But the market kept dropping. More investors wanted to take their money out, and if I hadn’t made more raids on capital, the whole thing would have blown up. When the market really did recover, too much was already missing.
But I still had hope. I was considered to be successful, investors flocked to me, and I used their money to pay previous investors their gains: ten, twelve, sometimes even fifteen percent, so much that almost nobody had the idea of withdrawing their capital. For a long time I thought a way out would suddenly present itself. Then, one night two years ago when I was forced to run the numbers in my head, and run them, and run them, I knew it wasn’t ever going to happen.
Argentina or Venezuela. Ecuador. Liberia. Ivory Coast. New passport, new name, a new life. I should have done it. Marie might have been enchanted. Laura could have given parties someplace else. The weather is inarguably better anywhere but here.
But then the moment was lost. I had been too slow, too undecided. It takes a lot of money to vanish in comfort. Now I am totally wiped out. All the capital is gone, all my credit is used up.
“Do you know the Bhagavad Gita?” I ask.
Kluessen stares at me. He hadn’t reckoned on this.
“The god Krishna says to the commander Arjuna: You will never be able to explain why things are as they are. You will never be able to sort out the complications. But here you stand, mighty warrior. Don’t ask why, stand up and give battle.”
I once heard this on the car radio. The quote pleased me so much that I asked Elsa to look it up.
“Yes, but where?” she asked.
“In the Bhagavad Gita.”
“How do I find it?”
“When you read it.”
“The whole thing?”
“Only until you hit the right sentence.”
“And if it’s right at the end?”
She didn’t find it, so I’m quoting from memory. Kluessen isn’t going to be looking things up.
He’s silent. Then he says: Whatever. He wants to reassign his portfolio.
“Adolf!” I clap him so hard on the shoulder that the old man’s body shakes. For a moment I lose the thread: it’s to do with his eyebrows. With brows that bushy, it’s no wonder that someone might get confused. “Together we’ve earned a great deal of money. And it’s going to grow! Base prices are all on the uptick. Anyone who bails out now is going to regret it.”
Whatever, is his response once again, and he massages his shoulders. His wife, his son, and he have reached an agreement to redistribute the assets. His son thinks the entire system is heading for collapse. Everyone is piled with debt. Capital is far too cheap. It’s not going to come out well.
“Redistribute assets? You don’t even know what that means!” No, this time I’ve gone too far. “I mean, of course you do, but this doesn’t sound like you, these are not your words, this isn’t the Adolf I know.”
He says his son has just gotten his MBA and—
“Adolf! University is one thing, but reality …!” What is all this, what is his son doing, mixing himself up in it? I say nothing for a moment, then draw back and cut loose. It doesn’t matter what I say, Kluessen understands almost nothing and notices even less. What counts is that there is the sound of a human voice, with no interruption and no hesitation, what counts is that he hears my voice and grasps that there is something more powerful at work here than he can summon up, with an intellect that dwarfs his own.
Soon I’ll have to talk this way in front of the court. My lawyer will advise me to make no statement, that’s what lawyers always do. They worry about contradictions, they don’t trust anyone to cope with the prosecutor, they think no one can talk with conviction about anything. It’s possible that I will even have to part company with my attorney, which in the middle of a trial will have a devastating impact. Perhaps it’s better if I conduct my own defense. But people who defend themselves are regarded as idiots, any respectable defendant must have an expensive defense attorney, a pompous, grandstanding gentleman. There’s no way around it. But I’ll keep control of my own testimony.
“What do you mean?” asks Kluessen.
“Excuse me?”
“What testimony? Where?”
He looks at me, I look at him. It can’t be that I spoke out loud, it must be a misunderstanding. So I make a dismissive gesture and keep talking: about derivatives and secondary derivatives, undervalued real estate funds, dispersed risk, and statistical arbitrage. I quote the professional magazine Econometrica, of which I possess a single copy, mention game theory and the Nash equilibrium, and don’t omit a hint that I have connections to people in key positions who give me inside information — borderline illegal, but extremely profitable.
Finally I stop. One must always give one’s opponent the chance to collect his thoughts. He has to come to his senses and be able to grasp that he’s lost. I fold my hands, bend forward, and look him in the eye. He pulls out a handkerchief and does a thorough job of cleaning his nose.
“Handshake, Adolf!” I hold out my hand. “A man and his word. We’ll carry on together. Yes?”
He says he’s confused.
“Handshake!”
He says he’s confused.
With my left arm I reach for his right arm and try to take his hand in mine. He resists. I pull, he keeps on resisting, and he’s surprisingly strong.
He needs to think, he says. He will talk to his son, and write me a letter.
“Just think about it!” I say hoarsely. “As long as you want! Thinking is always important.”
Now we do actually shake hands, but not to seal our professional partnership, just to say goodbye. I squeeze so hard that all the suntan fades from his wrinkled face. I know I’ve lost. He will demand his money back. And he knows that I know. What he doesn’t know is that I no longer have his money.
For a moment I fantasize about killing him quickly. I could strangle him or break his skull with something hard. But then what? How do I get rid of the body? Besides which it’s likely that there’s a camera in here. Wearily I collapse into my chair and prop my head in my hands.
When I look up, Kluessen has left. In his place there is a tall man standing in the room. He’s leaning against the wall and watching me. I close my eyes, then open them again. He’s still there. He has a hideous gap in his front teeth.
Not good, I think.
“No,” says the man. “Not good at all.”
I close my eyes.
“Won’t help,” says the man.
And yes, I can still see him.
“Don’t get mixed up in it,” says the man. “Just walk right past. When you see them, don’t get mixed up in it. Leave it be. Don’t speak to the three of them, keep on going.”
I feel dizzy. Mixed up in it? Keep on going? I can’t ask him what he’s talking about, right now I have to deal with Kluessen. I can drag things out for a week or two, tangle him up in some complicated exchange of letters, be unreachable, and generally bring things to a standstill with a series of excuses and questions. But at some point he’ll press charges, then the prosecutors will weigh in with their interrogations, but the time will tick by and until then I can stay living in my house and drive to work every morning. Autumn will come, the leaves will fall, and with any luck I won’t be arrested before the first snowstorm.
The man is no longer there. I hold up my hand in front of my eyes. The sunlight in the window is so harsh that it seems to destroy the tint of the glass. I pick up the receiver and ask Elsa for a glass of water. It’s already here and I drink it. As I set it down, I see a priest I know. He’s even fatter than he was the last time. When did my brother come in? And the glass in my hand, who brought it so quickly?