The Immigrants (26 page)

He thought so, but his mind refused to function properly. The
Anacreon
was due in from Hong Kong. To hell with it! Let her find out. He dozed off trying to remember what the name
Anacreon
meant, if it meant anything. Then, in his dream, he was on the dock, under a bulging cargo net, and it broke. A warning bell was clanging in his ears, but it was too late, and slowly as if they were held in transparent molasses, the great crates were descend ing on top of him.

The telephone awakened him. It was Hemmings, the Seldon’s butler, and he asked whether this was Mr. Daniel Lavette.

“Yes, yes.”

“Mrs. Lavette asked me to telephone, sir. I bear un happy tidings.

Mrs. Thomas Seldon has just passed away. Mrs. Lavette will remain here until you arrive.”

Dan stripped and showered and shaved, angry at his own lack of pity or grief or remorse. But then, he had hardly known his mother-in-law. During the seven years of his marriage, she had remained safely behind her rigid barrier of class and family pride, never forgetting for a moment that while she lived in California, her fam ily, the Asquiths, were from Boston and could claim

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re lationship with the Adamses and the Lodges. He could count on one hand the times he had been suffered to kiss her cool cheek, and while she had never been nasty to him, he could not recall that she had ever been kind.

Thomas Seldon opened the door of his home for Dan, and said chokingly, “Good to see you, my boy. You’ll have to take care of things. I’m in no condition to think, and poor Jean is devastated.

The whole world breaking up—she was too young, too young.”

Two days later, the funeral services for Mary Seldon were held in the Founders’ Crypt of the still-unfinished Grace Cathedral, within sight of the Seldon residence. In spite of the fact that the crypt was inadequate for the numbers who would have come to the proceedings, Thomas Seldon specified to Dan that he desired it to be there and no other place. A small piece of property which his wife had owned on Nob Hill had been willed to the cathedral.

In this decision, Seldon was following his wife’s wishes; and during the two days after his wife’s death, he talked to Dan at length about this and other matters. Dan realized with some surprise that Sel don was clinging to him desperately, that one of the three or four richest and most powerful men in San Francisco was to all effects utterly alone in the world with no one else he felt he could turn to. Dan took care of all the arrangements. Bishop Nichols gave the funeral oration, commending Mary Seldon as a woman whose gracious-ness and beauty would long be remembered and whose generosity had contributed so unselfishly to the great Episcopal cathedral that would some day rise over this crypt.

A few days later, Dan and Jean and Thomas Seldon gathered in the library of the Seldon mansion for the reading of Mary Seldon’s will. There were a few be quests to various charities. The bulk of her estate, ten thousand shares of stock in the Seldon Bank, various other stocks and bonds, as well as some fifty thousand dollars in cash, went to her daughter, Jean.

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Training recruits to crawl on their bellies, their heads down, their guns sliding in front of them, Lieutenant Jacob Levy was informed that he was wanted at the post headquarters. There, Colonel Albert Broderick said to him, “I’m sorry, Jake, but the honeymoon’s over.

It’s open season on lieutenants. Jones is cutting your orders. You go up to the front tomorrow morning. I wish to hell we had some other replacements. You had your lumps.”

“Maybe I’ll be lucky,” Jake said.

“I hope so.”

But he had no faith in his luck; he had used it up. He had made friends, good friends, dear friends, the kind of friends who clutch you and look at death through your eyes, and they were all dead. Even Steve Cassala had been torn open, ripped apart, and he thought of Steve now as his command car lurched and swayed over a rutted, muddy road through the Argonne Forest. A misty rain had been falling; then the sun broke through to reveal the tortured, blackened sticks that had once been trees in this demented landscape.

When he reached his unit, there was no welcome. Lieutenants were in the nature of condemned men, and the men who were only half condemned looked at him with blank, tired, bearded faces, their eyes dead al ready. His captain nodded at him, took his papers, told him to keep his head down, and led him to his dugout.

“Get some sleep,” the captain said. “It’s been too quiet.

Tomorrow, the shit hits the fan.”

But it was quiet all that night. Jake didn’t sleep. He lay there, thinking. He let the pictures flow through his mind, pictures of things he was convinced he would not see again, the sun on the water of Richardson Bay, the catboat slipping past San Pedro Point on that long, long sail he had taken with Clair through the narrows

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to Petaluma Creek, the stillness while they drifted for hours, becalmed and content, the old Spanish house at Sausalito, his mother and his father. He pictured them all, and lay awake in his pool of melancholy. Perhaps he dozed. The voice of his captain came out of the blob of daylight that marked the entrance to the dugout— without rancor, strangely gentle: “Levy, you lucky sonofabitch.”

He sat up, pulled on his shoes, and stared at the cap tain.

“Listen.”

It was quiet. There were voices outside, but otherwise it was quiet.

“I think it’s over,” the captain said uncertainly.

Jake went outside into the trench. The men were leaning high on the parapet, staring out over the rup tured, wire-strewn earth that separated them from the enemy. No gun fired and no shell exploded. The still ness was unearthly, incredible, not broken by cheers or tears or any sound except the low voices of the men, speaking to each other almost in whispers.

That afternoon, word came through that Kaiser Wil liam had abdicated and that Prince Maxmilian of Baden, the Chancellor of Germany, had resigned.

The war was over.

In San Francisco, Mark stood at the window in his of fice over the department store, staring out at the wild celebration below, people in a vast parade, twisting, dancing, embracing strangers, hundreds of them wear ing gauze masks to protect them from that silent death of influenza that had slid out of the trenches and across the whole world. When Dan entered the office, Mark didn’t move.

“This calls for a drink,” Dan said.

“Get out, Danny.”

“What?”

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“Get out and leave me alone.”

“Jesus, Mark, it’s over. Over!”

Mark turned to face him, blinking his eyes to keep back the tears.

“What’s over? Is Jake alive or dead? Tell me what’s over. I was on the phone with Sarah for an hour. Tell her it’s over.”

“Jake’s all right.”

“How the hell do you know?” Mark demanded.

Dan walked over and put his arm around him. “Come on, old buddy. How many times you told me the kid’s a survivor? He’s all right. You know what, we’ll have a few drinks and then we’ll find Jim Rolph and put him on the telephone. There are ways to find out what’s with Jake. And Sunny Jim owes us. Mark, bad news comes home and damn quick. All we got now is good news, so let’s find a bar and put down a few.”

Stephan Cassala had been a quiet, studious boy, very gentle, very unaggressive. If anything, these qualities were accentuated in the man. He returned to work at the bank. He was only twenty-three years old, but he had the lined, thin face of a much older man. He was tall, slender, good-looking. His father adored him and thanked God every day for his recovery; and more and more, he came to lean on him and to turn to him. While the Bank of Sonoma was still a small institution, it was nevertheless substantial and in the process of growth. When Anthony Cassala wanted to buy a piece of property on California Street—since they were bursting through their seams in the small space on Montgomery Street—it was Stephan who persuaded his father to re main where they were and to erect a nine-story super structure over their heads while they continued to do business. Montgomery Street was the place to be, re gardless of the cost.

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In such matters, Stephan could be decisive. In other ways, he appeared to have no will of his own. Dolores Vincente was a countrywoman to Maria, and she had a daughter of seventeen years whose name was Joanna. The Vincentes lived in the city, where Ralph Vincente owned a grocery store. Joanna Vincente was a quiet, placid, rather pretty girl, with large, dark eyes and a mass of fine black hair. For years, Maria Cassala and Dolores Vincente had been plotting a match between son and daughter, and now Joanna became a guest at the Cassala home in San Mateo. Her shyness and gentleness appealed to Stephan; he was not in love with her, but indeed he had never been in love with any woman; there was no force within him that impelled him toward marrying her, but then again there was no force that impelled him away from such an action.

Certainly, she was a comfortable person, unassuming and making no demands whatsoever. Both Rosa and Maria loved her, and she fell into the life of the big house at San Mateo, causing scarcely a ripple. Week ends, the house would fill with guests, and they were all exorbitant in their praise of Joanna. Maria saw her as the perfect daughter-in-law, and Anthony as well indi cated to Stephan that it was time he married and settled down.

In all truth, it simply happened and Stephan let it happen. The wedding ceremony took place in St. Mat thew’s Catholic Church on Notre Dame Avenue, where Maria’s tears had wet the altar rail so many times, and afterward there was a reception at the Cassala home. Cassala had erected three enormous striped pavilions, one with a dance floor, the other two crowded with ta bles, chairs, and great mounds of food. More than two hundred guests were invited.

Jean Lavette begged off with the understandable excuse that it was too close to her mother’s death, and on a public occasion of this sort, May Ling could hardly be present. But Dan came and Mark and Sarah Levy, bringing with them Clair Harvey and Martha Levy.

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Just turned fourteen, Mar tha was budding into full womanhood.

She was an im petuous, bubbling, effervescent young lady, so filled with life and energy and excitement that people who caught sight of her found themselves seeking her out again and again as the party continued. Stephan danced with her, and then he found that he kept looking for her, trying to find her in the crowd.

When he glimpsed her, he would feel a pang, a kind of forlorn excitement.

She said to him at one point, “Oh, Stephan, your bride is lovely!

She’s like a Madonna!”

And in reaction to that, he experienced a sense of loss, of awful, poignant loss.

Alan Brocker had been one of the people present at Mary Seldon’s funeral, but he had not spoken to Jean on that occasion. He waited for a number of weeks after that, expecting to hear from her, and, when he did not, he telephoned her and made a luncheon date.

She was neither warm nor cool, but simply matter-of-fact, and she suggested lunch at the Fairmont. “The easiest way to hide a relationship, Alan,” she explained, “is not to attempt to hide it.”

When they were seated at their table, Alan looked at her thoughtfully and observed that she had changed since her mother’s death.

“Have I? How?”

“I don’t know yet. Did you have a rough time?”

“I loved my mother. It’s not easy.”

“And now?”

“Quite capable of facing the world.”

“Am I permitted to say that you’re more beautiful than ever?”

“Thank you. What is the champagne for?” An iced bottle had arrived.

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“I use every opportunity. We are going to have Pro hibition, my dear. This will all be a dreamy memory.” The waiter filled their glasses, and Alan raised his. “To the living. I don’t want to sound callous, my dear, but I have an aunt and three friends who died of the flu. Welcome back.”

“Don’t be so damned sure of yourself. Just once, show some trace of humility.”

“I do, Jean dear. I run errands. You appear to for get.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Pinkertons. The report on your errant husband.” He took a folded sheaf of papers out of his pocket. “Six hundred dollars’

worth. Don’t mind that. It’s a gift, but not a paltry gift.”

“I had forgotten all about it. I’ll pay for it. Don’t worry.”

“I told you it’s a gift.”

She opened it and glanced at it. “Did you read it?”

“I could lie and tell you that honor triumphed and that I did not.”

“I don’t blame you,” she said. She wanted to put it away unread in her purse, but she could not resist. Her eyes picked it up in the middle of the page: “From Sep tember 16th to September 28th, the subject made seven visits to the house on Willow Street. On September 16th, he arrived at 1:00 p.m. He was observed to embrace the Oriental woman who opened the door for him. On said day, he departed the premises at 2:45 p.m. On September 18th, he arrived at said premises on Willow Street at 7:20 p.m. Surveillance was maintained as per contract until midnight, at which time the subject had not departed. Surveillance began the following day outside subject’s Russian Hill residence, from which residence he was observed to depart at 8:12 a.m.—” She broke off reading and stared at Alan Brocker.

“You can go on reading if you wish. I don’t mind.”

“You’re so generous.”

“I could have ordered twenty-four-hour surveillance. That

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would have doubled the price, and I don’t think you would have known any more.”

“Thank you.” Unable to control herself, she was leaf ing through the pages.

“I don’t know whether to commiserate or not,” he said. “It depends on how you look at it.”

“I don’t need sympathy,” she snapped.