The Immigrants (21 page)

We pick up a cargo of pow dered milk, so the kids in England and France won’t die, and the cost of the milk is five cents a pound, and the freight charge is twenty cents a pound, and the de mented part of it is that Mark and me, we’re caught in the trap, we don’t set the rates, and the government pays the charge and writes it off as loans to the Allies, and they pay the overage on the insurance, and I get rich, and every lousy bastard who’s doing the same thing, making the shells or the oil or whatever and ship ping it—they’re all becoming rich as God, some crazy lunatic God who’s running that slaughter in Europe—and me too, me too, and damn it all, when I left the office I found myself stopping to look at our balance sheet—God damn it, the
Oceanic
sinks, and Jack is dead, and I look at the balance sheet!”

“Danny,” she said gently, taking his hand, “Danny, come with me.” She led him into the parlor. “Sit here. I’ll make you a drink, and we’ll talk about this.”

He sat in the single comfortable leather chair among the tufted black horsehair Victorian pieces with which she had furnished the parlor. He was drinking a whis key and soda, May Ling facing him.

“Danny,” she said, “we are going to talk about this. We never have before.”

“I thought we talked about everything.”

“Not about this, Danny. You know, people become rich out of war, some people, other people become poor, and other people die. This is not new. It’s as old as war, and you have become richer

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because of the war. You would have been a rich man anyway, because I think you wanted it so much, and I am not making any moral judgments. I have taken all the things you have given me, so I have no right to make any moral judgments. But now you are trapped in a moral judgment, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know,” he said uneasily. “Maybe I’m just whining.”

“Perhaps. We’ll both try to be truthful with each other. Are you really a millionaire? I never asked you that before.”

“I suppose so, if we liquidated. If I sold the stock and whatever property I have, it might be a couple of mil lion. But there’s no way to do that.”

“Why?”

“Well, there’s Mark—”

“You’re stronger than Mark. You always have been. And from what you say about his feelings, he’d go along with you.”

“May Ling, what would I do?”

“Danny, you’re not even thirty years old. I’m twenty-one. We have our whole lives ahead of us.”

“Baby, darling, you don’t understand. I have no life apart from ships.”

“We, you and me—we’re a life apart from ships.”

“No, I mean something else. I was out with my father in his fishing boat when I was five years old. You got to understand, May Ling—listen to me. This was going to be a surprise. I bought a cutter, a beautiful thing, thirty-two feet—for you and me. It’s being shipped to the marina at San Mateo—”

“Danny, where are you?” she said sharply. “The fact that you bought a boat has nothing to do with this. I’m talking about you and me and Jack Harvey’s death and the war in Europe, and the fact that any day now we will be in that war.”

“Oh, Christ,” he said, “it’s all so rotten complicated.”

“No, it isn’t.”

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“I’m married. We always forget that.”

“I never forget it.”

“And you want me to wash my hands of everything.”

“No. Only of what hurts you.”

“And what about Jean?”

“Tell me, Danny. What about Jean? When did you last make love to Jean—if you ever did?”

He sat there, silent, staring at her glumly.

“God help me for what I’m going to say, Danny, but it’s the truth. Do you know why you don’t divorce Jean—not because you’d have to give her everything or half of everything, or whatever the price would be, no indeed, but for the same reason you can’t see a life with me instead of those ships of yours—because this San Francisco sickness is in your blood and you can’t think of yourself married to a Chinese woman.”

“No, God damn it, no!” he shouted. “That’s not true! I love you!

Don’t you understand how much I love you?”

“I know you love me, Danny. And I love you, oh, so much, so much, and I don’t know why I said all this—unless it’s because I’m pregnant.”

“What!”

She nodded at him, trying very hard to smile and then giving way to tears. He knelt in front of her, his head in her lap, clutching her; and then she began to giggle through her tears at the sight of his enormous bulk in that foolish position. She stroked his black, curly hair, telling him that it would be all right. “We’ll work it out, Danny, some way.”

When Mark reached his home in Sausalito that after noon, he was met by his son, Jacob, and before they saw anyone else, he told him

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about the sinking of the
Oceanic
, asking him where Clair was and how he thought they should break the news to her.

“She’s in her room. But let me tell her, Pop.”

“I thought your mother should.”

“No, no, I must. Do you know about Clair and me?”

“What is there to know?”

“We love each other. Some day we’ll be married.”

“Just like that?” Mark said.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘just like that.’”

“When did this happen?”

“It didn’t happen. It was there all the time, from the first day you brought her here.”

“All right. Go ahead and tell her. We’ll talk about the other thing later.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Jacob said.

Mark went into the kitchen where Sarah and Mar tha—who was almost thirteen now—were setting the ta ble for dinner. The kitchen was a large room, with floors of red Mexican tile and walls of blue tile, all of it brought by ship from Guadalajara. This was their favorite room in the house, full of light and color. Sarah glanced up, saw her husband’s face, and asked him what had happened.

“We got a cable,” he said. “The
Oceanic
was torpe doed and sunk.

No survivors.”

“You mean Jack is dead?”

“Jack—the whole crew.”

Martha, listening, her eyes wide, suddenly burst into tears. Sarah went to her and held her close. “Does Clair know?”

“Jake wanted to tell her.”

“Yes.” She held Martha closer. “No hope?”

“It was observed by a British destroyer, and they searched the area. Come outside with me for a mo ment.”

They went out of the kitchen door onto the long, col umned

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gallery that ran the length of the house. At the other end of the gallery, Jacob and Clair came out of the house and walked away through the garden. Jacob’s arm was around her waist. She was a tall girl, almost as tall as he.

“Poor child,” Sarah said.

“Did you know that he and Clair think they’re in love with each other?”

“They don’t think so, they are,” Sarah said, tears running down her cheeks.

Mark gave her his handkerchief. “You mean you knew about this?”

“Of course I knew.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why? Why? Why don’t you open your eyes? You’re as bad as Dan with those filthy ships.” She struggled to control her tears. “If you were here sometimes—”

“I am here.”

“Oh, yes, yes.” She swallowed and took a deep breath. “Do you remember when you brought Jack here, when he was so drunk?”

“Yes?”

“He was here for three weeks. We used to sit in the kitchen and talk—we’d talk for hours. I think he was the loneliest, saddest man I ever knew. I told him to find a good woman and marry her, and he said that for a sailor to get married was just dumb and asking for trouble, and that anyway the only woman he could imagine wanting was me—”

“He said that?”

“Why not? I’m not an old frump.” She was sobbing now.

“You’re beautiful.”

“How do you know? You never look at me.” She wiped her eyes again. “And one day, he tried to make love to me. It breaks my heart to think about it. He was like a kid.”

“What happened?” Mark asked.

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“Nothing happened, you idiot! But I wish something had—yes, that’s what I wish!” And with that, she ran back into the house, leaving him confused and bewil dered.

Clair and Jacob sat on the ground under an old, twisted eucalyptus, a vantage point and a favorite place, with a long view across the glistening bay. He held her hand, and for almost half an hour they sat there in silence. Finally, Clair said, “I’ll cry later. I have to be alone to weep.”

“I understand.”

“Anyway, Jake, I always knew it would happen like this. Every time he went up the coast in one of those little redwood schooners.

They used to lose one in six. They’d pile up on the rocks. I was just a little kid, and I could never understand why men should risk their lives for some lousy lumber, and I lived my life that way, always sure he was dead and I was alone in the world, and I was so afraid, so afraid. But then I must have realized that I had to stop being afraid and that I would somehow survive even if he never came back. Only I can’t feel that he’s dead. He’s just not coming back—across the whole world. It’s so far away.”

“You don’t have to ever be afraid, not anymore.”

“Jake, he was like a big kid. He wasn’t like your fa ther. I don’t mean Mark’s not great. He is. But Jack was like a kid, always. He used to take me to fair grounds and amusement parks, and he’d eat the cotton candy with me and stuff himself with hot corn and frank-furters, and he’d go on all the rides with me, and I swear he had more fun than I did, and then on the Fourth of July, if he hadn’t shipped out, he’d find someplace where they were doing fireworks and take me there, and fireworks always bored me to death, but he loved them, and even when I was a little kid, I’d say to myself,

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All right, he likes it.
I don’t mean he was dumb. He read books, my goodness, he read every book Jack London ever wrote, and he read
The Sea Wolf
at least five times, and he got me to read
Moby Dick
when I was ten years old, and I didn’t understand a word of it, but he made me read the whole thing—oh, my God, you better take me back to the house now, Jake, be cause I want to sit in my room in the dark and cry. I want to cry the whole thing out of me, please.”

It was about seven o’clock that evening when Dan got to his home on Russian Hill. The house was crowded with people. He remembered vaguely that Jean had said something about a reception for Calvin Braderman, who had just completed a mural in a new post office or hotel or some such place. Dan pushed through the crowd, some of whom he knew and others of whom were complete strangers to him. Jean was nowhere in sight. Suddenly, he was confronting a dark, voluptuous, handsome woman, who told him, with a heavy Russian accent, that he must be Daniel Lavette.

“I am Manya,” she said. “I am friend of Jean, model for Braderman, worshiper of art, and dying to meet fi nally the romantic Daniel Lavette.”

“Yes. How do you do.”

“That is all? You are legend in San Francisco, but indifferent to women. That is so sad.”

He was trying to control himself. A dozen times, May Ling had said to him, “At least try to understand Jean and who she is and the people she likes and why she likes them—not to make her love you but at least to live without hate.” It was all very well for May Ling to be cool and objective, but whatever he promised her, when he came into the situation, his hackles rose and he was tied up in knots of frustration and anger.

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Now Jean appeared. “Have you met my husband?”

“We met.” Manya shrugged.

Tall, lovely, sheathed in blue silk that matched her blue eyes, Jean moved in command. Eyes followed her. Even in this situation, culmi-nating in all that had hap pened this day, Dan felt his stomach tighten with a kind of desperate wanting at the sight of her. He drew her away from the dark woman and said, “I must talk to you alone.”

“Dan, I can’t leave my guests.”

“For just a moment. It’s important.”

She sighed and followed him into the library. “Now what is it?”

“Jean, I don’t want to screw up your party, but it’s been a bad day. We got word that the
Oceanic
was tor pedoed off the British coast.”

It took a few moments for her to assimilate the facts, to put them apart from where she had been before, and then she said, “How wretched, Dan. I’m sorry. But you are insured, aren’t you?”

“There were no survivors. Jack Harvey went down with the ship. I must go to Sausalito tonight. His daugh ter’s living there with the Levys.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But Mark is there, isn’t he?”

Dan stared at her in amazement.

“Don’t look at me like that, Dan. Am I supposed to burst into tears? I don’t even know this Jack Harvey of yours. I think I met him once—he was the captain, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he was the captain.”

“Well, there is a war, you know.”

“Yes. Well, I must go to Sausalito.”

“Of course you must. And if it weren’t Sausalito, you’d be launching a new ship or spending the night trying to find a crew or out on the pilot boat or at an emergency board meeting, so don’t stand on ceremony. Just go.” With that, she walked out of the room, leaving him there.

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A week later, President Woodrow Wilson addressed a special session of Congress, saying, “With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my Constitutional duty, I advise that Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German govern ment to be nothing less than war against the govern ment and people of the United States…”

A few days later, on the sixth of April 1917, the President signed the declaration of war that Congress had passed, and a little more than a month later, Con gress passed the Selective Service Act and the draft be gan.