House of All Nations (59 page)

‘Put your money into United Gas Improvement, instead,' recommended William.

Jules frowned. ‘I've been thinking over Schicklgrüber's visit. Why did he come? I guess he came out of curiosity. And I guess he's right. Either I get Carrière, or Carrière gets me. It's a straight play, now.'

‘Well, why plot? Take him out to dinner and drop a banana skin under his heel just as he gets out of the taxi.'

‘He's skidded over greasier patches than that and still alive to tell the tale. He's like Rasputin: arsenic wouldn't kill him. Can you kill a cobra with cobra venom?'

‘Don't ask me: write and ask your kept man Bomba for details on his own family.'

Exasperated, Jules cried, ‘What does Alphendéry think he is doing? I heard him asking Léon if he had heard any rumors about us in Amsterdam.'

‘Don't you want to know?'

‘Not Léon! Hasn't he got any brains left? I don't trust Michel any more since he started going with the communists. His brain is wrong.'

‘You thought it was a joke before.'

‘Things were going well before. This Red talk is jinx talk. He's got to stop it.'

Léon spent a long time over lunch asking questions about ugly Davigdor's fabulous success with women: he was jealous. Then he looked round, lowered his voice. ‘Graetz, my manager, tells me he heard from a lot of fellers on the Bourse that Bertillon is running a big long account not only with Stewart, but with other houses in London, with Paul Treviranus and other houses here and with Legris especially in Amsterdam … and that he's selling sterling.'

‘What's the explanation?' Michel asked, guardedly.

‘There's only one, surely. He's plunging to offset the Carrière contract. Look here, my boy, why don't you get out of it?'

Michel looked melancholy. ‘I can't leave Jules until the Carrière affair is settled. That's got him in this jam.'

Léon shook his head. ‘Michel, do you think he would sell the bank now? I'd make a settlement with this feller Carrière and pretty quick, too. Why be short and long? And we can work together. I need someone to give me advice—keep me cool.'

‘Give us a straight proposition and I'll try to talk Jules into it.'

The twin brothers, Paul and Francis Bertillon, like Jules, but thinner and in dress, characterless fashion plates, Jules's chief
pensionnaires
, sat immaculately, but with depressed expressions in Jules's two green armchairs. Their cronies, in bars, restaurants, and clubs, had dinned into their heads the warning, ‘Carrière is the most dangerous man in Paris to cross and has threatened, in every night club and salon in town, to ruin Jules. Get him quickly: you owe it to your brother.'

They saw their bread-and-butter, their clothes racks, and their club fees in danger; they had come to ask Jules to make terms of peace with Carrière. In fretful elegant tones, Paul complained, ‘Life is not worth living, Jules, with all this talk buzzing about. It's not pleasant to hear one's brother talked about so frequently and in this strain.'

Francis murmured, ‘Jules, the very waiter in Maxim's asked me about it this morning … it's so unpleasant.'

‘Now,' ended Paul, ‘Jules, if you want any help, we'll help you. Tell us what to do.'

Jules was marching up and down, a great strength, for their benefit. William, usually carping, today sat stern and quiet, upholding even the most fantastic things Jules said, supporting his authority against the parasitic impertinences of the two boys.

‘I'll crush him,' said Jules, in a loud voice. ‘Leave him to me. I know him. He's soft. But it can't be done in a day.'

‘Don't leave it too long,' urged Paul.

Francis brightened. ‘I know a couple of lads that would be glad to beat him up one night if you'll put up the dough.'

‘Pay some swordsman to provoke him to a duel: he's proud of his swordplay but he couldn't beat a professional, say, an Army man. And all Paris would be on your side.' This was Paul's contribution.

‘He's such a coward, he'll find a way out,' Francis vetoed the last.

Their tired voices faded along the air, swooning with so much effort. At this moment, Alphendéry came in from lunch. The twins looked at him without too keen a glance of recognition. To them he was some emanation of the virile fiscality of their brother. They presently got up and drifted away, having some rendezvous for afternoon tea.

‘They needn't worry, even if the bank goes bust,' said William kindly. ‘All they have to do is to put an advertisement in the
Journal des Débats
to meet their case: “Two retired gentlewomen, too dumb to beg, too drowsy to steal, are waiting for some kind person to give them a handout. Here is your chance to avoid the inheritance tax. Apply P. and F. Bertillon.”'

At this moment, Etienne Mirabaud, the doorkeeper, tapped at the door. ‘There are two gentlemen to see you alone, sir!'

‘What—gunmen?'

Etienne looked horrified. ‘Gentlemen, sir.'

‘Go and look, William.'

He came back. ‘The heavenly twins.'

‘Show them up, Etienne.' Jules groaned, ‘What did I get in with those Teutons for? They're so fat and solemn I always think they've come to blackmail me. What do I want them for? I don't want anybody.'

* * *

Scene Fifty-three: The Wheat Scheme

L
éon sprang into the bank in the morning, fresh, succulent, and fat, brimming over with intention. He said, ‘Good morning' from his vortex to Jacques Manray and went up the main stairs. At Jules's door he knocked. Jules was lounging over an airplane journal. He knew two of the entrants for the next Deutsch-de-la-Meurthe cup and at moments thought of inducing William to enter, as an advertisement for the bank. William was out of condition and flatly refused to leave the earth.

‘I got an idea,' said Léon. ‘This wheat scheme: do you want to listen to it?'

‘Sure.'

‘Where's Alphendéry? Tell him to come in, will you? I like him round to get his angle.'

‘Sure.' Alphendéry entered at this moment, having heard of Léon's arrival, by grapevine telegraph. ‘Hello, my boy. Listen, I want you to listen to this, get the points, so that we can put it over.'

‘I'm listening, Henri,' said Alphendéry.

Léon straddled, pushed back his head, uttered an ultimatum. ‘America full of wheat because of, lack of—she's smothered in wheat, she's very depressed on account of the surplus. Can we put wheat into the Gulf of Mexico—can we find an outlet for it?'

‘Can we?' Alphendéry was a tight ball of a thousand gummy layers of attention, springing along a parabola of intention.

‘I mean, she says to herself, ‘Can we throw the wheat into the Caribbean, twenty-one thousand feet, get rid of it?' If we can find an outlet for it—wheat—in the U.S.A.—wheat would—the market's very poor—it would bolster up the stock market. Now, you see, the financial position is—'

‘Shocking—' murmured Jules.

‘Shocking but not, but not—shocking, but—'

‘Not catastrophic,' said Alphendéry.

Léon's great finger was wagging up and down like a baton, for the trio. ‘Shocking but not catastrophic—it might become—a rise in wheat would restore confidence. Am I right, Michel, am I right? Eh, eh?'

‘You're right, Henri,' they both said.

He shifted his giant Adam's apple quickly in his collar. ‘Here, in Europe, the situation is—the countries need wheat—'

‘The consuming countries—' said Alphendéry.

‘—the consuming countries have need of wheat. Watch me, Alphendéry, see if you get this. But there are reports of a big promising surplus in Russia. Russians are supposed to be ready to dump wheat at any price, first to dump, second to undermine the system.' He laughed hugely. ‘The Russians are devilishly,' he corrected himself, blushed, ‘
very much
enjoying the low prices! Now
she
is around—'

‘Russia is a seller of wheat,' said Alphendéry.

‘Yes, Russia's a seller of wheat (thank you, Michel) because, because she has bills to meet and her credit is—forty per cent, she's got—forty per cent—when she took cash—'

‘Russia,' explained Alphendéry to Jules who was listening idly (and not following, except that with a pencil he had written on a blank piece of paper, ‘How much?'), ‘Russia has very bad credit, no credit at all. She must get goods for the Five-Year Plan and in order to get goods for the Five-Year Plan she has to pay four per cent a month; that's the usurious interest she has to pay, because she has no money and no credit. She pays four per cent a month. Now this year she has got a wow of a crop, a bumper crop, the Black Sea's going to be jammed with wheat, she's never had a crop like it; neither has anyone else. That's what the reports are. So she doesn't care
what
price she sells it for, she can dump it for next to nothing, because for it she gets cash: she gets
cash
, pays no interest, get it?'

‘Sure, sure,' said Jules, ‘and what else?'

‘Yes,' said Léon, nodding thankfully to Alphendéry. ‘You see what they're all afraid of?'

‘What chance has the U.S.A. to sell her wheat?' asked Alphendéry of Jules.

Léon said, ‘The question is,' he shook his finger menacingly at Jules, ‘the question is: how can we find a buyer for wheat?'

‘The Americans say to themselves, “How can we find a buyer for our wheat,”' annotated Alphendéry. ‘Excuse me, Henri, with your elliptic style, I've got to make it clear.'

‘Elliptic style, what's that?' He brought himself up short.

‘You think like a chess player, you're always two or three or four or eight jumps ahead,' smiled Michel.

‘A chess player,' he said slowly and smiled, ‘a chess player, eh? Elliptic—that's like shorthand, then?'

‘Yes. No one knows themselves, Henri: no one knows how they appear to others.'

He spent a moment considering, then suddenly darkened again, plunged ahead. ‘Yes. How can they find a buyer for wheat, stop Russia selling and put the price up? Listen, don't interrupt, Alphendéry. You can tell him afterwards. Listen now, I want you to get it into your head and then you can explain it. That is the bright idea. Supposing we could arrange to take fifty to seventy-five million bushels of wheat on account of
Russia
and also have arrangements that contracts will be distributed pro rata to international grain markets. The question of sales must be—never a doubt. Do you see? And no jealousy. You see? Every firm would have a contract. The world would wake up … the telephones begin to ring early in the morning. “Do you hear the news? I don't believe it!” Instead of Russia being a seller, she's a buyer! But how? Don't tell him yet, Alphendéry. This would cause a tremendous rise in the market—of course, we would unload on the option market on the way up to countries that really needed wheat—we'd give the proceeds to Russia. Now, it's got to be worked out, that's all. And I want someone to put it across. To put it to the governments. Michel can put it to the Russian government because he's sympathetic. I'll go to Berlin—chance to see a sweetie, eh ? Anyhow, I'll—
Berlin—then Jules can go to his friends in the American embassy—we've got to keep it quiet, though … those boys would steal— Listen!'

‘How are you going to do it?' asked Jules, who had not followed it at all.

Michel kept nodding at Jules as if to say, ‘I'll explain it all to you afterwards, get you out of the barbed-wire entanglements.'

Léon rushed on, ‘You see, they would ask and find Russia was really buying.' He pressed his palms together and gasped sunnily like a giant sunflower almost blown to shreds in a breeze. ‘The fact that Russia would not only buy, but
would not sell
her gigantic crop would justify us. Russia was only—she intended pressing wheat to get money—say forty per cent credit—and say forty per cent—yes, they are saving forty per cent if the market didn't go up they could afford to lose with forty per cent—'

‘Sounds crazy,' said Jules. Michel nodded to him, ‘I'll explain, just wait, later on.'

‘Wait till I get through and Michel will tell you, he explains it, elliptic,' said Léon, quite unaware of the extraordinary manner he had of talking, himself, and putting Jules's incomprehension down to the fact that he was a Gentile, or fantastic, or unsound, or some other frailty, but with infinite kindness and calm, trying hard to hold in his horses, and going on, ‘The only problem is to get the U.S.A. government to accept Russian bills in payment.'

‘You are going to get Russian bills in payment? How?' asked Jules.

‘No, no, no, no,' shouted Léon, ‘there is no intention of taking the U.S.A. government into the secret; you mustn't let on, when you see your friends at the embassy. Not a word.' He shook his head doubtfully and looked at Jules with alarmed speculation. ‘It's a practical scheme: that's how it's going to appeal to them. What's the good of all that wheat to them? They'd do better to throw it into the Atlantic. There's a Brazilian coffee situation in wheat. The wheat goes out of condition due to keeping. The Farm Board is losing hundreds of millions, the wheat market will be low for years …'

‘It's undermining the banking structure; if they're not careful there'll be irreparable trouble. It's led to a banking crash—if they don't want
Jacqueries
—' supplemented Alphendéry, who had begun to see light through Léon's imbroglio. ‘The crash all over the West is due to it.'

‘Furthermore,' shouted Léon impatiently, ‘furthermore, Michel, Michel! Furthermore,' he reduced his voice and waved his short, muscular arm, ‘this is the point, this is—which will appeal to them: Russia meets all her bills on a gold basis, that's an additional gain to dollars. Don't let them know. The Farm Board will copy the idea. I don't want them to get my idea. It's brilliant, brilliant—well, what do you think of it?'