The Beauties and Furies

by Christina Stead

  ‘Attila?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it, like the barbarians that followed Attila. This is an age of decay—you can plunder, you can’t lay up treasures or build. If you do someone else will take them. Like Boutdelaize. He’s just a plain bandit. He was born for to-day. You’ve got to be a man of your time.’

  ‘Venus de Milo wouldn’t become Miss Europe today,’ put in Georges. ‘It’d be like the chaps who invented the first fire-balloon putting fire into an aeroplane and sending it up covered with fancywork. Raguse makes lace for Looie Dizweet, and we’ve got to sell to the Galeries Lafayette, who sells to typists on 800 francs a month who make their own camiknickers in the Tuileries. No one has a glory-box any more. Everything’s changed: everyone’s poor. And the only fine designs the Rothschilds are interested in are the arabesques on banknotes. Banknotes, gold and diamonds are the only things that have value any more. Nobody believes in fine laces, jewels, movables, antiques any more. Only the dumb middle-classes, who still hang on to Aunt Annie’s Queen Anne mirror, which they think is worth £200, but which only brings £5 in a sale. The chaps with money have bent steel, frosted glass and fancy geometry on curtains. The only commercial money is in something the unemployed can buy, or something their sisters, who work as typists and keep the family out of their pay-check, can buy, cheap, effective, and that can be sold off the shelves in a week. When the girls buy cheap stuff they want to change it often. What we’re doing in the lace business at a time like this I don’t know. Sell something people want. How did Woolworth’s make their money? They saw the world was getting down to a pauper economy…’

  ‘That’s Boutdelaize’s idea,’ said Marpurgo.

  ‘Come into my office, Marpurgo,’ said Antoine, ‘and we’ll look through the samples. Georgie’s seen them already.’

  When he got Marpurgo inside his own door, he said: ‘Don’t listen to that moke; you know him, he’s on to everything: he’s so wise that he hangs up his pants where he can’t find them in the morning, so that he won’t pick his own pockets in the night. You don’t make money that way. We’ve got to have some new ideas; of course the business dies when you sit around and groan like Georges. Isn’t that what they’re all doing—sitting around and moaning you can’t do anything? Now Boutdelaize is making money and so is Faubonhomme, your dyer friend. They’ve both got their heads screwed on firmly though crooked. Boutdelaize uses rotten thread and skimps on the selvedge. I’m not against that, it’s business. You’ve got to reckon that you’re up against rascals in business. Faubonhomme invented the angel-skin finish for rayon, and now uses this new glossy finish for écru lace. He undersells Lyon for his dyeing and finishing because he uses non-union labour and sacks every man that sabotages. Boutdelaize knows that ninety per cent. of his competitors are out of the market, Faubonhomme knows that eighty per cent. of Calais workers are out of a job. They understand the world they live in: they may be crooks, but they’re hellishly smart. And you’ve got to make money quick or go under to-day: this is the last act. We boys who understand that this is the twilight of the gods are the only ones that are going to keep our heads up till the last minute. We won’t see the end. We’ll have time to get off to Patagonia, or Iles d’Or, or Australia before trouble comes, war, or revolution or fascism. You wrote me Boutdelaize is making money on some colour-film process, didn’t you? I didn’t quite understand your letter…’

  Antoine fished in his drawer and brought out a letter from which he read:

  ‘“…our virtuoso in financial jazz has become a chef d’orchestre: a new Mephisto, his volant shadow moves from Barcelona to Berlin, chaffering cockeyed souls of proletarian Fausts who exchange little matchgirl dreams of preferred stock and lifelong participations for the materiality of a crust, one day to startle the yokel Everyman with a few cheap tricks in white magic and retire with the contents of their pockets before over-capitalisation has stolen their pants…” I knew “virtuoso in financial jazz” was Boutdelaize, because you always call him that, but what does the rest of that spiel mean? You’ll have to write just plain French to me, Marpurgo. You know I had no education. My family sent me to one of the finest schools in England and we learned the trick of washing in a trough and eating soup and sardines off a wooden trencher. But I ran away; I wasn’t smart enough for that even: I can only eat soup out of a soup-plate. My folks despaired of me after that and sent me to art-school. So I learned nothing literary at all. I learned English, but not French. Next time you write to me, do me a favour—write it in words of three letters. Keep your white magic for Boutdelaize. He likes it. Did he tell you anything about the colour-film business?’

  Marpurgo smiled darkly. ‘You know, I tried the old enchanter on him; I played the flute and the cobra danced. He loves me like a brother—watch out for the knife in your back, in other words. I did my mental hula-hula, and the old fornicator fell for it: my asceticism gave me a more than feminine charm. He flattered the flatterer to flatter himself he was of my company. A gross old whoremaster like Boutdelaize, with ten legitimate children and three childless mistresses of the most flamboyant sort, who seduces half his working-girls, a vulgar devil, can’t resist the seduction of metaphysics, especially pseudo-metaphysics. Doesn’t Christian Science have its greatest following among business men and bank clerks? Boutdelaize, stinking money-grubber, still likes to think he can attract the open-pored person, monkey philosophers as well as working-girls who have brothers and sisters to support. There are plenty of men who think they seduce whores. Old Boutdelaize is a savage, a primitive; he lives by rule of thumb, acts on his childish impressions, follows out his coarse impulsions with the superstition of a successful egotist. In me he senses mysticism, post-graduate of superstition. You’re all satraps, you successful business men, you want to buy everything! You think money can buy everything, even brains, even mysticism, even poetry! And then he thinks I’m rich. He drew plenty of bank reports on me. The reports all said I was liable to inherit a couple of million lire when my brother dies! Like all over-smart men, he’s quite a fool. He only believes in his own game.’

  Antoine watched him patiently, the tips of his fingers together, his chair tilted back, a pleasant smile on his charming, thin, blond face. At the end he said, ‘What did he tell you about the colour-films, Marpurgo? Has he really got the patent? Does the thing work? Is it a commercial proposition, or does it cost too much?’

  Marpurgo shrugged his shoulders delicately.

  ‘He hasn’t put any money into it but is letting the inventor use the last of his own capital; his brother’s and his wife’s savings have all gone into it, and now the fellow’s broke. Boutdelaize has promised to buy the invention if it succeeds, and so the fellow keeps on at it. He is living in an attic in the ghetto, his wife and a child with him. Boutdelaize advanced a few guilders just to buy bread, and got in return a promise in writing that the invention would not be offered to any other promoter. When the inventor dies of hunger Boutdelaize will get the invention from the wife, or the other way about. In the meantime, Boutdelaize keeps him working at it to perfect it. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to it yet…’

  ‘Think there’s any chance of buying out the inventor before Boutdelaize gets it?’ enquired Antoine lazily, as if in duty bound.

  Marpurgo put away the question with his hand as he went on:

  ‘You noticed his samples? That incrustation with a second, different design is done by a special machine. He pays the girls twenty centimes a metre: a metre may take an hour to do. The rates vary, but he cuts his cost to a minimum. I believe this new incrustation will be taken up by all the cheap lingerie makers. I bought the whole stock. It’s on a bet, but I don’t think I made a mistake. The man’s a pure thief, of course. You have to keep your third eye open, the primitive one in the forehead. Faubonhomme told me they have the dickens of a time stretching his laces after dyeing. He skimps on thread and requires the drying machine to pull the lace out to the proper width. The edge is always tearing, and the whole piece of
lace is weakened and shoddy with the excessive strain. You’ve got to watch out for such lace with him.’

  Antoine thoughtfully remarked: ‘Well, that’s your job, Marpurgo: if you know what he does, you can look out for it. He’s a smart man; I wouldn’t mind putting through a deal with him. I’d get you and Toto to knock it into shape: you go up and see this inventor for me, after you’ve been to Lyon.’

  Marpurgo had frowned. ‘I wish you’d get someone else besides Pierre Brunet for your private lawyer: he’s the laughing-stock of Paris. Nobody but you would employ him: you’re his only client. Maître Lebrun told me the other day he has the reputation of not knowing anything about anything: when he takes a case before a judge, he automatically loses it.’

  Antoine waved his hand, airily, irritably.

  ‘You’re prejudiced, Marpurgo; you never did like him. I know he’s a bit of an ass, but my wife likes Toto, and I’ve known him since I was a kid. He knows my business and he wouldn’t let me down. Besides, my wife says he brings us luck. If you can’t go a bit crazy sometimes and have the wrong fellows along with you, what’s the use of being in business? It’d be better to do what Georges wants to do, be safe and retire. I like life. Toto’s smarter than any of you think: you don’t know him.’

  ‘And he flatters you,’ said Marpurgo bitterly.

  Antoine laughed. ‘What the deuce! He likes me. You and Georges are always against poor Toto. Perhaps you’re right: perhaps he’s a mistake—but I don’t think so,’ he suddenly shouted crossly. He instantly regained his good-humour, but with a ring of command: ‘About Boutdelaize, write to him and see when he’s coming to Paris next: I want you to get me in touch with him. That man’s money: I want to go in with him on some deal.’

  Marpurgo sneered gently. ‘Take my advice, Antoine, the best deal any man can get out of that man is the worst of it. But you won’t listen to me, Antoine, what’s the use? I’ll write to him.’

  Antoine shouted in exasperation:

  ‘I’ll listen to anyone that has something practical to say, without hooey, without a lot of theatrical mise en scène.’ He resumed his normal tone: ‘Scheherazades should remember to keep their bedtime stories for lighting-up time. I’ll listen to you every time, Marpurgo, but you’re a fantasist: you let your suspicions run away with you. You see when he’s coming to Paris, and we’ll get together. I like that crook. He won’t pull the wool over my eyes. We’re both post-war men: we’re both depression-men.’

  Marpurgo smiled at Antoine, veiling his eyes.

  ‘Yes, but you have a weakness he hasn’t, Toine.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Antoine, anxious.

  ‘A good heart,’ murmured Marpurgo. ‘You’re kind, sweet and generous, Antoine; essentially you’re a good man, you were born a moneymaker, but love is in your heart. You deserve a beautiful fate, but your crooked ingenuity pushes you into all these schemes and into the company of these gross, brutal egotists who think that money is all there is in life.’

  ‘What else is there in life?’ asked Antoine with childish simplicity. Then warming to an old theme, he expatiated: ‘With money you can buy everything, ev-ery-thing! You know that’s the truth, Marpurgo. You’re a brilliant fellow, and your rigmaroles and spiels and conversation and your talking about books and philosophy is just a way of getting the better of businessmen. It’s a very smart way of doing it. I like you for it. You like books, you like plays, you like fine liqueurs, lectures: you like to belong to chess-clubs and subscribe to hotsy-totsy magazines: you like to take people out to famous restaurants. There’s no harm in it; I like you for it. You know how to live and how to graft along in a world where there isn’t much to go round. But it’s all money. Without money you couldn’t get any of them. And I don’t know whether you’ve noticed that you don’t like anything that doesn’t cost a lot? You haven’t any simple tastes, Marpurgo. It’s all luxury with you. Am I right or not? You say yourself one of your grandmothers must have slept with a doge. Am I right or not?’

  ‘You love your wife,’ said Marpurgo. ‘Is that money?’

  ‘She was a rich girl,’ replied Fuseaux. ‘All the girls I was ever sweet on were rich girls. I couldn’t love a poor girl; there’s something missing—they’re rough, gawky, crude, they have bad clothes, their teeth aren’t fixed right, they wear cheap rouge. They’re not lovable. Of course you can say they’d look just as good as Huguette, my wife, if they were dressed by Worth—but they’re not, and they never will be. But rich girls are beautiful and lovable, sweet, easy to get on with: they’re good fun, and they can pay for their own kiddies. They’re nice human beings: the rest of the human race ought to be like them. And all because their papas had pots of money.’ He laughed gaily. ‘You must admit you’re beaten, Marpurgo!’

  Marpurgo laughed. ‘Well, I can’t convince you, Antoine. I’m going to get a hair-cut.’

  He got up. Fuseaux laughed and shuttled his slim long legs.

  ‘Yes, go and pay for your hair-cut and overtip the barber so that he’ll like you.’ He began spinning a five-franc piece on the table. ‘Hey, Marpurgo, I’ll spin you for five francs, heads or tails?’

  ‘I don’t want to, Antoine,’ said Marpurgo.

  ‘Come on, heads or tails?’

  ‘Heads.’

  Antoine spun, looked at the coin, laughed. ‘I won. Go on, you owe me five francs: pay me next week.’

  ‘I never gamble,’ said Marpurgo, ‘because I never win.’

  ‘And I always win, in the long-run,’ said Antoine. ‘Why? Because I’ve got the money to stand the gaff. I quit when I win. I never play more than ten thousand francs an evening. At the end of a year, I’m at least even. What do you bet you fall for a rich girl, Marpurgo? You’re getting near forty, you’ve been chaste, you like refinement, elegance, you’re soft, Marpurgo. I bet you five thousand francs you fall for a rich girl before midnight, December 31, this year. Do you take me on?’

  ‘No, keep your money. You forget I married a poor girl.’

  ‘Yes, you started in life by being a bit crazy. But you’ve got more sense now. You’ve got a sane streak somewhere: if it weren’t for that little safety brake in your head you’d be running round with café-poets now, or sitting in a garret writing philosophy. But something saved you. Perhaps it was your unlucky marriage. The only reason you can live apart from your wife and not have her squeaking and fainting about the house, is money.’

  Marpurgo sighed. ‘True enough. You have good instincts, Fuseaux. If you only knew men better and could get this money-monomania out of your head. But I don’t really wish it: it’s the way you make money, and you’re only happy scheming for it. In that you’re an artist, fulfilling your creative destiny. I’ve sold myself on the ideal stuff. I believe my own canvass. That’s why I’m spendthrift and why I’ll never have any money: money is something ideal, abstract to me, as it is to an extravagant woman. You keep me for amusement on your earnings, Antoine: I’m your whore.’

  Antoine shouted with laughter. ‘You old leather-skin: you do believe in that seraglio grandmother, don’t you? Go on, go and get your hair-cut.’

  As Marpurgo was going out of the door, Antoine called:

  ‘Oh, Marpurgo, I want to see you in here when you come back. Have you ever heard of Lanafil? It’s a wool substitute; I want you to have a look at it. I know the man who wants to put it on the market. He swears it’ll put Australia and the Argentine out of business. He has some Japs and Heinies after it. I want to get your slant on him; see if you think it’s hooey or horse-sense. And don’t listen to that groofer Georgie; he’s against it as usual. If we followed his advice we’d go to sleep in a forest and wake up with beavers after two thousand years in a peat-bog—and then sell the peat.’

  Marpurgo bobbed, put his forefinger to his eyebrow in assent, and padded out.

  On the way through the now empty general office, Georges Fuseaux waylaid him, with gloomy mien.

  ‘What was Toine gassing about? He was in there all the aft
ernoon yesterday with a funny-looking flat. Did he mention that dopey Lanafil scheme to you? Look, Marpurgo, I want you to do me a favour: persuade him not to go into it. You and I slave for the money and he defecates it away. He wants to make wool out of paper or something. It’s like a scheme for growing fish in the air or inventing artificial oil. Why can’t he stick to the lace business? Why does he have to be a financial wizard? I’d rather he went and played with his children and let us run the business.’

  Marpurgo patted the lapel of the younger Fuseaux. ‘Surely. I’ll try to dissuade him, but you know, Georges, I must listen to his scheme. It’s not good my vetoing it straight away. Sabotage only makes a poet fly into more furious fits, you know. He’ll only accuse you of being of the earth, earthy, a mole or a slow-worm.’

  ‘A poet,’ cried Georges. ‘We’re in business. When I first went into this business I had a few illusions. I thought I was doing something for the women when I got out a nice new pattern or bought up a good line and let them have it cheap. I thought the things went on getting better from year to year and the human race was benefited—progress, you know. Then I saw the private lace museum of Paindebled in the rue Jacob and I thought we were making it easy mechanically for working-girls to get what fine ladies used to wear. Now I see there just ain’t any progress. Progress is just a train that stops at every station to take up the eight-o’clock workers and drop them in town, and then stops at every station coming back in the evening to put them down again. I know better now. Business is business, and the accountant is there at the end of every six months to tell you whether you’re up or down. You don’t have to wonder, Am I doing mankind any good? Will my work be appreciated in twenty years? I’ll beat my competitors in the long-run because I have vision and they’re money-grubbers. I’m full of bright ideas. You can’t fool yourself the way artists can. And you can’t retire when you go broke and say, He’s beaten me, but I’m the better man. In business you know goddamnwell who is the better man. That’s an advantage after all: you don’t kid yourself.’