House of All Nations (89 page)

Jules thought Carrière something of an ass, and in a short time, bored to death with the school ritual and his failure at it, left for a commercial career. Jacques went to medical school, published poems in reviews, made an art collection, learned fencing and elegance, bought a yacht, and in the yacht club met again Jules Bertillon, grown into one of the most elegant, lackadaisical, and charming youths of Paris, newly married to Claire-Josèphe, with a Spanish fortune, of irreproachable life and simple manners. Jules, with a fortune of his own, picked up in the war, in Poland it was said, or Russia, Jules, a newly fledged banker and feted companion, always accompanied by blueblood youth: Comte Jean de Guipatin, of Bourbon blood, Prince de Monteverde, bobsleigh champion, Roger Flowers, South African millionaire, amiable chief rowdy of Blue-Coast bars, Robert Legris, wartime friend and now his inseparable, son of a banking and stock-exchange house of Amsterdam. Carrière tried to complete the sketched friendship of years before—but Jules always wafted himself away and the result was no contact. But Carrière this time wasted few days on Bertillon: he had developed a tropical thicket of sensuality, and the ‘crowd he hung round with' were wilder and certainly not irreproachable.

One day he heard in the club, ‘Carrière's always under full sail; Bertillon knows how to trim his sheets to the wind: he'll get there. He's got the lucky streak!'

At that time Bertillon seemed to be shooting into the higher and more gilded skies of finance; he was said to be intimate with Débuts, influential liberal head of the Banque du Littoral du Nord. Carrière never for a moment believed that anyone in his world could take
his
place, and he thought he would soon prove it, but in pleasures he let years slip by. He lost money in 1929, for he had large investments everywhere, and about the beginning of 1930 he had reckoned up his books of accounts—he was thirty and Bertillon had eclipsed him as far as personal prestige went: Carrière, for all his family wealth, was horribly smirched, and it almost seemed lost, by the well-known scandal of his life. He suddenly bent his wasted powers and not yet wasted health to overtaking Bertillon, the only other young man of personal fame in his entourage.

Ambition was Carrière's core as the love of turning a trick was Jules's. Jules, not out of cynicism, but out of the clarity of his nature, believed nothing that was told him, sought the person's interest behind each sentence, lied perpetually for the pleasure of tricking even the credulous, tried to recast every situation, for the pleasure of changing it; he cared not so much for money as for moneymaking, and, when he had got the hang of moneymaking, not so much the making of money as the endless field for speculation and fantasy it yielded him. He hated to think, he liked to depend entirely ‘on inspiration,' and his inspiration was fertile enough not only on the principle of hit-and-miss but because through endlessly studying in one field and experimenting in it, with his original and single-minded talent, he was bound to make some good strikes. Jules had some gifts of nature, also: an unusual generosity, a visible harmony that tamed even critics, cynics, the unquiet, the suspicious, and the blackmailing, at least for the moment of their conversation.

Jacques Carrière finally admitted that nature, not Jules's intelligence, had given him a worthy pacemaker. He began to make political relations, to advance himself as a possible candidate for
deputy, to figure the cost of launching himself, by means of press and social pressure, to calculate how long it would be before he could start his own private bank. It would be a moderate task for one of his ability, not too hard. Jules was a gambler in life, basically, he told himself and his friends, and he was ignorant of ambition, that is, in the sense that he neither maligned nor aligned, nor campaigned. ‘An innocent!' Carrière said, sneering. But an actor from the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre, who cultivated good society and heard Bertillon's bank called the ‘Banque Mercure,' exclaimed, ‘Now I understand: an allusion has been rankling … Bertillon is altogether the personage of the old-world Mercury!' The name stuck to him and Carrière had the displeasure of hearing his rival referred to by the caressing and satiric name …

William and Michel Alphendéry knew some moments of panic now: William was all for settling with Carrière, when Michel was for fighting, and when Michel's courage failed, William had become obstinate. Jules was swayed by one, the other, Claire-Josèphe, and the moods of the day. Each hour of the day, they were hagridden by Carrière and his threats, and they perpetually thought out new schemes either for denouncing him, showing him up, bringing him ‘to reason,' and circumventing his design.

Alphendéry thought that the following representation should be made to him: that, if he continued to demand the gigantic profit that Jules insisted on paying him on the ‘gentlemen's agreement,' a profit that was beyond all honor, equity, or reason, he would either force Bertillon to his own ruin or they would be forced to fix up a bankruptcy to save the funds of the bank and the clients' deposits …

* * *

Scene Seventy-five: A Family Brawl

A
lphendéry was summoned before the judge on the Rosen-krantz and Guildenstern complaint.

‘I'm going to make a human speech,' he said to William before leaving. ‘Let's try and mop everything up before Jules comes back. By doing something they don't expect with their smart official manners and ‘literal interpretations,' I'll try to terminate the case today.' William smiled.

The judge, prejudiced against the Bertillon bank by the host of little cases which had been filling the courts, and also by things whispered in the corridors of the courts, turned severely to Alphendéry. ‘Mr. Rosenkrantz claims that you have not fulfilled a single one of your engagements towards Kaimaster Blés, S.A., that he has been a victim of what he calls sabotage, and that you yourself, acting by yourself, and conscious that he thought you were mandatory in the bank, not only first tricked him and his partner in the first place, pretending to engage the bank when you only engaged yourself, but that further, this is a part of the bank's system of avoiding its contracts, that you are not responsible, have no seizable assets in France, and, in the last place, broke the contract with them, before the agreed time was out, with the intention of annoying them and damaging their credit.'

Alphendéry, who had taken in the insolent assurance of Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern on the other side of the judge's desk, the almost smiling ease of Maître Lallant who was handling their case, as the cases of other enemies of the bank, came forward with a debater's supple resolute alacrity.

‘
Monsieur le Juge
, may I present my story to you in its entirety?'

‘I should like to hear it.'

‘Good! These men came to us from Hamburg, unknown, unannounced, without any letter of introduction. They walked in from the street.'

‘We already had an establishment in Boissy d'Anglas,' interrupted Guildenstern promptly.

‘They were negotiating for half a shopfront precisely,' continued Alphendéry. Their argument before you,
Monsieur le Juge
, is that on us they built up a business and when we broke the contract it crumbled. Therefore, they had little or no business before.'

‘Proceed.'

‘Their own books will show that ninety-five per cent of their customers came from our bank. Now, sir, they have therefore made money through us since the beginning of their contract. As an aside, I mention that we have never made a penny out of them. Their statement was that they would transmit to us stock-exchange business and solicit their clients for stock-exchange business for us. They never did this, but as we did not, really did not, desire to
make
any money out of them, we pass this by.'

The judge said, with low cunning, ‘You didn't want to make money out of them?'

‘No. In the first place, we are, primarily, a bank. In the second place, although we signed on a basis of
quid pro quo
, for the sake of commercial routine, since we were not in competition with Kaimaster Blés, S.A., and we handed them business that was of little use to us, we regarded the whole thing as a minor courtesy, and not as a profitable undertaking …'

‘But you lent them your name on their letterhead.'

‘Publicity. We even designed the letterhead for them, so that the name of the bank, though in small letters, would be presented with elegance. One thinks of those things, as a routine. Thus the contract was made, in the first place, to enable them to use our name, to help them only, and not with an idea of profit to ourselves.'

‘But you say you also agreed to hand them your commodity-exchange business. Why, if with no hope of return?'

‘Commodities have never been a branch of our business. Occasionally, to oblige board-room clients, or bank clients, we have passed through an order for wheat, cotton, barley, et cetera, but it is an expensive nuisance and we never encouraged it. We quote commodity exchanges on our boards, because they are an index to the trend of stock markets. Our books will show that commodity business has not been one, not one-half per cent of our business.'

‘Then you deny that you asked these gentlemen to act for you in developing the commodities business, with yourselves?'

‘We gave them that business as one gives away a new pair of shoes that don't fit. They got no business for us; they occupied themselves only with their own business.'

The sneering suavity of Maître Lallant broke in: ‘My clients found it impossible to get any business for you on account of the bad reputation of your bank, and the publicity round the broken contract with Dr. Jacques Carrière.
'
The
ma
î
tre
smiled knowingly at the judge.

Alphendéry, with passion, turned to Maître Lallant. ‘There is too much of Jacques Carrière in your activity against us! Strange, that all of our enemies, poor and rich, find their advocate in you! I say nothing more. I wish to proceed without interruption from parties whose interest in this invites examination.'

‘Gently,' said the judge, with enthusiasm. Debates, personal enmities, especially when conducted with vileness and venality, were the sauce of life to him. ‘Proceed, Mr. Alphendéry.
Maître
, you may speak later.'

The lawyer folded his robes round with ease; what did he care?

The judge rolled his lips outwards and leaned forward: would he hear anything of the inside story of the quarrel of these two rich youths, anything of the seamy side of the Haute Banque. He hoped so. He was a poor man, completely stupid, immoral: getting secrets and making relations with the financially great were his only hope. He almost smiled at Alphendéry.

‘Mr. Alphendéry?'

Alphendéry threw himself into the debate again with the gesture of a surf-club hero in a relay race. ‘All we did was out of pure generosity, out of pure humanity, to help two exiles, two Germans who might not find it so easy to make a footing here. The financial world is jealous.'

The judge took out a toothpick. ‘Ah?' A little smile, the unspoken sneer of the lawyer's drudge who ‘knows his world,' broke on his face. Maître Lallant turned his head, nodded to his two clients. ‘Is that usual—such generosity—Mr. Alphendéry?'

Alphendéry had paled. ‘
Monsieur le Juge
, these two gentlemen, these
three
gentlemen are Jews!' The three looked at him somewhat startled. ‘I myself am a Jew! Messieurs Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern came along, and when Mr. Jules Bertillon had refused to see them two or three times, he deputed me to see them, because, coming from Alsace, I speak German with ease, and he thought I could find out their business more easily. As it happens, the gentlemen speak French. I came to them and said, “I represent Mr. Bertillon, I am his deputy: what do you want?”'

‘As soon as they saw me they recognized that I was of Jewish blood. They said to me, “We come to you as a Jew, we appeal to you as Jews. There is an anti-Semitic wave rising in Germany, and we believe it will sweep the country. We believe our race will again be dyed in its own blood. Our property, our lives, are not safe. Therefore, we come to France, where there is still liberty of thought. Nevertheless, as well as Jews, we are Germans. We are not as acceptable to Frenchmen as might be Englishmen or Americans: there is the race-hatred!” (A phrase and a concept,' said Alphendéry aside, ‘which I regard as stuff and nonsense, but let that pass.) Mr. Rosenkrantz here was a lieutenant, Mr. Guildenstern was a liaison officer, I believe' (Alphendéry smiled sweetly at them; Maître Lallant frowned), ‘and “although” (said they) “we have sent our children to a German school in Switzerland, on account of the superiority of German thought and education, and we hope to return to the fatherland when the trouble is over—we are obliged now to seek the hospitality of French soil and French tolerance. We know no one here and we are foreigners. We hope that you, Alphendéry, as a brother in the Jewish faith” (which I am not,
Monsieur le Juge
, being an atheist), “and that Mr. Jules Bertillon, that gallant onetime enemy, that hero decorated with the Legion of Honor and the Military Medal, will unite your sympathies
and lend us a helping hand.” I said to them, “I am not a synagogue Jew; but of Jewish stock, that I am. I will do my best to help you, though, not as a Jew, but as a Frenchman who detests intolerance, loves liberty, and sympathizes with your difficulties.” Messieurs Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern then told me a long tale of their miseries and the difficulties which begin to appear in the path of business in Germany, explained that their business was commodities, and asked me to help them build up their business. I explained to them that we did no commodities business but that the few orders that accidentally came our way, we would send through them. I went to Mr. Bertillon and took it upon myself to plead for them, because they had moved me with the story of their business troubles and also, undoubtedly, with the story of their persecution. I said, “Here are two men of high character and good business ability who are practically thrown out of their country for no fault of their own.” Mr. Bertillon is a kindhearted man who detests all kind of fanaticism and he said, after some discussion, that there was no reason why we shouldn't throw them any commodities business that came along. In return they made many protestations, urged that they would endeavor to get clients for us among the North Americans and others they proposed to canvass. That was the origin, the whole background of the contract.'