Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Page 18

  “Could you ask your secretary to come in?” said William quietly.

  “As you wish.”

  Alan Lloyd pressed a button on the side of his desk, and a middle-aged, conservatively dressed woman entered the room from a side door.

  “Good morning, Mr. Kane,” she said when she saw William. “I was so sorry to learn about your mother.”

  “Thank you,” said William. “Has anyone else seen this letter?”

  “No sir,” said the secretary. “I was about to type twelve copies for Mr. Lloyd to sign.”

  “Well, don’t type them, and please forget that this draft ever existed. Never mention its existence to anyone, do you understand?”

  She stared into the blue eyes of the sixteen-year-old boy. So like his father, she thought. “Yes, Mr. Kane.” She left quietly, closing the door. Alan Lloyd looked up.

  “Kane and Cabot doesn’t need a new chairman at the moment, Alan,” said William. “You did nothing my father would not have done in the same circumstances.”

  “It’s not as easy as that,” Alan said.

  “It’s as easy as that,” said William. “We can discuss this again when I am twenty-one and not before. Until then I would be obliged if you would run my bank in your usual diplomatic and conservative manner. I want nothing of what has happened to be discussed outside this office. You will destroy any information you have on Henry Osborne and consider the matter closed.”

  William tore up the letter of resignation and dropped the pieces of paper into the fire. He put his arm around Alan’s shoulders.

  “I have no family now, Alan, only you. For God’s sake, don’t desert me.”

  William was driven back to Beacon Hill. Grandmother Kane and Grandmother Cabot were sitting in silence in the drawing room. They both rose as he entered the room. It was the first time that William realized he was now the head of the Kane family.

  The funeral took place quietly two days later at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral. None but the family and close friends was invited; the only notable absentee was Henry Osborne. As the mourners departed, they paid their respects to William. The grandmothers stood one pace behind him, like sentinels, watching, approving the calm and dignified way in which he conducted himself. When everyone had left, William accompanied Alan Lloyd to his car.

  The Chairman was delighted by William’s request of him.

  “As you know, Alan, my mother had always intended to build a children’s wing for Mass. General, in memory of my father. I would like her wishes carried out.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Wladek stayed at the Polish consulate in Constantinople for a year and not the few days he had originally expected, working day and night for Pawel Zaleski, becoming an indispensable aide and close friend. Nothing was too much trouble for him, and Zaleski soon began to wonder how he had managed before Wladek arrived. The boy visited the British embassy once a week to eat in the kitchen with Mrs. Henderson, the Scottish cook, and, on one occasion, with His Britannic Majesty’s Second Consul himself.

  Around them the old Islamic way of life was dissolving and the Ottoman Empire was beginning to totter. Mustafa Kemal was the name on everyone’s lips. The sense of impending change made Wladek restless. His mind returned incessantly to the Baron and all whom he had loved in the castle. The necessity of surviving from day to day in Russia had kept them from his mind’s eye, but in Turkey they rose up before him, a silent and slow procession. Sometimes he could see them strong and happy—Leon swimming in the river, Florentyna playing cat’s cradle in his bedroom, the Baron’s face strong and proud in the evening candlelight—but always the well-remembered, well-loved faces would waver and, try as Wladek would to hold them firm, they would change horribly to that last dreadful aspect—Leon dead on top of him, Florentyna bleeding in agony, and the Baron almost blind and broken.

  Wladek began to realize that he could never return to a land peopled by such ghosts until he had made something worthwhile of his life. With that single thought in mind he set his heart on going to America, as his countryman Tadeusz Kosciusko, of whom the Baron had told so many enthralling tales, had so long before him. The United States, described by Pawel Zaleski as the “New World.” The epithet inspired Wladek with a hope for the future and a chance to return one day to Poland in triumph.

  It was Pawel Zaleski who put up the money to purchase an immigrant passage for Wladek to the United States. They were difficult to come by, for they were always booked at least a year in advance. It seemed to Wladek as though the whole of Eastern Europe were trying to escape and start afresh in the New World.

  In the spring of 1921, Wladek Koskiewicz finally left Constantinople and boarded the S.S. Black Arrow, bound for Ellis Island, New York. He possessed one suitcase, containing all his belongings, and a set of papers issued by Pawel Zaleski.

  The Polish Consul accompanied him to the wharf and embraced him affectionately. “Go with God, my boy.”

  The traditional Polish response came naturally from the depths of Wladek’s early childhood. “Remain with God,” he replied.

  As he reached the top of the gangplank, Wladek recalled his terrifying journey from Odessa to Constantinople. This time there was no coal in sight, only people, people everywhere—Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians and others of many racial types unfamiliar to Wladek. He clutched his few belongings and waited in the line, the first of many long waits with which he later associated his entry into the United States.

  His papers were sternly scrutinized by a deck officer who was clearly predisposed to the suspicion that Wladek was trying to avoid military service in Turkey, but Pawel Zaleski’s documents were impeccable; Wladek invoked a silent blessing on his fellow countryman’s head as he watched others being turned back.

  Next came a vaccination and a cursory medical examination, which, had he not had a year of good food and the chance to recover his health in Constantinople, Wladek would certainly have failed. At last, with all the checks over, he was allowed belowdecks into the steerage quarters. There were separate compartments for males, females and married couples. Wladek quickly made his way to the male quarters and found the Polish group occupying a large block of iron berths, each containing four two-tiered bunk beds. Each bunk had a thin straw mattress, a light blanket and no pillow. Having no pillow didn’t worry Wladek, who had never been able to sleep on one since leaving Russia.

  Wladek selected a bunk below a boy of roughly his own age and introduced himself.

  “I’m Wladek Koskiewicz.”

  “I’m Jerzy Nowak from Warsaw,” volunteered the boy in his native Polish, “and I’m going to make my fortune in America.”

  The boy thrust forward his hand.

  Wladek and Jerzy spent the time before the ship sailed telling each other of their experiences, both pleased to have someone to share their loneliness with, neither willing to admit his total ignorance of America. Jerzy, it turned out, had lost both his parents in the war but had few other claims to attention. He was entranced by Wladek’s stories: the son of a baron, brought up in a trapper’s cottage, imprisoned by the Germans and the Russians, escaped from Siberia and then from a Turkish executioner thanks to the heavy silver band that Jerzy couldn’t take his eyes off. Wladek had packed more into his fifteen years than Jerzy thought he himself would manage in a lifetime. Wladek talked all night of the past while Jerzy listened intently, neither wanting to sleep and neither wanting to admit his apprehension of the future.

  The following morning the Black Arrow sailed. Wladek and Jerzy stood at the rail and watched Constantinople slip away in the blue distance of the Bosphorus. After the calm of the Sea of Marmara, the choppiness of the Aegean afflicted them and most of the other passengers with a horrible abruptness. The two washrooms for steerage passengers, with ten basins apiece, six toilets and cold saltwater faucets were wholly inadequate. After a couple of days the stench of their quarters was oppressive.

  Food was served on long tables in a large, filthy dining hall:
warm soup, potatoes, fish, boiled beef and cabbage, brown or black bread. Wladek had tasted worse food but not since Russia and was glad of the provisions Mrs. Henderson had packed for him: sausages, nuts and a little brandy. He and Jerzy shared them huddled in the corner of their berth. It was an unspoken understanding. They ate together, explored the ship together and, at night, slept one above the other.

  On the third day at sea Jerzy brought a Polish girl to their table for supper. Her name, he informed Wladek casually, was Zaphia. It was the first time in his life that Wladek had ever looked at a girl twice, but he couldn’t stop looking at Zaphia. She rekindled memories of Florentyna. The warm gray eyes, the long fair hair that fell onto her shoulders, and the soft voice. Wladek found he wanted to touch her. The girl occasionally smiled across at Wladek, who was miserably aware of how much better-looking Jerzy was than he. He tagged along as Jerzy escorted Zaphia back to the women’s quarters.

  Jerzy turned to him afterward, mildly irritated. “Can’t you find a girl of your own? This one’s mine.”

  Wladek was not prepared to admit that he had no idea how to set about finding a girl of his own.

  “There will be enough time for girls when we reach America,” he said scornfully.

  “Why wait for America? I intend to have as many on this ship as possible.”

  “How will you go about that?” asked Wladek, intent on the acquisition of knowledge without admitting to his own ignorance.

  “We have twelve more days in this awful tub and I am going to have twelve women,” boasted Jerzy.

  “What can you do with twelve women?” asked Wladek.

  “Fuck them, what else?”

  Wladek looked perplexed.

  “Good God,” said Jerzy. “Don’t tell me the man who survived the Germans and escaped from the Russians, killed a man at the age of twelve and narrowly missed having his hand chopped off by a bunch of savage Turks has never had a woman?”

  He laughed and a multilingual chorus from the surrounding bunks told him to shut up.

  “Well,” Jerzy continued in a whisper, “the time has come to broaden your education, because at last I’ve found something I can teach you.” He peered over the side of his bunk even though he could not see Wladek’s face in the dark. “Zaphia’s an understanding girl. I daresay she could be persuaded to expand your education a little. I shall arrange it.”

  Wladek didn’t reply.

  No more was said on the subject, but the next day Zaphia started to pay attention to Wladek. She sat next to him at meals and they talked for hours of their experiences and hopes. She was an orphan from Poznan, on her way to join cousins in Chicago. Wladek told Zaphia that he was going to New York and would probably live with Jerzy.

  “I hope New York is very near Chicago,” said Zaphia.

  “Then you can come and see me when I am the mayor,” said Jerzy expansively.

  She sniffed disparagingly. “You’re too Polish, Jerzy. You can’t even speak nice English like Wladek.”

  “I’ll learn,” Jerzy said confidently, “and I’ll start by making my name American. From today I shall be George Novak. Then I’ll have no trouble at all. Everyone in the United States will think I’m American. What about you, Wladek Koskiewicz? Nothing much you can do with that name, is there?”

  Wladek looked at the newly christened George in silent resentment of his own name. Unable to adopt the title to which he felt himself the rightful heir, he hated the name Koskiewicz and the continual reminder of his illegitimacy.

  “I’ll manage,” he said. “I’ll even help you with your English if you like.”

  “And I’ll help you find a girl.”

  Zaphia giggled. “You needn’t bother, he’s found one.”

  Jerzy, or George, as he now insisted they call him, retreated after supper each night into one of the tarpaulin-covered lifeboats with a different girl. Wladek longed to know what he did there, even though some of the ladies of George’s choice were not merely filthy, but would clearly have been unattractive even when scrubbed clean.

  One night after supper, when George had disappeared again, Wladek and Zaphia sat out on deck and she put her arms around him and asked him to kiss her. He pressed his mouth stiffly against hers; he felt horribly unfamiliar with what he was meant to do. To his surprise and embarrassment, her tongue parted his lips. After a few moments of apprehension, Wladek found her open mouth intensely exciting and was alarmed to find his penis stiffening. He tried to draw away from her, ashamed, but she did not seem to mind in the least. On the contrary, she began to press her body gently and rhythmically against him and drew his hands down to her buttocks. His swollen penis throbbed against her, giving him almost unbearable pleasure. She disengaged her mouth and whispered in his ear.

  “Do you want me to take my clothes off, Wladek?”

  He could not bring himself to reply.

  She detached herself from him, laughing. “Well, maybe tomorrow,” she said, getting up from the deck and leaving him.

  He stumbled back to his bunk in a daze, determined that the next day he would finish the job Zaphia had started. No sooner had he settled in his berth, thinking of how he would go about the task, than a large hand grabbed him by the hair and pulled him down from his bunk onto the floor. In an instant his sexual excitement vanished. Two men whom he had never seen before were towering above him. They dragged him to a far corner and threw him up against the wall. A large hand was now clamped firmly on Wladek’s mouth while a knife touched his throat.

  “Don’t breathe,” whispered the man holding the knife, pushing the blade against the skin. “All we want is the silver band around your wrist.”

  The sudden realization that his treasure might be stolen from him was almost as horrifying to Wladek as had been the thought of losing his hand. Before he could think of anything to do, one of the men jerked the band off his wrist. He couldn’t see their faces in the dark and he feared he must have lost the band forever, when someone leaped onto the back of the man holding the knife. This action gave Wladek the chance to punch the one who was holding him pinned to the wall. The sleepy immigrants around them began to wake and take an interest in what was happening. The two men escaped as quickly as they could but not before George had managed to stick the knife in the side of one of the assailants.

  “Go to the cholera,” shouted Wladek at his retreating back.

  “It looks as if I got here just in time,” said George. “I don’t think they’ll be back in a hurry.” He stared down at the silver band, lying in the trampled sawdust on the floor. “It’s magnificent,” he said almost solemnly. “There will always be men who want to steal such a prize from you.”

  Wladek picked the band up and slipped it back onto his wrist.

  “Well, you nearly lost the damn thing for good that time,” said George. “Lucky for you I was a little late getting back tonight.”

  “Why were you a little late getting back?” asked Wladek.

  “My reputation,” said George boastfully, “now goes before me. In fact, I found some other idiot in my lifeboat tonight, already with his pants down. I soon got rid of him, though, when I told him he was with a girl I would have had last week but I couldn’t be sure she hadn’t got the pox. I’ve never seen anyone get dressed so quickly.”

  “What do you do in the boat?” asked Wladek.

  “Fuck them silly, you ass—what do you think?” And with that George rolled over and went to sleep.

  Wladek stared at the ceiling and, touching the silver band, thought about what George had said, wondering what it would be like to “fuck” Zaphia.

  The next morning they hit a storm, and all the passengers were confined belowdecks. The stench, intensified by the ship’s heating system, seemed to permeate Wladek’s very marrow.

  “And the worst of it is,” groaned George, “I won’t make a round dozen now.”

  When the storm abated, nearly all the passengers escaped to the deck. Wladek and George fought their way around the cr
owded gangways, thankful for the fresh air. Many of the girls smiled at George, but it seemed to Wladek that they didn’t notice him at all. A dark-haired girl, her cheeks made pink by the wind, passed George and smiled at him. He turned to Wladek.

  “I’ll have her tonight.”

  Wladek stared at the girl and studied the way she looked at George.

  “Tonight,” said George as she passed within earshot. She pretended not to hear him and walked away, a little too quickly.

  “Turn round, Wladek, and see if she is looking back at me.”

  Wladek turned around. “Yes, she is,” he said, surprised. “She’s mine tonight,” said George. “Have you had Zaphia yet?”

  “No,” said Wladek. “Tonight.”

  “About time, isn’t it? You’ll never see the girl again once we’ve reached New York.”

  Sure enough, George arrived at supper that night with the dark-haired girl. Without a word being said, Wladek and Zaphia left them, arms around each other’s waist, and went on to the deck and strolled around the ship several times. Wladek looked sideways at her pretty young profile. It was going to be now or never, he decided. He led her to a shadowy corner and started to kiss her as she had kissed him, openmouthed. She moved backward a little until her shoulders were resting against a bulwark, and Wladek moved with her. She drew his hands slowly down to her breasts. He touched them tentatively, surprised by their softness. She undid a couple of buttons on her blouse and slipped his hand inside. The first feel of the naked flesh was delicious.

  “Christ, your hand is cold!” Zaphia said.

  Wladek crushed himself against her, his mouth dry, his breath heavy. She parted her legs a little and Wladek thrust clumsily against her through several intervening layers of cloth. She moved in sympathy with him for a couple of minutes and then pushed him away.

  “Not here on the deck,” she said. “Let’s find a boat.”

  The first three boats they looked into were occupied, but they finally found an empty one and wriggled under the tarpaulin. In the constricted darkness Zaphia made some adjustments to her clothing that Wladek could not figure out and pulled him gently on top of her. It took her very little time to bring Wladek to his earlier pitch of excitement through the few remaining layers of cloth between them. He thrust himself between her legs and was on the point of orgasm when she again drew her mouth away.