Sins of the Fathers (26 page)

‘Jake!’ I had to laugh at the appalling description, and suddenly the gulf which separated us no longer seemed unbridgeable.
‘You can’t really want to know about that!’ I protested. ‘You can’t!’

‘Ah, you mysterious Anglo-Saxons!’ he exclaimed, laughing with me as his fingers closed tightly on mine. ‘You’d suppress the
whole world if you could in the name of your so-called good breeding and good taste! Well, I prefer to acknowledge the absurdities
of the world frankly and even laugh at them if I choose. If one really stopped to think about the insane way the universe
is arranged one would go mad in no time, so now and then it’s good to laugh, it’s therapeutic, it dilutes the
pain … Now please – tell me about your early life. I have this amusing suspicion that despite our differences it was far more
like mine than either My Crowd or Your Crowd would be willing to believe …’

[3]

I talked to him through several meetings. We met always on Thursday, always at the same time, always for no more than an hour.
I told Cornelius I was on the committee of a new charity and he said he was glad I had found another interest to occupy my
time.

During all our meetings Jake never suggested that we should adjourn to the bedroom. We kissed casually when we met and kissed
warmly when we parted, but otherwise there was no physical intimacy between us. Yet the intimacy which did exist became increasingly
important to me. We would sit drinking his favourite scotch, and while I talked I would watch the way his fingers gripped
the glass and notice the angle of his profile when he raised the glass to his lips. The curve of his fine elegant mouth became
familiar to me, as familiar as his high forehead, his thin nose and the solid line of his jaw, and as the days shortened and
I saw him only by artificial light I noticed the way his straight thinning hair seemed no longer pale but the subtlest shade
of gold.

Whenever we met he would bring something different to eat. The bagels with lox and cream cheese were followed by pastrami,
which I could not eat, and then by potato pancakes which I found delicious. It was only when I arrived with some caviar which
he refused to eat that I realized he was enjoying all the food he never had at home. The cuisine at the Reischman mansion
on Fifth Avenue was much too grand to acknowledge the existence of bagels and pastrami.

In fact Jake and I ate little at the apartment. I developed a taste for scotch, although naturally I was careful to continue
drinking sherry at home in case Cornelius started wondering where I had acquired my new drinking habits. I also smoked more
than usual but I never felt guilty about that because Jake was a chain-smoker, lighting one cigarette from the butt of another.
Sometimes I wondered if he smoked so much because it was a strain to listen to me, and sometimes I wondered if he smoked so
much to take the edge off his sexual appetite, but I did not know and could not guess. Instead I went on talking. I talked
about my isolated childhood with a stepmother who disliked me and a father who was absorbed in his work, and Jake smoked and
listened but remained an enigma. I talked
about the boarding schools, the dreadful summers when I had been exiled to Europe with a succession of governesses, and Jake
nodded and was sympathetic but unfathomable. I told him how I had married Ralph to escape from home, I tried to describe how
I had felt when I had been someone special, giving birth to my sons, I recounted the whole sorry history of my first marriage
with its disastrous conclusion, and Jake listened and encouraged me to talk, though for what purpose I did not know.

Yet I talked. I went on talking to this stranger who was outwardly beginning to seem so familiar to me, and then one day,
halfway through our sixth meeting, our roles slowly reversed themselves, and he began to talk to me.

[4]

‘Of course I always knew we were different,’ said Jake. ‘I always knew we were special. When I was a little boy I thought
we were royalty, the cream of Old New York. My father was like a god. Everyone bowed and scraped to us. There was a horde
of lesser relatives all reinforcing my childish belief that we were the centre of the universe. It would be hard for you to
imagine how protected I was but perhaps not so hard for you to imagine what a shock I had when I finally went out into the
world and encountered prejudice. Nothing had prepared me for it. My father had had a little talk with me when he had conceived
the heretical idea that I might go to Groton, but since I never got as far as the gates I never got the chance to mix with
boys from the other world. The powers at Groton put my father very politely in his place by saying they just didn’t think
Groton was quite the right school for me; they didn’t think I’d be happy there.

‘At first I couldn’t believe I’d been rejected. Then I was very hurt, but finally I realized that the only thing to do was
to be very debonair and say “so what?” Sometimes I think I’ve been acting debonair and saying “so what?” ever since.

‘God, how I hated Your Crowd.

‘Then Paul came into my life and everything changed. You know Paul’s background – you know he was a Yankee aristocrat who
had been trained in a Jewish banking house. He spanned both worlds. He and my father were as close as Sam and Neil are today.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know Paul but I never knew him well because most of the time I was just a kid and children
didn’t appear at the extraordinary social occasions when my parents entertained the Van
Zales to dinner. But Paul must have noticed me because he invited me to Bar Harbor that summer when I was seventeen.

‘I was very nervous. I admired Paul but I was in awe of him. I was also scared of the three gentile boys he had invited to
his summer home, and I was scared too of Bar Harbor, the haven of all the most blue-blooded Yankee aristocrats who thought
Newport had gone down in the world and who believed all the Jewish resorts on the New Jersey shore were far beyond the pale.
So when I arrived for the start of my vacation I was very, very debonair and very, very grand and the first two days were
hell.

‘Then Paul dragged us all out of our shells and I realized with amazement that the others were just as nervous as I was. He
used to make us debate set subjects after dinner, and the first subject he chose was what it meant to be an American. Of course
it meant something different to each one of us. I had to explain what it was like to be a Jewish boy from Fifth Avenue, Kevin
had to explain what it meant to come from an Irish-American Catholic family heavily involved in politics, Sam had to tell
us what it meant to be a German immigrant and Neil had to tell us what it was like to be a cloistered mid-westerner from a
Cincinnati suburb. Paul forced us to know each other, and once the barriers were down we saw how alike we were, four bright
ambitious boys, perfect material for Paul to influence as he pleased.

‘I stress this Bar Harbor experience because I want you to understand what a turning point it was in my life; I want you to
understand what I owed to Paul and why, when the time came, I let myself be influenced by him. Paul did for me what the gods
of Groton had refused to do: he introduced me to that other world, and it was a gold-plated introduction because as Paul Van
Zale’s protégé I found all kinds of doors were immediately opened to me. But Paul did more than that. He treated me exactly
as he treated the others, and the others, taking their cue from him, treated me as an equal. It was an environment devoid
of prejudice and it gave me the self-confidence I so badly needed.

‘That was the positive side of the Bar Harbor experience. But there was a negative side too. It’s debatable how far a cynical
man of the world like Paul Van Zale should be allowed to take over a bunch of adolescent kids, particularly kids who were
not only insecure but mixed up – and I was feeling very mixed up at the time because I’d just realized I didn’t want to be
a banker.

‘Of course I hadn’t dared tell my father. My father was a tyrant and we were all terrified of him. Like your father he was
absorbed in his work so to our relief we didn’t have to see him much. It was true he
was indulgent with my sisters, but with my brother and me … did you know I once had an elder brother? He could never measure
up to my father’s standards, poor bastard, and my father kept beating him and beating him until one day he just ran away and
never came back. He died in an automobile accident in Texas in 1924. God knows what he was doing down there and nobody ever
dared find out. My father said his name was never to be mentioned again, and meanwhile, of course, I’d become the son and
heir …

‘During the second summer I spent at Bar Harbor – the summer of ’26 when Paul was killed – I finally nerved myself to seek
Paul’s advice. But when I confessed I couldn’t face telling my father I didn’t want to be a banker, Paul just said: “If you
really hated the idea, you’d tell him.”

‘I couldn’t help wondering if the situation was that simple, but Paul told me in no uncertain terms to pull myself together.
He said: “You’re ambitious, aren’t you?” and I said: “Yes, I am.” Then he said: “And don’t you want to spend the night of
your fortieth birthday thinking how successfully you’ve doubled your father’s fortune?” and I said: “Yes, I do – but shouldn’t
there be more to life than mere worldly success?”

‘He just laughed. He patted me on the shoulder as if I were some pathetically innocent small child and said kindly: “For God’s
sake go into the bank or you’ll spend the rest of your life regretting your lost opportunities!” And he added: “You’re at
an idealistic age but when you’re older you’ll see more clearly that ideals are nothing but a millstone around a man’s neck.
The moralists may decry worldly success but the truth is mankind is so vain and so petty that it finds worldly success the
only kind worth chasing. If you want to get on in life, Jake, you won’t waste your time worrying about the way things ought
to be. You’ll concentrate on learning to deal with the way things really are.”

‘Well, I went into the bank and I doubled my father’s fortune, but I didn’t have all those happy self-satisfied thoughts on
the night of my fortieth birthday. I took my wife out to dinner and tried to pretend I had something to say to her, and then
after I’d got rid of her at home I went out again to a woman I kept – no, not here, it was over on the West Side – and I got
drunk and when I awoke next morning with my hang-over all I could think was: I wonder what it would have been like if I’d
stood up to my father. I wonder what it would have been like if I’d never listened to Paul Van Zale.

‘My secret dream had nothing to do with making money on a large scale – nor, to tell the truth, with any idealistic vision
of serving mankind. It was just something I wanted to do. I wanted to own a
hotel – oh, a grand hotel of course! Five stars in all the best guidebooks! I wanted to own a hotel in Bavaria. Just as well
I never did. God, that animal Hitler. I can’t describe how I felt when I got back to Germany in 1945 and saw where the Nazis
had led the country …

‘I was one of the interpreters when they started interviewing the war criminals. I couldn’t take it, but when I angled for
a transfer I ended up in Munich just as they were sorting out Dachau. There were sights I saw – things that can’t be spoken
about, and yet they must be spoken about, they must, or people will forget … Eventually I managed to get home, get away from
all those ruins – yes, it was the ruins I couldn’t bear, the ruins and the GIs swaggering around chewing gum – it was all
such a nightmare, like watching a multiple rape with Germany the victim and everyone, the Nazis, the Allies, just everyone,
doing nothing but ravage, brutalize and destroy … And Germany was lovely, so beautiful. I’ll never forget how much I wanted
to live there long ago before the war.

‘My wife never felt at ease in Germany although her family is just as German as mine. She won’t speak German either and pretends
she’s forgotten it. I can’t think why I married her – no, that’s not true. I know. I was dating this gentile girl – not seriously,
but I was twenty-five and I guess my father thought he’d turned a blind eye long enough. He said he thought it would be a
good idea if I started seeing Amy occasionally. He was mild about it, but I knew an order when I heard one. Amy was very suitable,
naturally, one of Our Crowd, nineteen years old, brought up like my sisters to be a lily of the field … but she was prettier
than my sisters. At first I thought she was cute. God, it’s a terrible mistake to marry when you’re only half in love …

‘I’m fond of my kids and I’d fight to the death to protect them, but I never know what to say when we’re together. I don’t
see them much – too busy at the bank – and I know now that this is exactly the situation I wanted to avoid when I was eighteen,
the whole cycle repeating itself with me standing in my father’s shoes. I never wanted to end up like my father. But I have,
and there’s nothing I can do about it now – except, perhaps, not to stand in my son’s way if he decides he can’t face the
future I can’t resist planning for him.

‘Yet if David rebels and decides not to go into the bank, it’ll be the end of Reischman’s as we know it and I can’t help feeling
sad about that. The Reischman family’s dying out too. Demographers never seem able to explain why families rise and decline
but it must surely be part of a built-in biological pattern. My great-grandfather came to America with three brothers and
they produced twenty-one sons yet now, three generations later, David is one of only two male
Reischmans in his generation. If he doesn’t go into the bank I’ll incorporate it to preserve the name and retire as chairman
of the board, but it seems a pale anti-climax of an end to a colourful family history. Probably we won’t even be living on
Fifth Avenue by that time either – the real estate speculators seem to think of nothing nowadays except tearing down as many
private houses as they can get their hands on in order to build apartment blocks and stores. The old order changes, as Tennyson
pointed out, and gives way to the new …