House of All Nations (46 page)

‘Marianne, perhaps I'm wasting my time. I dropped in at Cleat, Placket, and Company this afternoon and talked to a few of the boys.'

‘You're hedging your job?'

‘It's not a bad idea, any time.'

‘No, but you're in Bertillon's. Make this trip, I say, and you'll come back with a very different view of the bank. You can snoop round in Amsterdam, for example, and find out their relation to Legris and Company. And you can find out who Alphendéry represents.
Mon Dieu
, surely your nose is good enough for that.' She sounded impatient for a moment.

‘My dear, I haven't been there very long, they might think it peculiar—'

‘Eh,
mon Dieu
, you're timid, Aristide. You've got Carrière. You know Carrière. Carrière carries an account there and he carries a great whale of bonds abroad with their foreign branches. Isn't that enough? If they're obdurate, get Carrière to ask specially for you to go abroad and check up his accounts. Anything. You've no resource, Aristide. This clerk, Constant, travels for them. Bertillon doesn't stand on status.'

‘Yes, I'll do that. It's a good idea. Thank you, Marianne.'

‘I should think so!'

‘You must find me a poor sketch sometimes, Marianne!'

‘Oh, don't say that: you're my husband. I want you only to praise yourself to me. Whatever happens, I want to think well of you. How can I if you run yourself down, Aristide? Don't depreciate yourself to me or anyone else. That's a first rule of dignity.'

‘You're sharp.'

‘That's animal cunning: every dog knows it. You're too soft and human, you are too gentle. Hold your head up, Aristide. You don't know human nature. If you give way ever so little, the pack will swarm over you and tear you to pieces. You ought to know that. You must have suffered, Aristide!' She gave him a look of pity.

‘Yes, I've suffered. I always thought it was temperamental weakness.'

‘Oh, no.' She suffered herself and was angry. ‘This is folly. You are a brilliant man, Aristide.'

‘You're in love with me, Marianne.'

‘Oh, no, no … it's not that. Oh, how angry you make me! No. I have known lots of men in my life, Aristide: my father, my four brothers, my cousins in the Banque Czorvocky: my life has been nothing but men, and as you say, I have strong nerves myself. I have met bankers and brokers all my life. I know the temperaments that give promise. Yours is one. I saw it from the first. Now, listen to me a moment. There is some secret in the Banque Bertillon. We must work discreetly but continuously to find out who is behind Bertillon. There is certainly someone. There is this new rumor, for example, that the Société Générale Alsacienne owns part of it. And then you have the fact that Alphendéry has occult influence there, and that he is an Alsatian. Can we run this rumor to earth? Now Cleat, Placket, and Company is just a little firm, struggling to appear thriving, like the rest. It seems to me that in Bertillon's, through the difference of your temperaments, you, Aristide, have the chance we have been waiting for. You were caught in a trap in Claude Brothers. We have botched things for the last ten years. Now we are starting fresh and with wind behind us. I feel it. I am full of confidence.'

He was still moody, though brighter than before. ‘I found that sneak Parouart sitting in Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern's lobby, fresh as paint and very much at home. I am certain he is working with them.'

‘Working? He couldn't.'

‘Well, up to some of his games. Your people aren't in it?'

‘I don't think so. I'll go and see Czorvocky though. He still works for my uncle sometimes, I know.'

‘Look here, Marianne, how the deuce can I get in with Rosenkrantz and his partner if your uncle is already tangling things with his toady Parouart? You know Czorvocky is not a friend of mine.'

Marianne considered for a moment and then said equably, ‘I'll go and see him, dear, and find out what tricks he's up to. So, that is what you were worrying about?'

‘Your uncle is a terrible thief, you know, Marianne. Let him keep his fingers off our bread and butter.'

‘Good, I'll see him. He'll do a lot for me.'

Aristide trembled, and said excitedly, ‘I'll do for this Parouart if he interferes in my business. He's only a police rat. He has no brains.'

‘Listen, dear, you remember Claude Brothers? Don't forget there's a file in your name down at police headquarters. So much the worse. We must bear even with Parouart.'

‘I can't stand him, I can't stand this petty intriguing that goes on round your uncle.'

‘Calm yourself and don't go back over all that. We will make out and when the time comes I'll get uncle to dish Parouart. Let us get something on him … You say he's blackmailing Bertillon?'

‘Yes, as I told you. He told me himself. There may be something in his complaint, of course.'

‘Oh, what's that? A man like that has no rights. Well, tell Bertillon that Parouart is up at Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern trying to worm his way in. That will start the ball rolling.'

‘Good, a good idea. I'll do it tomorrow. You're very clear-headed, Marianne.'

She looked at him deliberately. ‘No, never praise me, Aristide. All my ideas come from you. I would be nothing without you. This is not a world for women.'

He walked beside her, his large head bent and livid, his full lips protruding, a gloomy expression still in his eyes, but she felt the mood had almost passed off. Presently he stood straighter and began talking cheerfully about the stock market which was up. He always felt better when prices soared: he was a natural bull and he never felt honest when he had to tell clients to ‘bear' the market, even when he was convinced that this was the right advice. He was no good in a depression. She recalled something. ‘I found out something interesting about your precious bank today. The head teller, Henri Martin, you know?'

‘Yes, a very nice fellow. Pleasant manners, very dignified.'

‘Yes, he inspires confidence.'

‘Oh, I believe he has real ability.'

‘Undoubtedly. He was an agent of the French Secret Service during the war, in Switzerland. He sent some twenty-five men to death.'

‘Good God.'

‘Yes; he could help us with Parouart if need be.'

‘What's he doing in the Banque Bertillon?'

‘I don't know that.'

‘There is some mystery in the Banque Bertillon, Marianne.'

‘Perhaps Bertillon did some special work in the war, too. He has the military medal and citations, you know'

‘Yes. Hm. We must watch our step, Marianne.'

‘Yes. But I don't think Parouart is so dangerous, you see, in the Banque Bertillon. Aristide, you must act. You are unhappy when you don't. That is how you get into messes. I want you to work with Bertillon because I don't think your temperament is suited to big banks. You would be swallowed up. You can't stand the idea of a sea of men above you; you stifle. We are money types. Bertillon wants a real lieutenant. If Alphendéry is acting for someone else, he is not an officer of the bank; if he is not, he is only one of these materializations of a vague desire or dream or need which a financier needs at times in his life. A financier is a strange animal: he needs props, grand viziers, and court jesters at times. If Alphendéry is only that he will go overboard one of these days. But you are not the court-jester type. You have a real function in the bank. You are afraid to investigate the bank from top to bottom systematically. One would say you are afraid to find out someone or something. Are you afraid to find Bertillon out? Or yourself? You hesitate with a weapon in your hands. This must be done piecemeal, Aristide. You have no psychological ingenuity, you rush into things—bull optimist, bull pessimist. What is the use of filling the ears of every evening with the mournful tale of your half-measures, your fears and frights? Our old age will come and you still in a state of indecision in an indecisive career. Perhaps, if you cannot push yourself to the top, you should go back into small business, Aristide? Give up all your ideas of making big money? …

‘Listen, while you are wondering, other people are consolidating their positions, forming partnerships, learning what the books are about, getting positions abroad, like this Adam Constant, who was no one but a minor teller yesterday and today does secret commissions abroad for Bertillon and tomorrow will go to Shanghai. You are working alone. You must form partnerships, smile at the tellers, bribe the accountants, take the other customers' men out to lunch, flatter Alphendéry. You are too cold, you don't smile enough, you fall into a frenzy on the slightest accident, the rest of the time you go about sunk in the cold lard of your slight melancholy. You are, at bottom, quite a neurotic in business, Aristide, like a poet who has been forced into a countinghouse by his uncle. But no one forced you: this has been your life-long desire, Aristide. You want to make big money, you like a life of ease: you would be miserable as a clerk or salesman. You must go ahead or renounce the whole career and go back to your father's business, waste the rest of your life in regrets and wish dreams.

‘You see—you must take a different attitude … It is very well to go out to dinner with Sournois, Carrière, the Carrière troop of chorus boys, and Oscar Rennel and his actresses and the people from the Théâtre Mogador and Mrs. Weyman, Fred Pharion, and Kensington Southe. It is very good, I say, they have money and they are speculators, but you must not rest with them: you wanted to be an actor yourself and when you are with them you slacken up, you tend to dream. You must go in more for politicians. When I got Czorvocky to introduce you to Carrière five years ago, I wanted you to get in with the politicians. You must pursue that line. Everything in France is politics and if you wipe your feet when you leave them and wipe your hands when you shake hands with them, you will get their leavings, have their protection, and in due time, you will form a lifelong alliance with one of them. Of course, it's always possible that Carrière himself will become your protector. But you must hedge: and Carrière will respect you more if he sees you have other alliances among the deputies …'

Aristide listened attentively and said nothing at the end of this speech.

Marianne waited a few minutes. The sweet night air blew round them and presently blew away the unpleasant notes of Marianne's remarks and then she said, gently, ‘A character in a play, even a super, must at least elbow the other players a bit to show he's alive.'

‘That's the convention of the stage and of women,' Aristide remarked, ‘that there is some way of getting things done and some way out. As if in a dizzy beehive like the bank there was some way of getting anything done. No, it is not a beehive, it is a merry-go-round. The horses look splendid, their nostrils flash fire, their mouths drip slaver, they rear, their eyes dart passion, their manes float, and they even go round, but all is sculpted wood, and a spinning platform. The bank is a stage, Marianne: there is something in it I can't seize, for the life of me. I don't know what gives it momentum.' Marianne did not pursue the subject: her thoughts had turned to something else. ‘I saw about fifty apartments free yesterday between Sèvres-Babylone and the Rue Bonaparte. I may have to redecorate my apartment, after all … Raoul wrote for some more money: what are we going to do with that ne'er-do-well, Aristide? With both our apartments empty and Pierre's fees to pay, it is really quite a squeeze. Thank goodness your commissions are swelling.'

‘Money, money, Marianne: there is something else in life besides money,' said Aristide suddenly.

‘Not to pay the rent with: I shouldn't like to hear that from my house guests in Rue du Jardin Botanique. No. There is nothing else in life but money. Listen. The working people are not so foolish as we are. No sentiment with them. One reads nothing else in their papers but that—demands for more money, pensions, rents, price of bread, apprentices' wages. As a result of this single-mindedness on their part, we, the softening middle class, pay for it in taxes, insurance. We should have their hardheadedness. I really believe we will go under to them if we don't wake up. What do we want with the arts, for example, in a time like this? We should become more Spartan, Aristide: I tell you, we really deserve to lose the battle if we cannot throw overboard our fancy cargoes, pare our comfort down. Men like you, Aristide, my dear, are relics of a more comfortable age. Money, I don't despise it. It's a clean, honorable thing. Debts are paid in it. Tell me, aren't we uncomfortable, if someone starts doing us all sorts of vague favors, puts himself out for us: it is quite an annoyance! Everyone prefers to have services rendered to him in terms of pounds, shillings, and pence. Then you know what you owe. As for gratitude, it is only money teaches people gratitude. We despise the person who obliges us in things with no exchange value; we are grateful to those who lend us money; we are glad to know the exact price of everything that's given to us … Doesn't everyone go sneaking round to the shops, after a birthday, to find out the price of the watch or lace jabot just given? Take a rich father: he neglects his children all his life, sends them to boarding schools, finds them the most inconvenient domestic animals. When they are twenty-one, he settles an estate on them and he suddenly begins to have an affection for them, for he has evaluated them to himself. We live in an unsure shifting world: money gives us a sure set of values; everything else is mere opinion, but you and I and Mr. No-Name passing by can agree on the value of a louis d'or …

Aristide laughed. ‘You would have made a lawyer, Marianne.'

She bent her looks on him. ‘My friend, you are passing through some crisis—what is it?'

‘I don't know, Marianne. Always the same struggle; sometimes I wonder why I don't succeed.'