The Little Book (25 page)

Back at ground level, in the nave of the great cathedral, Dilly took care to point out each exquisite detail. “A Gothic cathedral is like a book, and the stained glass the pages. The people of the time couldn’t read, so they built themselves the stories, instead of writing them. They intended them to last forever. The stories taught how to live good lives and how to ensure entry into the kingdom of God.” He pointed across the great vaulted space. “You see, over there on the sunless northern wall are Old Testament stories and biblical characters depicting the world before the Messiah. And here, on the south wall, where the sun shines, we have the New Testament stories of Christ and the saints. Very clever and very geometrical.” He paused and looked squarely at Wheeler. “That’s what I love about the Middle Ages. Everything is so rational and logical. I would have loved to live then.”

“Don’t you find it a little confining?” Wheeler asked. “Rules had a pretty tight grip on things.”

“No, don’t you see? It was the inner life that mattered.” He touched his temple. “The life of the mind. It was so pure and clean. The material world was transitory. Look around. Do you realize how many man-hours it took to design, carve out, and place each one of these stones?” He reached out and touched the rough wall in front of him, drawing its history into his fingers. “Whole villages devoted their entire working lives to the projects. And the masons who worked on this level knew they wouldn’t finish in their lifetimes. Imagine being comfortable with that thought. They took hundreds of years to complete. For us in our rushed lives that is unfathomable.”

Dilly paused and furrowed his brow. Wheeler was familiar enough with his father’s history to know what was coming next. “And your mother and I saw firsthand how quickly it can all be destroyed.” He cringed. “We walked through the rubble of Coventry Cathedral the day after the bombing. Timbers, stones, shards of glass everywhere. The work of centuries destroyed in an instant by a couple of maliciously placed two-hundred-pound bombs. The people who destroyed that shrine in a moment had no idea what they were doing, had no idea what an irreplaceable treasure they were obliterating forever. What if—” He stopped and closed his eyes, shaking his head slowly. “What if the people of fourteenth-century Coventry had known to what end their work would come? Would they have labored painstakingly to hew each beam, lay in each piece of glass, carve so precisely each stone?” He repressed an involuntary shiver. “It was the most horrifying thing I have ever seen.”

“I know. Mother told me.”

Dilly paused for a moment and reached inside to regain his exuberance. “A cathedral is a stupendous technological achievement.” Dilly closed his eyes again, this time to breathe the rich and musty air of centuries. “They are the highest point in civilization.”

“Better than the great catch?” Wheeler said, out of nowhere.

Dilly looked surprised and then eyed Wheeler for a moment. “You have your mother’s sense of humor,” he said. Then he turned silent and fell for a moment into deep, troubling thought. “How is she?” he asked, as if finally mustering the strength to get the question out.

“She did fine. You would be proud of her. You know, your family gave her the Feather River ranch in 1946, and she became a farmer. A good one. She never went back to England.”

“A farmer,” Dilly said, shaking his head. “That woman—” A flood of memories showed on Dilly’s face, and he smiled savoring them. “A farmer. How was she with the books?”

“Ferocious like a tiger. She had a legendary style,” Wheeler said with the same sort of smile. “And great with the workers. She has a reputation as a great bargainer.”

“Last time I saw her she was quite the pacifist.” Dilly smiled even more warmly. “You know, that isn’t easy when there is war raging all around you . . . and your husband goes off to sacrifice himself to the cause.”

“Mother never seemed to do anything that was easy.”

Dilly looked down at his feet. “Including team up with me.”

“Are you kidding? She always said it was the best thing that ever happened to her. She said you were repressed and an incredible overachiever, and it gave her a whole new way of looking at the world.”

Dilly laughed soulfully. “She had a hard time with my sense of duty,” he said. “I’m pretty singleminded on that score, I guess.”

“She said it was your father in you.”

Dilly grew serious. “My father was a stern man, the consummate banker, very forthright and prominent. He had been an athletic star, you know. Three sports at St. Greg’s, football and baseball at Harvard, the first modern Olympic games.”

“That was true, then?”

“Oh yes. In 1896, when the Olympics were formed in Greece, he and some athletes from Princeton and Yale formed a team and paid their own way. Father went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and built a discus from the sculpture. It was quite a project, and he won the event. I think he did it to prove the superiority of Anglo-Saxon bloodlines. I suppose he was an influence.” Dilly paused and fell into thought, then wished to change the subject. “So your mother thought I was too duty bound?”

“She used to say you had an overdeveloped superego.”

Dilly laughed again. “Your mother had a wonderful way of taking a few hundred years of excellent New England Puritan heritage and making it sound like a nervous disorder.” There was deep affection in his voice, but he stopped and looked up again at the Old Testament stained glass across the nave. His eyes filled with tears. “My goodness, I loved that woman.”

They had an elegant lunch at the Hotel Imperial. “If this is going to be a grand tour,” Dilly said, “we will not short-change the
grandesse
. That is the word a favorite teacher of mine at St. Gregory’s School used to describe this hotel.”

Wheeler smiled. “You wouldn’t be referring to our Venerable Haze, would you?”

Dilly returned the delighted smile. “I would indeed,” he said with a flair. “Our great Arnauld Esterhazy. I forgot for a moment that you too were one of his boys.”

“I was indeed,” Wheeler said proudly.

“What a joy we both shared him.”

“Me, for only two years, unfortunately.”

“His world must have been quite a change from a California farm.”

“You might say.”

Dilly looked wistful. “And Esterhazy was still in form?”

“Still around, and probably even a greater character.”

“He was like a father to me.”

“I know. He used to tell us how great you were. Sort of worshipped what you were, they said.”

“Did he still call his select gathering of students
Jung Wien
?”

“He did indeed.”

“And their essays
feuilletons
?”

“Still did. Right to the end.”

“Oh my,” Dilly said, swept away by a feeling of nostalgia. “What a force he was! And what a luxury to have those Hazings in our schoolings.”

“That’s how we know about all this.” Wheeler’s hand swept out as if from the cathedral railing to the magnificent city below.

“To the Haze, then,” Dilly said, tearing up, raising his glass of young white wine.

“To the Haze.” Wheeler tasted the wine and gave a satisfactory smile. Then he paused and looked square into Dilly’s eyes. “He’s here, you know.”

Dilly looked puzzled. “The Haze is here?”

“Of course. He’s in Vienna right now, and he should be about eighteen years old, if I figure right.”

The new thought stunned Dilly. Dilly who thought of everything had not thought of that. “You know, you are right.” An impish smile came onto his lips. “We could go pay him a call.”

“I wonder what he is like,” Wheeler said, not letting on that he had actually seen him. “Probably a prissy little guy.”

“You don’t suppose it would interfere with his history if we just took a little peak at him. I mean, we wouldn’t want him to end up at Dover.” He frowned as if having bitten into a sour fruit.

“Maybe we could borrow some money from his father,” Wheeler said, looking into his wineglass. “I was beginning to wonder how we were going to pay for all this
grandesse
?”

“We’ll just have to invent the airplane, and sell the patent,” Dilly said, lifting his wineglass toward his son and his elder.

“Too late. It’s already been invented, I think.”

“Well then, the automobile.”

“That too.”

“Then something.”

“The Frisbee,” Wheeler said quickly.

“The what?”

Wheeler gave Dilly a long look. “Right. You wouldn’t know about that,” he said, not bothering to explain that he had already had a beautiful prototype lathed by a Viennese cabinetmaker.

“How about the ball-point pen.”

Wheeler lifted his wineglass and returned the toast. “To the ball-point pen.” As Wheeler looked at Dilly, the younger man’s face blanched.

“Oh lord,” he said, suddenly, aghast, his eyes darting as if looking around for an escape route. “Here he comes.”

Wheeler turned around behind him and to his horror saw walking toward them across the dining room the stern young man from whom he had stolen the clothes. He turned back quickly and buried his head. “Let’s not let him see us. He’s walking right this way,” Dilly said. Then with great relief: “He is turning.” Dilly’s eyes followed the man as he left the ornate and spacious dining room, then looked at Wheeler.

“You look pale,” Wheeler said, regaining his own composure.

“I didn’t mean to alarm you, but I very much do not want to run into that young man.”

“You’ve made that very clear.” Wheeler did not dare look up.

“Well, it is not what you would call an ordinary situation,” Dilly said, collecting himself. “That young man is Frank Burden, my father.”

26

The Nature of the Condition

For some reason Wheeler had not told Dilly that the stern young American both of them were now assiduously avoiding was the very man he had robbed in his first hours in Vienna. “It is Frank Burden?” Wheeler asked uneasily. “He’s from Boston, the 1896 Olympics and everything. You’re absolutely positive?”

“Absolutely positive,” Dilly said. “I ought to know my own father, even if he is younger than I am. But I wanted to make very sure, so I followed him into the hotel and asked the clerk at the desk, and sure enough, he said it was Mr. Burden from Boston, and he was in Vienna for ‘an indefinite stay.’ ”

“What’s he doing in Vienna?” Wheeler said abruptly.

“That, I don’t know. I realize he was in Germany after the Olympics, a year at the university in Berlin, studying international banking. He became quite the expert. But I’m not sure about Vienna. Some position with the department of state, studying the Austrian currency exchange, I think.”

“Well, he doesn’t look any too friendly,” Wheeler said.

“Friendly?” Dilly repeated, reflecting. “No, not friendly.” He paused again and looked up at Wheeler. “There are some things I want to tell you about my father. He was a serious and stern man. Mother was bright and cheery, the one who brought culture and warmth, and Father provided the discipline.” Dilly stopped again and smiled. “I get confused with tenses. I don’t know whether to say
is, was
, or
will be
.”

Wheeler laughed. “It’s the nature of our condition,” he said.

Dilly returned to seriousness. “Father
was
something of an autocrat, a black-and-white kind of fellow. One thing I can guarantee you: he is always absolutely certain that the way he sees things is the right way.”

“You can sort of see it in his face.”

“Well, don’t get in his way when he wants something. I know that.” Dilly’s voice was cold and had lost its enthusiasm.

“That sounds a bit harsh.” Wheeler was fishing for more information. “And what of the rumor?”

“What rumor?”

“When I was at Harvard, I read an article in an underground newspaper. It was pretty hard on the Burden legend, you included, and it said that Frank Burden had killed a man in Europe, a Jew, and it got covered up.”

Dilly frowned. “I did hear something like that a couple of times, I’ll admit. But I didn’t take much stock in it. There was that and—” Dilly suppressed a shudder and fell silent. “There are things I don’t wish to talk about. Maybe later.”

“I don’t know much about him,” Wheeler said. “I knew Grandmother pretty well. We spent time together when I was at St. Greg’s and Harvard, but he was gone by the time I got there. I knew Mother didn’t like him, but I never really knew why.”

“He never accepted her,” Dilly said coldly.

“There is a part you don’t know,” Wheeler said suddenly. “He took your death the hardest of all. People said in Boston that he never got over it. He was terribly proud of your accomplishments, and he had great plans for you after the war, ‘the hope for a new world,’ he called you.”

Dilly shuddered again. “I find that very hard to believe.”

“It is true. Mother said that when you died, the life went out of him. You were his pride and joy, his main reason for creating the life he created, but I guess he didn’t express it very well.”

“You could say that,” Dilly said with a rare cynicism.

Wheeler shook his head. “I didn’t know him at all.”

“I can tell you about him,” Dilly said, the color returning to his face.

Frank Burden’s roots went back to colonial days, back to Miles Standish, and he was a well-educated man. He had gone to St. Gregory’s, a fine new Episcopalian day and boarding school outside Boston, and to Harvard, the oldest and finest college in the country. He had studied European economics and politics with the finest of academic minds. He had traveled to the continent a number of times, the most recent as a victorious member of the first American Olympic team.

Then he stayed in Europe for the academic year, studying international economics at the university in Berlin. Now, in 1897, he had been sent by a consortium of Northeastern bankers to Vienna, to coincide with a personal mission. He formed a perspective that the greatness of his country was being eroded by immigration, a perspective that was perhaps not unique among his American peers, but one that gave him the feeling of being a prophet for his times. He saw his own country on the brink of disaster and decline. He spent a good deal of his time in Europe searching for answers.