House of All Nations Read online

  The two women who had started the evening with a good lead were perspiring with embarrassment, irritation, and doubt. No one could believe Léon’s tales but here he was chattering in a sort of French with the Mme. Verneuil and there was no telling that he did not really know her. Besides, the Scheherazade was a first-class cabaret and they rarely had an opportunity to go to it. Marianne decided to hold out for the sake of the champagne which they would presently get.

  Léon cried, ‘And afterwards we’ll go to Mitchell’s on the Rue Pigalle and have bacon and eggs, four o’clock in the morning. First to the Brasserie Moulin Rouge, then to Mitchell’s: first an omelet, then a raft of eggs. Good, eh? But first we’ll have some fun. How are you, Madame? What is your married name now? This is Madame Verneuil.’

  ‘I am Mme. Saintspères, then,’ said the girl throatily. She was a strange-looking woman, neither young nor old, or both; her bugle eyes popped as in childhood or senility; they were large, blue, and exorbitant. Her pink skin was deeply flushed and it might have been fever or natural complexion. The mouth was formless, the teeth white and protruding. She laughed gawkily, showing the teeth, and yet she showed no embarrassment or fear in the presence of the splendid Mme. Verneuil. Her dress was bizarre to Continental eyes and took after the American or English unsophisticated adolescent pattern, a cut between Kate Greenaway and a Burne-Jones heroine. They had all seen her round Paris for years and marveled at her persistence in living a life for which they were convinced she had no talent. And here she sat in the Café de la Paix. She took her seat next to Margaret with composure.

  Another girl, seeing the gathering, came nearer with hesitation. Léon looked her over, recklessly beckoned her. The other women of her profession now began to understand what Léon was doing. A good and kind man in his personal relations, his drunkenness was bringing to sudden flower some secret malices and acute perceptions of personality which in his sole passion for money and his merchandising even of love had been dried up, like peas of Pompeii, perhaps, which can still flower after centuries of being buried.

  This new woman was also well known to all frequenters of Paris cafés. Some said she was Russian, some, German. She was tall, ugly, plump, dark, and heavily marked with sadness and poor living, but well built and with a great pride in her manner as tall Russian women often have. She had on a round cap which did not suit her heavy square-built features, a poor black dress which muddied her spoiled olive complexion, black gloves, large feet in low-heeled shoes. She approached with dignity, as if she was meeting the acquaintances of some close friends of hers. Her stone-cut face smiled. She sat down and began settling herself as if richly dressed. The other women feared her for her great poise. Although poor, strange, and ugly, she had many lovers and although she would whore for a piece of bread or to pay her rent, she had lovers for long intervals. Some said she was formerly the Baroness So-and-so of Vienna and her history indicated that she had some secret attraction of history or station, above her present looks. Léon, however, when she came near perceived that she was not the type to amuse him vastly, although he murmured, leaning back and eying her fast, ‘What a woman! Magnificent, eh? Look at her?’

  Aristide looked at her with immense distaste. Léon noticed this and began to laugh. ‘Well, Aristide, speak up! See if you can’t see any friends here. Haven’t you any friends? Why, you live in Paris; and look at me, in ten minutes, look at all the old friends I see here! This is Mme. Verneuil, this is Mme. Saintspères, and what is now your married name, Madame?’

  The noble ogress shook all her teeth in a wide laugh and said sweetly, ‘Anna, that’s all; never mind the Madame. I am your old friend Anna. Don’t you remember I never had any other name?’

  He looked at her vividly, appraising her great proportions, startled. The meeting had now become interesting for all the women, who for the first time, no doubt, had an opportunity of measuring each other’s talents and learning the method and attractions of the others. The waiter had begun to smile, relishing this treat offered to all the hungry women who had been waiting round the café; for although they belonged to a world to which his wife, sister and daughter did not, and although he found them parasitic, the waiter at least liked to see money spent on other than these plump and self-satisfied married women. Léon took a drink of wine.

  ‘Here are we making whoopee and the Red Army is fighting for civilization in China,’ he said sadly, shaking his head.

  The dark-browed Parisienne bridled at this, blew smoke from her cigarette. She had turned her back towards the whore who sat next to her.

  ‘I would spill my last drop of blood against the damned Reds,’ said she. ‘There is civilization, the family, honor, self-respect over here. What must it be like over there? I pity the women when those bandits pass over.’

  Léon laughed. ‘You are a great fighting woman!’ He broke off, and looked serious. An improper idea had occurred to him and he was a decent man: he disliked obscenity. He shook his head and looked round. ‘Lady, lady! Come over here. There is a friend of mine,’ he announced shamelessly to them, ‘what a woman! Why, I met her when Kratz and I were over last March.’ He frowned. Kratz had played a lot of dirty tricks since then.

  They were presently twelve sitting at the table. Then the ogress said, ‘Now, we are sufficiently fabulous, Monsieur: let us go somewhere else.’

  ‘The bill!’

  One of the girls began cadging for cigarettes. Another took her place by Aristide’s side and began coaxing him to come in ‘their’ taxi. The two women who had begun the evening with Léon, Marianne and Margaret, now stood huddled aside, ruffled and astonished, trying to look dignified.

  Léon suddenly noticed hovering with curiosity in the distance the cigarette girl he had previously courted. This reminded him that he would never have time at this rate to return and take her home in a taxi. So he suddenly bundled them all out to the sidewalk and as the girl passed near him on his way to the cloakroom, he said, ‘Tomorrow evening, sweetie. I met so many friends tonight!’

  She laughed at this. ‘All right. At eleven.’

  He went out, extremely pleased with his new appointment. He was losing interest in the bevy of girls. He thrust them into two taxis, taking Margaret and the prettiest with him, and left Aristide with Marianne and the others to the other taxi. Aristide and his wife felt shoddy when they found themselves, by Léon’s generalship, in this position.

  Léon made Margaret talk and when the hetaerae found out that she lived in Hollywood and knew intimately all the great stars, they were wild with enthusiasm: they really fell in love with Margaret, flattered her, and drew her out in long silken threads with questions. She began to have a better time and Léon decided that, positively, he loved her and perhaps she would be the Great Romance of his middle age.

  ‘Margaret,’ he cried, ‘will you come with me to Russia? To the Ukraine? I will buy grain for the people of Russia. What do you say to that? I will have a function: I will do some good. By James, if I can’t do that, don’t you see, I’ll have to do something, create a scandal, set the town hall on fire, kill Mussolini.’

  ‘Could you keep your fingers out of the plum tart yourself?’ joked Margaret. ‘I am sure you couldn’t.’

  ‘I could, I could: you don’t know me. If it was for the people—’

  The female merchandise cackled hollowly at this and the slow, ugly Russian—doubtless she was Russian, after all—said in her deep cracked voice, ‘Why, you don’t understand anything about that country; they don’t believe in private property! Women are even common property: not cattle like us, but all women: good women, pure women, mothers.’

  There was a bizarre silence.

  ‘Who would you be without private property?’ laughed Margaret.

  ‘Who? Well, tell me who I am with it.’ He laughed, himself again.

  ‘Let’s forget it. I have money on me tonight. I’ll throw it away: spread it roun
d thickly a bit. Driver, don’t go first to the Scheherazade: stop at the first bazaar—night club, I mean.’

  They began the round of the night clubs in their two taxis. They stopped in the Rue Pigalle. Léon had a system all his own for visiting cabarets. He liked music sufficiently, and he loved dancing. He liked to see the tango very much indeed, and often went to El Garrón to see the drum-dance. His object in visiting cabarets was to add a string to his long chaplet of handsome women. He was not impressed by the luxury of the cabarets, but was very exigent and easily bored by their shows. Their shows were pretty poor, in fact, for they were really places for the sale of women and champagne. If he paid for a bottle of champagne in a cabaret and found no pretty women, he did not even look at the floor show and considered himself sold. For one of the most brilliant grain traders and option placers on the Continent that was not a nice position. Therefore, to get past the theatrical Don Cossacks, Argentine and Andalusian dons, Montmartre apaches, red Indians, porters in evening dress, and black-satined coat snatchers who stood at heavy portieres and painted doors, to get an eyeful before venturing his party in, Léon left them standing on the pavement, with the chauffeurs of the taxis fuming and suspicious, cried, ‘Wait!’ and muttered to the doorkeepers who tried to induce him, engage him, push him, entice him, seduce him, inside the great maw of pleasure,

  ‘One moment! I’m looking for a friend of mine: Mr. Guinédor.’

  The curtains would droop reluctantly aside and Henri Léon for a few minutes would be able to sample the entertainment, the women in attendance. He did this as a matter of course, without consideration of the women already in his company. This evening they sought Mr. Guinédor high and low. They even went into the Caveau Caucasien, sat uncomfortably amongst its half-gilded demimonde, the scurf of Paris that thinks itself the jewel in her ear. The Cossack dancers, of whom one was a prince, of course, performed very skillfully the traditional sword dance, while a blonde Russian woman, junket-white, in barbaric velvet décolleté, sang ‘Black Eyes’ and ‘All Russia Is Under Snow.’ Beautiful Byzantine paintings covered the wall, very suitable to the Byzantine culture these relics of a better order lived in. Every section of the room was decorated by long Persian and Turkestan rugs and tapestries. They ordered two bottles of champagne. Pop! Glouglou. Léon and Mrs. Weyman drank little. Marianne and the dark Russian woman finished two glasses each with only a slight leavening of their heavy black flour. Henri said impatiently, ‘Let’s go! This is slow: don’t you think it’s slow, Margaret? Eh, Marianne: shall we go? It’s slow.’

  He snapped his fingers, swept away the anxious captain, nodded blindly to the owner, whom he knew (and who had once partaken of a girl that Léon himself had unsuccessfully desired), and towed his party ungracefully, ridiculously, out of the place, so that a ripple of smiles lighted up that gloomy, respectable place of off-color entertainment. He stood at the door calling for his hat and coat, his back to the company, masterfully discontented. Aristide helped some of the women with their hats and coats. They stood jostling each other and nicking out the collars of each other’s coats like a party leaving after an auction. Out on the pavement, he breathed again and brushed away the cabaret runners and pullers-in and the voices of hungry taxi drivers.

  ‘Let’s all walk.’ They all walked. ‘No women,’ declared Léon.

  ‘Haven’t you got enough?’ Aristide was in a rage: he was being made a fool of in public. A French woman passing, said aloud, ‘Six each: formidable!’ His eyes smarted: he cried easily. He walked along moodily imagining a knife stuck into Léon’s muscular back. It would rend a lovely suit. A pity.

  ‘Paris is dull,’ Léon cried back to him.

  The women had begun to laugh and were billowing all round Aristide. Marianne puffed in the rear of Léon, heroically resigned to public disgrace.

  ‘A Russian girl told me there’s a place up this street, a new place which is very high class and has beautiful women there, exiles, real aristocrats. I know they’re all aristocrats, but these girls really are, princesses and the like down on their luck, since the revolution.’ He laughed. ‘I’d rather see them here working in a night club than oppressing the people drinking and rolling under the table in St. Peters—Leningrad.’

  The bizarre girl with the American get-up and the bugle eyes said in her high voice, ‘They take the bread out of French mouths, don’t you see? I am not for revolution. One set begins to steal the bread of another; let us all stay in our places and know where our bread is coming from.’

  ‘She sleeps with philosophers, apparently,’ said a female voice.

  They laughed ghoulishly in the night. ‘She’s only fit for that.’

  ‘Let them whore at home, that’s right,’ said another.

  ‘Is it their fault?’ asked the dark Russian, Anna.

  ‘Ah, you’re Russian: you don’t understand patriotism,’ shrilled the dark Parisienne, first picked up.

  They entered an intimate Russian ‘aristocratic’ cabaret. Léon complimented the hostess.

  She passed quickly on to other subjects. Léon was the richest man, by far, in the room. Everything he did spoke power, wealth, and the ability to make money any day. She addressed herself particularly to Marianne, and then moved off. Aristide danced stiffly with Margaret, whispered doubts to Léon that he could make the highborn hostess.

  While the women were getting their cloaks, Léon showed Aristide a card but not long enough for him to read the name and address on it. ‘Her card.’ He rolled his eyes ominously at Aristide, then smiled. ‘She’s a sweet woman. Listen, we’ll go for a bit of onion soup, Rue de la Grande Truanderie.’ As they went out the door, Léon suddenly contracted and hid himself among the women.

  ‘Who was that?’ whispered Aristide.

  ‘Nobody: what do you mean?’

  But Aristide turned this way and that and presently observed standing in the doorway they had just left, Léon’s school friend, onetime crony, and now bitter enemy, looking at them. He was showing his false sharp teeth in a smile intended only for himself. Aristide smiled to himself likewise. He drew close to Léon.

  ‘Aren’t you taking a cab?’ cried the Parisienne dark-browed girl.

  ‘Oh, it’s coming on to rain,’ cried another.

  Even Margaret drew in to the wall. ‘Henri, my twenty-five-dollar shoes!’

  ‘Walk or stay behind,’ said Léon, and marched off in front where Aristide joined him.

  ‘I just saw Julius Kratz: we passed him in the doorway.’

  Léon was silent. Aristide murmured, ‘You are enemies now. I have seen a lot of these unfit but fated friend—fellowships, Don Quixotes with their Sancho Panzas, Don Juans with their Leporellos.’

  Léon quickly raised his smoldering eyes to his face. ‘He came from Kronstadt: I came from Hermannstadt. We met at the age of twelve in the soupline of the same relief society at London, on a bad, winter day. We were with four other families in an apartment in a tumble-down house in Black Horse Yard and Jack was in a house, all bulging out, used by pullers-in, thieves, and streetwalkers just near St. Mary Axe. I made money. I took him with me. There’s no Leporello in it. You know that as well as I do, Aristide.’

  ‘A Leporello just the same,’ murmured Aristide seriously. ‘You can’t get rid of him. See how he crosses your path. He’ll try to do you harm.’

  Léon was dubious, frightened, ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know the animal,’ declared Aristide.

  ‘No, my boy, no, no.’ But Léon was not the same. They heard Margaret talking about her shoes. ‘There were my twenty-five-dollar shoes speckled with mud—’ Léon exclaimed with sudden impatience, ‘Where did I pick up that cow?’ He was restless now and fell on his onion soup before anyone else, handed round a few hundred-franc notes, and stood up suddenly with his hat on his head before anyone was ready. Insulted, angry, feeling their evening wasted, and these men washouts, th
e women were very slow getting on their wraps. Léon kept looking at the clock. Then he said, ‘Listen, Aristide, you’re an honest man, you’re going home with your wife, you go to sleep legally, and I don’t blame you, on the contrary—I’m busy, I’ve got to go to the station to meet a friend, Rhys, who’s coming in from Brussels—’ While talking he had dragged Aristide out of earshot.

  ‘I’ll meet him for you,’ Aristide said avidly.

  Henri Léon smiled his broadest jolly-boy grin and clutched Aristide’s arm, ‘Listen, I’m going back to that Russian place: I’ve got to make that girl.’

  ‘You’ll never do it.’

  ‘What do you bet? Go on, my boy, do this for me. I’ll do something for you any day. My wife and daughter get in tomorrow morning at eight. I got no time to waste.’

  ‘I think you’re wrong,’ Aristide said sullenly. ‘I think I know women—as merchandise.’ He said it not obscenely but with bitter coarseness. Léon drew down his brows and gave him a close look: instinctively he took a step back. ‘What? Well—you don’t happen to know the Rue Navarin, do you? I think she said she lived there but I don’t know the number.’

  ‘What do you want me to do? Start them walking, I suppose?’

  ‘Nicely, my boy, nicely. Now, when they come up to the corner, I’ll say I just remembered I have to go to the station to meet Mr. Rhys of Rotterdam. You send the others off. You know what I want.’

  ‘I have no money,’ said Aristide. ‘Not for that, Henri.’

  Léon threw back his head, looked round, ‘Hey, taxi, taxi!’ A taxi wheeling round the street, drew in. ‘Get another: get two others,’ commanded Léon. The driver, with a quick glance, climbed down off his seat and got two others who were coasting round looking for nightlife stragglers. ‘There!’ said Léon. ‘Girls, I’m terribly sorry, time just passes like water in your company, sweet company. I have to meet a friend of mine, Mr. Ganz of Amsterdam. Got to go now. This gentleman, old friend, will take you to the Moulin Rouge, get an omelet, wonderful omelets there … see they get it, Aristide … nice red wine. See you get omelet, very good after champagne: make you sleep. See you have it. Marianne, you go with Aristide and see they get it. You’re a good sport. Margaret! Darling, sweetheart!’ He took her hand, fondled it until she withdrew it. ‘Darling,’ he said urgently, drawing her off a little, ‘my wife and daughter coming tonight. Very unfortunate: I telegraphed them to stay another day or two but it’s this marriage of my daughter’s. Tell you all tomorrow. Just meet them and take them to their hotel. They leave tomorrow evening. It’s all right, darling: trust me. You understand.’