House of All Nations

by Christina Stead

  My Dear Mr. Honfleur,

  I am obliged to leave Paris to attend to my business in the Netherlands, earlier than I had planned and thus, to my great regret, will miss the debate in the Chamber of Deputies on the recognition of the Spanish Republic. I had especially wanted to hear your voice, not only because to an old socialist and humanitarian like myself, your rich understanding and mellow statesmanship are an illumination of our present problems, but also because I know that you are for the immediate recognition of Spain and that is what I wish to see, both as a French patriot and a republican. As we have bound forever to ourselves, with ties of respect and affection, the American people alien in race and language, we should bind more closely the Spanish people, our kin. Amongst the preoccupations of a copious commercial life, this is still my first hope. They say that this will be a somber year for our side, but it will be lightened by the new day in Spain: I cannot despair. I will wait upon you when I return from Amsterdam and trust that at some time, you will have a moment for me, when we can go over some perhaps quite elementary problems that are disconcerting me. Need I say that our meeting the other day was to me one of the most pleasant occurrences of my life? The very manner in which you state a dilemma is for me a flash of light and I have since pondered over the present situation from a new angle.

  Yours respectfully,

  Henri Léon

  ‘It’s good,’ said Henri Léon rubbing his hands. ‘Let’s think it over. You do me a favor, Alphen: you ask your girl to type it out double-space and we’ll look it over. My boy, you and I are partners in this. Don’t you see,’ Léon wheedled, ‘perhaps—’ he murmured mysteriously, ‘when I get sick of the grain business, I might go into politics, French politics. Now I couldn’t do without someone like you, a brilliant scholar, a good head, good language sense, good sense of men—now, I’m very poor on sizing men up. You see? You’re in along with me. The moment I saw you I said to myself, “This boy looks like luck!” And I’m luck, Michel, I’m your luck. I’m grateful and when Henri is grateful he shows it. Ask anybody. Well—h’m. Don’t ask anybody.’ He twinkled. He became pressing, ‘Now—’ he mumbled quickly, ‘got to see a man for dinner, from Bucharest, just come from London, Paganin, dinner,’ he smiled affably. ‘My boy, meet me in the Scribe at half past nine. We’ll have coffee, a good time—we’ll finish this letter. Eh? You’ll do that for me? And I’ll look after you, my boy.’

  ‘Well, you can give me five thousand francs and I’ll do it for you,’ said Alphendéry.

  ‘Five thousand francs? Of course, not much, not much at all.’ He hooked his stick over his arm, settled his hat on his head, straightened his back, ‘Well, got to get along. See you nine-thirty. So long. Thanks, thanks, my boy.’ Alphendéry got up and they bustled to the door. At the door Léon held him mysteriously. ‘I hear you’re going into the commodities business with two Germans. What is it? Can you trust Bertillon? He wouldn’t take my wheat schematism.’

  ‘It’s just commission business,’ explained Alphendéry.

  * * *

  ‘

  Scene Twenty-six: No Money in Working for a Living

  Well,’ said Michel Alphendéry to Jules, ‘Léon had one good crack last night: he says prosperity by repudiation is the new economics.’

  ‘Do you realize how rich we would be,’ Jules asked thoughtfully, ‘if we repudiated, Michel? The Dow-Jones average of New York prices is down to 121 as against 383 at the top of the boom in 1929. We’ve been selling short all round the world markets for six months. I’ve just been going over our entire position with William. Guess how much we’re worth.’

  ‘You mean bank deposits, clients’ equities, our gold abroad, the money we’ve cashed in recently, our equity in brokers abroad, guarantee funds in banks abroad for our branches—everything?’

  ‘No, not guarantee funds abroad. Do you know how much we could skip with?’

  ‘Do you mean everything in sight—without paying out the clients at all ?’

  ‘Ah ha.’

  ‘Let’s see: let me figure.’ After a few minutes’ penciling, Alphendéry ventured, ‘One hundred and fifty million francs—I’m not including clients’ bonds.’

  ‘Very close: 161,000,000 roughly. I say, Michel, that’s fair enough—if we had it clear and away! You could hide in some South American country, or South Africa or one of those places for a while until the shouting died down and then come out large as life. Everyone worships a successful thief. Why wait? We’ve got what we were waiting for!’

  ‘I don’t want to spend my life in hiding,’ said Alphendéry.

  ‘What do you care? Money has no country. Change your name and become a Chilean and join the Chilean Communist Party if that’s what’s worrying you. I’m serious, Michel. I’ve been figuring that it would pay us to just jump. What are we working for? There’s no profit in working for a living. We won’t always have this amount of money in the kitty from now on. Days will come when I’ll lose it in the market, clients will withdraw it. Perhaps a moratorium will come; war. Something will clean me out. Fellows make a fortune and end up with their pockets hanging out. Because they don’t know when the bell rings. The bell is ringing now. We little fellows can’t survive too long. The government wants to bleed us for taxes. We’re the goats when the deputies throw a sacrifice to the lambs. A raider has to get himself into the service of some big robber, like a Rhodes, or know when to retire if he’s working for himself. One of the two. Mercury himself would have to work for De Wendel today. De Wendel hasn’t a fifty-year run! I’m darned lucky to have survived twenty years. It’s because of my great streak of luck. Why shouldn’t I run away with the cash register while I can have the best fun out of it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alphendéry, ‘did you ever hear of extradition laws? You want to make another one hundred million in Chile? Under what name? People will inquire into your antecedents.’

  ‘No. People ask no questions of a profit.’

  ‘Yes? And you’re so nondescript! No one would ever recognize you! And the South Americans who come round here like flies in summer! How many people in France are afflicted with this particular bright idea every year—lawyers, petty bankers, trustees? Our countrymen have damned long memories, Jules. If you come back after twenty years, they’d have you in custody when you touched Marseilles. There’s no statute of limitations here for principals. What makes you so dumb, Jules?’

  ‘I’m not stupid, Michel. I’ve been thinking this thing out for a long time. I’ve been in business twenty-five years, ever since I was fourteen. I’ve always known this day was coming. I never had to learn: I knew when I started. Now the day has come. This is the highest I’ve ever been and perhaps ever will be. Who knows? Things may turn upwards. I can only make money when the rest of the world is going to pieces. I’m like the pickpocket who gets his big chance in an earthquake. I’ve got to slip away before the buildings fall in on me and before the police are reorganized. They’ll never let me make the final scoop, don’t you see! They’ll close the stock exchanges first. Say, if we want to make money for ourselves, all we want, you and I, is one room with two chairs, one table, and a telephone. We’ll take a little room somewhere, change our names and speculate for ourselves. Perhaps—we could even take a room with a chap like Léon, or across the corridor, call ourselves a grain firm and make money. No one would look for us there in a thousand years. Léon would never give us away: he’d like to be in the conspiracy. You read up all the dope and we get to work and make money. Say a year or so of that and then we can take a holiday. We’ll work out a plan of campaign together. I don’t want to take the risk of business any more. Why the overhead? Why the façade? We’ve got their cash, haven’t we? Who wants to be in high finance? How long do dynasties of dough last? Let’s be rich and safe.’

  ‘That’s against nature,’ laughed Alphendéry. ‘You mean you wouldn’t pay any of the clients?’

 
‘Not if I slid out. They’ll start the hue and cry anyhow, whether you take one per cent or one hundred per cent. Why should you leave anything lying around for the liquidators? Pay the employees six months and they’ll stand by you. They know I’m a good boss.’

  Alphendéry tapped his lower lip, considered pouting, dubious, not wishing to push Jules to an extremity. ‘It’s not worth it, Jules. We have enough lawyers around the place to be able to stage-manage a normal bankruptcy. You can pay off the biggest clients, Plowman, the Comtesse de Voigrand, the Princesse Delisle-Delbe, the Comtesse de Marengo—especially that type, they’re the most dangerous—Carrière, anyone likely to be vindictive and after you’ve got enough abroad for yourself, say, fifty million francs, you can pay the smaller clients so much per cent. You see, the smaller clients are only keeping small accounts here in any case, sort of courtesy. Then no one will be after you. You won’t necessarily have to live in exile. You can always buy off the cops or the judges for a small bankruptcy; there need be no tom-toms and you won’t face Devil’s Island if you go away and return. Another thing, you can’t be made a political stunt, for you are neither a big crook nor a robber of widows, orphans, and concierges. That’s infinitely more sensible. It lacks drama; but drama is expensive.’

  ‘If I only get away with fifty million!’ said Jules disappointed. ‘Only one-third! Ph!’

  ‘Don’t forget,’ warned Alphendéry, ‘that no bank could stand an inspection of its books and so they’re only too glad to cry “untouchable” and make you an example.’

  ‘And we lose one hundred and ten million francs, for them,’ complained Jules.

  ‘It’s true that’s not much for a man, his wife, and children to live on,’ lamented Alphendéry. ‘It’s only the monthly salary of a ticket collector on the AB bus line on the boulevards for fifty-two hundred years. What you need is enough for sixteen thousand years; or are you going to live as long as from four times pre-Glozel to now? I can see that. Couldn’t you tighten your belt and draw in the life line and go through a decent form of bankruptcy and try to live on sixty million francs? I’ll meet you for ten million. Now, for a man in your profession, at your age, the expectation of life is—say thirty years, maybe longer, but say thirty years. That gives you two million francs a year if you just live on your capital and don’t invest it. If you invest it in rentes françaises three per cent at seventy-five, you will get four per cent net yield or 2,400,000 per annum while preserving your capital intact …’

  ‘It’s not enough,’ said Jules. ‘If I only took sixty million and left all that cash lying round the place, they’d investigate me from here to doomsday because they’d be convinced that a chap who could leave fifty million behind must have ten times that much put away. It doesn’t pay. The only thing is to clear the shelves. I pay the employees six months’ salary each, or, in other words, I simply give them the sack, because I’m going out of business. They get a chance to get another job and the working-class sheets can’t howl, either. I just worked out with William what it would cost, say, at the rate of one hundred and fifty thousand monthly in the main office, bright day, dark day. Leave the branches to themselves, all the branch mangers—they’re all rich sons of guns—and I’m willing to take the moral blame—“that pirate Jules Bertillon let us all down”—you know. Every investigation committee—if it came to that—would exonerate them.

  ‘Well, salaries here, about one million francs, not more. Of course, I’m overcalculating. Raccamond gets twelve thousand monthly, but you could pay him half of that and then I’m a fairy godmother to him, he’s only just come in. And he can’t yell, because he arranges his salary so that he seems to get six thousand francs monthly, only, here: the other six thousand he draws, on overdraft, from a little company he’s formed for himself abroad—or he had formed before, from the time he was with Claude Brothers. I don’t know. At any rate, his official rate is six thousand, and if I pay him six months at that everyone will say he’s well treated: so his is thirty-six thousand only. Then our golden parasites, Jean de Guipatin, Arturito MacMahon, and so forth: those ginks owe us money. We’ve got money coming to us from the estates of old Comte Lucé, Hervé is overdrawn sixty thousand francs, Tony owes us some money, Pedro de Silva-Vizcaïno probably owes us money, Zurbaran owes me twenty thousand francs. Partiefine owes me a couple of thousand, there are the little businesses I support, say twenty thousand owing to me in all, on I.O.U.’s. In all about three or four millions of francs, which I won’t collect but which will be counted as credits and can serve as a sop for the liquidators. You would have to lose that.’

  ‘Don’t forget, Jules, one black mark: don’t forget what you owe for income taxes. You’ve been buying off the inspector for ten years. When they get on to you they’ll be ready to serve you up Guiana smoking hot. The government as a first claimant would have no mercy on you. The clients’ shrieks are going to be nothing to the government. The government is the meanest of creditors. You owe them, for ten years that you’ve been dressing the returns, with taxes, interest, penalties, about eight million francs. You’ve got to leave the government that amount, Jules.’

  ‘Do you think I’m crazy?’ asked Jules, in horror. ‘Eight million sous is too much. For what? For a rival bunch of gangsters who are always trying to put tacks under my tires? Don’t be soft.’

  Alphendéry considered for a minute. ‘Jules, it seems a pity. You have a big pull with the moneyed immigration. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are only the first forerunners of a wealthy German immigration, especially of Jews if things go bad in Germany. Jews don’t forget that France was their liberator, despite the Dreyfus case. With me here you could get their money. Why, you’re only just beginning! Let’s look at the branches in the Côtes d’Azur et d’Argent, in Monte Carlo, in Zürich, in Brussels, Liverpool, Antwerp, Amsterdam. You’ve only had them running a few years, some only a few months—like the Antwerp one. They’re not on their feet yet! With war coming there will be immense speculation in commodities: there is a fortune to be made in all those cities—with immigrant money, scare deposits, commodity accounts, speculation in American shares (when things go up), transfers to London. Now is the time for a great, but solid, pyramiding. You have only begun, Jules.

  ‘What will you do, if you quit now? You’ll go and stew for a few months, then you won’t be able to bear the tedium and you’ll start again in some tinpot way, after wrecking one of the finest networks in the world. We get a freshet of alien money here every time there’s bad political news in Germany and America. Perhaps America won’t get any of it. Europeans are funny people. America is, in the minds of most of us, a land of gangsters, racial terror, strike war. Now London looks shaky. Who would invest in Germany with the threat of the National Socialists? Confidence has been shaken in all the good old institutions. Rothschild no longer means florid money, incalculable foresight, the Bank of England no longer thrills bank clerks, the Rock of Gibraltar will get malaria next. You’re going against your own principles: this is the age to make money in. Look at your situation! You’re one of the few men in the world who had the courage to say, “This is an age of going-down and I’m betting on disaster,” and who actually went and pyramided on disaster and who has won! Why give up? You are born for this age! You are brilliant, Jules. You can be another Rothschild.’

  Jules turned restlessly, as if with a small fever. ‘I think you’re arguing for respectability, Michel. I’ve always known that, at bottom, despite your communism and all, you’re very respectable. The Rhineland counselors, lawyers, and writers you come from are rustling stiff and starched in your blood. Admit it: you don’t like to go bankrupt!’

  Michel vigorously nodded. ‘No, it’s not that. Why don’t you go away for a week and think it over, Jules? You’re not strong. Paris in spring is getting you.’

  ‘I’m all right. But I have a hunch.’

  ‘It’s not that I’m respectable, Jules. But I have to earn my living and th
is is the only thing I know how to do. Who will employ me if my name’s associated with a scandalous runaway, a dubious bankruptcy, or a notorious embezzlement?’

  ‘Everyone!’ said Jules heartily. ‘People only give money to thieves; they respect them. If you ran away you’d be courted: they’d only despise you if they found out you didn’t steal any money. If you ever do skip, don’t forget to let everyone think your old overcoat in moth balls is really lined with ill-gotten gold. You’ll get invited everywhere. Besides, who says you’re going to look for a job? Won’t you be with me? You’re not thinking of leaving me, Michel? You wouldn’t do that? We’re together in everything, aren’t we? You’re not really serious about this socialist boloney?’

  Michel wanted to evade an answer, for he did not intend to run away with Jules. He did not intend to leave Adam Constant, Jean Frère, and his other friends. The idea of leaving them and of having them despise him was something he could not face. He fought for them.

  ‘But Jules, I don’t understand! Only the other day you were full of sparks, bringing in a list of really brilliant schemes and now you want to throw the works in the fire! What has happened? Have you lost on the Paris bourse? Treviranus, Cristopoulos are always around here. I saw them this morning. Have you lost money?’

  ‘No: I’ve been making money. It’s unreal. That’s why I want to scram. Now is the time to shut up shop. The Credit-Anstalt is gone, Rothschild is bunged, everyone expects war every week, Léon is talking of selling his business and retiring to Spain or the south of France, even America doesn’t seem to be able to collect the money owing to her: she hasn’t the power any more, or she’s afraid of putting the whole world into bankruptcy. Don’t you see the time is close when they simply won’t let us make money any more? When creditors can’t collect debts—’