House of All Nations (86 page)

Aristide slumped in his chair. ‘But it is abuse of confidence; illegal!'

Mouradzian continued without paying attention to this objection, ‘And I do my best to protect my own clients; that's all.' Aristide looked at Mouradzian with dislike. ‘But if anyone got their books he could ruin Bertillon!'

Mouradzian took out an immense silk handkerchief and wiped his little, bald head, ‘What good are books, what good is ruination? Profitable accounts are what we make a living from. Bertillon is rich. Why shouldn't he try to welch on Carrière's contract? Why shouldn't he save the money? A scandal! People who don't like scandals should not be in finance! Scandals should be limited by influence, that is all. Bertillon is rich. Bertillon likes good society. That is all that should interest us as customers' men.' He got up again and toddled off.

Aristide thought, ‘Yes, indeed, but he has no position to think of! I have wedded my luck to this bank—immoral little Easterner! And what clients he has!'

When he reached the bank he learned that Mouradzian had just brought in as a client, Paleologos, a Roumanian statesman famous for thirty years, a democrat who had lined his pockets and his safe deposits with gold, who had squeezed streams of gold from exchanges, shipping, contraband, ministerial power, taxes, perquisites, a Midas with a reputation for liberalism and learning.

‘These foreigners come here and place our accounts, take our place,' thought Aristide; for he could not get rid of the idea that Paleologos should ‘by right' be his.

Sunk in the great armchair in the entrance, Aristide waited and watched for the clients. Alphendéry's voice was borne down from the gallery, ‘Mouradzian's family has served the Paleologoses for nearly a hundred years; Machuca's family were treasurers to the kings of Spain and Greece; Achitophelous has had the great families in Greece for a hundred and fifty years; what a team, boy!'

Mouradzian came back to the bank while Aristide was still sitting there. He gave him a rapid indecipherable glance and moved quickly upstairs. He wished to have no collision with this fellow of peasant dramas and storms. Mouradzian had the lofty contempt of a race which counts backwards. He well imagined the reflections of Raccamond. Forty years in business of all kinds had left him no illusions, much astuteness, elasticity, and resource. He had never gone into business on his own account because he had taken his own measure from the first: a man to spin silk off cocoons, not to make silk cloth by the yard.

Aristide, like a sick dog, crept out of the passageway. He heaved his great body out of the chair and into another in the board room, waiting, watching for a crisis. It was yet early and no one was about that he knew. The telephone rang and Jacques Manray spoke into it, ‘Yes, Mme. la Princesse …'

Aristide bounded. He had to himself nearly all the princesses that there were in the place.

‘I will verify it, Mme. la Princesse! Will you wait an instant?'

Jacques came back and said, ‘Yes, Madame, this afternoon, whenever you like.'

‘Why didn't you tell me? What does she want?'

Jacques, although angry, looked at Raccamond, drooping and sweating. He thought, ‘He's got something wrong; syphilis maybe, a persecution idea or something …' He said amiably, ‘The Princesse Delisle-Delbe, as you heard, wants an appointment with Mr. Jules, or Mr. Alphendéry. I arranged it with Alphendéry. It's about her account …'

Aristide bounded. ‘And you didn't try to talk to her! She's complaining that she's been overcharged for New York state tax on her American shares. What if she withdraws her account! How do you expect to eat if she withdraws her account? Why don't you calculate the taxes correctly? Every week I am hauled over the coals over some mistake in the accounts.'

‘In their favor,' said Jacques patiently.

‘Mr. Bertillon always adjusts.'

‘Mr. Raccamond,' responded Jacques, ‘you know as well as I do that most of the time the clients are wrong and we pretend they are right in order to soothe them. You can gamble on it, that they know how to count and that they know as well as we do that they're cheating us. I've been in this business since I left off being a captain in the war' (he had to get this in), ‘and I've never seen an honest client yet, comtesse or king. The ones that behave the best are the gamblers and professional crooks, they'll take a loss, but your comtesses don't impress me, they're petty thieves. Don't worry yourself so much about them, Raccamond,' he said with some pity.

‘You take orders from me,' Raccamond cried, getting excited. ‘Here I am a director; I know nothing about Alphendéry. This is my client.'

‘Why, yes,' said Manray, surprised.

‘It is not right; it is irregular; he has been allowed to—Mr. Bertillon is too—' there was a faint line of saliva on his lips, ‘too—kindly,' he bit the word and threw it from him like a dirty piece of fat. ‘Mr. Bertillon allows himself to be guided: a man without a position here, without any recognized office, works secretly—how do I, or any of us know what is going on here? We work, I work—I bring all the big accounts into the place (those that are not taken from me), I have all the connections, and Alphendéry—is the only—director you know—and the others! The others are the same! This is all incoherent. Who is the chief of the customers' men?' he asked Manray, with tragic satire. ‘You don't know? There is none! No one knows anything here. I don't understand it. Can a man work for an anarchy? We are throwing our work away, Manray; you and I, too—it's hopeless; what's the good of our struggling?'

Jacques Manray's color had receded; he looked at Raccamond like a doctor.

‘Sit down, Mr. Raccamond, you are not well.'

‘I am well. Manray, I want you to tell me as soon as the Princesse comes this afternoon; I must see her first. I am going to telephone.' He disappeared, leaving a swirling silence behind him. Jacques sat down. He began mechanically to classify some order slips. ‘All prima donnas,' he reflected.

Alphendéry came in cheerily. ‘Hullo, Jacques; how's the old general this morning? Still commanding the front trenches from the rear? What's the matter, Jacques? Have the police been bothering you again about Parouart?'

‘They were here, trying to get information but I told them they now know all I know. I can't tell you any more unless I make it up, I told them. And there was testimony in the Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern case. I can't get my work done; it's all behind,' he seemed about to cry. ‘No, Michel, it wasn't that; I'm not afraid of the police. It was Raccamond! He acted like a prima donna because the,' he lowered his voice and looked round, ‘the Princesse Delisle-Delbe, one of his princesses, wants to talk about her account, and she sounded all on edge.'

Alphendéry looked worried. ‘She wants to take it out? They have no gratitude; you work for them for years and at the first rumor of trouble, they start a run.'

‘Don't worry,' said Jacques fraternally. ‘Mouradzian turned up trumps; he brought in the Paleologos account this morning. He's the only one of the lot that's worth his salt. He's upstairs waiting for you.'

‘Good, good.' He started up the back stairs. Jacques cleared his throat.

‘Michel!'

‘What is it, Jacques?'

‘Aristide is in a jam of some sort, acting frantic: look out for him. He's ready to blow … He made a scene here just now; said everything should go through him; said he was a director and you were his subordinate. He's nothing but a scrambled egg of grades, laws, regulations, and authority; never got over the Army—he wants to have the orders of the day put up on a slate every morning. He's going to telephone Mr. Jules.'

‘About what? Have we all done him wrong?'

‘I guess he's upset about the Princesse. Michel! Do you notice anything funny about him? You don't think he's sickening for something? The way he walks? Do you think he's been to the doctor and found out he's got clap? Some men have a nervous breakdown over that. He's that type.'

Alphendéry laughed. ‘Perhaps; why speculate?'

As Michel turned to go upstairs again, Jacques came close and said in his warm, low voice, ‘Michel, I know Aristide; I've been at his house twice. He's lunatic jealous of you. The whole thing seems to be that Mme. Jules did not invite that wife of his. I think if Mme. Jules would invite her to tea, say, at the Marquise de Sévigné, Raccamond would not be so angry. It's that,' he dropped his voice very low, ‘excuse me, bastard wife of his that sets him on. She's a vixen; and she's got a mother with a face to stop a clock, lives near them, comes and visits them whenever there's a party. Between the two, poor Aristide—I'm sorry for him—hasn't got a will of his own. You mark my words; it's
she
that sets him on …'

‘I've always been nice to them both,' said Alphendéry, hurt by this. ‘I've done everything; I pleaded for him to be taken in here.'

‘Jealousy knows no gratitude; jealousy resents favors.'

Alphendéry laughed roundly. ‘Who can be jealous of me? Am I a director? Do I put a brass plate, Comte Alphendéry, on my desk? Do I spend a lot of money? Have I got a car? Do I wear golden raiment? Do I ask the boss to put out a red carpet when I come in in the morning? Do I file my nails? Do I even have my shoes shined? No, you must be wrong, Jacques; no one can be jealous of me … I live—do you know where I live? In a miserable apartment, with one good room, and one room made by running a partition through the corridor. And before I lived in a hotel room in a students' hotel.'

On the way up the back stairs, Alphendéry talked to himself and forgot his sudden pet. Upstairs he found William doing nothing but smoking his tenth cigarette of the morning.

‘Hullo, Jacques says Raccamond is busting up the furniture because he's a director and doesn't get enough respect. He says he's got a vest-pocketful of new director cards.'

‘Surely,' said William easily. ‘He visits the branches, appoints a new man here and there, lords it round on a two-sou basis. He's happy and we lose nothing. What do you and I care? After all, you sign nothing; he signs all he can to impress his wife. Who will be in the soup when the soup is made?' He laughed cynically. ‘Fat pig! Let him chortle; he treats me like dirt. First sign of trouble, and he squeals like his brothers at the abattoirs.'

With a sort of gray-flannel malice, he saw things taking a course that would complete the financial and mental ruin of Raccamond. He was capable of much patient fatalist plotting. He continued in the same tone, unpacking his philosophy, ‘Let the fools struggle to trample on each other's head; what do we care? We're the cabal; they're on the inside-outside. You and Jules and I, Michel, one day will just close up our bags and take a fast train somewhere else, and where will be their vanity then? Let's forget them. You imitate me, Michel. I take no notice of them. I close my eyes to their insults, for I know who is boss. And that is all that's worth knowing. They tussle and snoop and eventually find out everything but the one thing that counts. Fools …'

Michel paled. ‘We're not making any money?'

‘Not a sou: everything we have is going out to lawyers, or is under lien in the banks to fight our cases, or is tied up in numbered gold bars and certificates to clients. This account of Paleologos is a stroke of luck but I don't know whether to give thanks for it or swear at it. I heard this morning from a friend of Toots Legris, who is a friend of Carrière, that Carrière is sure to win his case and then we must pay up or—what? Bankruptcy. At present no one knows whether there isn't something funny in the contract—and you and I know there is! But as far as the law goes, Carrière is in the right. And I was fool enough to believe my brother, who's never told the truth in his life, when he said he never signed a contract with Carrière.' He said grimly to Michel, ‘Don't think you know anything about this bank, Michel! Every day even I find out new lies of Jules's and as for you—you're not much better off than Aristide.'

He caught up on his bitterness. ‘Oh, don't worry, you're one of us; what I know, you know. Jules promised me six months ago not to gamble in the Paris market without telling me, and I find I've got to pay out 120,000 francs in losses since he went away. Cristopoulos, Sweet, the crowd—imagine a man knowing what Jules knows about the game, and yet falling for it! Of course, Jules doesn't know how to tell the truth; he doesn't know what it is. I don't think he knows his own name. He lies about it to himself at night. My name's Evarist Zugger, or let's say, Peter Mugger or better Timothy Hugger: I have twenty million francs, or 150,000,000 francs; I've sold short eighty- five thousand shares yesterday and two million today, that makes a handful of fireworks! What a splendid firebug I am! I'm a genius and my name is Aristide Scarface, I'm a
nervi
from Marseille, I'm Popoff the anarchist, I'm getting the White Russians on Tardieu's payroll, what a smart fellow I am! That's Jules's conversation with himself at night. An eagle of finance who only lays duck eggs, and who doesn't know whether he's a mocking bird or a vulture.'

‘We've got to make some arrangements with Carrière.'

‘How? When he's got a chance to get his knife into Jules? He'd take it for the signal to gore us to death. We've made enough advances to the animal already. He'd think we were afraid. He'd be right.'

‘He's lost thousands of dollars in the American market. And Mamma won't pay for his losses. He might be glad of the ready money.'

‘Don't kid yourself. No, we've got to fight this through if we get some more accounts; or scram, and quickly. I don't often pity the lambs, but I hate to see a good account like Paleologos going into Carrière's maw.'

* * *

Scene Seventy-two: Marianne's Philosophy