It had often been noticed by Jules Bertillon that the more generous he was, the more his moneyed clients expected for nothing. Nevertheless, he loved the idea that his bank was sleek and that its servants were as perfect as those in a rich mansion of high respectability. And, in fact, the bank quietly breathed out his own air of teeming wealth. Along the other side of the square downstairs hall were tellers’ cubicles, also. In the first of these, seated on a high chair, her rosy beauty always framed in that green air, strange behind gilt bars, like a madonna materialized in prison, sat the customers’ mail girl, Mlle. Armelle Paëz. She watched and meditated, smiled and got invitations to dinner from all the high-stepping male clients. Adam Constant was in the next booth. And after him, was occasionally to be seen Jacques Manray, the stock-exchange manager.
At that moment, a tall, dark young woman in a coat of the silkiest sable entered against the light. Marianne at first only saw the lilting step and the sheen of the fur. In the light she recognized the brilliant hairdressing, the irregular, dark, merry features of Claire-Josèphe, wife of Jules Bertillon, an heiress in her own right, of Spanish and French parentage. She surged forward.
‘Good day, Madame.’ She said this in a loud voice, but Claire-Josèphe, young and nervous, involuntarily withdrawing herself from the crowd of furious stock gamblers and rich plungers in her husband’s bank, went quickly through them all, with a faint smile to Jacques Carrière, a childhood playmate. Marianne flushed faintly and looked out to the curb where the Hispano-Suiza stood with Jean, the chauffeur. Claire-Josèphe chattered girlishly with the fascinating inanity she had been taught at finishing school, with Jacques Husson, and then whisked back through the throng to her car. Marianne smiled once more and said with emphasis, ‘Bon jour, Madame!’ this time finding herself face to face with Claire-Josèphe, but too loudly so that Claire-Josèphe certainly got the impression she was talking to someone over her own shoulder. She looked at her blankly, with a little surprise, dipped to get out of her orbit, and swept on. Marianne went to the writing table where Aristide usually sat now and pretended to be writing out a check. The mail girl, Armelle Paëz, sat, watched, added up details of personalities in her imagination.
Marianne looked up and saw Jacques Carrière bowling along behind the screen on the balcony. Fred Pharion was smiling oafishly to himself—at what? The Bertillon door shut. Aristide, at a loose end for the moment, came looking for her through the crowd. He detected a pallor in her ruddy complexion.
‘What’s the matter, Marianne?’ There was fear in his tone, as well as solicitude.
‘Nothing, nothing.’ She recovered herself, grinned. ‘I don’t suppose she recognized me: we just met for a moment—Mme. Bertillon. She just treated me rather shabbily—made me look pushing.’
* * *
Scene Fourteen: The Collection
Why, thought Raccamond, were the employees allowed to be so free and easy? Mlle. Annette Gentil, the head stock bookkeeper, a smart girl, but one whose chatter was like a tap left running all day, was standing by one of the pillars upstairs looking down on the population of the ground floor. He began to push his way through the crowd towards the stairs to ask her to look up yesterday’s purchases and sales for the Princesse Delisle-Delbe, a very important account he had rescued from the paralytic clutches of Jacquot de Machuca, a spineless aristocrat, and which he was now setting to rights.
He found that Mlle. Gentil was talking to a tall red-gold youth with a small head and large feet. Aristide patiently trod water for a few minutes, then, with a certain glance that Mlle. Gentil caught, swung the door of his room. ‘Old’ Berthellot waddled past them in his white waistcoat and stock, going to lunch although it was only eleven-thirty. Aristide was buttonholed by the senile millionaire, John Tanker, Sr., who asked with an insistent, tinny cackle,
‘Is that you, Whittaker? I’ve been waiting a long time for you—such a long time. I can’t see Bertillon at all. What do you hear about Austria sevens, 1943? I’ll sell them. What time is it? Whittaker? No, what’s your name, man? I didn’t get down till ten-thirty this morning. It was so hot. I have no time for business at all. How are you, um, Raccamond, that’s it: pardon me … Shall I sell? That’s what I came to ask. I need your advice. No good holding a portfolio full of dead paper. You see, I’ve got to think about getting my money affairs into final shape. I’m an old man. You’ll be very good if you find out for me about the following: Austria sevens, ’43, Belgian sixes, ’55, Australian fives, ’57, Cuba five-and-a-halves, ’53, and I want you to sell Argentine sixes, ’59, worthless, practically … Can I leave that to you, Raccamond? I’ll call back.’
Raccamond was obliged to go and get the bonds book and ask Alphendéry’s advice, meanwhile Mlle. Gentil poured talk endlessly into the invisible ears of the corridor. Half an hour later, when Tanker was still sitting there, sucking the head of his cane, and politely rambling on, there was a knock and Armand Brossier, the confidential clerk, his pale curls for once falling over a lively pale expression, said, ‘Pardon me, sir, I’ll come back—’
‘No, no: what is it?’
The man, who looked like an ailing adolescent, came in smiling with a little chamois leather bag in his hand, one of the bags, in fact, in which he stored away gold.
‘Mr. Raccamond, Mlle. Gentil, the bookkeeper, you know, is going to be married, as you have heard perhaps. We’re taking up a collection to buy a wedding present from the whole staff. As she attends particularly to clients’ stock accounts, we thought you might like to make one. Mlle. Gentil has been with us twelve years, in fact, long before we were thought of,’ he said with deference.
‘Does Mr. Bertillon know this?’
‘Yes: he gave me permission.’
The old man’s hand went towards his pocket, clung there for a moment, then he took it away, shaking his head. ‘No, no: I wish the young lady luck. I don’t know her. Gentil? I don’t know her.’
‘We’re taking the hat round in an unofficial way, but if you like I’ll give you a receipt to be in order,’ said Brossier, innocently, to Raccamond.
Raccamond flushed. ‘No, the whole idea is most unpleasant to me. I can’t contribute. If Mr. Bertillon is making—some provision, it ought to be considered that that is, as it were, from the bank: individual members of the staff should not be asked—it resembles gouging, a holdup. It’s unnecessary. It means that every time anyone leaves or gets married, we have this mendicancy. I have a sense of my—what is expected: one expects to give presents to friends, not strangers. No, Brossier. I’m not going to apologize. I dislike the idea. It’s foolish.’ The flush had receded, but two brownish spots still lay under the white lower lids. Brossier looked furious. Raccamond went on, impatiently. ‘The idea of seeming to supplicate a contribution from clients is—so repugnant. A client must never be asked to give money for nothing. They are not in the bank for that. This isn’t a benefit society. And—who knows Mlle. Gentil?’
‘She has looked after their accounts for twelve years,’ said Brossier, angry.
‘We must never give them the impression that we expect anything of them. The client is—almost a sacred person in business.’
Tanker had hatched a scheme—they did not come so frequently now—for an oil-royalties bonus public company and wanted to see if shares could be sold in England. He had a letter in his pocket from his solicitors at the moment and from Paul Méline, chief motor, though not chief name in the Kirkonhill Trust. He thought the business could not be done in England but there were ways of marketing such an idea. ‘I must get into business again,’ he said to himself, without paying any attention to Raccamond, though he nodded politely. ‘Whoever uses his reserves and deludes himself into thinking that it’s income, hangs, smokes, and eats his own bacon while smacking his lips and saying, ‘What a fine pig!’ Yes. I must go to work.’ He got up and walked to the door. At the door he realized he had left Raccamond in the middle of a sentence.
He said, ‘Pardon me: I must go to London. Here there is little information on some matters. Yes, my banker. Good day.’
Raccamond had wasted half an hour on the old man and the only result was a humiliation. ‘Old imbecile, why does he cling to me?’ The door opened: Tanker’s brown hat came through the crack. ‘Thanks very much, Raccamond,’ he said. ‘You went to a lot of trouble.’ The door shut. ‘I get no commission out of thanks,’ said Raccamond aloud. At that moment, he saw Brossier with his wash-leather bag going into the large directors’ room which was given over to the machinations of Cambo and Dreyer and the divagations of Plowman, all unprofitable livestock.
Daniel Cambo whose personal fortune ran to half a million guilders, while those of his mother and sister added another two million in Swiss francs, said in his teasing, goodman voice, ‘No, sir, I never give presents. Only when they pay me a profit. Ha, ha. Eh.’
The genteel voice of his partner, old Dreyer, polished with a silk handkerchief and dusted off like his silver and waxed furniture, murmured, ‘I always do a mitzvah, Daniel. What’s the proper thing, young man? What do the others give? Is ten francs enough? Tell her Mahzeltof, young sir. Do you know what that is?’
‘Good luck,’ rattled Cambo, ‘good luck for me, too.’ Then his warm voice shaded darker. ‘Here, this is all the loose change I’ve got, not much, but it’ll help, won’t it? I say, young fellow, how do you like these? Just samples. If you don’t let on to the others (it wouldn’t be nice), if you want anything for yourself, or a young lady, you can have them cost price. I got them to show the Galeries Lafayette. Nice dressing cases, mirrors, everything; if you want to—say, for that wedding present—I’ll give you a couple of samples at—very cheap, just to throw them away. I’ve finished with them. Don’t you think that would be nice, Ephraïm?’
‘Perhaps, yes, perhaps,’ said Dreyer, softly.
‘Come round after you’ve finished collecting,’ said Cambo heartily: ‘there, Mahzeltof, eh? A young lady, you know, a young lady likes those things. It was lucky I had them here.’
A directors’ room, thought Raccamond angrily, and no directors. Madness to give that beautiful room, with banqueting-hall windows, free to anyone. He himself could have done with it. It would give him a great air of dignity. The Princesse, for example, would just as soon come and see him as Bertillon, in a room like that. But two hucksters had to be there, and a cracked old man who cut out pictures from The Tatler.
Well, let it rest, thought Raccamond: let the prologue go on. Time will show who are the actors with the best parts.
The snow-headed doorkeeper ambled upstairs with a slip of paper fluttering in his hand. Raccamond advanced, ‘What is it, Etienne?’
The old man combined respect with independence. ‘Mr. Bertillon,’ he said firmly.
‘Let me see.’
‘Mr. Bertillon,’ the old man said, rising to his full height. Raccamond was reduced to following him towards Bertillon’s room and hearing Bertillon read the names,
‘Franz Rosenkrantz and Franz Guildenstern … sounds like a comedy couple.’
‘No one walks in for your good,’ scolded William (behind the scenes). ‘Tell them you’re not in.’
‘What are they like, Etienne?’
‘They seem two very nice men, sir.’
Jules’s shout of laughter: ‘You go and take a peek at them, Alphendéry.’
Raccamond skipped into William’s room, skipped out in a minute. Alphendéry had gone back and was saying, ‘Typical Berlin high-pressure businessmen: probably something to do with German defaulted bonds, one of those export businesses, no good to us. You might see them. They probably have a little money. Maybe they’re shifting their business: there’s a lot of that going on.’
‘Sharks?’
‘I don’t think so: they’re taking stock of the bank with efficient but pleased expressions, expensively dressed in the hard Berlin style. But all that proves nothing. Germans always get the externals right.’
‘Don’t want them,’ laughed Jules. ‘I’m against them. Etienne, tell them I’m not in.’
Etienne saluted and reverentially crept out. Alphendéry followed him and came back fizzling with laughter. ‘They’ve gone off in a pest of a disappointment: they’ll come back. Etienne said, “Mr. Bertillon says to say he is not in.” You’re not much of a crook: you picked a cherub for doorkeeper.’
They telephoned for Etienne and with the old white-headed workingman standing in the center of the three, Jules said, ‘Now, Etienne, a lot of people come into the bank who don’t bring business. They come in to get my money. They want me to lend them money, chiefly. And usually they don’t want to pay anything for it. They have good suits on but they’re charity cases just the same. The better the suits they have on, the more they expect to get for nothing. That’s a rule of business … Now, Etienne, I’ve had a lot of experience and I can tell the ones who want money, by looking at them from the balcony. If they know I am here, they will try to buttonhole me. They will wait four, five, six hours. So I have to say I am not here. It is a lie, Etienne, but I must say it, otherwise I cannot run a bank: I’ll have to open a waiting room and give up business. And you must lie for me, Etienne. You must say, I am not here. Don’t say I told you to say it. Because then they wait and they annoy me. Do you understand, Etienne? I know it’s not the truth and I’m sorry for it, but you must lie for me, Etienne. Just say, Mr. Bertillon is not there and leave it at that … Now, you see, those two fellows are coming back and they are annoyed, into the bargain, because they know I am here.’
Etienne blushed at the idea that he had done wrong. ‘I am sorry, Mr. Jules.’ He loved Jules whom he regarded as a young boy, a miraculous child. ‘Did I do any harm?’
‘Not a bit of it.’
His soft old eyes nodded to Jules. He went out.
‘Isn’t he respectable!’ cried Alphendéry. ‘I’d deposit money with a bank that had Etienne, myself.’
‘Sure,’ said Jules. ‘You must have decent people round you: a bank is a confidence trick. If you put up the right signs, the wizards of finance themselves will come in and ask you to take their money. Show a man a marble column or Etienne’s soft brown eyes and he goes frantic and sheds money for you: the way he sheds blood for you if you wave a flag. A man is just a cheese, he sweats and sweats until he shrinks and cracks and goes moldy. He lives on milk, you put him in a round pot and he goes round, or a square pot and he goes square: you collect the milk he sheds and then you eat what’s left! … Did you ever think, Michel, that even a pirate or a gangster puts his money in a bank? They stick up one bank and put the money in another. They wouldn’t be a bank clerk to save their lives, but they give their money to one. That’s the mystery … Lord, what nitwits!’ His whole peal of bells rang out. ‘All suckers—even me.’
‘I could stand being such a sucker,’ said Alphendéry mournfully. Jules was emphatic (he seemed to regret his last words ‘even me’), ‘Pah, you’ll never have a cent, Alphendéry: if you wouldn’t sell your mother’s womb for tripe, you won’t make money.’
‘Yes, I am too softhearted,’ regretted Alphendéry.
Henri Léon sat impatiently in one of the deep leather chairs, studied with violent attention the richest of the clients, returned to his present preoccupation (viz., would he get a Belgian decoration for a letter he had written to the Food Ministry, or would he have to pay real money for it?), put a sudden rude question to the clerkish boys, probing the intelligence of the lackadaisy customers’ men, came back restlessly with the sudden rushes and calms of leashed energy, sitting down again, taking out his notebook, and writing in it, ‘Send Rhys, Rotterdam, book on Bismarck,’ looked at his telephone book, watched the beautiful mail girl through her bars, tried to estimate the cost of the sculpture on wood and stone on the doors and windows, saltily scrutinized the tellers, wondering what was the matter with such insects that they didn’
t skip with the cash, and fixed with the start of the stallion any beautiful luxurious women who walked about, passing over the workers who slid through the crowd, with a walleye.
Henri Léon pretended not to see Armand Brossier with his wash-leather bag and obvious intent and when he came near, he simulated profound sleep or meditation. Then he opened his eyes surprisingly wide, swept the room to see if he was observed, noted Jacques Carrière and made a dash for him, to ask him if he knew anything about currencies, in view of his relations in ministries and banks. There, as luck would have it, Armand Brossier pursued him, not for him, but for Carrière, who for years had held quantities of stocks and bonds in accounts at the bank, especially in its branches abroad. Mlle. Gentil was the girl who held the secrets of all his income-tax evasions as well as those of the other great clients, ‘Old’ Berthellot preferring to remain officially ignorant of all that. Armand Brossier, therefore, with that simple blackmail that is no more than justice, expected Carrière to give something relatively handsome to his bag for the wedding present.
Léon extracted a ten-franc bill and gave it, smiling delightfully to the young man with a friendly ‘Good luck. Where’s the young lady? I must see her and wish her good luck myself. A wedding,’ he said tremendously, ‘always gives me pleasure: I like to dance at weddings.’ He insisted on going upstairs to see the bride-to-be.
The pale Brossier, silently absorbed, lit the staircase like a ten-candle-power bulb on his way down. At the bottom he collided amidships of a tall, powerful man, black-haired and bronzed, with broad produced forehead and chin, snugly dressed in black with white hair-stripe, in the richest South American dude fashion, who was consulting a platinum and ebony wrist watch while taking the stairs in a bound. A diamond pin stuck in his black-and-red satin tie; he had a frilled ivory silk shirt and red socks. There was a fine gold chain round his ankle. This was Zucchero Zurbaran, an Argentine millionaire of great strength, a sweet, savage, uncivilized nature, who owned herds of steers no wilder than himself, to whom his servants, peons, and boundary riders were men-dogs to be lashed, who trampled down and shot at will. Of him the usual legend was told that, having invited a young worker who sang and played well, into his home, he showed him the pictures of some of his ancestors and for no reason suddenly drew his revolver and cried, as a wild lark, ‘Shall I shoot you or not?’ The worker, a young Aesop, saved by instinct, humiliated himself, pretended great fright. The wild bull, appeased, put the young man out of doors, then, saying ‘Think yourself lucky,’ he shot instead at a dog running round the garden, laughed, ‘But there’s more pleasure in shooting a man: it takes longer to breed him.’
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