House of All Nations

by Christina Stead

  ‘When are you and Claire going to Geneva to release the gold?’ asked William in a low tone.

  ‘Next week end … I’ll tell you tonight. You’ll get the tickets. I’ll tell Jean de Guipatin to say I’ve gone to Deauville for a couple of days.’

  ‘I don’t like that cake-eater the way you do.’

  The old porter came in and William departed.

  Meanwhile Alphendéry had been extremely restless and unquiet and had nervous crises every day, sometimes fainting in the evening when he came from work. At the end of this week, the morning before Jules left for Geneva, Alphendéry, with crayon blues in all his hollows and lines, came in to say, ‘Jules, I think I’ll have to ask you either for a holiday or a release. The air of Paris is getting me down. Another thing is, I can’t go about openly to meetings and the like here, out of respect for the bank; and then anyone from Upper Rhine, Lower Rhine, and Moselle is suspect, especially watched by the police. My father and mother were German … that is, Alsatians under German rule! I think perhaps I’d better take leave of absence and then look for another berth. It’s only a question of political loves, not human loves. There’s no one I love more than you, Jules. But I feel I have no future in Banking.’

  Jules said soothingly, ‘Yes, I know, Michel. Anything you like. You can take a three months’ holiday and then leave. I’m sorry to see you go, but I know how you feel. A man at your—our age—has a right to change his destiny. I’m going to Deauville tomorrow; think over what you want to do, and we’ll talk it over when I come back.’

  ‘Thanks, Jules.’

  ‘Nothing to thank me for: on the contrary—’

  He said to William, ‘There’s something about old Michel: he’s positively psychic.’

  William said, ‘His mother! he worships her. He complains about her, but he’s crazy about her! He told me there was no one who could tell character from faces the way she could. She was famous for it.’

  Jules, who hated his mother, laughed elfishly. ‘She didn’t know his too well.’

  ‘You expect a mother to know her son? Well, for Michel, perhaps it’s better this way.’

  ‘As long as he gets out in time, or stays with us to the end: that’s what’s essential with his nature. He needs a coward’s excuse, or else to be pushed to the wall.’

  * * *

  Scene Sixty-nine: Léon’s Letter

  Alphendéry went up to Amsterdam. Léon, after hanging round the bank for a day or two, had not made his offer, and Alphendéry wanted to find out why. On the Saturday afternoon Léon had nothing to do. He bought a dozen newspapers, ordered some coffee, and imprisoned Alphendéry in his hotel suite while he talked to him, boasted, romanced, grew loud and tender by turns, all about himself. Alphendéry, worn out by a week of wrangling, stretched out on one of the beds and listened to Léon, going and coming, going through his lengthy toilette and spinning out the web of things seen and hoped-for.

  ‘Why do Bertillon’s schemes fail? He has solid ones,’ asked Léon, and hurried on, for fear Alphendéry would answer, ‘I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, my boy. Listen to me. I’ve studied him … Although he has very large ideas, he is a very mean man: he is frightened to go into partnership with people who have ideas, with people with more energy than he has; he’s frightened to see me, to school me in his business, to grant me participations. He lacks a sense of loyalty,’ said Léon triumphantly, lifting his head nobly and looking all round the room and out into the street, as if he could call on anything, the picture frame, on anyone, the streetcar conductor, for example, to say how loyal Léon was.

  ‘Yes, sir, he has no loyalty, and he thinks others won’t be loyal to him either. Now, I say to myself, if that boy’s going to work for me, I’ve got to give him a square deal … Then,’ he frowned, ‘Michel, it don’t matter how harebrained his schemes are, they’d go up if they were built up. He lacks the constructive urge, Michel. A creative urge and a wholesome urge. He has to go down to build it up even if it’s a house of cards, like one of these toys you blow up, one of these …’ He went round flipping his fingers.

  ‘A balloon?’ queried Alphendéry, with shut eyes.

  ‘No, one of these toys—’

  ‘A Mickey Mouse?’

  ‘Not a Mickey Mouse, anything. You got to blow it hard while you blow it, while it stands it’s got to have air in it, while it stands up—like a model of a ship, it’s not a ship, it’s not for freight, but it’s got to be built just the same.’

  ‘No,’ said Michel, ‘he’s an actor—a great actor. He would have been a superb actor. Sensitive, reflecting—’

  ‘An actor. But he couldn’t put on a show. An actor is an actor, a show is a show, but he couldn’t put on a show, you have to arrange it … You know me: I’m very persistent. I’m a pest but I know how to put on show … ’ In a lower tone, he continued rapidly, ‘I kept on going over it: he left me with the impression that he had the wheat deal from A to Z, every delicate point, the light and shade. But somehow he gave me a very curious impression, that he had it superficially—’

  ‘As an actor learns a part,’ said Alphendéry.

  ‘No actor. Like a feller whistling a tune: you think he knows it, he goes down to play it on the pianer, and you see he doesn’t know the notes.’

  ‘He always believes in lying to his own side,’ said Alphendéry, almost defending Jules.

  ‘He’s got trackless, trackless—’ Leon’s voice trailed off.

  ‘Trackless?’

  ‘Trackless: it proves his bank account’s shrinking, I think. You know what he is? He is one of these half-baked Goyim with a bit of a Yiddischer Kopf and it drove him mad … I said, ‘Are they going to drop it in the Gulf of Mexico? …’ It was a stroke of genius, Michel. Genius, my boy! I said to myself, “How to put the market up, revolutionize values?” The millers were buying hand to mouth. It was the golden opportunity, my boy … And I thought, “It suits him, because he can only make money when the rest of the world is fut.”’

  ‘He can shake down the plums but he can’t get them to his mouth.’

  ‘That’s it … I’ll never understand it … Those Bomba! … It was a calamity,’ he suddenly said, very loud and cheerful, standing right above Alphendéry. ‘It was disastrous.’ His voice trailed away into the wardrobe. ‘My girl’s … h’m.’

  ‘He never recovered from his plane accident.’

  ‘He thinks his star cracked. He’s a man of one star. I chose the Milky Way. Ho, ho, ho! … Listen, Michel, if I become an English O.B.E., will you work with me in England?’

  Léon revived his project for a letter to the cabinet.

  ‘Why not,’ asked Alphendéry, ‘write straight to the President of the Board of Trade? Let’s get down to the scheme and write the covering letter afterwards.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Then he smiled wisely, ‘No one can say I don’t work for my golden crown. Mind you, I don’t say if I get an English honor. I put my capital there. The rest to follow if all is satisfactory. If not, I’ll try to become a Belgian baron first. One or the other. What do I care. It’s a business proposition.’

  Alphendéry spent the week end getting out Léon’s letter to the British cabinet and scheme for Government Control of the Wheat Supplies of England. When it was finished, they both regarded it as a masterpiece, and put it at once in the post. Meantime, Léon offered Alphendéry a job and his everlasting ten per cent of all earnings on stock-market speculation advised by Alphendéry. Alphendéry was to take six weeks off, go to Greece, and then join Léon in Amsterdam.

  * * *

  Scene Seventy: Love Letter

  Davigdor Schicklgrüber came to see Alphendéry on his way to Berlin, ‘to nose things out for the Lord: of course, one of these days he’ll wake up to me and find out I simply sleep and eat, but in the meantime, I don’t mind taking a holiday from the dear old man, at times �
�� Say, Alphendéry,’ he continued calfishly, wagging his long head at Michel, ‘I forgot all about that interview for you with the Lord: next time you come to London don’t forget …” Alphendéry realized that this unexpected and dishonest offer was a preamble to asking him for the famous letter to the Berlin blonde. He therefore got out pencil and paper and after some difficulties (for his German forgotten since his childhood was not very solid), he vamped out:

  Liebes Gnädige Fräulein,

  Entschuldigen Sie, bitte, mein Deutsch, warum, ich, als Ausländer, schreibe es wenig. Ich glaube dass es war eine grosse Freude fur Ihre Bruder ihnen zu besuchen in Berlin! Es war leid dass in Bahnhof wir hatten so wenig zeit sich zu unter-halten: und besser sich zu kennen. Aber macht dies nicht schöner mein Hoffnung ihnen wieder zu sehen in Berlin. Ich habe ihre Gesicht nur ein paar minuten gesehen aber ich bin sicher dass es voll reizend war … Hier ist meine Adresse in Paris. Ich erwarte ihre liebeswürdige Briefe … Welche Schade dass ich so schnell nach London müss wiederfahren! Vielleicht eine andere Zeit, also, können Sie nach Brussel oder nach Paris fahren uns nur zu unterhalten. Dann wollte ich viele täge in kleines liebeskämmerlein mit ihnen leben. Ein heben ohne hiebe ist kein heben: und Sie sind meine Ideal. Schreiben Sie mir, bitte. Höffentlich—Wilhelm Meister …

  (Wilhelm Meister was the name used by Davigdor in his German love affairs. The young lady’s address was Frau Florenz, Poste Restante, in a Berlin postal section.)

  After Alphendéry and William and Davigdor had grubbed around for some fifteen minutes they produced between them the above linguistic and amorous masterpiece and Alphendéry set to work to copy it out in a fair hand, Davigdor never wrote to any girl in his own handwriting … In return for this favor, Davigdor gave them a few pointers, while protesting that he was practically a born idiot and could never understand anything: that there would be a prolongation of the accord on German frozen credits and that the politics of Social Democracy in Germany was all the capitalists of the world were hanging by, until they had determined on a policy for themselves. They could only now depend on the errors of a Bruning, the coat-turning of a MacDonald, and the ultimate though not now apparent wealth of the U.S.A. to save them till they tried out some expedient—possibly an extension of fascism … Davigdor laughed at those who still pinned their hopes of Germany’s paying her debts and returning to ‘sanity.’ ‘She’s between the devil and the deep sea, between a moratorium and an inflation: bet on which you will …’

  ‘And the Lord?’

  ‘Ah, ah, the Lord is getting old but he’s not so weak-minded yet as to tell me his business.’

  ‘What about Deterding: he is really cuckoo? Is he going bankrupt? Is he going to ruin himself in silver?’

  The speculations followed. Davigdor let fall some of his idiocies, to amuse them: ‘They say in London that you’re working for Ivar Kreuger now.’

  ‘Don’t joke, Davigdor: what do they say about Kreuger?’

  Davigdor wouldn’t be drawn: ‘Oh, Kreuger’s got a couple of old communists working for him, I thought maybe he’d bought you in too. I hear you went to the Rothschilds, Alphendéry, with a scheme for selling Royal Dutch short.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘More fool you,’ said Davigdor rudely. ‘A peasant takes his daughter to the landlord to taste and then expects him to marry her … no, no … oh, oh. No one knows the boys but me; no one but me has seen them skin a flint … you boys,’ he said cavorting, ‘will all be ruined, all … Hey, Alphendéry, I hear you’re sleeping out.’

  For it was a fact that nothing went on in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, or Berlin in their circles, which was not immediately communicated to the other centers; and Alphendéry, ‘Bertillon’s mystery man,’ was one of the minor beasts in their fables.

  ‘Well,’ said Schicklgrüber, preparing to go, ‘excuse me: promised to sleep with a sweetie this afternoon … What currency are you boys going to make a fortune on next? …’

  Alphendéry threw out his hands. ‘Sound money’s no good, bad money’s no good, high interest is no good, cheap money is no good: it requires the leaven of the U.S.A.’s dough before they do any good here, and when will that come? The only thing that would save Europe is socialism, higher wages, higher productivity … tell that to the capitalists … I predict a crash in all European markets within three months: there’s no hope anywhere …’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Davigdor, ‘I’ll write that to the Lord.’

  When he had gone, William smirked, ‘What’s he up to in Berlin?’

  Alphendéry pondered, ‘I’ve a hunch that the Lord is thinking of punting on Hitler. He’s making a mistake, Hitler will never convince them; they’ve had too much socialist training since the war … what has he got to sell?’

  William ripped out his usual cranky speech. ‘You can sell anything to the Boches: they’re regimented … goose-step heroes with tin medals, like kids. Say, you don’t know them, you’re too sentimental; you can’t change a Heinie overnight with a few speeches about sharing the wealth or whatever it is. For all they know, this Hitler can really change things, turn the big ones into little ones for their sake: they invented fairy tales, didn’t they? They still believe them.’

  Alphendéry was irritated beyond endurance by William’s crabbed stupidity. ‘I know them better than you, I’m an Alsatian.’

  William laughed bitterly: ‘You’re too open-minded, Michel: intern your mind, shut it up; don’t be so fair-minded. This isn’t a fair world; this is a lousy world since the war, and it’s going to get worse. You can start a society for the prevention of cruelty to tigers but that doesn’t stop even the kitchen cat from chewing your leg off, if it’s hungry and you can’t shoo it … Say, Michel, if you hadn’t been living off rich men all your life, selling yourself with your sweet line, would you be so soft? You would have had to bring down a few birds yourself before this if you hadn’t struck it lucky. It’s too late now: you mark my words. And if your bunch of Red friends don’t get tough too, they’ll go down before even a Tardieu or a real ironsides, another Poincaré.’

  Instead of answering, Alphendéry got up and moved through the door; he walked up and down outside in the corridor. William was getting beyond endurance. Inside William shrugged his shoulders to himself and sulkily went to look through the card index. Thirty-five clients undermargined: he was going to call them for margins this very day. Alphendéry being kind to the clients and he, William, had to face a half-empty cashbox! For this secret, the inroads made by Carrière’s campaign, on their reserves, William had never revealed even to the observant and experienced Alphendéry. No one but Jules’s eldest brother would ever know Jules’s danger.

  The telephone rang; William called, ‘Michel, Davigdor on the wire for you.’

  Davigdor said, ‘Michel, there are rumors all over London that you’re looking for a job elsewhere,’ and laughing with a certain emphasis, Davigdor put down the telephone. A girl was laughing beside him. Michel knew that this was a warning.

  ‘What do you want to see the Lord for?’ queried William suspiciously, leadenly. ‘Are you trying to land a job with him?’

  ‘Not at all; but I don’t see what harm there is in getting to know one of the richest thieves in the world. It will be a great help to me later on, if I write.’

  William’s voice held a bitter note: ‘You wouldn’t use your own name when writing for them?’

  ‘No, perhaps not …’ said Michel dubiously.

  William cried with one of Jules’s pets, ‘I think you’re getting us into a lot of trouble: Plowman says everyone says the bank has Reds in it; you know what these mugs are where their money’s concerned. How do I know that that isn’t behind these …’ He nearly said ‘withdrawals.’ He changed it to, ‘cases that are being hurried through the courts against us at breakneck speed …’ He laughed, somewhat ashamed.

  While Jules was away and Alphendéry absorbed, Aristid
e Raccamond was taking the subordinate chiefs of the staff into his confidence: Henri Martin, one of the chief cashiers, a brilliant, close-keeping fellow, well knit, solid, giving an impression of manliness, was one to watch out for. Aristide had it on good authority that Martin was a retired war spy and had sent seventeen men to their death in Alsace. Why was he in Bertillon’s bank? A friend of Bertillon, it was said, picked up during the war. But why? Was he set to watch Bertillon? Was he watching Alphendéry? Was he simply doing nothing, earning his living? Did ex-war spies ever simply earn their living? At any rate, Mme. Raccamond, consulted, warned Aristide to have nothing whatever to do with Henri Martin.

  Jean de Guipatin, really Aristide’s friend, was loyal to Jules before all others. This left Urbain Voulou and the customers’ men upon whom he would not call, and Jacques Manray, manager of the ground floor, a loyal and ready fellow, sensible, experienced, and cheerful, who had confidence in everyone … Raccamond, concurring with Marianne, his wife, had therefore cultivated Jacques Manray’s acquaintance, and the two had begun to visit each other’s homes. But Jacques was cautious. Nevertheless, in his honesty, he talked over some of the troubles of the bank with Aristide. Marianne, after their second visit, smiled to Aristide, ‘He is a man for you. Count on him.’

  Carrière found that Aristide was not bringing him enough information now: he expected Aristide, he told him, during Jules’s absence, to get on the inside of the bank, learn its secrets, and take the opportunity to make his grip felt, to announce himself as director pretty generally, make Alphendéry take a back seat. He invited Aristide to his home to a private lunch with his secretary and then, confidentially, showed not only that Jules had cheated him on a plain exchange contract but that Jules was bankrupt: if he had the money, why didn’t he pay and get rid of the counterpublicity?

  * * *

  Scene Seventy-one: Aristide in a Stew

  Carriére attacked Jules and the bank every day in the widespread press of his friend, the Deputy Sournois, and the more he attacked, the more Jules absented himself from the bank and filled in his time swimming, yachting, riding, gaming on the Mediterranean and Channel coasts. The mess of lawsuits, clients’ demands, rumors, and blackmail petitions became the daily meat of William Bertillon, Michel Alphendéry, Adam Constant, and Jacques Manray. All of these four were haggard and harassed. The customers’ men as well as the cashiers began to lose confidence in the bank. William tried to be even more thick-skinned, Michel even merrier, to make the place more lively. Clients clustered downstairs but there was an unhealthy plaguy atmosphere in the bank: the Carrière-Bertillon duel was the subject of all conversations. The clients became suspicious and touchy; the workers in the bank foresaw the ruin of the bank and their unemployment. The luster was turned on every day in Jules’s room, and William and Michel entertained visitors there to warm the place up, but Jules was not to be seen and the spirit of the bank was missing: the bank seemed to have gone soggy like a house of cardboard left out in the rain.