House of All Nations

by Christina Stead

  Zucchero had been purposely trained to uncontrollable passions, gambling, whoring, killing, and South American bullfighting: his race trained to waste and terror. He belonged to the highest South American, Paris, and London society, appeared at all the grand crushes, fancy-dress balls, charity banquets, broke duchesses’ hearts with his magnificent male beauty, was a friend of the then Prince of Wales, a great lover of country life. He was a member of the thoroughbred club to which Jules belonged and greatly admired the audacity and disorganization of Jules. He felt at home in Paris, the capital of the Latin race, though keeping to the resorts in which his idiosyncrasies were passed over with the tolerance accorded to vast landed wealth. He only went with the wilder young men, shunned contact with the reasonable portion of the French population, alien and cold to him. At home he buzzed and boomed, belonged to the small species of giant meat flies in bronze mail, who eat off the sweating brown backs of the natives: his power over human life gave him a grand fling and satisfied animal beauty. In intimate society with Jules and other chic young fellows, he was sweet as a robust broad-faced child, full of unprovoked horseplay as a Rhodes scholar, wild and senseless, but cunningly ferocious in his rages.

  The bag flew out of Brossier’s hand and scattered over the stairs. Zurbaran laughed, but at the money, not at the clerk. For him the clerk no more existed than the statement of account he sometimes received, never read, and always lost, in the wind, the sweeping, the wastepaper basket, something that the world sent his way but entirely out of his cosmogony. The black-diamond eyes of Prince Hal of the desert shot out a flash; he scooped a handful up, laughed, put it in his pocket. The clerk said, ‘Please, Mr. Zurbaran’ respectfully. But Zucchero had filled some of those bags of gold coins in the safe and never withdrew them. ‘That is for a wedding present.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Zurbaran plunged his hand back in his pocket. ‘I don’t know how much—take it all, there!’ He flung half his pocketful of change back on the stairs, turned and bounded upstairs.

  Raccamond stopped him on his florid way: it seemed a bloated goat-cheese merchant trying to sell his goods to an Oriental despot whose diamonds and daggers jingled.

  Zurbaran was oblivious of people but when spoken to showed that he was aware humanity existed. In this he differed from a certain section of rich South Americans who, sent to English snob schools, combine the cruelty of their own system with the cold-mannered sadism of England. Zurbaran stopped and tried to collect his wits, sketched a smile, a rock-salt cleft in the dark sand of his face, his eyes, like splendid and voracious eagles, perched in niches in the cliff-forehead, above which dark plumes grew.

  Urbain Voulou, great, golden flabby-dabby, lounged out of the customers’ room and benignly looked over his chicken yard. Aristide gave him a man-eating glance which he did not see and would never have appreciated. Urbain Voulou still got twelve thousand francs monthly, the salary he drew in the days of the American bull market, when fortunes were won and doubled in their board room weekly. Jules was too kind and believed too much in his grand coup to take it out on the customers’ men yet. But Urbain’s customers had mostly died out, been pauperized, been sold out through lack of margin, been repatriated by their families or their embassies, taken to sponging, art. Urbain was humble now, whereas in the old days he had been lordly; his commissions had shrunk to hundred-franc notes. He did not know what had happened. When the market went up a couple of points for a couple of days, Urbain began again to unfold, roll in and out with sea-gait, laugh at pessimists, recommend everyone to buy—the corner had been turned; but when the market went down, he relapsed at once into his credulous, helpless humility, was nice to everyone, contradicted no one, said in a humble deep voice, ‘Things are bad, Comtesse: you oughtn’t to invest.’

  He had a few clients who stuck to him for his goodness and his belief in the benevolence of nature and his ability to drink everyone to a standstill in any of the smart, sporting bars. His little wife was saving bank notes meanwhile against a rainy day.

  Aristide saw him take out a fifty-franc note and give it to Armand Brossier for his collection. ‘Calf’s head,’ he said between his teeth.

  Hastily threading his way through the crowd, with a loose cloak, a bowler hat, and a black leather bag came Maître Rodolphe, a lawyer he had met on another day in his career of vicissitudes. He came about the Wades’ case: the Wades were Urbain’s clients in the palmy days. They were now involved in a suit and countersuit with the bank. The bank was suing Wade for seven hundred thousand francs odd, an overdraft run up progressively, because Wade was rich and smiling, lived on the Côte d’Azur, ran a yacht, dressed his wife at Schiaparelli. He now refused to pay entirely. But Lucienne Wade, the wife, once a cabaret singer, had one hundred thousand francs in an account in the bank. She demanded payment of it and when Jules Bertillon refused to pay, she brought suit against him. They found (what they should have inquired about in the first place) that Lucienne, having had a heap of money when Wade married her, had had her marriage contract drawn up with a separate dower agreement.

  Jules, too lazy, too sanguine, had always refused to get a release on Lucienne’s account: they were so unbusinesslike, they would never cheat him. Wade’s letters showed how unbusinesslike he was in fact—friendly scraps written on paper from here, there, and everywhere:

  Madrid: ‘Dear Jules, I have your letter asking me for the money. I am up a tree just now but you may be sure I’m thinking of you. Yours ever, Dédé.’

  Pontresina: ‘Dear Old Pal, You have been frightfully decent to me. I’m expecting my ship to come in any day and then I’ll drop you a note. Yours ever, D. W.’

  Aix-les-Bains: ‘Dear Jules, One of these days I may need your friendship, so you may be sure I won’t let you down. Yours ever, D.’

  And another from the Negresco, Nice: ‘Dear Jules, I’m flat broke, if you want the lowdown on your old comrade Dédé. You couldn’t send five hundred francs, could you? You can take it from me, our accounts are always in my mind. Yours ever, André.’

  A specimen from the Westminster, Le Touquet: ‘Dear Jules, Making money hand over fist: you come along and break the bank in your usual style. Lucienne is dying to see you. Yours ever. (P.S. Lucienne wants about five thousand francs. I haven’t bothered to stick in a check. Be a good fellow.)’

  When Jules’s lawyer saw these documents, he sighed and said to Alphendéry (who conducted Jules’s legal business), ‘Never, never in my life have I seen an institution run like this: it’s lunatic! What’s the object? It would be so easy—well, what can one do? I’ll do my best: I’ll write him a letter but I’m afraid you won’t get it. Wade is a thief, with intent, of course, but there is only the letter of the law.’

  Maître Rodolphe, a man with the precision, cynicism, and sophistication of Talleyrand, came up.

  ‘The whole suit is based on fraud and iniquity,’ Alphendéry in forensic ardor declared, standing in Bertillon’s room, legs apart, under the great luster. ‘How can a man of your professional stature, Maître Rodolphe, urge it? How can you argue such a cause?’

  Maître Rodolphe was a bullet, five feet, one inch, one hundred and eighty pounds, head a bullet, body a bullet, fat, so neatly dressed that he seemed one piece, talking in machine-gun style.

  ‘It is an unjust claim,’ said Maître Rodolphe. ‘I can admit it here since if you repeat it, I can deny it. I am a blackmailer, my clients are blackmailers. But there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t plant shame in my heart. No, sirs, one and all. To allow the overdraft without a guarantee, without a release, was an act of folly … People like my clients live on folly. I live on them. There you have it in a nutshell … If equity and human, natural reason were allowed there would be no law, there would be no lawyers. Anybody who tries that is hounded out of our profession, I assure you! Oh, I assure you it has been tried! President Magnaud, for example … I know, Mr. Alphendéry, that Mr. Wade borrowed nearly three-
quarters of a million francs from Mr. Bertillon. I grant he borrowed it without the intention of ever paying back a centime. I submit that my clients are persons who live on just such technicalities. I have seen them at work. But I assure you they usually have to work harder for it!’ He was not laughing: he was putting his views seriously.

  ‘I know, Mr. Alphendéry, as you have eloquently said, that Mr. Bertillon is a good man, a kind man, an amiable character, who advanced this money, as he has advanced a great deal of money, out of the rash geniality of his nature, but, sirs, Mr. Bertillon behaved like a philanthropist, not like a banker, like an impressionable humanitarian, not like a man of sense, like a friend, sirs, not like a man of business. In other words, he opened a bank and behaved like a benevolent asylum. And I’ve seen benevolent asylums which—oh, la, la!—in short, he behaved like a fool. There is no other word for it. What do you expect me to do? No, you cannot beat me! Believe me now and save a lot of time and money. Your time, Mr. Bertillon, ought to be devoted to banking, not to lawsuits. Your name appears too often, I tell you as a friend, in law lists. Stick to banking or take up litigation as a profession. I tell you this, which is naturally against my interests, because, sir, I think you will be perpetually robbed otherwise. Not that it is my business. The contrary. But here and now, I will beat you. You will lose the one hundred thousand and another sum besides.’

  ‘What Maître Rodolphe says is only sense,’ said Alphendéry. ‘Then, let us buy you off, Maître Rodolphe. What will make it worth your while? Twenty-five thousand francs? That is what you are going to get from the Wades, I calculate. And then—are they quick payers? We’ll make you out a check now. It will pay you to take thirty thousand—in notes, say, rather—and save your time and trouble. What do you say to that?’

  ‘I would rather do it,’ Rodolphe smiled. ‘It is a petty case, although it is quite watertight; you haven’t a chance, sirs, against me. I am inexpugnable, my dear sirs. But what does it benefit us in the long run? I will then have to work on some other case equally nauseous from the purely human viewpoint. The Wades will divine that I have been bought and will go off to another lawyer. They don’t lack here. They’ll insult me, injure my reputation—for I work mostly among such persons, they are no worse, rather better, than the average. And think of me, Mr. Alphendéry. The Wades (I can admit it, you know it) are immensely rich—villas, yachts, Madame in the great Rallyes, at the Bal des Petits Lits Blancs, et cetera. She’s a pretty whore, he an elegant ruffian; they drink, dance, sleep with, are seen in, the world … And you will keep on buying off lawyers at thirty thousand? No, it is cheaper to let me run the affair on for a few months. I’ll sting you as hard as I can, for it’s my business, but it won’t be so expensive! Permit a remark as a friend: I am astonished at the way you do business. Protect yourselves, my dear sirs. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Good day!’

  ‘You see,’ said William: ‘Jules the lawsuit king scores another triumph. Another wash-leather bag gone to glory. Let’s set up our own legal department.’

  ‘Not so bad,’ cried Jules, ‘and put Alphendéry in charge; it’ll be cheaper.’

  ‘Nothing doing,’ protested Alphendéry. ‘A legal department and you’d sue the whole day long, on the principle that once you have a letterhead you must have a company incorporated to fit it. I know you, Jules. You take on a legal department and I resign.’

  Small in the sight and dreams of godlike men, Armand Brossier crawled about below with his wash-leather bag. Abernethy Gairdner smiled like a bloodless angel, declared in his pure voice whose echoes could be heard rolling round the building, ‘Of course, with pleasure. Good luck to the young lady.’

  There went the Hallers. Brossier smiled at the little trotting pair, one blonde and one dark, amiable, fat, pleasant. They had been to the bank for thirteen years to partake of its bourse services and now considered it only right to contribute something. Raccamond loved the Hallers in his unsmiling tormented soul for their solidity and their confidence in him and the way they valued his opinions which they had gratis, except for the dinners they gave Marianne and him, once a month, ever since he entered the bank.

  A delicate figure blacked itself into the great bank doorway, advanced with small weaving feet, a figure of negligent youthful elegance in light gray, with (as he came under the central glassed roof) a dark blue shirt, yellow tie, a figure that advanced rapidly but as in a dream, pushing its way through unresisting crowds. It stopped to speak anxiously to Armand Brossier and then, the light falling on the profile, Aristide remembered who it was, Pedro de Silva-Vizcaïno, forbidden entry to France, but once more in his old haunts. Aristide was startled and looked at the front door expecting to see the little capes of police agents already silhouetted there. A man wanted by the police, three times denied entry to France, walks freely into his favorite bank in Paris at midday, with all the world to see! But wealth, like genius, is to madness near akin. Pedro came upstairs by the secret stair, reached Bertillon’s room at a point down the corridor, walked into Jules’s office.

  Aristide heard the first words, ‘I went to your house first, Jules, and Tiqui is not there. Where is she?’ Where was Tiqui? Where, the guitar? Aristide erased himself from the frescoes of the upper story. God knows, the servant and bootlick of rich people should be more careful and cherish canaries, sick grandmothers, family ghosts, tombstones, pot plants, collections of butterflies and remedies for gonorrhea, if he is to succeed, but Aristide, in his troubles, had forgotten it entirely. He felt most depressed, saw himself a failure. ‘But,’ said Aristide to himself, ‘if you know men’s foibles, they have the foible of thinking you know them too well and they are weak with you.’

  Where was Tiqui? ‘The man on the way up,’ said Aristide to himself, ‘has to kiss not only every step on the ladder but also pinch in the trouser creases of the one on the steps above and also wipe off with his whiskers the droppings of their dogs. Nothing but envy, backbiting, sneers from the idle, lies from the spineless, petty jokes at his expense, hate, that was the internal history of every success. Nobody but the boss counts in a small affair like this: he has the money, he can withdraw it in a day (frightful thought), the reins are loosely held in his erratic hands and the general feeling is, “Go to hell, you’re only a rich man’s whim, the same as me!” At first I remembered every act, attitude, allusion, and at night rolled up mountains of such sand grains that took the breath from my lungs. But now—who can get back at them all? I was foolish. It is a question of who is the master. The canaille worship a master. A radical I am, but the royalists are right when they say, “Without a chief, no beauty in life, no order.” Would I obey a committee, stand rebuke and recall from a whole department? But with a single head I can grapple, breath to breath, hand to hand. Yes, that’s the secret: if you are head, they hate you more, love you more.’ Downstairs he saw a Spanish grandee pacing about. Aristide reflected, ‘Gold from Spain placed in Paris and gold from Paris placed in London and gold from London placed in a hole in a mountain in Switzerland and gold from Switzerland transferred to Oslo—and Bertillon was the clearinghouse, a sort of little London on the Seine … ’ A smile crossed Aristide’s face … Bertillon is a genius, fortune smiles: the golden hand of fate is on the tiller.

  ‘Always happy to know of a marriage,’ said old Richard Plowman, laughing and putting his hand in his pocket. ‘Here you are. My daughter’s only been married a few months. Perhaps you know the name, Johnny Arpels is her husband. You’ve heard of my daughter Anita? I suppose that soon—well, we won’t talk of that so soon … I know Mlle. Gentil very well—charming girl. Very intelligent. Remarkable. And who’s she marrying? I must see her. Which is her room?’

  When the count was made, Brossier netted one hundred and one francs from the clients (mostly due to Zurbaran’s lunatic broadcast), three hundred and fifty francs from the employees, and five thousand francs from Jules Bertillon. Alphendéry gave an Encyclopedia and was invited to the wedding.
The wedding was held in the church at Senlis (although both bride and bridegroom were atheists) to please the parents on both sides. But it was years since either of them had been to church and Alphendéry, the Alsatian Jew, student of ethnology, was the only one who knew the service: they followed his lead when it came to kneeling, rising or making a response.

  * * *

  Scene Fifteen: The Man with Cunard-colored Eyes

  It was a variable day, starting chilly and damp, with smoky-blue interludes and a midday warm and gray. There were bitter communist May 1st notices posted on the hoardings and fences, immediately covered up by moderate C.G.T. notices in pink. In two days there had been two arrests of alleged Soviet spies and there was general trouble and anxiety in the air. All the morning the desultory conversations in the bank had turned round the bad U.S. Steel report received late the night before (after the close of the market) and the two brokerage failures of the week, and the usual rumors were flying round of two bank failures expected within the succeeding few days. As many of the clients in the bank had small money interests in numerous countries, there were doleful faces about and Aristide Raccamond traveled moodily round the corridors looking for Alphendéry to give him his philosophy of the day. He had on a new pair of spectacles, large bridged over his large tapir nose, and he looked like a whole face of dough depending from the bridge of the glasses. Presently he came down and began earnestly persuading Dr. Jacques Carrière who had dropped in.