shyly, “To us,” then said, “I wish Mother could be here.”
“We’ll all go upstairs and visit her later, if that damned nurse will let us,” grumbled the clan patriarch.
The butler entered to ask if the servants could begin serving the noon meal.
“Have them wait about five minutes, Fukai-san, and close the door when you leave.” Even at seventy-one, Neil Macneil was stiffly erect with a full head of hair and a commanding presence enhanced by a voice that had lost none of the impressive timbre of its prime. When he spoke, others listened with the respect usually paid to vast wealth.
After the senior of the family retainers of the clan—the Macneils still thought themselves more clan than family—softly closed the dining-room door, Neil Macneil, illegitimate son of a pioneer merchant of the same name and that merchant’s first cousin Anne, waited for the attentive silence of his three children. Then he began.
“My annual report on the state of our fortunes is disheartening.”
“Are we broke?” the infectious Sarah asked, almost as if she welcomed the prospect of new adventures coarsened by poverty.
Her father grinned wryly. “You know we’re not, my dear. I’ve had a summary of our financial condition prepared. Copies will be given to each of you later. As usual, read, digest, and destroy. As you will see, we own less than last year, but we’re far from destitute. Anyway, that’s not why I wanted us to have this private talk.”
Bill Macneil squared his shoulders. “You want to talk about the coming war, don’t you, Dad?”
The father smiled at his son. He could always rely on Bill to know what was on his father’s mind.
“And I’m almost glad it’s coming,” Bill muttered.
Neil Macneil well knew the reason behind his son’s mumbled comment.
“Yes, a war is inevitable. I’ve sold too many arms to too many nations not to read the omens. I can hear bugles, even if others won’t. Since the Macneils can do nothing to prevent this conflict, we must prepare for it.” Although no one but family was present in the dining room, the patriarch lowered his voice. “I intend to shift all our liquid assets out of Japan. In fact, out of Asia entirely. Our main office will move to the United States: New York, maybe San Francisco. I’ll sell as much of our real estate as I can as well as our holdings in Japanese corporations.”
“What about us?” Sarah asked. Twenty-one, she had spent the previous summer in the Dairen, Manchuria, branch of Macneil Brothers’ Trading Co. Petite, intelligent, Sarah seemed always to be in motion, flitting from one enthusiasm, one cause to another. Her father thought of her as a breeze of compassion, blowing hither and yon seeking yet another of the afflicted on whom to lavish sympathy and support. Her amah, Mrs. Chang, said the girl she had raised since birth would swim a flooded river to tend an injured mouse.
“You children have no financial concerns, Sarah. The main thing is to go where you will be safe. Bill is returning to school in San Francisco next week. I trust Ship and I and your mother will leave Japan by the end of the year or early next year. And you had better not stay in Manchuria much longer.”
“But Daddy,” Sarah protested, “I don’t want to be separated from Nathan. Not until he can leave Manchuria with me. Besides,” she added with a quick smile, “I’m sure there won’t be a war. Both of you are always so pessimistic.”
“What about you?” Shipton Macneil asked his father.
Neil Macneil grinned. “It’s about time for me to retire, don’t you think? After all, I’m seventy-one. Your mother and I will go to Oregon and find a quiet place to enjoy life. Somewhere close to a hospital for her.”
“But can Mother travel?”
With Ship, his father thought, it was his mother first, last, and always. A delicate boy but with definite inner strengths. “I think she can make the trip.”
“If she can’t, I’ll stay here with her,” Ship declared.
Although much younger than her husband, Umeko had been an invalid for six years. “If a war starts, Son, you might have to change citizenship in order to stay.” But Neil Macneil really didn’t think it would come to that. Surely, he could get Ship and Umeko out of Japan in good time.
All three children and he carried American passports. Although the Macneil clan, at least the Japan branch of it, had established itself in Japan in the 1850s. Except for the invalid Umeko, they had always considered themselves American. Everyone spoke and wrote Japanese as well as, maybe even better than, English. All had received much of their education in Japanese schools. They thought in Japanese as often as in English, and Japanese friends probably outnumbered American and European ones.
Even so, they insisted on retaining their identity as Americans. Fellow Americans back home might look at them askance, but nothing could ever shake a deeply held belief that they were as American as youngsters who had been born in and never left Olathe, Kansas.
“Oregon?” Bill asked in reference to his father’s plan to retire there, “Why Oregon?”
“It’s where your grandfather came from.”
“Right,” Bill mused. “I’ll have to drive up some weekend from San Francisco and see what old Fort Stockton looks like.”
His father smiled. “You won’t find any trace of the original Macneil trading post, I’m afraid.”
“That’s a shame, Dad. I’d have liked seeing it.” Bill shifted his attention to his sister. “Speaking of disappearing trading posts, Sarah, Dad’s right. If war starts, Manchuria is the last place you want to be.”
“But what about my job in our office?” she asked with intentional deception. “How can they possibly manage without me?”
“Cut it out, sis. We all know why you want to be there,” Bill bantered in the tone he often used with his younger sibling.
“All right, I admit it,” Sarah said, laughing. “I’m in love. Madly, wildly in love. Nathan Blum is the most marvelous man. Gentle, intelligent, so dark and . . .”
“Why do women prefer dark men?” Bill asked with mock petulance. He and his father were blond, as was Bill’s long-dead mother, Valerie. Neil’s second wife was Japanese, so Sarah and Shipton were Eurasian or, more properly, Amerasian.
“I sometimes suspect you don’t like Nathan because he’s a Jew,” Sarah said, suddenly turning pugnacious.
“Oh, I don’t mind his being a Jew, but he’s too smooth a talker and—well, a bit too refined for my taste,” Bill said, happy to deliver tit for tat.
“You think he’s more interested in our money than in me? Well, let me set you straight, dear brother of mine. His father owns most of the movie theaters in Dairen.”
“As well as most of the opium dens, gambling halls, and good-time houses.”
As Sarah’s cheeks flushed, her eyes kindled with the fires of confrontation. “Money’s money, no matter where it comes from, Bill. I’ll bet your sweet little Miss Bluestocking Quaker would die to have some of ours, too. Talk about setting your cap for a rich husband!”
“If you’re talking about Helma Graf, you can stop worrying, Chankoro.” That was the family’s pet name for Sarah, somewhat analogous in Japanese to the English pejorative “Chink.”
Why the family called Sarah “Chink” was another story.
“When I board my ship in Yokohama next week,” Bill went on, “I hope I will have seen the last of her. Besides, she despises wealth as much as she does war and our family arms business. She’s altogether rabid on the subject.”
“Is that the hogwash she’s been feeding you?”
“Lay it to rest, Chankoro. Helma’s greed or lack of it