House of All Nations (74 page)

A gross mocking line formed round her mouth. ‘And what are we? Anyone looking at us from the outside—your history with Claude Brothers, our marriage a marriage of arrangement, because of my connection with Czorvocky and Marcuzo, your mistress Lucienne's child given over to us because she couldn't support him in style, her second child born after our marriage, brought up a slum child with heavy skull and starting eyes and anemia—I shed my illusions when I—well, after my son was born. I don't understand how you can still deceive yourself. Why believe in anything? I don't have to. Why pretend there is a world of men different from the ones you call brutes, in finance. You really think that, say, painters or actors are finer and more generous? There are people who go through life with their hands over their eyes: they are sure to blunder into dung quicker than the others. Life is only sordid if you're looking for something else. I see what there is to do and I'm going to do it.'

‘At our age? You think one can start again at our age? I call that an illusion.'

‘Age? I'm getting stronger every year. I'm going into finance. It's a splendid profession: hard work, insecurity, plunges, great chances, success, if you've got the right mind for it.'

He looked guilty. ‘My dear, while you were away a letter came from a journalist. I put it somewhere. I don't know.'

She looked at him suspiciously and with contempt, ‘You were certainly in a state.'

He took a resolve. ‘Marianne, really, I don't want you to do this: it isn't fit for a woman. You think you're made of tough material. You don't know: you would be miserable. And think of me. No home. Stock market, overdrafts at the office, bourse in the streets, tips in the cafés, spying out personalities in the restaurants, political scandal in the Bois on Sundays, and at home—more finance … No. It's a fantasy.'

She looked at him with a lift of the head and a faint smile: she thought (so intensely that she forgot to answer), ‘No, but you don't think I have to depend on you, do you? I have passed the time when I asked myself with astonishment why you left Lucienne (perfectly charming, after all), for me. I can get men. I like you, but looking forward to fifty empty years to please you is another thing …' She felt impatient and bit her lip, ‘God in Heaven,' she thought, ‘I understand a pure happy-go-lucky wastrel: he understands life and won't play the game; but I have no patience with a gloomy sentimental fanatic, like
him
!'

Aristide, surprised that she did not answer him, half seized the expression on her face: he sat up. ‘Marianne, you must not do this. I don't want it. If you do, I'll take you away from the city: we'll go back to Picardy.'

For a fraction of a minute, she shivered and recalled the morning twilight of her life with Aristide. Odd, she thought: and softened. He was a good husband: and easy. Or had it always been so easy as it was now? She did not remember any more. Now Aristide was an old overcoat, good for the storms, good for warmth, but bulky, frayed, soiled, broken-backed. ‘Still, I'll go by easy stages,' she thought. ‘I'll drop the pilot when I'm sure I know the channel.'

He tried to keep up his authority. ‘Two in the family is too much.' She smiled. ‘You will see, Aristide: it will not be so bad as you think. And then, think, we need more money. A small example: I only mention it to show you. I have no good fur coat. Oh, don't think that what other women think bothers me. But still. Raoul—that lummox will always be in hot water. Until they settle down and we have grandchildren, we must have a full life. I won't be the old mother who has to be fed pap … But only if we have enough money. You don't think of that?' (Raoul, he thought: she doesn't call that an illusion then; of all the misbegotten pickpockets—however: a woman's son, that's an illusion so solid I suppose you must call it a reality.)

‘No,' he said, ‘oh, go ahead, Marianne. I'm not stopping you. What do you want to do?'

‘Listen: I've thought it all out. I have interviewed a lot of people. Marcuzo will help me at the beginning. You must too. I'm going to start a financial tip sheet in opposition to Marthe Hanau: I won't sail so close to the wind to begin with. There are plenty of people who think women are lucky in finance.'

He sulked. ‘Who is going to put up the money?'

‘Marcuzo, perhaps others: I don't know yet. I intend to run it alone. When it is going, you can say, That is my wife's sheet.' That's all. And it will—' she stopped: she was going to say, ‘Give you prestige: people will think you're behind me; that will start up rumor as to the powers behind me,' but she just shook her head slightly and let the sentence die.

‘It will—what?'

‘It's fortunate, I made a point of meeting everyone,' she said. ‘We met the new American ambassador last month. Connections are everything.'

‘I admire you, Marianne.'

She was pleased, nevertheless. ‘Why? It's nothing. You see, I fool them: they will all say, ‘Who is behind her?' Men never believe a woman can do anything: they let her through, unsuspecting. An immense opportunity for a career.' She regretted saying that but it gradually disappeared into the waters of the ensuing silence.

‘About Raoul, we will not have to worry so much,' murmured Aristide. ‘I have managed to get him into the Biarritz office. Bertillon seems quite pleased to have him in. That gives him three thousand a month of which I told him he must pay one thousand a month to me, to make up the …'

‘I know, I know.'

A dismal affair of a check passed without provision: the casino, the bathing heiresses, a young man's head is turned—and that was not the only escapade. There was a Voisin stolen for a joy ride, from the automobile showroom, where he had been salesman. Aristide had settled that. Where did Raoul get this gallant streak?

‘I think,' said Aristide, ‘I may be able to get Bertillon's permission for a car when I'm running through the resorts on the Argent Coast. It looks better considering the class of client: purely a business car.'

Marianne's eyes brightened. ‘Well, that's really an idea. Then you can leave me the Ford to run about in.'

‘Good.'

She hesitated, then, ‘And as to the bank, dear—I have only one motto in all these things: sound the Jew and you reach the bottom of the mystery.'

‘The Jew.'

‘This Jew, Alphendéry, is at the bottom of all that's hazy and bizarre in the bank. I had a conversation with Bertillon's old friend, the banker Plowman. He was head of the Timor and Arafura Banking Corporation. He's well known in London. He told me that before they took on Alphendéry it was all plain sailing but Alphendéry brought in an intellectual diablerie, too cunning for Bertillon and yet so glittering that Bertillon was induced to take it up …'

‘What on earth does that mean?'

‘I only conjecture. On his advice, contracts are not paid, checks held up: transfers of funds delayed, bearer bonds sold out and bought in again when called for, and so on, and so on. You know better than I do. He's never shown any positive profits except for his great foreign clients—evidently, since he still manages their accounts: as far as the Bertillons go, merely guile and negative suggestions. If you had only come into the bank an hour before he did. I hear Bertillon picked him out of the street, literally.'

‘It's not possible, that.'

‘Indeed, it is. I know lots of things about the history of the bank. I did not waste time in London … And you, my dear, have underrated Alphendéry. Don't let yourself be set up on strings: the other puppets dance for him. Be advised. Find out something about him? He's brilliant. He was formerly with a house in Nancy. Find out why he left them; why a man like that was wandering in the streets of Paris; why he appears to be poor even now, lives in a cheap flat; find out the scandal about his wife. Arm yourself, Aristide. A moment will come, and it is not far off now, I judge, when you will need ammunition against Alphendéry, both for yourself and for the good of the bank. Bertillon will thank you. Plowman will aid you. You can move into the bank on proper terms—perhaps a partnership. You know as much about the market as Alphendéry; you are better situated, you have even visited the U.S.A … You had nothing but the one letter from your man in Amsterdam?'

‘No: I had another today. There are at least two secret journals
A
and
B
respectively which the head accountant keeps himself and will not let him see.'

‘Good … We must get at them.'

‘He says he has a plan.'

‘That's a good type of fellow. Should you send him something?'

Aristide was scandalized. ‘Wait till he's found out something. Don't let him think money is easy to come by.'

She let the question drop. ‘I think I'll write a note to Mme. Haller, explaining.' She wrote and also slipped in a story of the strange visit they had paid to the Hallers' flat. Mme. Haller wrote back at once and explained that they always left Anna in charge of the flat; she never let anyone in, she was a perfectly good watchdog: she regarded it as her flat till they came back and she was very angry indeed if the Hallers came back before the appointed day. This two months was her reward for the whole year: she queened it over the empty apartment and the goods in it; it rang with her voice and her songs. She went out once a day to do her shopping but spoke to no one and after an hour or two trailing the streets, looking in shopwindows and making to herself strictures on the behavior and clothes of the women, came back to ‘her apartment' a free personage, for once. She was not mad by any means, said Mme. Haller; she worked for very little and she really did not need money: she sent it all to a brother much younger than herself and sick, in Transylvania.

She had been with the Hallers twenty years, and was well content, for Mme. Haller always saw that she had good shoes and hats. Naturally, she had been too ugly, poor thing, ever to have a man and Mme. Haller had tried to make it up to her by giving her a new dress on her birthday every year. ‘Thus, my dear Mme. Raccamond, our house is the only home she knows. She loves Mr. Haller better than me, for he is a man and he has a big voice, but I manage. One day I heard her laughing to herself in the pantry and talking and singing in rather a strange way over the washing-up and I went straight in and said, “Anna, you must stop that, or you must leave me. You know you need not do that. You must control yourself.” And, this is all I have to say to her when she gets queer. She is odd. I often have to laugh at her. When she does talk, she talks about her troubles. We have known her for twenty years as I say, and she was brought up in my mother's house. She was there from the time she was twelve, so you see there is nothing in her life we are ignorant of. And she has never had any troubles. She has always been protected, in a way: no husband, perhaps a drinker or a man who would have beaten her, no children, no slavery in a cottage! Always getting better food than peasants eat, too. But she so often talks about her “troubles” that I really do think at times that she is getting a little queer. What do you recommend, dear Mme. Raccamond ? I am sure you are perfect in your management of servants! But no, don't answer me this in a letter. Mr. Haller would be very angry. I am not to tell about Anna, he says. But you understand, you are a woman, dear Mme. Raccamond. We will talk of this again, one day and perhaps you can think of something Anna would like. Naturally, I think about her. Why not? She is, after all, a human being. Do you think it is so wrong, dear Madame? No, I am sure you don't. I know your kind and rational nature … We are doing splendidly and the food is so good. Of course, Swiss food is very, very good, almost as good as our own …'

‘You see, Aristide, it pays to write letters, my dear: she is a real friend now; and only because I have written her a letter or two. So few people know this secret!'

‘Yes, and yet it is such a farce: people tell such lies in letters!'

‘Oh, you have no sense of comedy; you are not grateful. You do not see that a letter is a work of fiction written specially for one person. It must give excessive pleasure.'

* * *

Scene Sixty-one: A Sanitary Measure

S
eptember, 1931.

London was wild in those weeks. The torpid Englishman could be heard, in the underground, the buses, in Leadenhall Street, in Maiden Lane and in Oxford Street, coming out of warehouses, pubs, and offices, walking to lunch, waiting for the tram and standing in the gutter, discussing not only politics, but the currency. This had even been going on in the months of July and August and one felt that this race of century plants was waking from one of its cyclical sleeps. Meanwhile, in the cafés round the Baltic, the Royal Exhange, and in the dives off Throgmorton Street and its associated alleys, many schemes both rich and wild were heard for keeping the pound on gold, many speculations were made about the amount of gold in the great Bastille in London's heart, the Bank of England.

On September eighteenth (this was the last act, not the first), it was announced that the stabilization of the pound was threatened because of naval unrest and the report that a general election was imminent. The conversion of British funds into foreign exchange was attacked by the press. People talked of a foreign conspiracy and ‘attacks from abroad' on the pound, Englishmen always having the strange illusion that (far from their living coming from abroad), harpy nations and bandit races are always trying to rifle the boundless treasure of the little island. On the twentieth the pound was pegged, the possibility of its going off gold everywhere announced: the pound was then below gold shipping point. On the twenty-first the Bank of England suspended the gold standard and immediately the congratulations started and the suspension was ‘seen by bankers as a first step towards the solution of our economic problems.' Nevertheless, there was a violent reaction in Berlin, Vienna, Copenhagen, Tokyo. The stock exchanges closed in many parts of the world till values were readjusted. The congratulations went on, to cover this and stop a panic. ‘The attempt to stabilize at prewar parity led to the European economic situation. Now prosperity would come on.' J. P. Morgan called the suspension a ‘hopeful event,' a ‘second step towards financial recovery.' Hoover spoke of the ‘good' to come.