House of All Nations (17 page)

‘What about Lenin?' said Alphendéry, peacefully.

‘Oh, he was just a fanatic; he wanted power. Power's—well, you can't talk about that. It's like loving a woman. You can't predict what a man will do once he wants that.'

‘What about William Z. Foster, the American leader: he was offered a position in industry and he refused it.'

‘Oh, well, a man like that's just a madman. Most men aren't like that. What's the matter with him; has he got anything wrong?'

‘Naturally, like most men, he's not perfect: and in fact, he is a great sufferer …'

‘You see! What did I say? You see!'

‘Listen,' said Jules sharply, ‘don't go telling Léon you're a Red. These Central Europeans are funny.'

‘I like your knowledge of human nature,' said Alphendéry with asperity. ‘Léon's a follower of MacDonald in England, Blum in France, Louis de Brouckère in Belgium, Fritz Adler in Austria—Fritz Napthali—all the great beans of the Second International. That's your conservative for you! You boys are comic in your ignorance.'

Jules, at ease in his chair, spouted one of his ideas. ‘The world's getting down to a Woolworth level. Woolworth saw that what we've got now is a pauper economy. Dress them up in colored shirts, give them grass slippers or wooden sabots, get them to work for nothing, and sing at it, too. What does it matter what they sing? The “Internationale,” or “Horst-Wessel,” or “Hallelujah” down in the swamps of the U.S.A. That's the only way profit is going to be made from now on. The history of everything is down from now on. The only investment now is in a crash. I saw that in 1929. Everyone else was wringing their hands. I was short a few stocks in the American market. I made a bit of petty cash: but the next day I figured it all out to myself. I said to myself: I won't weep. I won't cry. I've got the hang of this—first the Russians started to smash the works and then the Americans had to. That's it! The history of the world is down!'

‘You're a superb natural economist, Jules,' said Alphendéry, ‘although you don't realize it.'

‘Don't I!' cried Jules.

‘You have hit the nail on the head. There are going to be three quick sweeps between the last war and the next. The expropriation of the Russian bourgeoisie on October 30, 1917, the expropriation of the American bourgeoisie via the stock market, October 29, 1929, the smashing of the German bourgeoisie, if a type like Hitler ever gets in. But a Hitler will never get in in Germany: they've got to do it some other way.'

‘Yes. You see what it is?' went on Jules. ‘We've got to get ready to make money in a declining economy! Now, I think Léon sees that, too.'

* * *

Scene Thirteen: The Bank

T
he telephone rang. Jules said, ‘All right. Send him up!' To Alphendéry, ‘It's Jacques: Jacques Carrière. He's trying to sell the brewery his uncle left him at Burton-upon-Trent—in England, isn't it? He's very worried about the payments. He's afraid the pound won't hold. His payments won't be completed till 1933 or 1934, according to the plan they're working out. I told him the pound wouldn't go off. There's India, isn't there? While the maharajahs rally round, the Bank of England can still clear petty cash without inflating it … I wouldn't mind being on the inside of a game like that, would you?'

Alphendéry said,

‘Germany probably won't be through till next year: neither will England. I wouldn't bet on it. Perhaps Britain will see Wilhelm II or his son back on the throne before she permits the rise of a pseudosocialist regime in Germany. No one knows what her game is. She doesn't herself: that's why it's so deep. If you ask me, I don't think there's fifty per cent of the gold they allege there is, in the vaults of the Bank of England. If a private company can cook its accounts, how much easier it is for the Bank of England, synonymous with security and the credit of the State, in England and throughout the world. Who dares question it? Who looks over its accounts? In London, lots of people think the Old Lady finds her purse half empty, but she can be kept going on prestige and on the new financial business of the world, the balance of debit-paper. That's her new game. So far, she's done nothing to discourage Hitler and as Hitler, representing fascism, represents nothing but an empty treasury—for it's a last expedient, everyone hates it, including the reigning bourgeoisie—that's a bad indication for Britain. Still, it's a long bet. In Germany, too, the masters, powers, thrones, dominions, are watching carefully, watching their step … Go slow with Jacques Carrière … You may laugh at me, Jules, for being romantic but I wouldn't do business with a man of his private habits. In doing business, you should bank on the one sound spot a man has: Carrière has none.'

Jules waved his hand, wading in his own speculations. ‘All right, Michel, thanks. I'll see you after? See if Carrière is coming up, will you?'

Alphendéry looked over the balcony and saw a sprinkling of clients and visitors downstairs. Carrière, a dumpy red-haired young man, showily imperative, wearing upper-class mannerisms like a toga, was talking to Aristide Raccamond earnestly. The room, a soundingchamber at this point, carried up the tones of their voices. Mme. Marianne Raccamond stood waiting for Aristide to take her to lunch and had got into conversation with Fred Pharion, the new cinema star, a loose-limbed, weak-jawed young man with curly brown hair and large brown eyes, handsome and gay in general appearance and towards this woman gentle and receptive.

A brilliant middle-aged society harridan in black talked sympathetically with Ignace Dvorjine, a cashier, a Russian exile, formerly proprietor of a small estate in Kharkov (he said) and violently anti-Soviet. Although his personality, made up of airs, a frozen reticence, and bitter pride, was unpleasant to many of the employees and some of the clients, he drew white Russians to the bank and was a very able accountant. His son, Arthur Dvorjine, an
émigré
at the age of five, had been reared in a poor apartment in Maisons-Lafitte with children of French socialists and was himself ‘a Red' as he said, although actually a Left democrat.

Next to Arthur, who was idle and reading, stood Jacques Husson, a Quaker, a small, thickset, rheumaticky womanish man of forty-five, who loved to chat with the women clients, told them his backaches, asked their advice and always had a long line of ‘fans' at his window. Beside him was André Ribot, the pale, tubercular, young teller and beside him Henri Martin, a man of superior intelligence and experience who ‘knew what the game was about' in their cant phrase, who had been a high officer in the secret service during the war and had sent more than a dozen men to the firing squad in the time of his service. He considered himself superior to the commission men and even to William, the elder brother but junior member of the firm. He had got out of hand when he first entered the bank, and had begun to do peculiar business for himself on its books, but Jules had brought him up short and since then he had had a clean record. After a long period of sniffing and superiority he had decided to work in with Alphendéry, regarding him as the leading, the only mature intelligence in the bank. He looked up and smiled at Alphendéry now. He was acutely conscious of every person in the bank at the moment.

In the end booth stood darkly twinkling, like a sweet ferret, a debile, polished youth of dark complexion, François Vallat, the clients' secretary. He attended to the little personal wants of the customers without charge by the bank. He ran messages for them, got them opera seats, seats at the boxing matches, took their passports and identity cards to the
préfecture
, knew people in embassies who sent the long-winded identification papers through like lightning, gave advice about triptyques (automobile permits for the Continent), knew addresses, recommended restaurants, and in general gave the advice that a private secretary of Mr. Bertillon would give to Mr. Bertillon's friends. He was well dressed, sensitive, servile, and had perfect taste.

It had often been noticed by Jules Bertillon that the more generous he was, the more his moneyed clients expected for nothing. Nevertheless, he loved the idea that his bank was sleek and that its servants were as perfect as those in a rich mansion of high respectability. And, in fact, the bank quietly breathed out his own air of teeming wealth. Along the other side of the square downstairs hall were tellers' cubicles, also. In the first of these, seated on a high chair, her rosy beauty always framed in that green air, strange behind gilt bars, like a madonna materialized in prison, sat the customers' mail girl, Mlle. Armelle Paëz. She watched and meditated, smiled and got invitations to dinner from all the high-stepping male clients. Adam Constant was in the next booth. And after him, was occasionally to be seen Jacques Manray, the stock-exchange manager.

At that moment, a tall, dark young woman in a coat of the silkiest sable entered against the light. Marianne at first only saw the lilting step and the sheen of the fur. In the light she recognized the brilliant hairdressing, the irregular, dark, merry features of Claire-Josèphe, wife of Jules Bertillon, an heiress in her own right, of Spanish and French parentage. She surged forward.

‘Good day, Madame.' She said this in a loud voice, but Claire-Josèphe, young and nervous, involuntarily withdrawing herself from the crowd of furious stock gamblers and rich plungers in her husband's bank, went quickly through them all, with a faint smile to Jacques Carrière, a childhood playmate. Marianne flushed faintly and looked out to the curb where the Hispano-Suiza stood with Jean, the chauffeur. Claire-Josèphe chattered girlishly with the fascinating inanity she had been taught at finishing school, with Jacques Husson, and then whisked back through the throng to her car. Marianne smiled once more and said with emphasis, ‘
Bon jour
, Madame!' this time finding herself face to face with Claire-Josèphe, but too loudly so that Claire-Josèphe certainly got the impression she was talking to someone over her own shoulder. She looked at her blankly, with a little surprise, dipped to get out of her orbit, and swept on. Marianne went to the writing table where Aristide usually sat now and pretended to be writing out a check. The mail girl, Armelle Paëz, sat, watched, added up details of personalities in her imagination.

Marianne looked up and saw Jacques Carrière bowling along behind the screen on the balcony. Fred Pharion was smiling oafishly to himself—at what? The Bertillon door shut. Aristide, at a loose end for the moment, came looking for her through the crowd. He detected a pallor in her ruddy complexion.

‘What's the matter, Marianne?' There was fear in his tone, as well as solicitude.

‘Nothing, nothing.' She recovered herself, grinned. ‘I don't suppose she recognized me: we just met for a moment—Mme. Bertillon. She just treated me rather shabbily—made me look pushing.'

* * *

Scene Fourteen: The Collection

W
hy, thought Raccamond, were the employees allowed to be so free and easy? Mlle. Annette Gentil, the head stock bookkeeper, a smart girl, but one whose chatter was like a tap left running all day, was standing by one of the pillars upstairs looking down on the population of the ground floor. He began to push his way through the crowd towards the stairs to ask her to look up yesterday's purchases and sales for the Princesse Delisle-Delbe, a very important account he had rescued from the paralytic clutches of Jacquot de Machuca, a spineless aristocrat, and which he was now setting to rights.

He found that Mlle. Gentil was talking to a tall red-gold youth with a small head and large feet. Aristide patiently trod water for a few minutes, then, with a certain glance that Mlle. Gentil caught, swung the door of his room. ‘Old' Berthellot waddled past them in his white waistcoat and stock, going to lunch although it was only eleven-thirty. Aristide was buttonholed by the senile millionaire, John Tanker, Sr., who asked with an insistent, tinny cackle,

‘Is that you, Whittaker? I've been waiting a long time for you—such a long time. I can't see Bertillon at all. What do you hear about Austria sevens, 1943? I'll sell them. What time is it? Whittaker? No, what's your name, man? I didn't get down till ten-thirty this morning. It was so hot. I have no time for business at all. How are you, um, Raccamond, that's it: pardon me … Shall I sell? That's what I came to ask. I need your advice. No good holding a portfolio full of dead paper. You see, I've got to think about getting my money affairs into final shape. I'm an old man. You'll be very good if you find out for me about the following: Austria sevens, '43, Belgian sixes, '55, Australian fives, '57, Cuba five-and-a-halves, '53, and I want you to sell Argentine sixes, '59, worthless, practically … Can I leave that to you, Raccamond? I'll call back.'

Raccamond was obliged to go and get the bonds book and ask Alphendéry's advice, meanwhile Mlle. Gentil poured talk endlessly into the invisible ears of the corridor. Half an hour later, when Tanker was still sitting there, sucking the head of his cane, and politely rambling on, there was a knock and Armand Brossier, the confidential clerk, his pale curls for once falling over a lively pale expression, said, ‘Pardon me, sir, I'll come back—'

‘No, no: what is it?'

The man, who looked like an ailing adolescent, came in smiling with a little chamois leather bag in his hand, one of the bags, in fact, in which he stored away gold.

‘Mr. Raccamond, Mlle. Gentil, the bookkeeper, you know, is going to be married, as you have heard perhaps. We're taking up a collection to buy a wedding present from the whole staff. As she attends particularly to clients' stock accounts, we thought you might like to make one. Mlle. Gentil has been with us twelve years, in fact, long before we were thought of,' he said with deference.