The Immigrants (29 page)

Her apartment was in a clean, white frame building on Powell Street. It consisted of a tiny kitchen and a fairly large living room that doubled as bedroom. The bed had a flowered cretonne cover and was piled high with cretonne-covered pillows. She sat Mark down with a glass of beer and set about preparing dinner.

“I don’t drink much,” he told her, “but I love beer. That’s what brought me here, if you must know.”

“Not myself?” she asked from the kitchen.

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“Of course, Polly. As a matter of fact, I know a place where you can still get good beer, but the food is terri ble. You know, years ago, when we first started out as partners, Mr. Lavette and myself, we used to sit and put away three or four quarts between us. Well, we were younger then.”

“You’re still a young man, Mr. L. Everyone talks about how young you and Mr. Lavette are.”

“Forty-one, that’s not so young.”

“Oh, it is. It is indeed.”

The dinner was good, and he stuffed himself. He was only slightly surprised when she suggested that the bed was the only comfortable place to sit; and then he felt doubly foolish as he tried to assuage his conscience by allowing her to make all the overtures. He had the feel ing that he was clumsy, mawkish in his lovemaking, conscious of his protruding belly as he undressed him self—as if he had only this moment realized that he had developed a paunch. He tried to assume some degree of sophistication, remarking that he was quite aware of the fact that his BVDs were the most ridiculous garment ever invented. Yet she was kind and warm and managed to put him at ease; and then he realized that in all truth she was grateful for his presence and for the makeshift bout of sexual intercourse that he provided.

She said afterward, “Mr. L, I sometimes think I am the loneliest woman on God’s earth.”

He caught the last ferry back to Sausalito, and stand ing there, looking at the black waters of the bay, he felt a surge of pity and remorse—not at what he had done, but because for at least a moment he had experienced the monumental sorrow of human existence.

Jake bought a secondhand Model T Ford, and he and Clair explored the dirt roads of Marin County and the Sonoma Valley.

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Their favorite spot was in the Muir Woods. To Clair, the grove of giant redwoods was like a sanctuary, and she realized that somehow this place eased the anguish that was blocked inside of Jake. He told her the story of William Kent’s thirty-year-long bat tle to save the splendid trees from the loggers. “It’s the only church of God I would give ten cents for,” Jake said, “and all the while Dan Lavette and my father were fattening on the corpses of the redwoods.”

“They weren’t the only ones,” Clair told him gently. “Half of San Francisco was built of redwood. You know that.”

His bitterness against Mark and Dan was something she simply could not comprehend; and she wondered whether it was just an outlet for a knot of nameless an ger that he himself could not comprehend. She never pressed him to talk, to let out the worm that was gnaw ing at him, but one day, sprawled in the catboat that was becalmed out on the bay, the water momentarily glassy and still, she asked him about Maguire, whom he had mentioned so often in his letters.

“Funny about Maguire,” he said. “I haven’t thought about him for months, and then I dreamed about him last week. Bigoted, stupid sonofabitch—he grew up in Chicago and became a regular army top sergeant. He was drill sergeant in my unit, and he kept after me night and day, Jew bastard this, Jew bastard that—the only proper, prideful thing he had in his life was his hatred of Jews. And then it got to a point where I couldn’t take it anymore, and I got him in a quiet corner—we were already in France—and I beat the hell out of him. Great achievement. I was bigger and stronger and younger. He could have had my hide, but he never said one word about it, but after that he kind of worshiped the ground I walked on. Like I was his big brother. He never read a book. All he knew about women were whores. He boasted that he had come through five doses of the clap. He used to tell me about how he grew up in Chicago—a kind of unholy poverty of the body and soul that

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I couldn’t even imagine. He had been twisted and deprived and brutalized and depraved as much as one human being could be and still live. He had inter course with his own sister at the age of thirteen. She was eleven. His father was a drunk who systematically beat him half to death, and at the age of fourteen he left home and became a spotter for a pimp. That was Joe Maguire, and do you know, we became closer than I have ever been with any man in my life. He was a damn good soldier, but more than that, under all the filth and crap there was something beautiful and wonderful. He saved my life once. Oh, hell, what’s the difference?”

“What happened to him, Jake?”

“He died.”

“I know that. Tell me how he died.”

“Why?” he demanded, almost belligerently. “What difference does it make?”

“Because until you do,” she said slowly, “until you let me into that part of you, there’s going to be a wall between us, and I don’t want any walls between us. Did you ever think about how I grew up, Jake, and what it meant for me to come into that great hacienda up there on the hill with Mark and Sarah? You know you made it possible. I think I fell in love with you the first day I was there.”

“Yeah? Well I think I fell in love with you that day I first saw you on the
Oregon Queen
.”

“No kidding? You remember that?”

“Would I forget it?”

“Tell me about Maguire.”

He didn’t look at her now. A faint whisper of wind picked up, and the limp sail began to flap. Jake leaned over the side of the boat, letting his hand trail in the water. “We were in a shell hole,” he said. “Nine of us. Pinned down by machine-gun fire. Our lieutenant was dead, his body on the lip of the hole with bullets slam ming into it. You have to understand that the German gunner knew

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we were in the hole and he pinned us there. There was nothing we could do, but then some crazy bastard officer in another hole began screaming for us to clean out the gunner. I took half the men, Ma guire took the others, and we made a rush for it. I don’t know why. For the life of me, I don’t know why. We went out in two directions, two clumps, which gave the gunner the choice. He chose Maguire, and he wiped him out with his men, all of them. I never saw any of them again.”

“And you, Jake? What happened to you?”

“You want to hear that?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” he whispered. “We got through, me and a skinny little kid from Palo Alto whose name was Fredericks. The others were killed. There was only one German left alive, a fat, round-faced kid with sandy hair and blue eyes—big, blue eyes. His helmet was off, and he was staring at us in complete terror when Fred ericks and I dived into the hole and bayoneted him. My—bayonet—went— into—” He sat up and looked at her. “Into his face, Clair,” he said harshly. “I drove my bayonet into the center of his face.”

Her eyes met his squarely, and she would not look away. “All right, Jake. I’m glad you told me.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what shell shock is?”

“I read about it.”

“It’s a euphemism for insanity. In war nothing is called by its right name. I’m lucky. I was never wounded and my mind stayed together. Fredericks wasn’t. His mind went. He’s in a vet’s hospital and he’s finished. I telephoned his mother and tried to explain. You want me to talk about these things and I talked. Do you still want me to talk about them?”

“Yes,” she said flatly.

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He took a deep breath and reached out for her hand. “You are one hell of a woman, Clair Harvey.”

“You’re one hell of a man, Jake Levy. Now let’s sail the boat.

The wind is up.”

“Why don’t we get married?” he said.

“It’s time you asked.”

“What kind of wedding do you want?”

“The same kind you want.”

“You know my mother and father will never forgive us,” he said.

“Sure they will.”

Three days later they packed a picnic lunch, drove across the Sonoma Valley to the tiny town of Napa, where they were married by the justice of the peace. Then they drove north through the Napa Valley. It was a clear, cool beautiful day. Small clumps of cloud drifted across the sky, while their shadows raced crazily over the golden hills. They turned off the main road onto a dirt cart-track, the little Ford lumping and bump ing its way along. They lunched in the shade of a grove of live oaks, spreading a blanket on the ground, lying side by side and watching the clouds meander across the blue sky.

“What a beautiful stinking world it is,” Clair said. “Why don’t you make me pregnant? I want to have at least eight kids, so we ought to start right away.”

“Here?” He pointed up the road, to where a pair of iron gates hung from two stone gateposts.

“No one’s watching. Not that I care if they are. We’re awfully good. We could give demonstrations.”

“God Almighty, I married a tramp.”

“You’re damn right you did, and it’s time you knew.”

Afterward, they walked up the road to the iron gates. Across the top of the gateway was spelled out Higate Winery. A road, lined on either side with weed-grown rows of vine stumps that thrust

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out a tangle of green tendrils, led up the hillside to two old stone buildings. Tied onto the gate itself, a small sign rather hopefully and somewhat pathetically proclaimed, “Rooms for Rent.”

They looked at each other. “This is as close to para dise as we’ve ever been,” Clair said. The valley swept down beneath them to the golden hills in the east. Be yond the stone houses, the mountains climbed west ward, covered with live oak and mesquite.

“We’ll give it a try,” Jake agreed.

They opened the gate and walked through up the road to the house. A small, stout man of about sixty was cranking an old truck that refused to start. He let go of the crank to watch their approach.

“This old sonofabitch is more trouble than it’s worth,” he said to Jake.

“You get in and work the spark and the throttle. I’ll crank,”

Jake said.

The engine started. The fat man got out of the truck and shook hands enthusiastically.

“We just got married,” Clair said. “You’re renting rooms?”

“What else with this lousy, rotten, barbarian Vol stead Act of theirs? You run a small winery and you’re lucky to keep body and soul together. Now they’ve scragged me, ruined me, destroyed me, driven a stake into my heart—that devil’s brew of temperance swine! You’re not temperance, are you? Because if you are, I’ll not have you dirtying the ground you stand on. I’ll drive you away like the devil himself.”

“We’re not temperance,” Clair replied, laughing. “Good heavens, no.”

“’Tis nothing to laugh at.”

“I’m Jake Levy. This is my wife, Clair. Our car’s down there on the road, and we saw your sign.”

Now a small, round, red-cheeked lady came out of the building, wiping her hands on her apron.

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“I’m Mike Gallagher,” the fat man said. “There’s my wife, Mary.

We got a clean room for two dollars a night, good bed, three dollars if you want breakfast, four dollars if you want dinner.”

“Oh, what an old skinflint you axe,” his wife cried out. “A dollar for breakfast. That’s shameful.”

“You leave the business matters to me, old lady.”

“We’ll take it,” Jake said.

As they walked back down the hill to get their car, Clair said, “Oh, what a beautiful honeymoon! Who would have ever dreamed it would come out like this?”

Coming into the house on Willow Street, Dan an nounced to May Ling, “Well, young lady, I am off to Honolulu.”

“Oh, no, Danny. When?”

“Four days from now.”

“And how long will you be there?”

“Including the passage, I’ll be gone five weeks.”

“Five weeks? Oh, Danny, it’s too long.”

“Not at all.”

“And is she going with you?”

“Who is she?”

“The ice lady,” May Ling spat out.

“Oh, I do like you when you’re mad.”

“I am not mad. Only disgusted. You just haven’t enough sensitivity to know the difference. I just wish you were in China right now.”

“In China? Why?”

“Because then everyone would look at you and be filled with disgust and say, who is that enormous, over sized creature with a huge nose who walks like a man?”

“I didn’t know you felt that way about me,” he said, grinning.

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“Well, I do. Is she going with you?”

“No. She hates ships. She hates boats.”

“She also hates you, but you haven’t enough sense to know it.

Are you going alone?”

“No.”

“Well, don’t grin at me. Who is going with you? Mark?”

“No.”

“Who?”

“You,” he said.

“Oh, Danny, don’t tease me, don’t.”

“I’m not teasing. You are going with me.”

She kept shaking her head.

“Will you please just listen to me. The passage is all arranged.

You are to come as my secretary. Frank An derson is a friend of mine, and we’re going to go on one of his ships, the
Santa Barbara
.

She’s a twelve-thousand-ton cargo carrier, and she makes her run be tween here and Yokohama, with a stopover at Hono lulu. She has two passenger cabins and a Japanese and Kanaka crew. As far as Anderson is concerned, it’s all up and above board. I’m taking my secretary. That makes sense. I have important business in Hawaii.

You will get down to Pier Thirty-eight at the Embarcadero at ten o’clock on Friday morning and board the ship.” May Ling stared at him. Then she sat down, still staring at him. Then their son, Joseph, almost three years old now, came into the room and embraced Dan’s leg. Dan swung him up into the air, and he howled with glee. May Ling’s mouth was open. Tears appeared and ran slowly down her cheeks.