House of All Nations (35 page)

Léon was intimidated. ‘My dear, I swear to you, look, I never swear unless I mean it—I swear to you that in five years we will be married. I can't do it at once, because Hélène's marriage has got to be put through decently, and I couldn't divorce her mother in her first year of marriage. It would upset the young pair. But after the first year, I'll divorce my wife, put my son into business and we'll live in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Paris or even New York, if you wish.'

Margaret had several long parleys about the agreement. Mrs. Weyman and Léon now formed a trust, the Margaret Trust of which she held fifty-one per cent and Léon forty-nine per cent of the shares, into which Léon put one hundred and fifty thousand American dollars, and Margaret nothing. Léon was to operate the funds of this trust every year for the next five years and distribute the profits pro rata between himself and Margaret. He calculated that he would make up to fourteen per cent yearly. Margaret had about a hundred thousand dollars of her own invested for the most part in three-and-a-half per cent bonds. Léon contracted to pay her the difference between the yield on her money invested in bonds and stocks and seven thousand American dollars as well as give her ten thousand dollars yearly for living expenses and a dress allowance. ‘You are,' explained Léon, ‘my wife, at least to me: and you must be properly established as a wife would. You and I will be known as a couple and we must do this thing in style or we will be despised and our relation despised.'

To mark the signing of the contract Léon brought Margaret to her apartment in the house in Amsterdam, three bracelets in platinum, set respectively with diamonds, emeralds, and amethysts. As Margaret hesitated between them, Léon cried, ‘Here, keep them all, my darling. Why should you have to pick? Keep them all! After all, they'll be mine again soon, because we'll be married.'

Léon and Margaret Weyman were now in their prenuptial honeymoon. Léon was quieter than usual, went away earlier from work, was not at his wife's home for months at a time, only turning up when some arrangements had to be made for his daughter's marriage. Léon began to run the funds of the Margaret Trust with exemplary brilliance: he had put a hundred and fifty thousand dollars on ice for a woman and he now had to make them pay him something. He was staggered at his own magnificence. What a woman! Only a woman like this was fitted to be his wife.

And for the first time in years he began to think of his dull and now decidedly malicious little wife, with pity. In observing her in this new light for the first time, he suddenly saw that during his long absence she had blossomed again, the grayness of years had vanished, and she had become one of the prettiest little women in Switzerland. Léon was glad that the divorce must take some time. ‘It must all be done without hurting her. It will be a great shock to her to realize I don't want her any more.' He became quite tender about his wife at times, thinking that when she was divorced she would look back and regret her rich and brilliant Henri.

* * *

Scene Thirty-three: Mamma

A
lphendéry received two letters, in the same mail, from his mother.

Strasbourg, June, 1931

Mon Bien-Aimé,

Your letter made me the happiest old girl; I was very worried. I thought you are now becoming a revolutionary. I am happy that you have improved since last year. I hope you get a complete cure. I have felt lonely not seeing you on your birthday. About the delay of war—owing to the splendid advance of the Russians it is not definite, it may be a change may take place, a surprise party. Let us hope for the best. Do you remember when I used to wake you up saying, ‘The Czar is killed,' or, ‘The Kaiser is assassinated' to get you up for school? I was looking for a room near Cousin Kitty, but it is impossible to find one—the people are quite wealthy and roomers are not desirable. The trouble is I cannot look myself for a place to establish so I got to suffer. It is a pity of my being for a few years in Paris with you, not knowing the right place where to get relieve from my physical troubles, Aix-les-Bains and Vichy and Vittel it was not worth while. So we make mistakes in life and suffer useless and you, my poor son, lose money. Please,
mon fils bien-aimé
, write me as soon as possible. You letters are the best medicine for me write me all; keep well and cheerful. Take good care of yourself, don't go too much with the revolutionaries, it is all right for young men, but you are a family man. You have your troubles. Don't forget your old girl with love and thousand kisses.

Mamma

Strasbourg, June, 1931

Mon Cher Fils,

Your welcome letter and the 2,000 francs cheque received. You cannot imagine, my jewel, my happy moments of reading your charming letter. I am well provided with my living expenses. I possess 3,000 francs in cash and a 800 franc balance from the 2,000 francs cheque you sent me May. I am very worried of your going with revolutionaries now with all war-clouds, riots, revolutions and this Adolf Hitler, though they say he is not German and the Germans are a great socialist people, they will never listen to that race-talk but he says he is going to make the poor little shopkeepers prosperous and that is something. Only he wants votes, that is all. You have one life, my treasure, you never can tell what may happen any moment, try your best, if it is only possible to keep a steady position and make connections and you can return here and if things go bad we can fly to another country, perhaps America. Living is cheap but to pay with the life for, it is not advisable. My best medicine and recreation will be of seeing you my sunshine. Lately I am feeling very often giddy, may be it is due only to old age and weakness. Thousand kisses and take good care of yourself, my dove.

Mamma

A week later, Michel received another letter from his mother.

Strasbourg, July, 1931

My Dear Michel,

Your welcome letter received: don't worry too much about me. I am only a guest in this world and my time soon over. You have plenty of worry and expense, to cover all your expenses is not fun, nobody lending you a hand to relieve your burden. You should only be able to endure your troubles. It is all over with me. What can't be cured must be endured. If I am to die alone, in misery and poverty in my old age, that is my burden: complaining won't help it; you know I never complain. What is the use? Who cares for the sick and old? You don't write how is your health, my treasure. Are you in good shape. As to your plans, you say nothing: you know best what is to more of advantage for you. It is my destiny to drag myself alone all my last days in this world without son, daughter or grandchild. I would not mind to put up with all the unpleasant troubles only to hear you are doing well and happy and not going astray. If you had only taken my advice. Revolutionaries are not for you: I am glad you have given a speech at Juvisy for Jean Frère and he is a good man, but that is for workingmen, not for you. He came from the slums: he has something to fight for. Not you. You cannot ask a woman of good education to live poor with you in a little place. Your old mother is different, but not a young pretty woman. Of seeing you I have little hope. A man needs a woman. I am so frail and sick. I am eating solid food but cannot eat much and my friends are afraid to come and see me, I look so bad: it is all due to my chronic weakness. I believe what I see. My dear son, you go to so much trouble to get nowhere: you are sure there is no fear of war I hope. There is difficulty getting identity-cards for foreigners in this part: they are calling up the military service for Alsace-Lorraine. If the torment comes again where will I go? As long as you do good for yourself, but when you are in sickness and live alone, who will look after you? I am wishing you luck and glad you get to know poets but you cannot write poetry, my son, you are from different stock: don't forget your grandfather was the first lawyer in Mannheim. In meantime stick to your job. Please write me often and all. With much love and kisses, old sweetheart.

Mamma

Alphendéry, in terror, got leave of absence for three days and took the evening train to Strasbourg. He arrived there unexpectedly the next morning, coddled his old mother for a few hours, took her out, and in the evening the two spent a gay time in a restaurant listening to a German band. She was feeble, through the overthriftiness and loneliness of the old, but otherwise in good health. Alphendéry left the same night, promising to make her a home in Paris. He was afraid to stay away from the bank for three days, because he alone knew the technique of balancing the short and long positions and William Bertillon and Jacques Manray, who took turns at it in his absence, always muffed it and caused great losses. These were, in general, bad times for him: he waked far into the nights and when he slept, slept and groaned. When would his slavery come to an end? He was bound to the bank by money needs and affection for the Bertillons, as well as inertia.

* * *

Scene Thirty-four: Five Cents and the Million Dollars

K
ézébec, the Breton painter, Abernethy Gairdner, the American writer, and Garrigues, the Gascon sculptor, were seated together in three green armchairs in the stock-exchange clubroom looking earnestly at something that looked like a geological cross section of the Dent du Midi with its escarpments, but which was really a two-line graph of American railroad stocks 1921–1931 and American industrial stocks for the same period. Kézébec had been nearly a week constructing it with the greatest care. Kézébec was explaining.

‘The market must reach rock bottom again, after another fall in which I will sell short, the market will begin another long rise and then we can look forward reasonably to a period of boom.'

The writer added his gem: ‘There should be a stock-exchange committee ruling to prevent undue booms and then we would not have these crashes: the stock market would be more predictable. After all, the broker loses as much as the client who can't pay, doesn't he?'

The sculptor, who had dropped every penny he had earned on war monuments for the past three years: ‘You see rails are not nearly so speculative: the rise is much more even, but whenever you see a long rise in prices you should drop out. I've had too much bitter experience. If I had any money now, I'd chisel to make my bread, that's all.'

‘And so,' jeered the American writer, ‘if you had got out at the beginning of that Alpine climb in the middle of 1928—'

‘Will history repeat itself?' asked Kézébec, with caution.

Alphendéry leaned over the center chair in which sat Gairdner. ‘You still here, Gairdner? Why don't you go off, as you promised me, and write those masterpieces the world is crying for? I told you I'd throw you out if I ever saw you in our stock-exchange room again. I don't want your money. Go and write.'

Gairdner, little, blond, delicate, kind, flushed. ‘I know, I did promise: but what's the use? I don't believe I'm so important as you say. If I could make about twenty-five thousand dollars I could retire into Vermont and get the peace necessary to write. If I don't have the money I can't do it. I know myself. You see, I'm not really a healthy personality: I'm a sort of multiple personality. My personality is a kind of earthworm in sections—it would take years to grow together. A man like me needs a lot of money to write. I suppose that shows I'm worthless.' He looked pallidly sorrowful like an ailing child.

‘And what are you doing, Kézébec?' Alphendéry continued. ‘Why aren't you out in Brittany leading the back-to-Brittany movement! You believed the French language is tied up with French imperialism; don't you believe that the price of U.S. Steel is tied up with American financial imperialism? I thought you were a revolutionary socialist!'

He glanced quickly at Garrigues who was sitting, as always, voiceless and neurotic, and went on to Gairdner. ‘You sit there,' and there was a note of patient scorn in Alphendéry's voice, ‘and think the capitalist class is going to hand you out strawberries and whipped cream the rest of your lives …' He laughed. ‘Did I ever tell you how to make enough money to retire for life in three days?' The three of them started and looked earnestly at him. He waved his hand in a white gesture of disavowal. ‘In Chicago I buy a one-day option on a million bushels of wheat, put up ten thousand dollars—there's a variation of one to five cents, say it goes up five cents, fifty thousand dollars. The market favoring me, and renewing option with my winnings, by next day's closing, $40,000 becomes $160,000: next day, the third day's trading, that is, I'm up to $640,000: the fourth day, I'm up to $2,560,000 … That's enough for me to retire on. In fact, making money is easier than playing marbles: you've only got to guess right twice. You've only got to guess right three times to break the bank at Monte Carlo. That's why it's so common … But Levi Z. Leiter did it!'

‘Supposing it goes down a cent,' said Garrigues, heavily.

‘You've got to have the ten thousand dollars to start with,' said Gairdner wearily. ‘You can't play the market with two cents and that's what I've got.'

‘You've got two thousand dollars,' smiled Alphendéry.

‘I may as well throw it in the Seine for all the good it is to me,' said Gairdner.

‘A mere song! Fifty thousand francs is a mere nothing to this nabob,' cried Alphendéry, lifting up his hands. ‘Man, come back to earth: you don't live in the Age of Gold. Why don't you take your two thousand dollars odd and move out of the bank into Meaux or Nevers or Louviers, live like a French scholar on bean soup, and write your guts out. The market has made a ghost of you. You're not a man.'

Gairdner flushed very deeply. ‘You're right, but I can't do it: I will either make twenty-five thousand dollars or commit suicide.'

Garrigues sat by and bit his fingernails. It was three months since he had sent up an order, over a day since he had had anything to eat save for one coffee which Urbain Voulou had given him. He followed Alphendéry out of the room.