The liqueurs working in their stomachs and the conversation, the interest aroused by the introduction of Lenin, one of their favorite topics, and their apparent victory, also habitual, made them begin to wonder when the next dish was coming. Sure enough, the door opened at the psychological moment and Mme. Haller trotted in, jolly, bearing a larger dish, on which was a huge stuffed jellied and nobly decorated carp, the pièce de résistance of the Haller feast, a dish Mme. Haller invariably spent the previous twenty-four hours preparing. Behind her, Anna was perilously toting red-bordered Sèvres plates, silver, a little crystal dish with extra pieces of roe, jelly, and stuffing, and a small dish of macaroons.
‘There!’ said Sophy, with a blush of triumph at them all, especially at Mr. Raccamond whose eyes opened and who quite openly licked his lips.
‘Did you do it all yourself?’ Marianne exerted herself to please, as her own eyes were pleased. It was the most delectable of dishes and Mme. Haller’s masterpiece. She knew that Mme. Haller only made it when Aristide and she came to dinner. Some strange feminine instinct prompted Mme. Haller to feed that great mountain of flesh till his eyes popped. She passed the fish out more sparingly. It was very good. With less ceremony than before they downed the helpings of carp and Mme. Haller pressed them less to convert the good great delicate fish into Raccamond meat, for it was a particular delight of Georg’s and she knew he would go foraging, at night, after the Raccamonds had left, in the kitchen, hoping for some remnants. Nevertheless, one way and another, with their exclamations of pleasure, with Haller pressing and she herself pressing, from habit, they got through the carp and several glasses of chartreuse each and there was no time for talking at all, except for asking occasionally, ‘Is it good, is it really good?’ and exclaiming almost with tears in her eyes, ‘Oh, I am so glad! If it pleases you, I am most happy.’ But, strange thing, the tears were there as much for the vanishing of the carp which had taken so much labor, thought and love and delicacy and experience and money, and for the vanishing of all the dreams and desires of praise that had grown up round it in its brief afterlife, and for the astonishing end to which so much hard work was directed. Nevertheless, she was not wholly conscious of this last feeling: it would have been unworthy of a good hostess. Strangely enough, there was something displeasing to her, embittering almost, in seeing those two good, fat Raccamonds engulf her tender, kingly fish, surrounded by so much perfumed shining jelly and dressed in so many little sprigs, and bits of lemon, and olives and fancy bits of gelatine. This time she had really surpassed herself and there was not an ounce of the fish left. Leaning back a little, she therefore comforted herself with liqueur (‘I mustn’t take very much, my head turns, I haven’t a strong head like you, Mme. Raccamond’) and presently the slight shadow had disappeared. She had the pleasure of hearing the great blubber of voracious male, Raccamond, whose appetite attracted her dreadfully, almost sexually, say, ‘You are the best cook I ever knew or heard of, Mme. Haller. Isn’t she, Marianne?’
‘Oh, wonderful, wonderful, I wish I could cook like that.’
‘Oh, is it really good, then?’
They both cried out, ‘It is the best carp we ever tasted.’ Haller looked at them with a smile between gratitude and derision.
‘You fatten me, really,’ Aristide shook a playful finger at her, ludicrous gesture in his solemn demeanor. Marianne, breathing a little hard to cover up that absurd gesture, rushed in, ‘Yes, you go to too much trouble for such poor folks as us: it is a shame, Mme. Haller. You ought not to.’
The little thing’s face clouded. ‘Oh!’ She looked quickly at both of them. ‘You don’t like it! Is it bad? Oh, how dreadful!’
‘No, no, no.’ The boulder of Sisyphus to roll up all over again! But they came to it with willing, if exhausted shoulders again. ‘No, it’s a delightful, wonderful fish.’ Aristide looked at her with a husbandly, tender admonition. ‘Only, we don’t want you to go to such preparations for simple people like us. Why, it is fit for the President of the Republic.’
‘Simple people! Oh, how can you say that? You are people with such good taste. If you praise a thing I know it’s really good. Then the carp is really good?’
‘Yes, yes, indeed.’
‘Then I’m satisfied.’
Mr. Haller was still picking bits of roe and jelly out of the second dish. Impulsively, gratefully, she leaned forward and helped Aristide to another piece of roe, one of the last titbits she had been reserving for Georg’s night hunting. ‘There, eat that! It’s nothing, not a feather-weight.’
‘Oh, no, I beg you.’
‘Not if you like it! If you don’t eat it, I’ll know you don’t like it.’
Aristide ate. His ears had flushed. He helped it down with a half glass of chartreuse, not quite knowing any more what it was, only that it was an alcoholic drink which whipped his gastric juices into action.
‘I am a bear on principle, you see, Mr. Raccamond,’ said Haller courteously, harking back to another part of their conversation, ‘because money is limited on the bear side: shares can only go to zero. But on the bull side the theory is that it can go to infinity simply because we can go on adding up. That is why, on general principles, the bulls are always wrong because there is no mechanical factor to limit their dreams. Ignorant people, with a limited knowledge of how money is made, like to bull. But money is really only made through bear operations, through put and calls, and through arbitrage, protected to a limited extent, through stop-loss orders, although they are unsatisfactory. You have to let money out on a checkrein.’
‘Unless you’re in a pool,’ said Aristide, for this was his dream.
‘I’m talking of the independent money-maker.’ Haller shook his head.
Marianne was talking aside to Sophy, rash because the carp was finished to the last crumb of the roe. ‘How did you learn to be such a wonderful cook? Did you learn it at home?’
She lifted her little dimpled hands in the air, delighted. ‘Oh, no, no, no, no. I knew nothing. When I married—Georg, I was eighteen! I knew—less than that,’ a tiny piece of fingernail. ‘My mother never let my sister or me into the kitchens. When I got married, a favorite uncle of mine wrote to say he would come and visit me and see what a good housewife I was. He loved jellied carp and I decided to make one for him. I got a big book, I went down to the market myself, and bought a very big carp. I’ve no idea what it cost me! Do you remember, Georg? Well, that was thirty years ago. Could you believe we have been married thirty-one years? The book said, ‘Savonnez bien!’ so I scrubbed it with a scrubbing brush and soap. When my uncle came I put it before him and told him I had done it all myself. He put one piece in his mouth, for it looked beautiful with jelly and everything, just like it did, tonight—and you said it was good tonight, didn’t you?—and spat it out. Oh, my dear Mme. Raccamond, oh, my poor Mme. Raccamond, I burst out crying. “What’s there in it?” he said. “Stuffed with soap?” Well, Georg, you have eaten all the fish.’
She rang the bell while she gazed round at them, pink. ‘I am very happy tonight: you liked it.’ Georg looked at her, content, and then went back to his dispute with Raccamond. Sophy whispered, ‘Never mind, he left his estate to my sister and me, just the same; he was childless and loved us very much.’
Marianne saw in the Hallers the sump of a large childless family. Sophy nodded at her. ‘Your son is doing well at Oxford, of course? It is so charming.’ She nodded to her, congratulating her. ‘Anna! Hurry up!’ (The rest in Hungarian.) ‘Try a little more Cordial-Médoc, Mme. Raccamond. We laid in a big stock just after the war, for Mr. Haller was sure there would be another war within fifteen years!’ The Cordial-Médoc, like the other drinks, had sharpened and lost its original flavor by bad cellarage but they both cried out they were all excellent, superlative.
‘Dear Madame,’ Mme. Haller again said, ‘I prefer to eat in my own lares and penates. Restaurants cheat you.’
‘S
ophy! You ought to see what Anna is doing!’
She answered sharply in German, ‘Georg! Why do you always order me about?’
‘A hostess,’ he laid down, as if repeating some basic assumption of physics, ‘should always make her guests’ comfort her first care.’
‘Excuse me,’ she said to them both, blushing. She went and stood behind Georg. ‘Georg, you are naughty this evening. You command. You order.’ She laughed girlishly, still the nineteen-year-old bride, conserved, put her hands a minute on his shoulders. ‘Naughty, disagreeable Georg.’
‘Go,’ said Georg, gently. She tripped off at once. ‘Yes,’ continued Georg, in contented repletion, ‘Russia will one of these days be the most modern state in Europe and in perhaps twenty-five to fifty years will be better off than America. Look at the anarchy that reigns in America!’
Mrs. Haller came in with a deep fruit dish in which large half-peaches swam. Behind her, Anna, bearing a dish deeper and smaller, full of whipped cream; nuts and nutcrackers and sugar. She returned to the kitchen and brought back a plate of cakes, while Sophy nipped out and returned with a bag of chocolates and a jar of honey. ‘Georg, come and eat.’
Georg had been looking through his engineering textbooks to illustrate some point to Aristide and now came back slowly, with his eager, sunny, blond face turned to him. ‘If the government has the foresight to form a trade pact with Russia, France will ride the storm in the next few years. Russia is making herself felt. France was boycotted for years after the French Revolution: statesmen all fulminated against her and those who supported her were treated as ragamuffins and tatterdemalion intellects, but it became impossible to neglect her. You see!’
‘And she, of course,’ said Aristide nastily, ‘needs an outlet for grain. She’ll ruin the little grain producer in this country.’ He himself reaped a few bushels yearly on a little place down south.
‘Mme. Raccamond, will you help your husband to peaches and cream?’ asked Sophy. Marianne did so, putting only one peach on his plate. This caused a frightful outcry from both the hosts and Aristide’s plate was heaped with peaches and cream, which his doctor had told him not to touch. ‘Just a little … it won’t hurt you!’ Sophy nodded confidentially, ‘This is better than you get anywhere in Paris; a man brings it in specially for me twice a week from the country. Just taste it, Mme. Raccamond. There! Eh?’
‘No system can support compound interest,’ said Georg. ‘I will show you a little calculation of my own. Do you read propositions in algebra easily?’
‘How would we run the state without it?’ demanded Aristide, whose dream was to insure his old age by a great quantity of War loan, Treasury bonds, and so on. ‘Why, colonial expansion has only been possible on compound interest. My customers wouldn’t buy stocks or bonds if they didn’t expect compound interest on their money. Money can’t lie sterile, Mr. Haller.’
‘Eat, eat, Mr. Raccamond; you are eating nothing.’ He ate obediently, saying between mouthfuls, ‘I know it’s a burden on the mortgagee, but that is the only way you can encourage people to save and to hold property. Mortgages and rent are really a sort of compound interest on your saving and foresightedness.’
‘Georg, don’t talk to Mr. Raccamond : he wants to eat. Look at him, his plate is empty. Help him to some cream, Georg. You see, Mme. Raccamond, these are tinned peaches, but I only get the very best. They are the Australian brand, Yanco … do you know it? There is only one place where you can get it. You don’t know?’ She bit her lip, almost irritated: the Raccamonds were really no connoisseurs. She felt it her duty to save Mme. Raccamond from poisoning Raccamond by inches. ‘Mme. Raccamond, I’ll go and get the tin.’
‘Sophy! There’s no need to do that.’
‘Georg, don’t speak so sharply; you don’t understand that they don’t know the brand!’ All this in German. She hurried out. At the door: ‘And after, some tea, some coffee? Yes? A little tea with wine in it, surely.’
They were glad to see her go, being anxious to plunge back into the interest discussion again. Marianne especially, who was slowly accumulating an income from bonds, was heart and soul for interest.
‘Interest is sound arithmetically, but unsound and revolution-producing politically,’ Haller set out, placing a little slip of paper with algebraic symbols on it, between the peaches and the chocolates. ‘Interest is unsound financially and revolutions are necessary to purify the financial system; revolutions lead to a revival, the dead weight of indebtedness is thrown off: repudiation is necessary to liquidation and this to optimism and new hope. Nothing arouses hate for the ruling classes like excessive taxes and an excessive burden of internal debt. Lenin saw this. He acted as a cathartic; the ruling classes in Russia had stuffed themselves to bursting on interest. You see, the financial papers enable the people to see the Fat People eating.’
‘You mean the financiers?’
‘Yes, I call them the Fat People. Now, human nature teaches us, we know by instinct, that there is something wrong when five per cent of the people stuff and ninety-five per cent have almost nothing to eat and no money to put into interest-bearing bonds at all.’
Aristide said cloudily, ‘Perhaps, there are thieves, my dear friend, amongst the rich, but what about the sound bourgeoisie to which you and I belong? The sound bourgeoisie—the workers don’t realize this—are hard-working, intelligent, saving, modest, liberal, the only good people. The best intelligences are found amongst them, the highest positions in the State. The workers live from hand to mouth. If they ever seized the State, it would be a fearful thing: the State would live from hand to mouth.’
Marianne nearly nodded her head off at this and looked positively Chinese with grasping and avarice. Not that the Chinese are grasping—this is just the way she looked. ‘We go out on the road on Sunday in our little car which we have just been able to afford, out of our savings. We can hardly get along the roads with working-class people in cars too. Secondhand cars. God knows they can’t afford them. And there they go racing past us, jeering at us, using up oil, destroying the roads, risking human life, not only their own lives—they can do that, with pleasure, but ours too. They have no idea of economy. I shudder at the thought of the money that must be poured out in Russia: every sou is gone. No wonder the country is breaking down. It’s a detestable thing. It’s because they were a nation of animals and personally I don’t blame them so much as the old aristocrats. They were very charming people in themselves, but they didn’t improve the country and now they have to pay for it: a nation of animals and pack mules have got hold of their estates and their factories. When the landed people and the capitalists get back it will take them twenty years to repair the country.’
‘You are wrong, Mme. Raccamond,’ said Haller, in his deliberate manner, intending no offense though. ‘A backward economy eventually proves more economic than an excessively hurriedly modern one. Do you know thread at all, Mr. Raccamond? Look at the thread in this shirt, it is made of six strands; it won’t wear out in forty years, probably. I was getting some very fine thread from a place in Lille, but only a little of it, some years ago. Finally, I went to see the man, thinking I would buy the place and improve it, make a big business out of it. I found him in a side street and his machine a tiny old-fashioned thing, more like a bedstead than a modern filature. I sat down on the floor with him and he told me, his brother went into business, put up a modern spinning factory, and has been bankrupted because of the constant need for modern improvements in machinery. The buyers demand it. Then the slack time comes, he is left with it on his hands, weeds grow in the courtyards, dust falls from the walls; in five years when business picks up, industry has got far ahead of him. He has used up all his capital, he owes everything to the bank, and he has nothing to start with again.
‘Meanwhile new competitors are starting from scratch with the latest thing in machines. You see the waste? America, for example, has spent all this time, labor,
money, lives, has seen bankruptcies and suicides, to learn how to build modern buildings; and England has now only to take over the latest designs and profit from American experience, without bleeding for it herself. The expense of experimentation is enormous and I assure you, Mr. Raccamond, that thousands of profitable, time-saving inventions are throttled in their cradles, even in America, to save money. Now Russia was saved all the elementary struggles of machine capitalism. She is that much to the good. She can start right off now, with her first tractor factory the same as the best tractor factories in Germany or America. She need count nothing for depreciation. But in an old-fashioned economy, like England’s, the profit lasts only a short time. The preservation of antiquated styles by tariffs and loss of trade by old patterns eventually disable the country. It cannot be done artificially. Only in the revolutionary way. And Lenin saw that, too. He was a great economist!’
‘That is very well for men of our cultivation,’ protested Aristide, with a blank expression, ‘but workers cannot understand these things. We have had a university education. I once tried to read Marx and found it quite impossible. I didn’t understand even the first page. How can workers then?’
‘That is a comfort to me,’ Marianne peaceably put in, lapping up her peaches. ‘Even if the Reds continue to govern in Moscow, which I don’t believe, it will take them fifty years to acqure any culture, a hundred and fifty years to produce a Velasquez, longer than that to produce an El Greco.’
Mme. Haller returned with the opened peach tin which she had rescued from the garbage box. She was flushed. ‘You see, Mme. Raccamond! This is it. You will recognize it by the label? It’s a pretty label, isn’t it?’
‘They are the very best,’ Georg explained. ‘You see, they get so much sun, they are unusually luscious. Otherwise we would not eat tinned things at all. The ordinary brands are unhealthy. You don’t eat tinned things, do you, Mme. Raccamond?’
House of All Nations Page 34