Matters of Honor

by Louis Begley

  Oh that, he said, it’s a crapshoot with loaded dice. I’d rather not think about it, but I do.

  It was very late, even for this restaurant that claimed to remain open until four in the morning. I paid the check. The radio taxi arrived. I told the driver to go first to Trinité, where Henry was living in an apartment he had not wanted to show me, claiming that the owner had furnished it to look like a concierge’s loge, down to a large radio covered with a lace doily that was the chief ornament of the living room. If I stay in Paris, he said, I will stop living like a clerk, but so long as I am a clerk and I’m paid like a clerk, I don’t see why I should put on airs. This was a new development in Henry’s outlook. Perhaps it betokened a decision to devote less time and energy to trying to be first in everything—without regard to whether he needed to win.

  MADAME BERNARD left for Geneva. The bouquet of flaming-red roses I had brought to our last session had probably been deposited in a trash can or given to her concierge. She had seemed pleased to receive them, thanked me without sticking in the interpretative knife, and asked whether I ever went to Geneva. If you do come, she continued, my husband and I would be pleased to have you at our home for dinner. She gave me her card. I thanked her in turn and, emboldened by her initiative, asked whether her husband would also be teaching at the university. Oh no, she said, he is a poet—rather well known but his name is not the same as mine.

  An onset of shyness prevented me from asking his name, and some similar emotion probably impelled Madame Bernard to explain that in Geneva she intended to do only training analyses. She wouldn’t treat patients. I sensed that the existence of the line separating the analyst and patient had been drawn anew, and that if I made my visit I wouldn’t be crossing it.

  My curiosity had been aroused, and I might have found a reason to pass through Geneva in the fall, if a letter from my mother had not caused me to go instead to Lenox. She wrote that she and Greg had grown tired both of Berkshire winters—the ski slopes were more and more crowded, and neither of them cared for skiing all that much—and Berkshire summers with their hordes of Tanglewood tourists. That left the spring mud, about which the less said the better, and the fall, which was glorious if you could disregard the busloads of old ladies in search of foliage and maple syrup, but that was impossible. She was also tired of the cattiness of her friends. They had decided to move to Hawaii—not Oahu, which Greg found too commercial and too American, but to Maui, which was as Hawaii used to be. I would no doubt see that keeping the house in Lenox, a big financial drain despite its excellent condition, didn’t make sense for her and Greg. She thought that I should buy it. The house had been in the family since it was built—while Cousin Jack’s house in Stockbridge had only been given to him and May as a wedding present from May’s father. I wouldn’t regret it, she assured me. Values in the Berkshires were rising; a historic house owned by a famous writer would command a premium.

  I answered that I would think about her proposal, and if it seemed that I could go along with it I would come to the Berkshires in early October. I’d stay with George and Edie, in the stable that the Standish parents had turned into an independent cottage for them to use. Then I telephoned Mr. Hibble, to sound him out about the transaction. It was a steal, he told me, with or without the family furniture, but he couldn’t understand why my mother wouldn’t just give the house to me. With the pension the bank paid her, plus the Richardson money, she shouldn’t need the cash. Of course the cash by all rights should go to you anyway on her death.

  But can I afford it? I asked. Yes, he said, even if you never earn another dollar. Besides, she’s right about Berkshire real estate; there are few better bets.

  Dealing with my mother had always been pleasant if she was getting her way in every detail. I went over to the house the day after I arrived at George’s and found out that she meant to let me have all the pieces that had come from the Standish side except a desk I considered too small to be useful. In that case, I said, it’s a deal, subject only to inspection for termites. I can assure you that we have no termites, she informed me haughtily. I replied that I was sure she was right, but I wanted to check anyway. Someone in Mr. Hibble’s office would have my power of attorney so that the closing could go ahead after I had returned to Europe. It’s all right, honey, Greg said, it’s what’s always done. All right, she replied, I’ll go along, but I think my own son ought to be able to trust me.

  I RETURNED TO PARIS at the end of November, having shown my editor an early draft of a long study of Hawthorne. He encouraged me to work on it, but suggested some changes in approach. Thinking them through and revising the manuscript accordingly would be time-consuming. In early December, Wiggins & O’Reilly announced its decisions. Henry and George had both become partners. When Henry called with the news, I invited him to dinner at Maxim’s that night. To my surprise, he arrived with Margot.

  Jean is in Marseille, she told me, at a book signing. Isn’t it nice, having just the three of us?

  She and Henry seemed to be on the floor each time the band played a fox-trot, and I couldn’t help noticing the way she clung to him. By midnight we’d become very sentimental. Henry said he wished we could call Archie. Instead we went down to the telephone cabin and placed a call to George. He was at a meeting from which he was going directly to the theater to meet Edie. We gave up. Since I had not brought my car and Margot had hers, they drove me home.

  Henry also invited Margot, this time with Jean, to the ponderous official celebration of his partnership. It too was held at Maxim’s. The Wiggins resident senior partner, Derek de Rham, a spidery man, all thin arms and thin legs, in an ancient dinner jacket that miraculously fit his strange frame, had taken over the narrow section of the restaurant known, because of its shape, as the omnibus, the only place where an habitué would agree to be seated at lunch, but less desirable in the evening because of the distance from the dancing. To be away from the band, however, made it particularly suitable for toasts, of which there would be a considerable number. George and Edie had come from New York, he in his double capacity of Henry’s best friend at the firm and representative of the class of new partners, as had old Mr. Allen, Henry’s mentor and the strong man of Wiggins & O’Reilly, as well as a couple of other partners and their wives and a platoon of clients. De Rham’s little brother and one of his cousins had been at school with me. After I mentioned that to him, and Edie had explained who I was, he found it was worth his while to speak to me. In fact he beckoned to his wife, a stern bony woman, to join us. I asked how Henry had adapted to practice in the French outpost of the firm.

  Adapted? exclaimed de Rham. He’s taken over. If we didn’t want as a matter of policy to have a couple of seniors here to keep an eye on the kiddies, both Warner—he indicated a solidly built man patiently listening to Mrs. Allen—and I could pack up and go home. He has excellent relations with all the avocats and notaires we deal with and has already reeled in some big fishes. Do you see this man over there—I don’t want to point—the one talking with Henry and the young woman who’s married to a Frenchman?

  I nodded.

  That’s one of them. A Belgian, Count de Sainte-Terre. Immensely rich and in control of a very aggressive holding company making strategic investments one after another. He’s fallen in love with Henry, or rather the structures Henry’s been inventing for him. A man worth meeting.

  XXVIII

  THE NEXT DAY Edie went shopping with Margot, Henry was at his office, and I had lunch with George. He showed me new photos of the children and gave me one of my goddaughter, dressed as a Halloween witch, in a Tiffany silver frame engraved with my initials. It was my Christmas present. At some point, I asked about Henry’s new Belgian client.

  You mean Goldfinger? George asked. Henry says that’s what they call him behind his back. He knows about it, of course, but doesn’t seem to mind.

  I told him I meant the very muscular blond man with ears that stuck out to whom de Rham had referred as the count of someth
ing or other.

  Right, he said, Hubert de Sainte-Terre. Did you see his wife? She was there too, looking like the lady leading the unicorn. Hubert’s supposed to be the richest man in Belgium, one of the most powerful too. Henry has him eating out of his hand. Last July he got him to ask our group to do his estate plan. The partners in the group now think he can do no wrong. Just to prove my point, I’ll tell you what Billy Rhinelander told me. He was taken in two years ago so he participated in this election. Anyway, Billy said that this time there was only one partner who got one hundred percent of the vote. Guess who!

  You, I said.

  No, Billy specifically told me it was Henry, though to be honest I have to tell you I can’t believe that anyone voted against me. Or maybe I can—one of those self-appointed censors who are always inveighing against nepotism.

  I raised my eyebrows and asked since when did he have uncles or even cousins among the partners.

  Of course I don’t. I couldn’t have gotten in the door, they’re so strict about it. But I am Hugh Bowditch’s son-in-law. That’s not nothing, but believe me it’s a double-edged sword. Sure, all the partners know that as a practical matter they can’t turn down a guy whose father-in-law controls thirty percent of the firm’s business unless they have a damn good reason. I’d have to be a real bonehead or really lazy or screw up in a major way. On the other hand, a case like mine sets off all kinds of alarm bells, because Hugh has so much influence. They start to worry about the firm’s depending too much on a single client, the other associates’ perception of unfairness, and on and on. Thank God, nobody can say that I don’t do a good job or don’t pull my weight. My hours are way up there, on a par with the corporate guys.

  Henry managed to find time to have dinner with me before I left for Malta, where Tom and I were going to spend the Christmas and New Year’s holidays together. Afterward, he would return to Cambridge. If the island turned out to be as attractive as I had heard, and the climate as mild, I thought I’d stay on, perhaps until summer, if it took that long to finish my book.

  Henry had told me to pick him up, and I found him waiting in what would soon be his old office, a nice room with a window on rue Royale. He showed me the one he was moving into as soon as the paper hangers had finished with the wallpaper, which wasn’t paper but silk, and the cabinetmaker had installed the mahogany bookshelves. The new office had two windows overlooking place de la Concorde, was almost as large as old de Rham’s corner office and equal in size to that of the other corporate law partner, Dick Garland, who on the night of the party at Maxim’s was in Amsterdam at the closing of a bond issue. Henry introduced me to this sturdy-looking fellow, perhaps ten years our senior. After I’d shaken his hand I looked at Henry and then again at Garland and suppressed the urge to crack up. On the surface, Henry had come to resemble him and George and, I was certain, all the other bright Wiggins partners more or less his age. How deep did the likeness go? I supposed that among these future grandees of New York, he still saw himself as a Moses—a Moses who had slain no Egyptian for smiting a Hebrew and wasn’t likely to and would neither lead his kinsmen into the wilderness to feast unto the Lord nor go forth into it himself.

  This time Henry was the host. He took me to one of his favorite fleshpots in Paris and as soon as we had ordered told me about his holiday plans. He was in high spirits. The de Rhams had an annual Christmas Eve party for lawyers and staff. In the new circumstances, he thought it was his duty to attend and would be glad to do so. They were all nice people. On Christmas Day he was invited to dinner at the Garlands. Two days later he would be picked up at Le Bourget by Hubert de Sainte-Terre’s private plane and taken to St. Moritz for a week of skiing with him and Gilberte—Gilberte, he explained, was Hubert’s wife. He’d stay at their chalet. They would all come back together around January 5. There was an argument for treating most of this time as client development; otherwise it would be charged as vacation days. He wasn’t sure which he’d do; he didn’t really care.

  Since when do you ski? I asked.

  I don’t, he said. Hubert has told me I must learn, so that I can go with them on their vacations. They’re both passionate about it. He says the teacher he has on retainer in St. Moritz could turn an elephant into an Olympic skier.

  In that case, I told him, perhaps you do have a chance. Babar was pretty regal on skis, so why not you?

  Why indeed, he replied, though it does seem to me that Babar started younger.

  I didn’t remember whether this was so, and I didn’t ask where he had come across Babar, my own acquaintance with him being from books I had bought in Paris for the Standish twins. Instead, I asked by what magic he had conjured up such an important client and become so close to him and his wife.

  No magic at all, said Henry, blushing. Pure luck. You remember the van Dammes?

  How could I forget Madeleine? I asked. Besides, don’t you remember that she and Etienne were at Margot’s wedding?

  Of course, he said, that’s all ancient history. It slipped my mind. Actually, Etienne and I have been seeing each other in New York, pretty much every time he has come through. He’d ask me to dinner to get some free legal advice.

  It occurred to me that this would be news to Margot.

  The Sainte-Terres, he continued, have been family friends of the van Dammes for generations. Hubert is only a few years older than Etienne, and they are very close. In fact, Madeleine is a cousin of Hubert’s mother-in-law, whose husband—the father-in-law—is a member of the French family at the head of which stands Duc de Grandlieu. Gilberte’s being a Grandlieu is a source of considerable satisfaction for Hubert. Anyway, unlike Etienne, who is a very good businessman but not very ambitious, Hubert is a bird of prey, what the French call un rapace. About ten years ago he inherited from his father a profitable but relatively small Belgian bank—Banque de Sainte-Terre.

  Palestine! I interjected.

  Shut up, said Henry. As the only child, he inherited all his father’s shares and became by far the largest shareholder, with something like sixty-five percent of the capital, the rest being held by some of Belgium’s best-known companies. Belgium, in case you don’t know, is the land of holding companies. Companies invest in each other’s shares and then scratch each other’s backs. A few years ago, when Hubert set out on a buying spree of companies, Belgian, French, and Dutch, he was able to get his shareholders to join forces with him. Usually, he and those shareholders as a group take control. In Europe that doesn’t necessarily mean buying a majority of the capital. Bearer shares rarely vote, so a much smaller position can give you control, or at least a veto over any important corporate move. Take Banque Industrielle d’Occident. Occident is worth perhaps twice, some people say three times, as much as Hubert’s bank, Banque de Sainte-Terre, and has most of its value in businesses outside of France. Banque de Sainte-Terre has control over that bank although it owns only about forty percent of the capital and the vote. It was one hell of an investment. Of course, when I say that Sainte-Terre owns all those shares, I don’t mean that it acquired them directly. For tax and bank regulatory reasons, it’s often done through intermediate holding companies located in countries with a particularly favorable tax regime. The Netherlands and Luxembourg are used a lot. In some cases Switzerland may be better, but it has lots of problems. Using holding companies, by the way, makes financing this sort of acquisition easier because third parties can be brought in as equity investors all the way up the line, so that you take effective control with minimum capital outlay.

  I raised my hand to stop the rush of words while the waiter refilled my wineglass. Henry’s enthusiasm for this esoterica took me right back, I thought, to the evening so many years ago when he first spoke to me about Ubu Roi. There was something zanily wonderful about it.

  Apparently having judged the pause long enough, Henry went on. You can imagine that such operations, especially if they involve more than one country, as Hubert’s almost always do, eventually result in complex legal structur
es and very tricky tax problems. Believe me, even if the basic business is sound, the real profits depend on structure. In order to realize tax savings in each country that’s involved, you have to make these transactions sing under company laws and currency control and banking regulations. Otherwise, you’ve bungled it.

  All right, I interrupted, that’s very interesting, but how does that put you and Hubert together?

  Excuse me, he said. I do get carried away. Who would have thought that this stuff would become my passion? To answer your question, the van Dammes put us together; it’s that simple. Hubert and Gilberte were at Bayencourt. Etienne was there as well. They talked about business, and Hubert said that he’d been looking without success for a suitable American lawyer who could act as his general adviser. He wanted someone based in Europe but American trained, with the resources of a first-class American firm behind him, ready to jump in when the right opportunity presents itself and he tries to enter the American market. Etienne mentioned some senior lawyers doing international work in Paris and London. Hubert had already seen them all and was unimpressed. In some cases it was a lack of personal chemistry; in a couple of others he wasn’t sure that the particular lawyer would be willing—or even able, given his other commitments—to give him full-time attention. Between him and his bank, he said, he had enough work to keep a partner and a team of associates going full tilt. He had come to think he needed someone younger. As soon as they heard this, Madeleine said that she and Etienne knew the right lawyer for him. Between you and me, Henry said, blushing, I don’t know how she could have any idea of my legal skills or talent or why anyone would trust her on that subject. But Etienne, who does know these things, chimed in and said all sorts of extravagantly flattering things about me. I gathered that he had been making inquiries about my reputation for his own purposes. Perhaps he was trying to decide whether one day he would hire me and pay for my time. Anyway, this conversation was in early June. Hubert came to Paris shortly afterward and invited me to his office to discuss a possible project. He grilled me for about two hours about my studies, the work I had been doing at the firm, and how I would solve various hypothetical problems and, believe it or not, about Latin and Greek poets. He’s something of a classicist himself. I sensed that the session was coming to an end, when he asked, as if it were an afterthought, By the way, why aren’t you listed in Martindale & Hubbell as a partner in your firm? I said, It’s simple; I’m not a partner. I wanted desperately to say I wasn’t a partner yet, but I didn’t dare. I see, he said, you’ve been passed over. I pulled myself together and explained that my turn hadn’t come yet. He shook his head saying, Etienne might have told me. I thought that was that; he’d thank me for having taken the trouble to see him. Instead, he looked at me very intently and said he was willing to bet I’d make it. And I was hired!