House of All Nations

by Christina Stead

  ‘Yes, I’ll be there, Aristide.’

  When Raccamond was escorted out the four men looked at each other, and smiled.

  ‘Well,’ declared Alphendéry, ‘the hat goes to Jean. One drop of blue blood makes the world go round—think what Jean can do!’

  Guipatin said seriously, ‘No: that’s only the first round. Aristide will think it over and that fury, his wife, will have him full of hop by the morning. We’re a long way from the finish. Another means would be to segregate him from his wife, but that can’t be done. What can we do, to give her a soothing sirup? She’s the secret arsenal, there, you know. I’ll think up something.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jules impatiently, ‘that woman! He’s so transparent: you could see her discourses shining behind his eyes where he was reading them off from his memory.’

  ‘What did you think of his insults to me?’ said Alphendéry. ‘Should I come tomorrow or would that only infuriate him? Where does he get it from? I’ve always been almost a brother to him.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, Michel,’ said Jules, ‘we want you to keep your nerve for the trouble I see coming: I don’t want you to get depressed.’

  William smiled his slow smile, difficult to break through the Chinese calm. ‘Aristide has two months’ start on us or more; he’s nearer the finish. His nerves will never outlast ours. We’ve only got to finagle him along for a week or two, and he’ll go mad or to a sanatarium, Marianne aiding, and we can cook his goose for him. The police haven’t finished with him on the Claude bankruptcy yet.’

  This sedative consideration sent them home with a certain amount of cheer. At the same time, all except William, to whom this reasoning was flawless, slept ill that night and the bank was running a high fever by the morning.

  Marianne received Aristide with a smile and a questioning look. He put the books down on their dining-room table with discouragement. ‘Have you got any coffee? I’m so tired I could drop.’

  Marianne let him droop on the couch for some minutes while she was making the coffee: this was a simple stratagem to make him talk immediately after she came in. He drank the coffee, however, and said nothing. A slight anxiety filled her. ‘Well, Aristide, what did they agree to do?’

  ‘Nothing … we did not have time to go over it all tonight. Comte Jean de Guipatin was there and we went over the thing together. I am to see the Bertillons and the Comte in the morning.’

  A deep and old knowledge of her husband filled her with suspicion and anxiety. She had regarded the filching of the books of the bank as a godsend, a sure lever for Aristide into the higher heavens of the bank: she saw him marching side by side with Jules Bertillon, the only man in the bank of Aristide’s caliber. But such a thing was not to be obtained by merit; she herself often said it to him, ‘In the world in which we move, my poor friend, merit does not count; pressure, relations, and moral blackmail alone count. It is sad but it is true, and we must accommodate ourselves to this world.’

  She said with that firm high note which he knew was a note of alarm and decision, ‘My friend, you will not go to that bank tomorrow without a form of compromise, a series of capitulations drawn up by Maître Olonsky.’

  He looked at her with startled, almost fawnish eyes, ‘Why; do you see something wrong?’

  ‘They fooled you, Aristide, with Guipatin. He is an aristocrat. If you listen to him, he’ll deliver you to the Bertillons tied hand and foot. He doesn’t care for you: he does care for the Bertillon millions. Open your eyes. Money is an exact measure of the friendship of all our sucking-doves of the Faubourg St.-Germain.’

  Aristide opened his eyes a little and surveyed her closer than he had done for months. ‘Marianne! You said to me that he was the only wholesome character in the bank.’

  She brushed this aside. ‘No. Your first interview was check to your king. Let your queen act. Henceforth, Aristide, listen to me. This is the most important period of our lives. You have taken an irretraceable step. You must go through with your plan. You must force them to the wall and show a firm will. If they beat you, Aristide, they will pretend to be nice to you for a month or so and then they’ll throw you out. Keep those books, value them as your life—or my life, at any rate, and insist on your conditions.’

  ‘All women are good in moments of decision; they do not face the issue themselves—they see it as a bystander.’

  ‘That is true, but I could fight too. I am always resolved, always,’ she continued flushing a little and exciting herself. The end of it was that she could not stop talking and felt herself obliged to torment Aristide with questions and exclamations long after he should have been asleep, and even after the light was out her healthy mind kept them threshing the thing over till both their minds were dancing like chaff.

  * * *

  Scene Eighty-eight: Dodges

  At home that night, Alphendéry took paper and pen and wrote to Thargelion asking the price of a winter cruise for six weeks round the Mediterranean and the Isles of Greece. For some reason, he was angry with everyone, and he had fully decided at last to leave the brothers Bertillon after this holiday. He wrote to his mother, sending her some money and telling her to prepare to have him as a boarder after two or three months’ time. They were to live on a narrow margin, because he was going back into scholarship. He had written a book on grain for Léon and turned it over to him, but had received from Léon only two thousand, five hundred francs, and nothing at all for the advice he had given him on stocks and shares.

  ‘Why should I wear away my life grubbing for rich men?’ he wrote bitterly to his mother, although he knew she thought his acquaintance with rich men the one glory of his life.

  He sent these letters off and went to sleep assuaged, as if by this simple act the bogeys of Raccamond, Carrière, and the rest were conjured away.

  The next day, following Marianne’s advice, Aristide rang up to say that he would not be in to see the brothers Bertillon and the Comte de Guipatin that day, or not until the afternoon, whereupon Guipatin with hauteur mentioned that he was playing a match that afternoon at the Stadium Roland Garros in the Parc des Princes, and the whole thing would have to be put off to the following day. Everyone was relieved; even Marianne. She spent the whole day with Aristide couched beside her, stuffing him with arguments, every half-hour seeing new difficulties, new grandeurs.

  Meanwhile, Maître Olympe called Jules on the telephone, announcing that he had for him a very fine, very profitable business, and that if Jules was agreeable Olympe would arrive in the afternoon flanked by representatives of a foreign power.

  ‘They’re friends of mine,’ said Jean de Guipatin apologetically. ‘I’ll try to put off that match this afternoon.’

  William and Michel Alphendéry were forbidden the chief’s room all the afternoon. Their discontent grew. William was irritable. ‘What the deuce is he doing in there now? Signing some more I.O.U.’s, no doubt. He’s got two Spaniards, picked out by Olympe—you can imagine. One looks just like Gil Robles; one’s got a face like a bad Walloon. As far as I can make out, it’s about oil monopolies. Do you know what’s going on in that line?’

  ‘This is a great oil year,’ remarked Alphendéry, ‘but why come to us?’

  ‘Since the Kreuger money we’ve got a rep for being too smart.’

  They pumped the doorkeeper Etienne and found out the names of the persons with Jules—Señor Rodriguez Damora and Señor Fadrique Palmones, one of whom represented himself as vaguely attached to the Spanish embassy and a friend of the chamberlain of Alfonso XIII. They represented themselves as participating in a group willing to form under the financial leadership of Jules Bertillon and using his bank as part of their window dressing.

  The room was hot with dandyism, mystery, international secrets, fantasy, millions. Jules was glad to fly to this to forget the Raccamond terror, and a conscious as well as an unconscious motive made him exclude Michel
and William, his judges in the Carrière affair and fellow tremblers in the Raccamond affair. Even Claire-Josèphe, formerly gay and irresponsible and charming in a savant way, was now anxious and practical. Claire-Josèphe the delicately proud, the rashly independent, had offered to invite Marianne Raccamond to tea and call on her womanly feelings! What a descent in the world was that for the Bertillons!

  The Spanish economic plan under the Azaña government provided for a state monopoly of oil of all grades, said the pair of Spaniards; and they had come to Jules to suggest that he could get an unlimited supply of oil through an American company whose representatives were then in Paris for the oil conference, and could sell it through the state monopoly organism at a reasonable profit to himself. The two Spaniards assured Jules that the Spanish government would accept his tender, if he provided the requisite quantity of ‘palm oil,’ which they would place themselves. They were in touch with the right officials: and as for the other tenderers, they would be found either too dear, or blinds for Russian oil. At the moment there was a peculiarly strong campaign of publicity against Russia. It was asserted that Russia was supplying arms by all the frontiers of Spain and preparing ‘the revolution.’ Therefore, the cry of ‘Red oil’ would be sufficient for public opinion. Jules, to make the affair look proper, was to form an Oil Supply Company with these two liaison men, with Comte de Guipatin on the name plate, Maître Olympe and others at the moment remaining in the background. Jules would make such a fortune selling to the oil monopoly that nothing else need worry him: the bank would become a mere toy, a necessary screen, that is all.

  Jules finally revealed the scheme to Alphendéry. Alphendéry made the natural objections—why would real potentates come to Jules?

  ‘My reputation since the Kreuger fortune,’ said Jules.

  Possibly. How was Jules to know that these fortuitous Spaniards would really spend the ‘palm oil’ as indicated? They asked for fifty thousand pesetas to begin with.

  ‘Jean de Guipatin knows them, and Comte Lucé vouches for them,’ answered Jules.

  Alphendéry objected that if only comtes and marquises answered for them, it was a poor guarantee.

  ‘You’re the sort that wouldn’t accept a thousand-franc note handed out free on the Pont-Neuf,’ jeered Jules. ‘Listen, I have friends. I’m going into this with you and, if you don’t want to help me, without you …’

  ‘Well, don’t sign anything without asking us, or asking Maître Lamaître,’ begged Alphendéry. ‘Your scheme is too simple: it just looks like plain graft and asks for a Government Commission of Inquiry. You must mask it.’

  And he worked out a scheme.

  ‘I’ve got to make some money,’ Jules clamored. ‘You two only sit about and wait for Raccamond, your protégé, to pull another fit of hysterics. Every time I get a good proposition, you two either wet-blanket it or you try to make it look respectable. I want to tell you one thing: money isn’t respectable. Money is a steal.’

  This was Jules in his worst mood. William and Michel cautiously kept out of his way all day; and William began to talk about a fine little run-down hotel he had seen last time he was in Aix-les-Bains. It only needed good management.

  * * *

  Scene Eighty-nine: A Solution

  Aristide came into the bank carrying a satchel. He went to the door of the board room and said with dignity, ‘Manray! If the Princesse comes in, telephone to Mr. Bertillon’s office. I will be there. Don’t keep her waiting. I have an appointment with her.’

  Manray murmured, ‘All right, Mr. Raccamond,’ and came to the door to see Raccamond plunge into the lift. His pallid face loomed through the open lift.

  ‘What’s eating him?’ asked the genial Voulou rather sadly of Jacques Manray. Manray had already given the preconcerted signal on the interphone.

  ‘I don’t know what’s eating him, but I wish he’d never come in here. If he asks you any questions, Urbain, don’t say anything. Be dumb!’

  They both looked up to the chief’s room which hung over them, between the two galleries, on the outside wall. All the lusters were on, and the decorated panes of the inner doors sparkled. Someone was now always talking privately with the chiefs and their lawyers. They turned back to the clients with sober expressions.

  Upstairs, Richard Plowman (taken in by the advice of Claire-Josèphe, his ‘sweetheart’), William, the Comte de Guipatin, and Maîtres Olympe, Lemaître, and Beaubien made a full session. Alphendéry was missing, a concession to Aristide’s invidious temper. Aristide, full of fever, entered with brio, advanced into the center of the circle, and sat down in the hard chair they had kept for him.

  ‘Well, Aristide,’ said Jules, ‘what is it? You have given me enough trouble.’

  ‘I didn’t come to talk about trouble,’ said Aristide. ‘Trouble is the only weapon with men of your kind! … I am glad to see that your brother William is here. I know his signature is necessary. I know he has power of attorney.’

  ‘What have you in mind?’ said Maître Lemaître.

  ‘Never mind about me!’ Aristide rudely turned to Bertillon. ‘You are in a corner, Bertillon. Don’t try any tricks. You can’t outplay me. I have the books!’ He said this with a strange air of triumph. ‘Let Alphendéry be present! I want him too to sign the agreement.’

  ‘What agreement?’ asked Maître Lemaître. ‘Let’s have some sequence.’

  Jules looked quizzically at Aristide, unhooked the telephone. ‘Where is Mr. Alphendéry? Alphendéry, come here to the office: I want you. No, Raccamond wants you!’ He laughed, put down the phone and smiled at Raccamond. ‘Take it easy, Aristide; don’t look so tragic! If anyone looks tragic, let it be me or William!’

  Raccamond carefully drew from an inner pocket a long, thick folded sheet which he put down on the desk. ‘I have a duplicate.’

  Jules cast an eye on it, tossed it across to Maître Beaubien. The lawyer read:

  Memorandum of agreement between Jules Bertillon, William Bertillon, partners of Bertillon and Company, known as the Banque Mercure, on the one hand, and Aristide Raccamond, director of the same bank, on the other hand.

  An Agreement can be arrived at between the above Parties, only if based upon the following principles:

  1.A complete certified statement must be submitted to Mr. Raccamond, showing the entire financial position of the bank, credit and debit balances, gold, stocks, and bonds held for the bank, and held in safekeeping for clients; the equities and share positions of clients; the equity and share position of the bank operating for its own account, must be shown separately.

  2.A list of the personnel must be drawn up showing the status of each person.

  3.A list of directors must be established; there are not to be more than three directors: of these Mr. Jules Bertillon and Mr. Aristide Raccamond will be two.

  4.A list of customers, with accounts in Paris and in the other branches, must be drawn up and the person specially charged with the care of the account of each must be named.

  5.Contre-partie account: it must be recognized in writing that the bank has conducted a contre-partie account. Further conduct of the account: Mr. Raccamond, realizing that it is not possible to reduce the short position of the account at once without causing disturbance in the markets, is agreeable that the position should be reduced slowly, month by month and according to the course of the markets. Nevertheless, to safeguard the interests of the clients, Messrs. Jules and William Bertillon must institute a guarantee fund of two million francs to equalize losses possible in the liquidation of the contre-partie account, and this fund is to be administered equally by Jules Bertillon and Aristide Raccamond—no other person to know how it stands. In the operation of the account, for withdrawals or deposits, each signature requires the countersignature before it is valid. Mr. Bertillon will pay into this fund the two million francs necessary, and thereafter Mr. Bertillon is to be considered a
s participating in it to the extent of 50% and Mr. Raccamond to the extent of 50%. If Mr. Bertillon is shown, at a later date, not to have shown full accounts to Mr. Raccamond, or to have shown bad faith, or to have contravened the principles of agreement set out in the clauses of the agreement, Mr. Raccamond may withdraw from the guarantee fund his 50% participation, that is, one million francs, and not be obliged to give an accounting to anyone for this million francs.

  6.The equalizing account of the bank must never involve more than 50% of the shares bought or sold by clients, unless Messrs. Jules and William Bertillon and Mr. Raccamond agree to act to the contrary and sign a paper to that effect.

  7.Mr. Raccamond is to receive a monthly statement of the financial situation of the bank and to be allowed to withdraw his clients’ accounts if he deems it necessary and to have priority over the customers’ men in this instance; he is to be allowed to act according to his lights and in full secrecy. To guarantee this and to guarantee Mr. Raccamond against bad faith and error, Mr. Raccamond is to be considered the owner of 50% of the two million francs of the guarantee fund, but if his clients are not paid out immediately on his demand, he can withdraw the one million francs, and for this withdrawal alone, the signature of Mr. Raccamond is to suffice, without the countersignature of Mr. Bertillon.

  Everyone was laughing quietly. Alphendéry, behind, said, ‘Why so timid, Aristide?’ Maître Lemaître said nothing, but calmly took the document from Maître Beaubien. Maître Beaubien, however, frowned and in his most elegant accent pronounced, ‘You’re a rogue, Mr. Raccamond.’ Jules laughed. William said with bonhomie to Raccamond, ‘The carpet’s nailed down, Aristide, but we can always get a man in with a tack hammer to take it off for you.’

  Aristide bent forward, lost his temper. ‘It’s merely a safeguard for the clients. There has been so much imprudence here—and undue influence, not to say worse—’

  ‘It’s impossible, Raccamond,’ said Jules sharply. ‘Don’t run away with the idea that we’re going to turn the business over to you. I offered you a limited partnership one time. You’ve drawn up an agreement which—why go into it? It’s ludicrous. You could browbeat us and blackmail us forever. Every time it pleased you, you could blackmail me into signatures, whatever you wanted. Are you crazy?’