Love, M.
P.S. I am sorry I cannot find the diamond bracelet you ask me for back to get altered. I move so much, I mislay things. I will look for it. I am so sorry you have business losses. This was the only thing I love most and what proves it is the other things I have put in a safe-deposit in my mother’s bank, also the lovely fur coat you geb me. But if you want it back, I will get it and will not mind been a little cold if my darling has had business losses.
M.
P.P.S. Forgive, as always, my Greek: I learn it but recently because I think I am going to preside at dinner-table of my darling. But now it is not so and really I am so sad I cannot write good Greek. M.
From Dimitri Achitophelous to Mme. Mimi Eloth, June, 1931
Constantinople, June, 1931
My Own Sweetie,
I have your letter, my darling. Business is very bad. I will be in Paris on the 9th for our party on the 10th. I am so worried about business, sweetheart darling, and about my troubles at home that I cannot think about anything else. I cannot make out how your lawyer’s letters to me went astray. I look in every post for letters from you. We will look for the bracelet when I get home. Do not worry about me. When I have made another million I will get out of business and solve our life problems. And so I must work!
D.
P.S. I was too bullish and I lost some money this week. D.
* * *
Scene Thirty-two: Real Romance
Henri Léon was very happy. At the age of forty-three he was once more head over heels in love. He was full of love and gratitude for Margaret Weyman who so unexpectedly unsealed the fountains of his earliest passions and thrust him out into a deafening wind storm of desires with a few stars above, the Venus of adolescence, the early twilight globes of hope, content, and fresh blood, the rare warm rain of love given again. Léon called himself a Don Juan and Casanova indifferently, but for the greater part of his life he was no more than a great cock, calling on compliant women, getting and giving little joy, arousing no love.
He had good looks, lustihood, power. He smiled and sang sweetly, spent money freely on women, pursued them relentlessly. But his obsession was money-making and his great appetite degenerated into a petty satyriasis: he picked up the women who were in the love business, because it saved time, and muffed the few affairs that sprang up spontaneously with pretty, plump, respectable, middle-class women, the kind he really admired, because he wanted the consummation as quickly as with café women and because, taking advantage of their respectability, he gave them their fare home instead of large presents.
And even the splendid women that, with a sultan’s eye, he picked out occasionally in the great hotels and on the fashionable boulevards, like Mme. Vera Ashnikidzé and the so-called Russian Princess, he treated no better, except that, as they were in the thousand-franc class, he gave them a thousand francs where he gave some poor girl frequenting the dark corners of the Place Vendôme at night, one hundred.
But Léon was at heart still the village lad who rushes the village girls and likes to count the number of his triumphs. True, he only counted them over to himself, but his chief satisfaction in venal love was, as in money-making and bondholding, the number of women he slept with. He was modest. Still like a village lad, he feared and rejected the multifarious arts of the great strumpets.
For years Léon proclaimed to all his friends that he was looking for a love affair. He regularly regaled Méline, Raccamond, little Kratz, with stories of Mme. Léon’s stupidity and wept over his misfortunes, even though his eye would stray during his stories and he would note with swelling bosom every pretty leg that came within a hundred yards. His children he said, didn’t love him (but he was never at home), his wife never talked to him (but he only talked about money and she had enough of her own).
On the chapter of his love conquests it was that little Kratz was able to make the most biting comments. ‘You a great lover! Huh. You buy your women like a grocer. You have a lot of money, so you buy more than I can, that’s all. Don’t make me laugh.’
‘Listen,’ Léon would answer good-humoredly, ‘Kratz—it’s true I buy them. But look at me: a great dome, a great tail, short, thick, and forbidding, the money type, not the love type. There are a hundred dandies and grenadier guards and Rudolph Valentinos hanging round every night club. But they all go for me and I get them for the same price as the Valentinos. So? So I must have some winning ways.’
‘You buy them,’ Kratz shouted in malicious triumph, ‘you buy them. They go for you because the dandies look like monthly allowances and you look like the king of the stock exchange. You sound, talk, look, smell fat money. When you’re out to get a whore you buy the dearest champagne, you bring out that million-dollar wallet of yours, you command, unwrap a roll of domestic and foreign bills of the largest denominations, you snap your fingers rudely like a man used to ordering a clutter of miserable clerks about. You fool, you look like big vulgar money.’
‘Not vulgar,’ Léon would say in a softer voice, disappointed. ‘They know men. They know I spend freely on them. I’m not mean.’
‘You buy them,’ triumphed little Kratz, ‘you buy them. Look at me, thin, rat-faced, poor: obviously your hanger-on. I get women for nothing.’ Léon would frown. Kratz did get them for nothing, but he was a mean, poor-spirited fellow—he only went out with hopeless nursemaids, servant girls, and ignorant poor lonely women, timidly trying to help out their miserable fare given them in the kitchens they inhabited, too fearful and too stupid to put a price on their favors.
This insult, repeated and stuck on to others, was one of the reasons for the separation of the old cronies.
Léon had been looking round for some years and had begun to feel really pathetic, when Mrs. Weyman appeared, told him he had a challenging personality and a handsome face and refused to go to bed with him. Instead of angling for flowers and scents, she gave him a swagger cigarette case of ebony and chased gold, with his initials inset. This was the first time Léon had received any gift from any woman but his daughter.
Léon could not sleep without the gold cigarette case, looked at it a hundred times a day, drew it out as often as he could: besides being his unique present, it had cost Margaret Weyman, he calculated, fully eight thousand francs! Léon fell in love ‘at first sight.’
Léon therefore prepared to go into his love affair in the style of a pasha. His little house was one of the most charming in Amsterdam, in a rich and progressive district. He had drawn up a maintenance agreement between himself and Margaret. In the meantime, Mrs. Weyman had united affection and interest and fallen in love with Henri Léon and there was talk of divorce and marriage. Mrs. Weyman had, in fact, already instituted divorce proceedings against her husband. When Léon asked her to sign the contract that he had prepared, she became thoughtful. To tell the truth, she was disappointed. ‘Be honest with me, Henri. If you’re not going to marry me, tell me, and I’ll make other plans.’
Léon was intimidated. ‘My dear, I swear to you, look, I never swear unless I mean it—I swear to you that in five years we will be married. I can’t do it at once, because Hélène’s marriage has got to be put through decently, and I couldn’t divorce her mother in her first year of marriage. It would upset the young pair. But after the first year, I’ll divorce my wife, put my son into business and we’ll live in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Paris or even New York, if you wish.’
Margaret had several long parleys about the agreement. Mrs. Weyman and Léon now formed a trust, the Margaret Trust of which she held fifty-one per cent and Léon forty-nine per cent of the shares, into which Léon put one hundred and fifty thousand American dollars, and Margaret nothing. Léon was to operate the funds of this trust every year for the next five years and distribute the profits pro rata between himself and Margaret. He calculated that he would make up to fourteen per cent yearly. Margaret had about a hundred thousand dollars of her own invested
for the most part in three-and-a-half per cent bonds. Léon contracted to pay her the difference between the yield on her money invested in bonds and stocks and seven thousand American dollars as well as give her ten thousand dollars yearly for living expenses and a dress allowance. ‘You are,’ explained Léon, ‘my wife, at least to me: and you must be properly established as a wife would. You and I will be known as a couple and we must do this thing in style or we will be despised and our relation despised.’
To mark the signing of the contract Léon brought Margaret to her apartment in the house in Amsterdam, three bracelets in platinum, set respectively with diamonds, emeralds, and amethysts. As Margaret hesitated between them, Léon cried, ‘Here, keep them all, my darling. Why should you have to pick? Keep them all! After all, they’ll be mine again soon, because we’ll be married.’
Léon and Margaret Weyman were now in their prenuptial honeymoon. Léon was quieter than usual, went away earlier from work, was not at his wife’s home for months at a time, only turning up when some arrangements had to be made for his daughter’s marriage. Léon began to run the funds of the Margaret Trust with exemplary brilliance: he had put a hundred and fifty thousand dollars on ice for a woman and he now had to make them pay him something. He was staggered at his own magnificence. What a woman! Only a woman like this was fitted to be his wife.
And for the first time in years he began to think of his dull and now decidedly malicious little wife, with pity. In observing her in this new light for the first time, he suddenly saw that during his long absence she had blossomed again, the grayness of years had vanished, and she had become one of the prettiest little women in Switzerland. Léon was glad that the divorce must take some time. ‘It must all be done without hurting her. It will be a great shock to her to realize I don’t want her any more.’ He became quite tender about his wife at times, thinking that when she was divorced she would look back and regret her rich and brilliant Henri.
* * *
Scene Thirty-three: Mamma
Alphendéry received two letters, in the same mail, from his mother.
Strasbourg, June, 1931
Mon Bien-Aimé,
Your letter made me the happiest old girl; I was very worried. I thought you are now becoming a revolutionary. I am happy that you have improved since last year. I hope you get a complete cure. I have felt lonely not seeing you on your birthday. About the delay of war—owing to the splendid advance of the Russians it is not definite, it may be a change may take place, a surprise party. Let us hope for the best. Do you remember when I used to wake you up saying, ‘The Czar is killed,’ or, ‘The Kaiser is assassinated’ to get you up for school? I was looking for a room near Cousin Kitty, but it is impossible to find one—the people are quite wealthy and roomers are not desirable. The trouble is I cannot look myself for a place to establish so I got to suffer. It is a pity of my being for a few years in Paris with you, not knowing the right place where to get relieve from my physical troubles, Aix-les-Bains and Vichy and Vittel it was not worth while. So we make mistakes in life and suffer useless and you, my poor son, lose money. Please, mon fils bien-aimé, write me as soon as possible. You letters are the best medicine for me write me all; keep well and cheerful. Take good care of yourself, don’t go too much with the revolutionaries, it is all right for young men, but you are a family man. You have your troubles. Don’t forget your old girl with love and thousand kisses.
Mamma
Strasbourg, June, 1931
Mon Cher Fils,
Your welcome letter and the 2,000 francs cheque received. You cannot imagine, my jewel, my happy moments of reading your charming letter. I am well provided with my living expenses. I possess 3,000 francs in cash and a 800 franc balance from the 2,000 francs cheque you sent me May. I am very worried of your going with revolutionaries now with all war-clouds, riots, revolutions and this Adolf Hitler, though they say he is not German and the Germans are a great socialist people, they will never listen to that race-talk but he says he is going to make the poor little shopkeepers prosperous and that is something. Only he wants votes, that is all. You have one life, my treasure, you never can tell what may happen any moment, try your best, if it is only possible to keep a steady position and make connections and you can return here and if things go bad we can fly to another country, perhaps America. Living is cheap but to pay with the life for, it is not advisable. My best medicine and recreation will be of seeing you my sunshine. Lately I am feeling very often giddy, may be it is due only to old age and weakness. Thousand kisses and take good care of yourself, my dove.
Mamma
A week later, Michel received another letter from his mother.
Strasbourg, July, 1931
My Dear Michel,
Your welcome letter received: don’t worry too much about me. I am only a guest in this world and my time soon over. You have plenty of worry and expense, to cover all your expenses is not fun, nobody lending you a hand to relieve your burden. You should only be able to endure your troubles. It is all over with me. What can’t be cured must be endured. If I am to die alone, in misery and poverty in my old age, that is my burden: complaining won’t help it; you know I never complain. What is the use? Who cares for the sick and old? You don’t write how is your health, my treasure. Are you in good shape. As to your plans, you say nothing: you know best what is to more of advantage for you. It is my destiny to drag myself alone all my last days in this world without son, daughter or grandchild. I would not mind to put up with all the unpleasant troubles only to hear you are doing well and happy and not going astray. If you had only taken my advice. Revolutionaries are not for you: I am glad you have given a speech at Juvisy for Jean Frère and he is a good man, but that is for workingmen, not for you. He came from the slums: he has something to fight for. Not you. You cannot ask a woman of good education to live poor with you in a little place. Your old mother is different, but not a young pretty woman. Of seeing you I have little hope. A man needs a woman. I am so frail and sick. I am eating solid food but cannot eat much and my friends are afraid to come and see me, I look so bad: it is all due to my chronic weakness. I believe what I see. My dear son, you go to so much trouble to get nowhere: you are sure there is no fear of war I hope. There is difficulty getting identity-cards for foreigners in this part: they are calling up the military service for Alsace-Lorraine. If the torment comes again where will I go? As long as you do good for yourself, but when you are in sickness and live alone, who will look after you? I am wishing you luck and glad you get to know poets but you cannot write poetry, my son, you are from different stock: don’t forget your grandfather was the first lawyer in Mannheim. In meantime stick to your job. Please write me often and all. With much love and kisses, old sweetheart.
Mamma
Alphendéry, in terror, got leave of absence for three days and took the evening train to Strasbourg. He arrived there unexpectedly the next morning, coddled his old mother for a few hours, took her out, and in the evening the two spent a gay time in a restaurant listening to a German band. She was feeble, through the overthriftiness and loneliness of the old, but otherwise in good health. Alphendéry left the same night, promising to make her a home in Paris. He was afraid to stay away from the bank for three days, because he alone knew the technique of balancing the short and long positions and William Bertillon and Jacques Manray, who took turns at it in his absence, always muffed it and caused great losses. These were, in general, bad times for him: he waked far into the nights and when he slept, slept and groaned. When would his slavery come to an end? He was bound to the bank by money needs and affection for the Bertillons, as well as inertia.
* * *
Scene Thirty-four: Five Cents and the Million Dollars
Kézébec, the Breton painter, Abernethy Gairdner, the American writer, and Garrigues, the Gascon sculptor, were seated together in three green armchairs in the stock-exchange clubroom looking earnestly at
something that looked like a geological cross section of the Dent du Midi with its escarpments, but which was really a two-line graph of American railroad stocks 1921–1931 and American industrial stocks for the same period. Kézébec had been nearly a week constructing it with the greatest care. Kézébec was explaining.
House of All Nations Page 27