House of All Nations (18 page)

‘Does Mr. Bertillon know this?'

‘Yes: he gave me permission.'

The old man's hand went towards his pocket, clung there for a moment, then he took it away, shaking his head. ‘No, no: I wish the young lady luck. I don't know her. Gentil? I don't know her.'

‘We're taking the hat round in an unofficial way, but if you like I'll give you a receipt to be in order,' said Brossier, innocently, to Raccamond.

Raccamond flushed. ‘No, the whole idea is most unpleasant to me. I can't contribute. If Mr. Bertillon is making—some provision, it ought to be considered that that is, as it were, from the bank: individual members of the staff should not be asked—it resembles gouging, a holdup. It's unnecessary. It means that every time anyone leaves or gets married, we have this mendicancy. I have a sense of my—what is expected: one expects to give presents to friends, not strangers. No, Brossier. I'm not going to apologize. I dislike the idea. It's foolish.' The flush had receded, but two brownish spots still lay under the white lower lids. Brossier looked furious. Raccamond went on, impatiently. ‘The idea of seeming to supplicate a contribution from clients is—so repugnant. A client must never be asked to give money for nothing. They are not in the bank for that. This isn't a benefit society. And—who knows Mlle. Gentil?'

‘She has looked after their accounts for twelve years,' said Brossier, angry.

‘We must never give them the impression that we expect anything of them. The client is—almost a sacred person in business.'

Tanker had hatched a scheme—they did not come so frequently now—for an oil-royalties bonus public company and wanted to see if shares could be sold in England. He had a letter in his pocket from his solicitors at the moment and from Paul Méline, chief motor, though not chief name in the Kirkonhill Trust. He thought the business could not be done in England but there were ways of marketing such an idea. ‘I must get into business again,' he said to himself, without paying any attention to Raccamond, though he nodded politely. ‘Whoever uses his reserves and deludes himself into thinking that it's income, hangs, smokes, and eats his own bacon while smacking his lips and saying, ‘What a fine pig!' Yes. I must go to work.' He got up and walked to the door. At the door he realized he had left Raccamond in the middle of a sentence. He said, ‘Pardon me: I must go to London. Here there is little information on some matters. Yes, my banker. Good day.'

Raccamond had wasted half an hour on the old man and the only result was a humiliation. ‘Old imbecile, why does he cling to me?' The door opened: Tanker's brown hat came through the crack. ‘Thanks very much, Raccamond,' he said. ‘You went to a lot of trouble.' The door shut. ‘I get no commission out of thanks,' said Raccamond aloud. At that moment, he saw Brossier with his wash-leather bag going into the large directors' room which was given over to the machinations of Cambo and Dreyer and the divagations of Plowman, all unprofitable livestock.

Daniel Cambo whose personal fortune ran to half a million guilders, while those of his mother and sister added another two million in Swiss francs, said in his teasing, goodman voice, ‘No, sir, I never give presents. Only when they pay me a profit. Ha, ha. Eh.'

The genteel voice of his partner, old Dreyer, polished with a silk handkerchief and dusted off like his silver and waxed furniture, murmured, ‘I always do a mitzvah, Daniel. What's the proper thing, young man? What do the others give? Is ten francs enough? Tell her
Mahzeltof
, young sir. Do you know what that is?'

‘Good luck,' rattled Cambo, ‘good luck for me, too.' Then his warm voice shaded darker. ‘Here, this is all the loose change I've got, not much, but it'll help, won't it? I say, young fellow, how do you like these? Just samples. If you don't let on to the others (it wouldn't be nice), if you want anything for yourself, or a young lady, you can have them cost price. I got them to show the Galeries Lafayette. Nice dressing cases, mirrors, everything; if you want to—say, for that wedding present—I'll give you a couple of samples at—very cheap, just to throw them away. I've finished with them. Don't you think that would be nice, Ephraïm?'

‘Perhaps, yes, perhaps,' said Dreyer, softly.

‘Come round after you've finished collecting,' said Cambo heartily: ‘there,
Mahzeltof
, eh? A young lady, you know, a young lady likes those things. It was lucky I had them here.'

A directors' room, thought Raccamond angrily, and no directors. Madness to give that beautiful room, with banqueting-hall windows, free to anyone. He himself could have done with it. It would give him a great air of dignity. The Princesse, for example, would just as soon come and see him as Bertillon, in a room like that. But two hucksters had to be there, and a cracked old man who cut out pictures from
The Tatler
.

Well, let it rest, thought Raccamond: let the prologue go on. Time will show who are the actors with the best parts.

The snow-headed doorkeeper ambled upstairs with a slip of paper fluttering in his hand. Raccamond advanced, ‘What is it, Etienne?'

The old man combined respect with independence. ‘Mr. Bertillon,' he said firmly.

‘Let me see.'

‘Mr. Bertillon,' the old man said, rising to his full height. Raccamond was reduced to following him towards Bertillon's room and hearing Bertillon read the names,

‘Franz Rosenkrantz and Franz Guildenstern … sounds like a comedy couple.'

‘No one walks in for your good,' scolded William (behind the scenes). ‘Tell them you're not in.'

‘What are they like, Etienne?'

‘They seem two very nice men, sir.'

Jules's shout of laughter: ‘You go and take a peek at them, Alphendéry.'

Raccamond skipped into William's room, skipped out in a minute. Alphendéry had gone back and was saying, ‘Typical Berlin high-pressure businessmen: probably something to do with German defaulted bonds, one of those export businesses, no good to us. You might see them. They probably have a little money. Maybe they're shifting their business: there's a lot of that going on.'

‘Sharks?'

‘I don't think so: they're taking stock of the bank with efficient but pleased expressions, expensively dressed in the hard Berlin style. But all that proves nothing. Germans always get the externals right.'

‘Don't want them,' laughed Jules. ‘I'm against them. Etienne, tell them I'm not in.'

Etienne saluted and reverentially crept out. Alphendéry followed him and came back fizzling with laughter. ‘They've gone off in a pest of a disappointment: they'll come back. Etienne said, “Mr. Bertillon says to say he is not in.” You're not much of a crook: you picked a cherub for doorkeeper.'

They telephoned for Etienne and with the old white-headed workingman standing in the center of the three, Jules said, ‘Now, Etienne, a lot of people come into the bank who don't bring business. They come in to get my money. They want me to lend them money, chiefly. And usually they don't want to pay anything for it. They have good suits on but they're charity cases just the same. The better the suits they have on, the more they expect to get for nothing. That's a rule of business … Now, Etienne, I've had a lot of experience and I can tell the ones who want money, by looking at them from the balcony. If they know I am here, they will try to buttonhole me. They will wait four, five, six hours. So I have to say I am not here. It is a lie, Etienne, but I must say it, otherwise I cannot run a bank: I'll have to open a waiting room and give up business. And you must lie for me, Etienne. You must say, I am not here. Don't say I told you to say it. Because then they wait and they annoy me. Do you understand, Etienne? I know it's not the truth and I'm sorry for it, but you must lie for me, Etienne. Just say, Mr. Bertillon is not there and leave it at that … Now, you see, those two fellows are coming back and they are annoyed, into the bargain, because they know I am here.'

Etienne blushed at the idea that he had done wrong. ‘I am sorry, Mr. Jules.' He loved Jules whom he regarded as a young boy, a miraculous child. ‘Did I do any harm?'

‘Not a bit of it.'

His soft old eyes nodded to Jules. He went out.

‘Isn't he respectable!' cried Alphendéry. ‘I'd deposit money with a bank that had Etienne, myself.'

‘Sure,' said Jules. ‘You must have decent people round you: a bank is a confidence trick. If you put up the right signs, the wizards of finance themselves will come in and ask you to take their money. Show a man a marble column or Etienne's soft brown eyes and he goes frantic and sheds money for you: the way he sheds blood for you if you wave a flag. A man is just a cheese, he sweats and sweats until he shrinks and cracks and goes moldy. He lives on milk, you put him in a round pot and he goes round, or a square pot and he goes square: you collect the milk he sheds and then you eat what's left! … Did you ever think, Michel, that even a pirate or a gangster puts his money in a bank? They stick up one bank and put the money in another. They wouldn't be a bank clerk to save their lives, but they give their money to one. That's the mystery … Lord, what nitwits!' His whole peal of bells rang out. ‘All suckers—even me.'

‘I could stand being such a sucker,' said Alphendéry mournfully. Jules was emphatic (he seemed to regret his last words ‘even me'), ‘Pah, you'll never have a cent, Alphendéry: if you wouldn't sell your mother's womb for tripe, you won't make money.'

‘Yes, I am too softhearted,' regretted Alphendéry.

Henri Léon sat impatiently in one of the deep leather chairs, studied with violent attention the richest of the clients, returned to his present preoccupation (viz., would he get a Belgian decoration for a letter he had written to the Food Ministry, or would he have to pay real money for it?), put a sudden rude question to the clerkish boys, probing the intelligence of the lackadaisy customers' men, came back restlessly with the sudden rushes and calms of leashed energy, sitting down again, taking out his notebook, and writing in it, ‘Send Rhys, Rotterdam, book on Bismarck,' looked at his telephone book, watched the beautiful mail girl through her bars, tried to estimate the cost of the sculpture on wood and stone on the doors and windows, saltily scrutinized the tellers, wondering what was the matter with such insects that they didn't skip with the cash, and fixed with the start of the stallion any beautiful luxurious women who walked about, passing over the workers who slid through the crowd, with a walleye.

Henri Léon pretended not to see Armand Brossier with his wash-leather bag and obvious intent and when he came near, he simulated profound sleep or meditation. Then he opened his eyes surprisingly wide, swept the room to see if he was observed, noted Jacques Carrière and made a dash for him, to ask him if he knew anything about currencies, in view of his relations in ministries and banks. There, as luck would have it, Armand Brossier pursued him, not for him, but for Carrière, who for years had held quantities of stocks and bonds in accounts at the bank, especially in its branches abroad. Mlle. Gentil was the girl who held the secrets of all his income-tax evasions as well as those of the other great clients, ‘Old' Berthellot preferring to remain officially ignorant of all that. Armand Brossier, therefore, with that simple blackmail that is no more than justice, expected Carrière to give something relatively handsome to his bag for the wedding present.

Léon extracted a ten-franc bill and gave it, smiling delightfully to the young man with a friendly ‘Good luck. Where's the young lady? I must see her and wish her good luck myself. A wedding,' he said tremendously, ‘always gives me pleasure: I like to dance at weddings.' He insisted on going upstairs to see the bride-to-be.

The pale Brossier, silently absorbed, lit the staircase like a ten-candle-power bulb on his way down. At the bottom he collided amidships of a tall, powerful man, black-haired and bronzed, with broad produced forehead and chin, snugly dressed in black with white hair-stripe, in the richest South American dude fashion, who was consulting a platinum and ebony wrist watch while taking the stairs in a bound. A diamond pin stuck in his black-and-red satin tie; he had a frilled ivory silk shirt and red socks. There was a fine gold chain round his ankle. This was Zucchero Zurbaran, an Argentine millionaire of great strength, a sweet, savage, uncivilized nature, who owned herds of steers no wilder than himself, to whom his servants, peons, and boundary riders were men-dogs to be lashed, who trampled down and shot at will. Of him the usual legend was told that, having invited a young worker who sang and played well, into his home, he showed him the pictures of some of his ancestors and for no reason suddenly drew his revolver and cried, as a wild lark, ‘Shall I shoot you or not?' The worker, a young Aesop, saved by instinct, humiliated himself, pretended great fright. The wild bull, appeased, put the young man out of doors, then, saying ‘Think yourself lucky,' he shot instead at a dog running round the garden, laughed, ‘But there's more pleasure in shooting a man: it takes longer to breed him.'

Zucchero had been purposely trained to uncontrollable passions, gambling, whoring, killing, and South American bullfighting: his race trained to waste and terror. He belonged to the highest South American, Paris, and London society, appeared at all the grand crushes, fancy-dress balls, charity banquets, broke duchesses' hearts with his magnificent male beauty, was a friend of the then Prince of Wales, a great lover of country life. He was a member of the thoroughbred club to which Jules belonged and greatly admired the audacity and disorganization of Jules. He felt at home in Paris, the capital of the Latin race, though keeping to the resorts in which his idiosyncrasies were passed over with the tolerance accorded to vast landed wealth. He only went with the wilder young men, shunned contact with the reasonable portion of the French population, alien and cold to him. At home he buzzed and boomed, belonged to the small species of giant meat flies in bronze mail, who eat off the sweating brown backs of the natives: his power over human life gave him a grand fling and satisfied animal beauty. In intimate society with Jules and other chic young fellows, he was sweet as a robust broad-faced child, full of unprovoked horseplay as a Rhodes scholar, wild and senseless, but cunningly ferocious in his rages.