Balance Wheel

by Taylor Caldwell

  “I think I know,” said Friederich, finally. “Yes, I think I know. But it is something I will never tell you, for it would make you happy. It would make you think of profits.”

  Charles had to control his temper. He had to hold back the contemptuous words: “And you never think of profits?” Instead, he said: “George Hadden is in business. He has no aversion to profits. He is also a Quaker, and an honest man.” He waited. He said: “Friederich, perhaps there are things I know, too, which you think I do not know.” He stood up. “I have a son, Friederich.”

  “A son,” began Friederich, sneeringly. Then he stopped. He wet his lips. “I—” he began, then was silent

  “Let us help each other; there are things we all ought to tell each other,” said Charles.

  Friederich turned away. Confusion and irresolution were in his every slow step which he took towards the door. Charles did not follow him. Friederich stood by the door, his head drooping, his sunken profile to his brother. He had drawn in his upper lip under the lower one.

  “I cannot see George Hadden for at least four weeks more,” he mumbled. “I am leaving tomorrow for Detroit.” He was trying to gather himself together; he straightened up. He was trying, Charles saw, to renew his rage. “Jochen has just told me that you will not put your precision jig grinder into production, for some stupid reason or other, that you will listen to no argument.”

  “I own the patent, Friederich. It is an important one, but as yet in the experimental stage. Yes, I know that the Bouchards would like us to manufacture it for them. They have been writing to me, and I believe they have written to Jochen. But it is not ready. It might never be ready for the Bouchards. They also wish us to lease or sell our patent for gun bores to them. Why, Friederich?”

  Avarice, fear and anger suddenly blazed on Friederich’s face. Now he was utterly distracted. He pushed back his untidy hair with one smudged palm.

  “You are such a liar, Karl!” he cried. “Always, you deliberately try to confuse me!”

  So, thought Charles. He used his old weapon against his brother. He goaded him.

  “I confuse you?” asked Charles, laughing slightly. “You are the most confused man I ever knew—Fred. You don’t know what you want, do you?” He spoke in English now. “Why don’t you try to settle for something—either a lot of money, or your ideals?”

  Friederich took one step towards him, almost beside himself. “Why do you talk like this to me, as if you knew anything about ‘ideals’ or anything besides money and profits? I have hateful brothers. I am sick of all of you.”

  “Including Joe? You’ve just been with him, haven’t you? Had a nice, cosy chat, I suppose.”

  Friederich’s rage overpowered him. “Yes, I talked with him about your obduracy, your cautious clinging to your patents.” He stopped. The tic was more pronounced on his face. “But that is not important. You are all fools, all of you. Jochen is a fool today. He wants to change our name, by court order, to Von Wittmann! Wittmann is not enough for that imbecile and his Gnädige Frau!”

  “What?” exclaimed Charles, incredulously. “‘Von Wittmann!’ Why, the infernal damn fool!”

  “Yes!” shouted Friederich. He pointed a lean finger at Charles. “And do not lie to me and tell me you are not willing!”

  “I certainly am not.” Charles was genuinely outraged, and Friederich saw this. This threw him into worse confusion. He cried: “Well, then, if you are not ‘willing,’ do something about it!”

  He caught the door-knob now, opened the door, closed it with a violent bang behind him.

  Charles was so angry that his first thought was to go see Jochen. But he knew this was not the clever way. He touched his bell and asked Mr. Parsons to ask Mr. Wittmann to come in.

  Jochen came in, jocular, ruddy-faced and all pleasantness. But Charles saw that he was also wary. He said, abruptly: “Have you been talking to Fred about our gun-bore patent and the precision jig grinder?”

  Jochen sat down, with a tolerant smile. “Yes, I did. Any objection? After all, he is an officer of the company. Or do you and I keep all our business under our hats?” He laughed. “Not that it mightn’t be best, with the kind of brothers we have.”

  “You know that Fred doesn’t know much about the business. You teased him with the idea of more money, didn’t you?”

  “Why not?” asked Jochen, easily. “He likes it. I like it. You like it. Willie likes it. And we’re all Wittmanns together.” He smiled again. “Now, will you tell me what all this is about? I’m busy, you know. Though not as busy as I could be, thanks to you.”

  “Don’t be so ingenuous. You know I’ve refused those patents to the Bouchards, that I’ve refused to expand just now. So why did you try to use Fred against me?”

  Jochen became indignant. “Are we all your tame seals? Can’t we discuss these things without you standing over us with a whip? If I disagree with your policy I have a perfect right to consult my brother officers to see if we can’t do something to persuade you to change your mind. You’re acting like a damn fool, Charlie.”

  “Have you talked to Willie, too?”

  Jochen’s eyes slid away. “Yes. What if I did? But lately you’ve got him in the palm of your hand.” Jochen’s eyes came back to his brother, and they were vindictive and sly. Finally, he smiled. “But there was one thing with which he agreed. Perhaps we’ll tell you about it one of these days. After all, it might sound funny—”

  He stood up. So, thought Charles. That’s all I wanted to know.

  Charles shrugged. “I can always wait, contentedly, to hear about your schemes, Joe. They’ve sure to be amusing. I do like to laugh, sometimes. And I’ve needed a laugh, lately. Got a cigar?”

  Jochen, not pleased, took out his silver cigar-case, opened it, extracted a cigar, and threw it on Charles’ desk. “Why don’t you buy your own cigars?” he asked. “But no, you’re too much of a miser. Anyway, I suppose I ought to be flattered that you like mine.” He watched Charles light it. He could not resist saying: “That’s even a better brand than mine. Roger Brinkwell gave it to me.”

  Charles, squinting through the smoke, saw his brother preen with high satisfaction. He nodded, after a few concentrated puffs. “Very good,” he conceded. “A little strong. But excellent. You’re wonderful friends with the Brinkwells, you and Isabel, aren’t you? I hear about it all the time.” Charles allowed himself to show that he was impressed. Jochen leaned against the desk. “We’re on first-name basis,” he said. “But then, we always were.”

  Again, Charles nodded, comfortably. “I don’t suppose Brinkwell likes me. I haven’t been invited.”

  Jochen chuckled. “You’re not the society type, Charlie. The grubby business man. Polly likes a little savoir-faire in her guests. Nothing against you personally, of course.”

  “As you say, I’m not ‘society,’ Joe.” He puffed steadily. “What’s the matter with Gerry? She’s been to see Jimmy only twice in the past two weeks. Is she sick?”

  Jochen colored. He began to move towards the door. “No,” he said, airily. “But there’s her school, and her dancing classes. Isabel keeps the girls busy with such things. Geraldine’s only seventeen. But young Brinkwell, Kenneth, comes to see her quite often. Saturday nights, sometimes.” He opened the door, spoke quickly and loudly: “Jimmy going to be able to go back to school, soon?”

  Charles sat and smoked for a long time after his brother had gone.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  Jimmy had so far recovered by the second February Sunday that Dr. Metzger had agreed that the tutor, who had been helping the boy with his lost school work for the past three weeks, might be discharged, and Jimmy might look forward to resuming school the following Monday.

  The illness had seemed to hurry the boy towards maturity. He was now eighteen, yet though his strong young life had begun to surge again he had taken on a deeper seriousness. When his fellow-students who visited him talked to him of basketball, and baseball in the spring, he listened with interest
but not with the passionate attention he had shown a year ago.

  This February Sunday was dark and bitterly gloomy, skeins of snow driving themselves against the windows as they were blown by a violent wind. The furnace gushed up its streams of warm air, but fires had to be lit to offset the extraordinary cold. After dinner, Jimmy sat with a blanket on his knees before the parlor fire and talked with his father. The boy did not show his concern over Charles’ worn appearance, his lost weight, his air of abstracted anxiety. Charles did not speak of them, and Jimmy did not ask him. He knew his father. If Charles wished to speak he would do so.

  Jimmy was still very thin; his young face so slender, now, so pale, resembled his mother’s. His hair had not been cut since his illness; the thick and wiry curls fell on his forehead as Mary’s hair had fallen, and now Charles saw that Jimmy’s smile was Mary’s smile. The old desolation came back to him acutely, and his loneliness. But after all, he said to himself, when it comes down to rock-bottom we’re all alone, all of us. Yes, I’ve heard all that before; it’s an old story. But when it occurs to any of us it isn’t something we’ve heard before.

  Jimmy had not spoken today, or yesterday, of his cousin Geraldine. It had been ten days since the girl had last come, and then she had run in from school, breathlessly, for only five minutes. Jimmy had told his father of this, frowning slightly. He had added nothing to his brief account, but Charles had seen that Jimmy was disturbed.

  The two had not been speaking for nearly an hour. Jimmy was studying; Charles read his newspapers. The gaslights over them flared as little gusts of wind found their way through double windows. It was only four in the afternoon. It was the day that Charles was to visit his brothers. But Friederich was not in the city; Jochen had called that morning to explain that he and Isabel were having “late supper” with the Brinkwells. There was only Wilhelm to visit. Charles smiled faintly. Wilhelm’s illness had been trivial compared with Jimmy’s, but he clung to his invalidism with the precise fussiness of an old woman. He had always been a hypochondriac, Charles remembered.

  “If the storm keeps up, it wouldn’t be a good idea for you to go out, Dad,” said Jimmy, putting down his book.

  Charles said: “I’d be glad of the storm, frankly, if it weren’t that I’ve got to see your uncle about something. Something ridiculous.”

  Jimmy glanced at the Picasso over the fire. He squinted at it carefully. “I just hope we don’t get something else like that, after you’ve seen Uncle Willie,” he said.

  Charles laughed. “Now, don’t get hidebound, yourself, Jimmy. If we had some kind of artistic intelligence that painting would mean something to us. Or, rather, as your uncle would say, it would mean something especial and private to us, something we read into it ourselves. Sort of obscure, isn’t it?”

  “It looks to me like a case of piles,” said Jimmy, hoping his father would laugh again. It had been a long time since he had heard Charles laugh.

  Charles studied the painting. “I’ve tried and tried,” he said, baffled. “I’m learning a little. I know quite a few phrases, and can rattle them off with the best of the connoisseurs. I even surprise myself. But I always seem to prefer something that isn’t ‘especial and private.’ I like something that is universal. One part of me doesn’t seem to exist, and it ought to exist, as your uncle says. And that part is ‘individuality,’ so that any scene, face, event or sound will take on my own unique ‘coloration.’ I suppose I just don’t have any unique coloration.”

  “Thank God you haven’t found out anything that you could use with Uncle Fred,” said Jimmy, grinning.

  Charles rubbed his chin with his finger. He said, thoughtfully: “There ought to be something, Jim. You wouldn’t know of anything, would you? Fred never spoke of something—well, sane—that I could use to get on common ground with him?”

  “Is it that bad?” asked Jimmy, concerned. Then when Charles nodded, the boy began to think. He kept shaking his head impatiently. He said at last: “You know that Uncle Fred doesn’t know I’m alive, most of the time. Once or twice, I’ve passed him on the street and he didn’t recognize me. But last summer, one day, I saw him carrying a big book, and I spoke to him. You know how he is: always in a hurry, but he actually stopped when I mentioned the book, and was even pleasant. It was a book about Goethe, and he said he belonged to a world Goethe Society.”

  “Goethe,” repeated Charles. He looked at the bookcases which lined each side of the fireplace. His father’s books, in German, thick dark books in crimson or brown leather. Among them, he was certain, were many books about Goethe, and written by Goethe. He stood up and examined one or two. He put the books on a table. Tomorrow, he would start reading them. He took out his handkerchief and wiped a fine film of dust off the top book. “This isn’t going to be as bad as Impressionist painting,” he said. “My father worshipped Goethe. I don’t remember much about the whole thing.”

  “If you knew as much as my uncles do about everything we’d all starve to death,” said Jimmy.

  Charles put his hand on his son’s head, shoved it with rough affection. “They say it takes brains to make money,” he said. “But no one believes that, these days. Or perhaps you aren’t supposed to care about rent and food and clothing or bills or obligations—if you are intelligent. Grubs like me will take care of you. Or ought to, a lot of people think.”

  He sat down. “The Puritans used to say: ‘He who does not work shall not eat.’ But quite a lot of those who call themselves the intelligentsia deny that.”

  He took up his newspaper again. He was seeing so many things these days, small things easily passed over.

  Alsace was still seething over the “Zabem incident.” Work was being hurried on the Kiel Canal, and the Kaiser had triumphantly announced that the Hohenzollem Canal would also be opened in the summer, far ahead of schedule. Dr. Liebknecht had accused the Kronk officials of maintaining secret agencies in Berlin whose function it was to bribe German Army and Navy officials to reveal state documents pertaining to new munitions contracts. Munitions? Why? A gentleman high in official circles in Austria had openly, and derisively, expressed his disbelief that Italy would honor the Triple Alliance she had with Germany and Austria. “I recall to the attention of my colleagues what Napoleon has said about the Italians,” said the gentleman, with high-bred disgust. Now, what the hell had Napoleon said about the Italians?

  “Jimmy,” said Charles, “did Napoleon say anything in particular about the Italians? I mean, as far as military commitments or alliances are concerned.”

  Jimmy screwed up his face, thoughtfully. “I believe Napoleon implied that Italians weren’t very much as soldiers, and that you’d need a lot of divisions to watch them, or something, to force them to toe the mark about fighting or honoring military alliances.”

  “Is that so?” Charles was pleased. “A very intelligent people, the Italians, apparently. So, they wouldn’t be much good in a war, eh? Yes, definitely very intelligent people.”

  “‘A nation great in war is great in nothing,’” said Jimmy. “That’s what my history teacher told us.”

  Charles went on reading closely. One hundred million dollars had been appropriated by the French government for military services for a three-year term. Why?

  Little things. But they came every day. It was like watching the licking of flames far off in the distance in a great hazy forest. Small flames; just a faint flash once in a while, a puff of smoke, and the flame sank down. But there it was again, in another part of the forest. Soundless, still. The roar of holocaust was not yet loud in the wind. Would it ever be? Where were the fire-fighters?

  There is nothing, nothing, that I can do, thought Charles, as he thought so often. I can only watch. He turned to another portion of the paper. Mr. Wilson was still demanding regulation of trusts and monopolies. Good, thought Charles. We small business men and manufacturers should support Wilson in this. Men aren’t to be trusted, whether they are soldiers or business men, or anybody. Power goes to men
’s heads; they become insane.

  Someone rang the doorbell, and Charles heard Mrs. Meyers go to the door. Father and son turned their heads in the direction of the sound. They heard Mrs. Meyers’ voice, and a younger voice, subdued and hurried. “Gerry,” said Jimmy, and his face lighted up so brilliantly that Charles felt sick. The boy put aside his book, shook back his hair.

  Geraldine came in. She saw no one but Jimmy, though Charles stood up. She looked at Jimmy, and said: “Oh. I—I was just passing, Jimmy. I thought I’d come in to see you.”

  “Hello, dear,” said Charles, gently.

  She started, and turned to him. “Uncle Charlie,” she murmured. She stood there, irresolute. She had not allowed Mrs. Meyers to take her wraps. She wore a long brown beaver coat, new and expensive, and her hands were in a beaver muff. There was a wide beaver hat on her head. She had just been permitted to “put up” her hair; it was coiled in a smooth black knot on her neck.

  She was very thin, much thinner than she had been last summer, and taller. Her young face was wan and quietly intense, and there were circles under the beautiful dark eyes, as if she had been ill, or sleepless for a long time. Even her mouth had no color, and the corners, as she looked at Charles, were tremulous as though she were trying not to cry.

  Jimmy said: “I’m awfully glad you came in, Gerry. Here, sit down.”

  She sat down, stiffly, her hands still in her muff. Charles, with deep tenderness, said: “We’re always glad to see you, Gerry. We’ve missed you.”

  Now her mouth became tight with her effort to control her emotion. When Charles went to her to loosen her coat she did not resist. He threw the coat over the back of her chair. She bent her head so that her face was half hidden by her hat.

  “I’ve missed you, too,” she said, almost inaudibly.

  “But school, and everything,” said Charles, sitting down in his chair.