Читать книгу Two banks of the Seine (Les Deux Rives) - Fernand Vandérem - Страница 6

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AT about a quarter to six, Uncle Cyprien went to his small dark kitchenette to polish his shoes before going out.

He intended to go to the Klapproth Brasserie in the rue Vavin to join his old friend, Johann Schleifmann, and talk for an hour with him while drinking an apéritif.

People who knew the younger M. Rainda antisemitism were surprised at his intimacy with that Galician Jew.

But when he was asked about it, Cyprien showed not the slightest embarrassment. Far from it! He eyed his inquirer from head to foot, shrugged his shoulders and then informed him—if he cared to know—that Schleifmann was the best man in the world. He had associated with him for ten years and never had had any cause to complain of him. These inquiries, moreover, seemed to him futile, because, he could vouch for it, Schleifmann, although a Jew, was as “much of an anti-semite as you or I.”

Cyprien voiced an exaggeration when he said this, or at least, he was misinterpreting his frien feelings.

Schleifmann could not be classified among those cautious Jews who deny their Jewry through fear of prejudice, or because they cringe before the majority, or through worldly or professional self-interest.

His anti-semitism, on the contrary, was made up of sheer love for his race and atavistic pride. If he appeared anti-semitic, it must have been in the fashion of a Jeremiah, an Isaiah or an Amos. In sooth, the bitter spirit of the ancient prophets animated his heart. He cursed the men of his religion merely because they were shirking the destinies of Israel and let themselves be corrupted by trifling vanities instead of ruling the world by the influence of thought. This Semitic pride had even been the cause of all the difficulties of his adventurous life.

He was a Doctor of Philosophy of Lemberg University who early in life had neglected the ancient Mosaic law in order to embrace the more recent creed which was spreading over the world—socialism. According to him, the Jews had been the initiators of that new faith as they had been of the other one. Karl Marx and Lassalle were to him the modern messengers of Jehovah upon earth, sent to bring forth the new gospel and the economic religion of the future. He considered their books as almost holy and rejoiced at seeing once more the divine Jewish supremacy asserted by their writings. He was affiliated with the principal socialist groups of the city and carried on an active propaganda in the poor districts. Three months in a fortress and ten years’ exile put a sudden stop to his zeal, if not to his convictions.

While in prison he had carefully thought out the place where he would seek asylum on leaving. Life would be very painful to him in Austria or in Germany, where he would be watched by the police and exposed to the attacks of the anti-semites. He decided upon a temporary stay in France where he went towards the end of 1882.

He thought he would make a living by teaching German, philosophy or the natural sciences. Warm letters of introduction had been given him by Viennese Jews to their relatives and fellow-Jews of Paris. Thus he rapidly obtained a certain amount of patronage which placed him beyond want and even earned him comfort.

Soon, however, and of his own free will, Schleifmann was to lose that comfort owing to an idealistic ambition and a mania to put his ideas into effect and to bring the Jews back to their hereditary duties.

He had noticed in Eastern Europe the contagious progress of anti-semitism and was deeply convinced that the anti-Jewish microbe would pursue its unrelenting march westward, successively invading France, England, the New World and finally the whole of Christendom.

This tendency must be resisted, fought and destroyed. As to the means of doing it, Schleifmann had a very clear theory, which he claimed to have derived from the very sources of the purest Judaism. It was simple. All that was needed was for the wealthy Jews to return to the traditions of their race whose almost divine mission was to supply the nations with moral examples, their brains with ideas and their hearts with a religion.

To accomplish this purpose they were to repudiate their past errors, leave the worldly and clerical society where they grew soft at the expense of their dignity, return to the fold of democracy whence they had sprung, employ their rare abilities in the defense of the weak, the triumph of the right, and enforce victory against injustice. Finally, keeping back nothing but a personal income, in no case to exceed ten thousand francs, they were to give up all their acquired riches, the whole of which would be used in national, popular or colonizing schemes. Such, in brief, were the main practical means by which Schleifmann intended to secure the salvation and glory of the Lor chosen people.

After a few months in Paris, he thought the moment was favorable for him to lay his daring plan of regeneration before the parents of his pupils, the clergy and the notables of Jewry. His illusions of success were short-lived.

The Jews of high finance had recently fought the first round with the Catholics. Some said they had been helped by the Cabinet. Others, that they had enjoyed the secret approval of a government which had long been in sympathy with the Jewish cause. Others again, more conservative in their estimate, claimed that the Jews enjoyed the “non-official sympathy” of the Administration to which the revolt of the wealthy Catholic families caused much anxiety. In fine, whether supported or alone, the Jews had won and now they were blinded by the enthusiasm of their victory. Never had their conceited arrogance been more insane nor their trust in the efficacy of the law more dense.

Schleifmann was everywhere repulsed. The rabbis were afraid that he might place them in a difficult position with high finance, whose members were all powerful in the Consistory; they begged him not to persist in his dangerous utopias. The rich and the half-rich dismissed him with a few dry words or with scornful jesting.

Very few cared to enter into discussion with him. They would give a fatherly pat to the obstinate Galician and ask him whether it was really himself, M. Schleifmann, a wise and learned man, who prattled such nonsense. Anti-semitism! That was all very well in Germanic lands, or in Slavic countries where—they had to say it, but with no desire to offend him personally—the Jews were ... well, he knew well enough what! But in France, in the land of all the liberties, on the beautiful soil of France, the mother of Revolutions and of the sublime Declaration of the Rights of Man, never, never, never at all, he ought to know, would anti-semitism flourish. Thereupon they would burst out laughing and offer him a cigar.

These unfortunate rebuffs were not the only punishment met by Schleifmann. Many parents became alarmed at his theories and withdrew their children from his care. He was left with barely a third of his patrons, making just enough to live on, or rather enough not to perish of want.

The wreck was thorough, but he faced it with courage.

In order to prepare for such possible contingencies as sickness, he sold all his furniture, all his books but a hundred odd volumes which he termed indispensable. He kept his Bible, the Imitation of á Kempis, Goethe, Spinoza, Shakespeare, Mendelssohn, Renan, Taine, Victor Hug poetical works and the writings of socialist leaders.

Then he took a large, well-lighted room on the sixth floor of a house in the rue de Fleurus and waited, while reading, for fortune and humanity to change.

Three whole years passed by and he was beginning to doubt his own prophetic acumen when, suddenly, the events occurred that restored to him his faith.

Despite what he had been told, anti-semitism was beginning to germinate and blossom in the beautiful land of France. It had come through the fertilizing agency of the envy and resentments of some, of the clumsiness and the extortions of others. The ardent crop was growing daily in spite of regulations and legal fences, in spite of the laws and the proclaimed Rights of Man.

Johann Schleifmann was joyfully complacent at first, then deeply sorrowful. He followed the affair, always divided between these opposite feelings.

He deplored the cruel, partial attacks levelled at his co-religionists; but he could not free himself from a certain feeling of pride that he had predicted them. The more unfairly they were abused, the more his anger rose against them. Fools! Poor wretches! Had they but been willing! When the social columns told of their magnificent garden-parties, of their deer-and fox-hunting and of their raouts, he sneered wickedly, yet with sadness. He repeated the words aloud in a sarcastic tone or uttered them as so many curses: “Garden-parties! Raouts! Fox-hunting!...” Yes, they could “receive” and “dance” and “ride out.” Those fellows were making the most of it! He was carried away, indignant, at the thought that so much money was stupidly thrown away, when, had they with a kind hand but given a portion of it to the people, it would have served a generous cause and settled and repaired everything.

It was about that time that he had become acquainted with M. Cyprien Raindal at the Brasserie Klapproth where they both took their meals.

They had liked each other from the first words they had exchanged. They were mutually attracted. Their nationalities were different, their religions antagonistic, their temperaments divergent but they found out that they shared the same grudges and detested the same castes. Curiosity also helped to foster their association. Schleifmann was to Uncle Cyprien a real mine of exceptional documents upon which he could feed his hatreds, and Schleifmann saw in him an unregarded specimen of the enemies of his race. Moreover, they cherished in secret their own plans concerning each other. The Galician wanted to convert his friend to the theories of Karl Marx; while the younger M. Raindal had sworn to himself that he would convert the exiled philosopher from his internationalistic views. Above all other motives, poverty united them, that poverty which kneads all the lowly into an identical paste, merges them into one family, transforms them into brothers and allies—age, origin or any other obstacle notwithstanding. Hence, they had hardly spent a day during the past ten years without meeting outside or visiting each other in their respective garrets.

Cyprien Raindal was ready and opened his door to go out. He fell back a step, surprised on seeing Johann Schleifmann himself, preparing to ring.

“You!”

“Surely, it is I!...” Schleifmann replied in a voice which the constant use of the Hebrew language had rendered somewhat nasal and slow. “I did not see you yesterday and so I came to ascertain whether you were not ill....”

“Oh, it is nothing at all; a mere touch of rheumatism, my wretched rheumatism.... Come in, come in, please,” the younger M. Raindal added, removing his own hat. “It seems as if we had not chatted for ages!”

He closed the door and pulled his old friend Johann by the sleeve.

Schleifmann replied with a smile.

“Yes, let us talk! As a matter of fact, I have brought you the surprise which I mentioned the other day.... Here, enjoy yourself!...”

He threw on the table a book bound in reddish linen, on the back of which was printed in black letters: Year Book of French Finance.

While Cyprien examined the volume, Schleifmann half-stretched himself on the couch, following a sarcastic trend of ideas. His was the type of the eastern Jew, a Kalmuk face with a wax-like complexion, a flat nose, turned up at the tip and with broad nostrils and small, yellowish eyes that shone with malice. His gray hair and beard were crisp and curly like wool; to correct his shortsightedness, he wore large gold-rimmed spectacles, the supreme elegance of Teutonic university men.

Suddenly he exclaimed in his usual slow, dragging voice:

“There are enough names in there!... Jews, Moslems, Christians, yes, and goyim, too.... Names from all countries and all religions.... It is to these names that the whole wealth of the land belongs.... They are all the names of those who fleece and grind us; you understand, my dear Raindal?... One of these names at the bottom of a paper is better than a cartridge of dynamite under a house.... It makes the millions dance as oranges fly from the hands of a juggler.... But, God be praised! my friend, this will not last forever!...”

“Ah! you are clever, Schleifmann!” the younger M. Raindal murmured, throwing an inquisitive glance at the Galician over the book he held open in his hand. “We know your game!... You want to egg me on again to your socialism.... Well, no.... I not to be done! I stand for freedom ... and for property ... and for the whole system of our filthy society, provided, however, people are honest. Yes, to be sure! Otherwise, pan, pan! To the wall with the grafters!...”

Schleifmann protested mildly, asserting that his remarks were disinterested. Then he came closer to Cyprien, who had laid the book on the table, the better to consult it. He guided his frien search among the terrible complications of interdependent banks, boards of administration, committees, sub-committees and other mysterious groups bent upon conquest.

Gradually, the younger M. Raindal waxed excited as he read. When he saw the same name figure on two, three, four boards, he exclaimed in distress like a man who is being assaulted. His jocular anger was especially excited by the names that bore the signs of Hebraic descent.

“Another one!” he would throw at Schleifmann.

“So it seems! But is it my fault?” the Galician replied sadly.

Again they took up their reading. To see their backs, their elbows closely touching, one might have fancied that they were two good little boys greedily perusing some picture-book or a fascinating volume of adventures.

Suddenly Cyprien straightened up and struck his rounded forehead. “By the way, Schleifmann,” he asked, “do you happen to know a certain Lemeunier de Saulvard?”

“Member of the Institute of France?”

“Yes, himself.”

Did Schleifmann know him? Of course, he did. None better. As a matter of fact, Saulvard banked at the Stummerwitz Bank and the Galician had heard the Stummerwitzes mention him more than once. He was teaching German to their children, or rather he was perfecting them in the use of that tongue; for they had learned the rudiments of it from their maternal grandfather, born in Stuttgart, and their paternal grandfather, born in Cologne. Rapidly in a hundred lashing words, Saulvard was sized up.

A man, it might be said without injustice, who was not much of a Catholic, that Saulvard!... A third-rate savant, a most mediocre intellect, an anemic writer, moreover a sycophant and a greedy intriguer. He had made use of his relations with high finance to enter the Institute, and then of his title of Academician to join the boards of companies. One had but to consult the Year-book. (And Cyprien feverishly turned the pages again.) He was there in three different places, as member of three well-remunerated, although discredited, boards. As to his wife....

“Probably a bigot?” Raindal the younger asked.

No, she was not a bigot;—she was a shameless hussy. Schleifmann, usually better informed, did not know the names of her several lovers, but he could give him two at all events, asserting in a symbolic and summary sense, that she had sinned with gods and devils. She was vain, moreover, an inveterate snob, painted and powdered way down to her waist, a back-biter, whose stomach troubles had ruined her disposition....

Raindal could stand it no longer. He was choking.

“Excuse me, Schleifmann,” he said, laying a friendly hand on the Galicia shoulder. “I forgot the time.... I am dining with my brother who is going to a dance to-night at the house of precisely this scoundrel.... I am very glad to be so thoroughly informed.... I assure you, yes, quite satisfied.... You do mind, do you? I have barely enough time! I must run away.... Are you coming?”

At the bottom of the stairs he parted hurriedly from his friend. A deep longing urged him to reach the flat in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, there to unload on his indolent brother the mass of filth with which Schleifmann had liberally filled him.

Not without apprehension did M. Raindal watch the arrival of his brother, having earlier in the day found that it was one of his talkative days. He anticipated a fresh outbreak of hostilities and controversies and that ill-disposed him beforehand. He received his brother with marked coldness, and carelessly held out his hand in order to forestall any new attempt.

“Just a minute! I am finishing an urgent piece of work.... If yo like to wait for me in the drawing-room, the ladies are there....”

When Uncle Cyprien had gone he congratulated himself upon his firmness. As a matter of fact, he had always intensely disliked discussing any subject with his brother. It was as in the tourneys of old, which were open to none but Knights. Before he would oppose a man in a discussion, that man had to be his peer, a gallant champion of his own caste, of his own intellectual rank, and one who practiced without flinching the noble art of tilting with ideas. With other men, Eusèbe Raindal avoided the contest; he turned tail in courteous agreement or even, if necessary, shammed sudden deafness.

His self-satisfaction increased at the dinner-table. Never had Uncle Cyprien proved so gay, so affable or so little inclined to quarrel. He teased Thérèse about her “forthcoming marriage,” repeatedly addressed her as “Mamzelle my nephew” or informed Brigitte, the young, ruddy-faced maid from Brittany, that, sapristi! it would soon be her turn.

Thérèse readily put up with his somewhat vulgar facetiousness. She tolerated much from her uncle, because she guessed at all the real tenderness hidden beneath his intolerance and his rabid abuse.

Mme. Raindal herself secretly admired her brother-in-law. She was grateful for the fact that he hated the Jews, whom she saw as the abhorred tormentors of the Saviour. She condoned his blasphemies concerning the priests because of his aversion towards the deicide race.

Her small, round face with its soft, pale cheeks reddened with a sudden flush of pride when he praised her pie. She laughed at all his remarks to the end of the meal, although she often missed his real point.

For politeness’ sake, M. Raindal smiled with her. When they had drunk their coffee, he returned to his study with Cyprien while the two women retired to dress. Left alone, they remained for a while in silent meditation. The master of the house, his feet drawn towards the red glow of the fire, dozed with his eyes half-closed, in that perfect coil of peacefulness that one feels in the company of a trusted friend. Uncle Cyprien lighted his heavy cherry-wood pipe from the Vosges mountains and paced the room, blowing his smoke out in strong puffs. He was preparing to let out his exterminating ammunition, all those deadly revelations which he had been holding back for the last two hours in sheer refinement of pleasure.

Brutally, he sent forth the first volley.

“By the way! Your chap of this evening, he is a nice bird!”

The effect was that of the alarm gun calling forth the soldier asleep in his tent. M. Raindal shivered with emotion and asked angrily.

“What? Whom do you mean?”

“Your Saulvard, of course!... Yes, I have some fine lines on him.... That gentlemen may well boast of them!”

One after the other, all the munitions piled up by Schleifmann followed in rapid succession.

“You surprise me very much!” M. Raindal muttered. “I admit that I do not know Saulvard very much.... I never had any but professional relations with him.... Yet, I never heard it said.... Your friend Schleifmann must be exaggerating....”

His brother Cyprien smiled shyly at this evasion but did not reply at once. He emptied his pipe in an ash tray. After a while, he broke the silence.

“Tell me ... where does this Saulvard live?”

The query made M. Raindal restless in his chair. He foresaw how grave was the reply he would have to give and tried to equivocate:

“Why, really, I do know.... It is the first time we are going there.... Thérèse has the invitation; she will be able to tell you....”

“You do know!” Cyprien replied, aggressively sarcastic. “Go on! I am willing to grant you may not know the number of the house; but surely you know the name of the street; you must at least know in what district it is!”

M. Raindal hid his uneasiness and pretended deeply to search into his memory.

“It seems to me,” he replied at length, “that he lives in the avenue Kléber.... Yes, tha it, avenue Kléber.”

“Of course! I would have laid a bet on it!” Uncle Cyprien said victoriously.

Thereupon the dreaded storm burst upon the master in a tumult of abuse and imprecations.

Cyprien had effectively found the opportunity once more to air his theory of the “two banks” and he hurled it out with a crash.

As a matter of fact, it was not altogether his own. The Galician had supplied the idea and Cyprien had but added the eloquent developments and the vigor of his lungs. But they had so often recited it to each other, chiseled it together and together enlarged upon it that they no longer discerned their particular share in the collaboration, and each of them claimed the authorship, whenever the other happened to be absent.

According to them, Paris was composed of two cities, absolutely distinct in population, ways of life and customs. The river Seine divided these two enemy cities. On its two banks, Sion the venerable faced Gomorrah.

Sion, the left bank, that was, stood for the home of virtue, science and faith. Her people were chaste, modest and diligent; they had preserved, in poverty and toil, the honest and decent national traditions. There the men were pure and the women beyond reproach. The whole inheritance of the ancestors—loyalty, devotion and high-mindedness were transmitted from fathers to sons, sheltered from the corruption of money and the shameful example of the foreigners. In sooth, it was the holy city.

Gomorrah, the right bank, was the region of vice, license and dishonesty. It was the hunting-ground of all the cosmopolitan riff-raff, all the shifty hordes of exotics who had gradually foregathered and silently slipped into France after the war of 1870. They formed a nomadic, rascally and thievish multitude, without principles, country or morals and were united solely by their greed for gold or a thirst for coarse pleasures. Gambling in stocks had filled their coffers and criminal transactions paid for their fatuous homes. The women were no better than the men; the adultery of the former flourished by the side of the swindling of the latter. Whole districts, and some of the finest, had become their domicile. Chaillot, Monceau, Malesherbes and the Roule bowed at their orders and their money. There were long rows of hotels all filled with rastaquouères, and houses which the Jews had conquered from top to bottom, occupying every floor. Semites from Frankfort fraternized there with adventurers from the New World, shady Americans with dubious Orientals. And the whole country was sucked dry in the service of that impudent mob which gave its orders in doubtful French. The right bank—it was the cursed city!

Cyprien always drew great effects and lengthy orations from these descriptions and parallels; he used them also as a sort of touchstone by which to appreciate people. If one lived on the left bank of the river, he was at once entitled to Cyprie sympathies. But if one dwelt on the right bank, in a rich neighborhood, Cyprien was at once wary of him, and would only make amends later after his title to respect had been established.

M. Raindal had labored hard to point out how such a theory was psychologically doubtful and topographically inexact; but his brother persisted in it because it was simple, violent, and corroborated his passions.

Especially this evening when he had been rested by two days’ silence and stimulated by Schleifman call, he was riding his hobby all around M. Raindal with an increasing air of challenge and daring.

“Yes,” he shouted at his brother, stamping the carpet, “you are blind.... You know nothing, you see nothing.... You live in your corner, buried among your mummies and your old books.... You have never been further than the bridge of the Saints-Pères.... You are duped and exploited; you are a child—a kid, as Schleifmann says. Why do you go for a walk some day through those places I am telling you about?... Talk, ask, find out.... You will see.... In that world, in those houses, abominable deeds are performed and all manner of foulness!”

The voiceless patience of M. Raindal was worn out. He risked one of those defenses which he had used before in the course of that polemic when the returns had at length become regular and mechanical as in a stage duel:

“Yet you are not alleging that the whole virtue of Paris has found asylum in our district!... I shall never be tired of repeating it to you: on the other side of the water are to be found many people that belong to decent society, and even to the aristocracy, people who have left the Faubourg to go and live in the new sections, the Champs Elysées, for instance.... Well! those people—you are not going to tell me that they....”

Cyprien sneered with commiseration and took up the gauntlet.

“Ha! ha! I am not going to tell you?... Of course, I am going to tell you!...”

And tell he did. He jumped from digression to digression, slashing right and left, forward and back, twirling his ideas about and knocking heads down everywhere in the craze of a wholesale assault. One after the other, the degenerated aristocracy, the Jews, the grafters and the priests fell under his blows. He reinforced himself with quotations from his favorite masters and these excited him as a war cry.

M. Raindal kept his peace for a moment, but feeling that his silence was perhaps even more exasperating to his adversary than mild retorts, he turned on the tap of conciliatory generalities. They oozed from his lips in amorphous, unfinished sentences, in small, intermittent streams, similar to the colorless and limpid dribble that runs along the chin of a baby; or else they suddenly dried up under the wind of invective.

“The plague of democracies.... A necessary evil.... This M. Rochefort is truly clever.... Experience teaches us.... M. Drumont is not lacking in spirit.... One of the vices of the plutocratic régime.... It is not a new thing to see financiers and revenue farmers.... I do not deny that M. Schleifmann is a very distinguished thinker.... We have come to a turning point of history....”

Thérèse came in and interrupted him, for her Uncle Cyprien instinctively lowered his voice when he saw her. The shy evasions of M. Raindal increased his assurance; but he dreaded sarcastic remarks or the sharp retorts of “Mademoiselle his nephew.”

“Well, what is happening?” Thérèse asked sweetly.... “Uncle, I bet you are teasing my poor father again?

“Hum! Not at all!” Uncle Cyprien replied shame-facedly.... “Not at all, we were merely talking.... You understand, one warms up, one gets excited....”

Thérèse pouted derisively.

“Yes, yes, I know, you warm up, you get excited.... I heard you from my room....”

She turned to M. Raindal.

“Come on, father, it is eleven.... Mother is ready.... Go and dress....”

Alone with her uncle, she walked to the fireplace to straighten in front of the mirror her hair which she had disarranged here and there when inserting her flowers. She wore white carnations—in memory of Albârt. Their spreading whiteness enlivened her face. Her neck seemed by reflection less sallow and more delicate in the pink muslin frame of her corsage.

Artlessly she smiled at herself, surprised to find herself thus dainty, attractive, almost pretty. As a matter of fact, she did have that ethereal iridescence of beauty which the unusual splendor of a party dress projects at once upon women. It is an ephemeral charm, light as a pastel, which fades away, evaporates in the heat and the jealousy of a ball; but at home it encourages the most homely. For one instant in the solitude of her own room, in front of her own mirror, a woman finds herself beautiful enough, too beautiful—and she is willing to go, and does, in fact, go.

Her Uncle Cyprien, in a friendly mood, observed her little coquettish ways:

“Well, my nephew? And so we are going to make merry in the merry world?”

“Oh, prodigiously,” Thérèse replied with a sigh. “We must enjoy ourselves in this world.... There will always be people to enjoy themselves.... Always there will be a frivolous and depraved society.... If they did not make merry on the other side of the river, they would do it here.... It is the rule and you cannot alter it....”

Uncle Cyprien brushed back with his hand his hair which was so close-trimmed that is crackled with a ruffling noise under his fingers. He murmured disdainfully:

“Philosophy! Philosophy!... You know, my dear nephew, that we do not argue, you and I, ... you are too strong and too sure of yourself. There, I do mind admitting it, you make me feel ill at ease!”

M. Raindal returned, followed by his wife, her form hidden in her long cape. She wore in her hair an old mauve aigrette, the barbs of which were limp and spread out like a worn-out paint-brush.

“Well, are we ready?” the master of the house asked, looking at his brother.

“Yes, wl all go down together. Come along!”

A cab was waiting outside. Brigitte gave the drive number to M. Raindal.

The family sat closely huddled in the back seat. Uncle Cyprien closed the door on them and shouted as the carriage began to move:

“Good luck! A pleasant evening, nephew!”

He gave a friendly pinch to the chin of Brigitte, who stood stupidly smiling.

“Good night, my girl.... Go and dream of a fiancé!”

He turned up the collar of his coat and took the rue Vavin. In the fever of his triumph at every step he flourished his thick cornel stick as if it had been a gory mace.