Her Lover (38 page)

Not one of these well-dressed mammals endowed with the opposable thumb had come in search of intelligence or human warmth. All without exception were driven by an urgent quest for contacts, whose social value they assessed by the number and quality of scalps collected. Thus a converted, homosexual Jew (who knew all there was to know about the kinship, marriages and health of everyone who counted in pan-European high society, where he had finally gained a footing after twenty years spent plotting, cajoling and being snubbed) was highly gratified to note that the person with whom he was talking was on visiting terms with an exiled queen who was 'absolutely adorable and terribly gifted musically'. When he had pigeon-holed his new acquaintance, he decided he was worth cultivating and as such invitable: so he invited him. It is such flummery which fills the waking hours of these poor excuses for human beings who all too soon will expire and rot and lie stinking in the earth.

Sometimes, in this gilded cage, sex occupied the high ground, attenuating or even supplanting the dominant social imperative. Over there, discreetly in a corner, a bald ambassador (who for forty years had deferred in servile flattery to his superiors so that he might steadily rise and eventually, wizened and with a colon riddled with bacilli, achieve Importance) was talking animatedly to a young interpreter, equally inane in four languages, who was endowed with breasts which had yet to fall and a grotesque rump significantly enhanced by a skirt chosen for its tightness: so decreed the lifeplan of this simpering kitten now basking in the exercise of her temporary power. For the action of the sexual is fleeting, while the social urge is sovereign and enduring.

Thirsting for contacts and personalities, a Greek lady journalist, acting clever and cute, said 'Hello, cousin' to a Russian princess to be chummy, shrieked at the correspondent of
The Times
'Hi there, O Great One, I adored your piece in yesterday's paper,' then moved off to prowl in the purlieu of a pair of ministers who were taking themselves rather seriously. The bald ambassador, having succeeded in making a date with the owner of the large rump, was listening gravely to a porkling named Croci, a plenipotentiary minister of minor standing. He felt intense dislike for this upstart, who made unduly much of being addressed as Excellency, so he feigned a mind preoccupied with higher things as a way of making him repeat his questions. Having thus taken the wind out of his sails, he would then reply with exaggerated courtesy or even not reply at all but instead come out with a question on an entirely unrelated subject. Close by, a flaccid, bovine redhead, never once dropping her smile, was quietly berating her husband, a tall, stooping ape of a man with woolly hair and an anguished expression, for not having dared approach a high commissioner now in the clutches of Mrs Crawford, an American millionairess who, in a space of mere months, had managed to bag all the big names in international politics by the simple expedient of offering sumptuous hospitality, for when good things to eat are set before the good and the great they come running. Countess Groning's teeth were wreathed in friendly smiles. She extended her hand with mathematical precision, unleashed a guttural 'How do you do' and, hungry for secrets, asked a delighted Benedetti if it were true that the English delegate had really thumped the table with his fist during the private sitting of the Council. The reply being affirmative, she closed her eyes in political ecstasy while she savoured the titbit. A fat Lebanese lady who had bought a husband who was a fool but also Baron de Moustier - she was the President of a Literary Society founded by herself as a method of extending her range of top-drawer acquaintances - was talking excitedly about a lecture given by a duke who was also a French Academician which she had attended with the express purpose of accosting him afterwards so that she could say henceforth that she knew the duke, such a dear, unaffected, approachable man, and say it casually, as was only right. Meanwhile, overcome at finding himself in conversation with the impassive Guastalla, an incompetent but well-connected marquis who, because nobody knew what to do with him, had been appointed special adviser to the Secretary-General, Petresco promptly began talking about his holidays, which he would possibly be spending with the Titulescos, who had an estate at Sinaia, but it got so damnably hot there in summer that he had not finally made up his mind even though the minister had repeated his invitation several times. At this, an amiable smile appeared on the lips of the marquis. Whereupon, seizing her chance to be unconventional, Madame Petresco clapped her hands like some spoilt brat or self-willed schoolgirl and shrieked that she wanted to go and stay with dear Titu and nowhere else, who cared if it got hot at Sinaia, with dear Titu and nowhere else, with her boyfriend Titu and nowhere else, so there! And she went on clapping her hands wilfully and screeching the name of her Titu to impress the impressive Guastalla. Abandoned by a minister for the disabled who owed his entire political career to his wooden leg, a husband and wife who could not stand each other but were at one in their determination to scale the social heights readied themselves to mount a joint attack on the ambassador of a small, newly created state, an ex-journalist with dandruff who was staring at himself incredulously in a mirror. Weighed down with ten heavy rings, an aged English poetess looked on in scorn and splendid isolation while she fiddled with her comforting medieval hat from which hung a long black train, the sort worn by Catherine de Medici and queen mothers given to poisoning. Noticing Solal, Croci the minister made a beeline for him, saying how happy he was to have this opportunity of exchanging a few words with such a dear friend. In reality, he had only turned up in the hope of landing some snippet of ephemeral political information which he could pass on to Rome and thereby raise his stock. Adopt a high profile, wangle an ambassadorial appointment, rise up the ladder from which all topple and fall into the waiting hole below. To get rid of him, Solal invented a tip which he passed on in confidence to the porkling, who made an avid mental note, Adam's apple bobbing wildly. Mouthing courtesies, he went on his way, elated and accompanied by an undiagnosed cancer. The lift was slow in coming and he took the stairs at a run in his impatience to share his knowledge of this vital item of political jiggery-pokery with his minister. Now he'd get his embassy! Quick, encode the telegram and mark it 'Top Secret. For the Exclusive Information of His Excellency'! No, wait a minute, why not fly direct to Rome? An ironclad reason for a meeting with the supremo in person! Having at last got the bald ambassador to herself, Baronne de Moustier was quoting, in a voice made resonant by a large population of nasal polyps, a
pensée
perpetrated by the dear duke, such an unassuming, approachable man, to the effect that it is as important to be a good gardener as it is to be a worthy duke and peer. What a beautiful thought, and how true! she drooled, turning a heart-warming smile upon the ambassador, who, however, not one to be fooled by a scheming woman, cut her off brusquely and sidled up to Lord Galloway, to whom the Romanian delegate, casting prudent looks in all directions, was saying that she had it from an unimpeachable source that in Council the day after tomorrow the Italian delegate would speak not of national revendications, like last year, but of national aspirations, a subtle but crucial distinction which heralded a turning-point in fascist policy, she affirmed, as she stood, regally, categorically bejowled, with her tiny hand on her vast hip like the proprietress of a pot-house. Overhearing her, an eavesdropping journalist gave a start and hurried off to telephone this astounding scoop to his paper, bumping as he went into an elderly professor from the University of Zurich, who, in the hope of being awarded the Legion of Honour before he died, was keeping a sharp lookout for the French cultural attache, while Madame Petresco, eager to show off her social graces, circulated saying 'Delighted to meet you', adding a 'ch' to 'meet' the way Lady Cheyne did. 'Marry in haste, repeat at leisure,' said the Greek lady journalist, trying to be witty and chic for the benefit of Baronne de Moustier, who gave her a sullen glare and, paying no further attention to a little schemer who was nothing and nobody, fixed her eyes on the inaccessible Lady Cheyne, with whom Countess Groning was enthusiastically discussing Lord Balfour. Dear Arthur! Such a wonderful person and a really great man of course, she had spent a delightful week at his place in Scotland. Yes, she was to dine with him and Anna de Noailles this evening, deaf Anna was a genius and what a wonderful friend!

Four guests, painfully aware of their insignificance, did not even dare try to make contacts. They were untouchables, and they clung together and spoke in whispers. They knew that they were pariahs and that pariahs they would always be, but would never have dreamt of admitting it, and they formed a supercilious, jaded little group. Though they were beyond the pale, they sought to capture the moral high ground by making sarcastic remarks about the glittering guests they so envied. These sad lepers, whose cynicism had been thrust upon them, cowered with tribal solidarity in a corner by a window, put on a brave show, and stuffed themselves with sandwiches. They were obscure subordinates of Benedetti: the secretary with eczema from the Information Section, the Portuguese registrar, a Belgian clerk and a typist who looked like a small, fat muskrat. Benedetti had asked them to his party because it was another of his principles that persons in authority should look to their popularity and be loved by those, however humble, who worked under them. But he only invited the four outsiders once a year, and was in no doubt that they would know their place, which was near the window.

To comfort herself, the secretary with eczema again brought up the subject of her father, who had been a consul somewhere in Japan and as such had once had the honour of putting up a member of the French Academy named Farrere whose complete writings she had had bound up into a set. Two or three times a week she wheeled out her father who had been a consul and her Academician called Farrere. But there, does not each of us have a social hobby-horse which we ride when given half a chance, some small redeeming laurel crown which we hoist to our brow at every conceivable opportunity?

The most wretched of all the guests was Jacob Finkelstein, doctor of social sciences, a small, underfed man who worked as an ill-paid correspondent for a Jewish press agency. Benedetti invited him once a year too, so as to avoid antagonizing the Zionists, for, like all anti-Semites, he had a morbidly exaggerated idea of their influence in the United States. He invariably invited along some such impossible person who was not seen again for another year. Thus diluted, these dreadful people never impinged on what Benedetti, who prided himself on his literary turn of phrase, called the 'ambiance' of his parties.

No guest talked to Finkelstein, a social nothing who was not only no use to man or beast but, more damningly, could not harm a fly. He was not dangerous,
ergo
he was not interesting, not the sort who called for careful handling, not someone you need like or pretend to like. Even the four pariahs by their window kept their distance from his degrading, low-caste presence. Ignored by all and having no other Jews to talk to, the wretched leper decided that acting like a man in a hurry would enable him to show a bold front, and his involvement in the reception consisted of elbowing his way firmly through the chattering mob at regular intervals. Head lowered, as though dragged down by the weight of his nose, he would charge across the immense room from one end to the other, occasionally crashing into other guests, saying sorry, though his apologies fell on deaf ears. Launched on his series of lightning, slanting runs, he camouflaged his isolation by giving the impression that it was desperately urgent that he get to someone he knew who was waiting over there, at the far end of the room. It was a gambit which deceived no one. When Benedetti came across him and could not pretend he had not noticed, he kept him at arm's length with a merry, preventive 'All right?' and immediately left him to his unremitting ambulations. Whereupon the doctor of social sciences and supercharged Wandering Jew set off once more, retraced one of his pointless journeys through
tins
land of exile, and with the same haste headed for the buffet and a comforting sandwich, which was his only social contact and the sole right he enjoyed at the reception. For two hours, between six and eight, poor Finkelstein subjected himself to forced marches of several kilometres, which he would not mention to his wife when he got home. He loved his Rachel and kept his griefs to himself. Why these unremitting charges? And why stay so long among these unfeeling people? Because he clung to his annual invitation, because he would not admit defeat, and also because he went in hopes of a miracle: a conversation with another human being. Poor, inoffensive Finkelstein, who wore your heart on your sleeve, a Jew dear to my heart, I hope you are in Israel now, among your people, among our brethren, and touchable at last.

At seven thirty, Sir John Cheyne, Secretary-General of the League of Nations, put in an appearance looking several sheets to the wind. Suddenly metamorphosed into a ballerina, Benedetti pirouetted hurriedly to meet him with love-light in his eye. The flame of his love was in no way simulated, for Benedetti was so driven by social ambition that he genuinely admired, nay doted on, any person of importance who might prove useful to him. Only sentiments which are sincere may be expressed effectively, that is, in a way which yields the maximum return. Moreover, one is left with a clear conscience. Far too big a bastard to be dishonest, Benedetti was quite convinced, even when privately admiring himself in his mirror, that he was genuinely fond of the Secretary-General and truly believed him to be a great man. He had been just as lovesick and just as reverential in his regard for the ex-Secretary-General. But when the previous incumbent had resigned, Benedetti had forgotten him instantly in his new enthusiasm for Sir John, whose photograph had immediately appeared in his office, ousting that of his predecessor.