“No, thank you. I know you’re busy. I’m probably interrupting.”
“No, just wrapping up the week. I’m not traveling for once, which is a blessing.”
He remembered now that when she first left a message a week ago he’d guessed it was an inquiry about working at the Fed, which while a rather direct approach wouldn’t be unheard of and would account for her nerves. But noticing her rigid posture and pursed lips he wondered if there wasn’t something more than that to her visit.
“We get them from the Met,” he said, following her eyes to the paintings. “We loaned them a bar of gold back in the seventies for some show or other and they’ve been kind enough to let us borrow from their basement ever since. The one problem being my predecessor decided the appropriate policy would be to hang only paintings by artists from the Federal Reserve’s Second District, a somewhat limiting condition when it comes to the history of art. But there we are.”
“I shouldn’t be here,” she said. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“Not at all,” he said genially, beginning to perceive the outlines of the thing. “Do you have another appointment after this?”
“No,” she replied, surprised by the question.
“So you’re not in a rush?”
She shook her head.
“I tell you what. Since this is your first visit here, allow me to show you something.”
He stood up before she had the opportunity to decline, holding his arm out to guide her back through his office door.
“Helen, I’m just going to take Ms. Jones downstairs. We won’t be long.” He led her along the arch-ceilinged hallway, their footsteps silent on the thick carpet. “Did you fly down?” he asked, as they stepped onto the officers’ elevator.
“No, I took the train.”
“Yes, it’s far more civilized than a plane these days.” He allowed a few floors to pass before observing, “When they built this place they dynamited their way a few stories into the bedrock of the island. It was one of their great precautions. Turns out it was the only foundation strong enough to bear the weight.”
The elevator doors slid open and they made their way down the windowless passage to the security officer’s desk.
“Charles,” he said, “are the tours over for the day? I was going to show this young woman around.”
“It’s all yours, sir,” he said, leading them through the ten-foot, cylindrical airlock and into the antechamber. “Will you need any help with the stock, sir?”
“No, I think we’re fine,” Henry said. He unlocked the inner gate with his own key and ushered Evelyn into the vault, clicking the gate shut behind them. At the center of the room stood the metal scales still used to test the purity of the gold. Beside the scales were two pairs of magnesium shoe clips worn to protect the officers’ feet lest they should drop a bar in transit and crush their toes.
“We’re eighty feet below the sidewalk here. Thirty feet below sea level. Go ahead,” he said, gesturing toward the rows of floor-to-ceiling metal cages that lined the walls, numbered but otherwise unmarked. “Have a look.”
His guest glanced at him first, inquisitively, as if an elaborate trick might be afoot, but then succumbing to curiosity she approached one of the cages containing dark-yellow bars ten feet high and twenty deep. After a moment, she turned to look down the aisle, taking in the sheer number of separate compartments.
“It’s the largest accumulation of monetary gold in the world,” he said. “In fact, it’s a decent-size chunk of all the gold ever mined.”
“And all this belongs to the government?”
“No. The Treasury keeps our reserves at Fort Knox and up at West Point. The vast majority of what you see here is owned by foreign central banks. Most countries in the world deposit with us. We’re just the custodians. When governments want to do business, they call up and we move the gold from one cage to another.”
“They trust us that much?”
“For these purposes, yes.”
She passed on to another compartment and gazed at the wall of shining gold.
“The tours come to the outer gate here every day. I think last year we had twenty-five thousand visitors. People love to look at it. It reminds me of something Galbraith said: ‘The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. A deeper mystery seems only decent.’ I suppose this is what’s left of the mystery. And yet this,” he said, indicating with a sweep of his hand the whole contents of the vault, “barely matters. Add it up and it’s no more than eighty or ninety billion worth. The wires clear more than that in an hour. All anchored to nothing but trust. Cooperation. You could even say faith, which sometimes I do, though it’s certainly of an earthly kind. Without it you couldn’t buy a loaf of bread.
“Of course as my sister never fails to remind me, the bigger ethical question is what people — what governments do with their money. Whether they buy medicine or food or arms. But there are conditions of possibility for doing any of these things. Whichever choices we make. The system has to work. People have to trust the paper in their wallets. And that starts somewhere. It starts with the banks.”
Her fingers curled around the bars of the cage she stood before.
“I guess you know why I’m here,” she said.
“Yes. I think I do.”
AT THE END of August, Evelyn had paid $390,000 for a shingle cottage on a tree-lined street out in Alden. The kitchen at the back was a bit dark in the mornings but it had a view of a dogwood and a rhododendron in the yard. Upstairs was a bathroom and two bedrooms with dormer windows that made the rooms feel smaller than their dimensions but comfortable nonetheless. She’d always pictured moving into such a place with a husband, but with Aunt Verna’s encouragement, she hadn’t allowed that image to stop her.
On the new commute home, she passed a video store and often stopped to pick up a DVD, a comedy or romance, which she’d watch with dinner.
Years before, in college, she’d taken a literature course and they had read a lot of James Baldwin, among others. Though she couldn’t remember what book it came from, one line in particular had always stuck with her. People pay for what they do, Baldwin had written, and more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply, with the lives they lead.
On the one hand, this sounded harsh, as if people were forever letting themselves go, as Aunt Verna would say, and being punished for it with their own misery. That was one way to hear it. But there was a democratic spirit to it as well, a sense that life consisted of the distance traveled, for good or ill. In which case, her guilt at having all that she did while her brother had got nothing lacked a purpose. Experience provided its own justice. From where it would come, no one could predict.
Two weeks ago at church, she’d stayed after for coffee. There, she’d seen a boy of nine or ten, thin with a high forehead, whom she had noticed back in June passing out programs at Carson’s funeral. She’d noted him at the time because she didn’t recognize him and she’d wondered who had placed him there at the door if not a member of the family. He appeared afraid when she approached him and said it wasn’t the minister who had invited him to help that day.
“I came on my own,” he said. “Did I do something wrong?”
She assured him that he hadn’t. She was just curious, she said. Had he known Carson?
“He used to let me hang out with him. When he had calls to make in the park. He’d ride my scooter sometimes. The thing is … see … the thing is, I seen him shot. I was across the street when they did it. There was two of them. And then quick-like, there was people calling the ambulance and all that. But I seen him lying up in there before they came, his face all shot up, and all these bills on the floor, I don’t know why they hadn’t taken the money or nothing, but there was all this cash, his I guess. But when I came back a couple minutes later it was gone, so I guess someone musta took it.”