The Dream Merchant

by Fred Waitzkin

  Many days Jim and Marvin hosted customers from around the world, Englishmen, Nigerians, secular businessmen from Iran: supporters of the Shah who dreamed of golden palaces amid aged cypress and aspens on the outskirts of Tehran. There were also Islamic fundamentalists who loathed the Shah’s Western leanings and were trying to raise millions to unseat him. Jim didn’t know where Marvin found these contacts. By the same token, Jim hadn’t a clue about how or why Marvin developed his impressive reading list. One afternoon Jim walked into Marvin’s office and he was reading a book called Death in Venice. He closed it abruptly, as if he had been caught at something unclean.

  Gesler Sheds was becoming an international player. This kept Jim away from Toronto more than ever, which was bad for Ava. He knew that, but he was closing the biggest jobs of his life. In the new company jet, Jim flew to Nigeria, Morocco, and frequently the Middle East, tiptoeing through social upheaval while working on contracts that Marvin initiated.

  Jim was Marvin’s eyes. He came back to the factory describing their galvanized storage sheds dotting the lush storied countryside outside Cambridge and Sheffield. He reported clusters of doughty sheds replacing the rotting dockside storage buildings of the Nigerian port cities of Lagos and Calabar. Africans favored them for keeping rice, beans, and various grains. You could store anything in these structures powerful enough to stand against the steady blast of a typhoon. Marvin dreamed of his sheds rising like cities in the desert. Already there were more than two hundred thousand of them spread across the verdant fields of rural Canada.

  * * *

  Marvin spent long stretches in his swivel chair reading financial journals, or after the office closed he hunkered over a first-edition volume of poetry or a novel. For Marvin, who grew less inclined to take walks and drives with Jim, the office in Toronto became his world—except his reading took him to places he could never have imagined. He became a night stalker through works of Nabokov, Kafka, Gide, Greene. He favored stories about obsessed men who explored side roads and dark pleasures. Marvin identified with many of the characters and became emotional reading tales of unusual personal discovery.

  Marvin enjoyed sex in the late morning, when he was most energetic, sometimes sitting up in his chair. His third girlfriend taught him how to be a lover and Marvin cherished her. He gave Francine fancy gifts and all the money she wanted. It didn’t matter to him. After a year he bought her a home just outside the city. She was tender with him and had become a source of inspiration and energy. Marvin’s thinking had never been sharper. In a way she had replaced Jim.

  Marvin conducted business meetings from the same chair, or he talked to Jim, who was putting on salesmen in Paris and Tel Aviv. Marvin liked the familiar office smells of his cigars and fast food. He often slept on the sofa. He fell asleep listening to classical music while considering ways to refine the steel arch of his shed for additional strength or how to beat the government out of taxes—he didn’t want to pay a single tax dollar and believed this was possible.

  The mystery of the books began to irritate Jim, who could not connect Marvin to poetry. How had Jim missed this side of his partner? Soon there were oil paintings coming into the office, Degas, Renoir, Chagall, and a few contemporary abstract canvases, although Marvin favored the impressionists, particularly delicate line drawings of women or lovers. Marvin was as brusque about fine art as he had been about the literary classics.

  Jim was comfortable with the Marvin he knew and was slow to recognize that his partner was changing. Many of us are like this, making boxes for the ones we love, stuffing them back inside. Jim wasn’t a reader and could not imagine the pleasure Marvin took from books, nor the depth of Marvin’s discoveries and how they turned his head.

  At this remarkable period in their business lives, Marvin was growing impatient with Jim. There was no shared language to express Marvin’s late-night reading delights and it felt unclean to describe the romantic feelings that inspired his days, so Marvin cut Jim off in mid-sentence or occasionally showed him the same old Marvin or an even more uncouth and dissolute Marvin.

  * * *

  Marvin recognized that his new English and Nigerian accounts were puny relative to the marketing opportunities in Iran. Despite its inhospitable climate and vast stretches of desert, Iran had near-limitless potential for farming growth, according to Marvin, because of its ingenious underground system of ancient channels, or qanats, that conveyed water from aquifers in the highlands to the lower levels by gravity. There were 170,000 miles of these channels crisscrossing the country like an underground sprinkler system. Marvin became obsessed with Iran. He said to Jim that with improved affordable crop storage the Shah would push for a modern farm industry and the desert country would soon bloom into a farming colossus ready to exploit nearby export markets. Our sheds will be everywhere, Marvin predicted.

  Jim traveled to Iran. For six weeks he introduced himself to bureaucrats and businesspeople; one new friend led to another who was better situated or knew just the person Jim needed. Eventually, he gained an introduction to Ahmadi Mashid, Minister of Agriculture, an international figure in his own right and an intimate of the Shah. Jim made his case for the easily assembled Gesler Sheds as a sturdy cost-efficient storage solution for small farming communities in the desert. Soon, Jim had established a more personal connection and the men began meeting for drinks and dinner. It was Mashid who introduced Jim to Tehran’s unusual nightlife. By the time Jim returned to the States, he had brokered an order for an astonishing five thousand steel sheds.

  24.

  Jim returned to Canada a conquering hero. The Iran trip augured a different realm of financial success for the company. There were many desert countries in need of staunch portable storage. But for Jim it went beyond money. He reveled in the hushed silence when he walked into the weekly sales meeting packed with a hundred reps. All the men knew Jim had traveled to Iran cold and came back with a $50 million order. Every one of them was thinking, How does he pull it off? What is his magic? Jim couldn’t restrain himself and was grinning ear to ear. The truth was that he could sell more in a year than the rest of them combined. He was that good.

  A week after Jim’s return, he happened to be visiting in the accounting office and overheard one of the girls muttering about Marvin, who had come and gone minutes earlier. Marvin had written a check to Cash for five thousand dollars. As Jim flipped back through the pages of the large checkbook he discovered that his partner had been writing sizable checks for nearly a year. Some were made out to art galleries or auction houses specializing in rare books, others to cash; probably to support his girlfriend, that was Jim’s guess.

  Marvin had never mentioned these checks. Had he been taking money from their other accounts as well? Jim began to sweat. How stupid to trust Marvin with the money, all the money. Jim didn’t begin to understand the finances of their expanding business. He was a traveling man. Was the company worth $20 million? Fifty million? Jim didn’t even know the names of the financial institutions where Marvin invested their money.

  But maybe there was a more innocent explanation, Jim thought, thumbing through the check stubs. After all, the checks were in Marvin’s handwriting for anyone to see. Marvin considered everything in the factory his own: the heavy machinery, the huge rolls of steel that were delivered twice a week. Marvin was the master of this universe, after all, while Jim was an outside guy. It was likely Marvin had used this account simply because it was handy and stealing from Jim had never entered Marvin’s head. Marvin was a spoiled child who needed to have what he wanted when he wanted it.

  But it was stealing nonetheless. Jim shouldn’t allow it to go on, but he felt weary at the thought of confronting Marvin or, worse yet, trying to coax or coerce him. Jim was still awash in the aura of Tehran’s grandeur, its palaces and secret clubs, the dusty evening market that smelled like olives and lamb simmering with curry. Tehran had been the apex of his career and Jim allowed it to play over again in his mind, the victories and glory.
He had been courted by men in the highest places. A $50 million order was agreed upon with a handshake, not even a formal written contract. Jim was feeling his own magic. Marvin’s checks, so what? So what if he grabbed a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand? Marvin was Marvin. Maybe Jim shouldn’t say a word, just live his life as before. They were making millions every month. He reasoned with himself that Marvin needed to deceive and chisel. He told himself they were making a fortune and he should keep his mouth shut.

  But he couldn’t get past the insult. Jim was unnerved by Marvin’s new manners and his secret reading. He stormed into his partner’s office and slammed the door, started shouting, and smacked one of Marvin’s first editions down on his desk so hard he cracked the binding.

  Marvin calmly folded his hands and said, So, what are we going to do, Jim? He never raised his voice or got red in the face. Would you like me to apologize? Okay, I’m terribly sorry. Marvin addressed Jim with a dry, controlled sarcasm he’d never heard before.

  No, that’s not it, Marvin continued, nodding slowly. You want to call the police? Okay, go ahead. Call the police. Here’s the phone.

  He pushed it across the desk to Jim.

  Go ahead, Jim; dial the police.

  Marvin never once pounded the table or made the pleading, petulant expressions of their early years. Jim was doing all the screaming. Jim had only empty threats. Marvin knew where the money was.

  This affront would have driven Jim to madness—fraud enhanced by Marvin’s great books, his love, his new direction, whatever it was—but there wasn’t time to reflect. Easy money was breeding on itself like a disease. Almost immediately Jim needed to fly back to Iran. Jim had hardly seen his wife in three months, but there just wasn’t time. Marvin’s sheds were creating a revolution in desert farming. The partners weren’t speaking, but they were making millions and everything else bent to that.

  25.

  Jim, we eat soon! Mara called from the kitchen. She was preparing a feast, baked chicken, potatoes with onions and chicken fat, an Israeli salad, challah, two bottles of Merlot sitting on the table. For the past week they were drinking wine every night with dinner, as if there were an ongoing celebration. For Jim this was odd and a little unnerving. There were just two of them in the tiny house. The kids were taking an extended visit with their father, who was living a few miles away. After dinner, she had been serving Jim rich desserts. Tonight, it was a moist double chocolate cake.

  Jim’s brother in Canada had sent a check for five hundred and Mara had spent most of it in a week. In a few days it would be gone, and there was no one else to ask. Jim had used up all his favors. He even considered calling Marvin Gesler, who as an old man was now living in Cincinnati, running a prefab-building business. But asking Marvin for help was too degrading, and Jim couldn’t make the call. They hadn’t spoken in more than twenty years.

  He felt a little dizzy when he stood up quickly, and he needed to steady himself on the furniture. His feet hurt. He should monitor his blood pressure and watch his diet, but the stronger impulse was to please her, eat whatever she served him, try to be young for Mara. He could do that if the world stayed away. If her ex-husband didn’t visit, with his weight lifter’s body, Jim could still settle into the fantasy. He liked to imagine himself as he looked at fifty walking softly in the jungle beside Ribamar. During the Brazil years Jim’s face had been lean and he’d had long flowing blond hair, a flat belly, and tan powerful arms.

  Even now Jim wanted to be beautiful, but he was off base with his vanity. Mara was impassioned by the winter of his life, perhaps for conflicting reasons. She had been very close to her stout, difficult father, particularly at the end of his life when he was sick and furious. Every day she had traveled a hundred miles each way to visit him in the hospital. When he died Mara had fallen into a paralysis of despair. That was a half year before she met Jim in Israel. Really, Jim knew very little about his new wife. He knew that she’d been repeatedly abused by an uncle when she was seven years old. She told Jim this story in a matter-of-fact tone, as if she hadn’t been touched deeply. She had been in the Israeli army, where she strip-searched female Palestinians. He knew a few other things, but not much. She didn’t like to talk about her past and he could accept that. Even more, the darkness on all sides of a few events intrigued him and gave their feeble world mystery and thunder.

  In their bedroom, Jim was a stallion with swollen ankles and a racing heart. His increasing infirmity seemed to incite Mara. Every night they made love. She was fierce about their sex and their sessions had become frantic and mercenary: Could they do it again? Could they complete it? She pushed him. Jim could no longer fuck her from behind because he quickly lost his breath. Even with her on top, Jim’s heart raced and skipped half its beats while Mara twisted from side to side and made a strange loud keening sound. Maybe she was feeling desperate about losing her Lion Heart. He preferred to think this, but perhaps it was another motivation, as Phyllis had once speculated. She was certain that Mara would fuck Jim to death and then after collecting her green card she’d remarry her ex-husband unless someone came along who was a better bet. Who could ever prove a thing? Phyllis had said to me. But even if Mara was already planning her future after Jim, when he considered it this had been an honorable deal. He had made much worse. More likely, Mara’s course wasn’t a steady one and her strategy changed with the slightly altered circumstances of their days, with the expansiveness of Jim’s salesmanship, and perhaps even Jim’s story factored into her whimsy.

  * * *

  Sex came after chocolate cake, but first Jim pushed on with his story. On this night he courted Mara with her own part of the world. She hadn’t realized that Jim had spent so much time in the Middle East. With the children out of the house, she could concentrate better, or maybe she was captivated by the palace of gold and a larger-than-life monarch and his empress. In school Mara had learned about Shah Pahlavi, king of kings, who had been a friend of Israel and President Nixon during the time of the Yom Kippur War, when Israel was threatened by a circle of enemies. She was impressed that Jim did business in this elite inner circle.

  We were the biggest in Iran, Jim said with his voice gathering strength. We peppered the country with our sheds, although for the first year very few people knew the name of our company. Jim paused for a moment to make a simple line sketch of a Quonset hut. He said a few words about the ingenuity of the design that allowed for a building without columns that could be easily disassembled and dragged around by nomadic farmers. For the first time, she seemed interested in his sheds, maybe because he was speaking about her part of the world. Jim was so happy that he had her attention. It meant everything to him.

  They were using thousands of our sheds over there, but we weren’t looking for publicity, at least not at first. It was best to be behind the scenes. There were so many people making money, really large amounts. We charged about fifteen thousand for one of our larger buildings, but after everyone got a piece, all the ministers, it went up very high; the buildings ended up costing the government nearly forty thousand. And no one cared. There was so much oil money in 1978. The Shah was a celebrity all over the world because of the oil. Mara, when he walked into a room, people shivered. The Shah had many palaces, seventeen as I recall. Some of the palaces he never visited. He owned three thousand cars. Yes, three thousand. Twenty Rolls-Royces.

  How do you know this?

  I’ll tell you how I know.

  * * *

  On September 16, 1978, there was a major earthquake near the city of Tabas in eastern Iran. At the time, Jim was in Tehran, more than two hundred miles away, and the aftershocks could be felt there for two days. The first news on the radio reported five thousand deaths; then it rose to fifteen thousand. It was a terrible tragedy. Hospitals were destroyed along with most of the city and surrounding villages. Thousands of wounded were lying in the rubble or in dusty fields. The phone lines in Tehran were jammed with calls, but somehow Marvin got through. It was a v
ery brief conversation, because at this point in their history the partners were barely speaking. Give them away, Jim. Do it. Do it today. That was all that Marvin said.

  Despite his rancor, Jim never doubted Marvin’s craft. In the city of Birjand, less than fifty miles from the disaster site, their company had fifteen hundred sheds stored on pallets, awaiting shipment to potato farms on the eastern border near Afghanistan. Within twenty-four hours Jim had arranged to have them trucked to Tabas, where he met the convoy and rapidly assembled work crews. On the outskirts of the devastation, a city of sheds was erected in five days and nights, hospitals and shelters for twenty-five thousand wounded and homeless.

  When Jim returned to Tehran, a close-up of his exhausted sun-blistered face was on the front pages of all seven daily papers. In a second picture, a man in attractive Western clothes—again it was Jim—was shown toiling in a field with a dozen bereaved peasant workers. This was a powerful visual image. In the weeks following Marvin’s public relations brilliancy, Jim was treated like a hero. He did TV and print interviews. Government officials, large landowners, and scores of bazarris from all over Iran lined up to order corrugated Gesler Sheds that had suddenly become a symbol of friendship between Iran and the West. Jim graciously wrote the orders.

  In November, he received an invitation to dine in the storied Green Palace with the Shah and his beautiful wife, Empress Farah Pahlavi. What a smart, lovely woman, Jim said to Mara, while recalling Farah’s sharply sculpted face. The empress was worldly, with a broad knowledge of government, literature, and art, but also she was fun-loving, curious, and fine-tuned to the moment.