cart horses and sold them to a fertilizer company for three cents a bushel. I dug muck from the bottom of a silted canal. No one in Los Angeles will accept the services of a Chinese bookkeeper or accountant at any price–no, not even if I offered to work for nothing. To wash dishes is decent and honorable labor, and at least I can hold my head up.”

  At that time, the University of California campus was still on the eastern edge of Hollywood, at Vermont Street north of Melrose. Work had already started on a new campus, to be located in Westwood Village, but it would be at least two years more before the new quarters would be ready. May Ling had found for her family a small, five-room, one-story house about three blocks from the campus, a small, stucco house, the type called a Hollywood bungalow. Its location enabled her to walk to and from work; and the day after her father announced his new occupation, she decided, walking to work in the morning, upon a course of action. This was very much in the nature of May Ling. She was not a victim. During all her years with Dan Lavette, she had acted out of her own will and desire and out of love for a man. When the situation began to take its toll on her child, she had changed the situation. She had a deep, unshakeable love for four people: Dan Lavette, her son, and her father and mother; and she was sufficiently Chinese to regard the family as the core of existence.

  Her first
step, now, was to see Mr. Vance, the head librarian. He was a small, thin, nearsighted man who was reasonably in awe of May Ling’s ability to find her way through the increasing collection of Oriental literature; and when she sat down in his office and informed him that nowhere in the library was there an English version of the writing of either Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu, he agreed with her that the situation was deplorable.

  “Are they important?” he asked.

  “As philosophers,” May Ling assured him, “they are as important to Chinese thought as Plato and Aristotle are to Western thought.”

  “Indeed? Then by all means we should order the books.”

  “We can’t. English translations simply don’t exist.”

  “Really? Not even in Great Britain?”

  “I presume not. Certainly not in America.”

  “Then I don’t see what we can do about it.”

  “The problem is,” May Ling insisted, “that there is simply no way for a student to approach China historically without these books. If there had never been a Lao Tzu or a Chuang Tzu–well there would not be a China as we know it. They lay down the basis of Taoist thought, and Taoist thought is the rock upon which the whole structure of Chinese philosophy is built.”

  “But if the books do not exist in English?”

  “They are not very long. Five thousand words contains the essence of Lao Tzu. Perhaps twenty thousand words more for the most important writing of Chuang Tzu. Certainly we can afford to have this work translated, and then if we mimeographed even a hundred copies, we would have a veritable treasure-trove–something that exists in no other university in America. Think of the distinction it would bring upon the library.”

  Mr. Vance was impressed. “A fascinating notion, Mrs. Lavette, but you know, the university has no press here. The press is at Berkeley. Of course, we could submit it later for publication, as a product of Los Angeles. They tend to sneer a bit at our scholastic achievement. Could you do it?”

  “Good gracious, no,” May Ling said. “I can read Mandarin–but a proper, scholarly translation, no, not in a thousand years. But I know someone who could do it.”