House of All Nations (30 page)

‘Well, salaries here, about one million francs, not more. Of course, I'm overcalculating. Raccamond gets twelve thousand monthly, but you could pay him half of that and then I'm a fairy godmother to him, he's only just come in. And he can't yell, because he arranges his salary so that he seems to get six thousand francs monthly, only, here: the other six thousand he draws, on overdraft, from a little company he's formed for himself abroad—or he had formed before, from the time he was with Claude Brothers. I don't know. At any rate, his official rate is six thousand, and if I pay him six months at that everyone will say he's well treated: so his is thirty-six thousand only. Then our golden parasites, Jean de Guipatin, Arturito MacMahon, and so forth: those ginks owe us money. We've got money coming to us from the estates of old Comte Lucé, Hervé is overdrawn sixty thousand francs, Tony owes us some money, Pedro de Silva-Vizcaïno probably owes us money, Zurbaran owes me twenty thousand francs. Partiefine owes me a couple of thousand, there are the little businesses I support, say twenty thousand owing to me in all, on I.O.U.'s. In all about three or four millions of francs, which I won't collect but which will be counted as credits and can serve as a sop for the liquidators. You would have to lose that.'

‘Don't forget, Jules, one black mark: don't forget what you owe for income taxes. You've been buying off the inspector for ten years. When they get on to you they'll be ready to serve you up Guiana smoking hot. The government as a first claimant would have no mercy on you. The clients' shrieks are going to be nothing to the government. The government is the meanest of creditors. You owe them, for ten years that you've been dressing the returns, with taxes, interest, penalties, about eight million francs. You've got to leave the government that amount, Jules.'

‘Do you think I'm crazy?' asked Jules, in horror. ‘Eight million sous is too much. For what? For a rival bunch of gangsters who are always trying to put tacks under my tires? Don't be soft.'

Alphendéry considered for a minute. ‘Jules, it seems a pity. You have a big pull with the moneyed immigration. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are only the first forerunners of a wealthy German immigration, especially of Jews if things go bad in Germany. Jews don't forget that France was their liberator, despite the Dreyfus case. With me here you could get their money. Why, you're only just beginning! Let's look at the branches in the Côtes d'Azur
et
d'Argent, in Monte Carlo, in Zürich, in Brussels, Liverpool, Antwerp, Amsterdam. You've only had them running a few years, some only a few months—like the Antwerp one. They're not on their feet yet! With war coming there will be immense speculation in commodities: there is a fortune to be made in all those cities—with immigrant money, scare deposits, commodity accounts, speculation in American shares (when things go up), transfers to London. Now is the time for a great, but solid, pyramiding. You have only begun, Jules.

‘What will you do, if you quit now? You'll go and stew for a few months, then you won't be able to bear the tedium and you'll start again in some tinpot way, after wrecking one of the finest networks in the world. We get a freshet of alien money here every time there's bad political news in Germany and America. Perhaps America won't get any of it. Europeans are funny people. America is, in the minds of most of us, a land of gangsters, racial terror, strike war. Now London looks shaky. Who would invest in Germany with the threat of the National Socialists? Confidence has been shaken in all the good old institutions. Rothschild no longer means florid money, incalculable foresight, the Bank of England no longer thrills bank clerks, the Rock of Gibraltar will get malaria next. You're going against your own principles: this is the age to make money in. Look at your situation! You're one of the few men in the world who had the courage to say, “This is an age of going-down and I'm betting on disaster,” and who actually went and pyramided on disaster and who has won! Why give up? You are born for this age! You are brilliant, Jules. You can be another Rothschild.'

Jules turned restlessly, as if with a small fever. ‘I think you're arguing for respectability, Michel. I've always known that, at bottom, despite your communism and all, you're very respectable. The Rhineland counselors, lawyers, and writers you come from are rustling stiff and starched in your blood. Admit it: you don't like to go bankrupt!'

Michel vigorously nodded. ‘No, it's not that. Why don't you go away for a week and think it over, Jules? You're not strong. Paris in spring is getting you.'

‘I'm all right. But I have a hunch.'

‘It's not that I'm respectable, Jules. But I have to earn my living and this is the only thing I know how to do. Who will employ me if my name's associated with a scandalous runaway, a dubious bankruptcy, or a notorious embezzlement?'

‘Everyone!' said Jules heartily. ‘People only give money to thieves; they respect them. If you ran away you'd be courted: they'd only despise you if they found out you didn't steal any money. If you ever do skip, don't forget to let everyone think your old overcoat in moth balls is really lined with ill-gotten gold. You'll get invited everywhere. Besides, who says you're going to look for a job? Won't you be with me? You're not thinking of leaving me, Michel? You wouldn't do that? We're together in everything, aren't we? You're not really serious about this socialist boloney?'

Michel wanted to evade an answer, for he did not intend to run away with Jules. He did not intend to leave Adam Constant, Jean Frère, and his other friends. The idea of leaving them and of having them despise him was something he could not face. He fought for them.

‘But Jules, I don't understand! Only the other day you were full of sparks, bringing in a list of really brilliant schemes and now you want to throw the works in the fire! What has happened? Have you lost on the Paris bourse? Treviranus, Cristopoulos are always around here. I saw them this morning. Have you lost money?'

‘No: I've been making money. It's unreal. That's why I want to scram. Now is the time to shut up shop. The Credit-Anstalt is gone, Rothschild is bunged, everyone expects war every week, Léon is talking of selling his business and retiring to Spain or the south of France, even America doesn't seem to be able to collect the money owing to her: she hasn't the power any more, or she's afraid of putting the whole world into bankruptcy. Don't you see the time is close when they simply won't let us make money any more? When creditors can't collect debts—'

‘It's a good time to get into debt,' laughed Alphendéry robustly. ‘You haven't thought of that! You own money. You ought to owe it too. Why don't you go and take out mortgages on all the apartments of your family, on your yacht, airplane, and Gauguins? Mortgage everything you've got up to the hilt, if you
must
jump. Make a real clean sweep. Why, your ideas of a cleanout are picayune. Owe money, when you jump. In the first place, you will have more; in the second, they'll think you're really bankrupt, that it's all gone down the drain, and they won't be so vindictive! Common sense. Go to the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, go to Morgan's, go to The Guaranty Trust, go to the Société Générale and get an overdraft! Then gird your loins and fly! Your credit's good. You can easily get up to fifty million francs in overdrafts. That will give you two hundred and ten millions and you can pay off all your employees and say, Richard Plowman and a few like that, without any loss of your good name. People will say, “He did his best to pay those who trusted him.”'

‘Good name!' cried Jules irritably. ‘You can't get a passport on a good name, you can't so much as pawn your wife's ring on a good name. Good name is a bee in your bonnet, Michel. But that's a good idea. I might do that.'

‘And if you've got two hundred and ten million francs, why shouldn't you really go into business in a big way?' asked Michel.

‘Listen, Michel, do you know any real toughs, assassins, I mean?'

‘No. What makes you think I do?'

‘Oh, I thought you might. You're always running around to those Red meetings, at the Vel d'Hiv' and what is it. I thought you might know a couple of thugs out of work who'd polish off Carrière for me. The air wouldn't be so thick if he wasn't around. I'm always running into him …'

‘Why, what's he done now?'

‘Only I don't like him. The proper way is to get rid of someone who is laying for you. I just want to skip to annoy him.'

‘But you're not going to take him on his quarterly sterling drafts payments. Or are you? Jules, tell me the truth. Did you write a letter to him, about the business?'

‘No, I didn't write that fox any letter. Still, I don't want him to say I welched. Let him walk into the trap.'

‘What trap?'

‘I've got up something with Pierre …'

‘You think he has no information?'

Jules's manner became flighty. ‘And at the same time I got the feeling that everything is getting phonier and phonier in the bank, so why not forget it? Half a million a year for that apartment in the Porte de St. Cloud. Lapage and Company suing me for the decoration; seven hundred and fifty thousand sunk in original paintings I can't get back anyhow. Why shouldn't I move to Switzerland? I'd be near the children and I could live on rentes. My children aren't like me. They can't tell a one-thousand-franc note from a tram ticket except the youngest, and why should he get into this game? I'm going to make him a professor. William's only dream is to dig himself a hole and fade from human activity. You're a philosopher, Michel … '

Michel broke in laughing. ‘I'm not a money type: if you are money sticks to you, as if you were covered with bear grease.'

Jules hung his head, ‘I'm tired, Michel.' ‘Yes, I know you are, Jules. Do go away for a while and leave William, the twins, and me to run things. We'll be circumspect and your dough will be intact. Don't act hastily. You're a great and a good man, Jules. I don't want you to ruin yourself.'

Jules muttered, ‘Why the dickens didn't I get a gun and blow up that assassin yesterday?'

‘Who? Carrière? Jules, you are in some trouble … you're concealing something from me.'

‘I'm not … Last night I dreamed of a hen yard of thin chickens. A dog howled from four o'clock on. I couldn't think of anything, gold, silver, or checks. I've got always to be thinking about money or I feel life isn't worth living. Hang the dog! What do I care or … what else is there to live for, Michel, tell me?'

Michel braced himself, clean as to face, collar cuffs, and spectacle-shine, said with his air of upright little professor of law, ‘There's mankind to live for—'

Jules murmured drolly, ‘Oh, mankind, Michel: be serious!' but he listened with some gay curiosity to Michel, tipped back in his chair, remarking the sincerity and energy of Alphendéry's traits. Michel went on with fire, ‘Your own sense of futility, Jules, shows what it is for men to live and work for themselves alone. You just find yourself the owner of a great fortune, a thing men dream of all their lives long—you have, in one direction, reached the summit of men's desire—and suddenly you don't want to work any more, you don't want to live: I don't think you even really want the money.'

‘Oh, yes, my word, I do: don't make any mistake about that.'

‘Yes, but you are a creative man: you want to build and what have you built? What is all that money but counters? You have long ago lost the sense of money that a poor man has, when a hundred-franc note means relief from pain, a thousand-franc note means marriage. That is money. What you have are counters. You might as well have matches. Suddenly you find that you hardly want to count it, for there is no joy in that. Money has flowed to you, but your joy has been in inventing schemes and you can invent them as well when you are poor. Meanwhile your money goes bad, begins to stink, vultures wheel round you and you are unhappy and discontented. But that is all you know, spoiled artisan. The corrupt fairy tales you have been told, the carefully whetted greed that has been lured out of you has made you build in counters and ink scratches in an account book. You see, because you are fine and fertile, that it is not enough. You think if you increase it suddenly with a great swoop of villainy, steal from everyone that confided in you, make a great scandal, see your money grow overnight from a bean to a beanstalk, that you will catch the hen that lays the golden eggs. But if you do it, Jules, I warn you, you'll be just as unhappy as before. You've built a hothouse here to force your fantasies in. They'll parch outside. No one will care for them. They'll grow twisted, leaves will turn into flowers, stalks will broaden into leaves, potatoes will grow on stalks, peanuts will hang from calyces, the world will be monstrous and topsy-turvy, you'll gamble, be spendthrift, melt your money down in liquor, cover women with it, your happy marriage will be broken, your children will drift away from you, your brothers will desert you, no one will care for you: because you are without a function. And you can only work with this machine you have built. You don't know how to dawdle, Jules, if there is no bank waiting for you to come back to. You can only enjoy yourself now on the Côte d'Azur, at Le Touquet, because the bank is here to shape your fantasies to. I know you so well, Jules. Don't give up this solid universe: don't float back into the air. Your feet are winged: unless you chain yourself by a golden chain to something on earth, you will join the worthless, fleshless creatures who float round our enterprises, our tenements of commerce, trying to get in. I know you: you don't exist apart from your bank, just the same as it would decay, until one could put his fist through the walls, if you were to leave it. Someone might buy it up, true, but it would not be this bank, this strange palace of illusion, temptation, and beauty. The beauty of this place is you, Jules. Its soul is you. And you are it. Don't leave it. You couldn't stand disgrace, for all your wise saws. Listen to me. You see, I'm not preaching humanity to you. You have to be born to love of humanity, and trained to it, the way you have to be born to money love.'