‘Look, just look at him! Is that the kind of gesture a European would make? He’s afraid to look at me. He’s afraid of seeing his own reflection. Ada, stay with me! I don’t care about wounded pride or any of your sophisticated stupidity. I understand what it means to long for something, to nurture a passion within you since childhood. Good for you if you’ve managed to get what you want for once.’
‘Ben, I’ve never loved you. You think that we are like you, Ben, but you’re the one who sees yourself wherever you look. I don’t need money, Ben; I don’t even need happiness. I want to live in a different way, can you understand that? I want to experience a kind of life that is not just work and longing, but tranquillity, tenderness, quiet pleasures. You shout, you curse, you’re full of spite and bitterness; you hurt other people more than you hurt yourself. Poor Ben, let me go. Don’t be stubborn. Oh, Ben, listen to me . . .’
Harry crossed his arms and said nothing; he left them alone together. In spite of everything, the two of them spoke the same language. Ada had sat down next to Ben; she’d put her arm around his long, frail neck; it was too long, too frail. Harry couldn’t hear what she was whispering in Ben’s ear. Their cheeks were touching. Their hair merged into a single mass. Anxiously Harry touched his own face. He knew that he looked like Ben, yet (and this was the snag) they had very few features in common; his other features were as different from Ben as from Laurence herself. But no one would ever believe it. Never. He would be forever rejected by both sides, endlessly snubbed by each, continually paying for the sins that Ben might commit. But his bitterness, his angry resignation could have been Ben’s. He felt as if some stranger’s body had been attached to his own and that he would never succeed in tearing it away without destroying his own flesh.
‘I’m begging you,’ he cried in anguish, ‘leave him be. Come on, Ada, let’s go!’
She stood up. Ben grabbed her by the shoulders. Harry thought he was going to hit her; he leapt forward, but all Ben did was take Ada’s face in his hands and stare at her the way you stare at someone who has died before closing the cover of the casket. Then he pushed her away, ran out of the room and disappeared.
25
One May morning, two years later, Isaac and Salomon Sinner, the current owners of the bank, were expecting their nephew Harry. They got up late, bathed and scrubbed their old, delicate bodies. They had their nails done by their private manicurists, beautiful young women whom they could no longer embrace: they simply watched them from a distance with a sense of pleasure mixed with annoyance and regret, the way you look at flowers behind a window. They dressed meticulously, with infinite care, and finally swathed their dry carcasses in dressing gowns which, through the richness of their colours and the perfection of their cut, were the triumph of two combined arts: the art of the Orient and the art of London. This had always been the more or less conscious goal of their ambition: to offer through their appearance a subtle combination of propriety and luxury. Up until now, everything about them had been impeccably proper, but with a hint of foreignness, like the perfume given off by certain tropical hardwoods. They were extraordinarily alike: thin and slight of frame with curly white hair, dark circles under their eyes and complexions that age had changed from swarthy to yellowish.
They had worked very hard. They were born at a time when their father, the famous elderly Sinner, idol and role model of the Ukrainian Jews, had not yet built up his formidable fortune. They were the two eldest sons, the ones who had to be taught to work hard early on – the younger ones were shown some indulgence, but the older ones were there before anyone could be spoiled, before anyone had been softened by extreme security and luxury. They were the heirs apparent, destined only for responsibilities in life and none of its privileges. They had left Russia with limited means, for the money earned by their father had been endlessly speculated, constantly jeopardised, gambled with time and time again with infinite good fortune but also extremely dangerously. They knew almost as well as their father that they could count on no one if they failed. Of course, they could always go back to the Ukraine where they would have food and a roof over their heads, but they would have no active participation in the company business: the elderly Sinner refused to die.
But in Europe, they had succeeded. They founded a small bank that, in the beginning, had been nothing more than the slave of the distant, colossal enterprises of their father, but which had gradually grown . . . Ah, they had the right to be proud! In its heyday, kings came to beg for money from their company. Thanks to their patient efforts, it had expanded and prospered. Now it lived on by virtue of its own merits, like a human life form. The two brothers were old; their presence in the immense presidential office every day, from two o’clock to four o’clock, no longer had any real significance, any real importance to the carrying out of business than the great full-length portrait of their father hanging on the wall. Yet in spite of everything, they were revered amongst their closest collaborators, in the way that old bottles of wine, covered in dust and spiders’ webs are revered. Only when the bottles are opened, the wax seal removed, the wine poured into glasses and tasted does it become evident that time, after improving the wine for so long, has ended up spoiling it: all its flavour has gone, and the only thing to do now is throw it away.
Were they aware of this? Only Harry had often asked himself that question. He found them sitting opposite one another in the dining room. He always felt uneasy when he went there, as if it were some vast cemetery. It was covered in so many expensive paintings that you could barely see the rich purple colour of the walls. His uncles were holding cups in their swarthy hands, in exactly the same pose; they still drank Turkish coffee in spite of their age, their heart palpitations and their insomnia. In their gold and scarlet dressing gowns, they looked like two old icons from ancient times. Did they actually understand that they no longer had any real power? That they had willingly locked themselves away in a retreat where the only people they received were opportunists or servants? That they had gradually lost contact with the outside world? That they lived as if the world was the same as it had been before 1914, and with the same problems? Did they still see their somnambulant state as wisdom, their inertia as prudence, their lack of imagination as experience? For Harry firmly believed that they lacked imagination. Perhaps because he had known them since childhood, he had never noticed that beneath their aloof expression burned the fire of the passionate soul with which all the Sinners, every last one of them, had been afflicted, to a greater or lesser extent . . .
The lack of understanding between these two generations had been pushed to an extreme. To Harry, his uncles appeared to have no human traits left; in their eyes, Harry was their heir, in the Oriental sense of the word: someone who would stop at nothing, so the old men thought, to overthrow them and steal everything they had. Harry might feign detachment and indifference, but that was so he could trick them better. He might pretend to have a cynical dislike of business: he thought it the best way to get rid of them. But they were still strong enough to keep power firmly in their hands. Let him wait! They had been forced to wait a very long time for their father to die. They had waited so long that when they finally found themselves in complete control of their fortune, they were already fifty-two, which was perhaps the reason why they had never forgiven Harry: he was still only a child when he inherited his share of his grandfather’s estate. Fortunately, they were his trustees: they took everything. Later on, when it was time to account for Harry’s funds, who would have the nerve to deny these two venerable, elderly men the right to keep the money they had managed with such skill? And besides, there was the bank. Harry would inherit the bank. In the meantime, they shrouded themselves in impenetrable secrecy. They jealously engaged spies, confidence men, an entire entourage of people whose function was to keep Harry as far away as possible from involvement in the business. Two old painted icons perhaps, but no one could touch them without being accused of madness or sacrilege; their old hands were simu
ltaneously delicate and dangerous. Their frailty itself was menacing. How could anyone do battle with these fragile, brittle old men? In their brilliantly coloured dressing gowns, they resembled two dead butterflies.
Harry did not feel the loathing towards them that they believed he did. Harry found them odd, irritating and touching, all at once. They both stretched out their hands to him with the same cold gesture. Isaac indicated that he should sit down; Salomon pointed out to the servant a chink in the curtain that was letting in a ray of sunshine. It was adjusted, and the room was bathed in the soft, rich, reddish glow of wine or roses. A servant silently entered the room carrying the platter of fresh fruit that his masters ate for breakfast, to purify their sluggish blood, thickened by age. Isaac allowed himself to be served with the serenity of a god on Mount Olympus, accepting chilled golden grapes served from the end of long antique scissors, just as certain exotic birds accept food placed in their beaks. Salomon was more alert; life still manifested itself in him through gestures of impatience and mistrust. He watched every move the servant made; frowning, he pointed out that two of the grapes had little rust-coloured spots. He pushed his plate away and it was immediately removed and replaced by another made of bright-green porcelain and full of beautiful strawberries. The entire set of dishes was valuable and rare.
‘Sad old things,’ thought Harry.
He refused their offer of fruit and coffee but waited patiently while his uncles finished their breakfast, for he knew that it was impossible to speak to them and have any chance of them listening until they had satisfied their finicky appetites. Salomon was now slowly eating his strawberries rolled in sugar. You could tell him apart from his brother by the shape of his nose: the bridge was very thin and looked broken in two places, and its sharp point almost touched his lips, while Isaac’s nose hung heavily down, like some exotic fruit. They both had large, almond-shaped eyes, like the young men in Persian miniatures. They seemed to sense that Harry was impatient, even though experience had taught him to hide it as best he could. They made the slow, ceremonial meal last as long as possible. Finally, Salomon wiped his hands on a green linen napkin, and Isaac gestured that he would take the few letters that had been opened and sorted by their secretaries and placed in a neat stack, like toast on a gilt platter.
This was the final ritual. Holding the paper knife at the height of his eyebrow, Isaac glanced over the pages he’d already read; everything that was important or essential had already been removed. Then he dropped the letters and gave a bored sigh. Salomon was skimming through the morning papers.
In the reddish darkness of the stuffy dining room, breathing in the sweet smell of fruit and the vague aroma of spices and ginger that seemed to linger around his uncles, Harry had to fight a strange feeling of drowsiness. He had often felt this. The presence of these old men acted upon him like a drug; their slow gestures and monotonous voices cast a sort of spell. ‘We are very old, very wise,’ they seemed to be saying. ‘What do you think you can teach us? We have seen the beginning of things and we shall see their end.’
Harry began speaking more quickly, more nervously than he would have liked.
‘Uncle,’ he said (he always instinctively spoke to Salomon, as he was the one who had retained a touch of humanity), ‘Uncle, is it true that we have added two more countries to the list of governments you’ve loaned money to in the past few years?’
Neither of the old men replied. Salomon closed his Figaro interminably slowly and put it down on his empty plate. A bee had somehow managed to infiltrate the carefully sealed room and was buzzing about, attracted by the smell of strawberries. Isaac swung at it nervously with the paper knife he was holding.
‘It’s the flowers on the terrace that attracts them. You’ll never believe me, but yesterday, in my room, I heard quite distinctly a mosquito humming right near my bed . . . At the beginning of May! In Paris . . .’
Salomon turned towards his nephew.
‘Maybe you could get rid of it? You’re an agile young man,’ he said in the sarcastic, melancholy tone of voice he used when speaking to his nephew, as if each word were accompanied by the thought: ‘All we’re good for now is to be thrown on to the fire, is that what you think, young man? Well then, set out the logs, fan the flames, but don’t be surprised if there is still some fight left in us!’
‘Leave it alone,’ Harry said curtly. ‘It won’t hurt you. You haven’t answered my question,’ he said after a moment’s silence.
‘What were you saying, dear boy? I didn’t hear you properly, forgive me.’
Harry stood up and began pacing around the room under the watchful eyes of his uncles.
‘I am worried about the business,’ he said. ‘For some time now, too much seems to have been happening at once. I would even go so far as to say that I find the profits themselves worrying, completely out of proportion.’
‘Since when has the younger generation complained about an established enterprise, one moreover that it is destined to inherit, adapting to modern times and trying to make money in any way it can?’
‘I have seen the names of all the countries to which we have given loans, in some form or other,’ said Harry. ‘It is overwhelming. All the countries in Europe and the Orient are on the list, especially in the Orient, and that is what I find worrying.’
‘Have you considered the advantages we get in return?’ Isaac said quietly. ‘We have taken control of some extremely important institutions. In exchange, the governments we support have conceded solid, appreciable assets to us . . . Leave it to us to run things, Harry. Up until now you haven’t had any complaints about the way we’ve managed the business.’
‘It’s not you I’m worried about. For two years now, you’ve placed all your trust in a petty opportunist whom we know nothing about . . . and all these foreign loans, all these complicated schemes bear the mark of a spirit that is not our own . . .’
‘Who might that be?’ asked Salomon. ‘This “family spirit” you talk of could not have found anyone more suitable than your cousin, and I don’t mind telling you, Harry, that if your grandfather were to return to this world, he would recognise himself in your cousin and not in you.’
‘But until now, we haven’t needed anyone else to grow and prosper.’
‘No, but neither the behaviour nor the activities of the company have changed as much as you think, Harry. We were lending vast sums of money to kings long before you were even born.’
‘But not like this,’ said Harry, shaking his head impatiently, ‘not like this. Don’t take me for a child. I know what I’m talking about. For the past two years, we’ve been involved in everything, in gold mines and iron ore, in weapons and platinum . . . just like the brokers in the ghetto who couldn’t care less whether they bought and sold raisins from Smyrna or silk from Turkistan. And one day, the whole mad structure will collapse and fall on to my shoulders, mine and mine alone!’
‘They are quite delicate shoulders, it must be said, but we hope to live for a few more years yet,’ said Isaac, ‘and hopefully, we’ll only die when the heir to our company has shown himself worthy of succeeding us.’
‘I wonder,’ thought Harry, ‘if they’re saying such pompous things tongue in cheek or out of spite, in the way that you hand a child the most common flower, the easiest to pick, rather than going to the trouble of finding him something rarer. Or are they actually sincere? The truth is, I’d have to jump on their old bodies and give them a good shake to get to the bottom of things, to save them – and myself. My cousin Ben wouldn’t flinch at doing such a thing, but of course, I’m too civilised.’
‘The Delarchers are extremely concerned about us as well, or so it seems,’ Salomon remarked. ‘Your father-in-law has said more or less the same thing to me.’
‘And what did you tell him?’
Salomon smiled; the smile appeared then disappeared from his lips like a soft ripple on the murky water of a lake.
‘What was the point of saying anything?’
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Harry could just picture him opposite the elderly Delarcher: he imagined his sly smile and the way he shaded his eyes with his hand, as if protecting them from some harsh light.
‘This air of secrecy around you is the cause of much hatred,’ Harry murmured.
His uncle held his head up high; for just a second, a look of pride and mockery gave his features the semblance of youthfulness.
‘Do you think you’re frightening me? You poor child! Have I ever known anything but hatred? It has been one of the formative elements of my life. Are fish afraid of the water?’
‘I truly believe,’ Harry said suddenly, ‘that you are reliving your finest moments through another person . . .’
They said nothing; they disliked being understood.
The sun had gone behind a cloud and the luxurious, stifling room was thrown into shadow; even the silvery reflections from the coffee pot had lost their glow. The elderly Salomon gestured to a servant who had entered; he helped the old man get up. One after the other, the shimmering dressing gowns disappeared, leaving Harry alone.
26
‘We’d be better off apart,’ said Laurence, one Sunday in spring.
She and Harry had spent the whole day behind closed doors involved in an intense discussion: the saddest one a married couple can have, with no shouting, no tears and no hope of understanding one another. The servants strained to listen, but the only sounds they heard were whispers and, now and again, Laurence’s sad, trembling voice saying over and over again, ‘I can’t bear it. We’d be better off apart.’
They had already agreed this several months before when Laurence had learned from her older sisters – who could smell a scandal in the distance the way a hunting dog follows the scent of a partridge – that Harry was keeping ‘that woman’. But that time she had cried and heaped reproach upon her husband; he had fought back, dragged up past grievances. The result was that their quarrel was like an illness – serious but not fatal – and the next day, a shaky reconciliation had been made. But just as the patient who thinks he has been cured still has deadly germs in his body, there remained between the husband and wife a kind of mistrust, a feeling of troubled embarrassment that gradually poisoned every moment they spent together.