The Immigrants (23 page)

“Can I explain?” He reached across the table and touched her hand. “Please.”

“All right. I suppose I shouldn’t have said that about Mark. But he’s such a skinny, sniveling thing.”

She is your wife
, Dan told himself.
She doesn’t know any better. She
is what she is.

“I know he’s very clever,” she added. “I know that. They are, you know.”

“Well, look,” Dan said. “Whittier thinks the war will go on for

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years. I don’t. I think it may end in a matter of weeks. And if I’m right and he’s wrong, then cargo ships won’t be worth the water they displace. They’ll be a glut on the market.”

“How can you say that, Dan? The Germans have been sinking everything.”

“No, they have not. Do you realize that this country has built over three thousand ships during the past year or so? There’s more cargo tonnage in the world now than ever in history.”

“But the hunger and the suffering in Europe—even if the war ends.”

“We’re not carrying food. That’s peanuts. We carry guns and munitions and oil and coal. We’re feeding a monster that’s going to drop dead, and that’s why I’m glad we’re out of it.”

“Then what will you do?” she asked nervously, as if she were suddenly about to be confronted by his pres ence for the first time.

“There’s enough to do.” He grinned now. “We bought Spellman’s Department Store.”

“Spellman’s? But what on earth for?”

“It makes sense. Mark talked me into it, but it makes sense. I think he wants something for Jake when Jake comes back. We’re going to rebuild it and turn it into the best and biggest department store west of the Mis sissippi.”

“But you in a store? You without a ship? I don’t be lieve it.”

“You’re right—don’t believe it. The store’s only part of it. I’m going to build the biggest damn passenger ship that ever sailed out of this bay. We’re going to open up the Hawaiian Islands and the whole damn Orient. She’s going to be thirty thousand tons displacement, as big as the
Mauretania
, a floating palace, Jean—the ship of the future. How about that?”

“I just don’t know what to say.”

“Only one catch.”

“Oh?”

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“I still don’t know where the money’s coming from.”

“But you have so much money.”

“Not really. This may run to over ten million dol lars.” He shook his head. “Well, if you play with expen sive toys, it costs.”

She was watching him carefully, thoughtfully. “Why don’t you go to Daddy?”

“I did once.”

“Things have changed. The Seldon Bank is the sec ond largest in California. You know that.”

“I guess I do,” he said.

Roughly, the hole measured sixteen feet across, and it was about five feet deep at its deepest point, and nine men were crowded into it. It was raining lightly but steadily, and the bottom of the hole was a pool of mud and human vomit and nine mud-soaked men who were practically lying one on top of each other. On the lip of the hole was Lieutenant Matterson, or what remained of Lieutenant Matterson, who had been chopped nearly in half by bullets from a thirty-caliber heavy machine gun. For the past half-hour his body had moved spas modically as the German machine gunner let go bursts at the lip of the hole.

In the hole were seven privates, Corporal Jake Levy, and Sergeant Joe Maguire. It was nighttime. The nine men listened to someone shouting something, but it was not until a pause in the gunfire and the shellfire that they were able to make out the words. The voice came from another hole somewhere.

“Matterson!” the voice was shouting. “Where the hell are you?”

“Who’s that?” Maguire shouted back.

“Captain Peterson! Is that Matterson?”

“Matterson’s dead.”

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“Who’s in command? What have you got there?”

“Sergeant Maguire! Me, Corporal Levy, and seven men!”

“Well, Jesus Christ, have you set up a fuckin’ rest home there!

Get rid of that sonofabitch machine gun!”

Maguire looked at Levy; Levy looked at Maguire.

“Fuck him,” Jake said.

“Motherfuckin’ bastard,” said Maguire.

The German machine gun opened up again, and Matterson’s body leaped and twisted under the impact of the bullets.

“Maguire, God damn you, I’ll have your stripes and your ass!”

“Fuck you,” Maguire said softly.

“What do we do?” Jake asked him.

Maguire looked from mud-caked face to mud-caked face. Levy was nineteen; Maguire was twenty; the other seven were mostly eighteen years to twenty years old. The rain increased.

“Anyone want to try?” Maguire asked.

Another burst of fire dumped Matterson’s body down upon them. His face had been shot away, and his brains splattered on the men in the shell hole.

“Oh, my God, I shit in my pants,” one of the men whimpered.

Maguire and two other men pushed Matterson’s body up out of the hole. Levy yelled, “We’re pinned down, Captain!”

“Who’s that?”

“Corporal Levy.”

“Well, you get that gun, Levy, you and Maguire!”

“We’re pinned down.”

“Shit, you’re pinned down! Now you listen to me, you sheeny bastard—you get that gun!”

“Sweet man, that captain,” someone said.

“All heart,” said Maguire, and yelled, “Give us some cover!

Where the hell are the field guns?”

“You get that gun!”

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“We can go out each side,” Levy said. “You take four men, I take three. That gun’s not fifty yards from here. Let’s try grenades, and then we’ll make a run for it.”

“Why?” Maguire asked hopelessly.

“God knows.”

“So help me God, you motherfuckers,” the captain’s voice came, “I’ll court-martial every last one of you!”

“Let’s start throwing,” Jake said, crouching, then pulling the pin and heaving the grenade. “Come on—throw!”

They clawed their way through the mud and out of the hole.

The German machine gun opened up. Jake fell, got to his feet, ran clumsily in the mud, threw an other grenade, and then, as a star shell lit up the place, saw the five Germans crouched around their gun. Someone else heaved a grenade at them, and Jake was firing into the burst of flame and mud. Then he and another man flung themselves into the hole and in sanely drove their bayonets into the single German who was still alive. They lay there in a tangle of dead, torn human flesh, and then Jake began to yell, “We got them, sarge! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

But he never saw Maguire alive again, nor anyone else who had been in the shell hole with him except Fredericks, who had plunged into the machine-gun nest with him.

Ever since their first beginnings in America, it had been a practice among many Eastern European Jews to christen—if indeed such a term can be applied to Jew ish naming—their children in dupli-cate. In other words, the rabbinical birth certificate would bear a Hebrew or Biblical name, while the civil birth certificate would bear an Anglo-Saxon version or a name which might be con sidered American. Mark Levy, on his rabbinical certifi cate, was Moses Levy,

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named after his paternal grand father. In naming his son Jacob, he abandoned the practice, although at Sarah’s insistence his daughter, Miriam, became Martha. For some reason, Sarah abhorred the name Miriam.

Rabbi Samuel Blum, who remembered Mark’s father as one of the founders of his small orthodox synagogue, called Mark “Moishe,”

which is the Hebraic pronuncia tion of the name Moses, and now he said to him, “It’s been a long time, Moishe. You’ve changed.

And you’ve prospered. Tell me about Sarah and the children.”

“They’re well. Jacob’s alive and unwounded, thank God.”

“He’s in the army?”

“God help me, yes. Very much in it. Now he’s on leave in Paris.

They gave him a decoration and a field commission of lieutenant, and God willing, this cursed war will be over before he goes back.”

“God willing.”

They sat in the rabbi’s study, a small room crowded with books; and now they sat in silence for a while, the rabbi, a short, bearded, tired man of seventy-one years, waiting for Mark to speak again, his blue eyes watching him thoughtfully, set in nests of wrinkles. He had been rabbi of the congregation ever since it came into being in 1880.

Finally, Mark took an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to the rabbi.

“What’s this?”

“Guilt, I suppose.”

The rabbi opened the envelope and stared at a check for two thousand dollars. “A princely gift. Are you that rich?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you, Moishe?”

“Almost forty, if you count the years.”

“And how long since you came to the synagogue? I’m not re-proving you,” he added hastily. “I’m curious.”

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“Ten years, I suppose. We live in Sausalito now.”

“And is this for your son’s life?” the rabbi asked, holding up the check, smiling to take the sting out of his words.

“No, for my own guilt, like I said.”

“Well—most contributions are. We can use it, and I am very grateful.”

“I’m confused,” Mark said.

“It’s a normal state.” The rabbi shrugged. “When was life not confusing?”

“I don’t know who I am,” Mark said, forcing the words. “I have become rich out of this rotten war. I lie awake every night in terror thinking about my son. I lost my wife somewhere—oh, she still loves me and I love her, but somewhere we lost each other, and I’m afraid of death.”

“We all are.”

“And my son is in love with a Christian.”

“Ah.”

“Otherwise, everything is fine.”

The rabbi smiled. “Of course. Tell me about the girl.”

“She’s a fine, beautiful girl.”

“And your son is determined to marry her?”

“My son is in France.”

“Yes, but the girl. How does she feel about your son?”

“She loves him.”

“She does not mind the fact that he is Jewish?”

“No.”

“Well, Moishe, I’m a rabbi. I don’t like to see our people marry outside of the religion.”

“What should I do?”

“What does Sarah say you should do?”

“She says I should keep my nose out of their busi ness.”

“Ah. Tell me, is there an Orthodox synagogue in Sausalito?”

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“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“If you can find ten Jewish families, you can start one, and then come to me, and I’ll find you a rabbi. This won’t take away your confusion, but it will be very good for your guilt.”

“You still did not tell me what I should do about my son.”

“Love him. Help him. What else can you do with a son?”

“And the girl?”

“Listen to Sarah. I could tell you to trust in God, but unfortunately that’s not enough. He has given us too much free will. We have to do a little something on our own. You’re almost forty.

That’s a good time to become Jewish.”

“I was born Jewish, Rabbi.”

“So you were. And again, speaking for the syn agogue, I thank you for this princely gift.”

The doctor was very specific about Stephan Cassala’s diet. He was discharged from the army hospital after Dan’s visit with his son to the Cassala place at San Mateo. His father drove him down the Peninsula in the Cassala limousine, somewhat in awe of this thin, pale wraith of a man, so unsmiling and depressed. Maria wept and embraced him and crooned over him. All of which troubled the family doctor who came to see him that same day.

“I know you will want to feed him and see some flesh on his bones,” the doctor said. “But his stomach has taken a terrible beating. Cream of wheat, warm milk, boiled eggs, soft, some well-cooked green vegetables, but no cheese, no spices, no sausage, no meat, no green pepper—” He was trying to remember what else came into the Italian diet.

“But he will die with such food,” Maria pleaded.

“No. He will get well with such food. Now mind what I say.”

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In any case, Maria had to beg him to eat, and what ever he ate caused him pain. For the first few days that he was home, he said almost nothing. Stephan had always been gentle and soft-spoken; the gentleness remained but he was turned in on himself. When the weather was good, he would sit on the lawn, gazing into the distance; and once Rosa had seen him like that—herself out of sight— with tears rolling down his sallow cheeks. She told her mother and then regretted it, for Maria burst into tears herself and could not be con soled. She spent more and more hours in church at the altar rail, and when one day Stephan smiled at her and said, “Mama, I’m going to be all right. So stop worry ing,” she was convinced that her prayers had overcome the hideous American food that was destroying her son.

Dan drove down to see Stephan, this time with May Ling and their ten-month-old child, called Joseph after Dan’s father. His relationship with May Ling was be coming increasingly complex.

Neither of them had wanted to face the fact of abortion; both of them had wanted the child desperately, May Ling because it was Dan’s child and Dan out of his need to cement a rela tionship that had become in some strange way the bed rock of his existence. But to have the child in the se crecy that surrounded their lives together was impossible. May Ling had to have a place to go—and therefore over a year ago Dan had gone to Cassala and poured out his heart.

Having told his story, Dan was ready for anything—rage, disgust, contempt—anything but the long, thoughtful silence that followed.

Finally, Cassala said, “Danny, I got two sons, you and Stevie. You love this Chinese woman?”

Dan nodded.

“Feng Wo, he knows this?”

“I think so. He must. We never said one word about it.”

“And when Jean finds out? What then?”

“I don’t know. Why should she find out?”

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