Bellagrand: A Novel (41 page)

“Me not little. Me big.”

“Yes, you are quite tall. Maybe you and I can go to a store to get some tools.”

“What’s tools?”

“Hammers, pliers, a saw, a wrench.”

Alexander shook his head. “Me get bananas, cookies.”

“Yes, those are called girl stores,” said Herman. “When you grow up, you’ll have to learn to stay
far
away from those. You and I are going to go to a man store, Alexander. Okay?”

The boy vigorously nodded, not letting go of his grandfather’s hand. “Now. No frogs. Go now.”

“Maybe a little lunch? Your grandpa is starved.”

“No lunch.”

“Please?” Herman said.

They walked outside into the blinding sunshine.

Alexander showed Herman the pond and the frogs under the lilies, the palm trees he and his mother had planted, the lemon trees, the grove of oranges. He showed Herman the dock with the boat and the fishing lines.

“Is that your fishing line?”

Alexander nodded. “Me fish. Daddy fish. Gampa fish?”

“I eat fish. And I like to fish. Your dad and I went out on the boat quite often when I was here last. You were too little. But perhaps this time, all three of us can go?”

“
Zio
Salvo go too.”

“How could I forget.” He rumpled Alexander’s hair. “Of course
Zio
Salvo go too.”

Gina called them in for lunch, and both old man and little boy looked reluctant as they trudged up the slope to the lanai.

After lunch, Alexander had a tremendous temper tantrum. “No nap, fish! No nap, fish!” Alexander kept yelling and kicking his legs as he was carried upstairs by Gina. But after the nap that never happened and before dinner, Alexander, Herman, and Harry sat on the dock in the warm December setting sun, legs dangling, and threw their lines in the water. They didn’t succeed in catching a fish that day, but they succeeded the next, and the one after that.

Herman bought Alexander a hammer.

Alexander stopped having naps in the afternoon.

“What are you two looking at?” Gina asked. Herman and Esther’s backs were to her. Since they both paid attention to little else but Alexander and his activities, Gina assumed her son was being extra special.

“We are trying to figure out what he is doing,” Esther said, moving slightly away from her father’s shoulder, to let Gina take a peek. Alexander was rolling multiedged stones from one end of the grass to the other.

Gina watched him. “Clearly he is building a fort.”

“Alexander, stop that!” That was Harry, from his mosaic table by the dock, where a moment ago he had been engrossed in Sabatini’s
Scaramouche,
a romance set during the French Revolution. Fiction was the only thing Janke heartily approved of. She deemed fiction “fangless, because it was so far-fetched.”

“Janke’s not wrong there, Harry, about it being far-fetched,” Gina had said. “How else to explain that in
Scaramouche,
Robespierre plays the part of a romantic action hero?”

“Alexander! What did I say? Stop it.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“But you’re not stopping!”

“Me no finish!”

“Not, me no finish,” Harry yelled. “You finish.”

“Okay!”

“I think,” said Gina, watching her son, “he is trying to build two forts on opposite sides of the lawn and then have a battle.”

“A battle with what?” Herman asked.

Gina shrugged. “Anything. Everything. Two carrots. Two bananas. The hammer you bought him.”

“I didn’t know he was a fighter,” said Herman with unconcealed pride. “But clearly your son is a builder.”

“And a fighter,” said Esther with unconcealed adoration.

“Alexander! Did you stop?” This time Harry didn’t even look up from
Scaramouche
.

“Yes, Daddy.”

Gina knew how much Harry was enjoying a book by how much he kept quoting from it.
He was born with a . . . sense that the world was mad.
And by how little attention he paid to everything else.

Gina called to her oblivious husband. “Harry,
tesoro
. Can you please look up from Robespierre? Your son is about to take off in the boat.”

Alexander chortling, trying to untie the rope at the dock hook, Harry dropping his book, running down to the dock, Herman, Esther, Gina laughing, Harry scooping up Alexander, swinging him upside down by his feet, pretending to throw him into the water, Alexander laughing, laughing,
more, more, Daddy, more, more.

Five

THE ONLY THING THAT
marred the idyll was the occasional rumble between Herman and Harry, like the South Florida weather with its distant but daily sound of afternoon thunder. Gina had mentioned this to Esther, about the way the two men kept bickering about all manner of things petty and small, and Esther laughed. “Darling, that’s not bickering. That’s them getting along like wood and matches. If they’re arguing, it means all is well with the world. It’s when they don’t talk that you’ve got to worry.”

Gina wasn’t convinced. “It doesn’t seem like they’re sorting
out
their differences. It’s more as if they’re showcasing them. Neither gives an inch.”

Esther nodded. “Harry is his father’s son through and through. The more he doesn’t give in, the more proud Father is.”

“I don’t think Harry knows that,” said Gina. “I’m fairly certain he doesn’t.”

“Yes,” Esther said, “Harry’s always been the last one to see the truth of anything.”

“Maybe we should ask Salvo, our new expert on all things real estate, to have Bellagrand appraised,” Herman said one fine evening after a late lobster dinner when they were sitting outside on the screened-in lanai while Alexander, unmindful of the evening flies by the pond, was attempting to find a wooden stick for himself so he could walk like his grandfather. “The bank had estimated the house’s value when they extended you the line of credit, Harry, but that was a couple of years ago. Prices have been booming. Perhaps Salvo can update us, tell us something concrete.”

“I’m sure he can, Herman,” Gina said when Harry didn’t immediately answer. “He’ll be here tomorrow for Sunday dinner. We’ll ask him.”

Harry grunted. “How’s Salvo going to help?” This seemed to be directed at Herman, though Gina could not say for sure. “There is nothing concrete about the price of a house.”

“Come again?”

“Never mind.”

“What do you mean, son?” said Herman. “This house has value. That value is expressed in price. How can anything be more concrete than that?”

“You know what the word
price
is short for?
Caprice
.”

“Oh, here we go,” muttered Gina, motioning to Esther to help her clear the table. They had sent Carmela home early.

“I don’t follow,” Herman said, sitting up straighter in his chair.

“Prices are arbitrary,” Harry said. “They can be set high to make maximum profit for the owner of this house.”

“Which is you.”

Harry shrugged. “I’m indifferent to that, Father, as you know. The house is like a widget. The workers who made this widget can’t afford to buy it.
That
I’m not indifferent to.”

“Well, yes. Many people can’t buy boats or diamond rings. What does that prove? That we shouldn’t have boats or diamond rings?”

Gina hid the hand with her ring on it. Harry blinked. “No, but it proves that price is set arbitrarily.”

Herman chuckled. “Are you saying that nothing has intrinsic value?”

“Not at all. Things you can’t put a price on have intrinsic value. Like babies. Things you
can
put a price on have arbitrary value. Like houses.”

Who was going to disagree with him there? thought Gina. Except in her mind, both things had value.

“Have you ever seen a profit and loss statement for a business, Harry?” Herman asked. “In Salvo’s restaurants perhaps? I think you’re confused about your terms.”

“I’m not at all.”

“Oh, I’m
certain
of it,” said Herman. “You’re confusing prices with costs. They’re not synonymous.”

“I know. The cost of this house is X. The price of this house is a capricious Y.”

Herman took a cheerful last sip of his mojito and motioned to Gina for one more. “If prices are arbitrary, then, by your logic, wages are also arbitrary.”

“Aren’t they?”

“Are they? Why did Wood Mill pay your wife X amount of dollars per week? Why not pay her half of X? Or a quarter of X?”

“Precisely! Why not twice X? Or three times X?”

“But why so low, son?” Herman asked with amusement. “Why not pay Gina twenty times X to work in the mending room?”

“Exactly. And you know
someone
is getting twenty times X, just not Gina.”

Herman turned to Gina. “Gina, why didn’t your brother pay the pizza baker twenty times X?”

Gina was making the rum and mint drinks by the high table. “Ask your son, Herman, not me,” she replied. “He paid the pizza baker twenty times X.”

“And where did that bring you?”

“To bankruptcy.”

“Precisely. Because Harry separated prices from costs by making one arbitrary and the other not. To pay the baker twenty times X, he would’ve had to raise the price of the pizza to twenty times X.”

“But that would have run us out of business in five minutes.”

Herman nodded. “What was it that I was saying about prices expressing the intrinsic value of things?”

“Father, you’re drifting away from my original point about Bellagrand,” Harry said, as Gina watched his rigid features. “You can’t charge twenty times X . . .”

“Don’t be stuck on twenty. It can be two. Or three hundred and two. Why can’t it be any number at all?” Herman asked. “If you think the price of a widget is arbitrary, then the wage to make that widget can be arbitrary.”

“Two different things.”

“Relating to exactly the same thing,” Herman said. “The cost per unit of widget. In fine-tuning the balance between price and cost, only the fluctuating market can tell you if you’re charging too much. Do you know how? No one will buy it, and you’ll be out of business.” He nodded to Gina to thank her for the mojito she brought over to him. “Ask four million dollars for this house. Or forty million. See if someone will bite.”

“Or I can ask fifty dollars and everyone will bite,” said Harry.

“But then how are you going to pay your electrician and your mason twenty times X as you wish? The mason’s salary and the price of the house are inextricably related. Almost like the gravitational force in physics. The heavier the thing is, the more it’s forced into the ground. Make it lighter and you’ll have to put weights on it to keep it from flying into the sky.”

“Father,” Harry said, “none of this is my point.”

“Fine,” Herman said agreeably. “Let’s take Bellagrand as your point.”

“I’m saying that the gap between the rich and poor is widening because capitalism is inequitable and inefficient, and one of the things that’s expressed in is price. But now, in contrast, let’s look at Russia. To concentrate the power in the hands of one party devoted single-mindedly to preserving the fundamental rights of man and extending his happiness, that’s what I’m wholeheartedly advocating.”

There was a baffled silence.

Harry amended. “I mean not anymore. I
had
been advocating it. I meant to say devil-advocating. I’m reformed now, Father, Gina, please don’t worry. I won’t let you down.” He forced a smile. “I’m still the objection maker, though. You’re all right with that, aren’t you?”

Less agreeably Herman tapped the table. “If we’re just advocating and objection making, you won’t mind if I advocate right back?”

“When do you ever not? Please go ahead.”

“Two things. You said something about happiness. Shall we allow that in Russia it might be too early to tell? Because from where I’m sitting, the Russian peasant’s two greatest joys, outside of his own body, are the market and the church. And your Vladimir Ilyich Lenin seems to be devoting his life to depriving the peasant of these two foundations.”

“It’s not the
only
thing he’s doing,” Harry said.

Troubled, Gina glanced at Esther, but Harry’s sister was unperturbed, as if she’d heard it all before.

“Oh?” said Herman. “Because it sure seems like it is. From where I’m sitting. But the second thing. You say the market is wasteful and inefficient. Let me ask you—the suit you’re wearing, how did it get on your body? The threads that made it, the yarn that spun it, the looms and the mills, and the cotton or wool that made the yarn, the fields that the cotton grew on, tell me, how did you just happen to put this suit on your body this morning? Or for that matter, how did you, when you were an urban man living in a building in a big town or a man of leisure like now, living in a small town, happen to get up in the morning and cut yourself a piece of bread and put it into your mouth? Did you get up extra early and ride out west to Iowa to your own wheat field? Did you thresh it today, mill it, bleach it, make flour from it, combine it with an egg from your handy and nearby chicken, milk your cow and churn your butter and then bake it in your self-made kiln? And if not, then how did this bread that appeared miraculously at your doorstep get to you?”

“Salvo made it.”

Gina and Esther laughed.

“And then he brought it to my doorstep,” Harry added, smiling himself.

“Where did he get the grain?” Herman asked. “We know Salvo didn’t grow it, so how did it get to him? By train? That other men built? The roads, the railroads, the cars, the threshers, the grain elevators all built by other men? Last night you slept in a bed with white sheets, and you had running water that came through a pipe. Where did these sheets come from? How did the pipe make its way into your house? For that matter, how did the water?”

Harry listened to him. “Father, I’m getting weary. What does any of this have to do with what
I’m
talking about, with what John Reed was talking about and fighting for?” Harry paused. “And dying for?”

Herman stretched back, crossing his arms behind his head. “I don’t know what your John Reed died for. Nothing, I should think. He got sick and died. But I’m answering your original complaint. You said capitalism was wasteful and inefficient. I found your argument faulty and explained to you how the free market is the emperor of efficiency.”