Ferral read the document.
“I even have the answer,” said the colonel.
He handed him a photograph: above Chiang Kai- shek’s signature, two characters.
“Which means?”
“The firing-squad.”
Ferral looked up at the map of Shanghai on the wall, with large red patches which designated the masses of workers and wretches-the same ones. “Three thousand men of the syndical guards,” he was thinking, “perhaps three hundred thousand back of them; but will they dare to budge? On the other side, Chiang Kai-shek and the army. ”
“He will begin by having the Communist chiefs shot before any uprising?”
“Certainly. There will be no uprising: the Communists are practically disarmed and Chiang Kai-shek has his troops. The First Division is at the front: it was the only dangerous one.”
“Thank you. Good-by.”
Ferral was going to Valerie’s. A “boy” was waiting for him beside the chauffeur, with a blackbird in a gilded cage on his knees. Valerie had begged Ferral to bring her this bird. As soon as his car had started off, he pulled a letter from his pocket and reread it. What he had been fearing for a month was happening: his American credits were about to be cut off.
The orders from the. General Government of IndoChina no longer sufficed to keep in operation the factories created for a market which was to have expanded from month to month and which now was shrinking from day to day: the industrial enterprises of the Consortium showed a large deficit. The stock prices, main- rained in Paris by Ferral’s banks and the French financial groups which were associated with them, and bolstered up by the inflation, had been steadily dropping since the stabilization of the franc. But the banks of the Consortium derived their only strength from the profits on its plantations-especially its rubber plantations. The Stevenson Plan 1 had raised the price of rubber from 16 cents to $1.12. Ferral, who by virtue of his rubber plantations in Indo-China was a producer, had benefited by the rise without having to restrict his production, since his was not a British enterprise. And the American banks, knowing from experience how much the Plan was costing the United States, the principal consumer, had been eager to open credits guaranteed by the plantations. But the native production of the Dutch Indies, the menace of American plantations in the Philippines, Brazil and Liberia were now leading to the fall of the rubber price; the American banks were thus withdrawing their credits for the same reasons that had induced them to grant them. Ferral was hit all at once by the crash of the only raw material that sustained him-he had been given credits, he had speculated, not on the value of his production but on that of the plantations themselves-by the stabilization of the franc, which brought about the devaluation of all his stocks (a major portion of which were held by his own banks bent on controlling the market) and by the cancellation of his American credits. And he was fully aware that, as soon as this cancellation became known, all the speculators in New York and Paris would take a short position on his stocks; a position that was
1 The restriction of rubber production in the entire British Empire (the world’s greatest producer), for the purpose of raising the price 'lf rubber which at that time had sunk below production cost.
all too safe. He could be saved only for moral reasons; hence, by the French gove^rnment.
The threat of bankruptcy brings to financial groups an intense national consciousness. When their enterprises in distant corners of the world are suddenly threatened with disaster they remember with mingled pride and gratitude the heritage of civilization which their country has given them and which they in have helped to pass on to colonial peoples.
It was Ferral’s experience that gove^rnments are indulgent task-masters, that they treat their favorite children, the big financial groups, with commendable leniency. But while governments are accustomed to seeing the treasury robbed, they do not like to see it robbed of all hope. A treasury that expects, with the tenacious hope of a gambler, to recoup its losses some day is a treasury half consoled. France had suffered a severe loss by refusing aid to the Industrial Bank of China. It was not likely that France, so soon after, would in turn abandon the Consortium and risk the wrath of a whole new army of investors.
But if Ferral were to ask her for help it was essential that his position should not appear hopeless; it was essential first of all that Communism should be crushed in China. Chiang Kai-shek as master of the Provinces meant the construction of the Chinese Railway; the anticipated loan amounted to three billion gold francs, which equaled many million paper francs. To be sure, he would not be the only one to receive orders for materials, any more than he was alone today in defending Chiang Kai- shek; but he would be in on the game. Moreover, the American banks feared the triumph of Communism in China; its fall would modify their policy. As a Frenchman, Ferral enjoyed privileges in China; “it was an accepted fact that the Consortium would participate in the construction of the railroad.” To maintain himself he was justified in asking the government for a loan which it would prefer to a new crash; while his credits were American, his deposits and his stocks were French. All his cards could not win during a period of acute crisis in China; but, just as the Stevenson Plan had in its time assured the life of the Consortium, so the victory of the Kuomintang was to assure it today. The stabilization of the franc had worked against him; the fall of Communism would work for him.
Would he, all his life, never be able to do more than wait, in order to take advantage of them, for the passage of those great tidal sweeps of world economy that began like offerings and ended like blows below the belt? Tonight, in case of either resistance, victory or defeat, he felt himself dependent upon all the forces of the world. But there was this woman upon whom he did not depend, who would presently depend on ^m; the avowal of submission on her face at the moment of possession, like a hand plastered over his eyes, would conceal from him the network of constraints on which his life rested. He had seen her again in several drawing-rooms (she had just returned from Kyoto three days before), and each time he had been thwarted and irritated by her refusal of all submissiveness, whereby she stimulated his desire, though she had consented to go to bed with him tonight.
In his limitless craving to be preferred-one admires more easily, more completely, from one sex to the other — he called upon eroticism to revive a wavering admiration. That was why he had looked at Valerie while he was lying with her: there is a great deal of certainty in lips swollen with pleasure. He detested the coquettishness without which she would not even have existed in his eyes: that in her which resisted him was what most irritated his sensuality. All this was very obscure, for it was from his need to imagine himself in her place as soon as he began to touch her body that he derived his acute feeling of possession. But a conquered body, to begin with, had more appeal for him than an offered body- more appeal than any other body.
He left his car and entered the Astor, foUowed by the “boy” who was carrying his cage in his hand with an air of dignity. There were millions of shadows on earth: the women whose love did not interest him-and one living adversary: the woman by whom he wanted to be loved. The idea of complete possession had become fixed in him, and his pride called for a hostile pride, as a passionate player calls for another player to oppose him, and not for peace. At least things were well started tonight, since they would begin by going to bed.
The moment he reached the lobby a European employee came up to him.
“Madame Serge left a message to tell Monsieur Ferral that she will not be in tonight, but that this gendeman will explain.”
Ferral, dumbfounded, looked at “this gentleman”- seated, with his back turned, next to a screen. The man turned round: the director of one of the English banks, who had been paying court to Valerie for the last month. Beside him, behind the screen, a “boy,” with no less dignity than Ferral’s, was holding a blackbird in a cage. The Englishman got up, bewildered, shook Ferral’s hand, while saying: