House of All Nations (84 page)

It went on like this day after day. ‘If I don't take a ticket to Alsace,' said Michel to himself, with a lowering expression, ‘I'll go clean crazy. It isn't the speculation, it isn't the clients all going mad with notions of the millions they might make, it isn't Jules with his hunches and cries, it isn't Estelle, it isn't my mother scolding me for not being a schoolteacher or a government official, it isn't my weakness in not joining the communists: no, it's William. I can't stand his drone; I'll take French leave some fine morning and that will be the last they see of me.'

‘You should have seen Aristide's face when I told him Arturito was bumped off,' cackled William. ‘You bet he was in on the white-slaving racket with him. Young Mouradzian had the dope.'

Michel snapped his fingers. ‘Waiter, another black coffee.' Would it continue?

‘And this afternoon,' said William, ‘first thing, he wants to get me to find a buyer for his house down in Biarritz: what does that look like, I ask you?'

* * *

Scene Sixty-eight: No Money in Philosophy

J
ules sat at his desk, and William leaned against the bookcase full of the classics of political economy and statistics.

‘Can't you stop your pal from going mad? He's been ticking off Michel and telling him he's ruining you, that he ought to be singing happy days are here again. Tell him to pipe down, won't you? We don't want Alphendéry running out on us in disgust, just when we're going to need him most. You know that the entire reserves of the bank have been withdrawn twice; we're getting them back again, probably only for a third withdrawal. This wolf Carrière means to sink you. How are you going to arrange to fly with a flea in the flue, if Michel isn't here to hold the fort?'

‘You haven't told him yet—you fool!'

‘Keep your shirt on: I haven't.'

‘Anyhow,' said Jules cantankerously, ‘if it weren't for listening to Michel's bolshevik boloney, I'd be worth a hundred millions today. It's fatal to know too much: a hunch is worth a hundred items out of
Die Welt im Zahlen
. If statistics made a man rich, every Poincaré-emulate would become a Rockefeller. Statistics are a heavy meat, indigestible, they send a man to sleep. What does a pirate like me want with philosophy? Did Jean Bart want any philosophy? Did Prester John? Philosophy is by the timid for the timid. The men who have made billions have hardly been able to write their own name. Let's fire Alphendéry. I thought it was a lark. Now, what do I know? I believe he is really a communist. He's one of their agents, for all I know; probably the police follow him.'

Jules scowled. ‘This is my bank: I don't want anyone's name on it but mine. Alphendéry is too much of a circus, anyhow. I don't want smart men: I can do the thinking. I don't want a salon here with philosophers giving out epigrams or whatever you call them—anagrams, for all I know. What do I care if the system's wrong? I know it is. But I'm wrong. Look at Plowman! No need to say, ‘What an ass he is!' But look at the money he made by simply believing in ‘the system.' Of course, ‘the system's' wrong for those who aren't on top. Do you want Plowman to get angry with me? You want him to draw it out before we make the grand getaway? Let him think we're fighting Alphendéry. Send Alphendéry away and let Plowman and this ox Raccamond think we've put things to right. They'll both be pleased as punch. I can manage my getaway without Alphendéry. And think of Carrière! Carrière will think I've lost ‘the brains of the firm.' It doesn't suit me to have everyone saying, ‘The power behind the throne is Alphendéry.' I want my name to be the name; I want my name on all the accounts; I want all my accounts to be in my name; I want myself to be the directors of my holding companies; I want my holding companies to be called not the Holding Company, but Bertillon Deposit Co.: I want the Zurich trust, to be called, not Claire-Josèphe Trust, but Jules Bertillon and Sons, Incorporated: what am I in business for? You're married to Alphendéry. If that boy ever gets on the witness stand in our case, and if the
Humanité
starts to say he's a dirty capitalist we're done for. He'll do anything to prove he's their friend.' He ended on a high note, almost a scream.

William looked at him medically. ‘I want to tell you one thing. After all Alphendéry has been to you, and the way he's worked for you, while you were away, you can't insult him. If you're going to insult and annoy men like Alphendéry who've paid for all your fantasies by their hard work, you've got to do the same for me. I've done the same for you. If you think it good policy to send him away to calm Plowman's nerves, ask him to investigate Brussels, Geneva, Antwerp, anything. Ask him to set up a new London office, a new London or New York or Oslo office. It's cheaper.'

‘Another thing,' said Jules with intense preoccupation, ‘Raccamond hates Alphendéry. Raccamond is asking too many questions. He's acting funny. I think if I sent Alphendéry away, Raccamond would calm down: he'd see no one between himself and the throne.'

‘When are you and Claire going to Geneva to release the gold?' asked William in a low tone.

‘Next week end … I'll tell you tonight. You'll get the tickets. I'll tell Jean de Guipatin to say I've gone to Deauville for a couple of days.'

‘I don't like that cake-eater the way you do.'

The old porter came in and William departed.

Meanwhile Alphendéry had been extremely restless and unquiet and had nervous crises every day, sometimes fainting in the evening when he came from work. At the end of this week, the morning before Jules left for Geneva, Alphendéry, with crayon blues in all his hollows and lines, came in to say, ‘Jules, I think I'll have to ask you either for a holiday or a release. The air of Paris is getting me down. Another thing is, I can't go about openly to meetings and the like here, out of respect for the bank; and then anyone from Upper Rhine, Lower Rhine, and Moselle is suspect, especially watched by the police. My father and mother were German … that is, Alsatians under German rule! I think perhaps I'd better take leave of absence and then look for another berth. It's only a question of political loves, not human loves. There's no one I love more than you, Jules. But I feel I have no future in Banking.'

Jules said soothingly, ‘Yes, I know, Michel. Anything you like. You can take a three months' holiday and then leave. I'm sorry to see you go, but I know how you feel. A man at your—our age—has a right to change his destiny. I'm going to Deauville tomorrow; think over what you want to do, and we'll talk it over when I come back.'

‘Thanks, Jules.'

‘Nothing to thank me for: on the contrary—'

He said to William, ‘There's something about old Michel: he's positively psychic.'

William said, ‘His mother! he worships her. He complains about her, but he's crazy about her! He told me there was no one who could tell character from faces the way she could. She was famous for it.'

Jules, who hated his mother, laughed elfishly. ‘She didn't know his too well.'

‘You expect a mother to know her son? Well, for Michel, perhaps it's better this way.'

‘As long as he gets out in time, or stays with us to the end: that's what's essential with his nature. He needs a coward's excuse, or else to be pushed to the wall.'

* * *

Scene Sixty-nine: Léon's Letter

A
lphendéry went up to Amsterdam. Léon, after hanging round the bank for a day or two, had not made his offer, and Alphendéry wanted to find out why. On the Saturday afternoon Léon had nothing to do. He bought a dozen newspapers, ordered some coffee, and imprisoned Alphendéry in his hotel suite while he talked to him, boasted, romanced, grew loud and tender by turns, all about himself. Alphendéry, worn out by a week of wrangling, stretched out on one of the beds and listened to Léon, going and coming, going through his lengthy toilette and spinning out the web of things seen and hoped-for.

‘Why do Bertillon's schemes fail? He has solid ones,' asked Léon, and hurried on, for fear Alphendéry would answer, ‘I'll tell you, I'll tell you, my boy. Listen to me. I've studied him … Although he has very large ideas, he is a very mean man: he is frightened to go into partnership with people who have ideas, with people with more energy than he has; he's frightened to see me, to school me in his business, to grant me participations. He lacks a sense of loyalty,' said Léon triumphantly, lifting his head nobly and looking all round the room and out into the street, as if he could call on anything, the picture frame, on anyone, the streetcar conductor, for example, to say how loyal Léon was.

‘Yes, sir, he has no loyalty, and he thinks others won't be loyal to him either. Now, I say to myself, if that boy's going to work for me, I've got to give him a square deal … Then,' he frowned, ‘Michel, it don't matter how harebrained his schemes are, they'd go up if they were built up. He lacks the constructive urge, Michel. A creative urge and a wholesome urge. He has to go down to build it up even if it's a house of cards, like one of these toys you blow up, one of these …' He went round flipping his fingers.

‘A balloon?' queried Alphendéry, with shut eyes.

‘No, one of these toys—'

‘A Mickey Mouse?'

‘Not a Mickey Mouse, anything. You got to blow it hard while you blow it, while it stands it's got to have air in it, while it stands up—like a model of a ship, it's not a ship, it's not for freight, but it's got to be built just the same.'

‘No,' said Michel, ‘he's an actor—a great actor. He would have been a superb actor. Sensitive, reflecting—'

‘An actor. But he couldn't put on a show. An actor is an actor, a show is a show, but he couldn't put on a show, you have to arrange it … You know me: I'm very persistent. I'm a pest but I know how to put on show … ' In a lower tone, he continued rapidly, ‘I kept on going over it: he left me with the impression that he had the wheat deal from
A
to
Z
, every delicate point, the light and shade. But somehow he gave me a very curious impression, that he had it superficially—'

‘As an actor learns a part,' said Alphendéry.

‘No actor. Like a feller whistling a tune: you think he knows it, he goes down to play it on the pianer, and you see he doesn't know the notes.'

‘He always believes in lying to his own side,' said Alphendéry, almost defending Jules.

‘He's got trackless, trackless—' Leon's voice trailed off.

‘Trackless?'

‘Trackless: it proves his bank account's shrinking,
I
think. You know what he is? He is one of these half-baked
Goyim
with a bit of a
Yiddischer Kopf
and it drove him mad … I said, ‘Are they going to drop it in the Gulf of Mexico? …' It was a stroke of genius, Michel. Genius, my boy! I said to myself, “How to put the market up, revolutionize values?” The millers were buying hand to mouth. It was the golden opportunity, my boy … And I thought, “It suits him, because he can only make money when the rest of the world is fut.”'

‘He can shake down the plums but he can't get them to his mouth.'

‘That's it … I'll never understand it … Those Bomba! … It was a calamity,' he suddenly said, very loud and cheerful, standing right above Alphendéry. ‘It was disastrous.' His voice trailed away into the wardrobe. ‘My girl's … h'm.'

‘He never recovered from his plane accident.'

‘He thinks his star cracked. He's a man of one star. I chose the Milky Way. Ho, ho, ho! … Listen, Michel, if I become an English O.B.E., will you work with me in England?'

Léon revived his project for a letter to the cabinet.

‘Why not,' asked Alphendéry, ‘write straight to the President of the Board of Trade? Let's get down to the scheme and write the covering letter afterwards.'

‘All right, all right.' Then he smiled wisely, ‘No one can say I don't work for my golden crown. Mind you, I don't say if I get an English honor. I put my capital there. The rest to follow if all is satisfactory. If not, I'll try to become a Belgian baron first. One or the other. What do I care. It's a business proposition.'

Alphendéry spent the week end getting out Léon's letter to the British cabinet and scheme for Government Control of the Wheat Supplies of England. When it was finished, they both regarded it as a masterpiece, and put it at once in the post. Meantime, Léon offered Alphendéry a job and his everlasting ten per cent of all earnings on stock-market speculation advised by Alphendéry. Alphendéry was to take six weeks off, go to Greece, and then join Léon in Amsterdam.

* * *

Scene Seventy: Love Letter

D
avigdor Schicklgrüber came to see Alphendéry on his way to Berlin, ‘to nose things out for the Lord: of course, one of these days he'll wake up to me and find out I simply sleep and eat, but in the meantime, I don't mind taking a holiday from the dear old man, at times … Say, Alphendéry,' he continued calfishly, wagging his long head at Michel, ‘I forgot all about that interview for you with the Lord: next time you come to London don't forget …” Alphendéry realized that this unexpected and dishonest offer was a preamble to asking him for the famous letter to the Berlin blonde. He therefore got out pencil and paper and after some difficulties (for his German forgotten since his childhood was not very solid), he vamped out:

Liebes Gnädige Fräulein,

Entschuldigen Sie, bitte, mein Deutsch, warum, ich, als Ausländer, schreibe es wenig. Ich glaube dass es war eine grosse Freude fur Ihre Bruder ihnen zu besuchen in Berlin! Es war leid dass in Bahnhof wir hatten so wenig zeit sich zu unter-halten: und besser sich zu kennen. Aber macht dies nicht schöner mein Hoffnung ihnen wieder zu sehen in Berlin. Ich habe ihre Gesicht nur ein paar minuten gesehen aber ich bin sicher dass es voll reizend war … Hier ist meine Adresse in Paris. Ich erwarte ihre liebeswürdige Briefe … Welche Schade dass ich so schnell nach London müss wiederfahren! Vielleicht eine andere Zeit, also, können Sie nach Brussel oder nach Paris fahren uns nur zu unterhalten. Dann wollte ich viele täge in kleines liebeskämmerlein mit ihnen leben. Ein heben ohne hiebe ist kein heben: und Sie sind meine Ideal. Schreiben Sie mir, bitte. Höffentlich—Wilhelm Meister …