House of All Nations by Christina Stead

tall Russian. ‘Give them one each, one hundred francs each. Had a good time. I enjoyed it. Good night, girls. Here, Aristide, here’s for the omelet—not enough—taxi for you and Marianne. If it costs more tell me in the—h’m. Never mind. Don’t waste money. Driver, Hotel Westminster. Good-by. Marianne! Good night. See you tomorrow. Very sweet of you to come, Marianne.’
    â€˜ Au revoir ,’ called the girls.
    â€˜Good night,’ he snapped. He had already forgotten all about them.
    They drove off leaving Aristide and Marianne on the curb with the women. Aristide looked at the money thrust into his hand—four hundred francs. Léon had shortchanged him, as usual. He looked at the girls, only nine of them.
    â€˜Here,’ he said in a curious bullying tone to the Parisian woman in black, ‘go and get something to eat!’ He gave her two hundred francs and got into the taxi. ‘Driver, Rue du Docteur Blanche.’
    â€˜Hey,’ said the woman, ‘hand over the other two hundred! I saw he gave you four hundred to take us out to supper. And there’s the taxi waiting. Something of the piker in you.’
    â€˜Drive on, what are you waiting for?’ cried Aristide savagely. The chauffeur shrugged his shoulders and turned the wheel.
    â€˜What about me?’ cried the third chauffeur. There was a shower of insults and reproaches from the girls waiting on the pavement. Stretching her neck, as they turned the corner, Marianne saw that the tall dark girl was paying out and the chauffeur was leaning out of his cab, giving them advice: ‘They are dividing it, all right,’ said she.
    Aristide said wildly, ‘Horrible.’ He struggled for a reason, ‘I don’t want my wife to be seen out with a party like that. Suppose we had been seen. He has no sense.’
    Marianne reflected, ‘Things whizz when Henri’s about. Has he really gone to the station?’
    â€˜No. Of course not.’
    â€˜The chit in the restaurant, I suppose?’
    â€˜No. The Russian woman.’
    â€˜Well, well. Well, she has class, at any rate.’
    â€˜Léon stinks of money,’ Aristide said rudely. He wrestled in an agony of envy. ‘Eleven hundred francs to those whores, about one thousand on champagne—they sold him nine bottles of sixty-franc champagne at one hundred and ten francs apiece. Mme. Ashnikidzé got five hundred francs, he’ll probably give this woman a thousand, that’s about her rating. And this evening when I asked him about the twenty-five thousand gulden he owes me, he made a joke out of it. Why shouldn’t they go for him? He bought me for less. I don’t know as much as they do.’
    Marianne asked with circumspection, ‘Did he make you any offer at all, any settlement?’
    â€˜No! Said the market had been up and down, his accounts weren’t fixed up for that year because that was the year the books were lost—the usual story. Oh, you know it’s hopeless. He made me a proposition: he wants to become a baron in Belgium. If I act as his go-between and write the proper letters and if he gets it, he’ll see about giving me my twenty-five thousand gulden.’
    â€˜And he gave you nothing?’
    Aristide admitted with shame, ‘He gave me—one hundred and twenty gulden—ten pounds in sterling he had on him. I took it. Why not? Anything from that fellow is cream. I didn’t expect that.’
    There was an embarrassed silence. Then Marianne laughed. ‘The deposit technique!’
    â€˜What he calls the deposit technique: yes.’
    * * *
    Scene Five: Small Kratz and Great Léon
    L ittle Julius Kratz, friend of school days and soup kitchens, clung to great Henri Léon as he zoomed upwards, lent him his advice, the advice of a wasp to an airplane, told him his defects with peculiar truth, listened to his inspirations with more asperity than a wife, and