Andre Malraux - Man's Fate

“The Vice-Director of the Mouvement General des Fonds,” he said, tapping the table with his pencil, “will tell you as I do that I cannot give you these guarantees without a vote of Parliament. I have called you together, gentlemen, because the question we are debating concerns France’s prestige; do you think that bringing this question before public opinion is a good way to defend it?”

“No dlout, no dlout, but pelmit me, monsieur le Ministle. ”

Silence; the representatives, chewing their caramels, sought refuge from the Auvergnat accent in a meditative air. They suddenly felt that by opening their mouths they would be exposing themselves to an unseen menace. The minister looked at them without smiling, one after the other, and Ferral, who saw him in profile- the side with the glass eye-looked upon him as a great white Carolina parrot, motionless and bitter, in the midst of other birds.

“I see, then, gentlemen,” the minister went on, “that we are agreed upon that point. In whatever way we look upon this problem, it is necessary that the deposits be reimbursed. The General Government of Indo-China would participate in the refloating of the Consortium to the amount of one-fifth. What share could you offer?”

Now each one sought refuge in his caramel. “Just a small pleasure,” said Ferral to himself. “He wants a little distraction, but the result would have been the same without the caramels. ” He knew the value of the argument put forward by the minister. It was his brother who had answered those who asked the Mouvement General for a conversion without vote of Parliament: “Why shouldn’t I after that give two hundred millions on my own authority to my little girl-friend?”

Silence. Longer than the preceding ones. The representatives were whispering among themselves.

“Monsieur le Ministre,” said Ferral, “if the healthy enterprises of the Consortium are, in one form or another, to be continued; if the deposits are, in any case, to be reimbursed, don’t you think there is occasion to wish for a greater effort, from which the maintenance of the Consortium should not be excluded? Does not the existence of so extensive a French organization have in the eyes of the State an importance equal to that of a few hundred million in deposits?”

“Five million is not a serious figure, gentlemen,” said the minister. “Must I appeal in a more urgent way to the devotion of which you have spoken? I know you are anxious, that your Boards of Directors are anxious to avoid the control of banks by the State. Do you think the fall of enterprises like the Consortium will not arouse public opinion to the point of demanding such control in a manner that might become imperious, and perhaps urgent?”

More and more Chinese, thought Ferral. This merely means: “Stop proposing to me five ridiculous millions.” The control of the banks is an absurd threat when it is made by a government whose policy is directly opposed to such measures. And the minister has no more desire really to have recourse to it than the representative who holds the Havas Agency among his cards desires to launch a press-campaign against the minister. The State can no more play seriously against the banks than the banks against the State. They are accomplices in every way: a common personnel, common interests and psychology. A struggle between the department heads of the same firm-by which, for that matter, the firm subsists. But poorly. As at the Astor, not so long ago, he could save himself only by not weakening and by showing no trace of anger. But he was beaten: having made personal effectiveness his essential value, nothing could compensate for the fact that he was now facing these men, whose persons and methods he had always despised, in this humiliated position. He was weaker than they, and by that very fact, in his own system, all that he might think was of no avail.

“Monsieur le Ministre,” said the oldest delegate, “we are anxious to show our good will to the State once again; but, if there are no guarantees we cannot, in view of our stockholders, consider extending to the Consortium a credit beyond the sum total of the deposits to be reimbursed, and guaranteed by the resumption of the healthy affairs of the group. God knows that we have no desire for this resumption, that we are undertaking it through respect for the superior interest of the State. ”

This fellow, Ferral was thinking, is really extraordinary, with his air of a retired professor transformed into a blind CEdipus. And all the numbskulls, including France, who come to his agency-directors for advice, and to whom State funds are thrown like asses’ skins when it’s a matter of building strategic railways in Russia, in Poland, in the North Pole! Since the war, that skewer sitting on the couch has cost the French reserve billions in State funds alone. Very well. As he used to say, ten years ago: “Any man who asks advice about investing his money from a man he does not know intimately, deserves to be ruined.” Eighteen billions. Without mentioning the forty billions in commercial enterprises. Nor myself.

“Monsieur Damiral?” said the minister.

“I can only endorse, Sir, the words you have just heard. Like M. de Morelles, I cannot involve the establishment which I represent without the guarantees which he mentioned. I could not do so without violating the principles and the traditions which have made this establishment one of the most powerful in Europe, principles and traditions which have often been attacked, but which enable it to prove its devotion to the State when the latter appeals to it, as it did five months ago, as it is doing today, as it will perhaps do tomorrow. It is the frequency of these appeals, Monsieur le Ministre, and the resolution we have made to hear them, which oblige me to ask for the guarantees which these principles and traditions require that we assure to our depositors, and thanks to which-as I have allowed myself to tell you, Sir-we are at your disposal. We can no doubt dispose of twenty million.”

The representatives looked at one another in consternation: the deposits would be reimbursed. Ferral now understood what the minister had wanted: to give satisfaction to his brother without committing himself; have the depositors reimbursed; make the Establishments pay, but as little as possible; be able to draw up a satisfactory report. The bargaining continued. The Consortium would be destroyed; but its annihilation mattered little if the deposits were reimbursed. The Establishments obtained the guarantee which they had demanded (they would lose, nevertheless, but very little). A few enterprises, which would be maintained, would become the affiliates of the Establishments; as for the rest. All that had happened in Shanghai was about to be dissolved, here, in a complete meaninglessness. He would have preferred to see himself despoiled, to see his work go on living completely out of his hands, conquered or stolen. But the minister would see only his own fear of the Chamber; he would tear no jackets today. In his place, Ferral would have begun by banishing himself from the Consortium, which would thereby have been rendered more healthy, and would then have maintained it at any price. As for the Establishments, he had always affirmed their incurable avarice. He remembered with pride a phrase of one of his adversaries: “He always wants a bank to be a gambling house.”

The telephone rang, close by. One of the attaches entered:

“Monsieur le Ministre, the President of the Council on the private wire.”

“Tell him matters are being satisfactorily arranged. No, I’ll go myself.”

He went out, returned a moment later, gave the delegate of the principal commercial bank (the only one which was here represented) a questioning look. A straight mustache, parallel to his glasses, bald head, weariness. He had not yet said a word.