The Raiders

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.

Abuelo became his grandson's closest friend. He told him who Sonja's family was. To many Mexicans, Fulgencio Batista was only an upstart colonel and maybe worse. But Don Pedro Escalante, though he was a hidalgo, had secretly sent money to Pancho Villa. And now he was secretly giving money to his daughter-in-law's uncle.

He was catholic in his political predilections but not Catholic in his religious ones. Little Jonas was baptized by a priest, but he was not reared a Catholic. His father was not a Catholic, so Grandfather deemed it would be inappropriate someday to present a devout Catholic son to a non-Catholic father — and he had no doubt the family would someday present the son to the father.

Grandfather sent the boy to the grammar school in Cordoba. Boys there knew he was a bastard and not only that but the son of a yanqui, but they dared not torment the grandson of the hidalgo. One did and suffered a broken nose for his effrontery.

Abuelo carried a pistol on his hip. He taught his grandson to shoot, and when Jonas was only eight years old he gave him a .22-caliber seven-shot Harrington & Richards revolver. Jonas practiced with it, under the careful tutelage of the old man, and he became accurate, so accurate that his targets were spent shotgun shells set up on a sawhorse to be fired on from twenty meters.

One of the boy's proudest moments came when he was nine years old. His little sister Maria was a toddler. She had been in the kitchen, where the cook had given her a slice of pie, and she wandered out through the back door, across the dooryard and beyond. Shortly Jonas heard the cook scream. He was in his room reading, and before he ran out to see what was wrong he grabbed his revolver. He had an instinct that if some sort of danger was threatening, a gun might be useful.

He ran into the dooryard. The cook stood flushed, trembling, terrified, pointing at the little girl. Maria sat on the ground, ten meters beyond the dooryard fence. She too was frightened. Not two meters from her a coiled rattlesnake buzzed its warning. She had wandered near it when it was shedding its skin and was in a foul, aggressive mood. Whether or not it would strike was uncertain, but it might if she moved. It almost certainly would if anyone else came near.

Jonas closed his left hand around his right wrist and took steady aim on the rattlesnake. Its head was as big as four of the shotgun shells that were his usual targets. Still, this was no easy shot. He held his breath, which he did not usually do when he was shooting. He fired. The .22 slug split the head of the rattler, and it writhed and thrashed as the boy rushed up and grabbed his little sister to drag her away from it.

He was a hero. It was a fine thing to be a hero. He enjoyed it.

3

The next year, 1936, he did not return to the grammar school in Cordoba. Instead, he and his mother went to live in Mexico City, in a flat maintained by Virgilio Escalante for his convenience in his frequent visits to the capital. The family had used its considerable political and economic influence to secure a place for Jonas at La Escuela Diplomatica, an international school for the children of diplomats. There he would study with Europeans and improve his English and learn French and German.

He learned something else: that Mexico was not one of the world's great nations, not in wealth, not in military might, not in cultural achievement and influence. No. The Estados Unidos to the north was all these things. Mexico was not. Mexico was a respectable nation but not a leader of the world. At the grammar school in Cordoba the teachers had taught otherwise.

His mother smiled when he asked her about this. The nuns had never taught her, she said, that Cuba was one of the great nations. They had taught her that Spain was the greatest nation of the world, with the world's supreme culture, admired and envied by everyone. The poor silly women had believed it, she said. And the teachers at Cordoba had believed what they taught.

At La Escuela Diplomatica it meant nothing that he was the illegitimate son of Jonas Cord, nothing that he was the grandson of Don Pedro Escalante. No one there had ever heard of either of them. He was Jonas Enrique Raul Cord y Batista, and all that counted was that his family had enough money to pay his tuition — that and the fact that he was bright enough to meet the challenge of a singularly demanding school.

During his first year at the school he lived at home in the Escalante apartment. In 1938, when he was twelve and no longer in the grammar-school department, he moved into the boys' dormitory.

The boys lived two to a room. His roommate was Maurice Raynal, a boy one year older than he was, who was supposed to act as a sort of mentor in the realities of school life. Maurice was the son of the naval attaché at the French embassy. Though a year older, he was no bigger than Jonas, who was tall and muscular with a man's voice, no longer a child in any sense.

Maurice's Spanish and English were heavily accented, as for that matter was his German. The teachers were constantly at him about it. The teachers asked Jonas to help him. They suggested that the two boys speak only English and Spanish in their room. Jonas was happy to do that, especially the English. The more he spoke English, the better.

Maurice complained that Jonas did not speak English the same as their English teacher. Eventually he understood. "Ah, Jonas, c'est Americain! Ce n'est pas Anglais! Vous parlez Americain!"

Jonas could not have been happier. He was not English. His father was not English. He wanted to speak his father's language, and his father spoke American.

Maurice was the source of a problem, and also of an education. He took off his clothes when they were alone in their room and the door was bolted. He walked around naked. Jonas never did. Usually when he did it, Maurice had an erection. Jonas was mature enough to know what that was.

And then one evening Maurice lifted his penis in his hand and asked, "Dites-moi, mon ami. Est le votre si grand?"

Jonas glanced casually at the stiff organ. "Oui," he said. "Plus grand."

"Vraiment? Me montrez."

Jonas considered for a moment, then stood and unbuttoned his pants and pulled out his own penis. "Voila," he said. "Assez grand?"

Maurice grinned and nodded. "C'est beau."

Jonas stuffed his back in, buttoned his pants, and turned his attention to a problem in plane geometry.

He had supposed what Maurice had in mind was a competition. That was not what Maurice had in mind at all. The next evening he asked Jonas if he ever had wet dreams. Jonas admitted that he did.

Maurice spoke English. "A pleasure, no? But you need not wait for that pleasure. You can make it happen."

That was an interesting idea. Jonas had guessed as much but had not experimented.

Maurice saw he was interested. "I will show you how," he said solemnly, and he proceeded to masturbate, casting his ejaculate into a handkerchief. "See? Shall I do it for you?"

"I will do it for myself," said Jonas.

"Do. Let's see how much time you need."

Aroused, Jonas did what Maurice suggested, wetting his own handkerchief.

"It is good, no?" Maurice asked. "It is better when we do it for each other — at the same time."

The next evening Jonas consented. The two boys stretched out naked on Maurice's narrow bed. They rubbed their penises together until both of them were on the verge of their orgasms; then, cued by Maurice's urgent cry, they grabbed at each other and finished with their hands.

What followed was inevitable. He would learn not long afterward that there were ugly names for boys who did what he and Maurice did, and he never did it again, but he would never hate the memory of Maurice Raynal.

4

During the summer of 1939 many embassies called their staffs home. Maurice Raynal wrote Jonas a letter from Paris, saying he would not be returning to La Escuela for the fall term. His father had been called home and was serving as first officer aboard a French cruiser.

Jonas wrote Maurice that he would not return to the school either. His mother and stepfather and grandfather had anticipated what would happen: that the school would lose three-quarters of its European students and would replace them with students who would not have been admitted before, from Latin American nations. It would make the school provincial — exactly what they did not want. His family had enrolled him in a school in the United States, Culver Military Academy in Indiana. Maurice should write him there, he said.

Jonas never heard from or of Maurice Raynal again.

Culver Military Academy was a difficult school, and not one that he liked. He was lonely there. The climate was cold. The norteamericanos were cold. He found it difficult to make friends. He learned to introduce himself simply as Jonas Cord, a name that sounded yanqui and saved him from the contempt most of the boys felt for Mexicans. A few knew the name Jonas Cord. They did not guess, fortunately, that he was an illegitimate son. He wore a uniform and learned to stand at attention and march. He did well academically. If he won any reputation at all, it was for his marksmanship. He won medals on the rifle range. Even so, he did not like Culver and did not enjoy his three years there.

The school had, just the same, a major impact on his life. His English became more American. He studied more of science and mathematics, less of languages, and so made up a deficiency in his education. He acquired a lasting distaste for military organization and discipline, yet a credential in them that would serve him well.

He learned that the relationship he'd had with Maurice was held in sneering abhorrence by Americans, who made crude jokes about it in foul language.

He graduated in June 1943. His mother and grandfather traveled all the way from Mexico to be present. On their way home on the train, his mother beamed as she announced what would be next in his life.

"We are very pleased, son. You have been admitted to Harvard!" Then her smile faded. "Of course ... Next year you will be of the age when every young American can be called to military service."

5

In the fall of 1942, Cambridge, Massachusetts, was an austere place. Most of the upperclassmen were gone. The few who remained had obvious physical infirmities. Jonas had no basis for comparison, but he sensed that two things were missing from Harvard College that year: first, the effervescence of youth and optimism, and, second, a confident sense of permanence that must have been traditional.

Instead, the college was gloomy and tentative. The institution and everyone associated with it were feeling their way, confident that Harvard would endure, yet not quite sure how, confident they would personally survive the war, while conscious that not all of them would.

His classes were not difficult. He was enrolled in an English class, which was really a class in English literature; a mathematics class, where the subject was calculus; a class in the history of Europe beginning with the Renaissance; a class in French, advanced; and a philosophy class, in which the entire first semester was devoted to the study of Plato's Republic. Except for the last, his courses covered nothing he had not studied before. When he took his first exams, the college decided it had a prodigy.

He was also required to take a class in physical education, and in order to avoid the strange American games of football and basketball, he concentrated on swimming and learned to play tennis. His coaches were pleased, though they knew they would have him for only one year.

The swimming coach had great difficulty finding boys willing to compete in the butterfly. It was, guys said, a "hairshirt" way to swim. To Jonas, who had first learned to swim at Culver, all the competitive strokes but freestyle seemed unnatural, no one any more so than any other. When the coach asked him to swim the butterfly, he agreed. Within a few weeks he was the freshman butterfly man. He won the intramural competition, then won a war-diminished inter-mural competition. He sent his blue ribbons to Cordoba.

He received two letters a week from his mother, one a month from his grandfather, an occasional letter from his stepfather, and one occasionally from his half brothers and sisters, usually writing together. He wrote to his mother in English, the other letters in Spanish. His roommate marveled over his ability to write easily in two languages. In truth, Jonas could have written in French or German almost as easily.

6

His roommate's name was Jerome Rabin, a Jew from Brooklyn and the first Jew he had ever met. Jerry was in the same situation as Jonas. He would be draft-eligible early in 1944.

They talked about it. "I'm going to apply for a naval officer's commission," said Jerry. "What they call the ninety-day-wonder program. Ninety days after I enlist I'll be an ensign. But, say, do you have to go at all? You're Mexican."

"I am a citizen of the United States," Jonas said soberly. "My father is a citizen, which makes me a citizen. It is important to me to keep my citizenship."

"They can't take it away from you," said Jerry.

"But I don't want to be known later in life as one who evaded his military obligation. That could become a great impediment."

"You've thought this through," Jerry remarked dryly.

"And discussed it with my mother and my stepfather and my grandfather."

"With your father?"

"I've never met him."

"I'm sorry," said Jerry. "I shouldn't have asked. I didn't mean to pry."

"I am not offended."

"Well — Let's change the subject," said Jerry. "Since both of us will be going away next year, we have only this year to get our wicks dipped."

"I ... don't understand."

Jerry Rabin grinned. He was a lighthearted boy who would later confide to Jonas that when they first met he found his roommate formidably solemn. He was not as tall as Jonas and was slight of build. His features were delicate. Girls envied his dark eyes. He had a Mediterranean complexion.

He opened a drawer in one of the two small desks in the room and pulled out a quart bottle and two small glasses. He poured and handed one glass to Jonas. "A shot of rye," he said. "It will put us in a better mood to plan our campaign."

Jonas sipped cautiously. It was his first taste of distilled spirits. He had drunk wine with dinner since he was ten years old, but his stepfather and grandfather had never invited him to share in their after-dinner brandy — nor, for that matter, to smoke cigars with them. The rye whiskey tasted terrible. He swallowed it with difficulty.

"Your English is perfect," said Jerry. "Apparently, though, somebody neglected to tell you a few words. Do you know what 'fuck' means?"

Jonas nodded. "Yes." His attention was focused on the rye remaining in his glass. He did not want to seem unappreciative; neither did he want Jerry to guess this was his first taste of whiskey.

"Have you ever done it?"

"No."

"Well, neither have I, and wouldn't it be a tragedy if we went off to war, maybe even got killed, and hadn't ever done it? That's why we've got to plan a campaign to get girls up to this room. And, incidentally, getting your wick dipped is a politer way of saying fuck. We have all kinds of ways to avoid using the word. Don't ever use it. You'll shock the eyeteeth out of people. We say" — he raised his voice a register and spoke through pursed lips — "we say, 'have sexual intercourse.' We say, 'make love.' We say, 'go to bed.' Or we say, 'get our rocks off.' Anything to avoid saying 'fuck.' "

Jonas grinned. "I've been denied an essential element of my education," he said — although it wasn't true, because he had heard much talk of this kind at Culver. He tipped his glass and finished his drink. "I will be grateful to you for more instruction."

Jerry refilled their shot glasses. "What's between our legs is a penis. Isn't that a terrible word? Guys call it 'cock' or 'peter' or 'dick.' What girls have is a vagina, another terrible clinical word. Guys call it a 'cunt,' chiefly. But don't ever use any of these words, the polite ones or the other ones, to girls. They'll go ga-ga. In fact, don't talk about these things at all. Except to guys."

Jonas laughed. "We have all these funny words and can't use them."

"Anyway," said Jerry, "we're virgins. I don't know about you, but I intend to remedy that as soon as I can."

"Why didn't you remedy it before?"

"The family. The neighborhood. Why didn't you?"

"The same, I suppose. Actually, I don't even know very many girls."

"Well, tell me, what did you put down on your card as your religion?"

"I wrote nothing. It was optional."

Jerry clapped his hand to his forehead in mock grief. "Why couldn't you have put down Catholic? Then you'd have been invited to a church and a Catholic youth club, where you could have met not only girls but naive girls."

Jonas shrugged. He had begun to learn something of what rye whiskey did to a person.

"Girls, Jonas! Nooky. Poontang. Don't you enjoy seeing their tight little asses twitch when they walk?"

"Well ... I haven't watched ... that much."

"Start watching! Start looking. Look at asses. Look at boobs. Concentrate on the job at hand, which is get our wicks dipped before we have to go into uniform."

7

When Jerry learned that Jonas could not go home for Christmas break — the journey was too far, and wartime restrictions on transportation might have made it impossible — he invited Jonas to come home with him. Jonas accepted the invitation, went home with Jerry Rabin, and lived for two weeks with a Jewish family in Brooklyn. It was a rewarding experience. He even learned a bit of another language: Yiddish.

Neither Jonas nor Jerry had by then gotten his wick dipped. They remained virgins. But at Jerry's prompting Jonas had begun to look more closely at girls: appreciatively, speculatively. Ironically, he looked that way at Jerry's sister, Susan. He noticed the size of her breasts. He studied the way her backside twitched when she walked. He studied that so closely he realized he had to be careful not to be so obvious. Lying in his bed in the guest room, he fantasized a faint knock on the door, then Susan coming in, undressing, slipping into his bed. In real fact, he would not have touched her. She was his friend's sister! But he found the fantasy delicious.

8

Spring break came, and they hadn't hauled their ashes.

It occurred to Jonas that they were too obvious. Girls they met knew what they wanted. The girls didn't want the same thing.

Finally, in April, Jerry succeeded in persuading two girls to visit the dorm room. They were not supposed to be there, so they had to climb up a fire escape, enter the dorm through a window, and slip along the hall to the boys' room — which process alone had discouraged several girls from accepting an invitation.

They were town girls. That is to say, they lived in Cambridge. One was still in high school. The other had graduated and worked as a waitress. Both lived with their parents and had to be home by eleven.

Neither was exquisitely beautiful. Helen was dark-haired, brown-eyed, and chubby. Ruth was blond and thinner. Her face was marred by pimples — only two that evening, but the marks of others remained on her cheeks.

None of these four young people had any doubt why the two girls had come to visit the two boys in their dormitory room. Only two questions remained: Which girl would be intimate with which boy, and what were the terms of this visit?

The two girls, it turned out, expected to be paid five dollars apiece. Jerry shook his head firmly. Maybe two, he said.

Jonas seized Jerry by the sleeve of his gray tweed jacket and shoved him out into the hall. "Listen, goddammit," he said. "Didn't you ever read Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain?"

"What's that got to do with —"

"All their lives the 'pilgrims' had dreamed of going for a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee. When the boatmen asked for eight dollars, they offered four, and the boatmen rowed away. Those 'pilgrims' never did get to sail on the Sea of Galilee. Because of four dollars divided among eight men. I'm going to give one of those girls five dollars and get my wick dipped. I suggest you give five to the other one."

Jonas strode back into the room and handed a five-dollar bill to Helen, the dark, chubby one. For his decisiveness he got his choice. Jerry would later complain of that, but for now he grudgingly counted out five one-dollar bills to Ruth.

Once again decisive, Jonas led Helen to the maroon-plush-upholstered sofa that was the centerpiece of the living room. His eyes shooting annoyance, Jerry took Ruth into the bedroom.

Helen undressed, directly without diffidence or hesitation. When she was naked, she helped Jonas undress. "Y’ know," she said, "I bet this here's your first time."

"Not really," he said.

She lifted his penis in her hand. "Well," she said. "Y' got what it takes, anyway. Y' ready?"

"Sure." He didn't know the term foreplay but had supposed there would be something before the act. But he didn't want her to suppose he didn't know what to do. "Sure. Let's do it."

She opened her purse and took out a Coin-Pak. Stripping the foil off, she pulled out the rubber and stretched it on her fingers. "Not circumcised," she muttered. "Bet y' friend is. Anyway, y' want it skinned back?"

"No."

She rolled the condom onto his erect penis. Then she lay on her back and spread her legs. "C'mon."

It was purely mechanical. Yet the satiation was so complete that it exhausted him. When he was finished and dropped his weight on her hips, Helen tousled his hair and patted his back: the first sign from her of anything like affection. He became conscious that his skin and hers were wet and their sweat was mingling. Their odors mingled. It had not occurred to him until then to kiss her, and she had not offered herself to be kissed, but he kissed her now and felt her tongue coming between his lips and into his mouth.

When Jerry and Ruth came out of the bedroom, Jonas was on his back under Helen, he was in her, and she was moaning quietly as she rotated her hips. His eyes were closed. So were hers. They were not aware that the other couple stood gaping, watching them.

"Well, Jee-zuss Christ!" said Ruth.