The Man from Lisbon, page 35
“It’s true, all this?” José asked tentatively.
“Quite true. The fact is, to gain our support, Camacho and Gomes are giving us more power than anyone in the history of Portugal has ever had—that’s what it comes down to. We will become truly rich men.”
“Like Kreuger,” José said.
“Perhaps, in time … but we will stand alone in Portugal. We will remake Portugal, gentlemen, as it should be … as it once was and will be again.”
“Alves,” Hennies cautioned, “don’t overreach yourself.”
“Ah, Adolf, my faithful counselor!” Alves said expansively. “Who knows this situation best, I ask you? I, Alves Reis, and I have never gone too far. …”
“Well, then,” Hennies said, standing, hooking his fingers into his vest pockets, “I think it should be said now once and for all that we—all of us in this room—owe what we are today and more importantly what we will become in the days ahead … to you, Alves Reis—one of the great financial geniuses of our time, of all time … the uncrowned King of Portugal!”
“Alves, you have done it!” José shouted, clasping his hand, and Marang embraced him. Hennies draped his arm around the royal shoulders. Arnaldo was the last: “I am very proud of you,” he said quietly. “Very proud, my friend.”
Ivar Kreuger was en route from Stockholm and would not arrive until evening. Consequently Alves met with Kreuger’s chief representative in Paris, Gunnar Cederschiold, a man about his own age. Their meeting went well. The Match King was prepared to go ahead with his purchases of two match factories in Portugal, streamline them and build an entirely new plant as well. Alves pledged a large capital investment, although, as was his custom, Kreuger would retain complete control. The idea was to force the Portuguese match business to become another Kreuger monopoly. Alves left a check with Cederschiold. In return he was presented with a formal pledge of stock certificates in the new operation. Kreuger moved quickly. As his agent in Lisbon, Alves was empowered to buy the existing factories at a good price. “Kreuger never cheats anyone,” Cederschiold remarked gravely. “It is his watchword. The golden rule.”
As promised, upon Kreuger’s arrival in Paris the next day, Greta arranged for him to host a small dinner at his apartment, No. 5 Avenue Victor Emmanuel III near the Seine.
“He eats very lightly,” Greta had warned them when she called in the morning, “so you might have a late-afternoon tea. There will be only a main dish, a dessert and some very fine Bordeaux—it never varies. He says eating makes him lazy, and he can’t afford to be lazy. Eight o’clock sharp. Ivar is never late.”
From the street No. 5 Avenue Victor Emmanuel was indistinguishable from its equally dignified, somber neighbors. A pointed black, gold-tipped iron fence fronted on the wide sidewalk bordered by tall trees newly leafed out. A wobbling cage lifted them to the third floor, where the great man lived while stopping in Paris.
Maria wore white, Alves a dark business suit. Hennies, Marang and José had arranged to arrive together. Arnaldo and Silvia accompanied Alves and Maria. The door was opened by a tall, pallid man with a large face and short, thinning hair that offered a great dome of forehead. His deep-set eyes focused above a long, straight nose. He wore a black suit, white shirt, black tie with a tiny, plain gold stickpin.
“How do you do,” he said without vocal or facial expression. “You’re the man from Lisbon?”
“Yes,” Alves said. “We are joining Herr Kreuger for dinner.”
“Of course,” he said, reaching for Maria’s diamond-braceleted hand. “I am Ivar Kreuger. I am delighted to make your acquaintance.” He bent over Maria’s hand and brushed his lips across her wrist. He nodded to Alves, who introduced Arnaldo and Silvia, over whose wrist he slowly, like a large and dignified elephant, performed the same ritual. “Please, come in. I have only just arrived in Paris, and you must forgive my lack of adequate preparations. I find it superfluous to maintain a staff to care for these five rooms. Your wrap, Senhora.” He helped Maria with her brocade cape. He acted, Alves thought, more like a butler than the most powerful financier in the world. He led the way across the small parquet foyer and into a large parlor filled with great heavy furniture, deep masculine chairs and couches in dark wood and fabrics. The light was dim and an indifferent fire struggled in the grate, lighting the oppressive darkness. Greta was sitting near the fire sipping a goblet of red wine. “You, of course, know my dear Greta.” His smile came and went, a phantom. “Please, if you would excuse, I hear the lift again. …” He went back the way they had come.
“Not exactly what you’d expected,” Greta said perceptively.
“I thought he was a servant.” Maria smiled.
“People can’t believe he lives so simply. But, of course, he maintains an absolutely magnificent place in Stockholm and a lavish penthouse in New York, apartments in Berlin and Warsaw—he’s always coming and going. His work is everything to him. He’s never married and I can’t imagine he will. …” Greta poured wine and passed it around as they all sat stiffly. “Don’t be nervous, Alves, he’s a very dear man but shy with strangers.”
“You shouldn’t have forced us on him like this,” Alves said. “We’re intruding on his privacy.”
“He told me he felt badly about being unable to see you personally yesterday. He’s delighted to have you here. You’re business associates, and think of that … an associate of Ivar Kreuger. I thought you’d be so pleased to meet him, Alves.”
Voices could be heard from the foyer, and immediately Hennies, Marang, José and two other gentlemen entered the parlor. Kreuger began to move among them, calmly, speaking in quiet tones, nodding agreement, bestowing time, remote smiles. Alves recognized Cederschiold, and they spoke for a while. Alves could not keep his eyes from tracking his host as he glided about, paying proper heed to the women. Eventually several more men and women arrived, including two eye-catching blondes with the overt, dramatic style of Folies-Bergere chorines. Alves was watching the girls when he heard a connoisseur’s gentle whisper at his shoulder.
“Decorative women take the attention away from one who gives the party, don’t you agree, Senhor Reis? You seem to have an eye for them.” Kreuger spoke slowly, as if measuring the words. There was no hint of carnality in the remark but a realistic appraisal.
“By all means,” Alves said tentatively. He didn’t want to say anything stupid. Greta was speaking with the girls as if she knew them, drawing them toward Maria, who was talking energetically to Cederschiold and Marang.
“Parties are not for men, in any case. I seem always to be invited to parties where I am overcome by the idiocy of the guests and the host. I always long for the sight of a beautiful woman, but more often than not I am doomed to disappointment with the result … so tonight I protected you on that count and drew some attention away from myself.” He did not look at Alves as he spoke but seemed to be staring off into a general area in the center of the room.
“I hope we aren’t inconveniencing you,” Alves said. He watched Kreuger roll the twenty-year-old Bordeaux on his tongue, the small deep-set eyes closing for a moment.
“Not at all. I am very sorry that I wasn’t able to meet with you yesterday. Sometimes I could swear I spend half my life on shipboard going or coming from New York. But there’s no need to tell you.”
“For the last six months I’ve spent most of my time on the Sud Express. Yes, it’s tiresome, but when business requires one’s presence, what is there to do but be there?” Talking with Kreuger, man to man, about the common difficulties of international tycoondom. Incredible. There was so much to learn from such a man. “I want to tell you how grateful I am for this business opportunity, Herr Kreuger. We shall do very well together, I’m sure.”
Kreuger’s gray-green eyes caught a shaft of light; they seemed to be mocking, but his resonant voice lost none of its conviction. “Perhaps you envision further dealings between us. … And who knows, perhaps they will come. Time will tell, time always tells.” His eyes moved slowly about the room. Alves had yet to look into them.
Kreuger took a Turkish cigarette from a black leather-and-gold case.
“People always find it terribly amusing when I have to ask for a match … but I never seem to have any on me.” He lit the cigarette from Alves’ Dunhill lighter, then rolled the piece of gold between his fingers. “Poor Ivar,” he said, “having to compete with such elegant trinkets. Fortunately the world is very poor and only the rich can light their cigarettes with such devices. Do you know, Reis, that a hundred million matches are struck every hour? There will come a day when every match will be a Swedish Match. We must have goals, don’t you agree? It’s all so incredibly simple. Reduce the number of matches in a box by three or four, raise the price a penny … profits increase quite literally by millions of dollars.”
Hennies, Marang and José had joined the group, and Kreuger personally, humbly topped off their goblets.
“The great mystery,” Hennies said, “the making of money. Everyone tries and almost no one succeeds. The human comedy. …”
“I’ve never found anything comic about money,” Marang remarked. “But, then, I’m often told I have no sense of humor.”
“It’s not easy to laugh,” Kreuger said, staring off, “at money or the human comedy. At least not when all human beings are so reprehensible. … Especially those who can get everything they want.” He drew his mouth tight. “You must tell me to be quiet. With wine I grow ever more voluble. Soon I’ll begin telling you about Charles the Second. …”
José was inspecting a painting beneath a dim yellow light.
“You are an art collector, I see.”
“Me?” Kreuger affected surprise. “Goodness, no. I have no interest in art. No, I have just two interests, the match and Kreuger and Toll … a third would split me. I can’t ever succeed in turning off my mind, and I always think business. No, I have no interest in art.”
“But this is a Rembrandt,” José said, “and this a Rubens. …”
Kreuger almost looked at José but let his eyes slide away toward the women, then went to attend to his other guests. José raised his eyebrows. “He wants me to believe he doesn’t know he has a Rembrandt and a Rubens six inches from my face? Is it a game?”
“Possibly it is a fact,” Marang said. “He is not an ordinary man.”
Greta had been quite correct about the menu. There were several racks of lamb on the table, a tureen of vichysoisse. Another Bordeaux. Kreuger sat at the head of the table with Maria on his left, Greta on his right. Alves was seated next to Greta with one of the blond girls on his right. She spoke with a thick Swedish accent and looked to be straight from a convent school, dewy and pale and well muscled, the perfect picture of a Scandinavian beauty. Marang was across from him, next to Maria.
Kreuger mentioned his recently concluded arrangement with the Spanish dictator, de Rivera: a twenty-five-year match monopoly for Swedish Match.
“We’ve taken a large step ourselves,” Alves said. “We are forming our own bank in Lisbon. …”
“Indeed,” Kreuger said, daintily chewing a tiny morsel of lamb. “You must be doing very well, Senhor. It will reflect well on Kreuger to be associated with you. A bank is a very convenient possession. …”
“It is the bank that will benefit from its association with Kreuger—that goes without saying.”
“Not at all,” Kreuger said, sipping the Bordeaux. “I once wanted a bank, years ago, and then a friend gave me a toy abacus … and I discovered I was more amused by it than by the bank. I could count up all the millions I wanted on my little toy.” He sighed, put his elbows on the table before him and rubbed his fine, small hands busily before him. He seemed to be staring at the remains of one of the racks of lamb.
“And let me add,” Alves said, feeling the effect of the wine, “that I can only barely believe that I am at table with Ivar Kreuger. This is most rare … One of life’s great rewards. …” Feeling a trifle foolish, he stopped and emptied his goblet.
“To our host!” Hennies’ ebullience rang like cannon fire in the quiet dining room. He lifted his goblet. “I give you the greatest financier of our age, a model for us all!”
A murmur of approval trickled along the table; wine was sipped by way of salute. A slight flush crossed the great man’s face, like a shadow. The Swedish girl cooed gently. Alves felt the unmistakable pressure of Greta’s hand on his thigh.
“You embarrass me,” Kreuger said with quiet sincerity. “I am always given far too much credit. Making money, a child could do it. … The fortunes of nations can be made to turn on apparently trivial things. I am called an earth shaker.” He shrugged. “And I am, but it is a trick. I have made countries swing upon a match. It could just as easily have been hairpins. Or buttons. …”
“But you are a man of your times, a titan,” Marang said.
“Our times,” Kreuger repeated distastefully. “When I compare our contemporaries with the people whose biographies I have read, I am struck with the desperate pettiness of the world today. Most people are tedious and boring. They are only barely aware they are alive at all. This one speaks of nothing but his dentist, that one about his family’s bad luck and a third about the job he didn’t get. … What are we to think of times that produce such ciphers?”
Alves nodded sagely. He reached for Greta’s hand, held it still. The Swedish girl was watching from the corner of her eye.
“To succeed,” Kreuger went on in his weighty, deliberate manner, “one must understand our times and the people populating them. This is the key. In the end, you depend on little men, your accountants. … Every period in history has its own gods, its own high priests, its own holy days. It’s been true of politics, religion and war. Now it’s true of economics. We’ve created something new, Reis, men like you and I. Instead of being fighting men, as in days of old, we’re all in business; our high priests are called accountants. They too have a holy day—the thirty-first of December—on which we’re supposed to confess. In olden times, the princes would go to Confession because it was the thing to do, whether they believed or not. Today the world demands balance sheets, profit-and-loss statements once a year. But if you’re really working on great ideas …”
Alves looked up from his plate, searching out Kreuger’s eyes, failing. Great ideas …
“If you are,” Kreuger went on, “you can’t supply them on schedule and expose yourself to view. Yet you’ve got to tell the public something, and so long as it is satisfied and continues to have faith in you, then it is really not important what you confess. Someday people will realize that every balance sheet is wrong because it doesn’t contain anything but figures. The real strengths and weaknesses of an enterprise lie in the plans. …”
Alves sighed to himself: how true. Kreuger leaned back, hands curled around the arms of the chair. His face looked suddenly tired, the skin tight, shadows spreading beneath his small eyes.
“I hope you have all eaten enough. I’m told I set a rather meager table. I apologize. …”
“I must tell a story on Ivar,” Greta said. Her hand was gone from Alves’ thigh. He missed her touch. “One night he was very hungry for a cheese sandwich. So off he went to one of our establishments here in Paris. A cheese sandwich, he suggested to the waiter. The waiter sniffed, said nothing, but the chill was ominous. Well, the great financier reconsidered. Yes, he told the waiter, some caviar, a lobster, champagne and some bread and cheese!” The table rocked with laughter. “Fifty dollars American,” Greta said, “to get a cheese sandwich! Only dear Ivar …” She put her hand on his, gently. Kreuger smiled.
“But that is not the end of the story,” she went on. “Carefully he conceived his solution—he bought Palliard’s! With a restaurant and wine cellar of his own he now can go out for a cheese sandwich whenever he wishes. …” Tears of mirth appeared on cheeks, hands clapped on the tabletop, candlesticks shook.
“The grand gesture!” Hennies bawled, red-faced. “Bravo, Kreuger!”
Over coffee in the parlor Maria sat next to Kreuger. Alves leaned against a lovely little Renaissance table, in the shadows near a window. Greta made her way inconspicuously to his side. “What do you think of him?”
“Certainly an unusual man. Brilliant thing he said about the importance of plans. … I’m a believer in plans, you know. A surprisingly accessible man, the common touch. Or is it an act?”
“No, this is the way he is. Polite, distant, full of thoughts you would appreciate. … I sense an affinity between you.” She brushed his hand with hers. “You handle yourself very well in his presence. I’m proud of you, darling, but …” She shuddered involuntarily. “I can’t claim you, turn to you, be yours on evenings like this. Maria takes you for granted, she knows the diamonds will keep coming, she doesn’t see in you what I do. …” She shook her head, looked away, biting her lip. “It isn’t jealousy … it’s envy, and there’s a difference. I’ve fought it, I’ve tried not to be too solemn about you, about us, but I need you. I feel myself coming undone sexually without you.” She brushed at her eyes, hand shaking. The sapphire crossed her face and in the dim light left an afterimage in his mind.
“You’ve never talked to me this way before. …”
“Have you assumed I’m faithful to you?”
“I’ve hoped. I’ve tried not to think about it.”
“Well, I have been, ever since our first time in bed. But how long can I go on, never knowing when I’ll see you? I’m not made for celibacy, Alves. I need a man.” She sniffled, her face still lovely in repose. “Tell me, what do you want me to do?”
“What are you asking of me? Are you asking me to leave Maria?” The bottom of his stomach was slipping away. He felt faint.
“You deserve more than she can give you. You deserve the grand life. … You are on the world stage now, a financier, one of Kreuger’s kind.”
“You would marry me? Is that what you’re suggesting?”
“I don’t know. I’ve said I’d never marry again. … But we could be together, here in Paris.”
