Matters of Honor

by Louis Begley

  How did you manage that? I asked. Have you converted?

  That hasn’t been necessary. I arranged to be out of town, and Margot got a Paris Match photographer who’d been hanging around her and Jean to represent me.

  Admirable.

  You could call it that, he said. If you connect with Margot you should make a point of seeing the apartment and the eighteenth-century hunting lodge they’ve bought outside of Chantilly. Ever since Mr. Hornung learned that a grandchild was on the way, no extravagance has been too great.

  That must be very satisfying for Jean, I suggested.

  Yes, Henry said. Lap of luxury and Margot too: for a conceited pompous ass with a mean streak, he has done very well for himself. But I shouldn’t complain. He doesn’t mind all the time I spend with Margot. I’m welcome to the scrapings from his table. I suppose I should even be grateful that he doesn’t treat her well. If he did, she might have less use for me.

  Henry, I asked, is there no one apart from Margot?

  He shook his head. I take out other women, go to bed with them, of course I do. Some are nice; some aren’t so nice. These are barren relationships. I can’t tell any of those ladies, even the ones I like most and respect, that I love her more than anything else on earth and want to marry her. Not with Margot in the rue Barbet de Jouy.

  Perhaps she’ll leave him, I ventured. She hasn’t been brought up to turn the other cheek.

  It hasn’t gone quite that far, Henry said slowly, but it may if he goes on interfering with her effort to be a good mother. Whatever happens, it won’t help me.

  Why? I asked.

  Because we’ve been on the wrong track too long.

  I pressed him to explain, but he shook his head and said he didn’t want to talk about it. It’s enough that I’m always there when I’m wanted and that I’m wanted. That’s how it is, and there is nothing to be done about it.

  THE EMPAIN EFFECT, Henry said. That’s why we’re traveling in a goddamn Sherman tank.

  The Sherman tank was a clunky Mercedes limousine, armored to resist heavy machine gun and bazooka fire and all car bombs known to be used by terrorists. Hubert de Sainte-Terre had sent it to the Brussels airport to pick us up and convey us to his huge villa. Henry pointed out certain special features: tires as resistant as the body of the car and a control panel with four buttons that permitted the count to stop the engine and lock the brakes, activate an alarm siren, lower and raise the pane of bulletproof glass separating the passengers’ seat from the chauffeur, and lock and unlock the car doors and the trunk without being overridden by the chauffeur.

  Primitive, he said, if you compare this with what Q serves up for 007, but it makes Hubert less nervous. He’s determined to keep his fingers.

  On the way he told me the story of Baron Empain, the head of Empain-Schneider, a big French steel and heavy machinery producer, whose namesake had built the palace at Heliopolis. The present baron had been kidnapped early that year as he was leaving his apartment on the Avenue Foch. At one point during the negotiations over ransom, the kidnappers sent the baron’s little finger by mail to the baroness to make clear to her and company officials that they really meant business. I had seen a mention of l’affaire Empain in the Herald or Time while I was in Kyoto but had forgotten or had never read about the details, which Henry related with apparent delectation. According to him, the baron was eventually released, minus his little finger, at a metro station in Paris after the kidnapping ring had been cracked by the police, with no money having been paid. No one wanted him back that much, Henry said. There had been many sleazy aspects to the case and the way the baron lived, including huge gambling debts at the casino in Aix-les-Bains or perhaps Enghien, laundered drug money, and so forth. His sexual inclinations were another subject of gossip.

  Nothing in the Empain case applies to Hubert even remotely, Henry continued, speaking carefully and lowering his voice because, as he said, he wasn’t sure that the chauffeur’s intercom had been turned off, though of course people immediately remark that he is another very important titled Belgian businessman. Hubert has so far kept his personal life free of scandal. It’s no small help that the women he has flings with are mostly ladies. And he operates within the law. I wouldn’t be advising him if he didn’t. Of course he is incredibly persistent when he has settled on a goal—usually buying a business that isn’t up for sale. Beyond that, he’d like to be known as the richest man on the Continent, perhaps in all Europe. He’s already the richest by far in Belgium and probably France. I should know how he measures up in Germany, but I don’t. Luckily we don’t all have the same ambitions.

  That Hubert, as he immediately asked me to call him, was a ringer for Gert Fröbe was certain, except that, unlike Goldfinger in the movie, Hubert had a full head of blond hair cut in an old-fashioned military brush. It stood up so straight that I decided he must use a wax pomade. The effect when his face turned red, not a rare occurrence, was striking. So long as Bond didn’t bait him, Goldfinger was possessed of a backslapping and backstabbing kind of politeness. Hubert’s was mechanical and very efficient. He introduced me to Gilberte, his unicorn tapestry countess, and then marched me from guest to guest explaining to each, in identical terms, that, in addition to being the renowned American author of many novels, I was Henry’s college roommate and his friend. The almost invariable response to my literary activities of these elegant figures, most of whom had titles that Hubert pronounced as distinctly as their double-or triple-barreled names, was a well-bred smile and a promise to be on the lookout for my new novel. Gilberte, however, sounded sincere when she said that my most recent novel had appealed to her no less than to Corinne, the wife of Etienne, who was also at the party. I knew that Corinne was a real fan of my work; she had been writing to me for years in her lovely English astute letters about it.

  If Henry or Hubert had been naive enough to think that my literary achievements would impress the Sainte-Terre guests, I disappointed them. Indeed, that may have been true of Henry; he had been hopelessly starry-eyed about my minor celebrity for too many years. As for Hubert, it suddenly occurred to me that he was just cunning enough to have concocted the invitation for the precise purpose of showing Henry that his own weight might be greater than mine in the context of this sort of high-society occasion, and that, having become a man of the world under Hubert’s tutelage, he need not let himself be impressed by me quite so much. That theory fit with Hubert’s words as he was beginning to parade me through his salon. Not only had Henry become his principal adviser, he told me, but in time he planned to dispute my claim to being his best friend. I was amused and answered that, in my long experience with Henry, there had never been only one claimant to that position; he would have to deal with at least two other contenders. Good, he said, giving my elbow a squeeze. I will enjoy the fight. I have never won a prize only to share it.

  If my impact as a novelist on Hubert’s guests was imperceptible, the same could not be said of the aura of power and importance with which Hubert had invested Henry. The way men whom Hubert introduced as his partners perked up at the mention of my long-standing connection with Henry was striking proof. It made me imagine a like alertness that the ancestors of these Walloon nobles would have displayed finding themselves in the presence of a close ally of one of the king’s favorites. I knew just enough about powerful businessmen’s patterns of speech to understand that when Hubert said partner he was using that word as an honorific, an accolade reserved for his high-ranking employees and certain investors in his businesses. One such “partner,” who did not appear to feel the same frisson of delight at meeting me as his colleagues, was Jacques Blondet, head of the Paris bank, whom Henry had mentioned. Blondet examined me quizzically and assured me that he had read every word I had written—looking for clues, clues: revelation of personality. We should find a moment to talk, he said. Perhaps over a Cognac after dinner. I bowed slightly without comment. When he left me, I drifted over to Corinne and stayed at her side until we were
called to dinner. I had expected to be placed on Gilberte’s right. That I should be between Corinne and Gilberte was a pleasant surprise. I began to look forward to our conversation. However, we were not able to exchange more than a few words before conversation at the table became general and very animated, the subject being the Camp David agreements that Sadat and Begin had just signed. Perhaps out of regard for Henry, perhaps out of admiration for Sadat, if any anti-Semites were present at this gathering of Belgium’s ruling class, they held their tongues.

  After dessert, at a signal from Gilberte, the ladies rose and followed her to the sitting room. The men were shepherded by Hubert into the library. Disliking the smell of cigars, I found an armchair near an open window and settled down to drink my coffee. I thought about the ease with which Henry had handled himself in this setting, manifestly enjoying the world into which Hubert had brought him. Or into which he had made his way. He had not changed physically—I thought that of my college classmates he had changed the least—and in other respects, except for having become over the ten years since he was made a partner almost terrifyingly adroit and competent, he was still the old Henry who had been my friend for almost thirty years. He wanted to be in charge and he was, and it little mattered that in this particular setting the power derived from Hubert. His position was the fruit of his own efforts and his own merit; the intervention of the van Dammes, mère et fils, had given him a leg up, but no more than that. The one big failure was in his relationship with Margot. They were both stuck in quicksand.

  My train of thought was interrupted by Jacques Blondet, who pulled up a chair next to me and, without preliminaries, said that he imagined that I knew Henry better than anyone. He waited for an answer, and, seeing that I wasn’t about to offer one, he added that he was forcing me to make a statement that could be thought of as lacking in modesty. For him, it was a conclusion supported by clear evidence: an acquaintance going back so many years, one that had included Henry’s late parents, and the general sense that I stood by Henry’s side and always had. He paused again, as though to give me time to make a statement, and then told me that in his experience with Hubert de Sainte-Terre, which went back to when Hubert’s father died and Hubert took over the business, no one had gained Hubert’s confidence so completely, not even he, Jacques, although he had gone to work for the old Comte de Sainte-Terre directly after finishing his studies—he was a graduate of the École Polytechnique in Paris—or had as good a grasp of the structure and dynamics of the Sainte-Terre businesses. It was in his opinion a virtuoso performance.

  I liked Monsieur Blondet less the more he spoke, but I said that Henry indeed was unusually intelligent and hardworking, as well as loyal as a friend.

  Characteristics you and he share, Blondet observed. Then he told me that sometimes these invaluable traits engendered a certain lack of measure in pursuing the objectives of the client, who is also the adviser’s friend. Do you see what I mean? he asked.

  I shook my head.

  I’ll give you an example, he said. A skilled and very tough negotiator may quite correctly decide not to pick every bit of flesh from an adversary’s carcass. Why? Because he is careful of his reputation. He’d rather lose a few points that he knows aren’t essential than acquire a reputation for ruthlessness. Is that putting his own interest ahead of the client’s? Perhaps, but if he has obtained for the client substantially all that the client needs, there is no harm, and there may be a benefit to the client as well. The adviser’s reputation for ruthlessness might begin to stick to the client, and that is something to be avoided. But once the adviser loses the detachment that should allow him to make this sort of calculation, he will insist on having the last bit of flesh and the last drop of blood. Do you now see what I mean?

  More or less, I said.

  Less zeal, said Blondet, less zeal. If only you would whisper those two little words into our friend Henry’s ear.

  Are you suggesting that Henry pushes too hard on Hubert’s behalf?

  You’ve put it very well.

  Then I think you should tell him so, I replied. If I were to speak to him about it, I would have to tell him what you have told me, and he would want to know why you haven’t spoken to him yourself, and I would have to tell him that I don’t know.

  A fair point, said Blondet, a fair point. In any case, I am very happy that we have talked.

  XXX

  MY FRIENDSHIP with the Japanese writer and sojourns in Kyoto came to an abrupt end. I returned to New York sooner than had been my custom. During the summer, Tom collapsed on the tennis court at the Standishes’ playing singles as Edie and I watched. I got him to the Pittsfield hospital and then to the Mass General in Boston. After three weeks in a coma he was dead. Thus disappeared the one older friend on whose advice and affection I had always counted. After Dr. Kalman retired, I began seeing a new analyst in Manhattan, who like his predecessor seemed willing to put up with my erratic schedule, but I thought that in this time of grief I should stay near him and plunge into work. The company of George and Edie was another reason for making East Seventieth Street again my principal abode, with occasional long weekends in Lenox. Although I had followed my plan and acquired a small apartment in Paris, nothing drew me there. I couldn’t even say that I missed Henry, because his visits to New York were frequent, and he always made time to see me over dinner or lunch. In fact, he came to the city a couple of months after Tom’s death. I hadn’t written to him about it, and he had missed the obituary in The New York Times, which the Herald Tribune hadn’t reprinted. When I told him about it over dinner he cried. He regained his self-possession quickly and talked about how amusing Tom had been in the old days at the house, regaling us with his Carolingian and Merovingian anecdotes. A short time later, I learned that Henry had made a sizable contribution to the scholarship fund established in Tom’s memory for which I had provided the seed money.

  That he was doing very well as a lawyer was evident from what he told me about Hubert de Sainte-Terre’s businesses, his air of contented prosperity, and George Standish’s occasional slightly envious asides. What I knew about his personal life was limited by his reticence and my absence from Paris. I did know that he continued to live on rue de Rivoli and that, in the company of Hubert and Gilberte and their instructor, he had become a proficient skier. George thought that he must have bought a house in some French province. That was the gossip at the Paris office, in which curiosity was mixed with mild vexation because he hadn’t said a word about it to anyone. All the same, the weekends when he was presumed to be at his hideaway were immediately noticed. Instead of the telephone number of one of the Sainte-Terre residences or of a hotel in London or Venice, he would leave in his absence memorandum only a telephone number—always the same—in Tours, with none of the other usual information. The office had on occasion tried to reach him at that number. An answering service picked up and offered to take the message, disclaiming any knowledge of the whereabouts of the subscriber. Usually, Henry called back within minutes. I found this intriguing. It seemed to me that if he were living with some woman George and I would know it. Whether he and Margot were having an affair was a question that occurred to me more than once, and perhaps it was conducted at that hideaway, but he had volunteered no information, and I drew no conclusions from the sadness with which he talked of the Hornung parents. By one of those meaningless but painful coincidences, Mr. Hornung died in the same week as Tom; from his obituary I learned that Mrs. Hornung had preceded him by less than a year. I wrote to Margot at once, offering my condolences on both losses. She wrote two sentences in reply, or perhaps rebuke, to the effect that the loyalty of her friends had sustained her.

  QUITE APART from Henry and Margot, Paris was once again on my mind two years later, principally because of the election in May that had carried François Mitterrand to the Élysée. The change of political direction to him after Giscard was in neat contrast to the one recently effected in our country, with the defeat of Jimmy Carter by Ron
ald Reagan. Taken together, they illustrated my thesis that we lived in an Age of UnReason. I had not much liked Giscard’s regime or the class he represented. But Mitterrand troubled me because of the skullduggery in the affaire de l’Observatoire and also for a subsidiary reason that I kept to myself: the appalling condition of his teeth: I had the opportunity to inspect them from up close a few years earlier at a small dinner given by the French consul general in New York. Would I have thought much better of him had he something resembling President Reagan’s porcelain choppers? I can’t say. But I followed with more than usual vigilance The New York Times’s spotty coverage of France. I even subscribed to the airmail edition of Le Point. It was thus that, among a number of articles dealing with the program adopted by the Left, I came across the controversy concerning Banque de l’Occident, the French bank controlled by Hubert de Sainte-Terre, which had been scheduled for the first wave of nationalizations. Jacques Blondet was taking every opportunity to make public his conviction that having the state as owner would lead to the ruin of a bank like l’Occident that did most of its business outside of France. Non-French banks and clients would shun it; they wouldn’t tolerate having the French state stick its nose into their transactions. This position was echoed by Hubert more pungently and with equal vigor. The attacks by French government spokesmen and left-leaning journalists—in these instances one could hardly distinguish French reporters from editorialists—against the forces of international capital were equally energetic. With other privately owned French banks as well as the most important industrial firms under the same nationalization threat, it was easy to gain the impression that the French bourgeoisie, foreseeing a new reign of terror, had decided to emigrate, London and New York being the refuges of choice. I was not in the habit of making transatlantic calls. Nonetheless, I telephoned Henry to ask him what was going on—not so much in general as in relation to Hubert’s bank and to him. He was in a meeting and his secretary told me he would be in touch as soon as he was free.