House of All Nations

by Christina Stead

‘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.’

  Jules looked at him with a bright eager smile.

  ‘You think the bank would collapse without me?’

  Michel said, ‘I am only thinking of you, now, Jules: not that making money is not creative: that it employs no one, gives no one work—’

  ‘Now, Michel, I employ forty people in Paris alone.’

  ‘Yes, you money-makers try to fool yourselves that you are of some use to mankind! You woul
d be benefactors, too. You see what I mean?’

  Jules shuttled his legs, laughed, ‘No, I don’t give a hoot for them. Why should I be mean? No reason. And why should I be generous? No reason. I do what pleases me.’

  ‘What is the secret attraction of this money you so fanatically build up. You’re a fanatic yourself. Why money? Why not sequins? Why not candied apples? Why not pebbles? Because the figure in your bank balance is a tally of counters, counters invented by your sort, and passed among yourselves in secret recognition of your right to, and power of, robbery.’

  ‘Oh, now, Michel, you’re getting fantastic,’ said Jules charmingly. ‘What would I do if I didn’t rob? Let someone else rob? Why? Will robbing stop if I stop robbing? No. It’s human nature. Look at Rothschild and those culture hounds. They know all about music, art, and philosophy. If there were really anything in it, they’d stop making money and study art. Who ever did?’

  ‘Then I’m practically an idiot,’ laughed Michel.

  ‘Oh, you’re a bit off center: you’ve got the brains. You could transfer a couple of hundred thousand francs, a million francs, a couple of million francs, any day, into your name and you don’t. Now, that’s just lunatic. There are guys in the world who don’t care for money. There are people born blind, too. They don’t count. You think like a logician, a mathematician; but the world isn’t syllogisms—it’s grab and graft.’

  ‘In any case, the theory that socialism consists of dividing up the money was invented by millionaires to flatter themselves with an absurdity,’ said Alphendéry. ‘Socialism consists in putting the means of production of wealth, land, railways, mines, etcetera, in the hands of the people, or rather of their seizing these things from those that now have them. It is your system truncated, grab without graft.’

  ‘There’s no such thing,’ pouted Jules. ‘You’re just an idealist. The people who can’t make money invent a theory that those who do are thieves. Without us there’d be no money at all. We make it: the smart people. Listen, you revolutionists are crazy! People don’t want to make money. They want to rest and listen to the radio. Stalin is a smart one. He runs the state and lets the workers get tired out building dynamos and then he teaches them to sing songs about Lenin. I’m not one of those superpatriots who can’t stand the sound of Russia—I think they’ve a smart gang there, a lot smarter than we have here. Every country’s got a right to its own system. And naturally they try to sell everyone the idea that they’ve got the ideal system: it makes the other countries green with envy. I wouldn’t go and shoot the Russian worker. His mouth’s stopped for another fifty years. But if I didn’t know you, Michel, I would shoot men like you, who go round stirring people up, while their own brains are confused about the world …’ He looked at Michel, laughing at the provocation.

  ‘Jules, why do you say those things? You don’t believe them.’

  ‘I do. I don’t have to shoot my workers: generosity is gamblers’ luck, you know. I’m not in business: I’m a sheep shearer. The lambs eat grass and grow wool and I clip it.’

  He stopped, having lagged and grown thoughtful during the last few minutes. ‘Well, Michel, what do you think of this idea of skipping? I’m serious. I want you to go and see Maître Lemaître and see how much he can do it for. If you’re really dead set against a simple walk-out.’

  ‘I suppose I’m old-fashioned or timid, but I love you, Jules, and I don’t want to see you end up this way. Why can’t you pay off your clients? You’ve got the money.’

  ‘Wha-at? Don’t be funny.’

  ‘Then why can’t you wait till we form this consortium you were talking about? You can pay off your clients and put the residuum into the pool and make money on your own with no overhead and no liabilities. Just one room and a telephone: you and William and me. We’ll plant the twins abroad or keep them.’

  ‘The residuum! I’m not in business for any residuum! What consortium? The Banque de France is a better consortium than any I can get up. No, I’m cashing in. When I get another streak, I’ll go back into the market.’

  ‘Why be in the market at all? Let the suckers guess for you and you bet against them: our old line is the best, wisest, most innocent.’

  ‘I’m not an old maid playing patience. I want big money and what have I got round me? Savers, hoarders, go-gentlies, abacus gentry back in the carpetbags of the Middle Ages, squirrels, ants, census takers, penny-bank campaigners—installment-plan robbers, shilling-a-week shortchangers, Saturday tillshakers, busfare embezzlers, dime defalcators—you’re as bad as Etienne. You’re honest. It’s no good hiding it. All your philosophy hasn’t got you farther than scraping and pinching like the knifegrinder’s wife. If you start little, you remain little. If you start with bells on, you end with bells on. I know what I want. I only want to hear from you how it’s to be done. You’re my technical expert, Michel. I employ you for that. Go to Maître Lemaître or Beaubien and find out how to do it. That’s all I’m asking you.’

  Michel stood up with dignity, still pleading. ‘Jules, you can’t make real money without working at it. There’s something queer about gamblers’ money: it doesn’t sound on the counter. And are you just a gambler? You’ve seen enough at Deauville to know what a breed that is. Are you just that?’

  Jules turned his back impatiently, rudely drummed on the edge of the long bookcase, pretended to look at the backs of the books. He turned in a minute, smiling brightly. ‘Ah, Michel, you’ll never understand the likes of me! I’ve never done a stroke of work in my life: neither did my father, I’m glad to say, and my grandfather didn’t wear out the small of his back with toil: grinding diamonds isn’t exhausting. I come from a breed of men who have harvested, for generations, what others have sown, or dug, or made. Not by the sickle, but by magic. I’m a magician. You can’t wonder that I’m impatient with all the sicklers and hammerers of the world. The hammer and sickle! A good sign for a nation of peasants, country Jacks. I’d pay your fare to Russia if I didn’t want you here. You’d find an upper class there, and commission men just the same as here. Even so,’ he frowned, ‘they paint their propaganda up too red and yellow. Listen, Michel, your father was a lawyer, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Where did you get these crazy ideas from then, that money comes from work?’ He laughed. ‘Well, Michel, unless we can think up a really good out by tomorrow, I’ve decided to blow up the bank. Hey, how about really blowing it up! Get the dough out and put in a stick of dynamite! Say the Bolsheviks did it! Say, that’s brilliant. We’ll transfer everything to—Oslo? Some can go to Antwerp in William’s name, some to Geneva in yours? What did you say was your limit of honesty? Thirty million francs? All right. I’ll trust you with fifty million. That’ll be in your name. We’ll have a consideration. You can sell me a factory in Schnippezoc. We’ll claim it afterwards. When the lawyers and the sleuths fade out, we’ll go and get it and start business in Australia, South Africa, Mexico, or Kansas. Antwerp? No one’s interested in a bank scandal in Paris: they read them in the papers every day. There’s a street there—last time I was in Antwerp I saw a little street, near the Leopoldstraat, full of quiet old houses, and private banks with grilles: dressed gray stone, brass plates with initials; not a sound; respectability at home in the family vault, discreet as a high-class house of rendezvous. No questions asked. Take the name of one of my companies. They look it up; in existence for twenty years! And it’s a monarchy and a potty one: no fear of socialist big-game hunting among the bankers. Ideal! You’d like Antwerp, Michel. It’s not far from Brussels for gaiety, and there are swell bookshops full of arty books. It’s only a quarter of an hour from the Dutch border in case of another German invasion. Let’s shift!’

  ‘Back to your grandfather’s stage!’

  ‘Yes. Thank goodness, everyone is losing confidence. The central banks have to publish pictures of their vaults with a sample of gold ingots: they have to run feature stories on th
e mint. Let’s get hold of their trash paper, before they use it to light their fires, and give them a modicum of hard cash. When you’re round at Lemaître’s, get him, or one of your other legal pals, to think up a watertight blanket guarantee.’

  ‘What’s it to be? New business or no business? If you’re going to collect people’s securities, you want a solid name and a good façade. You can’t go bankrupt and then expect people to hand you over their only insurance against sickness, old age, and unemployment.’

  ‘In a time like this, people will hand you anything for cash. It’s a hold-up. They’re trapped. Um. Let’s see: how does this sound? National Credit and Securities Nominees?’ He scribbled, ‘How’s this? Antwerp Consolidated Securities Assurance, Limited? Good, but not good enough. They’re mad on the Congo, aren’t they? How’s this: Ruanda and Urundi Gold Trust, Consolidated? Leopoldville Gold Corporation? What about Amstel Securities Corporation? Amstel Nominees. Solid and plain. I seem to have heard of it for years, myself. Amstel Banking Corporation? Have you ever heard of that?’

  ‘I might think so, if you popped it to me,’ mused Alphendéry.

  ‘We’ll see. Hello? Give me Mr. William’s office … William? William, what do people think of the Amstel Nominees Corporation, Leopoldstraat, Antwerp? Didn’t Léon mention it?’

  ‘It’s a small, private affair, isn’t it, rather old-fashioned?’

  ‘What do you think we can buy it in for? Find out, will you?’ He put down the receiver. ‘Yes, William has heard of it. Let’s try someone else. Raccamond, that’s the guy … Get me Raccamond at once … Raccamond? You know the Low Countries, don’t you? Is the Amstel Discount Corporation, Leopoldstraat, Antwerp, solid? Is it a good bank? … It is? You’re sure? … Thanks. No, don’t trouble yourself. Very interesting.’ He put the receiver down with a broad smile.

  Michel asked, ‘He knows about it?’

  ‘Certainly. It has a few branches. It’s worth about a couple of a million guilders (that’s the Amstel part of it). Worth a couple of million guilders already and we only invented it two minutes ago … I saw a nice suite of offices in the Rue Tronchet, by the way, yesterday. We might take them, if we don’t go bankrupt and work a business there for ourselves, just William, the twins, you, and I, maybe Mlle. Gentil with her husband—just speculate for very big accounts: sift out the small fry: a rich man’s securities and speculation outfit. Plowman, Zurbaran, the Silva-Vizcaïnos and all that crew. We don’t want any pikers …’