House of All Nations (16 page)

The street was very busy at this moment.

‘We Jews—' continued Henri Léon, ‘I'm really in business now. This is not like when I was with Strindl's and I was an iguana sucking out the eggs they laid, day and night. They kept me then. No! I'm working now. I'm not swindling.'

‘Go on,' said Jules Bertillon, ‘you know damned well you made a couple of million dollars for them in New York and you built up the whole of their business in Mannheim.'

‘It's this,' cried Léon, disregarding this, with a jerk of the chin, ‘it's a wonderful scheme for the wheat business. Alphendéry just said a good thing. Take over the food-buying for Britain! Yes. It's this. The wheat-buying for Britain should be taken over, not nationalized, not a government department, the buying left free and over what periods the buyers like. You see, do you get it? A millers' buying committee with government approval. It looks like muddling through: the English public will worship it. It looks like a lukewarm amateurish stab at nationalization: the Labour Party will think it's enough of a compromise even for them.'

Alphendéry's clear, schoolboy-debater voice was on the air. ‘I analyze it like this, Jules.
A
. The scheme is excellent because it takes the buying out of individual hands and exploitation; but,
B
., it is elastic, and
C
., it is under government control, but it is not uniform. It avoids the fault of uniformity which the English hate. It can be manipulated, it can conform to machinery that already exists.
D
. Its machinery is not stiff.
E
. It binds the individual talent and the taxpayer to the service of the government, in competition with the grain merchants who are now struggling against each other for everybody's disadvantage.
F
. It is controlled by the taxpayer.
G
. It leaves the way open for nationalization (this is a sop for the Red element).
H
.—oh, you can think up a hundred and one reasons. Some form of public control of food-buying is so undeniably good that everything is in its favor. And then the Great War left the form in people's minds. It is all nutty and unscientific, but it will appeal to the English, just for that reason. It's cunning makes the English so indirect and so, indirectly, so stupid on plain matters. It's their position in Europe. The Americans are Anglo-Saxons but they haven't that.'

‘They're cruder,' said Jules.

‘No, no,' said Léon. ‘Get on with the
schematism
, Alphéry—Alphendéry!'

‘Well, here's Léon's schematism, as he says, that I worked out for him.' He was one wave of laughter. ‘I only met him two days ago, but we get on like a house on fire.'

‘Yes, yes,' said Léon. ‘Now, for argument's sake, for argument's sake—a company, the manager owns fifty per cent—'

‘Well, here it is,' broke in Alphendéry with sobriety. ‘Léon wants to quit business, but he's afraid to give it up altogether, he'd go to
seed, or the girls. And he still wants to make money. Also, he's having difficulty with the combines. He goes to the British government—the French government would do equally, but they're smarter—and he says, Why should your all-essential flour be bought at the hazard of the markets? Let the millers be protected by a buying committee, a government affair, composed of government servants, which will buy from time to time according to the markets and hand out the stuff to the millers as they need it. There's no question of storing it and of the expense of silos. There's no fear of the government committee's being held up by the combines or by foreign sellers. Because you have on the committee an experienced merchant who has his ear to the ground and immense foreign experience and who is above suspicion—a man who belongs neither to combine nor private business. Léon will only elaborate the plan, which has a strong socialist dressing, if they give him this position. Then, while they're setting up the board, he liquidates his businesses abroad and he lives on his capital, which he has taken to England, and on the government salary. Léon, expert to the Government Buyers' Council! Good. The millers know their requirements and the Council fixes a price at which they will buy. Léon buys for them. He alone knows the buying price.

‘What am I doing meanwhile? Meanwhile, you, say, Jules and Méline and I form a wheat company. I have an office in Paris, say in this bank and am the manager of the wheat company. I take over Léon's buyer, who will be out of a job because Léon is going out of business. We'll call it the Société Financière de l'Exploitation des Blés. I own fifty per cent of the shares; Léon owns the rest privately. Actually Léon, knowing the price the committee is prepared to pay, will buy the wheat cheaper in advance and will sell it to me. I sell it to the buying committee at one farthing less than the price they are seeking. “How do you get it so cheap in a high market?” they ask me. “I'm a good buyer,” I say. I only do this in ten per cent of the cases, though. So it looks good. Only ten per cent of the cases. They cannot suspect. Or how Léon made a business out of retirement. The beauty of it is that the English public benefits and the bread is cheaper—and, wow, are they going to need it! And we're going good. A profit out of altruism!'

Léon irritatedly stared at Jules with half-closed eyes. Alphendéry rippled all over with laughter again. Jules tipped his chair back on to the back legs and balanced with a dreamy expression, while he repeated the theme of his life music.

‘You and I both believe in altruism, Henri, because altruism is selfishness out with a pair of field glasses and imagination.

The sinewy, slower timbre of William's voice followed. Aristide called him ‘the stupid brother.' William gave a faint hiccough of laughter. ‘Imagination! Hey, you don't want imagination, you want a credit balance! Let the other chaps, on the outside, imagine. You can't draw checks on imagination. Or if you do you soon find yourself studying geology. Imagination is making little ones into big ones and its end is the reverse.'

Aristide arrived behind the door at this moment, knocked, and was let in. Léon was walking up and down hastily, with his hands in his pockets, his short-tailed coat flirted over his hips. Jules was leaning back in his chair, slim hands in pockets, looking like a star of the Russian Ballet, playing bank manager in some goblin set. He was as thin as spun sugar, with spun-sugar skin, large clear eyes, set wide in a narrow skull, a long, voluntary nose with prominent nodule and irregular fleshy tip, the gambler's nose.

Léon was withdrawing an impatient thunderous glance from William. Jules looked at him with patronizing, smiling irritability. William, unperturbed, threw his last dart wide of the mark, ‘Imagination is the first stop on the road to the nuthatch.'

‘Ah, shut up, William, we're trying to do some business.'

William went on in the same level voice, ‘Business? Poker, you mean. Stay out of commodities, Jules; it isn't your game. Only doctors and opera singers punt on commodities.'

‘Even a Mussolini, in his half-blind miserable way,' Alphendéry erupted, ‘a confused, nineteenth-century tyrant, sees that there has to be a semblance of socialist organization to keep the people contented.'

Léon slapped his hand down hard on the table. ‘Yes, You've got something there! Perhaps I see that because I've dealt in grain futures all my life and I see in Russia great grain futures, and a giant, unhindered consumption. People free to eat as much bread as they want: when they get to that day,' he said solemnly, facing them, ‘we can make fortunes on the bull side. And the bull side is the side it's natural to take.' He nodded at them, then shouted, ‘She'll pay her debts. Her paper's good. I'll take it!' His golden humming began, forerunner of a clap of laughter: ‘I'll take it!' The vortex of laughter. He took a turn up and down, his head thrown back. Then he came back to them, elfishly, ‘At the same time, if we can get someone else to take it instead, it will be one move ahead. That idea of yours, Bertillon, German paper was a pick-me-up. I immediately thought, Now, what's everyone bearing? Not only German paper, but Russian paper. Surely we can work out something for the two. Now, let's set our minds to work. With your brains and mine, Bertillon—we'll work out something. With this boy here,' he put his hand on Alphendéry's shoulder, ‘we'll make money.' The clap of laughter. ‘I'm only in business (I was telling Alphendéry) to keep myself from getting into trouble with women, but while I'm in, I'll lead them a dance. When I find a girl that can give me real romance, I'll get out.' His merriment dried up and he began to look for his hat and stick.

‘I'll go with you, Léon,' said Alphendéry hastily. They went out, leaving Aristide weaving gloom uncertainly in a corner of the room. At the door Léon turned round. ‘It's good! Luther—wit's end: get 'em purged—Russian paper. Russian gold. Ha ha! The Reds get Russian gold. We get Russian paper.'

‘With our great wits, ha ha,' Alphendéry seethed behind him, ‘with our great wits—with our great wits—and the Reds in jail get gold. They say. They, they—ha ha—with our great wits. H'm.'

‘They seem to hit it off,' said Jules genially to Raccamond. ‘Léon put fifty thousand francs in the bank and insisted on its being put down to Alphendéry's account. Michel doesn't want it. Anyhow, we'll make it up to you, Raccamond.'

Aristide went out meekly. He had lost Léon but gained the bank.

* * *

Scene Twelve: The Revolution

D
o you know what I did with the two per cent commission you gave me on Léon's account?' asked Michel Alphendéry, the next morning.

‘Went to Auld Reekie and got a suit?' suggested Jules.

‘No.'

‘You should have then,' cried Jules, with one of his unexplained tempers.

‘I bought myself fifty German communist books for my library.'

‘Hey, I thought you knew enough already,' said Jules, just as suddenly restored to good temper. ‘I'm surprised at you, Michel, being such a mooch for the Reds. Stalin found out that the workers don't know what to do with money. That's all right. It isn't the Stalins that bother me. They know their game. But a man like you, Michel! A guy makes the money he can. Anyone who doesn't is a bit crazy. If there were the difference of a hair in your brain, Michel, you'd be batty: you'd be standing on soapboxes. That's a tomfool idea to want to try to make everyone rich by confiscating from the smart guys who knew how to get out of the tangle early! Why, if all the rich men in the world divided up their money amongst themselves, there wouldn't be enough to go round! It all proves there are constitutional dreamers—they're sick; you're sick, Michel.

‘I say, don't you realize if you gave everyone the same amount of money today, in a fortnight, somebody, some Citroën, some Oustric, some De Wendel would have got half of it back! You're too intelligent, Michel, not to see that! Why, types like me only think in money. Why, take me. When I take off my pants I'm thinking up a gag, when I make water, what the deuce! I'm asking myself why I didn't take a crack at the cheap crook who tried to do me in yesterday. I dream all night and I get up at three o'clock to write down all I've dreamed because there are some good schemes among them. When I wake up, I think of a check with a big figure, if I'm good-tempered, and of petty cash if I'm out of my humor: big or little, but I only think of money. How can the workers beat a man like me? They think of all sorts of things, what the boss will say if they're late, how much he's going to cheat them at the end of the week, whether they're too tired to go to the Trade Union meeting, whether they ought to knock the block off the blackleg fellow, whether they can get their wife an abortion. And all the time I'm thinking of money, money, money.'

His face clouded. He looked irritably at Michel. ‘Michel, it's not the Stalins or the Lenins or the Hitlers that worry me. They know the game. They'll play along with us once they get to the top. It's the fanatics that follow them. They're nitwits and when they get themselves warm with thinking up a few slogans, they think the rest of mankind has got central heating that way. It's dangerous to give guns to a lunatic. And these nitwits do that. Then they can't control them. Because they're dreamers. Now these agitators are smart men, but it's cheaper to lock them up than to employ them, because they're unbalanced.'

William was in a good temper. ‘What do they get up a constitution for, that's what beats me? They ought to just put in one rule: I have the right to jail anyone I don't like. It all comes down to that.'

‘With a constitution you fool all the people all the time,' said Jules. ‘Listen, Lenin and Stalin know just as well as you and me, that all the rebelling in the world wouldn't get men to work for monkeys. Why? Because we've got guns and we've got organization. And we've got something to fight for. Well, compared with us, the workers are monkeys. They talk, they speak our language, but it doesn't mean the same thing. They live, but as far as we're concerned, they only live from the time they punch the time clock in the morning till the time they punch it in the evening. In between those times, they're only moving pictures of men to us. Why should we worry about what they think? But you're a puzzle to me, Michel. You take them seriously.'

‘Listen,' said William, kindly argumentative, to Alphendéry, ‘you know, Michel, it's a racket, too: it must be. You don't tell me that if a chap in Arcos is offered a commission in London or Paris, he won't pocket it behind their backs. Why shouldn't he? What harm is he doing them? It's human nature. Why are they running it otherwise? Why do they fight that way to hold their jobs? What's the incentive? Of course, it's some sort of a racket. Only the Russians are smart Orientals. It's not so easy to catch them at it. And they know how to advertise. They've got the Genghis Khan technique. You know, glory. And if they did catch them at it, would they advertise it?' he asked with intense cunning. ‘Do you mean to say they'd do all that for just the same wage as a carpenter? Did you see the latest, eh? Piecework is paid for! Ah, they're wonderful advertisers. Better than the Boches. They know the trick better. Isn't their line the same as this Adolf Hitler's, or Mussolini's? What's the difference? Isn't it a dictatorship too? Only they add “of the proletariat”! I don't want to live under a dictatorship. I want to make money without being fenced round. If it isn't a dictatorship, why don't you see Stalin getting down occasionally and saying to some carpenter, “Comrade, you take the job”? You're just a sentimentalist on Russia. You don't know human nature. You judge everyone by yourself. I bet if you offered Stalin a million bucks to go and live in the Engadine he'd do it, wouldn't he? Blum has money, hasn't he?' William shrugged and lighted a cigarette, having used up all his usual arguments in one breath.