The Greed

by Scott Bergstrom

  An old woman’s voice answers, and I hear a soap opera in the background.

  I deepen my voice, try to sound bureaucratic, official. “Señora Lopez?”

  “Sí?”

  “I’m looking for a tenant of yours. Perels. Do you know how I can reach him?”

  There’s a long pause, as if the old lady had turned back to her television and forgotten about me. “Perels,” she repeats. “He’s gone. They’re gone.”

  I freeze, have to move my mouth away from the receiver so she doesn’t hear my shaking breath. I clear my throat. “Gone. Very interesting. Did he—move out?”

  “Last week. I saw him leave with one bag. He owes me rent.”

  “Did he leave alone?”

  “No, with his entourage of a thousand friends. Of course alone. Perels is always alone. Who is this?”

  “I’m—collecting a debt.”

  “Try that daughter of his, Judita, she works at…”

  I hang up the receiver, press my head to the phone-booth glass. Alone. On the run, alone. Better than the alternative. Something spooked him, sent the mouse scurrying. I have no choice but to calm myself, rely on faith that he’ll be in touch soon.

  For a time, I walk down a cobblestone street of elegant little boutiques, cocktail dresses and shoes and handbags displayed in windows with the style and reverence of treasure in a museum. A blond woman, some Scandinavian-looking goddess, departs through the door of a shop, carrying her customer’s bags to a waiting dark-windowed Range Rover, speaking to her in chummy Mandarin. Even on the cobblestone street, she never falters in her heels, never even looks down.

  I stop at another kiosk and buy a SIM card and three-day transit pass, then call the number Sabiha had given me. It goes to voice mail, so I text her: in zurich you free? An answer comes a few minutes later: address hard to find meet you aarhauerstrasse tram stop 45 min ok?

  The passengers file onto the number 4 tram in an orderly fashion, no shoving, no rudeness. A schoolboy of seven or eight, riding unaccompanied, gets up from his seat immediately as an elderly woman steps in. Only a whispered exchange of thank you; of course takes place; this is what schoolboys do here, and not doing it would be unthinkable.

  It’s a quick ride to Sabiha’s place northwest of the Altstadt, the old part of the city giving way to arching concrete railroad bridges and gleaming glass-and-steel cubes, like an architect’s dreamscape of utopia’s gritty side. We pass by a design museum, an ad agency, a public library that looks sleek and clean like a science lab, funky restaurants and clothing boutiques—hipsterland with Bauhaus discipline.

  The tram’s robot-voice announcer calls out the Aarhauerstrasse stop and I climb off with two or three others. A woman in a canvas jacket and baggy, paint-spattered jeans rolled up at the ankles leans against a light pole. Her hair is tucked under a baseball cap, also spattered in paint. “Judita!” she calls out.

  Sabiha is transformed, her face bright and every movement electric with excitement. A long hug, with her rocking me back and forth as if I were a returning sister. She pulls back, eyes shining from within thick circles of black liner. “You made it, Judita!” she says, beaming.

  Sabiha leads me down a street of industrial sheds and fenced-off empty lots. “You’ll stay with me, of course. With us. It’s not much, but there’s a place on the floor for you, if you want it.”

  “Us?” I say. “You’re staying with—a friend, relative?”

  “No, I have a job. Artist’s assistant. His name is Peggo. He’s a painter. Also, mixed media. You’ve heard of him?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so. You’re roommates, or—something else?”

  “He lets me stay in his studio.” Sabiha squeezes my shoulder. “Others, too. It’s an artists’ collective.”

  We come upon a yard stacked with steel shipping containers a few hundred meters later. As Sabiha leads me into a courtyard between them, I see the containers have all been converted into houses and studios and shops, some welded together horizontally, others stacked on top of one another. The battered steel walls are fading yellows and reds and blues and still bear the names and logos of the companies they belonged to.

  “This is where you live?” I say.

  “I call it Lego Village,” she says, opening her arms expansively in a Y. “And we’re all just tiny villagers living tiny lives.”

  A few of the other Lego Villagers mill around, arguing about art, smoking, sorting through piles of scrap metal. They pay no attention to us.

  Sabiha leads me into a complex of five shipping containers at the end of the row that appear from the outside to be arranged and stacked randomly at odd angles. Inside, however, they’ve all been welded together to form a contiguous space. Wooden shelves are stacked neatly with rolls of paper and canvas, and tables are arranged with careful rows of brushes and tubes of oil paint. Five or six others, men and women, are gathered here and there, working or in earnest discussion. The man Sabiha identifies as Peggo looks up at us from his position in the center of a large canvas spread across the floor. He wears a paint-splashed set of white coveralls that looks like a hazmat suit, and he has a long reddish-brown beard with hair clipped so close I can see his scalp. He steps carefully over the canvas and removes a pair of white shoe covers.

  “Viewing hours aren’t until tomorrow,” he says tiredly. “Sabiha, you know better…”

  “She’s not here to buy, Peggo. This is my friend,” Sabiha says. “I told you, remember?”

  “Ah, the Argentine,” he says. “Judas?”

  “Judita,” I say. “Good to meet you.”

  “Sorry, Judita. Welcome to our home.” He gestures around the studio. “Take what you need. Here, all belongs to all.”

  * * *

  Part of Sabiha’s role as assistant is making Peggo’s dinner. So I give her a hand preparing the kale-and-tomato salad and buckwheat porridge that are, Sabiha tells me, his dinner seven days a week. Afterward, Peggo climbs a ladder to a shelf two shipping containers up and is asleep by nine. Getting up every day before dawn, Sabiha tells me, is another part of his routine. She and I depart to another shipping container down the path, an improvised bar where the other Lego Villagers gather around a fire pit just outside for beer and whatever food the owner feels like making. We eat grilled sausages and some kind of dense, chewy oat bread, and wash it down with bottles of pilsner. In the firelight, Sabiha’s face is orange and happy.

  “He’s kind, Peggo. Teaches me in exchange for cleaning his brushes and making his meals.” She finishes the last of her beer. “Another?”

  “That’s all he has you do?”

  Her eyes narrow as she looks at me, hearing an implication I may or may not have intended. “Poor little refugee girl,” she says in a high voice. “Careful the big city doesn’t take advantage!”

  “That’s not what I meant.…”

  “It is exactly what you meant,” she says. “Now, do you want another beer or what?”

  Sabiha heads to the bar for another round, and I watch her, giddiness expressed in every step, hope in the tone of her voice—Stadtluft macht frei. Maybe I was patronizing her. Maybe I’m a cynical bitch who just needs to be somebody’s big sister. Or maybe I’m right. Maybe even in Lego Village there are monsters.

  She returns, bearing another bottle for each of us.

  “How long will you stay?” she says.

  “I’m not sure,” I say.

  She takes a long drink, then stiffens. “You miss it, where you’re from? Where was it again?”

  “Uruguay.” I shake my head. “It’s just a place.”

  “But you must miss, I don’t know, your people.”

  I close my eyes, the beer and exhaustion hitting me at once. “I don’t really—have a people.”

  Sabiha rolls her eyes. “Everybody does.”

  I shake my head. “Then I haven’t found mine yet.”

  * * *

  The mattress is old and stained, the horse blanket smelly and scratchy. Al
l night, artists snore, water drips from a thousand sources, eighteen-wheelers wheeze by on the road just outside. And whenever I close my eyes, there he is, my father on the run.

  He’s good at running. Must be, with his experience. He knows where to go. Whom to trust. How many times when I was growing up had I seen him work a salesman in a bazaar, a traffic cop, a dignitary with medals on his chest? He was a master of the well-placed idiom in the local dialect, the sly joke, just barely off-color, that made a coconspirator of whoever heard it. He almost always got what he wanted, a better price, a torn-up ticket, maybe a secret or two.

  But all that was before Montevideo. Before Prague and Paris. Before the world had broken him and pushed both of us to the very edge of what two people could endure, then a little beyond. So which version is on the run, old Dad or new?

  In the morning there’s the chaos of breakfast and too many people around and not enough privacy. Washing turns out to be low on Peggo’s list of architectural priorities. So when it’s my turn, I bathe in a garden behind his studio surrounded by corrugated steel, using a hose and standing in a child’s inflatable swimming pool. I’m frozen, nearly hypothermic by the end.

  On the train from Austria, I’d noticed a tickle in my mind, something just there beneath the surface of consciousness, like an idea that didn’t know it wanted to be an idea. Now, as I dress and slide my stocking feet into my boots, I find something digging into my right sole. I reach in and discover the small envelope with the diamonds I’d taken with me from Buenos Aires. It had slipped from between the layers in the insert where I’d stashed it. And that’s when the idea breaks free.

  * * *

  The 4 tram drops me off across the river past the Altstadt, and I peek through the windows of the jewelry stores, looking for one that’s well-off, but not too fancy. I find it a few blocks in from the river, dingy carpet and flickering fluorescent lights, but well-stocked glass cases.

  The man behind the desk wears a jeweler’s loupe over one eye and doesn’t look up from his work when I enter. Egyptian pop music plays softly from the radio next to him. “What can I help you find?” he calls in German.

  “I’m selling,” I say in the same.

  “What a coincidence, so am I,” he says, still not looking up. “You’d have better luck elsewhere. Take the train up to Antwerp for the day.”

  I switch to Arabic. “They belonged to my grandmother. I just want to get rid of them.”

  The loupe goes up, and he squints at me from across the room. “All right,” he says after a moment. “I’ll take a look, but I can’t promise anything.”

  I give him four of the five diamonds, keeping the largest in my pocket, and watch as he sets the stones out on a velvet cloth and inspects them. He’s a careful appraiser, holding each one in tweezers and squinting through the loupe. When he’s done, he turns to an old Rolodex and starts flipping through the cards. “Mendy, in Antwerp. A friend of mine. I’ll give you his number.…”

  “What will he give me for them?”

  “Five or so thousand for this one, and the others—three to four each.”

  “Fifteen all together?”

  “If you find Mendy on a good day.”

  “Antwerp, though. So far.” I look at him from across the desk. “How about you give me ten?”

  The man sighs, inspects them again. “Let me call my wife,” he says.

  * * *

  So it’s back on the 4 tram, north to the sleek public library I’d seen from the window when I’d first arrived. There’s no temple-like quality to the place as there is in the best libraries elsewhere, no soaring ceilings or well-loved wooden furniture. My initial impression had been right—this library is like a science laboratory: clean white surfaces, humming computer stations, immaculately even rows of books, all in pristine condition. I find an empty computer and start working.

  Publicly available news sites first, then legal databases. When I turn up nothing, nothing at all, the lack of results delights me. So on to the second step, the search string, Vidor Sonnenfeld antiques Zurich. Sketchy information here, irrelevant or old. The Facebook page of a music producer in San Francisco with the same name, who worked on an album called Zurich and collects antiques as a hobby. A mention in a travel forum from 2007 about places to find rare books in Switzerland. A community directory of businesses in the neighborhood east of the Altstadt. I jot down the address.

  I take two different tram lines to a sober neighborhood of older apartment buildings. MANUSCRIPTS RARE AND UNUSUAL, it says on a hand-lettered sign in the shop window. A bell tinkles as I open the door and step inside. Dust motes dance in the light like far-off galaxies and the air smells of aging paper and an old woman’s perfume, the strong stuff, unsubtle, meant to be noticed. Shelves filled with old books line the walls, and documents in cheap wooden frames hang in the spaces between. A signed letter of congratulations from Pope John Paul II to a Spanish soccer star. A note from President Reagan to an Austrian diplomat wishing her a happy birthday. I pick up a book from a table, a German-language copy of Catcher in the Rye, and read the handwritten English inscription inside the front cover: Best Wishes! Your friend, J.D. Salinger.

  From the back of the shop, a tiny silhouette appears, filling one corner of a doorway. “We are closed. Come back Tuesday,” the silhouette says, voice feminine but gravelly with age. “Or maybe Wednesday, I don’t know yet.”

  The silhouette steps into the light. Her gray hair is pulled back into a bun, and she’s wearing a man’s baggy black suit pants, old-fashioned suspenders, and a white dress shirt rolled at the sleeves.

  “I heard J.D. Salinger never gave autographs,” I say.

  “He didn’t,” the woman says. “For you, twenty percent off.” She smiles, as if reading my mind, then takes the book from my hand and sets it back on the table. Her nails are painted fire-engine red. “Novelty collectibles,” she says. “If other people claim they’re authentic, that is their concern.”

  “A friend told me about your shop. I’m looking for Vidor Sonnenfeld.”

  “Vidor. Vidor’s retired. Alzheimer’s.” She hooks her thumbs behind her suspenders. “Anyway, as I said, we’re closed.”

  She turns and starts back toward the stockroom in the back.

  “Herr Mucha sent me,” I say suddenly. “From the Pension Alexandra. Said I could—said Vidor would help me. Please.”

  The woman stops and turns slowly, eyeing me carefully. “How is the old man?”

  “He’s well,” I say. “His partner, Walter…”

  “Died. I know.” She sighs like I’ve interrupted the rhythm of her day with something unpleasant. “Mucha called me a day or two ago. Said to expect someone.”

  I hold up the J.D. Salinger book. “I’m looking for a novelty collectible,” I say. “Custom made.”

  She purses her lips and nods, then moves to the door and locks it. “My name is Miriam. It would be better if you didn’t tell me yours. Come.”

  I follow her to the back of the shop through a cluttered room stacked high with books and papers. She produces a key and unlocks a narrow wooden door that opens onto a descending staircase. “Mind the third step,” she says.

  Miriam leads the way, climbing gingerly over yet more stacks of books and papers, skipping the third step, which is only half there. In the basement, most of the plaster has been stripped away from the walls, leaving bare brick.

  “Vidor’s studio, now mine,” the woman says, switching on a lamp on the corner of a desk. “So, a collectible you’re after. A passport, I suppose?”

  “A passport I have. What I need is everything else.”

  “And the purpose? Your goal? You want to get through more than a casual police inspection, I imagine.”

  “Much more,” I say.

  She leans forward. “How much more?”

  I feel my shoulders stiffen. “I need to—prove who I am. Legally.”

  “Pinocchio wants to become a real girl.” The ends of Miriam’s mouth curl i
nto a faint smile. “Very well, then. A full suite of supporting documents. Birth certificate. Driver’s license. Apartment lease. A nice, rounded-out picture.”

  I place the Lila Kereti passport on the desk in front of her. “Everything needs to match this.”

  “Hungarian, current issue, Series C,” Miriam says, squinting at it with an appraiser’s eye. “Örvendek,” she says.

  I blink at her. “Sorry?”

  “It means ‘nice to meet you’ in Hungarian.” She laces her fingers in front of her and leans back in her chair. “Really, you couldn’t pretend to be someone whose language you actually speak?”

  “No,” I say. “It has to be her.”

  She sighs and picks up the passport, inspects the pages inside. “All right, then. You moved as a child. Speak French? Spanish? Your German is…”

  “I know. Spanish, then. I’m fluent.”

  “So a nice address in Barcelona for”—she flips to the identification page—“Miss Lila Kereti.”

  “How is it? The passport?” I say. “Does it look—real?”

  Miriam inhales sharply. “No, I’m sorry to say.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  Miriam slides the passport toward me, taps a red nail in the center of the page. “Look closely,” she says. “You see the tiny musical notes? It’s an anti-counterfeiting device introduced in 2009, almost impossible to reproduce.” She turns to another page where a holographic seal twists and undulates in the light of the desk lamp. “Same again here, found only on the Series B and C, changed to something else for the Series D.”

  I shrug. “I don’t understand.”

  Miriam closes the passport and gives it a little pat. “This is either an authentic issue, or the best forgery money can buy.”

  “So, where’s the problem?”

  “What’s missing, darling, is you,” Miriam says. “This passport is too perfect. It needs to be lived in. A work of art like this, it deserves to be lived in.” She opens a desk drawer and slides the passport into it. “Leave it with me. Miriam will take care of it.”