House of All Nations

by Christina Stead

  ‘The market must reach rock bottom again, after another fall in which I will sell short, the market will begin another long rise and then we can look forward reasonably to a period of boom.’

  The writer added his gem: ‘There should be a stock-exchange committee ruling to prevent undue booms and then we would not have these crashes: the stock market would be more predictable. After all, the broker loses as much as the client who can’t pay, doesn’t he?’

  The sculptor, who had dropped every penny he had earned on war monuments for the past three years: ‘You see rails are not nearly so speculative: the rise is much more even, but whenever you see a long rise in prices you should drop out. I’ve had too much bitter experience. If I had any money now, I’d chisel to make my bread, that’s all.’

  ‘And so,’ jeered the American writer, ‘if you had got out at the beginning of that Alpine climb in the middle of 1928—’

  ‘Will history repeat itself?’ asked Kézébec, with caution.

  Alphendéry leaned over the center chair in which sat Gairdner. ‘You still here, Gairdner? Why don’t you go off, as you promised me, and write those masterpieces the world is crying for? I told you I’d throw you out if I ever saw you in our stock-exchange room again. I don’t want your money. Go and write.’

  Gairdner, little, blond, delicate, kind, flushed. ‘I know, I did promise: but what’s the use? I don’t believe I’m so important as you say. If I could make about twenty-five thousand dollars I could retire into Vermont and get the peace necessary to write. If I don’t have the money I can’t do it. I know myself. You see, I’m not really a healthy personality: I’m a sort of multiple personality. My personality is a kind of earthworm in sections—it would take years to grow together. A man like me needs a lot of money to write. I suppose that shows I’m worthless.’ He looked pallidly sorrowful like an ailing child.

  ‘And what are you doing, Kézébec?’ Alphendéry continued. ‘Why aren’t you out in Brittany leading the back-to-Brittany movement! You believed the French language is tied up with French imperialism; don’t you believe that the price of U.S. Steel is tied up with American financial imperialism? I thought you were a revolutionary socialist!’

  He glanced quickly at Garrigues who was sitting, as always, voiceless and neurotic, and went on to Gairdner. ‘You sit there,’ and there was a note of patient scorn in Alphendéry’s voice, ‘and think the capitalist class is going to hand you out strawberries and whipped cream the rest of your lives …’ He laughed. ‘Did I ever tell you how to make enough money to retire for life in three days?’ The three of them started and looked earnestly at him. He waved his hand in a white gesture of disavowal. ‘In Chicago I buy a one-day option on a million bushels of wheat, put up ten thousand dollars—there’s a variation of one to five cents, say it goes up five cents, fifty thousand dollars. The market favoring me, and renewing option with my winnings, by next day’s closing, $40,000 becomes $160,000: next day, the third day’s trading, that is, I’m up to $640,000: the fourth day, I’m up to $2,560,000 … That’s enough for me to retire on. In fact, making money is easier than playing marbles: you’ve only got to guess right twice. You’ve only got to guess right three times to break the bank at Monte Carlo. That’s why it’s so common … But Levi Z. Leiter did it!’

  ‘Supposing it goes down a cent,’ said Garrigues, heavily.

  ‘You’ve got to have the ten thousand dollars to start with,’ said Gairdner wearily. ‘You can’t play the market with two cents and that’s what I’ve got.’

  ‘You’ve got two thousand dollars,’ smiled Alphendéry.

  ‘I may as well throw it in the Seine for all the good it is to me,’ said Gairdner.

  ‘A mere song! Fifty thousand francs is a mere nothing to this nabob,’ cried Alphendéry, lifting up his hands. ‘Man, come back to earth: you don’t live in the Age of Gold. Why don’t you take your two thousand dollars odd and move out of the bank into Meaux or Nevers or Louviers, live like a French scholar on bean soup, and write your guts out. The market has made a ghost of you. You’re not a man.’

  Gairdner flushed very deeply. ‘You’re right, but I can’t do it: I will either make twenty-five thousand dollars or commit suicide.’

  Garrigues sat by and bit his fingernails. It was three months since he had sent up an order, over a day since he had had anything to eat save for one coffee which Urbain Voulou had given him. He followed Alphendéry out of the room.

  ‘Mr. Alphendéry!’

  ‘What, Garrigues?’

  ‘You must replace my shares. I am wiped out. You stock-market sharks have taken everything. You must give me an overdraft to help me recoup myself.’

  ‘Have you no money at all?’ demanded Alphendéry wretchedly.

  ‘I am starving,’ said the sculptor fiercely. ‘You ought to know: you swindlers have taken everything.’

  ‘There was no swindling—you can look through the cards yourself.’

  ‘Cards!’ He threw back his head and laughed tragically. ‘The whole office is yours, isn’t it? You’ve bought them all. Everything fits your story. If I had every book in the place, it wouldn’t do me any good. But I know the truth. You must give me an overdraft to trade with, or credit me with one hundred shares, or I will blow my brains out.’

  ‘Come upstairs to my office,’ said Alphendéry quietly. ‘I’ll see Mr. Bertillon.’

  ‘Emotional blackmail,’ said Alphendéry. ‘We’ll have to give him one hundred shares.’

  ‘Do what you like,’ said Jules.

  ‘Why didn’t you let him?’ asked William. ‘We could easily get a cleaner in and he’d be better off. He’s insane. He’ll never do another statue in his life.’

  ‘Isn’t this a terrible business we’re in,’ said Alphendéry, ‘that drags writers away from their books, sends men insane, induces men to waste years of their lives in a stuffy room looking at figures, intent on gorging more and more and more money, until they’ve forgotten how to count, or what money is or comes from, until they don’t even want what’s bought with money—as, leisure, fine tailoring, good food and drink, round-seeing, books—but just want to sit there in the stock exchange year after year … There are the Hallers, who are stuffed with money, coming in day after day. They’re free, happy, have enough of everything in the world and could spend their lives traveling. But they sit every day all the year in the green armchairs in Jules’s board room looking at rows of numbers changing, and when the market closes, they go home to sleep. There is nothing else to do—in Paris, the bull’s-eye of desire—until the markets open again the next day. It’s an insane asylum you run, Jules. I can’t stand it: how can you?’

  Jules came down on the two front legs of his chair, long in the air, and said soberly, ‘People of my class pay an awful lot for mental specialists. If I didn’t get them, some Freud or Fraud would … What do you care about these poor squibs of men, Alphendéry?’

  ‘I love men, Jules.’

  Jules raised his eyebrows, surprised. ‘That’s a prejudice, Alphendéry. Most people don’t get on because of some old prejudice. Drop them and have a couple of crazy superstitions like me: you’ll make more money.’

  * * *

  Scene Thirty-five: Field Day for William

  Henri Léon’s dome was refined and diminished by the pinched felt. He lunged briskly into the bank at eleven o’clock in the morning, twisting this way and that to espy someone of importance in the cheerful springtime crowd now filling the small tellers’ den, the lobby, and the stock-exchange clubroom. A rapid fire of laughter rang out in the stock-exchange room where someone was saying he had just gone in with Aristippe de Partiefine in his Viennese Formula.

  Mnemon Cristopoulos, red-haired, middle-aged, suavely exotic as to suit, socks, and tie, with a fine gold chain on his wrist and ankle, serpentined muscularly through the crowd, avoiding contact with the women, delicately acknowledg
ing and sizing up the men. Near the beautiful lift-cage, made of fine wrought iron somewhere gilded, stood Aristide Raccamond, his head characteristically thrust forward between his fat shoulders, using his hands as best he could to gesticulate, while holding his usual pile of folders and newspapers under his arms. His expensive new clothing was pendent from his great body in extravagant loops and flags. He did not see Cristopoulos in time. Cristopoulos looked at him with revulsion, edged away, and pointedly avoiding him mounted the staircase to the balcony. Aristide watched him upstairs with nostrils pinched and mouth open. He got out his heavily initialed handkerchief and wiped his always livid forehead. But he felt safe: Jules Bertillon was no homosexual—detested the breed, in fact, and Cristopoulos, who had a great affection for Jules but would always have to love him from a distance, would never tell tales of this particular sort on Raccamond. But only a year ago, when Raccamond was procuring for Carrière, Cristopoulos had said, ‘If you cross my path again, you stinking flesh thief, I’ll ruin you.’ Cristopoulos, strange fellow, elegant, busy, secret, had no public scandals about him, and he had a large and respectful clientele in commission business. Cristopoulos represented what Aristide would like to be, on the second plane. On the first plane, he wanted to be a great banker, a great force, someone who sat ‘with the gods’: someone who always knew what Marthe Hanau would put in her next issue.

  An English broker visiting Jules Bertillon both for personal and bank business, cool as a cucumber, in appearance like a gray, superfine badger bristle in a Piccadilly shaving brush, seeming to despise faintly but wholesomely the excitable Gaul, bared his small red lips over his rat teeth and passed upstairs.

  Léon hailed him, ‘Hey, Stewart, what are you doing in Paris? Is the market going up? Is it good for a rise? … What do you say to Mulloney and Moonsteyn’s new promotion, North Atlantis?’

  At this moment William Bertillon moved upon them with the swift immobility of a ship of the line. ‘What’s the news from London? What’s the latest ramp? Those boys are still turning over thousands I bet. I hope you get some of it, Stewart.’

  Léon looked quickly from one to the other: Stewart’s mouth became smaller and tighter, then it opened to let out the voluble rat-bitten reproof: ‘In my opinion, North Atlantis is a perfectly good gold mine, not overvalued: the rumors have been spread either by the promoters themselves to interest the public, or else by the short-sellers trying to provoke a slump.’

  William spoke out of time, feeling gay in the good weather. ‘Why should they? It’s probably rotten anyhow … No offense, Mr. Stewart. Look at the record of all business. According to Dun and Bradstreet ninety-five per cent of them shut up shop for some damn reason inside of ten years. A bear market is a twenty to one bet on the facts. It’s all a time equation. You’re betting on the morgue—but Jesus, what tricks they go through before they land there! It’s like chasing a fox—he jumps, he doubles, he gets his mate to run for him, he swims a creek—’ Stewart was looking at him as if he was ready to pop like a lighted cracker. William was in his most annoying mood; he buttonholed Léon. ‘England’s such a Christmas tree for share pushers: noble lords will sit on the board of any company for a couple of quid a sitting. And the public. Loco or idiotic. God, I’ve never heard of such a people, except perhaps some peasants in Bessarabia, or the niggers in the Cameroons, who believe in what they believe in. Magic. Put up any sort of business that sounds utterly impossible and they’ll gulp it down. Because—why? Because life has always been handed to them on a silver platter since they conquered India and South Africa. Now a real, solid business doesn’t appeal to them, like a sixpenny bazaar or cheap machine-cut dresses. Nothing that is any good to the working people. I wish we were there. I’ve always said to Jules you could make millions there …’

  Stewart’s and Léon’s eyes opened wider and they showed a faint interest. ‘Gold mines!’ said William. ‘Brokerage is the true gold mine. No labor troubles, no accident insurance there. Frankly, Stewart, I don’t give a damn whether you execute the orders I give you or not! As long as you can pay me! If you work on the other side of the book from me you’re more likely to be able to pay me! That’s the way I see it. Business is business!’ Stewart, extremely irritated, darted looks round to see who was listening. Abernethy Gairdner was listening and drank it all in, politely; with bowed head, as if lost in calculations for his desired twenty-five thousand dollars.

  Stewart said crankily to Léon, ‘What do they think of Hitler up in Antwerp? You people must see more of it than we do.’

  ‘Hitler,’ William started off again. ‘Hitler looking for votes is like a man making love to a woman. ‘I’ll give you a bracelet, I’ll give you a fur coat, I’ll give you a motorcar, I’ll give you an apartment, I’ll give you an annuity’—then he puts on his hat and asks for change of a ten-franc note. ‘My dear, there are two sides to every deal. Thanks very much. So long.’ The German people. Idiots! Once a Heinie, always a Heinie!’

  ‘They won’t listen to Hitler, no, no!’ said Léon violently. ‘What’s he got to offer?’

  ‘He’s going one better than the goose step: he got the goose-step arm, too,’ jeered William.

  Stewart determined to break away. ‘You’ve got a big crowd here, they seem to like the place,’ said he.

  William laughed long, a luxurious laugh; he stretched himself and yawned. It seemed to him that fine morning that his Chinese nightingale was chirruping and whistling on his shoulder. He looked round, pink under the eyes, his eyes round and clear and his snow-white teeth smiled broadly. He was completely indifferent to Stewart’s irritation and also to his hate. He said lusciously, ‘The suckers: they’re always here. They never take their money. That’s how we make money. You may think this is a bank, Stewart, but it’s just a casino with letter drops on the front door. And we make casino money. Did you ever hear of a man who won money in the market and took it out, Stewart? No, if the suckers win, they double; if they lose, they put more money in to try to recoup. If they’re gamblers, they plunge; if they’re amateurs, they whipsaw. And there are people who ask us how we make our money! … The stock exchange is a tout, only in one case you’re betting, on a real horse …’

  Léon listened intently, for this problem had been absorbing him for some minutes, ever since, in fact, he had seen the white, stone face of the bank in the morning light. It had come back to him, struck him with an ache: how did they make their money? At the end of William’s remarks, therefore, ignoring Stewart’s pained and disgusted face, he gave a shout of laughter and putting his head between them, said earnestly, ‘You’re right, William. We all say we’re in broking or grain or banking or shoelaces—but the real business we’re in is milking … Good! Where’s your brother?’

  Near the door of the stock-exchange room, watching them and the other groups, stood Garrigues, the Gascon sculptor, sulking, his large country frame bowed, his poor suit sagging, his great forehead with beaded brows clouded. Gaston Garrigues, having nothing with which to pay for bed and bread, naturally could not answer a margin call and his account was closed by Alphendéry. Now, after desperate figuring, he had persuaded himself that the bank had robbed him of several hundred francs. He had complained to the criminal division at the prefecture of police and his complaint had been dismissed, for the police were used to the pleas, whether insane or justified, of miserable stock gamblers, against the various banks of Paris: they came in at the rate of two hundred a week when the market was wild. After this, Bertillon had called him in and credited him with one hundred shares of International Mercantile Marine, a reasonably quiet stock which he expected to go up. But this had only convinced the obsessed Gaston that there had really been something crooked in Bertillon’s handling of his account and that the one hundred shares was in the nature of hush money. He knew very well that big gamblers were ruined in the market in the course of nature but did not see why he should be.

  ‘I only want it to live,’ he sa
id to himself, ‘so that I can work without my stomach cramping from hunger. There’s no danger in that. I must win.’

  He had just now borrowed five hundred francs from his father, a poor share farmer near Bergerac, and was watching for Aristide Raccamond so as to offer it to him to put on ten shares of Tubize. He divined, with his sick intuition, that Raccamond was a force opposed by nature to Alphendéry in the bank, and as the one had brought him bad luck, he hoped Raccamond would restore his fortune. When the order was sent upstairs to the telephone room, Jules Bertillon had just come in and was lounging there. He tore up the order and sent down a message that no orders were to be taken from Gaston Garrigues, except for the one hundred shares of I.M.M. and that the five hundred francs was to be returned to him. He telephoned for Raccamond and Garrigues to come up to his room.

  Raccamond, standing near the lift, got the message first and rushed up the stairs, pleased to let the lobbyful of people see him on business intent.

  ‘Raccamond, I told you not to take any more orders from Kézébec or Garrigues.’

  ‘He brought in the money—’

  ‘I won’t have him. If he tries to gamble here again, I’ll have him thrown out physically. Remember that!’

  His voice was a whip and his manner scorpions. Raccamond shrank, retreated, bundled along the corridor. ‘I don’t understand him, I don’t understand the house: what sort of a …’

  Garrigues got his share too and, of course, imagined a persecution, and that Jules Bertillon, alternately, feared him and his accusations.

  ‘I’ll bring suit against you!’

  Jules jumped up. ‘Get out of here, Gaston: go back home and help your father on the farm if you can’t work. I don’t want you here. I won’t take your money. I’m not interested in poor men. I can’t make money out of them. Now, that’s what I really think of your business, Gaston. Get out. Thank you and good-by.’