The Immigrants (28 page)

He would never set foot in one of the great homes of San Francisco

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with May Ling at his side; he would never take her to the Fairmont or the opera or the theater. These were the places of ownership, of possession and permission.

When Hemmings, the butler, almost seventy now, had removed the dessert plates and brought the brandy, Seldon suggested that the ladies might leave him and Dan to themselves.

Smiling as she rose, Jean said, “Soon, dear Daddy, this antique custom of yours will go the way of the an kle skirts Aunt Virginia so adores. We shall play the victrola; I trust the music will not disturb you.”

The women left, and the two men sat down and lit their cigars. “I have twenty cases of that brandy in my basement, Dan,” Seldon said, “so don’t hold back. What do you think of this Prohibition idiocy?”

“Idiocy. They’ll knock it out in a year.”

“Who knows? Well, nothing’s changed. Except that now they telephone and plead with me to buy good rye whiskey by the case.

Do you suppose they’ll ever try to enforce that damn law?”

“How? It would take an army. I’m not much of a drinker, but Jean’s friends are putting it down like cam els. Where we used to buy a case, we now buy four.”

“Jean’s friends—well, that’s nothing I want to talk about tonight.

I want to talk about those ships of yours.”

“Oh? Has Jean been telling you?”

“Of course she has. And Alton Jones is a member of our club.

He’s been working on your plans for over a year now.”

“On and off—yes.”

“What is he charging you? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“An arm and a leg. More than I paid for the
Oregon Queen
, and these are just blueprints.”

“Well, you’ll never see a nineteen fourteen dollar again. This damned inflation will never stop. By the way, you know that you just about destroyed Grant Whittier?”

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“Come on now. I didn’t twist his arm. He was so ea ger to buy our ships that I couldn’t fight him off.”

“Well, they’re worthless today. You can’t give away cargo ships of that tonnage. Who would have dreamed that the bottom would fall out of cargo shipping like this?”

“I dreamed it would.”

“Yes, you did. Well, I won’t weep over Whittier. Let’s talk about these luxury liners of yours. Tell me about them.”

“It’s not a small thing,” Dan said.

“No, I don’t expect anything small from you.”

“We’re drawing plans for two liners, each about thirty thousand tons of displacement. I’ve drawn up a schedule that takes in half the world, New York to Eu rope, New York to California via the Panama Canal, and San Francisco to the Hawaiian Islands. The whole world’s changing now that the war’s over. There’s been no European travel since nineteen fourteen, and I esti mate that this new canal in Panama will open up Cali fornia in a new way. We’ll sell cruises where the ship itself will be a floating hotel, swimming pools on the ship, the best food, the best accommodations. There’s a whole army of bloated rich out of this war, and we’ll give them a way to spend their money. As far as Hawaii is concerned, my idea is to build a luxury hotel on Waikiki Beach and to tie in the hotel with ship schedules. We’ll want docking space in New York as well as here, and I suppose we’ll have to open offices on the East Coast.

What I’ve said is just the sketchiest outline of the whole thing, but I think it gives you an idea of what we’re after.”

Seldon shook his head and smiled. “You’re an inter esting man, Dan. Here we are in a total shipping de pression. There wouldn’t be an American cargo vessel afloat if not for government subsidies, and God only knows what the future of American shipping will be.

And you come up with a scheme like this.”

“I know where I can buy a five-thousand-ton-gross-cargo-2 2 2

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capacity Hog Island freighter for five thousand dollars. Two years ago, it would have cost almost a mil lion. All it means is that there are too many cargo ships. But there aren’t any passenger ships—I mean there are, but nothing like the cargo situation. Ship-building costs went up five hundred percent during the war; now they’re going down. This is the time to build.”

“All right—suppose I go along with you. How much will you need?”

“In terms of a credit line? Fifteen million dollars. Now a lot of that will be transferable into first mort gages, but that’s the kind of backing I need. I have a thirty-seven-page financial prospectus that Feng Wo, my manager, put together.”

“Fifteen million. That’s not small. Does it include the Hawaiian hotel?”

“Yes. I’m going there next month. The Bishop Bank there is interested in the hotel, and I could probably get considerable backing on the Islands. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to.”

“What about Cassala? You’ve been banking with him.”

“It’s too big for Tony. You know that.”

“Yes, I suppose so. And the Crocker Bank?”

“They’ve put out some feelers. I haven’t spoken to them yet.”

“You’re still rankled about that meeting with my board, aren’t you?” Seldon asked.

“No, I’ve gotten over that.”

“Send me the prospectus and let me think about it,” Seldon said.

“And now, let’s join the ladies.”

The fact that Feng Wo now earned a princely wage of fifteen thousand dollars a year and that he supervised the work of fourteen men and women in the offices of L&L Industries, located on

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the entire top floor of the L&L Department Store, and that he was the source of the mathematical-financial glue that held the growing Levy and Lavette empire together had not changed his style of living. He still occupied the same small flat in Chinatown.

He still walked to work each day, carrying a briefcase that he took home each evening, and he still wore suits of black worsted and white shirts and a black felt hat. So-toy, his wife, had progressed to the point where she could make herself understood in English, but in all truth she had little interest in mastering the language.

The conversations she valued were held with her husband and her daughter, and as far as her shop ping went, she could meet all her needs at places where Chinese storekeepers had at least a smattering of Shanghainese.

She never thought of her life as being unduly re stricted or unfulfilled. She was married to a man who in her eyes was wise and understanding beyond her com prehension. They had become wealthy beyond her wild est dreams, indeed beyond the wildest dreams of any person in the tiny village where she had been born. She still shopped carefully, saving pennies on the food she purchased, but this was only a matter of habit. She knew that they could afford any food she wished to buy, any quality, any delicacy. Her own needs in clothing were very simple, and her only extravagance was in the gifts she purchased for May Ling. She still suffered a certain amount of guilt and remorse over the fact that she was able to bear only a single child for her husband, and that child a girl; and she often recalled her own trepidation when Feng Wo decided to call the infant May Ling, which means “beautiful” in the Mandarin language. Yet all in all, her happiness was marred only by the curious and alien position of her only child.

When she raised this question with her husband, he would respond with irritation or silence; and then weeks would go by before she spoke of it again. And when she did, the talk came to no

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satisfactory conclusion. Thus it was with some apprehension that she informed him one morning that it was his grandchild’s second birthday, and that May Ling and little Joseph would be at their home for dinner that evening and that if possible he should not be late from work.

“I’ll be home no later than seven,” he agreed.

“I had a thought,” she ventured timidly.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Lavette has not been to our home since that evening so long ago. Would it not be pleasant to ask him to attend this small celebration?”

“No.”

“But why not?”

“You know that it annoys me to discuss this. I prefer not to.” In any case, Feng Wo felt awkward in the Shanghainese dialect. It was difficult for him to express subtleties of behavior, to explain things that he might well be able to explain in English.

“He is the child’s father,” she persisted woefully. “He is a good man. You tell me that.”

“He is not married to our daughter. We are Chinese. May Ling is Chinese. I have tried to explain this to you before, many times.”

“I know. I understand.”

“No, you don’t understand,” he said with some as perity. “I try to explain but you don’t understand. You know what a concubine is.

Let me be blunt. My daugh ter is a concubine.”

“No, no, no. There are no concubines in America.”

“Unfortunately, there are. I am not indicting Mr. Lavette. Our debt to him is too great.”

“But he loves her. He gave her a house. He gives her everything.”

“Everything except his name. I don’t want to discuss this because it gives me pain. I am torn sufficiently. You must take my word for it. We cannot invite him here to our house. There are rules about

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such things. There is a situation which I must pretend does not exist. I have never spoken about it—not to him, not to Mr. Levy, not to any human being. Now let that be the end of it. I must go to work now.”

Then he stalked out of the house. But when he re turned that evening, his arms were loaded with toys for the child—whom he loved more than he could say, who had become the center and focus of his own existence.

Sarah warned Mark about Jake. “Go slowly,” she said to her husband. “This man who came back is not the boy who went away.

Something happened to him, some thing terrible.”

“What?” Mark demanded. “What happened to him that didn’t happen to the other kids? He wasn’t wounded. He was in a war.

Well, millions were in this war.”

“You don’t know anything,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “You know about money, and you don’t know anything else. You don’t know about your son or your daughter or your wife, and you don’t want to know either.”

“Oh, wonderful, wonderful!” Mark exploded. “I break my back trying to make a decent life, and this is what I get in return. I dream of creating something for my son, something that will be a source of pleasure and reward for him, and this is what I get—a wife who tells me I’m a sonofabitch.”

“I didn’t tell you that.” She sighed and said, “All I’m asking is for you to leave him alone for a while, let him find himself. That’s all I’m asking.”

Mark’s office had become his refuge. In the twenty-foot-square, walnut-paneled room on the top floor of the department store building, he was renewed and re deemed. He sat behind

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a polished mahogany desk, fac ing a large, leather-upholstered couch. There were two big leather chairs to set off the couch and an Oriental rug on the floor. On one wall were two large framed paintings of the projected passenger vessels, still un named. On another wall was a sentimental painting of the
Oregon Queen
.

The same three paintings were dupli cated in Dan’s office. Next to his desk was the newest model of a dictating machine, admired but almost never used. It made him too uneasy to dictate into a machine, and he much preferred giving the dictation in person to Miss Anderson.

Miss Polly Anderson had been his secretary for over a year now.

She was a large, bosomy, easygoing woman in her early thirties.

Somewhere in her life there had been a Mr. Anderson, but they had parted company and she was now alone. This much about her life Mark knew, that she lived alone and that she sang in the choir at the Lutheran Church; about his life, she knew every detail. She overflowed with sympathy; she clucked over him and anticipated his wants; she endured his mo ments of temper; she was intimate with the members of his family without ever having met them.

She under stood Martha’s desire to be an actress, Jake’s with drawal, Clair’s odd position in the family, and of course Sarah’s displeasure with Mark’s behavior. Not that she ever criticized Sarah or any of the others; but she un derstood.

The day after his talk with Sarah about Jake, at half-past five in the afternoon Miss Anderson came into his office to ask him whether there was anything more be fore she left for the day. He looked at her bleakly and shook his head.

“You’re miserable,” she said. “Isn’t there anything I can do?”

“Can you make my son remember that I’m his fa ther? He’s been home more than two weeks and he hasn’t said ten words to me.”

“Mr. Levy, you know he’s said more than ten words to you. Give him time.”

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“That’s what Sarah tells me.”

“And she’s right.”

“She’s always right and I’m always wrong. What have I ever asked from her? Polly, would you believe it—I have been married twenty-two years and I have never looked at another woman.”

“You have looked at me, I hope.”

He looked at her now. “How would you like to have dinner with me?” he demanded suddenly.

“Oh?”

“Not oh. Yes or no? Or have you got another appoint ment?”

“Won’t they be expecting you at home?”

“Polly, they don’t expect me anymore. They’re not even excited when I show up.”

“Mr. L, I have a large steak in my icebox, and I’m a good cook, and I have six quarts of real beer that I’ve been saving, so may I invite you instead to my place?”

“You’re sure I can’t take you to a fancy restaurant?”

“Come to my place. It’s comfortable. And we can talk better there.”

“Give me the address and I’ll meet you there,” Mark said. He couldn’t bring himself to leave with her, and after she had gone, he was filled with a sense of guilt and danger too. But along with the guilt there was ex citement and anticipation, and the platitude he fed him self defined her as a kindly and sympathetic woman. It would go no further than dinner and talk.