House of All Nations (70 page)

He shook his head, his clean, blond head-clerk face, his blue eyes full of integrity, seeking to convince Alphendéry by his honest expression. ‘No one wants to do business with a bank that thinks the capitalist system is not going to last. Men with your type of mind don't make money, Michel. You are Quixotes: the wind blows and the world whizzes round—whoolloo-moolloo! Oh, they're reaching out to catch me, those giant arms, think you! And in you run, bravely, full tilt. But the world's not trying to catch you … or Jules. It's just going round and round. The wind bloweth where it listeth. Neither you nor I, Michel, are going to make any difference. All our theories are feathers in the wind. You see, you don't believe in money. You believe the financial world is nothing but a carcass—'

‘A bluebottle,' said Alphendéry grinning.

‘You have no sense of history.'

‘The sense of history is that the British Empire will last for ever by divine right? And the rest goes spinning brainlessly till London organizes it. Oh, worthy race, admirable illusion!'

Plowman frowned and came down to the downstairs manager, Jacques Manray, who happened to quote back at him one of Alphendéry's remarks, ‘The history of Europe since the war has simply been that of a South American republic—dictators, repudiation, paper money, civil war.'

Plowman said smartly, ‘Mr. Alphendéry does not think like a banker; he thinks like a radical and is from our point of view irresponsible. He is injuring the credit of the Bertillon brothers, Mr. Manray. Please do not repeat his remarks.'

He was angry. When William hove in sight, he buttonholed him also, ‘When a boom comes Jules will have sold everything short: his phrase to me last week. The world is not going down and down. It's against common sense. Why, if booms don't come naturally, they'll ease things up by spring booms and market booms, even inflation. It's so absurd to think bankers will allow values to disappear completely. They aren't there for that. If Alphendéry were to leave the bank, Jules would begin to see with his own eyes again. It's absolutely essential that Alphendéry should stop being a bear or go: otherwise, you boys will be ruined.'

William jovially went to caricature all this to Alphendéry but to his surprise found him very depressed. ‘I know.' He looked at William with great, distressed eyes: ‘Plowman is right. I mean I subtilize overmuch. I am too eager. I belong to those who want to see the great change in their lifetimes and so I overlook the truth that our overlords will not give up the ghost without trying to strangle us to death first. My philosophy is only casuistry, as far as you boys are concerned. Plowman, the old fool, is right. They have a hundred tricks up their sleeves before they'll lose and then, the last trick, machine guns.' He put his head on his hand. ‘I am too clever by half.'

William roused him, cheered him, ‘Dick is doddering; while we work, Jules and Dick have been patting themselves on the back down there. How to explain why they're not rolling in profits? The old trick: make the Jew the scapegoat.'

‘No, no, William: although he doesn't know why he is right, Plowman is right.'

* * *

Scene Fifty-eight: Return

M
eanwhile a client arrived from the south with a note scribbled on the card of Aristide Raccamond, ‘Director of Bertillon Frères.' William smiled. ‘Every day someone sends us roses.'

A letter from Jules commanded them to pay Aristide Raccamond henceforth twenty thousand francs monthly, ten thousand as salary and ten thousand in commissions, any balance to be settled on December 31.

‘Listen,' said William more seriously than usual, ‘you and I have power of attorney. We will be doing Jules a service if we transfer his money to some other place and maybe some other person. Shall we pay off the big clients and close the shop?'

But Alphendéry had lost his verve: he was trying to think in another vein, for Jules's sake, and to draw out his telescoped wishful view of disaster. He would not take any step, even with William behind him, yet.

And now Jules, accompanied by Raccamond, arrived suddenly from the Blue Coast by train. Jules was mad as a centipede self-stung by months of pain, idleness, and insane flattery. He did not speak either to William or to Michel, when they came into his room, ordered them to go about their business, and tried to set up his court once more in his own office. He received many calls of solicitude. The charm began to wear off in three days and it was hard for him to reconcile his grandeur and the wild pretensions of his toadies with the everyday work of the bank, the docile application of the cashiers and accountants, the questions which began to crop up every hour and which William plentifully showered him with, about accounts, shares, and taxes of clients. People began to drop in, as before, with propositions. At first Jules spoke of making a million dollars in a week, whereas those two blockheads had done nothing but had turned the place into a café during his absence and made no money at all; but presently he began to see that Michel and William, though hurt and silent, were working persistently, giving exchange, settling disputes, even paying off Carrière without any reference to himself, and perhaps one morning in the cool hours, he suddenly came to himself. At any rate, at this moment of near disenchantment, who should arrive, in full bloom, but Theodor Bomba! He had left himself behind on the Blue Coast, first, not to compete with Raccamond on the journey up and second, to fix up some small affairs hanging over for Jules, and third, to see what could be seen round the new office which Jules had just opened in the Hotel Magnolius.

Bomba blocked out a lot of air with base, blond fat. He was gaily dressed in a Homburg hat. He had a well-molded face with square forehead and long, fine amethyst eyes: the attentive, rapidly changing expression was part of his dress. His hands were longish, loose, with tapering fingers, but they jarred with the face. He usually compressed his canoe-shaped red mouth and his eyes with a certain expression of pensiveness, dignity, or excruciatingly flattering attention, but when he smiled a horrible change took place: he leered as if he knew degrading ludicrous secrets about his vis-à-vis, as if he had the whiphand of him in a peculiarly humiliating illegal affair, and he almost imperceptibly hunched his shoulders, as if hugging his own cunning to his breast. He could not conceal his malice at the undoing of others, or at their degradation by his hands or his tongue. He used his hands in an outward stirring motion, as if he was fishing round in a cesspool to find some delectable bits of garbage. Both William and Alphendéry found it very hard to take his flabby hand and when he smiled, this first time of his return, Michel fell back two steps as if from infection.

They were thunderstruck. How could Jules, that delicate, fragrant creature, even sit in the same room as Bomba? He had changed: on Jules's money he had got fatter and more noticeably unpleasant. William said agreeably, to Jules, ‘Claire wrote to me that you swallowed something that gave you gripes down in the Hotel Magnolius. I don't blame you.'

Jules frowned. Bomba, refusing to understand anything but a commencement of hostilities, smiled once more his revolting smile: he seemed to use it as a weapon. Alphendéry stopped Jules in the corridor, despite Jules's bad temper: he was still in a fit of astonishment and fear as if he had just discovered something in Jules's nature that he had never known.

‘What has happened to you, Jules? Bomba is a leper so evident that he seems to carry a bell round his neck: I'm sure mangy dogs lick his ankles in the street. Overdressed, he is Vice naked. He's rather a miracle. What are you doing with such a fellow round you ? I don't wonder things went queer in the U.S.A.'

‘Bomba knows the whole of the Internal Revenue Department. He's in touch with gangsters who have been revenue detectives for years. He can do anything for me in the States. He's no theoretician.' Jules was furious. ‘I still expect to get the wheat and cotton deals through, through Bomba. I've been working ten times as much, on the Côte d'Azur. Don't criticize the men I have round me. I want new ability. I want someone who believes in making money and can help me do it. I don't want wisecracks.'

Alphendéry's face fell. In a very sad voice, he acquiesced, ‘All right, Jules: if you feel that way—but we all have an instinctive aversion to Bomba. Believe me, it's nothing personal.'

‘I don't judge by men's faces: I judge by their advice. I need a person with ideas in my place. I don't say I like him. That's not the point.' He flung into his room.

Alphendéry faded into misery so far that he almost became a ghost. He went down into his room, took up
L'Information
and sat for a long time without being able to fix his mind on a single sentence. He was frightened by Bomba. He resolved to fight it out with Jules anyhow, even if he lost his job. Plowman came in cackling with glee.

‘Did you see Bomba? Smart fellow, eh? You should hear what he's got to say about markets. He says in Wall Street, everyone's expecting a gigantic rise. We've definitely turned the corner, I believe. There's nothing for it but to buy, buy! The world,' he smiled paternally at Alphendéry, ‘can't go on negatively. You've been making that mistake, Alphendéry. When you're my age, you will have seen so many depressions that you won't get depressed. Ha, ha! But thank goodness, Jules is always right. He sometimes makes mistakes but he can always retrieve himself in time. My money is on Jules!'

‘Do you like Bomba, Richard?'

Plowman was less confident but did his best, ‘I like his positive way of thinking. I like his connections. He is well-known in all the capitals.'

Alphendéry followed up his advantage. ‘I suppose he tells Jules what he wants to hear?'

‘I approve of that. Jules is naturally a straightforward simple architect: his instincts are right when he's in that mood and he should then be simply approved.'

‘You've worked with hundreds of men in your career, Richard. Would you employ a Bomba?'

‘If he had good references and his act was good.'

‘And the American act was good, in your opinion?'

Plowman flashed indignation, ‘Jules was sabotaged from the beginning by Léon.'

‘I see! I see everything! And Bomba says that Léon is responsible for the fiasco?'

‘Obviously he was. And sabotage in the bank itself. You, in particular, I'm not accusing of that, Michel.'

Alphendéry smiled.

Bomba, unable to keep the triumph out of his face, was spreading himself in Jules's presence. Jules, like a madman, stung by a crowd of impulses that blotted out the sun, angers, frets, remorses, doubts, found it more and more difficult to listen to his new virtue. Bomba had a whole bestiary of smiles for himself as he developed his theme. So fat was he with the prospect he saw here of a rich pasture, that he neglected to watch Jules whose character was changing every hour, as he became impregnated with the habits of the past and the familiar air of the bank, his home for twenty years.

‘Jules,' Bomba said familiarly, ‘I am no philosopher, but a sorcerer. I live by turning imponderables into gold. A proposition in real goods, like the wheat deal, good enough for the thick sinews of Atlas-Léon, baffles me. Besides, there was something queer in the memorandum they gave me. I said to myself, “There is something awry here: its tail is missing. Nothing to hold it by.” I set myself to it like a child learning a lesson. It sounded fine but I missed the milk in the coconut. It was a nut all milk rather, no meat. White, wishy-washy. Nothing to it. That's what Léon landed you with. No mistakes without malice aforethought is my rule of thumb. Now I am forced to believe there was no nut but Léon's self-conceit. These petty Napoleons—he builds up schemes which sound glorious and you keep tearing them apart to find the stone on which they are built. He assures you, the philosopher's stone. I assure you, not even anything so solid as ambergris. The reason is a—biological necessity. Self-glorification.'

Jules paid great attention to the last part of the speech. ‘You're right, Theodor. He just wanted glory. When it came to putting it across, he quailed. Didn't want to show himself up. What was the idea of sending you across with a hollow offering like that? … Only I have an idea—I think we can work it ourselves.'

‘I had a letter from Dan Waters only yesterday.' He felt round in his pockets: ‘Funny, I left it at home. I can repeat it textually, though.'

‘Why didn't you tell me before? This is important.'

‘I know, I know!' He patted the air down with his hand. ‘Only this has to be worked tenderly, with psychological tricks, with attention to crotchets, with Kabbala.' He had caught the phrase from Léon, and Jules recognized it. Bomba waved his hand. Jules was struck by the ugly strangeness of this hand. He himself had a very beautiful hand and he was shocked by physical disharmony, unless it had some bizarre key signature of its own. Bomba spoke grandly.

‘Let your grand vizier think. You know what you are? You're a prima donna and you want a manager. You are full of miracles but you don't know how to give them a local habitation and a name. That's why you're so restless. Now your brother is a good sort, but he is absolutely without genius, and he can't understand you. And Alphendéry, a defeatist. He has no class, no caste, no country, no occupation: he's an intellectual
déclassé
: and what's moving him are the mild, open-minded liberal sanguine impulses of the old-fashioned professional bourgeoisie. When I see an open mind I want to put a padlock on it. To account for his having no money left in his family, he says the whole world is going to blazes. A very logical attitude, Jules. But why should you participate in it? For you the whole world is not going to blazes. On the contrary, there are fortunes to be made this very year and you are one of those going to make one of them. You're what is wanted in these times, a brilliant mind, a genius. What you have lacked, hitherto, is an executive who understands you without participating in your genius. Now, well, you have one. I am devoted to you, Jules. Self-interest! Why not? Self-interest is an engine in perpetual motion. You had one once in your old associate Dannevig that I ran into in your suite in the Hotel Magnolius. Poor old Dannevig! he's nothing but a scarred warhorse now. Poor old crab! I'm afraid he's been giving a very bad impression in your Oslo office, of not understanding banking at all, but of having a purely totemistic view of finance. Shocking, his unconscious sabotage of your inspirations, Jules. The unconscious hate of the old for the young. He tried to keep me away from you.'