House of All Nations (25 page)

‘I know you did,' said William mildly, ‘but gold is virtue: one double-eagle crushes four shady rumors. And gold has no name, it licks the hand of anyone who has it: good dog! It's better than stocks and bonds; it's always valid; and it doesn't have to be changed into any other value. It is value. You let the Comtesse de Voigrand know you can pay out a demand for, say, fifty thousand francs entirely in gold, and she'll bring you back the next day half a million: gossip harvest …'

‘What's the use of reserves in a time like this: have the Germans reserves? We have and we're picked on by all Europe: blackmail is what pays,' squealed Jules. ‘We've got out of the gold age, that's all. Gold is only good because it's portable … the governments have learned a thing or two: they won't be letting us hold gold and let it sweat profits in failing currencies, the way it does at present … Not too much of it: I need funds …'

William was laughing in his sleeve. ‘Say, Jules: you know the Swedish baroness used to be here? She left an account of two hundred and fifty thousand crowns: I thought she'd forgotten about it. You know she's always soused in akvavit. Last week she sent in a letter demanding the transfer of two hundred and fifty thousand francs (not crowns) to her bank in Stockholm. I forgot about it, I've been so busy. Today I got another letter insisting on the transfer at once of her two hundred and fifty thousand francs at the current rate of Swedish crowns—about 41,666 crowns. So I did it. If she finds out her “mistake,” we'll transfer the rest …'

Etienne, the venerable doorkeeper, appeared in the doorway, his faithful eyes on Jules.

‘Mr. Jules! Monsieur Aristippe de Partiefine would like to see you.'

‘Send him up. Poor guy,' said Jules, ‘I suppose he wants a loan: his last wife only gives him petty cash.'

Aristippe de Partiefine was one of the fabulous figures of little Paris—a penniless Casanova; so charming, so rich in love, and so empty-headed that four rich women had married him and deserted him.

‘Aristippe must be forty-five now, you know,' said William in a melancholy tone.

He came up, tall, broad, very swarthy, well groomed, bowed a little from his excessive height, modest-speaking, mild. His features, though well formed, had a disproportion that caused people to say, ‘Why, the man's quite ugly!' His eyes were set rather close together, but deep enough with richly folded lids that disappeared in shadows at the outer corners; his jutting nose had a slightly thickened end; the long mouth with perfectly formed, dark swelling lips, broadened
to smile a guileless, kind, confiding smile, whenever Aristippe turned
from the person speaking to him, to some other one standing by, as if to confirm this silent person in their first impression: ‘I am your friend: count on me.' Women immediately felt that they had happened on an affinity, a natural intelligence, a deep harmony, a grand devotion. Aristippe smiled at Jules.

‘Jules, I have a little scheme for business. I just wanted to know if you knew some good stenographers, male stenographers I should prefer—I want some copying done … I have a formula I want copied out. François Legris said he would back me. It's a good formula—for reinvigoration, much better than the Titus pearls.'

‘Oh, I'll get one of my girls to do it.'

‘Oh, no: I shouldn't like the young ladies here to do it … you don't know some public stenographers. You see, they are used to all sorts of work. And then it has to be translated from the Polish. It was sent to me from—a man I know in Warsaw. It is used by him and his family. It is a sort of family secret. It is all in Polish. There would have to be so many words to look up—you see,' he smiled his smile at William and went on to Jules, ‘Your girls couldn't do it. Besides, I must pay for it.'

‘Have you got it?' asked Jules. ‘I can read Polish. I was in Poland one time.'

Partiefine handed over the formula. It was a typewritten document about fourteen pages long, giving the formula, the complaints it was supposed to cure, the happy results obtained by its use, a short history of the family that had originated it, the method of distribution, its cost … Aristippe smiled once more sweetly at William to show that no favoritism was meant by showing Jules the formula first …

‘It looks fine,' said Jules.

‘I have some chaps going round the pharmacies in the sixteenth and seventh and fifteenth
arrondissements
and the pharmacies have agreed to take it, but I've got to get up some diagrams and publicity. Do you think François Legris will really put up money?' Aristippe had a rather timid and deprecating manner which showed Jules that he hoped the Bertillons would back him, too. ‘I thought a few, downstairs—' he hesitated and smiled at William, ‘might like to back me,' he said softly. ‘I showed it to a couple of them. Your manager, Urbain Voulou, said he would put a couple of thousand francs into it. I think it should—interest—the pharmacies seemed—quite interested. Of course, there are other—other kinds—being sold. I thought I might call it the Polish Formula: it's attractive, isn't it? Or the Viennese Formula … Will you give me the address? …'

‘Ask Alphendéry,' said Jules. ‘He knows everything.'

Aristippe soberly thanked him and moved out with the gait of the leaning tower of Pisa walking.

‘I'll give him a couple of thousand, if he brings it up again,' said Jules. ‘Every guy when he's out of luck invents a contraceptive, a reinvigorator, or a purgative: why I wonder? That goes in the petty-cash account. The Comtesse told me to take Carrière on: she thinks the pound will hold, she thinks it's just a scare.'

‘Yeah? Well, I'd rather start fooling with the pound a few months from now: why is he anxious to run you in on this? Keep out of it. Carrière is poison.'

‘Oh, I won't do anything. I don't trust that fellow.' William walked out.

The door opened and Jules came in with Dr. Jacques Carrière, the famous young society bachelor, and Aristide Raccamond. Carrière was a head taller than Raccamond, Raccamond a belly wider than him; Carrière was flushed with wine, conceit, and impudence, but the secretary, Lucille Dalbi, thought him handsome. ‘I don't need you, Aristide,' said Jules insolently. Aristide lowered his head, looked at them all like a cornered bull, and left. Carrière sank down and his knife crease and florid shoes emerged more opulently.

‘To begin with, Jules, I'm a bit overmargined and you've got about 275,000 francs of mine here: you can make a book transfer of that, before I send you the rest round from the Crédit. By the way—the commission: I'd like to have a half per cent paid to Comte Hervé Lucé, poor chap. He's a friend of Jean de Guipatin's and I thought I'd make a bit of money for the poor fellow.'

‘Why not?' agreed Jules. ‘You know I don't want the money … What's the matter with him? Dope?'

‘Dope. I know the chap that sells it to him. You've got one of them here unless I'm mistaken: I've seen him hovering about the passages and back streets, pressing the hands of funny-looking gentry—that miserable little huckster-fellow that wears a bowler hat, a Belgian, isn't he? Looks like a bankrupt private detective, never shaved in the morning. Quite a cad, I should say, but—in cahoots with the drug squad.'

‘You mean Henri Parouart? He's a chiseler, petty blackmail artist. Catches us up by one minute on an execution in New York and a quarter of a point in London … Blackmail doesn't interest me,' said Jules with more emphasis: ‘a blackmailer and a denouncer always find themselves on the pavement. They do no more than beg their bread in a peculiarly slimy fashion: at the first breath of big business, the ranks close and we chuck them out …'

‘I've heard a Paris Napoleon is behind Parouart,' suggested Carrière with malice.

‘In those shoes? Let him ride: I'll get something on him, sooner or later, when I have the time. Well, Jacques, we're going to have Spanish royalty with us in Paris. Do you really think he's got all that dough here? I think we'll get fat with all the revolutions going on. They all come to Paris—everyone from the Aga Khan who sells his bath water, to Don Jaime de Bourbon, who only lives by divine right, gets here …'

‘Shall we write a letter to each other about this pound-sterling business? Or let it rest. Do you care? Perhaps an informal letter.'

With confidence, foxily, Jules agreed, ‘Sure, I'll write a letter: what do you want? Mlle. Dalbi, ask the telephone girl to get Comte Lucé up here: he's going to get a half per cent, he may as well witness it.'

* * *

Scene Twenty-one: The Letter

T
he letter in its final draft was so full of erasures and reconsiderations that Jules said, ‘Listen, Jacques, I'll send it to you by tonight's mail, or tomorrow morning: you send me yours in the same mail. That'll settle it. Hervé will be my witness …'

‘O.K … I must get along. I want to drop in at the Chamber to see the debate. The future of Briand has got them all excited.'

‘Good luck: why don't you run for the Chamber? You could get big support down in the Dordogne, a native son. Must be lively down there. I'll bet the border towns are flustered with grandees, jostling each other, their coats all out of line with concealed duros …'

When Carrière had gone, Jules called up his crony Pierre Olympe, a lawyer fabulously ignorant, but extremely fashionable. Between them, they concocted the letter about the bet on sterling and posted it off to Carrière. It read:

I agree to pay you in francs, at the rate of 122 francs to the £, any sterling demands in the sum of £,25,000 each, the first demand payable on May 10,1931, and succeeding demands every four months thereafter, until the sum of £,250,000 shall have been paid, on this basis. On the other hand, should the £ continue above the rate of 122 francs at the dates of such demands, the difference between 122 and the prevailing rate shall accrue to me, Jules Bertillon, on each occasion.

Carrière read this carefully and laughed aloud the next morning at breakfast. He looked across at Caro de Faniul, with his suffering white face and long scarlet mouth. The youth's hands, long, firm, white, and ringed, tapped impatiently: he was scowling frightfully and forcing his face into a wrinkled mask because Jacques was reading the mail in his presence. Jacques smiled. ‘Read that, Caro.'

His lids drooped and he tossed it back. ‘You know I don't understand anything about business!'

Carrière was even more expansive. ‘Why, he says ‘sterling demands,' the fool, not ‘drafts.' Thus, without any brewery at all, he has to pay me the difference in exchange on any demand I send through: he hasn't mentioned the brewery, for example. Well! … Of course, the pound will go off: it will give him a stitch in the side trying to keep up with the pound, and it may ruin him. Not bad!'

‘You are filthy, Jacques.'

‘That sort of boy, self-centered and ignorant in a world of quicksands, if he gets something done, thinks he is a genius, something mystic and superior to us other men: he has never seen a snow crystal or the hair of a fly through a lens, for example: if he did, he would believe in demons! It's so easy to break him—it's no more pleasure than splintering a match, really.'

‘Then don't do it, Jacques: it's so vulgar.'

‘To realize anything is vulgar,' said Carrière. ‘When you've done it, you ask yourself, “Why did I bring it out in the light of the sun?” like the mother of an ungrateful son. There's as much difference between the image and reality as between the joy of conception and the chaos of childbed.' Caro looked at him coldly, drank the last of his coffee. ‘But why is this so?' asked Jacques Carrière, with the slow grinding tone of one who is forced to talk although he knows he is boring his partner. ‘Because I am myself formless and cannot conceive properly. You see that, don't you? You should. If I could grow up, entirely, I would not be so vicious: I am an unhappy myth. Jules is endlessly, primevally fertile. But he isn't human! He doesn't even try to be a man.'

‘He is charming,' said Caro. ‘You know, when I met him I said to myself, ‘Who is he? Where have I seen him before? Long ago, very long ago?' And later in the evening, I found myself saying, ‘Hermes, Hermes,' again and again, muttering the name like that. Why (I thought) Hermes. That's Jules. He would be at home in ancient Greece, crooked, modern, plausible, argent, endless coiner, stamping images of himself on wax hearts, his own fraud, currency.' Jacques studied him carefully with an aged expression of craft and understanding.

‘A king-thief!' said Jacques Carrière.

* * *

Scene Twenty-two: ‘Weltanschauung'

F
ranz rosenkrantz looked in the mirror all the time he talked and this gave his conversation an added polish, a reflective elegance of mood which matched well his polished fingernails, eyeglasses, white collar, and smooth thin black hair. A few gray hairs in tufts over each ear fell in with his mid-European color scheme of balanced black and white. The responses that Alphendéry made to him were only legatos in the sonata of his reflections: he heard what was said faintly as an echo and he bound these musical echoes into his theme.

‘I was at Verdun,' said Alphendéry. ‘I saw five years of war and I really am still alive.'

‘Undoubtedly: then we never faced each other—I was in the division that occupied St. Quentin in 1917.'

He looked into the mirror, half smiling to himself, but at himself. ‘One would say that time is a river in which we turn over and over like logs and blades of grass!' He held his wineglass to the light with a gesture from the old gay dramas. ‘I prefer the purple mantle of dark Burgundy! The French put all their
Weltanschauung
into their wine! Our wine is clear, reedy, piquant, reasonable, and we put our
Weltanschauung
into our music, literature, and philosophy! Judge which nation has chosen wisely.'