The Dream Merchant

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by Fred Waitzkin


  Ribamar knew Setimbrano from thirty years earlier, but recently this impressive self-educated man had been working in a garimpo three hundred kilometers to the south where the gold was found by divers dredging in the Madeira River. The riverbed was called the big hole of pain because many workers got sick and died. For years the illness in the muddy river was linked to black magic, but eventually garimpeiros learned that the hole of pain gave them radiation poisoning along with gold nuggets. Nonetheless, most garimpeiros remained on the job, the river’s peril heightening their gold fever along with the passion of cantina nights. The life here is an illusion, Setimbrano would say, savoring his beer while Ribamar nodded gravely. Each night men crowded into Jim’s cantina as Frank Sinatra crooned into the dark rain forest.

  After eighteen months, there were more than five hundred men camping out on Jim’s land, digging holes; some of them were twelve or fifteen feet deep. It was hot, punishing work. Eventually, every one of the men walked into the clearing to sell gold to Jim for 60 percent of what it would get in Manaus and to book passage home in Jim’s plane. There was no other way out. Even in groups, walking out of the forest was very risky because of animals and the likelihood of being killed by bandits for their savings.

  To return home, a man put his name on Jim’s list and waited around the camp until there was a seat available. It usually took four or five days. Meanwhile, the worker rented a hammock, ate Martha’s delicious food. At night he drank a beer and felt intoxicated by the music, and the girls were so young and playful. Not just sexy, they were tender and caring. They asked about his hardship and great plans, caressed his face. Luis was right about the girls. How could a man resist, particularly a man who had endured the jungle for five months? A small lump of gold dust hardly mattered when a miner was bringing home a kilo. And just beyond the clearing, the jungle was saturated with more gold. It was like fruit. There were nuggets out there worth ten thousand, even more. If only a man kept digging he would strike it rich and never work another day.

  After four days in camp, drinking pinga and enjoying the girls, the garimpeiro had no more gold left to exchange with Jim for reals, not even enough for a seat on the plane to Manaus. He needed to tramp back to his deep hole in the forest and begin shoveling more mud and gravel, slowly accumulating gold until he could return to the city and his family. Then the same thing happened again unless his difficult work was interrupted by an anaconda in the river or he succumbed to malaria.

  The life in this place is an illusion, Setimbrano said. All the men knew it. And yet they savored it. They dreamed of striking it rich until they could no longer manage the backbreaking work. When elderly garimpeiros lived out their days in Manaus they reminisced about the perils they’d braved, the cantina nights and fervent dreams while sleeping deeply in a hammock between the trees.

  * * *

  One morning Phyllis was awakened by the chauffeur’s wife. There were fifteen men standing outside the gate to Jim’s estate, one of them with a warrant. Soon the attack force of cops and IRS agents was combing the main residence and Jim’s game house for hidden wall safes. They found three. They looked for cash, securities, jewelry, and any records that might help their case, but all they discovered were a few porno tapes and two small bags of marijuana. One of the men snickered. The agents catalogued Jim’s boats, cars, furniture, everything of any value. They pretended Phyllis wasn’t there, watching. They went through her underwear. They took Jim’s paintings off the walls. She worried they’d be damaged and raised her voice. The agents were dismantling her world, piece by piece. Everything Phyllis owned was handled. They took her engagement ring. She should have sold it. Jim was right.

  Many months earlier, before he’d left for Brazil, Jim said to her, If the police come hide your passport. When she had the chance, she took the passport from her makeup drawer and slipped it into her pocketbook. She believed in Jim. She was listening for his voice for guidance. The passport would save her. She could fly to him in Manaus. The police gave her and the boy two hours to leave the house.

  Michael shivered violently while he clutched Ava’s ratty little dog. What he must have thought while Phyllis rushed up the stairs to pack some of their clothes. The chauffeur and his wife were right after all. Hell and madness and cruelty had descended upon them. The boy’s mother was gone. The house was gone, almost gone. Soon they would take his dog.

  One of the men drove off with Phyllis’s car. In a minute, she had been dealt a whole new reality. She had this crazy teenager, no money, and no home. There wasn’t any way to reach Jim. He was still living his life in the jungle as though he had millions up north to back up his play.

  She made a quick call to her sister. By nightfall, Phyllis, the boy and dog were staying with her sister in a small one-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto. The chauffeur and cook were gone. The dream house was gone. The only things of value Phyllis had been able to save were two signed Monet prints Jim had given to her before he’d left for Brazil. They had been sitting in a framing shop in Toronto.

  * * *

  Phyllis tried to befriend the boy, but he was fierce and very strange. He was repelled by tenderness. Michael simmered and you didn’t want to touch him. He would burn you. Phyllis wondered if he could accept love from anyone, his mother? He fixated on the idea of dyeing his hair green as though it were crucial to his welfare. Phyllis gently tried to talk him out of it but ended up helping him do it in the bathroom. They made a mess and laughed at the green dye on the tiles. It didn’t matter to Michael that people on the street looked at him. But he let Phyllis in, just a little, maybe because she was harmless, just barely managing, and she was trying to understand things that were beyond her horizon. Michael had this cutting off-the-wall humor that made her laugh and cringe until tears were rolling down her cheeks. Then, in a heartbeat, he’d close down. She could not imagine Jim tolerating such a person.

  * * *

  Every eight or nine days, occasionally he could stall it off for two weeks, Jim, Luis, and three gunmen flew back to Manaus with gold Jim had collected from his garimpeiros. Seeing the girl was the best part of these trips. Jim was eager to tell her what was happening at the camp. Soon they would build an enormous sluice box, a hundred and fifty feet long. Everything would change for the better with the sluice box in place. The gold would flow into their hands. The real life would begin.

  She nodded, tried to imagine what he was talking about. She felt his urgency. Jim no longer had patience for the view outside his picture window of fruit trees and lethargic caimans. His whole manner had changed. His body had grown harder.

  Jim could not afford impediments. He was running out of cash. He tried to pick up the pace. He urged his men to work harder, the small construction crew and the gunmen who resented doing manual labor. He needed Luis to make phone calls, find a more trustworthy gold buyer, locate a shop to fabricate aluminum cross members for the sluice box that would make his fortune. The sluice box became everything. There was a long list of things to do. He needed Luis to get moving. But there was a distracted look in Luis’s eyes that Jim didn’t like. Jim pushed them all. Although Luis he had to coddle along.

  Jim pulled out the scroll of old promises. He was well practiced, having recited them, with variations, for more than thirty years. The gold was for all of them, he pledged. Soon, very soon, Jim’s gunmen would never again need to risk their skins for ten bucks a day. Jim became emotional. He cared for all of his guys. It was true.

  He lured them ahead. That was also true. He offered them attractive packages. He’d pay them a little less now, five or six dollars a day instead of ten, and give them much more later. Jim could negotiate deals, even in the steaming jungle. Soon they would all be driving around Manaus in big, powerful sedans. He spoke beneficently of bonuses and little partnerships. He’d take them all to Rio for lavish vacations or he’d take them to Vegas, why not? He’d fly them to Las Vegas.

  Jim summoned the endless future of lavish cars and boats and
idyllic islands off the beaten track. Jim had always mainly sold happiness and optimism. The gold was for all of his children, not just Jim. Just work with him, put in the hours, take a little less now. Because it’s coming. He talked to each man. He probed for the hot button, even in the absurdly remote camp. What do you want out of life, really want? Jim’s hired guns smiled at him with their fat greasy faces and sweaty camouflage shirts; they shook their heads and grinned, even the ones who hadn’t visited emotion in half a lifetime. They called him Jim in a lingering way that implied gringo maluco, crazy American, who will do anything to win.

  Jim promised to make Luis and Ribamar wealthy men. Soon Jim’s top guys would never have to work another day in their lives.

  Ribamar stood outside the circle, watching and smoking a cigarette, listening to the sounds beyond the clearing. He was a sentinel among fools. Jim cast him a glance. No more time for the music, Ribamar, not now. Ribamar nodded. He drew his own conclusions.

  * * *

  Except for the girl, trips to Manaus felt to Jim like bloated time, dragging his heels, waiting for Luis. Too much eating and sitting around Brazilian steak restaurants, driving to stores flanked by his big men mopping their faces. He put off calling Phyllis—tried to force the dying world out of his head. He had work to do back in the camp. They were rolling, and the gathering pace of it thrilled him. He needed to be back there. He wanted to start cutting timbers for the sluice box. He needed Luis, and more often than not he couldn’t find him. Luis was irreplaceable for his gift for drawing talent from a hat. But Jim also counted on Luis to translate when he sold the gold to one of the local buyers, and twenty other things. Jim wasn’t getting the best prices. It was impossible to negotiate in Portuguese.

  Without Luis, Jim had too much time to think and he felt dragged down by his own deficiencies. He wasn’t sure if they were making a profit or even breaking even. He had never learned to read spreadsheets. He didn’t know how to do research. Jim didn’t have patience for such things. He wasn’t Marvin Gesler.

  Luis went off to his women friends. He needed time for himself. He tried to tell Jim that something was wrong. Luis had become afflicted by dread. For no reason his heart would begin racing. He had premonitions. It was something more cataclysmic than worry about disease or animals. An expression would pass across his face, terror and loathing for the work they were doing in the jungle, as though he were casting a warning.

  Luis, what’s wrong, man? Why are you looking at me that way? Don’t you see what we’re doing here! Luis covered his face with his hand, a delicate, girly gesture, trying to erase his expression. He tried to change himself for Jim, but Luis was losing his grip. He ran off to his girls for solace and to search for himself apart from the camp and Jim’s unwavering convictions. Luis dreamed of corpses crowding him in his own bed. One day, out of the blue, he grasped Jim’s arm and said, I know you are leaving me, going back to America. Please, Jim, don’t go. Luis’s face was awash and he looked a little green and teary. Jim shook his head, no. I’m not going anywhere.

  Jim needed the gold. He had to have it. It never occurred to him that he might lose the house on Lake Ontario. He was jarred by this news much more than by the reappearance of Ava. He’d always believed that she would show up one day. Even after learning that the government had seized his factories, he never thought that they could take his house. With that place sitting on the lake he could thumb his nose at Marvin Gesler. He could succeed in the gold business or fail because he had the house behind him; it was worth millions; he had been esteemed for owning such a place. Now he was playing without a safety net. He only had the girl whom he didn’t understand (but he loved her more and more) and the gold, which only came in trickles. Jim could make it work in his favor. He’d done that as a boy, come back from zero. He’d saved his family when they were starving. These were the stakes he liked best, all or nothing. He could do it, rev up the energy and conviction and win.

  Jim showered all the men with promises and hope. He inspired them, even Luis, though he came ahead half-crazed.

  Luis wrested the idea out of his tortured being. It was so obvious. Why not bring Iliana into their operation? She had studied geology at the university. She was available, waiting for the chance to launch her career. What would be the risk? Jim needed a real expert who knew where to look for gold. They had five hundred people out on the land, guessing where to dig. At least talk to her. Maybe she would make some suggestions about where to construct the sluice box. She could save them months of trial and error.

  * * *

  What a smile she had, broad and captivating and self-assured. She spread her geologic maps and aerial photographs on Jim’s rough-planked dining room table. Iliana was wearing rayon pants, an off-white silk shirt, and sandals with three-inch stiletto heels, everything classy and expensive. Iliana put the stakes right out there with maps, charts, the insider lingo of meandering rivers, black shale, granite, earth fissures. She was here for considerable money. She would deliver. He should take a long look. She sold herself like a Mercedes.

  That Hollywood smile and great legs made him a little breathless. She laid out her ideas. There were things to look for, drainage patterns, other clues about the evolution of the landscape. She was very firm and sure-handed. She would cost a lot. A lot. Iliana was high maintenance. And Jim felt the danger, right then, in the first minutes. She was Ramon’s girl. They would be in the jungle together. That tension was a part of her proposal. She liked risks and money. Iliana was very smart. She could deliver the gold.

  The smells of Angela’s dinner seemed to seal the deal. Jim always relished her stew with meat and potatoes. He remarked on the smells from the kitchen, but there was an expression on Iliana’s face, some mild distaste.

  Listen, for all her fancy geology talk, Jim didn’t know if Iliana was a real scientist. He knew she’d cost plenty. She appealed to him and that’s how Jim did business. He went with his gut. In minutes, maybe in the first minute, she’d become his hired expert. His mind was racing. She could take over the Manaus end. She could sell the gold for him in town, get better prices than Luis. Jim wouldn’t have to worry if Luis was off with his girlfriends. Luis didn’t know the ins and outs of selling gold. She did. Maybe she was feeding Jim a line, but he didn’t think so. He didn’t comparison shop. When he liked a car he bought it right off the showroom floor while he felt first love. Iliana was a beauty.

  Angela served the food and Jim kept his eyes on one of the maps. All of a sudden he felt ashamed about Angela. He didn’t want Iliana to know that his girl was a peasant with no education, no good clothes; she was dirty every night from planting in the field.

  Angela was clearly pleased with herself. She had prepared his favorite meal, and he nodded, pretending to be focused on big business. Then she was back in the kitchen. It was an awkward situation, but he started to enjoy it. Jim got away with things his whole life. He always believed that he could slide through and win.

  He and Iliana were drinking red wine. She was beautiful all right, long legs, lustrous black hair. She liked to run her hands through her hair. He wanted to touch her hand and then he did, let it linger for a moment, making his point. She smiled at him. All of this was happening very fast.

  He’d eaten half his plate before he noticed she wasn’t touching her food.

  What’s wrong? he asked.

  I’m not very hungry.

  Come on. You don’t like meat or something? It’s delicious.

  Do you know what she’s cooked for you?

  It’s a stew.

  She wrinkled her nose. Jim, the name of it is nutria. It means “rat.” A big rat.

  Iliana spoke perfect English with barely a trace of an accent. She had spent three years in Chicago going to high school while living with an aunt.

  When I was a kid, I’d smell them roasting behind the house, she continued, the dinner for our servants. In my country, poor people will eat anything. She’s feeding you rat.

  Ili
ana shook her head, to brush aside the subject. He smelled the light fragrance of rose and lavender. Then he breathed her again; he couldn’t restrain himself. She nudged him ahead with hints and dares. What arrangement do you have in mind, Jim? She smiled. It was a large question. She had a very big ambition. He needed a lot of help. He needed to find the gold and sell it at the best price. Jim knew where this was leading, but maybe it was okay. If she could find the gold.

  She backed off a little, tucked her feet up underneath her. She told him a little about her background. Her father had owned an anthracite mine a hundred miles north of Manaus. After returning from the States she had studied geology and mining at the university so she could help her dad with his operation. She adored her father. During her last year in school, he got sick and soon after he lost the business. He died one year later. It happened so quickly. Iliana was biting her lip. Everything was lost. She’d trusted her father. Her dreams were linked to his. Each month she sent money back to her mother, who was looking after Iliana’s three younger sisters. All this tragedy had made her angry and very directed. There were many sides to Iliana. She wanted Jim to see this. But she always kept her eye on the mark. She could come at you from many angles. She was faster than he was, and probably smarter. She was hard to locate. No one possessed her.

  Jim nodded.

  Look, Jim, I’m not looking for a salary, not even a good salary.

  Jim nodded and pushed his plate away.

  She waited until it was almost awkward. Jim, I think this could work out. For both of us, I do. She took a breath and then the softness was all gone. You’re finding gold on your property every day. Not so much, but every day your men take some from the ground. That’s important. Many areas in the Amazonas region have no gold. There is a chance to be wealthy, exceedingly wealthy. You need to find a dense concentration or you’re wasting time. There are clues. I can help you with this part. There are signs to look for. Maybe you are sleeping on top of it. I’ll find the gold and I’ll sell it for you. I can do this, but I don’t want to be cut out. I’m not coming into this for a few dollars. I’m not looking for a salary. I want a deal based upon what I produce.

 

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