"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.
9
1
"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.
2
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.
He was baptized Cord y Batista. The family never deceived anyone about his origin. But the word bastardo was never used about him. That would have incurred the wrath of Don Pedro Escalante, and Don Pedro was a hidalgo whose wrath no one wanted to incur. Don Pedro, it was well known, was the father of several children outside his marriage. It was extremely unusual for a woman of good family to bear an illegitimate child and acknowledge it; but in this case the man involved had been a man of wealth and position, and the child had probably been conceived in a first-class cabin on a luxury liner, or if not there then in Berlin's finest hotel. The circumstances made it all acceptable to Don Pedro. His daughter-in-law had not succumbed to any cheap adventurer but to a man like himself, like his son Virgilio. And if Virgilio did not object, why should he?
The boy was always intensely curious about the man who was the origin of his names Jonas and Cord. Madre was never reticent about it. She told him that his father Jonas Cord was a wealthy American businessman. They had loved each other for a time, she said. Unfortunately, differences between them were very great, and they had not been able to marry.
What really mattered, she told the young Jonas often, was that she loved him, Padre loved him, and Abuelo — Grandfather — loved him, which was very important. As the family grew, he was always older brother. His brothers and sisters knew he was different, but they, too, had been reared to understand the difference didn't matter.
His brothers and sisters, when they were old enough to understand, watched Jonas struggling over the Sunday edition of The New York Times, which came in every Thursday's mail. Sometimes his mother marked stories and told him to be sure to read them. They were stories about Jonas Cord.
Padre was often away from the hacienda on business, Abuelo stayed at home. From the time Jonas learned to talk, his mother spoke to him sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English, and his grandfather did the same. Jonas Cord, they told him, was a norteamericano, and he must learn to speak his father's language, not just as it was spoken by educated Mexicans but as it was spoken by the yanquis themselves. When norteamericanos came to the hacienda, for whatever reason, they were asked to talk with the boy, to let him study their accents.