I twisted my brain into Spanish mode, picked up the phone and dialed Sr. Pujol in Barcelona. Lucky guy, he had inherited the whole group from his father. He is also an unlucky guy, he will have to speak to me in Spanish. Catalans don't like doing that, but I don't use Catalan for the simple reason that I can't speak it. In any case it's not a language really, no wonder Franco banned it. Most of it is Spanish with the last syllable chopped off, and the remainder is derived from French and English and maybe a word or two from somewhere else. And all of it spoken with a ghastly, grating cacophony of nauseating vowel noises.
Sr. Pujol sounded nervous. They'd taken the decision; when could I start? I said maybe in about two months (a bit of vacation time wouldn't hurt me, and with Jeremy's money there, I’d make it a luxury one). He said that might be a problem, could I make it sooner. I said I didn't know, but I would try, I would let him know as soon as I were in a position to do so. Was he in agreement with the conditions we discussed last time? Yes, he was, no problems there. He still got in a Catalan word at the end, 'Adeu, Sr. O'Donoghue', which I did not replicate. 'Adios, Sr. Pujol, hasta la próxima' is what he got from me. Set the tone. Man, it sounds as if their losses are big. Whenever they can't wait, the problem is a big one. Great news, the bigger the problem, in my experience, the easier it usually is to fix things.
I finished off the newspaper, put on a jacket, took Mr. Brown downstairs with me again and rang Monika's bell.
She opened the door. She was looking extra good today, not much make-up, wearing a skirt, she's still got the legs for it, but also wearing a bra. Never mind, can't blame her, restaurant coming up, neighbors all over the place and why shouldn't she comply with the customs of the human race anyway, none of my business.
"Hi Peter," she said and we gave each other the mandatory two kisses. This stirred things up as usual, she does it on purpose, makes it seem natural, but I know she knows and I know she knows I know.
"How about Zum Grünen Baum today?", she asked, "it's sunny and warm."
"Cloudy and windy," I said.
"Was," she said. "And now it's sunny and no wind. You won't need your jacket."
She was right. I stuffed the dog's lead into my pocket, put my jacket over my arm and off we went down to the river. The Green Tree pub sits back from the river Main, separated from the river by parkland, lots of old trees and home to plenty of wild geese, ducks and a couple of swans. Great home cooking and an open-air Biergarten under the trees. Monika and I sat down and Mr. Brown went off to pursue his canine pursuits which, however, did not include trying to murder any amphibians. We all have lessons to learn in life and he had had to learn his.
A big sign also proclaims this pub-cum-restaurant to be 'Chez Marie-Anne' and here she came now across the grass to take our orders. A German girl with a French mother.
"Peter," she said with a happy smile. "The wandering minstrel. Back home again to the lovely Monika?" Said with a sideways grin at Monika, I would like to know what they discuss when I'm not here. Kisses all round again, but without any stirrings. First of all she avoids any squashing—at least with me and presumably with Monika as well, although you never know—and secondly she has a husband, younger than me too. But the poor bugger is the cook, he spends most of his time in the kitchen and who can tell how the oceans' tides may one day flow? No, that's not really fair, let me tell you he is a nice guy, I like him, I can talk to him and we sometimes do some cycling together. Even so, you never know…
"Back home again to the lovely Monika," I agreed. "I always miss her tremendously. It’s almost as bad as not being able to see you for weeks on end."
They both gave a little snigger at this, men are so transparent. But they love the charm, they all do, it brings that little bit of extra happiness into their lives. They love the flirting, in particular when they know that you're not really flirting, that you represent no danger to them. As far as they can judge and at the present point in time anyway.
Fish and white wine for me, fish and white wine and a salad for Monika. I leaned back and lit up a cigarette.
"You should give that up one day, you know," said Monika for the thousandth time. "It's not good for you, it damages all kinds of things."
"So I'm told, so I'm told, and mainly by you. And you're right, I agree with you, it's obvious. But I don't want a lot of children," I said with a grin, referring to one of the 'damages' she had mentioned last time.
"It's not that Peter, you might not have the time to have any children if you carry on for much longer with that stinking habit. And don't start on again about all those eighty year olds still puffing away."
"No intention of doing so, Monika. Those poor buggers are few and far between and in any case they haven't been able to breathe properly for a couple of decades. Some kind of life that is, I'd rather die at sixty. But where's your problem, you can't still get pregnant can you?"
A heavy one that, but we both did it, it was just our way.
"I don't know; probably not and that is a good thing too. Such an event would have a serious negative effect on our sex lives and just imagine, you would have to practice coitus interruptus whenever the baby needed its nappies changing. The benefits of the older woman, Peter, never underestimate the benefits of the older woman."
She laughed at this, the sound floating away under the trees, across the grass and over to the river and the ducks.
"O.K., I'll let you make me give up one day," I said. "But I am not a chain smoker and I'll just carry on for a little while under the auspices of that old adage, if you don't mind."
"Which old adage?"
"That smoking is stupid. But that he or she who never does anything stupid from time to time, is stupid."
"Oh very clever. And to which idiot is that quote attributable, might I ask? No, don't tell me, he's obviously a complete asshole."
"Why do you say 'he'?"
"Because a 'she' would never come up with something as inane as that."
"O.K., it was a 'he', but he's no longer with us. And in any case, he was referring to getting drunk. I just adapted it for my purposes."
Our meal arrived, some pretty young teenage girl who hadn't yet learned how to talk. But now was not an occasion for a training session. And it would possibly be a waste of time anyway, maybe only three brain cells available on the receiving end.
"You know something Peter? You are a lovely man. As I've told you before, you have your defects, but you are a lovely man. And here I am, sitting with a lovely man, in a lovely place, and the sun is shining and the ducks are quacking and the fish is good and the wine is good and Mr. Brown will soon be back to say hello, and you are a lovely man."
I think her eyes had begun to glisten a little while she was saying this, I couldn't be sure. But in fact I am not a lovely man, you know it and I know it, cynics are not particularly adorable persons. There are plenty of men, thousands, maybe millions, who would be far better for her than I. On the other hand, it must be said, there are plenty of men who would be worse for her than I. Just take a look around.
"Monika, you err in your judgment," I said. "But I'm glad you do. I'm glad you do because it means I can continue knowing one of the most stupendous women wandering around on the face of this planet. And I mean that."
The old charm again. But I did mean it, the cynic is not present on this one. Here is this woman, existing on next to no money, enjoying the sun and the ducks and the meal and Mr. Brown and me and everything else as well. Enjoying life in fact, the same as I do. Except that I wouldn't be if I had to eke out a living like she did, I know that for a fact. Some woman she is, no doubt about it. She knows the secret of life and the secret of living, and one day I might need to try and grasp that myself, who knows.
"Oh Peter," she sighed. She was happy, but she was sad as well, you could tell.
"I'm just lucky enough to be able to know someone like you, that's all," I said, and I meant that as well, and it made her look really weepy. Happy weepy.
Marie-Anne came by a
nd we ordered two more glasses of wine. We lapsed into silence while we finished our meal, another good thing between us, we didn't always have to talk. And in my little book of life's policies and procedures, that is a major indicator of how much a man and a woman like each other and has nothing to do with the millions of poor sods who never say anything to each other because they have absolutely nothing to say.
Mr. Brown came back. He was tired, he'd done a lot, and he settled himself under the table to snooze or philosophize or both.
I watched the river and the geese and the ducks, the swans were off somewhere else for a while. The bank on the other side was also green, also trees. The Main being a fairly wide river, it has a lot of barge traffic, long industrial transporters going east to west and vice versa, but even these were peaceful, sunk deep into the water, a slight chugging noise drifting over to where we sat as they passed us by. I watched the people walking along, plenty of girls testing out their summer dresses. Good for them; at that age jeans and slacks should be banned between the months of May and September for all non-fat women, and they would be if I were in charge of the world. Just joking.
"Looking for a younger one?" Monika asked with a grin.
"Monika, I am not joking," I said. "I wouldn't want a single one of them to swap places with you sitting on that bench. Not even five of them all at the same time, believe me."
"I believe you," she said, "and in any case you couldn't deal with five at the same time, you couldn't even deal with two the way you smoke." At this she beamed, like me she delights in the harmless sexual innuendoes. And in the not so harmless ones also.
"Monika, if you and I were together, I wouldn't be able to anyway. I would be walking around on crutches every morning, consuming vast amounts of vitamins during the day, swigging Viagra in the evening and dreading the next life-threatening bedtime. And I would be permanently gaunt and haggard-looking and none of those young girls would want to even say hello, let alone anything else, unless of course they thought that I was Mick Jagger after a night on the town, in which case you might, but even then only might, be confronted with some kind of a problem."
"Peter, you really are the sweetest man," she said.
No I'm not. What I was really thinking about was one of the greatest short stories ever concocted, 'Girls in their Summer Dresses', a story which is not a story, written by one of the greatest masters of short fiction ever to live, an American called Irwin Shaw. Read that and you will get the truth about what and how we men think, irrespective of our age. And that's the way I was thinking, like the husband in that story. Women don't know how we think, or at least they don't think we think like that all the time. Nor would they want to know anyway. And in any case they wouldn't believe it, even if a bishop were to swear to the truth of it a thousand times with his hand on his pump—his heart I mean to say, my apologies. No, I can't blame them. Any female with a reasonable set of neurons would have to consider it a grossly fraudulent exaggeration. Which it is not of course, no way.
It was getting late, becoming cool again, and so I collected a nice bone from Marie-Anne, paid the bill, and we walked along the river for a while and then went home.
Back in the apartment, I gave Mr. Brown some food, made sandwiches and a coffee for myself, put some Rachmaninov into the player, and played some chess on the computer. And I didn't forget to give Mr. Brown his bone before I went to bed. I picked up a book of Roald Dahl short stories—I tend re-read his stories from time to time and I'll re-read some of them several times more before I die—and eventually dropped off into the land of Nod.
DAY 8
I woke up at a civilized hour. It was raining. Mr. Brown, I thought to myself, you don't realize what a problem a bit of water is for us humans. But a walk is your due, there's not much you ask for and you give more than that in return. To me and Monika both. And to the children in the park. A pity human beings aren't a bit more like you my friend, this poor old suffering lump of rock of ours would appreciate the difference. No threats of nuclear bombs blowing its guts apart for starters.
But the morning is not a good time for philosophizing. It is the time for raincoats and umbrellas and doggie walks and good moods. I took the usual route to pick up the IHT, I collected the laundry, and I decided to have breakfast back at the ranch.
Mr. Brown shook himself all over the hallway and settled down on his mat in the living room. I made some coffee and toast, Chivers orange marmalade oh yes, and started on the newspaper. Today was going to be an easy day, I decided. I am one of those lucky people capable of working very hard for very long; but I am also one of those lucky people able to appreciate the pleasure to be found in doing absolutely nothing, or at least nothing of any import. Good for the soul, again, whatever that is.
And here he was again, Jeremy Parker rising up from the depths of my neuron cupboard. Right in the middle of an article about why we should start to trust the nice, incredibly honest Iranians. The same old human shit, century after century. You would think the clowns had never even heard of the Trojan Horse, or of Chamberlain in Munich or all the rest of it. You have to bow down to that member of the 10% who said that history was merely a record of the human species' inability to recognize its own stupidity; let alone learn from it. Right on the nail.
Yes, Jeremy Parker. The €100,000 man, maybe the €200,000 man. I'll check it right now in fact, leave them to argue and argue and argue about the nice Iranians who would never dream of blasting Israel into Allah's version of hell and back. I opened the laptop, clicked away into my bank. And there it was, another €100,000. Large credits in my bank account generate as much joy for me as the joy experienced by a rat living in an army shithouse. My mood metamorphosed from good to superlative without further ado.
I used the whole lot to short the Eurostoxx 50 some more. This index has a lot of banks in it and if there is a collapse by year-end or even next year-end, I will be selling off and looking at some more nice credits to my account. Mind you, the certificate I use was issued by the least risky bank, I make sure of that, they are all capable of going bust these days, a result of being managed by gambling morons who are not even obliged to risk a small portion of their own money. And then you lose the lot, or most of it at best. Because even their customer asset insurances are a dishonest joke.
And so what about friend Jeremy now? His money is real and he keeps his promises. But he is as deranged as a rat when its army shithouse has been abandoned and it can't get out. No doubt about it, he is shipping money all over the place in a maniacal delirium.
I don't know why I've got rats on the mind today, perhaps it’s because of the banks, or rather the bankers. They gamble away because their banks can earn a lot more money by investing in high risk products. Which means bigger bonuses for them, millions of euros, dollars, pounds, whatever. It's like putting your money on a single roulette number, the return is bigger. And if the number doesn't come up? Ah hah, therein lies the difference. This money is not theirs, it's yours and mine. And this is what happens when you separate authority from responsibility, as I keep trying to tell my consultancy clients. If the law required the gambling bankers to personally risk financial ruin for the rest of their lives, they wouldn't be taking those risks, they would be investing safely, they would be taking a few million less in bonuses and they wouldn't complain. But our lawmakers—the political pin-stripes—don't have the brain to organize something like that. And if you are a voter, no complaints please, because you are the reason why the pin-stripes are where they are. And then the bankers spend the rest of our money on beautiful and expensive bank buildings in the most expensive parts of the most expensive cities in the world, followed by those ridiculous and unearned bonuses—never a problem, choose your board members well and overpay them, and they'll approve your overpayments as well—and what's left over goes on exorbitant dividends. So our voters don't need to wonder where our money has gone or why our banks have insufficient reserves, they voted for the pin-stripes, not me. Me, I do
n't have any worries, I just watch the whole shebang from the comfort of my theater seat. I let the waves carry me up and down. I don't vote.
So let me analyze. Jeremy's fantasies do not include money. The money is real enough. And the potential for another €400,000 of this real money has now gone from possible to probable. That is the upside, nothing to add. The downside is that I have to attend a few more meetings and am open to whatever risks a full-blown lunatic, whether escaped from his asylum or not, can represent.
I considered. The meetings are not a problem, nothing to add. The risks, on the other hand, are as real as the money and are, in all logic, undefinable, so there's no point in trying to define them. But he seems normal, and his offices and the people in them seem normal, the dream herself seems normal, and he himself sounds like a non-dangerous specimen of this particular form of insanity. I cannot be sure of course, the risks are there, no doubt about it. But I estimate them to be of limited magnitude. Add to that the fact that life is an adventure anyway, and I conclude that the size of the potential benefits outweigh the size of the potential risks. Decision taken. I would be returning to the Royal Strand Towers on Wednesday.
I looked out of the window. The rain had stopped, the sky had brightened, and my superlative mood said coffee and a cigarette on the balcony, finish the newspaper.
And then, with the sky still behaving itself, I decided it was cycling time for me and marathon training for Mr. Brown. Along the river, along past Eddersheim, Mr. Brown is fast and fit but he can't keep up, plus he has other interests along the way. So I stop now and again to let him catch up. On the way back he was tiring fast and was more than happy to do some philosophizing under the table at the small restaurant where I stopped for an early evening meal. And by the time we got back home he was exhausted, not too exhausted for his food of course, but after that he collapsed onto his mat and fell asleep, no philosophizing this evening.
I dropped downstairs for a coffee with Monika, say goodbye. When was I coming back? I didn't know but at least in time for your birthday, don't worry, nothing will stop me. You are not only a lovely man Peter, she said, you are a lucky one. Tomorrow you get poached eggs on toast from me and you get a high pressure weather zone for your driving, 25 degrees and sunny.
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