Second Generation (17 page)

"Only one terrible thing occurs to me," he added.

"Oh? Yes, what terrible thing?"

"That you are happily married."

She hesitated and then replied, "Neither happily nor unhappily. I'm not married." '

"God be praised. Now, please, please, I introduced

myself before. But now more formally. My name is Marcel Duboise. I am unmarried, twenty-nine years old. I was born in Toulouse, which accounts for my accent. I work for the newspaper
Le Monde
in a most shameful way. You see, I hold nothing back. I write a daily column about food and restaurants, and the only redemption in my work is that I am the substitute play critic. Once, twice a week, if I am lucky, I am allowed to review a play. Also films, but again as a substitute. One time, the film critic was sick for a month. That was glorious."

"That's very interesting," Barbara said, for want of anything else to say.

"Then you find me interesting. Good. Please tell me your name."

She thought about it for a while. He stood there, hopeful, earnest, not a very good-looking man, but with an undeniable charm and with a boyish openness and vulnerability that she simply did not believe - could be assumed. ,

"My name is Barbara Lavette," she said at last.

"But that is a French name. You are not French?"

"My grandfather came from Marseille. He was part French and part Italian."

"Of course. The wonderful thing about Americans—they are always from somewhere else."

She was laughing again. Common sense said to her, You do not let yourself get picked up on the street in Paris by a strange man. On the other hand, strange men do not bother to pick up a woman who wears no make-up, a brown woolen suit over a beige cashmere sweater, not to mention scuffed ghillies with heels only three quarters of an inch high. She was also lonely and homesick, and fancied the smell of the April air to be like the salty scent of the sea on a breezy day on Russian Hill.

Sensing her mood and hesitation, Marcel Duboise said, "Mademoiselle, what harm will it do if I walk with you and we talk? If you tire of me, I will go. Surely, on the Champs-Elysees, on an April afternoon, nothing unpleasant can happen?"

"But you don't even know where I am going."

"That's where I am going. There is nothing in the world more important." A half-hour later, he was telling her the story of his grandmother, who had written her first novel

—and had it published—at the age of seventy-two. "Very risque, very risque indeed."

Barbara realized how little she had laughed in the past three years.

"But of course, you are serious," he said. "There is your charm. Myself, I am a fool. So my family regards me. So the world regards me."

"You are certainly not a fool, and as for myself, you know nothing about me. Oh, I wish my French were not so wretched."

"Your French is very correct, and your accent is absolutely delightful."

"Thank you. But I really, must go."

"Where? You see, you are in flight because we were not properly introduced. If an aunt of yours said, 'This is Marcel Duboise, a proper gentlemen,' then the whole thing would be so simple."

"But my aunt is three thousand miles away, so it is impossible."

"Miles, yes. What is that in kilometers? Oh, devil take it!" They were at the corner of the Avenue Victor-Hugo now, and Duboise pointed to a sidewalk cafe. "We sit down there for one moment. I buy you a small drink. Vichy water, tea. I accept the fact that I must be neutral and harmless."

The proprietor greeted him by name. "You see, I am not a nameless thug," he reassured her.

"All right." She dropped into a chair. "You are Marcel Duboise. I am Barbara Lavette. We have met. It is absolutely formal now. For a half-hour, you have been introducing yourself to me."

"And you have not driven me off."

"True. Could I have a beer?"

He ordered two beers and stared at her in delight.

"Monsieur, you must not stare at me like that."

"But certainly. Forgive me. I have told you who I am, what I do, what my father did, what my grandfather did. You have told me nothing."

"How could I? Do you always talk nonstop?"

"Oh, no. Certainly not. I was fighting time and tradition. I was talking for my life—really, truly. Now tell me about yourself, Barbara Lavette."

"You are rather nice—"

"Thank you. Bless you."

"And I am entirely able to take care of myself. But when a stranger tries to pick you up in Paris—"

"Not to pick you up. Only to keep you from walking out of his life."

"That's just it. Would I select a man and accost him on the street because I was attracted by his face? It stinks a bit, doesn't it? That's an American expression," she explained. "It doesn't work when I put it in French."

"I get it. My face? Never. But it wasn't only your face, but yourself, all of you."

"And still you know nothing about me."

"Not so. It's true, you have told me nothing. But just wait. The suit is Molyneux? Am I right?"

"Heavens, no. I bought it in San Francisco."

"Well, so much for clothes. I know this: you are kind, gentle, sure of yourself, intelligent and—all right, I say it I think you are one of the most attractive women I have ever seen. So I have sinned. And your French is excellent, so you have lived here for some time."

"I wish that were true." Barbara sighed. "I had four years of French at secondary school, two years at college. Six years. So I would be a perfect donkey if I couldn't get along with it. I've been here for almost three years."

"With your family?"

"No, alone. I came first to study at the Sorbonne, which is the rationalization of so many Americans who come here, but I just don't have the character of a student. I stuck it out for a year and a half. I was almost ready to give up and go home when I ran into a piece of luck. I met Frank Bradley, who is editor of
Manhattan Magazine.
Do you know it?"

"Yes, of course. My English isn't good enough for me to enjoy reading it, but I love the cartoons."

"So do I. Well, you know it's a weekly, and every other week they publish a 'Letter from Paris,' a sort of grab bag—some politics, fashion, the arts and letters, and whatever gossip might strike a chord back in the states. Well, Bradley and I got to talking, and then I showed him some pieces I had written. He liked them, and he let me try the 'Letter from Paris.' They liked what I did and I got the job—I guess for want of anyone else at the moment —and I've been doing it ever since."

"Then we're both writers. Do you see how sound my instinct is?"

She nodded, smiling, and he ordered another round of beer.

Ten years after the turn of the century, the leading citizens of Los Angeles, already suffering from a sense of inferiority imposed by San Francisco, which was arising like a phoenix out of its ashes, realized that they needed a harbor. History had bequeathed them a city twenty miles from the sea, and they felt that as an inland city in a semidesert, their future was far from bright. Long, long ago, ancient Athens had faced the same problem, and the Athenians, a vigorous and intelligent people, decided to build a pair of walls, each four miles long, to connect their city with Piraeus, their seaport. On the Pacific coast, in the vicinity of Los Angeles, there was unfortunately no harbor worthy of the name, but there was an ocean; and, never daunted, Los Angeles incorporated into itself a strip of land a mile wide and sixteen miles long, stretching from the westernmost edge of the city to two coastal fishing villages, San Pedro and Wilmington, two sleepy villages that fronted on a great mud flat called Terminal Island. The citizens of San Pedro and Wilmington, facing sudden absorption, were of mixed feelings, but the city of Los Angeles undertook a public relations campaign calculated to convince these people that their destiny and future were much brighter within Los Angeles than outside of it. In August of 1909, elections were held in San Pedro and in Wilmington, and when the results had been counted, Los Angeles was at long last a seaport. Eventually a stone breakwater, miles long, threw a great circle around San Pedro, Wilmington, and the neighboring port of Long Beach, providing Los Angeles not only with a seaport but with a large, safe harbor.

Within this enormous breakwater were enclosed the mud flats of Terminal Island, which was transformed into a busy hive of shipbuilding during the years of World War I and in the early nineteen twenties, employing literally thousands of men. With the onset of the Depression, the shipyards of Terminal Island closed down, succumbing one by one to the economic malaise that gripped America, until only a hardy handful were left to try to survive and dream of better times.

One of the companies that failed to survive and ended up in the hands of the local banks was Occidental Marine, a medium-size shipbuilder that had specialized in the construction of wooden minesweepers during the war. It had twenty acres of land, shops, cradles, groundways— even a small drydock that had fallen into disuse and disrepair. The whole enterprise was offered to Dan Lavette for a hundred thousand dollars, but, hoarding his tiny store of capital, he delayed, bargained, and finally took over the place for a total price of sixty-five thousand dollars, the bank taking back a mortgage of sixty thousand dollars at four percent interest, and considering itself fortunate in the deal. Dan was less fortunate in his plan to make enough money to send Joe through medical school. During the next three years, he built seven boats, only managing to keep his head above water, to pay his bills, and to meet the payroll for the five men he had hired—and to make them understand the situation when he had to lay them off. The first boat was ordered by Pete Lomas, whose converted mine sweeper-turned-mackerel boat was beginning to come apart at the, seams. There were two other fishing boats, one of which saw its owner go out of business. The remaining four vessels were small sailing craft, pleasure boats. The bank, which dreaded the possibility of another bankruptcy and the possession of worthless property, forgave him a year of interest payment, and somehow or other Dan forced his enterprise to survive.

One day in the early spring of 1937, Pete Lomas walked into Dan's office on Terminal Island and offered him a pure Havana cigar. The office, where Dan was the only occupant—the little bookkeeping he required was done by Feng Wo at home—consisted of six rooms in the main shop building, all but one deserted. The room that Dan occupied had a desk, a swivel chair, a row of empty filing cabinets, and a splendid walnut architect's chest, whose many shallow drawers were filled with old Occidental blueprints of boats Dan would never build. There was also a table and five captain's chairs, obviously for meetings to discuss the plans.

Pete Lomas dropped into one of the chairs while Dan examined the cigar and admired it.

"Courtesy of Alex Hargasey."

"Thank him. Who the hell is he?"

"Oh, nobody. Nobody. Only the most important director in Hollywood."

"Yeah. And that's why you're sitting here in white ducks

and a white shirt and that silly captain's hat of yours

instead of being out fishing."

"Exactly."

Dan bit off the end of the cigar, and Lomas leaned over to light it for him.

"Go on," Dan said.

"You be nice to me, Danny," Lomas said. "You be very goddamn nice to me because I am going to blow your ass sky high. You want to know why I'm not out fishing? Because Paramount Pictures—you heard me, Paramount Pictures—is paying me fifty dollars a day, seven days a week, and all expenses and the crew's wages for the use of my boat. They're making a film about a fisherman, and they're using my boat. Only today they're not shooting on location, which is my boat, so I'm a gentleman of leisure. You got anything to say about that?"

"It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. But it doesn't blow my ass sky high."

"Be patient." He reached into his pocket, took out his wallet, and extracted a folded check. "Five hundred." He handed it to Dan. "Last payment on my boat. Took two years, but it's done."

"It helps. Believe me, it helps."

"Now, listen to me, Danny. This Hargasey, he's a Hungarian, very emotional, blows up, yells, screams, but he's a nice guy. Since they start this film, he becomes absolutely crazy over the sea. He says it's because there's no ocean anywhere near Hungary. Well, he wants a yacht. He's got this girl, Lorna Belle—you heard of her?"

"I heard of her."

"She's the star in the film, and I guess they're shacked up, not married or anything, but that ain't too important with them, it seems. Well, she's just as nuts as he is on this business of a yacht. Hargasey is in love with my boat, and when I tell him that you built it, nothing else but you got to build him a yacht."

"What?"

"Hold on, Danny. Not just a yacht. He wants a hundred-foot Diesel with eight bedroom suites."

"Is he crazy?"

"Have I blown your ass sky high or not?"

"Pete," Dan said, "You can pick up yachts all up and down this coast—and for a damn sight less than it costs to build one. You know that. He must know it. And who has enough money for a hundred-foot Diesel? It could run to a quarter of a million—more."