Authors: Robbins Harold
They were in his car once again. He had kissed her again as he had
done before, and she was aroused. She let him slip her dress off her
shoulders and down around her waist. She allowed him to unhook her
brassiere. He kissed her nipples, licking them and sucking them
between his lips. She knew if he suggested it she would allow him the
ultimate privilege. She wanted that and had ceased to fear it.
Instead — "Sonja, I inherited my father's business.
Shortly before he died he committed our company to a major venture in
a new product called plastics. I have to go to Germany for two
months, Sonja ... Would you come with me?"
She went. Her mother was appalled, but her father and uncle
encouraged her to go. They knew who Jonas Cord was. They envisioned a
perfect alliance: Cords and Batistas. Sonja would play the
traditional female role: a marker in a game, her body would cement
the alliance.
1925 was an important year. Jonas's father died.
Jonas's stepmother sold him all her claim to the Cord estate, leaving
Jonas in complete control of the Cord businesses. A man who seemed to
be his dearest friend, named Nevada Smith, left Jonas and went off to
run a Wild West show.
Calvin Coolidge was inaugurated President of the United States, for a
full term in his own right. A squat, pockmarked, obviously brutal man
who called himself Josef Stalin took control of Russia. An elderly
retired field marshal by the name of Paul von Hindenburg was elected
President of the German Republic. A man named Clarence Birdseye froze
fish fillets so hard they were like small oak planks, in which
condition they would last indefinitely and were tasty when thawed.
Jonas took an interest in the process but decided not to invest in
it. What interested Americans most that year was a spectacular
courtroom trial that resulted in an odd little schoolteacher named
Scopes being fined a hundred dollars for teaching Darwin's theory of
evolution in a Tennessee school.
The two months in Germany was a dream. Jonas
traveled first class. They crossed the Atlantic on the
Aquitania,
which had to be like living in the palace at Versailles; certainly no
palace in Cuba was as elegantly appointed as the cabins, lounges, and
dining rooms of the ship. They flew to Germany on a Domier flying
boat that lifted off from the Thames and landed in the harbor at
Hamburg. In Berlin they took up residence in the Adion Hotel, one of
the city's finest.
Luxury and privilege did not come without its price. She was expected
to give herself to Jonas without reservation. That was expected by
her father and uncle as well as by Jonas. She gave herself to him
without reservation: whatever he wanted, whatever he suggested. She
never said no to him, not once. It was no high price. She had not
imagined what rapture she would find in the most animal of human
relationships.
Some of the Germans took him for a playboy. They were wrong. Jonas
Cord was an astute, even a Machiavellian, businessman.
One of the Germans introduced him one evening to a
strange little man who walked with a limp, smiled too readily and too
broadly, and spoke of a
Führer
, a man who would lead the
German nation to glory. The little man's name was Dr. Josef Goebbels,
and a week or so later he arranged for Jonas and Sonja to meet his
Führer
, an oddly charismatic man named Adolf Hitler.
Neither Jonas nor Sonja thought much of the encounter at the time.
They would later search their memories to try to reconstruct the
conversations.
On the way home on the
Berengaria
—
the former German liner
Imperator
— they discovered that
the Prince of Wales was a fellow passenger. Everyone sought his
company. Jonas did not. Perhaps it was as a consequence of his
refusal to intrude on the privacy of the prince that he and Sonja
were invited to dine at the prince's table the third night out. They
found the personable, gracious Edward Albert Christian George Andrew
Patrick David a far more memorable fellow than the two peculiar
Germans. For years Sonja would talk about the evening when she dined
with the Prince of Wales.
As they neared the end of their journey, Sonja began to wonder when
Jonas would propose marriage. She felt sure he would. For more than
two months they had lived together as though they were a married
couple. She utterly failed to realize they were like a married couple
in another way. He was becoming a little bored with her.
Aboard the
Berengaria
he openly courted the
daughter of a Massachusetts banker — or, said more accurately,
he tried to seduce her. Sonja was aware but failed to understand. It
was not unusual for a married man to have his little flings on the
side. That was understood and accepted both in Cuba and in
yanqui
land. She was troubled but not alarmed.
They reached Los Angeles. He took her home — that is to the
home of the Mexican family and her mother — and left her there.
He said he had to travel to Nevada and then to San Francisco and
would call her when he was next in Los Angeles.
During the three weeks before he called she learned she was pregnant.
She would not tell him on the phone and asked him to come to the
house. He said he was only passing through and would be leaving for
Texas in an hour or so. She did not see him until eleven days later,
when he returned from Dallas. Then he took her to lunch.
All he wanted to talk about was what they had done in Germany. She
could not endure his chatter and finally asked him, "Jonas, what
of the future?"
"Future? What future?"
"Ours," she said simply.
He frowned. "I'm not sure ... My god, you don't mean marriage!"
"We have been together as husband and wife."
Jonas shook his head. "You slept with me for two months. It was
great. I appreciated it. I took you to Germany. We went first class.
Did I ever mention marriage?"
"No."
"Well, then."
Her eyes filled with tears. "Then ... the
lovely traveling, the ships and all, were meant as ...
payment
?"
Jonas smiled. "I wouldn't put it quite that way."
"The payment for the services of a
puta
,"
she said bitterly.
"Sonja! No."
She got up and walked out of the restaurant. He didn't follow her.
Her father and uncle were angry. Her father spoke of horsewhipping
Jonas Cord, better yet of killing him. Her uncle demanded that she be
married immediately, so quickly that her husband would believe the
child she was carrying was his. He knew who she could marry: the son
of Don Pedro Escalante. The Escalante family was not as rich as the
Cords, but an alliance between the Escalantes and the Batistas could
be mutually profitable. Fulgencio Batista traveled to Mexico and
arranged the marriage.
Two days before the wedding Sonja contrived a private meeting with
Virgilio in the garden of the hacienda near Cordoba. She told him she
was pregnant. He was already in love with her.
"Twenty-five years," Sonja murmured. "And now for some
reason you called. You didn't telephone me for sentimental reasons. I
don't think you do anything much for sentimental reasons."
"Sonja, I —"
"You're being divorced again," she said with a thin smile.
"So, are you going around looking up old girlfriends?"
Jonas shook his head.
"If you like kidneys," she said, "there
is no place in Mexico where they do them better. Nowhere in this
hemisphere, I should say." She shook her head. "You still
do favor that foul
norteamericano
whiskey, don't you? Bourbon.
Whiskey flavored with maple syrup. Anyway, you came to see me about
what?"
"It can wait," said Jonas.
"You've bought a casino-hotel," she said. "You want to
buy one — or build one — in Havana. Right? Uncle
Fulgencio —"
"Maybe," he interrupted. "We can talk about it another
time. Right now, I want to know about you. I am told your husband is
a very wealthy man," said Jonas.
"No. But of a very old family," she said. "The
Escalantes are hidalgos, if there is any such thing anymore."
"Do you live in Mexico City?" Jonas asked. "I mean,
all year round."
"We have an apartment here, where we spend most of our time. Our
chief residence, in theory, is a hacienda near Cordoba."
"Do you have children, Sonja?"
She frowned, as if the question distressed her. "Yes," she
said. "I have two sons and two daughters. My elder daughter is
married and has made me a grandmother."
"You're too young to be a grandmother."
"I was too young to be a mother when I first became one,"
she said. She opened her purse. "Here. Here is the business card
of my elder son."
Jonas took the card and looked at it.
jonas enrique raul cord y batista
Abogado y Jurisconsulto
gurza y aroza abogados
1535 Avenue Universidad
Jonas's lips parted. He blanched. For a long moment he stared at the
card, and then he turned his eyes from the card to Sonja's face.
"Our son," she said quietly.
"BUT WHY? MY GOD, WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?"
Sonja raised her glass and sipped champagne. "When you left me,
you said the affair was over. You were most emphatic about it."
She shrugged. "Need I tell you I was not feeling very positively
toward you at that time, Jonas? Besides, I had my pride. I didn't
want you thinking I was asking for an allowance."
"Allowance? I'd have been happy to send ... to send money, to
send presents. I'd have come to visit."
"I didn't want you interfering in his upbringing," she said
bluntly, coldly.
"Meaning you didn't want him to be like me."
"I never had to worry about that. He isn't."
"Does he know —"
"He knows who his father is," she said. "He has read
every news story about you. For a long time he was not sure if he
liked you, if he ever wanted to meet you. I can tell you now that he
would have sent a letter to your office before much longer. He wanted
to be firmly established in his career before he contacted you. He
didn't want you to think he asked anything of you."
"My god, he's twenty-five years old!"
"Almost twenty-six. He graduated from Harvard Law School with
honors. His law firm is an international firm. Mexico does not allow
American firms to open branch offices in our country. But there is a
brotherly relationship between his firm and a prominent firm in New
York. They exchange young lawyers for a year's training. Jonas will
be spending next year in New York. He expected to see you during that
year."
"Tell me more about him," said Jonas quietly.
"My husband and I saw to it that he had every advantage, a good
education, foreign travel, exposure to the better things of life. He
is perfectly bilingual. In fact, he is fluent in French and German
also. He graduated from a private secondary school in 1943, when he
was seventeen. He completed a year at Harvard before he enlisted in
the United States Army."
"
United States
Army?"
"He is your son, Jonas. He is a citizen of the United States. He
would have been drafted early in 1944. He was with A Company, Seventh
Armored Infantry Battalion, and crossed the Remagen Bridge on March
7, 1945 — one of the first hundred Americans across."
"Why did I never hear of him?"
"He enrolled at Harvard as Jonas Batista."
"Was he hurt in the war?"
"Yes. He was wounded twice, nearly killed the second time. He
was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. He was a lieutenant when
he was wounded. They made him a captain then."
Jonas felt a burning weight in his stomach. A son ... A war hero. A
Mexican lawyer. He looked into Sonja's face and saw a look of
unalloyed satisfaction she was making no effort to conceal.
"I have to meet him, Sonja. When can I meet him?"
She nodded toward the bar. "He is sitting there. He came here
with me. He decided to have a look at you, whether I introduced you
this evening or not."
She raised a beckoning hand, and a young man slipped off his seat at
the bar and walked toward their table.
Jonas rose, not entirely steadily. He was like a man who'd been hit
with a sucker punch: trying to regain his equilibrium and be ready
for a new and harder blow.
Then abruptly the young man stood before him and extended his hand.
"I am your son," he said simply.
The younger Jonas was taller than his father. His shoulders were
broad, his hips narrow, and Jonas could guess he was solidly muscled
and probably played some sport or other. It was his face, though,
that was impressive. It was long and strong and open, with sharp,
bright-blue eyes and a broad, expressive mouth. His hair was blond.
He didn't look like either of his parents. He looked like the sort of
young man found among the officers of British guards regiments. He
had been staring from the bar long enough to have satisfied his
curiosity, and now he showed no sign of emotion, none of any kind.
Jonas had feared his voice would fail. He was right; it did. He was
hoarse and whispery as he said, "I would have contacted you a
long time ago, if I had known of you."
His son smiled — but only a measured smile, a polite smile, not
a friendly one. "Perhaps it is better that we did not meet until
now," he said quietly.
Jonas ran his hand across his eyes, wiping tears. "Well ... in
any case, I am so very pleased ... so very, very pleased."
"As am I," said the younger Jonas blandly.
Never in his life did the young Jonas suppose he
was the son of Virgilio Diaz Escalante. From the time when he became
aware of such things, he understood that another man was his father.
He was invited to call his mother's husband
Padre,
and he did;
but he knew what it meant that his younger brother's name was
Virgilio Pedro Escalante y Batista while his own name was Jonas
Enrique Raul Cord y Batista.