Candlelight Stories

by Andrzej Galicki

  "Is it possible that this man was once married?" he thought, still looking around the room. No trace of women, even women from the past remained, like a vase for flowers or some hand-made napkin, anything of the sort. Then again, perhaps such great sorrow smashed his heart after the loss of his beloved wife that he had removed from his view all traces of her? With a philosopher, anything was possible.

  Ludwik came back from the kitchen with two glasses. Paul put on the table the prints of the stock charts made on the hotel printer.

  "Well, this is what I needed," muttered Ludwik after reviewing the charts one by one. "Today I will start to analyze it."

  "Technical analysis or analysis using the tenets of Socrates?" Paul teased with a smirk.

  "Neither. The Ludwik's analysis. I've done preliminary research and roughly understand the market situation. Generally, all coincide with what you said last time. The situation is clear. The great road roller is getting closer and closer to the edge, and now it has come too close to it to stop. What is beyond this edge? Maybe a small hole. Maybe a precipice. We do not know, but we'll find it out, and soon."

  "Are you sure you are not overreacting? I read yesterday in the Washington Post that we just come out of the hole. They have some good financial analysts over there."

  Ludwik poured the Siwucha, a pleased expression on his face as he watched the murky liquid fill his glass.

  "He’s predicting" thought Paul. He knew that some could tell the future with coffee grounds or tea leaves, but with booze? About this he had never heard. They drank.

  "Newspapers? TV?" Ludwik spoke." There is a single term for them all in English, which you certainly know very well: "Bullshit". We live in an age ruled by money. All media are controlled by the corporations to whom they belong, and in turn, by those that finance them. You do not even need a philosopher to understand that. But I have to convince you that a good philosopher can predict the movements of the stock exchange, if only he wants to. Of course he can. You just have to understand that this will have a purely rhetorical meaning. I do not run a financial consultation firm. In your doings, your own brains should guide you."

  They drank the next puppy glass.

  Ludwik was getting more and more passionate about his theory. He obviously swallowed a bug. Pawel never had any doubt about his extraordinary talents. The real challenge was to persuade him to do something. Once his feathers had been ruffled, he did not rest until he had proved his case.

  "When we meet next time, I will present you with my charts.” Ludwik went on. “For now, based on what I can smell, I can assure you that there is no possibility of a swift exit from the hole. Do not believe in that crap. The stocks will, of course, move up and down, but a serious dip is still ahead of us. Your Citi Bank is not interesting, too stable for now. Much more interesting is the other bank, Goldman Sachs. They are extremely strong. Can you believe that US Secretary of the Treasury was before the CEO of Goldman Sachs? Do you know what that means? Other banks will fall, but this will go up a little, and it's probably soon, in two or three days. Bring me the weekly chart of Goldman Sachs please. And another one, that of Lehman Brothers bank. They may be a surprise."

  Paul promised to bring the two graphs. They drank again, silent for a while.

  "How did she die?" Pawel asked suddenly.

  Ludwik stopped and stared at the wall somewhere over the head of Pawel.

  "Just died, that’s it," he said finally.

  Pawel knew that nothing more could be drawn from him for now. Besides, he didn’t like to be intrusive. They decided the date for next week’s meeting.

  On his way back, Pawel traversed the same route as before. He was not surprised anymore by seeing western cars on the streets of Warsaw. More and more of Pawel he discovered in himself, less and less of Paul.

  The next day, he bought by Internet sizable stake in Goldman Sachs. "Let's see what happens, " he thought. "What will come of the first attempt."

  He did not believe in the ability of a philosopher, but he believed in the possibility of Ludwik. This guy always managed to achieve what he was aiming for. Or at least, he had so far. For instance, with Helena, she seemed once to be unattainable for Ludwik. But as it turned out, that was for a limited time only. Finally, he got her also, the stubborn dude.

  As he walked, he could not help but wonder.

  How did he do it?

  ***

  It was their last private party.

  Helena was set to start her studies at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, Pawel at the Politechnica of Warsaw and Lutek - everybody knew where he was going. They met this time at the place of Helena, a big, nice apartment on Avenue Ujazdowskie. Her parents were out of Warsaw so she promised to throw a fantastic party. And it was fantastic. They drank wine, listened to their favorite music and danced. Sometime around midnight, when they had all consumed enough alcohol to put them in a state of sweet oblivion, Helena pulled the sleeve of Pawel:

  "Come on, it’s our song." With the notes of "Love me tender" drifting in the background, they started dancing and Elvis' voice, soft as velvet, made them both float in the air as they swayed to the rhythm of the melody without thinking about anything real. Nothing else mattered. Only the two of them existed, lost in some far-off place, thinking the melody would never end. It did end however, and as soon as it did, Helena pulled Pawel towards her bedroom. When they were inside, she locked the door.

  She let him undress her and they plunged into this new game, so far reserved only for the adult world, the world in which they found themselves suddenly in without the warning. That evening, Helena ceased to be a virgin and Pawel, though it was not his first time, felt that this time was not the same as before. It was something more, something more serious.

  "I’ve been wanting this for so long and it finally happened," Helena said later. "I wanted to do it with you because if you were not here, I'd have to opt for this bloated crocodile, Ludwik. I do not know how I could survive it. He would probably consider the whole night how he should remove my bra in the most logical way."

  When they came out of the bedroom, the gaze of Pawel fell on the mirror hanging in the hall. It hung on the opposite wall of Helena’s bedroom and at that moment, exposed the crowd dancing in the living room in a cloud of blue vapour of cigarette smoke to the tune of Roy Orbison’s "Pretty Woman", and that was when Pawel saw the eyes of Medusa for the second time in his life.

  Lutek immediately realized what had happened. In those piercing daggers of his pupils reflected from the crystal glass, Pawel saw all the hatred which could be unloaded with one glance. He tried to withstand it for a moment. After all, why should he feel guilty? He didn’t steal anything. It was Helena who decided what she wanted, and she chose him for it.

  And then, something strange happened. The mirror cracked with a piercing sound under this gaze, not shattering into small pieces as sometimes mirrors do, just snapped with one thin, diagonal line crossing through the face of Lutek, dividing it into two unequal parts. It seemed that no one else noticed it, though. Only two of them.

  Everybody had guessed what had happened in the bedroom. Such things happened sometimes at parties like this and they had learned to recognize from the faces returning from hiding, who today lost his or her virginity. They all watched him and Helena with a mixture of discretion and envy, while the eyes of Ludwik become neutral again. He returned to his previous discussion on the superiority of university study over technical courses and no one but Pawel knew what was going on inside his soul.

  ***

  Rumor spread that the bank Goldman Sachs received permission to change its profile.

  From an investment bank, it became a financial holding institution, greatly increasing its features and importance. Its shares on the New York Stock Exchange jumped in three days. Pawel earned during that time about 50 thousand dollars and immediately sold the shares.

  "This guy really is a genius" he thought, going into the next meeting. "Either that, or he's a complet
e lunatic. To such a punk, different things could come by chance."

  Ludwik was happy as usual at the sight of the Siwucha bottle and immediately went to the kitchen to fetch glasses.

  "Well, let's see what you brought here," said he, spreading the graphs Pawel had brought on the table. He was muttering something under his breath as he studied the papers intently, hovering over them. Then, he finally straightened.

  "All correct," he announced happily. "You have to admit that my predictions have proven themselves."

  "It could be a coincidence," objected Pawel. "Something that only happens once does not mean anything."

  "Of course, it will be more than once. I promised you that."

  "I made a lot of money on your predictions and I’d be happy to share it with you."

  "Are you crazy?" Ludwik exclaimed indignantly. "You do not think that I'm doing this for the money, do you? I haven’t fallen so low yet, and I hope it will never happen."

  "Listen. After all, you like this Siwucha. If you had money, you could buy a whole box of it. You could even buy ten boxes, or as much as you want."

  Ludwik gave him a pitiful look.

  "Forgive me, but your mind must have become really primitive while you were on those platforms. You have ceased to understand how the brain works. If I had so much booze, I could not look at it. You know the old saying that money does not bring happiness. Putting at your fingertips everything you ever dreamed of only deprives you of these dreams at the same time. In the end, you lose completely the desire to dream and to live and you die. I know a lot of such cases."

  Pawel had to admit Ludwik had a point. He also knew such cases.

  "Have a look at my charts now," said Ludwik spreading on the table his own papers.

  Aside from the black printed curve of Standard and Poor’s stock exchange index, three others lines were drawn with different colored pencils: blue, red and green.

  "What are those?" Pawel asked curiously.

  "Stock market exchange rates are the results of the transactions of purchase and sale entered into by individual investors, banks and various financial institutions such as hedge funds which in recent years have multiplied a dime a dozen. Does that sound right?"

  "Exactly."

  "Added to this is the manipulation of the Federal Reserve in the form of printing new money and lending it to the U.S. government and the government finally juggling the level of the interest rates of bank loans and taxes, right?"

  "That's right. How do you know all this?"

  "Internet cafe. I forced myself to go through a little bit of research you see, to prove to you the superiority of philosophy over the other sciences, even specialized ones."

  "So far, there's not too much philosophy in it."

  "Wait, this is just the beginning. Transactions are executed by a lot of individual human beings, which together form a common mechanism that governs the movements of the stock exchange, isn’t that right?"

  "Exactly. Jesse Livermore himself couldn’t express it much better."

  "You see! And what governs the decisions of these bodies? Two emotions. Greed and fear. They are also the principles enunciated by this guy Livermore. And here we begin with psychology and philosophy. The blue line is the curve of greed described across the chart of Standard and Poor's 500 index. And the red curve is the panic line, the curve of fear."

  "And the green one?"

  "Green? This line is the most important. It is the output line of blue and red, or the trend curve of Ludwik." In his voice could be heard the sounds of fanfare. "Now you see what happens?"

  "I see only that your chart is very similar to the curve of the S & P 500."

  "Similar? Almost exact copy of it. And this "almost" is the key here. Look closely. My line goes clearly a little ahead of the index chart! The rapid changes in the exchange rate on the line of Ludwik are those called by Livermore as "pivotal points" and as you see they always precede the changes in the direction you can see on the chart of the S & P 500."

  "I agree, but then, everyone can draw lines on any chart so, that such changes happen in the desired locations."

  At this point, Pawel regretted what he said. Ludwik looked at him with a mixture of pity and contempt as a rich man looking at a beggar before throwing a penny into his hat. He put a piece of parchment in front of Pawel.

  "Here, on tracing paper, I scratched my curves before the real time, exactly in the same scale as on the graph you brought. And then I copied them exactly on your printout. Do you understand now what you have in front of you, you small-brained animal?"

  Indeed, it was hard to believe it. For a moment, Pawel was so impressed he lost his capacity for speech.

  "See what's going on here? We just crossed the next pivotal point. On the stock chart, it is not seen yet, but on the curve of Ludwik, the line turns sharply down and starts to drop like a stone. Well done, you sold the bank shares, you could lose a lot." He chuckled happily. "Watch out. Now, it will probably be very hot in the financial market."

  "How so?" asked Paul in disbelief. "I thought everything was just starting to go up. How is this possible?"

  "You read the papers again? I warned you before about that. They manipulate the human masses like a herd of sheep. Anyway, read if you must, but at least do not believe them."

  "And on what basis do you draw your lines of greed and fear?"

  Ludwik thought for a moment.

  "Those are investor sentiment lines. Maybe I'll tell you about them next time when you've been convinced of their validity."

  ***

  Pawel left the apartment of Ludwik well impressed. He walked slowly through the streets and thought.

  If the minds of investors were governed by fear and greed, how come Ludwik could capture the feelings of thousands, if not millions of people?

  He walked just along the Ujazdowskie Avenue until he stopped unconsciously in front of a gate that looked familiar from years ago. Walls of hewn stone and the frowning faces of gargoyles stood on either side of the entrance.

  Yes, Helena lived here once. He wondered if she still had her celadon Goplana bike?

  "Oh, what am I fucking going on about?" he chided himself silently. Helena was now dead. He looked at the gate again and moved on.

  The decision was made. The New York Stock Exchange opens at 9:30 am Atlantic Time, which is about 3:30 past midnight in Warsaw. He set the alarm clock and bought some shorts of Lehman Brothers. This bank was mentioned recently by Ludwik. If this time also, Ludwik’s prediction would come true, it would mean that this crazy guy was a genius. At any rate, he would find it out. Buying shorts is actually a reverse transaction, wherein money is made when the relevant company's stock goes down. And this exact operation is indeed not buying, but selling borrowed shares. When they go down, you must simply buy them back. Simple as pie, right? One important detail: they must go down. If it becomes the opposite, then it’s a flop. Well, he wondered what was going to happen tomorrow.

  It turned out that the alarm was not necessary for him, as he could not sleep anyway. He made one of the biggest investments in his life before the morning and after that fell into a heavy, restless sleep.

  ***

  Yes, it was their last school party. Their whole pack soon spread out. They met new people. New friends appeared from new places. Studies took most of their time. Those who went to work immediately fell into another vortex of life, not to mention those who got married. They simply sank into the ground.

  Pawel tried repeatedly to meet with Helena. Once, he even “accidentally” ran into her while for the twelfth time walking near her home. After a brief conversation about nothing in particular, she said she was in a hurry, deftly turned her face to the side before he could kiss her goodbye and then flew away into the depths of her staircase. During one of these walks, he met Ludwik, who also passed there "accidentally". They went together for a beer, but not one word out of their mouths fell about Helena. The issue was a “taboo” between them. There we
re not too many phones at that time in Warsaw, probably less than before the war. The news about the fate of common friends reached them sporadically, mainly through the mouths of people they accidentally met. That was just the way Pawel learned that Helena was tied up with one well-known actor and teacher at the Academy of Dramatic Arts and it was how he learned that upon her graduation, she also became an actress, though her roles were rather mediocre and rarely was she shown on the screen. She walked away from the life of Pawel, but left a painful sore in his heart. Whenever he saw her lover and later on, her husband, on the screens, immediately over his head flew a sweet thought: "I had her first, not you clown, and maybe even you don’t know it." After that, he always felt better. It worked like a charm. Later, news reached him that they split. The actor’s attention went to another female student and Helena was left alone. Perhaps that was the moment Ludwik acted. The whole time, he was lying in wait across the doorstep of her home and he must have grabbed her with his claws while she was abandoned and helpless. Pawel at that time became Paul, and slowly learned how to drill holes in the rocky bottom of the sea, so he knew nothing about it, but it all could very well have happened this way. Why not? Eh, life is life...

  ***

  Within five days, the shares of Lehman Brothers fell by 75 percent. Hard to believe. The money Pawel earned by buying shorts made him again a wealthy man. Going to Ludwik’s apartment for the next visit, he bought two bottles of Siwucha. "He deserves it" thought he with enthusiasm. "Whatever he is, he has a head on his neck. I have to admit it."

  Pawel even began to wonder if the University of Warsaw gave summary courses of philosophy for adults, or maybe a streamlined program for retirees, or even some basic training for amateur philosophers.

  Ludwik opened the door in an old, tattered gown, his face heavily ragged. He was unshaven. At the sight of vodka, his expression cheered as usual.

  "I see that you did well." he creaked with a shabby voice.

  "I did great," Pawel corrected. "I’d like to renew the proposal of distribution of profits."

  Ludwik just waved his hand at the unworthy deal.