Triumph (14 page)

"Pete Williams, as he often does (to everybody's surprise, at first) actually got us past that embarrassing moment. 'A meter reader,' he said quickly, 'is about three stages below a butler. Besides which, I never went to college.' He sort of bowed at George Hyama, Connie Davey, and me. 'But I always was crazy about collecting minerals. That's how come I'm down here. When I got to the side drive at Sachem's Watch, I stood looking at that quarried stone. That mountain of new-removed rock had always fascinated me. Of course, I'd heard why it was being taken out and left there. Down I went. But when I was sure it was all just cubic miles of blasted limestone, and nothing really interesting, I climbed back and started in on my job, at the Davey house. Out came Connie all dressed up in a summer frock and looking like a Bowl Queen. She gave me that stare and nod people always give meter readers--and the sirens went. She grabbed me and yanked me up the hill, me not knowing
what
was happening. Startled me. But, folks, I had with me some rocks I'd gathered on my last vacation. If you like, I'll give you a knockout demonstration of how geology is taught in night school in Hartford.'

"We all laughed. And took him up. And, after supper, Pete got out mineral samples. He gave a very funny burlesque of a teacher trying to instruct a dumb pupil. For the pupil, he used Connie. She acted her part very amusingly, though Connie's anything but dumb! Pete calls her his 'Savior Angel' and other kidding names like 'Nubian Nike'

(she doesn't mind a bit!). It furnished the best laugh we've had so far. He's a shy person, in some ways, is Peter Williams, but a wonderful clown.

"Still!
And not just because of things like Kit's recollection of the upper-class joking idea their shelters would save merely servants! And not just because Valerie keeps calling the group 'our League of Nations'! But for some other reason I cannot put my finger on, for the first time in my life
I feel Chinese!

"I'm not sure if I like it or don't.

"As a child, in Hawaii, being Chinese meant nothing very special to me. The kids in my class were all sorts of racial mixtures. Daddy always took a scathing attitude toward the pride my grandfather used to have in the fact that our family was still
pure
Chinese. I didn't care. I was
American,
like all the other kids, of whatever 'tint'--and I remember the absolute heaven we felt when the Territory became a state. My class--the fifth grade--marched in the Statehood Day parade. All of us girls wore grass skirts made of paper and all the boys, imitations of the feather cloaks the Polynesian nobles wore: chicken feathers, colored with Easter-egg dye. Very gaudy. After the parade I was one of twenty girls picked to do a hula for a group of important men from Washington. And the cord supporting my skirt broke so I had to go through the whole dance with only one free hand! I was so embarrassed! But U. S. Senator Willet picked me out after we finished and lifted me and kissed me and presented me with a tiny American flag that already had fifty stars. I never felt prouder, or more American.

"At the University of Hawaii, of course, nobody even noticed whether you were part Hawaiian and part Portuguese, part Swedish and part New England Yankee--or what.

One boy in one of my classes--statistical analysis and computer programming--told me, near the end of the first semester, it had only just then dawned on
him
that, among twenty-seven undergraduates in the class, he was the only--he had to struggle to get the word I'd understand--'Caucasian.' And that boy was six-two, an ex-Marine, with tow-colored hair and blue eyes--as 'white' an American as exists. With that sort of unawareness by
anybody
of our differentnesses, I never even kept in mind, in my first university years, that I'm Chinese. And in New York, if it made a difference, the difference was fun: I was exotic and oriental and a sought-after young woman! At Radcliffe there didn't seem to be any race prejudice. Certainly more Harvard men
dated
me
--or tried to, anyhow!--while I was there, than dated most American white girls.

"Now, though, I
do
feel Chinese. Why? It's from something the others feel. But what? I must ask George Hyama if he feels
Japanese.
Perhaps it's this: that the others expect me to be more stable, less flighty, less spontaneous, more imperturbable than they are! Orientals--in cheap fiction--are supposed to be that. And I find myself
trying
to be!

Trying
not
to show how sad I feel. Trying to look inscrutable and imperturbable. Don't they know the Chinese are far
more
expressive of their real inner feelings than white, mainland Americans ever dream of letting themselves be? I think
not!
And if
that's
why I have often felt my Chineseness down here, far more than anywhere else, I'm going to bust right out some day and bawl, or have hysterics, so they can see that being oriental doesn't mean you're a different kind of human person!

"We're all edgy, though.

"It shows in unexpected ways. A week ago I asked Mr. Farr--Vance--if he had stocked any diaries. I did it quite thoughtlessly, since, after a week down here, we'd all begun to think Vance Farr was a wizard. There seemed to be nothing--absolutely nothing-

-you could dream of needing that he couldn't produce from one of the stockrooms that open off dozens of different corridors. The man has a simply enormous amount of foresight--something businessmen aren't supposed to have, except about their special enterprise. (But
I
always knew differently, owing to knowing how far-seeing and imaginative
Daddy
is!)
Was.

"Anyway. I asked if there were diaries. And Vance Farr had a fit about it. Pure remorse!

Humiliation! You'd have thought I'd asked if there was anything to eat and he had forgotten to store food here! It was so amazing it was almost scary.

"I hurriedly said I didn't mean a regular diary-just any sort of notebook in which to write impressions, as time passed and I felt in the mood. He said, of course, there were notebooks. Then, leading me through a maze-I still haven't seen a tenth of the rooms of this placet-he opened up a veritable stationery store. And kept on apologizing for forgetting
diaries!
And even added--which made me feel pretty somber--that he should have had diaries printed up for
next
year
too,
and stocked
them!

"Later, at lunch, he told everybody, almost angrily, about forgetting to stock diaries. It was the first 'necessity,' as he called it, that he'd been 'caught without.' And, naturally, we all tried to calm down his self-rebuke. But he ate very little lunch and left the table first, muttering he hoped to God he hadn't overlooked any
other
'vital need'!

That may give some notion of our state of nerves.

"But, of course, Vance Farr has had an additional mental burden to carry, since Angelica and the others were saved.

"Even before she was on her feet again--and days before her alleged brother, Al, was up and about--all of us were told, by one or another person, that Angelica had been Mr. Farr's girl friend and had lived in a nearby apartment he rented for her: Candlewick Manor, or whatever it was. We were told that, I suppose, because those who didn't know were astonished at the sudden way Mr. Farr changed after Angelica's rescue. Changed from a vehement, active, very capable leader to a sort of quiet, hangdog man who forever asks somebody--Valerie, mostly--whether this or that should or should not be done. I mean, instead of just giving orders, though he had always framed them as mere suggestions, he grew
dependent.

"Guilt, of course. Hard to imagine him using a long tunnel through a high, rock hill, to get away from a wife at night. Hard?
Impossible!
--to see a man as worldly, as sophisticated, as Vance Farr, rebuilding that old tunnel, so he, like his father, could sneak out, the father pretending to be turning wine bottles, Vance Farr, to be working on this subterranean wonderland. Mrs. Farr takes it calmly. But she goes on drinking.

"As for our eleventh-hour quartet, the children are the biggest blessing.

Everybody's crazy about them, loves playing with them--and there's a nightly debate, after they're tucked in bed, about who will tell their daily story. Also, about who'll teach Dot and Dick what subjects, come September, and time for school to start again!

Evidently we'll be here that long, anyhow.

"Al--the Italian-looking man--still limps around and wears bandages on his face and seems full of self-pity. Connie told me--she and I gossip a good deal together; she's a dreamt--that Al actually doesn't need the bandages but is merely so vain he won't let us see his face till it's healed perfectly. And we're all sure he's not Angelica's brother--or even half-brother, which they both later told us. They don't talk like people from one family. Or look alike in any way. AI's slight, about five-nine, with those dark, seeking, liquid eyes Italians have--Puerto Ricans, too, and other Latins. Black hair, slicked back from a middle part. Apparently, under the bandages, is a beaky nose--though nothing to match Dr. Bernman's. AI's mouth is womanish, too shapely, a bit pretty-looking, given to the droops at its comers--though he seems wiry and healthy and moves like some sort of athlete. So far he hasn't done much talking to anybody, I'm sure. Judging from what I saw of what was left of the clothes he'd had on when they brought him here, he's one of those

'chiffon-type dressers'--the Broadway hanger--on sort: mauve suede shoes and matching silk trousers and the remnants of a turquoise sports shirt piped in cloth--of-gold, no less!

A gigolo costume! We are sure he was Angelica's boy friend--I mean her
real
one. Mr.

Farr was merely the man who paid the bills, and saw her only now and then.

"As for Angelica, I personally like her very much. For one thing, it was she who virtually forced Al to take along the two, abandoned children, when they went to that cave. For another, she's dazzlingly attractive. Half Spanish--South American, maybe--and half Irish. She has that blue-black hair that some Italian women possess, but it's wavy and light, not heavy like most such hair. The largest, bluest eyes I ever saw, with that
Irishness,
that look of I dare you, and also of curiosity, which some Irish girls have. I can understand how it drives men nutty! She's beautifully built--with a doll's waist, actually (we measured) smaller even than mine, and with absolutely lush bosoms and legs anybody would go mad to have for a front row in a chorus. She's more than just a chorine, too--which she was when Mr. Farr plucked her, and 'plucked' would be the word.

She had run away from home--some nasty-sounding coal town in Pennsylvania--in her third year at high school. To New York, of course! Worked as a waitress in divey-sounding joints and used her earnings to take dancing lessons. Then she got work in a theatrical road company and went on trying very hard to learn to be a great dancer, for three years. Traveled allover the world with two shows--I haven't seen either, but one was
Space Ship Stowaway,
the musical that the censors kept out of many cities, and the other was
How about Her?,
just as censorable!

"However, though Angelica has dancing ability and talent as an actress--and sings in one of those lowdown, belt-it-out voices, too!--her real lifework is, plainly,
Man.

Down here, I can see, she is making a tremendous effort to stop doing things almost instinctive with such girls. Girl?--she's about twenty-seven! Things, I mean, that make men go crazy, like the way she switches her head and makes that wonderful dark hair flash around. She doesn't seem the least bit embarrassed about her liaison with Mr. Vance Farr--in fact, she almost ignores him, and concentrates on the other men. Even gray-headed, reserved, sweet old Paulus Davey likes to watch her move about! And she gives George Hyama fits. Furthermore, she acts almost as if she had never even
met
Alberto Rizzo! I've seen him try, several times, to catch Angelica's eye. It never works. He just sighs--not aloud, but you can see his shoulders drop as air goes out of him--and I'm beginning to believe Mr. Rizzo is considering aiming those romantic, Venice-canal-gondola-glances at some other woman.
Me,
even, maybe! What a disappointment for him, if he does!

"Once, when I woke up thirsty at night and found I'd forgotten to fill the thermos on my bedside--really
bunkside
--table, I put on a housecoat and slippers and opened my door to go down the hall with the thermos to the showers and toilets, the women's, and fill it. I was just in time to see AI knocking furtively on Angelica's door, which he'd opened a little ways. She must have answered because he muttered his name and something about 'having to see her' and 'not being able to stand the loneliness.' Then I heard her say, so loudly it came through the door,
'Beat it!'
He pushed the door farther in after that, but it was on a chain. He slunk back to his place, farther down the hall--which is only dimly lighted at night, so he didn't glimpse me.

"After that I've put the chain on
my
door, though I feel it's rather silly of me. Only Mr. Rizzo, of all the men here, would annoy any woman. Of course, if a woman
asked
the man to call--
well!
--nobody has posted any house rules! But the
feeling
we have is that we must behave like monks and nuns. Partly because our world is dead. And partly because, if people started visiting, it could make all sorts of problems. I told no one of catching Al at Angelica's door, but I was sure he was not making a
brotherly
call. Even a
half-brotherly
one! And perhaps it is the discovery by Mr. Farr that his 'little lady friend'

has her own 'boy friend'--or
had
one-that further causes Mr. Farr to act so morose and ashamed. He
should!

"In spite of it all, though, as I said, I like Angelica very much. She is vivacious, full of fun, and not in any way ashamed of herself or her life, so I feel sure she has nothing to be
truly
ashamed of. Last night she danced a number for us all, with the record player in the Hall making it ring with music from one of her shows. Mr. Farr walked out, on some pretext. Al said his burns hurt, and retired. The rest of us, though, enjoyed it greatly--including Valerie, who was already 'gauzy' but seemed truly delighted by Angelica's attempt to lift our morale. Angelica's kind. Affectionate. And, no doubt,
very
passionate. So what? Should women continue
denying they are that, forever?