Homeland Read online

  HOMELAND

  The Crown Family Saga 1890 -1900

  John Jakes

  Dedicated to my grandfather

  William Carl Retz

  b. Neuenstadt-am-Kocher, 1849

  d. Terre Haute, Indiana, 1936

  There is a photo of him in old age, handsome still with his white imperial, seated in dappled sunlight

  with a small boy on his knee.

  I remember that day, or one like it;

  the sunlight, and a copy of Argosy

  with a bright yellow cover

  lying nearby. My grandfather

  loved good stories.

  In loving memory.

  Contents

  Part One BERLIN

  1

  2

  3

  4

  Part Two STEERAGE

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Part Three CHICAGO

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  Part Four JULIE

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  Part Five PULLMAN

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  Part Six LEVEE

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  Part Seven FLICKERS

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  Part Eight TAMPA

  88

  89

  90

  91

  92

  93

  94

  95

  96

  97

  98

  99

  Part Nine WAR

  100

  101

  102

  103

  104

  105

  106

  107

  108

  109

  110

  111

  112

  113

  114

  115

  Part Ten HOMECOMING

  116

  117

  118

  119

  120

  Afterword

  Author’s Note

  A Biography of John Jakes

  For he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

  Exodus 2

  And homeless near a thousand homes I stood.

  WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

  All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

  LEO TOLSTOY

  GERMAN 1: “I have a relative in America.”

  GERMAN 2: “Everybody has a relative in America.”

  Anonymous, circa 1900

  Part One

  Berlin

  1891-1892

  Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates

  shall stand

  A mighty woman with a torch,

  whose flame

  Is the imprisoned lightning,

  and her name

  Mother of exiles.

  1883

  The New Colossus by EMMA LAZARUS, written to raise funds to complete the Statue of Liberty

  1

  Pauli

  HE THOUGHT, WHERE’S MY home? It isn’t here.

  From a flimsy shelf beside his narrow bed he pulled a wrinkled paper.

  It was a map of the world, torn from a book he’d bought at a secondhand shop with money he could ill afford to squander. He bought the whole book in order to have the map.

  He scrutinized various locations as if he were some god-like being, able to choose any place on earth to live. But he was in Berlin, and that was that. Sometimes he loved the city but sometimes, as now, he felt trapped.

  He’d come home at midnight, exhausted from work, and lay now under the old duvet, unable to sleep, studying the map. It was almost two in the morning, and Aunt Lotte hadn’t yet returned. Out with one of her Herren, he presumed. He worried about her. Once the kindest of women, now she was short with him, as if she disliked him. Hated having him around. She was drinking more heavily than usual. That very morning, before he left, he’d seen her stumble into furniture twice.

  His room felt tiny and cramped, like a cell. Barely enough space for his single bed, an old wardrobe with a missing leg replaced by a wood block, one shaky taboret with a kerosene lamp. A night jar was tucked into a corner, beside a wooden box containing some childhood toys. The room was part of a cellar flat; he had not even one window.

  Often his room was cold; most of the time it was damp. Aunt Lotte complained that it was messy; very un-German. That could be said of him too. His clothes were almost always awry, his shirttail often hung out, his pockets were constantly stuffed with old pencils, chalk, scraps of paper on which he wrote down thoughts or things to do, rocks, crackers or sweets he forgot to eat, leaving them to crumble or melt.

  He was no longer in school; he’d never liked it, and had left it a year ago. Though dropping out was against the law, no one came to find him. No one cared.

  Pensive, he touched the map, putting his finger in the middle of America, where his uncle lived.

  As they often did at night, painful questions arose. Questions usually buried so deep, he’d never uttered them aloud to another soul. Probably because he feared there were no answers. There were no answers tonight. Slowly he stretched out his hand and put the wrinkled map back on the shelf.

  His name was Pauli Kroner.

  He was thirteen years old.

  Spring rain hammered the streaming glass. Lightning flashed and glared. Pauli peered in the window of Wertheim’s on Leipzigerstrasse; window dressers had draped a variety of gentlemen’s and ladies’ coats around a marvelous globe, multicolored and exquisitely painted. The globe had brass fittings at its axis and rested in a heavy wooden stand, fancifully carved.

  The globe’s painted seas and continents seemed full of mysteries, possibilities, wondrous sights Pauli yearned to see. If only he had enough money to buy a globe like that …

  Something hard whacked the back of his head. “Lump.” Ragamuffin. “Get away from that glass, you’re leaning too hard.”

  Pauli spun around to confront Wertheim’s giant doorkeeper, sodden in his greatcoat with gold shoulder boards and ropes of braid. Rain dripped from the bill of his braided hat.

  “I was only looking.”

  “Look somewhere else. We don’t want trash like you loitering around, it scares off the customers.”

  “Es wird überall nur mit Wasser gekocht,” Pauli exclaimed. It was an old proverb, meaning literally, They cook ev
erywhere with water. Pauli meant it to say he was as good as the next man.

  “Oh yes?” said the doorman. “You’re a good customer? Big spender? Get away from here before I whistle for the police!”

  Pauli gave the doorman a hot stare, but the defiance hid his real feelings about himself. The doorman knew him for what he was. Nothing.

  He disappeared up the rainy boulevard, hands in his pockets, head down.

  On a Sunday morning soon afterward, Pauli walked into the Tiergarten with a block of cheap paper under his arm. Returning from work the night before, he had found Aunt Lotte bemoaning the absence of gentlemen on a Saturday evening. Her speech was slow and slurred. She was drinking strong fermented Apfelwein from a goblet. She had still been asleep when he left this morning; he’d heard her snoring behind her closed door.

  Pauli walked through the Tiergarten with a strong, fast stride. He looked older than his years. He would never be handsome, but he had friendly, lively blue eyes, and wide shoulders, and a sturdy build that enhanced his masculinity. The blood of southern Germany ran in him, and there was a red-haired strain in the family that sometimes gave his brown hair russet glints. Whenever he was feeling good about himself or his circumstances he exuded an air of strength and competence that people noticed.

  The great park was green and misty this summer morning. Pauli hurried to a site, and a subject, that had caught his eye. On a grassy hillock, an old gentleman had laid aside his straw boater and his meerschaum pipe and gone to sleep with his belly jutting up like a mountain under his vest. At a discreet distance, Pauli dropped to his knees, smoothed the top sheet of the block and rummaged through his pockets for his charcoal stick. He licked a smear of chocolate off the end and poised the stick over the pad.

  He was tight inside, with anticipation and anxiety. He wanted to do a good sketch of the sleeping gentleman, but he feared he’d fail.

  He began with an outline of the sleeper, from the side. After four strokes, he rubbed out what he’d done; the proportions were all wrong. Somehow his hand couldn’t understand or execute the signals from his eye and mind. Pauli tore the paper off the block and crushed it, cursing. The old gentleman started, sat up and looked at him. Pauli grew red. He jumped up and ran off with the paper block and charcoal, quite forgetting to pick up the discarded sheets he’d left on the grass.

  Why did he keep it up? He wanted to draw the marvelous sights and subjects that abounded in the world. But his talent was poor. He struggled and struggled, and every time he came out with nothing. Sometimes it seemed he had no talent for anything.

  Once again Pauli was on the pavement outside the great department store, Wertheim’s, on Leipzigerstrasse. The doorkeeper was nowhere to be seen. It was late July; the long summer twilight was golden and warm.

  Pauli saw an old lady in black emerge from the store with a string bag. Instantly, a bearded man sprang from the crowd and brutally shoved the old woman to the ground.

  The old lady cried out as the man snatched her string bag, pulled out two tins of department store tea and swore furiously. He turned to flee through the crowd, in Pauli’s direction.

  Pauli didn’t hesitate. He threw himself on the sidewalk. The thief couldn’t stop in time, and tripped over the boy.

  Pauli grabbed the frayed hem of the thief’s long coat and brought him down. The man cracked his head badly.

  The dreaded doorman appeared, but he ignored Pauli, fussing and clucking over the old woman while helping her to her feet and into the store.

  The groggy thief tried to rise. Pauli sat on him. Two of Wertheim’s store detectives came out to collar the man. Pauli stood up, brushed himself off. A few angry people gathered around, shaking fingers at the robber.

  The police arrived. They insisted Pauli accompany them to the station.

  “But I’m waiting here to meet my friend.” The friend was Tonio Henkel, whose father owned a thriving sweet shop on Unter den Linden.

  “No argument, you’re coming along.” One of the policemen seized his arm to settle the matter.

  They took him to a room with dingy yellow walls and the inevitable large heroic lithograph of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

  Two stern detectives shot off questions like bullets.

  “Your name?”

  “Pauli Kroner.”

  “Age?”

  “Fourteen, last month, June 15.”

  “Address.”

  Reluctantly, he gave the number on Müllerstrasse. The detectives exchanged quick looks. They recognized a cheap street in one of the workers’ districts. Almost a slum.

  Pauli spent an anxious half hour repeating his story. All at once a distant bell rang. One detective was called out. When he came back in three minutes his whole demeanor had changed.

  “I was speaking on the telephone,” he said to Pauli. “You helped a very important lady. Frau Flüsser. The mother-in-law of the store’s deputy director. She wants to see you at her flat tomorrow morning. Nine sharp. I think she wants to give you a reward. I’ll write down the address.”

  The other detective patted his head. “Ein scharfsinniger Junge.” A quick-witted youngster.

  Dazed with delight, Pauli ran out of the building, then dashed toward Unter den Linden.

  “And the policeman actually called you that, quick-witted?” Tonio Henkel said. He and Pauli were seated at a back table at Konditorei Henkel.

  “Yes, he did,” Pauli said with a shrug of false modesty. He stuffed another Othello into his mouth, disposing of it with a few bites.

  Tonio smiled. His large, rounded forehead bobbed over the table. His head was too big for his frail body. Pauli and Anton Henkel had become fast friends in Grundschule, which Pauli had quit at Easter a year ago; the end of his seventh term. He had not been transferred to the Oberschule in his fifth year, as many bright pupils were. Remaining in the lower school marked him as one of those who would never receive a higher education at the Gymnasium. Aunt Lotte had made only minimal objections to his quitting; they needed whatever extra money he could earn.

  Pauli’s departure from school hadn’t affected his friendship with Tonio. He liked Tonio’s gentleness and good disposition. “I was scared when I got to Wertheim’s and you were gone,” Tonio said to him.

  “Couldn’t help it,” Pauli said, taking another Othello and devouring it with his usual speedy efficiency. He glanced at the gilded wall clock. Almost ten. He had to get home, so he’d be sure to get up on time.

  “When do you see the old lady who wants to reward you?” Tonio asked.

  “Tomorrow morning, nine o’clock sharp.”

  “What do you think the old lady will give you? Anything you ask for?”

  “Oh, I doubt that.”

  Tonio grinned. “Maybe she’ll give you a ticket to America.”

  “Oh yes, I wish,” Pauli said in a derisive way. Then: “I’d better leave. Aunt Lotte keeps track of my shifts. She’ll be wondering why I’m late.”

  Tonio followed him to the front, his big head inclined forward like a heavy burden. “How’s school?” Pauli asked.

  Tonio seemed reluctant to answer. “School. Yes—well—I have bad news.”

  At the doorway to Unter den Linden, Pauli stopped. Lime trees along the curb swayed in the wind. Smart carriages rattled by. The evening was crisp and breezy; cool weather had rolled in from the North Sea. Pauli saw an uncharacteristic fear in his friend’s eyes.

  “You know how the doctor inspects us weekly for signs of infirmity or slowness?” Pauli nodded. “Today I was inspected and—uh—taken out. From now on I’m required to go to the special school. Actually they say it’s more like a camp. I’ll go there in the autumn. The doctor said he was sorry, but it’s necessary.”

  “Tonio, that’s awful.” When a student was pulled from school because he was lame or feebleminded, there was no appeal. As the school doctor had once remarked when he was examining pupils, “It’s the only way to keep up standards. It’s the new German way.”

  If so, Pauli
didn’t like it much. Perhaps that was why he had such a strong interest in the country to which his uncle had emigrated years ago.

  “Tonio, I’m really sorry.”

  “Yes, me too. But don’t worry, I’ll get along.”

  Pauli squeezed his friend’s arm and left.

  His heels clicked on the pavement as he walked along. Dark leaves rustled in the cool breeze. The streets resounded with the laughter and lively conversations of passersby, the raucous voices and thumped tankards of celebrants in beer halls, the tuneful grind of a street minstrel’s Leierkasten, a barrel organ transported on a small two-wheeled wagon. With the appointment looming tomorrow, the night was full of anticipation and magic. Pauli loved Berlin again.

  Well, why not? It was one of the world’s great cities. A million and a half people crowded its old streets, creating constant noise and turmoil but at the same time a sense of energy, power, importance. The din of carriages and horse-cars wouldn’t stop until early morning.

  Athens on the Spree, the old residents called it. Because of the smoke, dirt, relentless industrial expansion, Rathenau, the electrics tycoon, called it Chicago on the Spree. Aunt Lotte had other, less flattering names. “This shithole of misery,” for one.

  On the streets you saw every sort of person. Elegant women and ragged gypsies. Travelers, officers, businessmen, Jews with their beards and hairlocks and long black gowns; Pauli had never spoken to a Jew, excepting those who were shopkeepers. You saw old Junkers in from their country estates, disdainful, and thin as their expensive cigars. Tonio’s father said the Junkers ran the country, the new imperial Germany. He said the Iron Chancellor, Bismarck, had brought back something called the old steel and rye clique—the soldiers and the landowners. He said their influence was good for Germany, along with Bismarck’s policy of promoting Germany through armed strength.

  Yes, Berlin was a pageant, all right. But he was no longer sure that Berlin would be his permanent home. He’d begun to think often of America. Of a particular city, Chicago, and of the uncle he’d never met. The uncle who was a brewer, and rich.

  Also, he disliked his job in the kitchen at the famous and elegant Hotel Kaiserhof. There Pauli swabbed the tiled kitchen floor, emptied trays of dirty dishes and smelly buckets of preparation scraps while avoiding the fists and kicks of the short-tempered chefs. Sometimes he worked days, and sometimes half the night, but the drudgery never varied. The single compensation was the opportunity to spend a few minutes with Herr Trautwein, the hall porter, a burly bachelor who crawled into the beds of female guests whenever possible. He was also an enthusiast about modern inventions of every kind, and talked endlessly but interestingly about the new age of mechanization that would enlighten the world in the next century.