The Salzburg Tales

by Christina Stead

  The next morning he dressed without looking in the glass, for he was busy looking at the house across the street: and he had dreamed that a beautiful young woman sitting on a first mortgage debenture had swum across the street to him during the night. He saw nothing worth mentioning for a week or more. Then, on a Sunday morning, the leaded panes flew open again and he saw opposite the old man at the table a swarthy young woman gesticulating violently, who, at that moment, turned to the clattering window, threw up her white arm and showed her teeth in a paroxysm of anger. The old man, leaning over his books, continued to read: the servant ran in, struggled with the lock, and then placed a chair against the framework so that the wind should burst in so rudely and without introduction, no more.

  “I understand it all,” thought Isidor: “an old man with a young wife, in an old and decaying mansion. An old scholar with a passionate young beauty in his libraries: she only wishes to dazzle her contemporaries with the fire in her veins. How beautiful she is and how indifferent he is! She would make a much better wife for a young ambitious man, one like me, for example, if only I had the money. She is certainly not more than twenty-four, and probably much younger;” thus he arranged the scene to suit his convenience.

  He was, therefore, disagreeably surprised to see Sir Solomon assisting his young wife into the automobile the next evening, and to observe that they behaved towards each other with the unmistakable looks and gestures of love; and that the old man (he persisted in calling him an old man), kissed the hand of his beauty tenderly as they seated themselves.

  And he was, therefore, delighted to see the young woman on another occasion stamp her foot and refuse to drive out with her husband, who stood waiting for her under the porte cochère; but he pretended to himself that the sight made him melancholy, and that he was full of commiseration for the young woman “evidently married against her heart by a businesslike father”. He began to lose sleep over this rare young woman. When he saw himself in this state he resolved to see her and speak with her and set his heart at peace. He cast about for ten days more, finding the Spineless Pineapple, the Bahamas Breadfruit Plantation, the Copenhagen Cork-matting and the Three-Dimensional Photograph promotions all too speculative for Sir Solomon, but on the eleventh day he was offered the business of promoting a subsidiary company for a flour mill twenty miles out of London: the mill was really antiquated but it could be furbished up for the time being.

  He presented his card next morning at the offices of Sir Solomon Perez, with an introduction from an influential broker in London Wall. When he entered the office he suffered a slight nervous shock, for the glance that Sir Solomon gave him not only dashed his hopes of getting the banker to participate in his questionable business, but made him despair of coming out of the interview with the proper respect of Sir Solomon. Isidor was a first-class business man, and it is not to be imagined that he dealt only in bad propositions or that his usual occupations were discreditable. He made his money by the exercise of very sharp wits, by understanding the true nature of money-making, by picking up affairs that had been dropped by duller men at the critical moment, and by judicious changes in his associates, so that he always dropped a meaner man for a more generous, and a poorer for a richer, and a foxier for a wiser. Also he had a small circle of friends out of whose purses he would never take more than one per cent, and two sponsors, rich men, whom he never plagued with his plans. These fidelities paved the way for him to a solid future. In consideration of his position, his reputation as a likely man, and his own sleep at night, it was necessary, then, that the banker should respect him; the more so, that he had come precisely to win Sir Solomon’s heart and confidence, and that the fate of his passion perhaps depended on this interview.

  Isidor hesitated a moment and then said cheerfully,

  “Sir, I am empowered to offer you a major participation in a small but safe business: I may say that the profits are absolutely secured to the promoters, and that profits may even possibly accrue to the owners and shareholders.”

  Sir Solomon waved his hand. Isidor continued,

  “Twenty miles from London, in Surrey, on the small streamlet the Wyenotte, are the flour-mills of the well-known firm of Jones and Backslide, Ltd., whose products are sold all over the British Empire: they manufacture cornflour, starch, self-raising flour, and so forth. We have approached these people and they are willing, after considerable persuasion, to permit a subsidiary company to be floated for the marketing of a new type of fine flour, various cereal foods, exploded, baked, boiled, scorched, scoured, dehydrated, whole and partial meals which will be advertised as much better for the digestion and teeth than the ordinary porridges sold till now. In the advertisement we intend to use the opinion of the Government Committee of Enquiry that the teeth of Scottish children are defective because they eat the Scotch oatmeal.”

  Isidor began to give Sir Solomon full accounts and details of the business, and mentioned that the promoters might expect to take as much as 60 per cent, of the proceeds of the flotation.

  Sir Solomon said,

  “You offer me a profit of 60 per cent, in this business?”

  Isidor said modestly,

  “You have seen the estimated figures, sir, which show 60 per cent, a figure arrived at in various ways.”

  Sir Solomon sat up energetically, and said,

  “Young man, you do not seem to be a fool, but you understand very little of the sort of business I do. Your offer does not interest me and I will tell you why.”

  He beckoned Isidor to him and went to the great uncurtained window which looked out on to the street, a narrow London street, heavily trafficked, full of small shops and hucksters along the pavements.

  Sir Solomon pointed to a miserable shop with the sign “Boulanger Sisters”, and to another, a large store of many departments, which was known for its regular advertisement of bargain sales and price-reductions.

  “The Boulanger Sisters have little money, buy poor stuff, expect a margin of profit of 60 per cent on each piece of stuff they sell, and are therefore always behind, from quarter-day to quarter-day, facing with diminishing receipts a gradually increasing debt: the “Palace Emporium” makes a profit of 5 per cent, on everything it sells, and even sometimes sells a line at cost price to get rid of it: they have plenty of money and only buy the best stuff in the market. Bring me a 5 per cent profit and I take it, but a 60 per cent profit on poor goods, no, I can’t afford it.” This was a serious check, but Isidor did not despair; and in the meantime, partly to avenge his honour in his interior courts, he took the cereals flotation to Henry Van Laer, who had an office in Poultry.

  Henry Van Laer had one of those Arabian Nights reputations for wealth, genius and diabolic intuition which only arise among hardheaded businessmen. He had arrived in London perhaps ten years before, had established himself in a small office, and by a series of daring manipulations, all operated according to principles opposed to those enunciated by Sir Solomon Perez, by a number of brilliant coups such as all financial speculators dream of, he had accumulated plenty of money and an elastic credit with the largest banks in the country: he was credibly reputed to be worth anything from three to twenty million pounds sterling.

  He did everything in his power to accentuate the supernatural in his setting and to cash in on the superstition next to the heart of city men. He now inhabited a magnificent suite of offices, entirely redecorated, in one of the famous old courts off Throgmorton Street: one of the rooms only was plainly furnished, papered in plain grey silk paper and containing a blackboard. Very few persons were admitted into the other rooms of his personal suite, but at intervals, one visitor and another was allowed to catch a glimpse of a rich tapestry, an exotic painting, a Daghestan carpet, or to hear the soft sound of water running into the fabulous Roman bathing-pool. It was confirmed by many that one of these rooms was hung with black silk curtains and that the curtains drawn back revealed on one wall a great six-pointed star of scarlet frames containing the photographs o
f men he had driven to suicide or ruined; or that these were the portraits of all the distinguished financiers in Europe with whom he was hand-in-glove. Further, it was said and believed that another room was elegantly decorated in eggshell blue and contained the portraits of seventeen women, his various mistresses; and that there was a room paved with red, black and white tiles, with a macaw in one corner on a golden perch, and in the centre, under crystal, an aquarium with the rarest kind of sea-animals, the aquarium being aërated subterraneously. The bathroom was supposed to be in Carrara marble, surrounded by columns and containing an authentic faun dug up at Herculancum. Let no-one think that this is a ridiculous account of the suite of the once-famous Van Laer, for much more fantastic legends are regularly current about the financial wizards and mystery-men of the Stock Exchange who spring up frequently in the nightmarish financial world.

  Henry Van Laer’s demeanour was not calculated to dissipate the illusion of the awestruck, covetous and generally rather stupid promoters who came to call on him: he spoke in a rapid, sibilant, unnaturally accented style, with impetuous gestures, or sudden cold calms, with withering analyses and frequent elaborate mathematical explanation on the blackboard. This blackboard was the undoing of most, for Van Laer was a good mathematician and had invented several new theorems (it was said), while most of his visitors simply knew how to divide and were difficult on fractions.

  Isidor encountered the redoubtable Henry after some difficulty, and left the business with him, feeling pretty sure of success. Naturally his share would be small and Van Laer’s large, but his self-respect was restored and he could now fish round for something more tempting for Sir Solomon.

  He hung about for several weeks without getting another interview with Henry Van Laer and without getting more than one glimpse of his enchantress—he had seen her in the street and she had seemed to him possibly slightly older than twenty-four.

  “Sir Solomon, that respectable old gent,” he said to himself, “is wearing her with his ancient’s passivity and forbearance: what she wants is active love and a companion, a mate who will not be afraid to throw his energy into the whirlpool of life and swim for it with her: what should she know about the conservation of energy?”

  During some weeks Van Laer was on the Continent, and when Isidor telephoned his secretaries, they coldly told him that the office was out of touch with Van Laer; true (they let him divine), they had their secret addresses, but he was engaged in stupendous affairs and could not be disturbed for a mere plate of porridge. Isidor smelt something in the breeze and went to reclaim his papers, but could not get even those, for Mr Van Laer’s private safes were locked and none of the secretaries might hand out papers.

  Isidor was busy likewise with other things, and his heart continued to burn in his waistcoat. The Winter passed away and the Spring came, and when he first smelled the fresher air and saw the black buds waiting to burst on the plane-trees and the gusts of wild wind rushing down the street, and an occasional bag of blue in the gloomy sky, his blood became mercurial: as he was blown along he found himself chanting verses in time with his light footfalls: “The heart arose like a bird, the heart flew into air” and at this he did a double twirl on his heels, for his hat, after hopping off his head and standing in the air, was now bowling along the pavement. This brought him in front of a large door which was suddenly opened: in the entrance stood two men carrying a bronze figure partly wrapped in papers and sacking: at the same moment the sun shone and the first man observed,

  “Yes, Spring is here.”

  “And thank Evans,” said the second, “cause in Spring they alluz go to Paris.”

  “It’s all right to be some people,” concluded the first, and they went trot-trotting down the street with their bronze figure. Then Isidor remembered that his lady had been away all last summer, and his heart jumped into his throat more like a stone flying up off the wheel of a cart, than a bird, and his temples began to beat, for he did not wish to spend the entire summer without having got one word with Lady Perez. He devoted all his ingenuity and patience (which was the smaller of the two) in the next two days, to finding out the lie of the house from his own post of observation and from an idle conversation or two with the maid. The maid immediately suspected a romance and guilefully let fall several titbits of information, such as, that Sir Solomon and his wife were not always of the same mind, that he called her “extravagant, extravagant, unendurably extravagant” (although the maid could testify that she had a very small and very unbecoming set of clothes for so rich a lady), and that Lady Perez had a lot of books in her private cabinet which were “what you might call queer”.

  “I don’t say anything against them,” said the maid, “and I know foreign girls are not reared up like English young ladies, and she’s a married lady too, but the books are very queer, sir, if you know what I mean.”

  On the whole the maid took the side of her master against her mistress. Isidor played with the tip of the maid’s ear, and with the tip of her nose: he also drew one lock of hair over one eye and told her her eye gleamed through “like a fox in a brush”, whereupon the maid informed Isidor (who was a young man of pleasing exterior) that she had to go indoors because the master was upstairs in his library and wanting something or other, but that he was out every day from ten till four or five and that he had lately taken to staying out till seven several times a week, or that he hurried home and went straight out again, and that was usually on Wednesday evenings, “to the Club, or the Linnean”.

  “Céleste Aida,” sang Isidor and departed.

  “The young woman is evidently a very romantic and passionate creature,” said Isidor to himself, “and the old man is neglecting her,” and he ran upstairs singing. He put his face against the pane when he got upstairs, and looked at the spray of light the remote chandelier made on the coloured glass in the banker’s house, and he imagined to himself that he was inside there, sitting in an easy chair on a carpet, stretching himself and looking upward at the old French-beamed ceiling, scarlet with gold mouldings and chisellings marked in blue. The door would open and in would come the maid with a letter: the door would open on another side and there would stand Lady Perez—“My dear Mr Stevenson, what a pleasure!”

  For I must now admit a thing I have concealed before. Some years before, Isidor had paid tribute to the country of his birth by changing his name to Irving Stevenson. It is only for the sake of clarity that I continue to call him Isidor.

  He would spring to his feet and bowing over her hand—words of rapture would certainly pour from his lips, for he knew that he could never contain himself at such happiness. Or, no, on the contrary he would kiss her hand with great elegance, and withdrawing to a little distance, carefully noting the details of her person and character, would say that he was not what he seemed to be, an idle visitor, come through a casual introduction; that he was a student—these ideas froze; would she be susceptible to scholarship? He thought of Sir Solomon bending over his book while his wife gesticulated; no, he would not be a student; a poet, rather, for a domineering woman loves a poet, and a poet can also twist her like silk. He started to say to himself, “Sweet …” but he did not know her name.

  The front-door yawned opposite and Sir Solomon drove out in his car alone. Isidor rushed into his bedroom and changed his clothes, made himself a hasty but lustrous toilet, ran the file over his nails, sat down on the edge of the bed with beating heart, and opening a volume of Byron’s poetry read some verses at random:

  “Or since that has left my breast,

  Keep it now and take the rest.”

  He fluttered the pages and came to the “Hebrew Melodies”:

  “She walks in beauty like the night

  Of cloudless climes and starry skies …”

  It was sufficient: armed with the emotion and prying open his treasure of rhetoric, he descended the stairs and rang the bell of the Perez door. To the footman he presented his card and said, with a frown,

  “Sir Solom
on Perez is expecting me!”

  “Sir Solomon is out, sir.”

  “He will surely return, for I have an appointment with him: let me see his secretary.”

  “I am sorry, sir: he has no secretary here, sir.”

  Isidor hesitated, and as he was being shown in, said with great dignity:

  “Perhaps you will be kind enough to give Lady Perez my card and ask het· to receive me.”

  Lady Perez, having made a scene with her husband, because he was once again dining out, was now sitting dolefully in her bedroom thinking of her abandonment. Her expression was sulky and her eyes furious with plans for revenge and liberation. She would have liked to free herself or she would have been content with a lover, but she did not see the possibility of either. Not only was her husband keen and careful of his fame, but she feared to wound him too deeply, for at seasons she loved him passionately, and he was usually tender with her; she knew she was difficult to get on with; to live with her required the silken armour of romantic love, which Sir Solomon had worn for her. Moreover, she had a dignified timidity in the presence of young men, because she had not seen much of society, and now lived so quietly.

  She agreed to receive the young Englishman, Irving Stevenson, and came into the library, the room with the unsteady windows, moving through the door with a grand gait like an imperial trireme. Her eyes rested steadily on the young man as he advanced to meet her, very upright and graceful, but with hallucinations of unsteadiness which can well be imagined.