The Senator, a large tanned man from New Mexico, greeted Marcus with exquisite politeness, if not warmth, and held out his hand to Albert. They shook. Albert and the Senator eyed one another: the tall self-contained English Jew and the broad-shouldered Senator, who was equally at ease in Congress as on his five-thousand-acre ranch; the two men belonged to the same species, but a different breed.
‘Come, Senator, can’t you persuade the fellows on the Federal Reserve Board to relax the regulations on foreign loans? Make all our lives a little easier. I mean, now that we’re all on the same side, it’s in all of our interests,’ said Marcus with a nudge and a smile full of bonhomie.
The Senator grimaced as though his drink had turned sour. He looked at Albert as he answered, not Marcus. ‘I’d be perfectly content to relax ’em, friend. But it’s in American interests, not the British. I want the American Federal Reserve to take the place of the Bank of England as the kingpin of finance.’
Albert winced. ‘I appreciate your honesty, if not your sentiments, Senator.’
The Senator acknowledged him with a nod. ‘I have more honesty, which I think you’ll like about as much.’ He turned to Marcus. ‘Leave me to talk to your friend for a minute, Marcus.’
Marcus smiled and walked away, immediately greeting fellow guests.
Albert gestured for Senator Morris to continue.
‘Marcus Ullman is kidding himself. Americans aren’t gonna invest one billion of their hard-earned dollars into a foreign fund. They don’t trust foreigners, or their money. You won’t raise a billion dollars. Hell, I don’t know if you’ll do half a billion.’
Albert felt his colour rising. ‘Everyone has listened to us with the greatest sympathy.’
The Senator snorted. ‘Sympathy makes the door easy to open, but once inside, finance looks to hard facts. We don’t like war bonds. They’re risky. My sympathy means I’ll gladly pour you a drink, but it doesn’t mean I’m giving you my money.’
The Senator drained his glass and signalled to a sailor to bring him another.
‘That’s not true. I like you, Captain Goldbaum, and I appreciate your service. I will give you two thousand dollars for your fund, but that’s charity, not investment. When I give to charity, I don’t expect that money back; on an investment I want a return. If I lend you more than a few thousand dollars, I sure as hell want it back. America has lent you a tidy sum. We’re going to want it back, and we’re going to make damn sure that you pay your debts.’
Albert started to run through the terms of the loan, but the Senator held out his hand, halting him mid-flow.
‘No, Captain Goldbaum. You are not listening. I’m telling you that America has entered your war because we have lent you so much money, we can’t afford for you to lose and fail to repay us.’
Albert shook his head in disbelief. ‘You had to declare war because of Zimmermann. The man offered your own state to Mexico as a spoil.’
‘That was quite something,’ said the Senator, clenching his fists. ‘But make no mistake, Zimmermann was an excuse. Many of my colleagues disagree with me, but our decision to enter the war wasn’t a moral one. It wasn’t because of Zimmermann, or German U-boats murdering Americans, it was because of money. The object in having war, and preparing for war, is to make money.’
Albert looked at him with profound distaste, but the Senator shrugged.
‘I am not saying it is a good or decent thing, only stating how it is. Human suffering and the sacrifice of human life are necessary, but Wall Street considers only the dollars and cents. We are going into war upon the command of gold.’
Albert disagreed fervently with the Senator, as did most Americans he knew. They were appalled by the Senator’s belief, and were adamant that this was a moral war, and yet the Senator was certainly correct about one thing. The American public did not want to buy their foreign bonds. Marcus used all his influence to persuade the House of Morgan to come in as a partner, but beyond Wall Street the American people would not invest.
Albert and Marcus abandoned hope of raising one billion dollars. Marcus’s ebullience began to ebb away. Albert wired Simon Grenville and Admiral Hall and, with regret, informed them that the House of Goldbaum, together with its partners at the House of Morgan and the Bank of Ullman, would only be willing to underwrite a loan for half a billion dollars; they could not hope to sell any more to the American public. Lord Goldbaum wired Albert, urging him to contract an equal share of the profit and risk as the two great American banks, but for the first time in his life Albert ignored his father’s instruction. He would protect his father’s legacy and his family, even against Lord Goldbaum’s orders. Humbled and with an unpleasant realisation that he was a supplicant, one morning in the Bank of Ullman’s palatial boardroom on Fifth Avenue he explained to Marcus and the directors of the House of Morgan that the House of Goldbaum could not underwrite a third share of the half-billion dollars. If the bond was not fully subscribed, the House of Goldbaum would sink under the debt. Even in better times they could not contemplate such an amount. Albert did not look at the men’s faces, but out of the window, where he glimpsed the last of the cherry blossom like scrunched-up lace.
‘So the House of Gold is only made of brass,’ said Marcus, a little cruelly.
Albert met his eye. ‘I will not risk more than the House can afford to lose.’
He was newly awakened to humility. His bank was a force in England, a gale that trembled the golden leaves in the City of London, but here in America it produced barely a squall. We were Kings of the Castle, thought Albert, but we didn’t notice that the island on which our castle sat was very small.
‘Our power in Europe came from the alliance of the Houses across the continent, but war has broken the union and, unable to draw on Berlin or Vienna, the London House’s capacity is severely limited,’ said Albert.
The others listened with polite interest, but the facts were irrefutable. The House of Goldbaum could not afford its share.
Even if the war ended, Albert began to doubt whether the House of Goldbaum could rise to its former position. And even if it could, it would be dwarfed by the reach of the American banks, swollen larger still with British gold. Albert found himself wishing they had opened a New York House fifty years ago, but back then they had believed in both the eternal God and the everlasting dominance of Europe and the Old World. They had sealed their fate two generations ago.
The issue was presented during a sixty-day offering. Six large munitions manufacturers bought two hundred million dollars, but by the end of the summer nearly a hundred and fifty million dollars remained unsubscribed. Albert stopped sleeping at night, no longer tormented by visions of Greta’s rejection but by the prospect of the vast liabilities to which the House of Goldbaum would still be exposed. Marcus invited him to dinner at the Riverview mansion, and Albert went on a hot August night, churning with self-disgust – he should have limited the family liability even further. They dined on foie gras and lemon sole stuffed with lobster, paired with a chilled pre-revolutionary Dom Pérignon, but Albert tasted nothing. It was as hot and airless as the dining room at home. He glanced around, dreading the moment when he must return to the original, smaller room in Temple Court and consider the disaster of the loan with his father. The disappointment was not merely personal; it spread outwards, cancerous. Albert had failed the House of Goldbaum, which had failed the Bank of England and, in turn, England herself.
Albert looked up to see that Marcus was waiting for him to answer a question to which he had not listened.
‘I’m terribly sorry, Marcus. Would you mind saying that again?’
‘I asked how much of a loss can the Goldbaum Bank absorb at present?’
Albert sighed and considered. ‘Not more than two million. If we sell the unsubscribed bonds now at a discount, I am not entirely sure how the bank will manage the loss.’
Albert was aware that Marcus was watching him closely.
‘The Bank of Ullman will take upon i
tself the balance for future distribution,’ said Marcus levelly.
Albert’s instinct was to decline the offer. He was too embarrassed to accept. It was to admit to his rival that they were beaten. Yet the Bank of Ullman could absorb a temporary loss, and offer the bond again at a time when the market was more favourable. The House of Goldbaum could not.
‘Thank you, I accept,’ said Albert.
Marcus raised a glass of champagne, and Albert joined him. As he drank, Albert tasted only defeat.
ROVNO, UKRAINE, SEPTEMBER
Otto ran out of cheques, so he started writing them on any scraps of paper he could find: envelopes, pages from his notepad, the wrapper of a tin of pilchards. Every two weeks he wrote out another and handed it to Dr Pytor Makarovich, who placed it reverently inside his jacket pocket. Otto was taken aback at the efficiency with which the cheques were cashed, although he did not admit to Karl that he had ever harboured doubts.
‘It doesn’t matter what I write it on,’ he explained to Karl. ‘A cheque isn’t a particular piece of paper, but an agreement between the writer and his bank that it will pay the amount stated from his account, when the cheque is presented. I could inscribe it on the side of a cow and it would still be valid, as long as the Goldbaum Bank accepts it is my intention that the money be paid.’
Otto spoke in a mixture of croaking whispers, signs and scribbled remarks. He wrote the increasingly expensive cheques partly to secure notebooks to communicate, Karl being the only person who could decipher the hiss that Otto produced when he placed his hand over the hole in his throat. The bullet and scar tissue had quite destroyed his vocal cords. The rest of the money purchased more digestible food – most of the prisoners dined on Russian cabbage soup and black bread – and, most important of all, Karl’s presence in the officers’ ward. Otto argued as best he could that Karl was an officer, a junior ensign, no mere soldier to be put on the teplushka train to Siberia. Since the overthrow of the Tsar, the number of transportations had increased. The fact that they had been captured together helped Karl’s case, but Dr Pytor Makarovich made it quite clear to Otto that he understood they were lying. He, personally, didn’t mind in the least, but his silence had a price. Otto added it to the fortnightly bill.
As officers, Otto and Karl were given the freedom to leave the ward and stroll around the gardens. The afternoons were pleasantly warm and the two men liked to sit on a bench beside the curve of the river and watch the gnats swirl above the surface of the water. They knew that if they followed the river, soon it would lead them to the front, which lurked upstream like some foul, despicable monster, its teeth snagged with blood and death. Friendships during war were as intense and fragile as eggshell, destroyed in a single moment. Otto’s memories of so many things belonged peculiarly to him. For so long he had not met anyone who knew Greta, or who had walked through the orangery in the great house on Heugasse. He clung to Karl, the boy from Vienna.
Yet now the autumn colours were starting, and the leaves on the trees were turning to shades of crimson and honey. Russia might be in the midst of a revolution, but this was something they knew, rather than experienced. The portraits of the Tsar had been ripped down from the hospital walls, and each evening the prisoners were no longer cajoled into reciting a prayer for the good health of the royal family, but only for the brilliant success of the Russian Empire. The hospital was an unlikely refuge. It might lack bandages, dressings, medicines and food, and have a paucity of doctors (Pytor Makarovich was one of the very few, and his greatest skill was in extracting money, not shrapnel), but here at least one was left in peace. But each day, as men improved, they were loaded onto the snaking teplushka trains and sent into Mother Russia. None came back. There were only whispers – hundreds of thousands of men dying in the snow as they built railway tracks, dressed solely in rags; feverish heat in summer, and swarms of mosquitoes spreading malaria amongst the winter’s survivors. The hospital was an island. War crackled on one side of the river, while the malevolent trains were always waiting at the platform on the opposite bank.
Otto and Karl understood this was stolen time. Sometimes each man wondered privately whether any of it was real. It was too serene, the days warm and the evenings mild. The rain came softly, stirring the branches of the trees so that the leaves shuddered and rustled like paper, while the birds woke them at dawn with melodious, unfamiliar song. They had found a private scrap of paradise. But there was another intrusion into the idyll that Otto could not ignore. He suspected he was dying. He refused to tell Karl because, if spoken aloud, it would spoil everything. Knowledge in this case was a rotten apple that would infect all the others.
Karl took pleasure in each moment. He did not worry that it could not last. He had lived for years as the Kanalrat, when he snatched each joy as he found it – he was good at living in the present tense. He guessed that Otto was dying, but he would not risk distressing his friend by telling him. He recognised the signs from earlier days – the suppurating wound, the slow shrinking of flesh; already Otto reached for Karl’s arm when they walked together. In time, Otto would start to shuffle, and his skin would stretch tight and yellow across his skull. Or perhaps not; Karl held out hope. Otto was not like the men he had known before. He commanded all of them unthinkingly – Austrian, German, even the Russian guards did not insult him. Perhaps Otto Goldbaum could command death himself.
For now, the two men savoured the afternoon sunlight cascading yellow and gold through the leaves, and watched as a fish, lithe and liquid, pierced the water’s surface and jumped in a smooth arc, the light making its silver skin glint like metal.
‘Let’s pretend we’re just two men fishing,’ said Karl.
‘I could attempt to get us a rod and line,’ mouthed Otto, uncertain, but willing to try anything to please his friend.
Karl shook his head. ‘No. I couldn’t face bludgeoning anything. I’ve had quite enough of death. Even that of a fish.’
Otto laughed without making a sound. Karl was from another Vienna, but Vienna nonetheless. It was an inversion of his own city, one glimpsed in a blackened mirror.
‘I told everyone in the hostels that my address was the Goldbaum Palace, or just beneath.’
Otto smiled, having heard this before.
‘If only I’d known,’ he mouthed.
Karl gave a snort. ‘And what then? What would you have done? Invited me up for brandy and cigars?’
Otto did not reply. It was perfectly true; the Otto from before would have done nothing. War had raised Karl up and pulled Otto down, not quite to the sewer tunnels, but almost. It was only Otto’s cheque book that kept them out.
‘The palace always gave away the best food. Better than any of the soup kitchens. Especially after parties,’ added Karl, grinning with satisfaction at the recollection.
Otto nodded, gesturing for Karl to go on. He loved to hear anything about home, especially when their Viennas overlapped. It was such a relief to be stranded in the middle of White Russia with a fellow who had stepped through the golden gates to his house, even if it was to queue for bread rather than to dance.
‘The last time I went, there was some fancy party in the palace. A wedding or some such. There were flaming torches and music. And I got a double portion. A pretty girl with plaits gave it to me.’
Otto thought for a moment and then clapped his hands with sudden exuberance. ‘My sister’s wedding party,’ he said, forgetting in his excitement to put his hand over the hole in his throat. ‘How remarkable that you were there! You remember it, too.’
In that moment it did not matter that Karl only remembered standing in a line of hungry men and being handed two wedges of bread by a girl with plaits in her hair; he had been there. For Otto, it solidified his mirage of home. On that night, her last in Vienna, Greta had paddled in one of the ponds, and she had cajoled him into joining her. Perhaps at that very moment, just around the corner, Karl had been accepting his soup. It felt almost as if they were old friends who had known e
ach other a long time, without somehow being aware of it. Otto was immensely comforted.
He was growing tired, but the warmth on his face was drowsy and pleasant. ‘And what would you like to learn today?’ he signed.
Each afternoon he asked Karl the same question. He’d explained on their first trip to the bench that he only knew two subjects: astronomy and finance.
‘Money,’ said Karl, as always. ‘What use are the stars to me? I used to live underground. I can manage just fine without them.’
‘Very well,’ mouthed Otto, amused. Taking out his notebook, he began to sketch diagrams to show the rise and fall of stocks, the right time to buy and sell. Karl listened with fierce acuity. Starting to tire, Otto wrote:
You have a head for figures. You’re like me. Numbers make sense to you. It’s a shame you won’t try astronomy.
‘I told you. Stars can’t make me rich.’ Karl stretched out his legs and yawned. With rest and food, amazingly, his foot was healing. Otto had paid Pytor Makarovich to delay the amputation. They kept it bandaged, and Karl remembered to limp and groan, so no one suggested he was well enough to be loaded aboard the teplushka train and sent to Siberia and the lower depths of hell.
Otto glanced at Karl. The boy was starting to tan. In the sunshine the rough brown of his hair shone with a hint of gold. There were freckles across his nose and cheeks. Otto reached out and traced them with his finger.
‘The Goldbaum constellation,’ he whispered. ‘The five sons sent out across Europe to find their fortunes.’
‘Does that grant me entry to the family?’ asked Karl. ‘If I’ve got their stars on my face?’
Otto chuckled and shook his head.
‘I keep telling you. Stars are bloody pointless.’
Otto was exhausted and suddenly fell asleep, leaning heavily on Karl’s shoulder. Karl remained quite still, listening to the whistle as Otto breathed. In an hour they would have to return for the daily meal. Karl dreaded mealtimes with a horror he hadn’t thought possible. He had to watch while Otto soaked tiny pieces of bread in milk or gravy and attempted to swallow them without choking. Frequently they lodged in his throat and would come up on a sea of mucus and vomit. It was a triumph when Otto succeeded in eating an entire slice of soggy bread.
House of Gold Page 38
