The Mirror of Present Events

by Brian Stableford

  “Oh, she’s a halfwit!” Griffith replied, without hesitation.

  “Very good. But Comte Jérôme Thomas is doubtless not as limited in his scope, as you connoisseurs put it?”

  “Certainly not,” affirmed Griffith, with remarkable energy. “He’s four times as bad. Comte Jérôme Thomas is a perfect imbecile.”

  “We couldn’t hope for better. Those are precious qualities: rich, generous owners, who know nothing about horses, and whom it’s easy to persuade that a sparrow is an eagle, or that an automaton is a thoroughbred. Furthermore, an honorability universally recognized on the Turf: their silks will be the flag that covers the merchandise. Then it’s a done deal, my dear Griffith…yes? Yes! You’ll need forty-eight hours to persuade your owners to make the purchase. As for payment of the sum, we’ll be very accommodating...as accommodating as your Monsieur Deschanel…yes, yes, I mean Monsieur Dufayel,58 anyway, the man who sells things on the installment plan...

  “You’ll send me a first check for a hundred thousand francs after Peau-de-Balle’s first victory, and a second check for the same sum after the second, and so on until the payment of the million is complete. If he’s beaten once, one single time, you can stop the payments. We’re generous...

  “The horse will be brought to you in an hour. You have a little isolated pavilion that’s entirely appropriate to lodge him. In the evening, Fred will come to explain the mechanism to you in detail. He’ll show you where the accumulators are, which it’s necessary to charge fully before every race, because there’s a great expenditure of electric energy...

  “Au revoir, Monsieur Griffith; you’ll be kind enough to settle the bill for the soda water. Hey, Fred, old man, it’s time to go. You can sleep on the train...”

  Left alone, Griffith shook his head, thoughtfully, and then sniggered.

  “It’s quite simple now…I only have a couple of small steps to take: firstly, to persuade Madame Tafoireau or Comte Jérôme—I have a choice—that the purchase of Peau-de-Balle is necessary, and that the horse is a steal at a million; and secondly, to find a jockey for the machine.”

  IV. In which the reader makes the acquaintance of

  Madame Tafoireau and Comte Jérôme Thomas.

  Griffith had defined Comte Jérôme Thomas very accurately, from the intellectual point of view. From the viewpoint of social status, the aristocrat in question, whose nobility went back all the way to Pope Leo XIII,59 possessed one of the largest fortunes in Paris, and even in the Champs-Élysées quarter. He had not made that fortune himself, firstly because he was incapable of “setting a river on fire,” as his trainer put it and secondly because he would not have had the time. He was only twenty-three years old and, since leaving school, had only given evidence of his existence by the sole means that was within his range—which is to say, by spending money. “I spend, therefore I am,” was the motto that malicious friends had composed for him, to combine with an appropriate heraldic arms: a pump on a red field.

  In fact, the millions of which the Comte disposed with such casual charm had been amassed by his father, Monsieur Jules Thomas, who was known as the Pump King. Understand what I mean: Monsieur Jules Thomas was not in the funeral business, nor did he sell fire-pumps. His specialty was a perfume of the most excessive Parisianism.60 He liquidated his funds, fortunately for him, before the law requiring the exclusive use of sewers had been imposed on property-owners by the municipality. As indicated, it had brought him luck.

  From that moment on, he preoccupied himself, above all, with giving the heir to his name a distinguished education, and he applied himself personally to making him the beneficiary of a culture that he had acquired himself very belatedly and in an incomplete fashion. When the young Jérôme, at the sage of six, committed a grammatical infelicity by saying to his father “You’re an imbecile,” Jules Thomas had taken his offspring severely to task. “My son, one ought not to talk like that. It’s necessary to say ‘You is an imbecile.’ Come on, repeat it...”

  Jérôme repeated, meekly: “You is an imbecile,” and Thomas senior, very proud, predicted that something would be made of that boy.

  Jérôme reached his twentieth year without having been able to pass any baccalaureate, even restricted, and then his twenty-first without having conquered the rank of corporal in the infantry regiment where he had copiously wined and dined his superiors for a year. His father, thanks to good connections in the diplomatic world, enabled him to enter the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the quality of cabinet attaché, but there, even though his tailor was excellent, his colleagues soon perceived his irremediable cretinism.

  It was then that he found his path: he would be, exclusively, a man of the world. He had everything necessary to succeed in that career. He got into the most select gambling clubs and was soon up to date with the routines. He punted like Mithridates, King of Pontus, in person.61

  In that epoch, Jules Thomas learned that, in return for a slight sacrifice of ten thousand francs, which one caused to reach the Roman curia discreetly, his son could receive the title of Comte de Saint-Siège. That title, moreover, if one thinks about it, was marvelously adapted to the profession that had enriched the former Pump King. It was nevertheless necessary to legitimate, in the eyes of France, the privilege of that distinction, by exceptional services rendered to Christianity. Jules Thomas therefore founded, in his son’s name, a Catholic club destined to moralize the dominical leisure of the workers who, by night, operated the famous pumps. He had thought of baptizing the club with his own patronymic—the Cercle Thomas—which sounded good, but the ambition seemed excessive. He used instead a distinguished euphemism whose synonymy seemed striking to him, and called the club the Cercle Bourdaloue.62 That good work cost him twenty thousand francs; with the ten thousand to the curia that made the Comte.

  It was then that, departing from the principle that noblesse oblige, and for the first time in his life, Jérôme had an idea: he wanted a racing stable.

  He did not, of course, lower himself to “doing the nags,” as he put it and go to Tattersall’s to bid for horses at public auction. He employed an infinitely more chic procedure: he bought the entire stable, including the stud-farm, of the Marquis de Latour-Prangarde, who had had enough of breeding and was only waiting to encounter a sympathetic head to liquidate his entire bazaar at a “friend’s price.” By the same token, he ceded his trainer, Griffith.

  Strangely enough, the colors of Comte Jérôme Thomas, when they first appeared on the turf, had a run of unexpected successes, explicable only by the fact that the new owner entered runners out of pure snobbery, uniquely so that his silks could rub shoulders with illustrious colors, without having the slightest desire to win a race. In fact, nothing is more disastrous for an owner than the ardent desire to win, and also the pretention of knowing how to do it; the result of the combination of those two factors is entries made without rhyme or reason, savant and fatal instructions given to jockeys, and finally, the dangerous enervation of the trainer, who always finds the irritating horse-fly buzzing around him.

  Jérôme Thomas, on the contrary, had at least the virtue of knowing perfectly well that he knew nothing at all, and left, if one might put it thus, the bridle on his trainer’s back. Griffith knew his métier, did his own thing, and won races.

  Things became slightly complicated when Jérôme made the acquaintance in the theatrical wings, of Madame Mag Iris, alias Caroline Tafoireau. It was at the Boîte-à-Clous, a café concert founded by a deadpan impresario who had announced to one and all the renovation of the café concert by virtue of his involvement. Mag Iris, the star of the troupe, sang songs there that, according to the posters, were very witty and in good taste,

  Her repertoire included the delightful Bacchic refrain:

  Oh, he gets out of line

  When he’s had a drop of wine!

  Augustine! Augustine!

  And also this one, with a fine Gallic savor:

  Where are you going, Mam’zelle?

&
nbsp; Monsieur, I’m going to Celle...

  Where is it you’re going to?

  I’m going to Celle-Saint-Cloud!63

  She also sang these verses, as richly rhymed as moralizing in their tendency:

  Arthur, Arthur

  I implore you,

  Don’t drink so much wine

  It gives your sister pain.

  If you don’t control yourself,

  You’ll ruin your health.

  (Repeat.)

  The delightful artiste was no longer in the first flush of youth. The most loyal of her friends even claimed that she had a son who was a sergeant-major in the territorial army.

  At any rate, she had, for a long time, made the happiness of the Marquis de Latour-Prangarde. The latter, in liquidating his situation, formed the project, crowned with a dazzling success, of similarly ceding the lady to the acquirer of the sable. Comte Jérôme Thomas had an ambition—he was at that age, after all—to entertain an actress at a subsided theater, but he resigned himself with good grace to accepting the flattering succession of a notorious gentleman. Besides which, he had an infinite appreciation for the talent of Mag Iris, who, according to him, performed with an incomparable finesse literary productions more accessible to his comprehension than the songs of Xavier Privas or Dominique Bonnaud.64 Then again, she was a well-educated woman; she could play you the “Virgin’s Prayer” on the piano and talk to you about Paul Bourget as if she had slept with him.

  From the first day of their liaison, Mag Iris undertook the facile task of turning Comte Jérôme into a complete blockhead. When her lover had paid her, with a smile, everything that a man can pay a woman who is not his own, she had a remarkable idea. It was one evening, on coming back from Longchamp, to which she went regularly, not because she liked it, but because she thought she had noticed that it tickled Jérôme to take her there. In the tone in which she spoke about a new hat, she announced, tranquilly:

  “You know, I’m going to need a racing stable.”

  Jérôme opened his stupid eyes wide. “But my dear child”—the dear child was much the older of the two—“I have a racing stable. You see my horses; you can talk to them. Griffith even tells us sometimes when they’re going to win, when he’s in a good mood.”

  “No, no, you don’t understand. I want my own horses, my own silks, Nelly Caroubier and Diane de Vaucresson have their own stables. I’m worth just as much as those whores!”

  Before that peremptory argument, whose value was incontestable, the gallant man could only incline. Mag Iris then ran to do the most urgent and most important thing—which is to say that she embarked on a long series of conferences with the costume designer at the Boîte-à-Clous, with the aim of planning the most harmonious hues that could make up her racing colors. In the absence of the director of the music hall, and with the complicity of the stage-manager, all the bit-part players were made to file past, dressed in the whole spectrum of multicolored fabrics, between which it was necessary to choose. Mag Iris decided on silks hooped in cerise and jonquil and an azure cap. Jérôme agreed that they were in exquisite taste.

  A slight disillusionment irritated the new owner against the members of the Societé d’Encouragement. Had they not insisted, in the most polite fashion in the world, on the article of the racecourse Code that forbids entering runners under a pseudonym? And they had treated as such the name Mag Iris, even though it was the stage-name of an artiste acclaimed by the crowds and saluted by all the newspaper gossip columnists:

  “Let us note, among the elegant ladies in the paddock, the delightful Mag Iris, in robe x, with trimmings y, the creation of the great designer Z , the Napoléon of couture; people estasized over her shoes, from the maison Z***, and her hat, signed by the milliner of genius Z***, etc.” They barely refrained from citing the manufacturers who had furnished her hair and teeth.

  But the commissars of the courses had been implacable, even though Comte Jérôme Thomas had threatened to complain about them to his father, and then to refer the matter to the pope, under the lofty protection of whom he had been placed once and for all, in return for a determined sum.

  It had therefore been necessary for the charming artiste to resign herself to entering runners under the name of Caroline Tafoireau. It was, in any case, the name on her birth certificate; it had been given to her a certain number of years before—she did not care to be precise—by a poor but honest couple to whom she also owed the light of day, and who had maintained a sufficiently prosperous commerce in fried potato chips on the Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève.

  Once those petty difficulties were resolved, Madame Tafoireau—that is the name that official programs employed, and also the one under which she will be designated here henceforth—occupied herself with forming a string of horses. That was rapidly done, and, in that epoch, Griffith’s equine personnel increased beyond plausible limits.

  In fact, every time Madame Tafoireau arrived at the paddock in time to witness the prize-giving, she had Comte Jérôme Thomas buy her the winner.

  “Oh, how beautiful he is, that horse! Did you see how he won? I’m sure that Griffith can do something with him. Go put in a bid for me; round out the sum to be sure of getting him.”

  That was so much profit for the treasury of the Societé. Madame Tafoireau soon had such a large quantity of horses that she started winning races. On those days of victory, she said to Jérôme: “I intend to direct my stable myself.”

  It also happened, sometimes, that the luck turned; the cerise and jonquil silks were unfortunate, while Jérôme Thomas’ colors passed the winning post victoriously. Then the charming owner made a terrible scene with her consort, claimed that she had been wronged, and sustained the contestable thesis that such luck should only befall deceived men when they are deceived by their legitimate wives—which was not exactly the case. Jérôme understood what he had to do, and the following day, the specialist newspapers reported:

  Madame Tafoireau has just acquired Ménélas, the horse that won the Prix Bétheny yesterday in the colors of Comte Jérôme Thomas.

  At that little game, the son of the Pump King soon no longer conserved any but the nags in his stable, and still feared seeing them win, knowing that his mistress, in the case of victory, would immediately annex them.

  “The winning post came just in time!” he cried in relief, one day when his representative had been beaten by the shortest of short heads for having come too late. The reflection might have caused ill-informed people to think that Comte Jérôme Thomas was having his horses pulled, but everyone was well-informed; they knew he was too stupid for that.

  In the enclosure, it was said that Madame Tafoireau’s horses and those of her lover ought to be coupled, as the owners were.65

  When the trainer Griffith, after a brilliant period of success, had known bad days, Madame Tafoireau had urged Jérôme in vain to be more energetic.

  “He’s our trainer, after all. You ought to make him understand—demand, if necessary—that he wins us races.”

  But Griffith interrupted the stammering speeches of the young man by raising his arms to the heavens.

  “It’s not to me, Monsieur le Comte, that you need to explain that, it’s to your horses. What do you expect? The stable is poisoned!”

  At the moment when the equine automaton as about to make its first appearance on the French turf, the newspaper La Veine announced that the trainer Griffith had had forty-nine consecutive losers, and refrained from mentioning him among the trainers in form.

  V. The Diplomacy of T. Griffith

  Madame Tafoireau was still in bed at eleven o’clock in the morning when her trainer was announced. She did not get up to receive him; she had seen many others there, and vice versa. Of that fact, Griffith had just had the proof, on encountering his jockey Blight on the staircase, who had saluted him with a mocking smile. The charming owner made it a duty to deceive her noble lover with all the jockeys in view—successively, of course—whatever their weight and physique. The
jockeys did not find an enormous pleasure in the accomplishment of that performance, but they thought it flattering to cuckold Comte Jérôme Thomas, in the same way that Comte Jérôme Thomas had thought himself flattered to have succeeded, in Mag Iris’ good graces, the Comte de Latour-Prangarde.

  On penetrating into the overly perfumed bedroom, and in spite of the evocation of overly precise memories, Griffith was untroubled. He was a gambler and, contrary to admitted prejudice, true gamblers, like true drinkers are generally almost asexual beings. Besides which, he had other things on his mind, which preoccupied him exclusively.

  “Oh, there you are!” exclaimed Madame Tafoireau, whose nerves, it appeared, had not been sufficiently calmed. “You’ve probably come to tell me that my horses can’t go in the mud? Last week, the going was too hard. It’s very amusing, you know. Before the race, my horses are always well, according to you. I give the tip to all my friends; and I end up in the doghouse. Do you know what they’re saying in the enclosure? They’re making delightful jokes; no one’s talking about anything but Madame Tafoireau’s losers. Baron Isaac de l’Échelle-Jacob, who’s got it in for me because I didn’t want to do it with him, made a witty Biblical allusion the other day to the parable of the fat cows and the thin cows. That’s charming!”

  Griffith did not flinch. He knew that with women, it is necessary to let the sheep pass by, even if they seem rabid.

  “Madame,” he eventually said, “this month, you’re going to win the Biennal des Quatre Ans at Longchamp, the Prix Lutin, the Cup, the Biennal des Maisons and the Prix du Cadran…for starters. Afterwards, we’ll see...”

  “With what?”

  In those days, one didn’t yet say: “On what?”

  “With a new horse that Monsieur le Comte will buy for you.”

  “Oh, thanks! A horse that won’t be able to put one foot in front of another once it’s with you. The Comte is a mug, but I’d rather he gave me another pearl necklace.”