No wonder I felt I had to do something drastic. I fought back. Scott recommended a couple of books to me and, still livid
that anyone should treat me as a second-class citizen, I embarked on some research. At this point I quickly forgot my rage.
In fact I even felt grateful to my in-laws for propelling me into a study of the ancient races of the world and rekindling
my interest in history.
I was sorry to discover that the Anglo-Saxons weren’t entirely the villains their enemies would have everyone believe, but
once I’d recovered from the disappointment of learning that they weren’t just a bunch of lice-ridden louts who burnt every
Roman villa in sight, I enjoyed making their acquaintance. I was particularly excited by the story of King Alfred, the greatest
Saxon of them all. He was the youngest of four sons and when he was a kid he did nothing but shit at the wrong moment so people
probably thought he was
dumb, but Alfred, underestimated Alfred, battled away against the invading Danes until he emerged not just king of Wessex,
his own homestead, but king of England, king of the whole damned heap. He admired culture, taught himself to read at thirty-eight
and developed intellectual tastes which would have put most Americans to shame. Yes, I liked Alfred. I liked him very much,
and in my new role of a persecuted Anglo-Saxon I clung to the memory of his glory.
When my son was born I was informed by the Reischmans without so much as a ‘by your leave’ or an ‘if you don’t mind’ that
the baby was to be named Jacob Isaac.
‘Forget it,’ I said. I probably sounded like a Nazi but I wasn’t. I’d married a Jewish girl willingly and had been delighted
to do so. It’s true I don’t care for the names Jacob and Isaac but I like the name Jake very much despite all my father-in-law’s
attempts to transform it into a dirty word. However no one on earth, Jewish or gentile, is going to wave the flag of prejudice
in front of my eyes by dictating to me what I should call my son.
‘His name’s going to be Alfred,’ I said firmly at the inevitable interview with Jake Reischman.
‘Alfred?’ said the proud grandfather in disbelief. ‘A-L-F-R-E-D? But what kind of name’s that?’
‘Saxon,’ I said. ‘This is a matter of cultural, religious and racial pride.’
I thought he was going to have apoplexy. Jake is a pale man with eyes the colour of blue ice but he went bright red. At last
he spluttered: ‘Is this some kind of joke?’
‘No, sir. I come from a great race and I want my son to be proud of it. Alfred triumphed over the heathen Danes to keep England
Christian. He was a great guy.’
‘My people,’ said Jake, maddened into making a big mistake, ‘were cultured when Alfred’s forebears were illiterate savages
shouting insults at Caesar across the Rhine.’
‘Your people,’ I said, ‘were itinerant parasites. Mine built the world.’
‘Why, you—’
‘Exactly!’ I said violently. ‘Now you know how I feel when you treat me like dirt! I feel mad and want to say all kinds of
dumb obscenities like that remark which we both know is the most disgusting bullshit. I would never have said it if you hadn’t
looked down on the name Alfred. Now you listen to me. I’m willing to respect your culture but I’m damned if this respect is
going to be a one-sided affair. You’ve got to give me some respect too, and you can start by respecting the fact
that I’m the father of this baby. I’ll call him Jacob as well as Alfred, but only on condition you treat me with the respect
I deserve.’
There was a silence before Jake said: ‘And his religion?’
‘Christian. It’s my right to choose, not yours.’
‘Elsa—’
‘Elsa,’ I said, ‘will do as I say.’ I paused to let this sink in before I added: ‘If all goes well and I’m finally made to
feel welcome in this house, I’ll see he gets proper instruction in the Jewish culture. If not, forget it. You’ll have a totally
gentile grandson whom you won’t see too often.’
There was another silence but at last Jake said pleasantly: ‘I see. Yes. Ah, I’ve just remembered that one of the Seligmans
was called Alfred – and of course there was Alfred Heidelbach of Heidelbach, Ickelheimer … A good German name! What are we
quarrelling about? What a tempest in a teapot!’
Jake was a smart old bastard and he had my measure then all right. He probably had me figured out better than Cornelius did,
although Cornelius was getting there slowly, groping his way along. After that incident Jake and I got along much better because
he respected me for standing up to him. You’ve got to stand up to those kind of people, and when I say ‘those kind of people’
I don’t mean the Jews. I mean people like the Bar Harbor Brotherhood, men Paul Van Zale marked for worldly success. You’ve
got to talk to those people in their own language, but I can speak that language when I want to and all the words are right
there in my head.
They say Paul Van Zale often picked out unlikely protégés, people others would have overlooked.
I think he would have picked out someone like Alfred of Wessex.
I think he would have picked out me.
26 February. I go to see Vicky. She’s been in hospital two weeks and she’s due to leave tomorrow, which is why I picked tonight
to call. I’ve stayed away until now. I didn’t want to see her with a load of other visitors but I figure no one will be around
just before she’s discharged. They’ll all wait till she goes home.
Vicky has a private room at Doctors’ Hospital and it’s full of brightly coloured flowers as if people were determined to compensate
her for the nauseous riot she missed at the funeral. I like flowers but they should at least be out of doors, like the magnolia
tree in the back patio at One Willow Street. That magnolia blossom’s beautiful in the spring.
Like Vicky.
Vicky’s wearing a white nightgown trimmed with white lace and
her hair is held back from her face by a white band. She’s very surprised to see me and not one bit pleased although she pretends
she is to be polite.
‘Sebastian! How sweet of you to come, but you needn’t have bothered.’
‘Right.’ I pull up a chair and sit down by the bed. I don’t ask her how she is. That’s a stupid question. Obviously she’s
miserable. I don’t say I’m sorry about Sam. She probably feels ready to scream by this time if one more person says that to
her, and anyway I wrote her a note the day he died. ‘Dear Vicky: I’m very sorry. Sam will be missed by many people. Best,
SEBASTIAN.’
I give her a little book of John Donne’s poems. No flowers or chocolates or magazines. I wouldn’t bring Vicky what everyone
else brings, because unlike everyone else I’ve spent great care choosing the gift and taken time to ensure it’s not meaningless.
‘Know Donne?’ I say to her.
‘I’ve heard of him, of course,’ she says carelessly. ‘Yes, I think I read a couple of his poems ages ago.’
‘They should read Donne more in school instead of going on and on and on about Shakespeare. I met a guy once who had to spend
two years in school studying
Hamlet
. Such things should be banned by law. Two years of picking over
Hamlet
would make even Shakespeare hate
Hamlet
. The class could have been reading Donne for part of those two years instead. Nowadays when you say “poet” you think of some
sloppy beatnik bumming around California, but in those days the word “poet” really meant something. You said “literature”
and what you meant was poetry and poetry was communication. Donne communicated. As a writer he’s strong and tough with a terrific
grasp of syntax and a mind which has triumphed over the inadequacies of language. Language is hell and most people are incapable
of expressing their feelings verbally but Donne made language the mirror of his mind. Language isn’t futile with Donne. Language
lives.’
She looks at me with wide grey eyes. I’ve never seen Vicky look so astonished. She thinks I’m a gorilla, unable to string
more than a couple of sentences together. She thinks I really do like drive-in movies about werewolves.
‘Oh,’ she says awkwardly at last. ‘That sounds great. Thanks. I’ll read the book.’
I look at the magazine on the table. There’s a book there too, a spy novel, a modern fairytale for people bent on escape from
the hell of being modern.
‘Kevin Daly’s got a new play coming on Broadway next month,’ I said. ‘You like Kevin’s plays, don’t you?’
‘Yes, most of them.’
‘Want to see the new play? I’ll take you, if you like.’
She looks wary. ‘With Elsa?’
‘No, Elsa doesn’t understand Kevin’s plays. She thinks they’re just about married couples being polite to each other when
they should be having a fight.’
‘But wouldn’t it look odd if you took me without Elsa?’
‘No. Why shouldn’t I give my stepsister an evening out after she’s been through all this hell, and if she wants to go to a
play Elsa wouldn’t enjoy, what’s wrong with Elsa staying home?’
I see her swallow hastily at this reminder of her bereavement. I at once blot out the image of her going to bed with Sam –
an easy exercise in will-power for me since I’ve had nine years’ hard practice at perfecting the art – but I still look at
her and wonder what kind of a mess he made of her life. If I could open up Vicky’s head and take a look inside I suspect I’d
be reminded of a ball of wool which has been pushed around for hours by a couple of cats. Before the ball of wool is fit for
use again the whole complicated muddle has to be unravelled and rewound correctly by someone who cares enough to produce the
patience needed for the job, but Sam Keller was not a patient man. He just hadn’t the time. He was too busy trying to prove
things both to himself and to other people; he tried to prove he was smarter than Cornelius (he wasn’t) and just as tough
as any blue-blooded Eastern Seaboard aristocrat (he was) and just as anti-Hitler as Churchill, F.D.R., Uncle Joe Stalin and
all (he didn’t fool me) but the truth was he was just a hardworking sonofabitch with no imagination, no intellectual interests,
no independence (Cornelius had bought him lock, stock and barrel years before) and no taste for unravelling balls of wool.
He used to boast about how he could reassemble television sets (‘It takes a machine to make a machine,’ quipped some wag at
the office in the days before ethnic jokes became repugnant to me) but I suspected that when it came to reassembling his own
wife he wouldn’t have had any idea where to begin.
‘Well,’ Vicky’s saying doubtfully, ‘it s nice of you to want to take me to the theatre, of course, Sebastian, but—’
The door opens. In walks Cornelius. I might have guessed he couldn’t let even one evening go by without treating Vicky as
if she were Elektra. Those Greeks knew what went on in families all right. I admire the Greeks. Too bad they got so civilized
they fell to pieces, but
that seems to be the destiny of man no matter whether he’s part of a superb classical civilization or a modern junk culture:
work hard, get rich, wallow in luxury and go to pieces. Cornelius, that arch-representative of our materialistic society,
certainly looks as if he’s about to fall apart although as we all know at One Willow Street you couldn’t dent him with a diamond-cutter.
But he’s probably the last of his line to escape decadence. Vicky’s sons will grow up to become disciples of Jack Kerouac
– or whatever
Time
magazine will call the Beat Generation of the late sixties. The name will change but the scenery won’t: a lot of drugs and
inertia and everyone dying all over the place of boredom.
‘Hi,’ says Cornelius to me after he’s slobbered over Vicky.
‘Hi.’
He waits for me to leave. I stay. We all think automatically of that stupid incident years ago at Bar Harbour when he made
such a disgusting scene. I was sitting in the sun by the pool reading a book, Eliot’s
The Wasteland
it was, I remember because I was far too young and ignorant to grasp all the allusions, and I was just looking up at the
view when Vicky came down from the house for a swim. I didn’t swim any more in daylight by that time because I hated people
noticing how hairy I was. I don’t mind being hairy but I hate people staring. One of the nicest things about Elsa is that
she likes me being hairy. She says it’s sexy. No one ever said that to me before or behaved as if it could possibly be true.
Vicky’s wearing a navy-blue swimsuit, all in one piece, but it’s too small for her now and she flows over the top of it. She’s
beautiful, fourteen years old like Juliet, and I know just how that poor bastard Romeo must have felt.
Well, she sits down with her back to me as if I don’t exist, dangles her legs in the water and gazes out to sea. I have an
erection and it’s damned uncomfortable so I unbutton my pants and shift around trying to adjust myself and the wicker chair
squeaks and Vicky glances over her shoulder to see what all the fuss is about.
Disaster. Tears and scenes. Mother looks at me as if men’s genitals were the most disgusting thing ever invented but she tries
to stand up for me. Fat chance. Cornelius has hysterics and treats me like a rapist and I have to spend the rest of the summer
with some Foxworth cousins whom I loathe. Finally Cornelius calms down, realizes he’s been behaving like a Freudian casebook
and makes us all swear to put the incident behind us. Except, of course, we never do.
Vicky’s mixed up about sex, that’s for sure, but it wasn’t me who made her that way. Any normal girl, confronted with her
stepbrother
messing around with his fly in a fever of embarrassment, would just have said irritated: ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Or
maybe, if she was shy, she would have averted her eyes and pretended not to notice. But to have hysterics and run sobbing
to Daddy is not normal, and when I look back on the incident again now it makes me wonder afresh how she really got along
with Sam Keller. Everyone keeps saying what a fantastic marriage they had and how they were such an advertisement for married
bliss, but I wonder. I wonder very much.
‘Well, thanks for stopping by, Sebastian,’ says Vicky, giving me the brush-off – not because she wants to be rid of me but
because she can see Daddy wants to be alone with her and Vicky always tries to give Daddy what he wants. ‘And thanks for the
book. That was sweet of you.’