The Immigrants (40 page)

Yet strangely—or perhaps not so strangely—this tor tured guilt brought zest and excitement to his life for the first time. He was in love. He had never been in love before, never idolized a woman,

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never thought of himself as a man who could complete a woman’s life; nor had he ever elevated a woman to an object of total desire and beauty. In all truth, Martha was not very beautiful. She had good features, her mother’s sparkling blue eyes, and straight brown hair that she wore in the tight, shingled style so popular then. She had a good bust and good legs, but it was her air of excitement, her bub bling enthusiasm for life that fascinated Stephan. He made no plans; the very thought of leaving his wife, as a part of a deeply religious Catholic family, was so com plex and preposterous that he could not even entertain it, and it was further complicated by the lifelong rela tionship between the Cassalas and the Levys and by the fact that he was Catholic and Martha was Jewish. For the moment, it was sufficient that he was in love, that the whole world was different, and that each morning he awakened, not to the full, featureless prospect of an other day but to a day of holding Martha Levy in his mind and his heart.

By the third day after the performance of
Romeo and Juliet
Stephan had worked out a reasonable package of excuses and lies. He manufactured an appointment with a banker in San Rafael that had to take place on Satur day, and since the trip would take him through Sausalito, he asked Mark whether he could stop by for lunch and discuss a matter of business with him. He chose Saturday because Mark would be home that day, but he lacked the courage to ask that Martha be there too. On that score, he would have to chance it.

It worked out well. Anthony Cassala had accepted the circumstances that took L&L into the Seldon Bank, both with its loans and its business, yet Danny and Mark continued to maintain an account of almost a hundred thousand dollars with Cassala. Now, sitting at lunch with Mark and Sarah and, fortune prevailing, with Martha as well, Stephan argued that the money ought to be used for some purpose, put into government bonds possibly. It earned no interest, and both he and his father felt a sense of guilt. Mark

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pushed his argu ments aside. “Too fine a day to talk about it,” he said. “Anyway, Dan’s committed to this airline thing, so we may get at the money after all.”

Sarah blocked her mind where money was con cerned. She refused to think about it, to deal with it, or to face it. Forty-seven years old now, her fair hair was already beginning to be streaked with white. She still maintained her slender, youthful figure, but her face had aged. As the men talked, she watched Stephan, not icing that he could not keep his eyes from Martha, who was impatient with all this talk of money and banks. To Sarah, Hollywood was a festering sink of sin and cor ruption, and her anxiety increased as the day of Mar tha’s departure neared. Now Martha was telling Ste phan about the New York School of Acting, where she had enrolled as a student. The school had just been or ganized under the direction of a man called Martin Spizer.

When Martha first announced to her parents her in tention of enrolling there, Sarah kept after Mark to make inquiries and find out something about it. Several phone calls to Los Angeles told him only that it was one of a dozen new schools that had mushroomed in Holly wood with the advent of talking pictures, and that it was apparently no better and no worse than most of the oth ers. Martha chose it because a leaflet advertising it had been handed to her by Mr. Fenwick, her local drama teacher; and the whole subject was so alien and so dis tant from any area of Mark’s knowledge that he was finally content to let her abide by her own choice.

“The trouble with the film stars,” Martha explained, “is that they can’t talk. Oh, it was just great when all they had to do was prance around and make faces—but now that people can hear them, well, it’s just open sea son for actors. Real actors.”

“Providing,” Mark said, “that talking pictures ever become anything else but a novelty.”

“Father, how can you close your eyes to it? Talking pictures are

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here to stay. Didn’t you see
The Jazz Singer
? And in
Tenderloin
, that ridiculous Dolores Costello, lisping.”

“Darling,” Sarah said worriedly, “every pretty girl in America is dreaming about Hollywood. And so many of them go there. So many of them.”

“But can they act?” She turned to Stephan. “Tell them what you think of my acting, Steve. They’ll listen to you.”

“Did you ever see her act?” Sarah asked curiously.

“He did. He came to see
Romeo and Juliet
.”

“I saw the notice in the paper,” Stephan answered uneasily. “She was wonderful, I thought.”

“And Steve’s seen half a dozen productions of
Romeo and Juliet
, and he thinks I was the best Juliet of the lot.”

“Well, maybe not half a dozen,” Stephan said. “But she was great.

I think she can act.”

He had to be alone with her, if only for a few minutes. Before he left, he told Mark that he wanted to say goodbye to Martha, since he might not see her again be fore she went to Los Angeles.

“You’ll find her in the old gazebo, out on the lawn behind the house. She does her reading aloud out there. She can’t stand it if anyone comes near the place while she’s declaiming, but she might make an exception for you.”

As Stephan walked toward the gazebo, he heard Martha. If one could criticize her acting, certainly her voice was powerful and far-reaching. She was doing Saint Joan, from Shaw’s play, which had come to San Francisco two years before.

“‘If you command me to declare that all that I have done and said, and all the visions and revelations I have had were not from God, then that is impossible: I will not declare it for anything in the world.’” She saw him, and her face bubbled with laughter. “Oh, Steve, you heard me, and my secret is out. But I will be Saint Joan, if I have to wait ten years to play the part. I will. I must. They must

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make a great movie out of it, even if I have to go to Mr. Shaw and plead myself. I will get down on my knees. I will say, ‘Look at me, Mr. Shaw, am I not Saint Joan?’ No! Of course I wouldn’t do any thing that silly. Are you leaving, Steve?”

“I’m afraid I must.”

“When will I see you again? Will you come to my first talkie?”

“Before then I hope. Martha—”

Her laughter stopped. “Is something wrong, Steve?”

“No. No. Only—well, I have a little present for your going-away. You will accept a present for me, won’t you?”

“I love presents.”

Stephan reached into his pocket, took out a small, velvet-covered box, and opened it to reveal a diamond pendant on a gold chain.

Martha stared as he slipped the chain over her neck.

“Steve, you are insane. This must have cost a thou sand dollars.”

“What difference does it make what a gift costs?”

“You know what difference it makes. How do I ex plain this to Mark and Sarah? What do I tell them? And why give it to me? I don’t understand you.”

“I love you,” he said simply.

“No. Oh, God, no. You’re absolutely out of your mind, Steve.

You’re a married man. Your wife has just had a child.”

“I know, I know,” he said unhappily, taking her hand. “You’re right.

I never led up to this. You don’t just tell a woman you love her.”

“You certainly don’t. What did I do to let this hap pen?”

“Nothing. It just happened.”

She took off the chain and handed it back to him. “I have to be honest, Steve. I’ve known you since we were kids. I always liked you, but I’m not in love with you, and I have no intentions of falling in love with anyone.”

“I know. That’s why I never said anything or did any thing. I think it began at my wedding. That stinks, doesn’t it, to say that all

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I could think about at my wed ding 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 noth ing of it.”

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“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, 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 begin nings 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 lis ten.”

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.

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They serve it in cof fee 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, trou bled 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 of fice facilities and a 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 prog-nosis 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 contrap tions.”

“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.

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They’ve designed and produced a thing cal ed the Ford Trimotor, and it’s going to revolutionize the whole in dustry. 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 alu-minum to prevent corrosion. It’s an incredible plane, Tom. It’s fifty feet long, with a wing-span 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.”