The trees are even more beautiful to me now, with my new affinity for leaves, acquired in the jungle. I breathe them in, for energy. Then I see the tombstone marking his grave. It is not rectangular like the rest. It is round, with a hole with a piece of copper. It stands out among the neat rows of stones, literally. It is not like him. Not modest, not subtle. I have heard a lot about this stone, brought here from the family’s country home in Normandy. His mom had planned to use it for her own grave. Fate let Pasje have it. But now with Willem in an urn there is unexpected room in the grave. She is planning to use it for herself as well. Mother and son reunited. Forever. She has claimed his possessions, his history, and now his body. It hurts.
In a sudden impulse, I grab the wooden urn from the grave. It is a simple box made of lightwood in Sweden. It looks like it could have been made for IKEA. With the urn in my hands, I move away from the grave, beyond a group of bushes. I sit on the ground, under the trees, overlooking a meadow with grazing cows. It is beautiful. It looks like a painting by an Old Master, but not as cloudy. It is a bright, sunny day. I hug the box. I rock it back and forth. It really feels good. I had pretended not to care. “They are only his remains; it isn’t him,” I had said. But this is the body of my love, after all, and it comforts me to hold it, even in this box. It gives me peace.
Miebeth is calling me. She has come looking for me ahead of the rest, but she can’t see me through the bushes. She turns around and starts to walk back. She thinks I have taken off with the ashes! I quickly come out from under the trees carrying the wooden box. She smiles, relieved, and hugs me. Together we put the box back in its resting place. We wait for the other thirty people to gather around the stone. I stand a bit off to the side.
Willem’s father starts by welcoming everybody. He looks at me meaningfully and repeats with emphasis, “Everybody.”
The ceremony proceeds. Willem’s father asks his mother to put his “favorite” things in the grave. They are all presents she has given to him.
His bathrobe with “Breda” and “Santiago” embroidered on it, the attaché case she bought him for his first job, and some kind of toy.
I can’t take it anymore. I run off. Over the graves. Away from the scene. I sit down on a bench and look frantically for the little gin bottle filled with water that my father has given me. He chose the bottle intentionally, for its small size. I put it to my mouth. High up, like a Coca-Cola commercial.
“Herfkens, put that gin away!” It is my friend Jet, who has come to my rescue. I laugh through my tears.
“It’s water!” I get up and stick my arm through hers. Together we return to the grave and rejoin the others.
It is the last time I see Pasje’s mother. I leave straight after the funeral with my parents and my oldest brother for his house in Dordrecht. Everyone else goes to the tea at the home of Pasje’s parents.
In The Hague that evening, my mother answers a phone call from my brother that Mrs. van der Pas was trying to get hold of me to offer Willem’s ashes. She has heard from Miebeth “that I care so much.” So she was prepared to dig them up? But when she later calls my parents, she says that, actually, I can only borrow them. My mother does not know what to say. She answers that this would not be practical, as I am going to London and Paris before returning to Madrid. Mrs. van der Pas suggests that I could take the urn as a carry-on: “We had no problem at all getting through customs!” I ask my brother to decline the offer on my behalf. “Let Pasje be in peace. I wouldn’t want him to be dug up a second time. Besides,” I joke, rather bitterly, “I do not aspire to become a modern-day Joanna the Mad, traveling with the body of my beloved through Europe, checking in his remains on airplanes instead of a golden carriage.”
Reflection: When Somebody Dies
When people die, everyone wants a piece of them. Like children wanting to sit next to the birthday boy or girl. But what matters is what the dead person has given to you in absolute terms, not in relative importance to someone else. I am still running on what Pasje gave to me.
At a funeral you often learn a lot about the departed from the stories of others. All the signs are there that this person had a whole life beyond you.
In the isolation of your grief, you can choose to ignore that. A wife can let herself listen to previously unknown details of her husband’s office life and his surprising sportsmanship, but tell herself that in the end he always returned to her. That she was the most important part of his life. I reckon this is not the same for a mother who has survived an adult son, which must be the loss of all losses.
It was only natural that, at the time Pasje died, Mrs. van der Pas was no longer the center of his universe. To her, the eulogies must have felt both like compliments for a job well done and knives in her heart, confirming the separation. Understandably, she blamed me. If only for surviving.
At the first funeral there was no way of getting around me. The press had portrayed me as a national hero. It did not help matters that I was dramatically wheeled into the church on a portable bed and was later carried behind the coffin on the way to the cemetery, looking like a corpse myself. At least the law was on Mrs. van der Pas’s side and assigned all Pasje’s belongings to her.
By the time the second funeral was held, history had been rewritten. Pasje’s mother had decided to skip her son’s adult years, which she had played little part in, and had rewound the tape to the innocent childhood.
That is how she could claim eternal ownership of her child.
After a long struggle with life, Mrs. van der Pas died of grief fifteen years after Pasje’s death. When I visited the grave she and Pasje now shared, I was afraid my fragile forgiveness would be compromised by seeing the concrete evidence of their reunion. But instead, I saw the beauty. The stone that I hated so much when it bore only his name had become beautiful with time.
TRADING PLACES
I am lucky to have the job I have. I get to continue trading as before within three months after the accident. I am also lucky I share that job with Jaime.
My jaw, my feet, and my heart hurt, but trading is the best distraction. Every other Friday, Jaime flies from Madrid to New York to see his sons. It is part of his job package: two business-class tickets per month. He will leave me to “woman” the fort. Though we are in charge of only a small trading unit, we have huge cash lines.
Because of the extended lunch and late dinnertime, Spanish offices stay open until at least seven in the evening. On our floor there are usually people around until nine, but not on Fridays. On Friday nights you could shoot a cannon on our floor. However, someone from our trading unit has to be there until 11 p.m., when the New York market closes.
Our office is not very elegant—yet. A giant space with randomly placed desks and fluorescent lighting. No trading system with touch screens yet, just old-fashioned phones with a couple lines served, unreliably, by Spain’s Telefónica. Though I’m generally coolheaded when trading, phones that stop working can totally tick me off.
One Friday afternoon the lines were down for three hours when we were short on Mexico. That is not a strategic position but an arbitrage one. I swapped out of some Mexican bank loans in the morning intending to buy them back later when New York opened. When the phone lines went down, I panicked. I ordered a trader on our floor, who was now reluctantly reporting to me, to get them at any price. He was only too happy to oblige and pay a premium to his very good friend at J.P. Morgan. That was the last time I let my emotions influence a trading decision. Even when the big boys from New York kept on trying to get me to do otherwise:
“Hi, young lady, what are you doing?”
“Nothing much, just hanging in there.”
“Are you there all by yourself?”
“Yes.” Patronizing prick. “I am. Why the honor of speaking to you?”
“I just thought: Let’s check what big and upcoming Santander is doing.”
“Right.” He knows Jaime is not here.
“Are you familiar with deali
ng prices?”
“Of course I am.” You have to define the amount at stake and agree to deal, once you do you cannot tighten the spread.
“You want to start with a few million?”
“I can do more.”
“Five?”
“Ten, if you want,” I say, showing off.
“OK, what country?”
“You name it,” I answer, showing off even more. “In Eastern Europe or Latin America,” I add. “Or do you want to do Africa?” Now I am bluffing.
“Mexico,” he says. Of course. Mexico is Morgan’s number one country. That means I will have to be that much sharper. “You choose the assets,” he continues. I quickly check my position sheet. We have a decent trunk of Mexican par bonds, and I wouldn’t mind having more. The average price is well below the market, and with an additional ten million we’d still be under. I like Mexico pars anyway. I think I’d rather buy, so I have to price it that way. But I am going to let him think I want to sell.
“You start,” he says.
“Forty-five, forty-five and a half,” I say. That means I buy at forty-five cents on the dollar and sell at forty-five and a half cents.
“Forty-five, forty-five and three-eights,” he answers. That means he wants to sell. Good.
“Forty-five, forty-five and three-sixteenths,” I answer, pretending I want to sell as well.
“One-sixteenth, three-sixteenths,” he says. Is he bluffing? I think so.
“One-sixteenth, one-eighth,” I answer.
“Ten million yours,” he answers. Bingo. I have bought them at the price I want. He doesn’t realize it yet.
“Wanna do more?” I ask, happy with my acquisition. No answer. “Or, if you want, I can play again, with bigger amounts?” He obviously wants to get off the phone.
Got you, big shot!
COMPLEMENTARY COHEADS
Our bosses in Spain value and respect us. They aren’t very corporate, more like traders. That’s how they manage the bank. They sell and take losses when common sense requires them to do so. They always keep a good amount of cash so they can purchase cheap assets in bad times. They manage the money as if it is their own, and in a way it is. They are major shareholders in the bank that their fathers and grandfathers built from scratch.
We like being part of this dynamic, growing entity, however feudal it can be. Sometimes our chairman summons us in on Sunday to get our views on the world economy. It could be worse: some of our colleagues are made to jog with the boss, play a round of golf, or come on board his jet to brief him on the way to Brazil.
Our direct boss has become head of Santander Investment, the investment bank, and she is taking us with her. Technically it is a promotion. We get a seat on the board. But we have our reservations about the move. We like being part of the “real bank.” Commercial banking is based on the good old practice of putting money to work. Investment banking is all about making a fee and moving on. Snotty MBAs who come up with sexy constructions, make a profit, and don’t look back. December is their horizon: bonus time.
We like the straightforwardness of our business. We trade for the bank’s own account, as if it is our own. I love my job. It is all I have left.
• • •
How do Jaime and I manage to be so profitable year after year? Even survive in a market as volatile as ours? Brazil is like a yo-yo, the Soviet Union falls apart, Venezuela has a coup d’état. How do we do it?
We both love our business. We have that in common. On first impression, Jaime and I also seem similar. Charming and full of it. Together we will fill up a room. But we could not be more different. We complement each other, in fact.
I like the big picture, Jaime the details. Jaime manages the numbers, I manage the people. I read and read, Jaime watches the news. I travel, Jaime stays put.
As our market matures, we get screens monitoring the latest whim in every country. Jaime is glued to them, only moving his eyes to make his minuscule notes. While I continue to have conversations on the phone, all Jaime needs is to trade. To be in it, to win it. I need to communicate. Dialogue. To get a sense of the market’s mood. To clear my head and hear my own thoughts.
For the longer-term outlook, I travel. To feel how a country is doing. I talk to taxi drivers, see whether the shops are busy, and listen to the local bankers.
I also look at graphs and printouts. I draw lines between the curves and come up with a level where I think it makes sense for a price to go. And so often it goes there.
Sometimes I sleep on it, sometimes the number just pops up in my head. I can only describe it as an educated guess from my clever unconscious. I don’t get the number through conscious thinking, but it isn’t gambling either. It never works for me in a casino.
As Jaime listens to my intuition, I follow his due diligence. Jaime makes sure all our transactions are properly processed. All the way through. We never fail to get an A for accounting.
But what we are best at is decoding. Reading each other. Taking the other’s personality into account. Separating the ego from the instinct, the noise from the music.
Perspectives
BASTIAAN, JUNIOR TRADER: I joined Annette and Jaime’s desk in the fall of 1995. I had just finished my MBA in Amsterdam and didn’t feel like lining up with my fellow students for that one trainee spot at the usual Dutch companies—ABN, ING, Heineken, Shell, Unilever. I wanted to postpone an office life and left for Madrid. To learn Spanish, play a bit of hockey. And maybe, if I really needed it, I would land a job.
Money goes quickly in a city where you live at night. Mine lasted three months. A Dutch relative put me in touch with Jaime and Annette, who happened to be in search of a young desk assistant. They interviewed me for about thirty minutes, and then took me to dinner. I remember suggesting Vietnamese, which wasn’t very clever. We had Japanese instead, Jaime’s favorite. For hours they introduced me to the “wonderful world” of emerging-market debt trading. My head was spinning from yields to maturity, the Russian Vneshtorgbank, debt-to-equity swaps, sake, and Kirin. But most important, we hit it off.
It was a good thing I had not been warned about them beforehand. I had no idea what to expect from a first job, but it wasn’t this! They worked hard; were very dedicated and profitable; and excelled at Nintendo games, Super Mario Brothers and Tetris being their specialties. But we were also very secluded in our little trading-room shrine. It was us against the world. Probably due to the outbursts Jaime was famous for directing at anyone who was not on his level of intelligence, the only persons who dared enter the room were Ana Botín and her husband.
One day—a Wednesday I believe—Jaime and I had been discussing buying Mexican debt all morning. We had covered all angles: GDP growth, US economic numbers due the next day, crude oil, peso devaluation, even the personal life of President Vicente Fox. In the end, we were convinced we should go long. The only thing left to do was to see if Annette would agree. Then we could start building a position with some $20 to $30 million worth of debt.
Annette, as usual, came in a bit late—let’s say just before lunchtime. We ambushed her immediately, giving her all possible reasons for buying Mexican debt and telling her why it would go up. She didn’t take the time to remove her coat off or put down her shopping bags, and instead went straight to her screens. She watched them for about five minutes, drinking in all the prices, which were blinking like a Christmas tree. Then she looked at our graphs, drew a line, and said: “No, we better go short on Mexico. It doesn’t feel right.”
Jaime and I looked at each other in disbelief. Had we done all those fundamentals for nothing? But Jaime knew never to trade against Annette’s instincts. When she wasn’t in the office, we often used our nickname for her: la bruja, the witch.
Jaime did sell short, and we made almost a million US dollars in one week. La pinche bruja! (That damn witch!)
WOUNDS AND WEDDINGS
The first year after the accident, I combine almost every trip to Holland with some kind of docto
r’s visit. Every month a dental surgeon checks the screws in my jaws until they are finally removed in the summer of 1993, slowly and painfully. But then a dentist has to construct a special tooth to fit into the fracture. Afterward my jaw is left protruding a bit, and my face is slightly asymmetrical.
The eight days on rainwater had taken a toll on one of my kidneys: Repeated sonograms show it shriveling up. Eventually it will disappear altogether. The other kidney ends up looking enlarged.
A plastic surgeon cleans up the scars. For those procedures I am under general anesthesia. Lucky for me, his colleagues in Madrid can change the dressing afterward, but I still have to come back for regular checkups. The results are OK, but the scars stay, visible on my arms and legs. I don’t mind that much.
My toes remain painful. With the tips missing, I feel a phantom pain where they are supposed to be. Nerves take a long time to heal. The scars on my ankle do not tolerate stylish shoes very well, or travel and standing around for long periods. Nerves play up; that is what they do.
• • •
When I am not at the doctor’s, I have weddings to attend. All my friends seem to want to tie the knot. For most of them, I fly over from Madrid, put on my party dress and a big smile, and choose a gift from the couple’s wedding registry.
Because my wedding is no longer happening, I decide to take material matters into my own hands. I hear Harrods has a big annual sale of china and silverware and decide to purchase my own wedding registry. I do the research on silver and china. I make list after list and interview my friends. What items do they really use, and how often? I even speak to a salesperson in Stoke-on-Trent, the English town where Wedgwood is made. He says that as a Dutch person, I would probably want Edme Queensware, although living in Spain, I might prefer Amherst. However, I might also like the plain white bone china, which the Italians tend to buy.
Turbulence Page 12