“I really wish you would stop this, Grandfather,” Clete said.
“Mr. Ettinger and the other fellow who’s going with you,” the old man said, “the Italian, have a right to know this story, Cletus. Please don’t interrupt me again.”
Clete sensed Ettinger’s eyes on him, and looked at him. The eyes seemed to say, I understand. Let him finish. There’s no way he can be stopped. Clete saw also in Ettinger’s eyes both sympathy for him, and pity for the old man.
“As I was saying, Mr. Ettinger,” the old man went on. “Horgay Goool-yermo Frah-day is a cattleman. My son James Fitzhugh Howell, Cletus’s uncle, was a cattleman. When Horgay Goool-yermo Frah-day heaved onto the scene, he was courting the lady who later became Mrs. Howell. Her family are cattlemen. Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day came to this country to do business with my daughter-in-law’s father. She wasn’t yet then my daughter-in-law, but I presume you’re following me?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“My son was at the Williamson ranch—my daughter-in-law’s maiden name was Williamson—when Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day came there to buy some breeding stock from Mr. Williamson. Handsome fella, charming. I’ll give him that, Horgay Goool-yermo Frah-day is handsome and charming. Spoke fluent English, with just enough of an accent to make the ladies flush. Like Charles Boyer, if you take my meaning.”
“‘Come wiss me to zee Casbah,’” Ettinger replied, in a very creditable mimicry of one of the actor’s most famous lines.
“Exactly, exactly!” the old man said, and then went on. “And they were about the same age, so my son asked Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day to come to New Orleans, to see the city. He came, and I opened my house to him. And I was the one, may God forgive me, who introduced him to my daughter. She wasn’t even through college, had a year to go at Rice. And Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day just swept that child off her feet.
“When he came to me and asked for her hand, I told him she was too young, and that I could not in good conscience offer my blessing until she’d finished her education.”
“I understand your position,” Ettinger said. “Any father would feel that way.”
“My wife, may she rest in peace, had passed on when my daughter was fourteen. They called it ‘consumption’ then; now they call it ‘tuberculosis.’”
“So you were both father and mother to your children,” Ettinger said.
“You could say that, Mr. Ettinger, yes,” the old man went on. “And so did Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day understand my position. Or so he said. So he went back to Argentina, and I thought—I’ve never believed that absence makes the heart grow fonder. And I concluded that would be the end of it. Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day would find some suitable young woman down there, and my daughter would find some suitable suitor here.
“Well, I’m an oilman, Mr. Ettinger…Did Cletus mention that?”
“Colonel Graham did, Sir.”
“I thought perhaps he might have,” the old man said. “Anyway, I’m an oilman, and the first thing oilmen learn is that the more you know about people you’re going to deal with, the better off you are. So I had a friend of mine with the foreign department of the National City Bank of New York City—when we first went into Venezuela, he was very helpful, and together we did all right down there—make some discreet inquiries about this fellow Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day down in Argentina. He reported back to me that he came from a fine family, which was highly regarded down there, and that they were, economically speaking, quite comfortable. To put a point on that, they have an estancia, what we call a ranch, that’s just slightly larger than the State of Rhode Island.”
“Very impressive,” Ettinger said.
“The next thing I know, a couple of months later, I get a telephone call from a fellow staying at the Roosevelt Hotel. Says he’s a friend of the family of Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day, and could we have lunch. I forget his name, but he was a gentleman. Charming fellow. I was halfway through having lunch with him—I had him out to the Metairie Country Club—before I realized that what he was doing was checking me out, to see if my daughter was suitable for Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day, not some Yankee gold digger after Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day’s daddy’s money.
“Well, I didn’t take offense, because I understood. There was nothing wrong with doing that. But I called him on it, and told him we could probably save some time by me letting him know I was dead set against any marriage, but just to put my cards faceup on the table, I wasn’t exactly walking around with holes in my shoes either.
“Then he told me—he was my kind of man, that fellow; I wish to God I could remember his name—that they weren’t exactly thrilled down there either that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day was determined to marry a foreigner, but there wasn’t much that could be done about it.
“So I told him sure there was, all that had to happen was to have Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day’s daddy tell him, and mean it, that if he married the foreign girl he could go find himself a job someplace, ‘because the money tree would be cut off at the roots.’ I remember using those exact words.
“And then he told me that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day’s daddy was about to pass on. Had kidney trouble, as I recall, and once the daddy was gone, there would be no control over him. And then we sat there in the bar drinking Sazeracs…
“I’ll tell you a secret about New Orleans, Mr. Ettinger. If you’re ever doing business in this town and the fellow offers you a Sazerac, turn him down. They sneak up on people; you could sell them the Mississippi River after they’ve had four of them.”
“I’ll remember that,” Ettinger said. “Thank you.”
“Anyway, I believed what this fellow was saying, so we sat there trying to salvage something from a bad situation. Well, after a while, it didn’t look too bad. Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day couldn’t marry while his father was dying. And they have some sort of Roman Catholic rule that the period of mourning is one year. So we had whatever time it took for Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day’s daddy to die, plus a year, during which time he would work at his end, and I would work here, to simply kill the whole idea of the two of them marrying. When I drove him back to his hotel, I remember feeling a little better about the whole thing. With a little bit of luck, Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day’s daddy would last a lot longer than anyone thought.
“Two weeks later he died. When my daughter heard about it, she wanted to go down there; and I had a hell of a time convincing her that before she could do that, the daddy would be a long time in his grave, and that it was unseemly, anyhow. They weren’t formally engaged.
“A month after he put his daddy in the ground, Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day showed up here with an engagement ring in his pocket. And then I realized that I had lost, my precious daughter was going to marry Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day whether or not I liked it, and there was nothing I could do about it but put on a smile and act like I liked it.
“The first time this theocracy business came up was when my daughter came to me and said she wanted me to know she was going to take instruction in the Roman Catholic Church. Now, as I told you, I have nothing whatever against the Roman Catholic Church. The Archbishop here is a close personal friend. But I asked her why she wanted to do that—she was raised Episcopal, and theologically, there’s not a hell of a difference between the two. And she said that for her marriage to be recognized down there, she had to get married in a Roman Catholic Church, and she couldn’t do that unless she was confirmed into the Roman Catholic Church, and that her Episcopalian confirmation didn’t count.
“So I called my friend the Archbishop, and he told me that was so, she couldn’t get married unless she was confirmed as a Catholic, but that I shouldn’t get so upset, it wasn’t as if she was going to become a Holy Roller or a Jew…no offense, Mr. Ettinger…”
“None taken, Mr. Howell,” Ettinger said.
“…certainly none was intended. And the Archbishop said he would personally take care of my daughter, and that if I liked, he would perfo
rm the marriage himself, to let her new in-laws understand that our family was held in a certain regard by the Roman Catholic Church here.”
“That was very gracious of him,” Ettinger said.
“So that’s the way it happened. A month before the official one-year mourning period was up, Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day showed up in New Orleans. I put him up in an apartment we have here in the Quarter…Cletus used to take girls there when he was at Tulane; he thought I didn’t know, and I never said anything; did the same thing myself when I was in college…and we started making arrangements for the marriage.
“It was one hell of a wedding, I’ll tell you that. Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day must have a hundred and two kinfolk, and I think every one of them showed up, all the way from Argentina. They were married by the Archbishop in what they call a High Nuptial Mass in the Cathedral of St. Louis, which is also right here in the Quarter.
“I gave her away, and she was a most beautiful bride, Mr. Ettinger, so beautiful and so happy. I even went along with that dowry custom of theirs, not that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day needed it. I gave her twenty-four-point-five percent of Howell Petroleum (Venezuela)…. Am I going too fast for you, Mr. Ettinger?”
“I didn’t quite understand that last. I don’t mean to seem too inquisitive.”
“Not at all. I think it’s important, with you going down there, that you understand the situation as fully as possible. I owned one hundred percent of Howell Petroleum (Venezuela). I wanted to keep control, of course, so I had to have fifty-one percent. I had two children. That left forty-nine percent for them. Half of forty-nine percent is twenty-four-point-five percent. You understand?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“At the time I thought it would give my daughter a little walking-around money, so she wouldn’t have to go to Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day every time she wanted a dress or a pair of shoes. So they got married and went on their honeymoon. To Europe. All over Europe. But no matter where they were, or what they were doing, my daughter wrote me a letter, two, three times a week.
“And then, before they left Europe—they were in Venice; I still have the letter—she wrote that she was in the family way, and that she wanted me to come down to Argentina and visit them, just as soon as she got her feet on the ground.
“Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day didn’t invite me, you understand, my daughter did. So I went down there several months later. Went supercargo on one of our tankers. She was eight months along when I got there. She looked terrible. She was all alone in their house in Buenos Aires. Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day was out at the estancia, and sent his regrets, and would be in town in a couple of days. That poor child was lonely. Hardly any of the servants could speak any English, and she didn’t speak a hell of a lot of Spanish. But I was concerned about the way she looked, so I called the Ambassador, and he recommended a good American doctor to me…his name was Kennedy, he’d trained at Massachusetts General, and he was down there teaching Argentine doctors at the medical school of the University of Buenos Aires…and I took my daughter to see him.
“And I was right. She was a sick girl. The details are unimportant, but she was a sick girl; he took me aside and told me if she got through this confinement, she should never have another child. He told me he wasn’t sure how that pregnancy was going to turn out, either. Well, he was wrong about that, of course. Cletus has been as healthy as a horse all his life. But he was right about my daughter. She damned near died in childbirth.
“Anyway, when Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day finally could get away from his estancia and come to Buenos Aires, I not only pulled him aside for a little chat, but I took him to see Doctor Kennedy. He didn’t want to go, I could tell that; he didn’t say anything, but I could tell he thought I was putting my nose in where it had no business. And Dr. Kennedy told him what he told me, that if my daughter managed to pull through this confinement, she should never try to have another child. It would kill her.
“So I stayed down there until the day came. She had…she had a terrible time, and we damned near lost her. She was in the hospital over a month. And I was there when they baptized Cletus into the Roman Catholic Church. They make a big thing of it down there. They did it in a place called the Basilica of Our Lady of Pilar. Their Archbishop did it.
“And then when I was sure my daughter was all right, a week or two after that, I came home. It was a pity, of course, I thought, that they could have only the one child…one child tends to get spoiled. But at least they had that, and with a little bit of luck, she could get her health back.
“Nine months after that, I got another letter. She was in the family way again. I decided against going down there…God only knows what I would have said to Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day for doing that to her, knowing what was at stake. But I telephoned Dr. Kennedy—telephoning down there in those days wasn’t as easy as it is now—and asked him to see her. And two days after that I got a cable from Kennedy, saying that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day had told him his services would not be required.”
“Why?” Ettinger asked. “Did he say?”
“I think Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day was telling me to keep my nose out of his business,” the old man said. “So I didn’t know what the hell to do. So I went down there again, and when I saw her, she looked even worse than I imagined she would. So I had a real man-to-man talk with Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day, and he finally gave in, and I took my daughter to Dr. Kennedy. And he said—and I was there when he said it, and I know damned well that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day understood what he said—that it was his advice, considering the clear threat to the mother’s life, that the pregnancy be terminated.”
“I understand,” Ettinger said.
“And Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day said that he would have to talk that over with his wife and his priest, and that he would let us know what had been decided.”
“Abortion is against the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church,” Ettinger said.
“Yeah. It is. That’s what he said. But he said that under the circumstances, he was willing to let my daughter come to the United States to have the baby. Our medicine was better than their medicine, and he knew it. So we got on a ship and came here. She was sick all the way, never got out of her bed. Lost a lot of weight. Had no strength. I radioed ahead and we had an ambulance waiting on the dock when we got to Miami. I put her in a hospital in Miami and telephoned down there and told him she was in pretty bad shape. I suggested he get on a ship and come to Miami. He said he couldn’t get away right then—that’s what he said, he couldn’t get away—and would I please keep him posted.
“Well, they fixed her up in Miami well enough so we could put her on a train and bring her here, and I put her in the hospital again here. They fixed her up well enough so I could take her to the house, and I found nurses and whatever else she needed. She was even able to get out of bed for my son’s, James Fitzhugh Howell’s, wedding. We took her to Texas on a train, and she got all dressed up and watched him get married.
“Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day wrote that he would do whatever he could to be in New Orleans when the baby was born. My daughter really wanted him to come. He got here five days after my daughter’s funeral, Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day did. He was all upset about that. He said that his wife should be buried in their family tomb in Buenos Aires, not in what he called ‘un-consecrated ground’ here. I buried her, with her baby in her arms, in our family plot. I told him she was going to stay buried where she was buried, where she belonged. And then finally he got around to asking about Cletus…asked when could he take him back to Argentina, and could I recommend a nurse to care for the child on the trip. I told Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day that my son and his wife were caring for my grandson in Texas, and that if he went near him, my son was going to kill him.”
“And what was his reaction to that?”
“I had the feeling that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day was relieved, that the whole unfortunate business of his marriage to the foreigner from
North America was over. He wouldn’t have to concern himself with raising a child, he could spend all of his time on his estancia, and he could get married again to some Argentine woman without having to worry about a child.”
“That’s a tragic story,” Ettinger said.
“I don’t like to air the family linen in public, Mr. Ettinger…” the old man said.
The family linen, maybe not, Clete thought, but I’ve never known you to pass up an opportunity to proclaim what an unmitigated sonofabitch Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day is. I wonder if it has ever occurred to you that it’s damned embarrassing for me.
Probably not. You expect me to hate him as much as you do—after all, he killed my mother. And since the child cannot choose his father, it’s obviously nothing for me to be embarrassed or ashamed about.
But it is, damn it, it is. And there’s no way I have ever been able to stop you.
“…but I thought, since you are going down there, a little insight into the way their minds work might be useful to you. They’re all, pardon the French, sonsofbitches. The man my daughter married is not some anomaly. I, for one, haven’t been surprised at all that the Argentines are on the side of the Germans in this war against us.”
“I appreciate your sharing this with me, Mr. Howell,” Ettinger said.
“I thought it was my duty,” the old man said. “And now, Mr. Ettinger, unless you’ve made other plans, I was going to suggest you ride out to the house with us. I’ve got a bottle of cognac out there, much too good for Cletus, that I think you might appreciate.”
“I hate to impose, Mr. Howell.”
“Nonsense. No trouble at all. We’ll have a little cognac and a cigar, and whenever you feel you should, I’ll have Samuel drive you back to the Monteleone.”
“Thank you very much, Sir. I’d like that.”
“If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to wash my hands,” the old man said, and stood up. “If the waiter should get lost and come in here, Cletus, will you ask him to have Samuel bring the car around?”
Honor Bound Page 13
