House of All Nations (7 page)

‘You are a friend of Adam's,' said Henrietta trying not to be shy.

Alphendéry said, ‘Well, Jules has told me all about it—or not quite all, I suppose. Now, have I got to convert the father or the daughter? I can do either.'

‘The father.'

‘The daughter!'

‘I'll talk to your daughter, Mr. Achitophelous,' said Alphendéry cheerfully. ‘Can I take her to lunch tomorrow?'

Achitophelous shot him a suspicious glance, but after a minute's study, said, ‘Yes, why not? With pleasure.'

Henrietta bridled at being the center of attention and became a little fatuous. But Achitophelous turned to Jules. ‘Well, that's done. Have you got a man called Mouradzian round here?' He stopped in the middle of a sentence when Henrietta took her leave, and shook his head. ‘A son,' he said to Jules, ‘is a gilt-edged security, but a daughter is goods that have to be given away with a bonus. Have you sons?'

‘Four,' said Jules carelessly, ‘do you know Henri Léon?'

‘Not much,' said Achitophelous, troubled, ‘he's all right. Sell, he can. He can sell last week's bait for tomorrow's halibut. He's all right. Is he in business down here then?'

‘Oh, he's a friend of mine,' said Jules. ‘You want to see Mouradzian?' He reached for the telephone. ‘Tell Mouradzian to come up here.'

Achitophelous sank into a chair. ‘My wife is pure as an angel,' he said heavily. ‘Where did Henrietta get such traits? Her mother is like snow. Such a temperament!' He flushed and giggled. ‘She gets it from me, all right.'

* * *

Scene Four: Whoopee Party

I
n the evening the women had their war paint on and Léon was in fine feather. He had spent a couple of hours at the Turkish bath with Paul Méline. They sat late in the restaurant of the Café de la Paix. Léon liked its loaded serving tables and gilded pillars. As a poor boy he had dreamed of fleshpots like this one: this was his way of telling himself he had arrived and that he was really a rich man and everything his to command. He was showering questions on them, interspersing questions with anecdotes of his career.

He seemed to be carrying Mrs. Weyman off at a hand gallop. Once he even burst into song, a Roumanian folk song, in his sweet fluted voice, at the request of Raccamond. The married pair were of use to him as a social screen, in case anyone turned up who knew Mrs. Léon.

Aristide tried to speak of the bank, said slowly, ‘Comte Jean de Guipatin is working with me there: he's related to the Bourbons; there's Comte Hervé Lucé, a fifteenth-century family; Prince Julius Campoverde, an Italian aristocrat—all customers' men.'

Alphendéry strolled into the café. Léon called him and asked, ‘Who are your customers?'

‘Our money comes from South Americans who make money every two or three years in some new mining grab or nitrates steal or currency flop, and a few old Spanish land hogs, a few Hollywood sky-rockets, a few Eton playboys, a few Theosophist bankers, a spa owner, a hotel speculator, a German steelworks heir, and the like. Not a bad little collection: we can survive.'

Léon settled back his head in his collar, threatened, ‘Seems nothing but a society outfit: rich young yellowbellies. No good. These counts: are they kosher? Do you think any of them have any real cash you can sound on the counter without bending it?'

Alphendéry spoke energetically, ‘Some new, some old: consolidated
squirearchies, new political money wedded to the U.S.A., conserved Napoleonic dough, society figures who remember where they came from and how far: not too rusty, not too incautious. Opportunist, clever, unscrupulous, and talented money. People who eat their cake and have it. The best for business: steady income, new sources, no baccarat, no scroungers, no expectations, no frozen funds. A few Chicago streetwalkers with packing-house fortunes, married to phony counts, a few French hereditary bankbooks, a few postwar youngsters, motordrome and flying aces, born in a bedeviled world, crazy to make a fortune, amoral, playing for big stakes: the latter hang around Jules Bertillon as if he were their long-lost brother. That sounds shaky, but it's sounder than you guess. Jules says, “I can work with any ace: he understands me. If I'm ever held up, it will be for speeding.” '

Léon laughed but said thoughtfully, ‘Birdmen:
Luftmenschen
?' He seemed to believe Alphendéry's tale. He mused, ‘But no big money. Not related to Morgan's? I heard something. You have a cousin of the Rothschilds in one of your branches, Aristide tells me.'

‘Have we?' said Alphendéry: ‘Perhaps. Everyone has. The Rothschilds have given up keeping their second cousins.'

‘That's bad,' said Léon. ‘I wouldn't keep them if they wouldn't.' He laughed suddenly. Alphendéry said, ‘I have to go. My old mother's leaving for home—Strasbourg—tonight. Good night, ladies. Good night!' He jumped up. They all saw that his clothes were good but his hat was shabby.

After he left Léon was thoughtful. ‘Well, I don't want to talk business. But I don't object to its being little money. Means you can make a graceful exit in a crisis. If France gets any poorer, you'll have socialism here and they'll gun for the big fellows … ' He shook his head. ‘At the same time, it's small. It depends on yield. You make your money how? That's what I don't understand, Raccamond. Can't figure it out. I've been worrying about it, all the afternoon. You don't give loans, you don't give commercial credits, you get no half-commission back. Isn't that what you told me? Then how do you make money?'

Aristide said, ‘I'll find out later on: I'll work it out.'

‘Well,' commanded Léon, having exhausted the subject, ‘don't let's talk business. We want to make whoopee, don't we? No business.' He clapped his hands and stared round at the pillars. ‘Waiter, where's the waiter? A bottle of wine. You want some more wine, don't you, Margaret? Of course. Marianne? Aristide?' They all licked their lips and agreed under their breaths. Aristide alone said in a businesslike tone, ‘We've got enough, Henri.'

‘Enough? Enough! Two bottles of wine for four people. You're not going to go back on me, Margaret? I want to have fun tonight. I come to Paris to have fun. Come on, darling, say you'll drink some more wine? You will. Waiter! More wine. Another bottle.'

‘Certainly.'

Léon looked round the table grandly, with satisfaction. Aristide said, bending over his plate and cutting a great hunk of meat, ‘Bertillon makes fortunes for himself at Deauville and on the stock exchange: he's lucky—'

‘Don't talk about Bertillon,' commanded Léon cheerfully: ‘let's talk about me. I want to be with my friends tonight. What'll we do afterwards? Eh? A cabaret. The Scheherazade? I've got four tickets. A girl there gave them to me. Four tickets and champagne free. She gave me four. We'll go to the Scheherazade.'

They ate dumbly while he looked round, searching for fresh horizons to beam upon. He leaned forward. ‘Ah, I tell you, Marianne, Alfonso XIII has to go. They all have to go: all the tyrants. That's what my heart tells me. No oppression. You can make more money under socialism. And if you couldn't, I'd still want it … Money-making isn't all of life. My life would be empty if there were only money-making in it. I tell you, Margaret, if I thought my life was going to end like that, I'd go and throw a bomb at one of the men who are oppressing people. A man can't go out like that. You light a gas flame, it sings and suddenly it goes out. There's no more money in the meter. Do I want to be like that? I get sad, Margaret, when I think that my life is empty.' He got gayer. ‘No, Margaret, I can't end like that. I've got to be famous, Margaret: by James, I'll be famous, I'll make my name known, even I have to throw a bomb and kill—George V—no he's too gray—kill Mussolini and free his people.' He looked tenderly at them all. ‘Eh, Marianne, did you know I felt like that? No, Marianne, I can't just be put back into a box after having been out all over the table, like a pack of cards.' He looked around. ‘My, what a pretty girl! Don't they have pretty girls here.
Hé
, Miss!' The girl smiled and approached with her tray of cigarettes. ‘What do you want, Margaret? Abdullas, Abdullas, Marianne? I'll buy you all cigarettes. Have you got any small Abdullas, Miss? These, these, no these, haven't you got any smaller—there you are, Margaret. You're too pretty to be working here, Miss. Bring me some cigars, will you?' She went off smiling. He whispered gigantically, ‘I say, she's a pretty girl: um, isn't she? Isn't she a pretty girl? What do you think? Say, they're pretty smart, aren't they? Nothing but pretty girls here. Look at the other one: not so bad. Poor girl, I bet she has to work hard.'

They smiled suitably. The girl approached again. It must not be forgotten that theoretically Margaret Weyman had approached Léon on a business proposition. Léon said, ‘Hey, Miss, what's a pretty girl like you doing here? You ought to be in the chorus. Aren't you in the chorus? Why aren't you?'

The girl dallied, with aplomb but without conviction. ‘Why, I never thought about it, sir.'

‘You're too pretty to be working here. You work pretty hard, eh? When do you get off?'

The girl said with a quiet dignity, her eyes having summed up the other women, ‘Oh, late. It depends. I get off at seven and then I have to come back at eight and don't get off till eleven.'

Léon shook his head. ‘Eleven! No, that's late. Young woman mustn't—unhealthy. And what do you do between seven and eight?' The girl didn't even trouble to smile but said in a cash voice, ‘We stay in.'

Léon was all consideration. ‘You stay in—here, ugh? Upstairs, ugh?' He shook his head, said to Margaret Weyman, ‘It's long hours, isn't it?' He asked the girl, ‘And then you have to go home: how long does that take you? Is it far?'

The girl cast eyes at a handsome Balkan man, as she answered carelessly, ‘It's quite a way. Near the Place de la Nation. I often have to get the all-night bus.'

Mrs. Weyman, annoyed by Léon's raw style, got up and asked her way to the ladies' room. Marianne sat on, ghoulishly enjoying the scene. Léon felt somewhat relieved by Margaret's exit and made haste to bring things to a head. He finished his canvass in a flurried warm tone: ‘It's a shame, a pretty girl like you. Would you like to get into the chorus? I know someone in the theater. This gentleman here knows Henri Bernstein, almost all the actors and managers of Paris. Don't you, Aristide?'

Aristide was sullen, but Marianne said instantly, ‘Certainly: that's true.'

Léon nodded his head like a good little boy, ‘I'll see if I can do something for you: should you like that, eh? See me after work some night and we'll fix it up. What do you say, eh?'

The girl yawned. ‘All right: I don't mind.'

‘When do you get off? Eleven tonight? Tonight?'

‘Later,' said the girl.

‘I've got a car. I'll take you in a taxi home. I don't like to think—pretty girl. You'll be tired at night. I'll get you a job, depend on me.'

The girl smiled sweetly. ‘What have I got to lose? … Tonight, perhaps.' She went off lingeringly, and with some misshapen gratitude, it seemed, in her heart. Perhaps she was lonely.

But Léon triumphed and puffed out his chest. He bent to them. ‘Eh? How was that? I don't waste time. That's what I say. Do something for a poor girl and she's grateful. You give a poor girl two and six, and she says thank you and means it. You give a girl you pick up in the Scribe Bar a couple of hundred francs and she hardly opens her mouth. She never reckons it means more than a week's wages for a miner. She never thinks of the miner working for his wife and children for a week for less than she gets. You've got to take working girls to know real gratitude. How did I make out, eh? You think she likes me, Marianne, eh? Yes, I think she took to me.' He spied Margaret Weyman coming back and finished quickly. ‘Shh! Don't say anything to her: she's a nice girl, she's a nice woman. You know American women—not sophisticated, not European.'

Margaret sat down. He put his hand on her arm. ‘Margaret—another bottle of wine!—Margaret, did I tell you what I did in the General Strike in 1926? I was in London, see, staying with Strindl and Company, with Taube, he's a fool, but old Elster is his uncle and let the boy run the business—boy, I say, fifty he is, but Elster is seventy—I was staying with Taube in Hampstead. I wake up in the morning. I eat breakfast at a quarter to eight. There's no breakfast! There's no gas to cook me an egg. There's water running: I can wet my face. That's all. There isn't even a tin of salmon in the house. And no grocery boy. All right, I think, I'll go downtown and get a cup of coffee. I call my chauffeur Corbin. ‘Sorry, sir: I've got no petrol. I can't even get down to the gas station and at the gas station they've no deliveries.' What's the matter? A general strike. Misery! All right, no tube, no taxi, no car. I must get downtown: see what's doing. So I walk. All right. No coffee downtown. I go to the Baltic:* the janitor opened it but who was there? Almost no one could get there. The Post Office was open but who was there to run it? Almost the telephones weren't working. I walk round. Everyone is gloomy. I go to the Western Union. There are two boys who lived in the city alone working. An American company. ‘Tell me what's the opening Winnipeg and Chicago.' Terrible … So it goes. I go home and I think. No business. If business could be done! I come down next day. Some more people are on the Baltic but no business: everyone is walking round gloomy thinking the red flag will be over London. It nearly got by. They nearly got the red flag. And still a terrible market in Winnipeg and Chicago. By the third and fourth day, no one thought of business, people were only wondering if they could get the price of a boat fare to Antwerp or Paris. What a pity, I think. No business being done and the market so low. I get an idea. It looks like revolution. The markets are starving. Not an order out of England in three, four days. They'll just wolf down any order. So I go to the Western Union and I calmly telegraph to buy half a million bushels wheat in Chicago in Strindl's name. They had the credit: their credit was still good … Well, I calculated: if it really is the revolution, they can't dun me in a soviet Britain, can they, for wheat bought before the revolution? And if it isn't the revolution, if we can sell short on the red flag yet, then the market will go up and I'll make money. Perfect. I couldn't go wrong. And I could say, ‘Who telegraphed? Not me.' I signed Strindl or Elster or Taube. I had a right: don't forget they were my partners in Amsterdam at the time. No swindle. No. Well, was I right? That's how I made ten cents a bushel. The market had had a tremendous bust. I plunged. No harm. Fifty thousand dollars—ten thousand sterling. I took a risk. Ha? Margaret, what do you say?'