House of All Nations (43 page)

‘Yes, yes,' Aristide's voice from its well, ‘but where is that architect? We cannot always have the best in the world: we are not Americans with their dollars. We are only looking for someone to keep the bridge in repair. Skyscrapers are not for us, any more than Le Corbusier houses. We have not that money yet. Some day, when our stock market is like the Americans—but even then we are not in the same position. There is the fear of war. Why should we build to give targets for German planes?'

Haller, with hands still poised, had the air of an engineer, working out his own style by using someone else as a sketching block. ‘New models are always possible.' He laughed: his stomach was in a state of happy digestion. ‘For instance, there was the old Brooklyn Bridge, one of the wonders of the world when it was put up, the work of genius of the Roeblings, but now it is no longer useful for modern transport, although it is charming to the eye. How do we know the Third Republic, pleasant enough to look at, can't be superseded by a better model? Why can't there be a Fourth Republic? Naturally, it is to the interest of people who have invested in the old model, not to change.' He stopped smiling. ‘If you want to know what I really think, Mr. Raccamond, I have been reading his works for five years and I have formed my own opinion, no man will live longer in the mind of man when the history of today is screened down, than Lenin!'

‘Lenin!' they both cried out.

‘An arriviste of
genius
,' said Marianne with her sure touch for agreeable commonplaces.

‘I can't agree with that,' stoutly held Aristide. ‘Why do you say that?' (
Mon Dieu
, and the man is rich enough … it shows they get fantastic and whimsical when they get idle, these ex-capitalists.)

Haller replied, ‘Because he's got the engineering view of society. Look how he organized production in a wasted, undeveloped, antiquated society like Russia's! What man has done so much elsewhere in so short a time?'

‘What has he done?' asked Raccamond, meanwhile. ‘What do we know? Everything we hear from Russia is propaganda, prepared in Leningrad. A friend of mine who was in Russia, on business, said that everything is impossible. His suitcase was stolen at the railway station. He went through with a party and they were supposed to go through according to schedule, parks, factories, all the routine. But he said to himself, “Just the same, I want to see for myself.” So he pretended to misread the schedule and stayed behind a day. When he came down to breakfast the next morning after the party had left, all the good food had vanished. There was nothing but black bread and stewed tea, as the peasants drink! Stage dressing! And the hotel was full of bugs. And he said the people in the streets are in rags! His heart bled for them, and I assure you, Mr. Haller, that he is not a particularly philanthropic man. I don't think we should base our ideas upon what the press agencies hand out, Mr. Haller. The venality of the press, we know. And in a one-voice country. With a pinch of salt, at least. Then don't forget, the Russians are a very backward people: they don't know how badly off they are. It's easy to fool them. Things are better! Yes, indeed. I should like to see it first, with my own eyes.'

The liqueurs working in their stomachs and the conversation, the interest aroused by the introduction of Lenin, one of their favorite topics, and their apparent victory, also habitual, made them begin to wonder when the next dish was coming. Sure enough, the door opened at the psychological moment and Mme. Haller trotted in, jolly, bearing a larger dish, on which was a huge stuffed jellied and nobly decorated carp, the
pièce de résistance
of the Haller feast, a dish Mme. Haller invariably spent the previous twenty-four hours preparing. Behind her, Anna was perilously toting red-bordered Sèvres plates, silver, a little crystal dish with extra pieces of roe, jelly, and stuffing, and a small dish of macaroons.

‘There!' said Sophy, with a blush of triumph at them all, especially at Mr. Raccamond whose eyes opened and who quite openly licked his lips.

‘Did you do it all yourself?' Marianne exerted herself to please, as her own eyes were pleased. It was the most delectable of dishes and Mme. Haller's masterpiece. She knew that Mme. Haller only made it when Aristide and she came to dinner. Some strange feminine instinct prompted Mme. Haller to feed that great mountain of flesh till his eyes popped. She passed the fish out more sparingly. It was very good. With less ceremony than before they downed the helpings of carp and Mme. Haller pressed them less to convert the good great delicate fish into Raccamond meat, for it was a particular delight of Georg's and she knew he would go foraging, at night, after the Raccamonds had left, in the kitchen, hoping for some remnants. Nevertheless, one way and another, with their exclamations of pleasure, with Haller pressing and she herself pressing, from habit, they got through the carp and several glasses of chartreuse each and there was no time for talking at all, except for asking occasionally, ‘Is it good, is it really good?' and exclaiming almost with tears in her eyes, ‘Oh, I am so glad! If it pleases you, I am most happy.' But, strange thing, the tears were there as much for the vanishing of the carp which had taken so much labor, thought and love and delicacy and experience and money, and for the vanishing of all the dreams and desires of praise that had grown up round it in its brief afterlife, and for the astonishing end to which so much hard work was directed. Nevertheless, she was not wholly conscious of this last feeling: it would have been unworthy of a good hostess. Strangely enough, there was something displeasing to her, embittering almost, in seeing those two good, fat Raccamonds engulf her tender, kingly fish, surrounded by so much perfumed shining jelly and dressed in so many little sprigs, and bits of lemon, and olives and fancy bits of gelatine. This time she had really surpassed herself and there was not an ounce of the fish left. Leaning back a little, she therefore comforted herself with liqueur (‘I mustn't take very much, my head turns, I haven't a strong head like you, Mme. Raccamond') and presently the slight shadow had disappeared. She had the pleasure of hearing the great blubber of voracious male, Raccamond, whose appetite attracted her dreadfully, almost sexually, say, ‘You are the best cook I ever knew or heard of, Mme. Haller. Isn't she, Marianne?'

‘Oh, wonderful, wonderful, I wish I could cook like that.'

‘Oh, is it really good, then?'

They both cried out, ‘It is the best carp we ever tasted.' Haller looked at them with a smile between gratitude and derision.

‘You fatten me, really,' Aristide shook a playful finger at her, ludicrous gesture in his solemn demeanor. Marianne, breathing a little hard to cover up that absurd gesture, rushed in, ‘Yes, you go to too much trouble for such poor folks as us: it is a shame, Mme. Haller. You ought not to.'

The little thing's face clouded. ‘Oh!' She looked quickly at both of them. ‘You don't like it! Is it bad? Oh, how dreadful!'

‘No, no, no.' The boulder of Sisyphus to roll up all over again! But they came to it with willing, if exhausted shoulders again. ‘No, it's a delightful, wonderful fish.' Aristide looked at her with a husbandly, tender admonition. ‘Only, we don't want you to go to such preparations for simple people like us. Why, it is fit for the President of the Republic.'

‘Simple people! Oh, how can you say that? You are people with such good taste. If you praise a thing I know it's really good. Then the carp is really good?'

‘Yes, yes, indeed.'

‘Then I'm satisfied.'

Mr. Haller was still picking bits of roe and jelly out of the second dish. Impulsively, gratefully, she leaned forward and helped Aristide to another piece of roe, one of the last titbits she had been reserving for Georg's night hunting. ‘There, eat that! It's nothing, not a feather-weight.'

‘Oh, no, I beg you.'

‘Not if you like it! If you don't eat it, I'll know you don't like it.'

Aristide ate. His ears had flushed. He helped it down with a half glass of chartreuse, not quite knowing any more what it was, only that it was an alcoholic drink which whipped his gastric juices into action.

‘I am a bear on principle, you see, Mr. Raccamond,' said Haller courteously, harking back to another part of their conversation, ‘because money is limited on the bear side: shares can only go to zero. But on the bull side the theory is that it can go to infinity simply because we can go on adding up. That is why, on general principles, the bulls are always wrong because there is no mechanical factor to limit their dreams. Ignorant people, with a limited knowledge of how money is made, like to bull. But money is really only made through bear operations, through put and calls, and through arbitrage, protected to a limited extent, through stop-loss orders, although they are unsatisfactory. You have to let money out on a checkrein.'

‘Unless you're in a pool,' said Aristide, for this was his dream.

‘I'm talking of the independent money-maker.' Haller shook his head.

Marianne was talking aside to Sophy, rash because the carp was finished to the last crumb of the roe. ‘How did you learn to be such a wonderful cook? Did you learn it at home?'

She lifted her little dimpled hands in the air, delighted. ‘Oh, no, no, no, no. I knew nothing. When I married—Georg, I was eighteen! I knew—less than that,' a tiny piece of fingernail. ‘My mother never let my sister or me into the kitchens. When I got married, a favorite uncle of mine wrote to say he would come and visit me and see what a good housewife I was. He loved jellied carp and I decided to make one for him. I got a big book, I went down to the market myself, and bought a very big carp. I've no idea what it cost me! Do you remember, Georg? Well, that was thirty years ago. Could you believe we have been married thirty-one years? The book said, ‘
Savonnez bien
!' so I scrubbed it with a scrubbing brush and soap. When my uncle came I put it before him and told him I had done it all myself. He put one piece in his mouth, for it looked beautiful with jelly and everything, just like it did, tonight—and you said it was good tonight, didn't you?—and spat it out. Oh, my dear Mme. Raccamond, oh, my poor Mme. Raccamond, I burst out crying. “What's there in it?” he said. “Stuffed with soap?” Well, Georg, you have eaten all the fish.'

She rang the bell while she gazed round at them, pink. ‘I am very happy tonight: you liked it.' Georg looked at her, content, and then went back to his dispute with Raccamond. Sophy whispered, ‘Never mind, he left his estate to my sister and me, just the same; he was childless and loved us very much.'

Marianne saw in the Hallers the sump of a large childless family. Sophy nodded at her. ‘Your son is doing well at Oxford, of course? It is so charming.' She nodded to her, congratulating her. ‘Anna! Hurry up!' (The rest in Hungarian.) ‘Try a little more Cordial-Médoc, Mme. Raccamond. We laid in a big stock just after the war, for Mr. Haller was sure there would be another war within fifteen years!' The Cordial-Médoc, like the other drinks, had sharpened and lost its original flavor by bad cellarage but they both cried out they were all excellent, superlative.

‘Dear Madame,' Mme. Haller again said, ‘I prefer to eat in my own lares and penates. Restaurants cheat you.'

‘Sophy! You ought to see what Anna is doing!'

She answered sharply in German, ‘Georg! Why do you always order me about?'

‘A hostess,' he laid down, as if repeating some basic assumption of physics, ‘should always make her guests' comfort her first care.'

‘Excuse me,' she said to them both, blushing. She went and stood behind Georg. ‘Georg, you are naughty this evening. You command. You order.' She laughed girlishly, still the nineteen-year-old bride, conserved, put her hands a minute on his shoulders. ‘Naughty, disagreeable Georg.'

‘Go,' said Georg, gently. She tripped off at once. ‘Yes,' continued Georg, in contented repletion, ‘Russia will one of these days be the most modern state in Europe and in perhaps twenty-five to fifty years will be better off than America. Look at the anarchy that reigns in America!'

Mrs. Haller came in with a deep fruit dish in which large half-peaches swam. Behind her, Anna, bearing a dish deeper and smaller, full of whipped cream; nuts and nutcrackers and sugar. She returned to the kitchen and brought back a plate of cakes, while Sophy nipped out and returned with a bag of chocolates and a jar of honey. ‘Georg, come and eat.'

Georg had been looking through his engineering textbooks to illustrate some point to Aristide and now came back slowly, with his eager, sunny, blond face turned to him. ‘If the government has the foresight to form a trade pact with Russia, France will ride the storm in the next few years. Russia is making herself felt. France was boycotted for years after the French Revolution: statesmen all fulminated against her and those who supported her were treated as ragamuffins and tatterdemalion intellects, but it became impossible to neglect her. You see!'

‘And she, of course,' said Aristide nastily, ‘needs an outlet for grain. She'll ruin the little grain producer in this country.' He himself reaped a few bushels yearly on a little place down south.

‘Mme. Raccamond, will you help your husband to peaches and cream?' asked Sophy. Marianne did so, putting only one peach on his plate. This caused a frightful outcry from both the hosts and Aristide's plate was heaped with peaches and cream, which his doctor had told him not to touch. ‘Just a little … it won't hurt you!' Sophy nodded confidentially, ‘This is better than you get anywhere in Paris; a man brings it in specially for me twice a week from the country. Just taste it, Mme. Raccamond. There! Eh?'

‘No system can support compound interest,' said Georg. ‘I will show you a little calculation of my own. Do you read propositions in algebra easily?'