How I became a Millionaire
Every word of this is true
"Do you need a receipt," asked the taxi driver. It was because I was wearing a suit. I dragged my mini-sized case out from the back seat.
"No, it's fine."
Always saying whatever is most convenient at the time, I berated myself as the airport doors slid open. I should have been ready to hand the receipt over to the client with a bright 'Good to see you. Is this OK to put in as expenses?'
During the phone call the night before I'd taken down the sector and desk number. I'd meant to write down the surname straight after, but got caught up in the details. All I had to go on was "John" and I wrote that down before I forgot that too.
It started three weeks before when a friend rang me to say he knew someone who needed a translator for a trip to Munich. What they needed was an interpreter, but neither my friend nor the client seemed to know the difference. The old college friend thought he was doing me a favour. He'd seen through the evasive answers I gave in our occasional telephone chats. Being jobless suited me just fine, but I couldn't explain that to him.
I took my German books out of the cardboard box and practiced. It had been a long time since I lived in the squat in Kreuzberg. I paced the room and read dialogues aloud, improvising the different voices. Long wave radio waves didn't penetrate the apartment block I lived in: the best I could get was a German-accented static.
Days passed, then weeks, then an indeterminate span of time. I began to relax. I began to enjoy reading German again and got some way through one of the thick novels I'd brought back. Until another Sunday evening the friend rang again.
"Are you all set for tomorrow morning?" He was surprised John had never rung me. It was too late in the night to ring him now, I should just turn up at the airport. It was all agreed.
"Wear a suit," he said, then added, "I know you know, I'm only saying."
"I owe you one," I said.
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"Yes, there is a ticket reserved for you Mr O'Reilly." And so the assignment is real. Somewhere beyond the barrier was the John I was due to meet. Just half an hour through security away. Forty-five minutes maybe. You could tell the type who would grumble at the search procedure. Ridiculous, they hissed as they stood in their socks. They were right to grumble, maybe I should do it a bit more. The ability to wait patiently is not much to be proud of.
The lounge area was filling up. I looked from face to face and slowly drew out my mobile. One pair of eyes tilted: "Aidan?" We shook hands. He led me away from the clusters of passengers. We looked out through the long glazing, watching the aeroplanes being refuelled.
"How long have you known McT? He's a gas man isn't he? How often do you run into him?"
Satisfied with my credentials, he pressed me to have a pint.
"Really," he said, "you should have a pint." I took a coffee.
"We just need someone who knows the language to be with us on the ground. It's a fair bit of money that's at stake. Not a huge amount, I would never put all my eggs in one basket."
The call for passengers to Munich came over the announcement system.
"There's the rest of them coming on the trip too," he informed me in a low tone. "Enda and Jim. Jim has proposed the deal and is wanting me to just put up the money but I need to look into it. Rob is along for the ride. We're all in it together, everyone has their tuppence in. We need to be there to see the people we're dealing with. You don't give four million away to people you don't know. You need to know what kind of people they are." I nodded earnestly through the briefing. He spoke quickly, but what I gathered was I had to keep my eyes and ears open.
In situations like this coffee acquires a gourmet flavour.
"Don't worry about the others," he assured me. He turned around to three men leaning over one of the scattered drinkstands. They had been looking at our backs for some time.
"Enda, Rob, Jim. This is Aidan."
I clasped hands with these men whose surnames I would later read on the business documentation then instantly forget.
"What are you having," they said.
I took a second coffee, then a third and fourth on the flight. The businessmen had baby whiskies. "No ice," they declared with vehemence, one after the other. The hostess laughed with them, just as she looked sullenly at those who politely placed their orders.
Enda told me about himself. He'd been vice-chairman of the farmers' association, owned five pubs at one point, a quarry before that and had done some work for the Australian embassy. He had spoken over the cubicle partition with the Australian prime minister as they both sat on the toilets. It was the Irish built Australia, he told me.
This man has run through as many careers as I have, I said to myself. Albeit mine were a bit further down the ladder.
"Go on and have a drink," said Enda, "it'll be late by the time we get to the hotel. There'll be no work done this day."
If I looked deep in myself, maybe it was true I'd been wanting a beer all along.
Morning in the Alte Muhle hotel. It was a perfect replica mill house in what had once been an outlying village. A narrow staircase, exposed blackened beams, white-washed walls. I scraped a fingernail along and a trickle of chalk fell to the floor. Someone had decided these businessmen needed the authentic touch.
In the breakfast room a bearded man with the look of a fanatic about him. He sat alone at the end of a long table. His severe features matched the woodcut images that alternated with the narrow windows. Portly burghers and merchants of the 17th century, butchers with sausage. A money-trader with caricatured features that no souvenir factory would dare to replicate. Maybe this place was genuine after all. I slapped the deeply-grained door-frame.
"Please," the man said, "choose your breakfast from the bench." He meant the sideboard. Plates of hard-boiled eggs, cheese and cold meats were arranged, baskets of breadrolls and tall jugs of juice. I pumped the coffee canister a couple of times.
"Your shirt is hanging out," he informed me from across the room. I jerked upright and tucked it in.
"Ah. Thank you."
As a counter-aggressive measure I took the seat opposite him and crunched my cereal confidently. I leaned back to savour the goodness of the morning and the exquisite woodcuts on the walls. Small talk of sorts ensued. The hotel was well-known for its piglets on a spit, I should try the roast boar. The owner himself served as carver, he trusted no-one else.
His initial remark was just some quirk, I decided, an eccentricity. I enjoyed the feeling of getting back into the swing of speaking German. The chunky syllables slid off my tongue and I thought briefly of some mad eighteenth century count who had locked a child up from birth to see if German was the primal language.
After a time it bothered me that I did not know who he was. A regular, a member of staff, or perhaps someone waiting for the businessmen. The more we talked the less possibility there was of suddenly asking.
"I'm here with a group of businessmen. From Ireland," I said.
"Yes, the Irish," he said. "I think they are still asleep from their excesses." He sighed. "But there are occasions when it is an advantage to know how to drink a lot."
I tried again. "You've met them? John and Jim?"
"Briefly. They are interesting characters."
"And you're a businessman yourself?"
"No. But I need them. All our plans remain just a dream unless we get the businessman on our side. Think about it, no matter how good your idea is, it's going nowhere unless it can be sold."
The ambiguity annoyed me. "I'm just here as a translator. I actually know nothing much about the business."
"I'm Klaus," he said. He was the engineer for the project. He was to come with us to the seller to do some final negotiations. That meant the fact-to-face encounter John had flown over for.
"It's about biodiesel and recycled diesel," he said. "The wave of the future. It's going to be huge in ten years time. Energy from household waste. But we're also metamorphosing diesel from a more mysterious source. Don't tell anyone." He smiled happily, wanting me to guess, glad he could share a secret with a non-businessman.
"Old tyres?"
"No. Good guess, but that's being done already.
"Sewage?"
"No, something just as unmentionable. Something that's been held in storage for several years now and that everybody wants to forget about. Carcasses. Millions of them. Ever hear of BSE? Fifteen million cattle held in cold storage. We have a pilot plant converting them to diesel."
"An insanely good plan."
He laughed at my effort at humour. His chest heaved in chuckles, making unhealthy sounds.
"A mad plan indeed," he said. "Everybody else has forgotten about those cattle. They would love for all those carcasses to just disappear."
John and Enda came down the stairs. They stood a moment looking right and left expectantly.
"That lad Rob," said John, "a bomb wouldn't wake him."
The Mercedes people carrier cruised the flat roads, keeping the gleaming hangars and car parks always to the right. The fields between were stubbled with a thin green sward, and the earth showed through in places. We orbited the airport several times while the driver tried to get through on his mobile. Hal-lo, hal-lo, his voice burred. The car had a comforting vanilla scent. It would be nice if this journey lasted a few hours.
Contact established, the car swooped in along a heavily sign-posted access route. Attention, the signs blared, no parking here, no setting down, no agricultural vehicles. The hedgerow was a tangle of wintry twigs clipped to a straight edge at chest height. As the car sped along, it was like looking at the world through an antique film reel.
John briefed me yet again. It was a brown-field site which had previously held a smoulder-treatment waste processing plant. Fumes had escaped, and the plant had been closed 'by the community'. Now any negotiations about setting up any similar type of operation had to be held on the QT until concluded. Biodiesel was totally different, of course, but it also involved a sort of waste processing.
The people carrier slowed at a security box, then was waved through. The acceleration had us all bracing limbs against the plush leathers.
"Is this a diesel?" asked John.
We got out. Sliding doors opened before us. A vast hangar with roofed drink bars pitched at erratic intervals like nomadic tents. Alongside each, an oasis of palms set in tubs. John and Jim stood just inside the entrance doors. The driver scanned from cluster to cluster of people across the sparsely populated space and gave a wave.
The seller approached at the apex of his retinue. All eyes were drawn to the swiftly-marching formation. The leader's creased warlord's face bore the marks of decades of sun.
He's a Bavarian, the whisper passed around, a staunch Bavarian. We were waved over to a low table surrounded by low couches. The company divided into those who sat back and those who leaned forward on the edge of the seat. I was of the latter kind. I had to catch every word.
The seller was introduced, handshakes all round. He sat back and spoke.
"Jim, you are much greyer since we last spoke three months ago. You must have many worries."
Everybody laughed except the seller. His own hair borrowed a style from Colonel Gadaffi without the Amazonian guard.
"John, I am pleased to meet you. I look forward to business fruitful to both of us."
His spokesman moved his chair forward. He depicted the steps of the purchase with geometrical clarity: First the contract is drawn up. The notary serves as a legal advisor to both parties. Then the notary composes the document to the satisfaction of both parties. Then it is signed in his presence. The notary makes an entry in the ground register and finally the enforceable letter of demand is served. Payment must be made between sixty days of receipt.
The spokesman switched gaze at the end of every significant clause, so as to bestow his attention equally. The three businessmen sat through this, looking a little discomfited at being lectured at. They were perplexed, all that travel just for this lecture.
Hands were exchanged all round again. The entourage departed, making sharp turns among the low tables until they reached the open concourse. I followed them with my eyes. The seller gave the illusion of strolling while his advisors trotted along on each side .
John mumbled something and set off for one of the miniature oases of fronds. I shuffled through my papers, admired the steel ribbing above me, and took a stroll to the toilets. On the way back I drifted over to where he stood at a counter.
"It's yourself Aidan. What'll you have?"
"Tonic water."
We sipped our drinks. "Did you get a look into his eyes? What's your impression from dealing with Germans?"
"He's sound," I said. I nodded decisively.
We were to get to the notary's office and be back in time to find a solicitor in the city before five. "We need to find our own solicitor," Jim explained. "This solicitor has his own concerns and isn't too bothered with us. He hasn't asked for all the documentation even. - John! Is there any way of getting in touch with the solicitor before five? It's all hanging by the hands of the clock."
"Which solicitor," I asked.
"There's only one solicitor," Jim said grumpily, "our solicitor."
No point in further questions. I was not being paid to understand the legalities. Jim had had a bad night: triple-rimmed bags hung below his eyes. The flesh on his cheeks was slack and purple. It must have taken him a great effort to shave that morning. One nick and those wine-dark folds would leach a brighter shade.
I was reluctant to even ask where we were going. The mountains, but which ones? A journey of several hours lay before us. I felt a need to earn my wages.
"There's a clause in this land register prohibiting the establishment of an incineration plant," I pointed out, "you know, after the contamination accident."
"Is there? Good man. Could you translate it and print it out for me this evening," said Jim.
"I don't have a printer. I don't think there's one in the hotel."
"Would it be possible to write it out, would it take much longer?"
His tone was polite, a simple question. All I had to do was laugh that the teachers in school could never read my handwriting. Instead I said, "Sure, that's no problem," and lapsed into mute resentment. He had no idea of what translation involved. Probably he assumed it would take no more time than reading the text.
Two hours and forty minutes to get there, Klaus had said in the morning. What they didn't say was it was three hundred and twenty kilometres.
We droned a line through the landscape like an aircraft on an interminable descent. Left and right bare fields stretched away. Enormous pylons flitted by. In the distance rustic barn towers, red roof tiles, church steeples, and now and again the steel superstructure of a manufacturing plant.
John also looked out, touched, perhaps, by the realisation that not just the motorways and power plants are man-made, but the precisely delineated fields too, as also the neat hedgerows, and forest sectors, and that not a single square inch of land is unplanned. Cadastre 15, plot 3, subplot 23/A. I read through the land registry entry for the sale of property to Seramat. To be proclaimed before the notary and signed in person by all parties concerned.
"John," said Jim. "How will you arrange to get a copy of the contract to your funds manager? Won't he need time to inspect it?"
"Yeah, that'll be arranged," replied John. He gazed out at the landscape, as wearying on the eye as a city grid. It was very different to the haphazard succession of overgrown fields, drumlins and isolated farmhouses at home. A ditch might be twenty foot thick, a small field might be fenced off for no conceivable reason. Here every corner and verge was accounted for.
Traffic was light, now and then a truck. On this motorway, if the speedometer showed 120 km/h, then you travelled a hundred and twenty kilometres in an hour. A child could understand it.
The Mercedes bore us onwards inside a cocoon of composite materials. The muted vibrations transmitted up through the undercarriage were just enough to lull a person to sleep. A soothing hum to lean your chin against. It was inconceivable that we could make a closer contact with the landscape, spill out against the tarmacadam, metal buckle against blacktop, limbs spin and crush.
John Aldridge 33, I read on the contract, wondering, stupidly, what the number referred to. Then it hit me. He was a year younger than myself. He was balding on top, bags under his eyes, and a kind of dull over-shaven pallor to his jaws. In my mind I had bracketed him as "businessman, 40's" and failed to notice he looked the same as the school friends I still occasionally met. He looked more or less his age, a middling non-descript age.
I felt like a foundational myth had been shattered: that constant reassuring back-thought: that I was at the beginning of things, just about to get it sorted out, to make the break into the big time. When I passed students on the street I felt one of their fraternity; maybe I would even go back to college next autumn, do a one-year course. Start on a different path in life. If not this autumn then the next.
I had let myself wallow in illusions. My life was narrowing in around me, defining me. I should try to see myself as just another person, and ask where that person is going. Wastes of years stretched out behind me. Disconnected skills and part-time jobs not building up to anything. There was something wrong with me: I had neither health insurance nor pension fund, and had not even worried about these things.
I felt that way for the space of an hour. Then one of those mood changes that I had come to rely on came over me. There was still time enough.
The vehicle shifted gear and shunted sideways to join the traffic on a slip road. We held on to the straps as we skewed left and then right. Seconds later we drew in to a roadside village. We clambered out on weak legs.
Across the road was a dark timbered inn, built to resemble a hunting lodge. The timbers looked blackened and old, but the front gardens were in perfect alignment with the modern slip road. Flower beds and rectangles of shrubbery filled in the spaces. I wondered briefly if this whole village had been constructed in a week as part of the motorway plan, as a high-value stopping point with top yield leases.
"Everything here is built like a story book," said John. He made a quick stretch of the neck - a countryman's gesture. "Look at the set of this place." He let out a sound expressing dissatisfaction with the levelled lawns and square cut hedges.
Jim had tottered across the road to find a toilet. He didn't look well. The sun shone weakly. This is spring, I reminded myself, not the beginning of winter. The door to the inn swung closed with a bang and I realised there was no sound of traffic. Nothing, not even a bird song from the spindly hedgerow.
John relaxed against the warm bonnet of the carrier. He had the air of someone about to say something, if he could just get the moment right.
"Just to let you know, Aidan, it's fine to do what Jim or any of the others ask, we're all in this together, but at the end of the day I'm the one that rang you on the phone. What I mean is, as far as Jim is concerned you're working for all of us, but the reality is, you're working for me."
How to distinguish reality was something that had long bothered me too.
"Sure," I said lightly.
"Just don't tell Jim. I mean, there's no need to."
"No no, I'm just here to make everything run smoothly."
"That's it, that's it," said John. "Do you remember McT took up boxing for a while last year? He's a complete madman. Battered around the ring he was, did he tell you that?"
Jim stuck his head out the door of the Gasthof. "Are we stopping here," he shouted. The two Germans looked at each other, shrugged as to say: it's not our four million.
"We'll just freshen up," agreed John. "It's a long journey, we could nearly have taken a plane. Tell them that Aidan, tell them it's almost an international journey."
The landscape changed to small copses interspersed with spacious private mansions. The fields became smaller, the land poorer. There was no distant vista of the mountains now. The road wound upwards, but the asphalt surface was as smooth as ever, the white lines just as bright. And the houses ever more extravagant. A sign in the centre of a green field advertised a family day-ticket for the ski lift. We realised with some disappointment that this was just as deep in the countryside as we were going to get. Or I did anyway.
When I stepped out of the people carrier at a sloping village some time later I thought it was an overdue break. The mountain air made me feel light-headed. My legs tingled. "This is it," Jim said, and put his hand to a doorbell. I was glad I didn't have time to get nervous.
We took seats in the notary office waiting room. Pamphlets on racks offered legal advice for single mothers and people who had been unfairly dismissed. Klaus went on ahead to an office partition with frosted glass panels. We could see the shine of metallic epaulettes and buttons, the two men joking loudly.
"What's this little chat about?" John asked. "Eh?" he added. I examined the leaflets, edged closer to the office.
"Let them have their natter, but not on our time." He looked bleakly at the almost-silhouettes. "C'mon lads get a move on," he said through closed mouth. His foot tapped staccato on the floor.
The notary came out in full regalia and was introduced all round. We proceeded to his chamber and took a seat, the notary taking position under an imposing coat of arms sculptured in relief. The businessmen relaxed on the upholstery, unimpressed by formalities.
And so it began. The notary declaimed in a voice as formal as a Roman senator. First entry in the land register, free of encumbrances, served letter of compulsory payment. I could interpret it fluently because it was exactly as written in the documents.
"What happens if there's a legal error in the contract?" John asked. I relayed the question and answer.
"The notary takes responsibility."
"I'm sure he does," smiled John, "but who foots the bill?"
"What about indemnification," added Jim.
The notary bears all financial responsibility, came the answer.
"Yeah but like, is he fully insured?"
Klaus the engineer had had enough of this questioning. "The notary is backed by the full power of Germany," he said in a loud voice. "The notary is like -" His English was insufficient, so he raised his hands in supplication. The Irishmen nodded.
"Like God," John interpreted for the others.
"Are we indemnified?" added Jim.
"The letter is sent by registered mail from the notary's office," I continued my explanations from memory, "and is considered served on the date the guy who's receiving it puts his signature on it."
"Are we indemnified? Can you please ask him that?"
I had no idea what indemnified meant in any language on earth. The notary looked at me expectantly.
"So. Everything will turn out just fine?" I asked in German.
"With the blessing of God," he replied. We were in Bavaria, not Berlin.
I turned to Jim. "Yes. We are indemnified."
On the drive home John explained about the delay while Jim behind us arranged to buy a Volvo tax-free via a friend in the Egyptian embassy. When he spoke on the phone his voice took on a higher pitch and he enunciated the words carefully.
"This whole deal is still on a knife edge," John confided.
"Why, does the seller have someone else interested?"
"No, but there's too much of this dragging on."
"What will he do with the land if he stops the sale."
"Nothing."
"Then why would he back out?"
"He's reaching the limit of his patience."
This did not make sense to me but I didn't doubt it. The man with the camouflaged country accent in the back seat owned a Dunnes Stores premises worth forty-six million. I couldn't doubt that either.
"John, are you to ring your fund manager now and make the extra arrangements?"
"Well you can't just get him to change mid-stream .. " The sentence degraded into a mumble.
"You can ring him now on the mobile. Isn't it an hour later in Ireland? It's getting on for four."
"He said he'd be busy this afternoon. I'll get him tomorrow."
"Busy? Busy? Surely he has a mobile phone. What kind of carry-on is that?"
John muttered it was all right, he'd talk to him later.
"Who's in control here? That's no way to operate. Give him a ring and get him working on it. Hey. Would you not do that?"
"Jim. Just leave me the fuck alone."
In the silence that followed we stopped being fellow travellers, and became our restrained professional selves: the driver with eyes only for the road, the translator shuffling through papers, the engineer resting his gaze on the passing factories. They sped by faster and faster as the vehicle got quieter.
Time passed quickly for the rest of the journey back - except once, where a sudden curve surprised the driver at 120 km/h. I hung from the hand grips. John braced his legs against the door. It was suddenly clear to me that if any one of us slipped in the interior there would be a corresponding slip on the exterior, tyres would be released from the tarmac - or whatever synthetic substance the Germans used instead of tarmac - and we would be violated by the outside.
"You know how I knew that was a close thing?" whispered John. "I saw him shift himself to let the airbag blast out on his right. He's been in an accident before. I could bet a grand on it."
This impressed me more than he could have guessed. The silence resumed. The landscaped slipped past, so much of it, so many nice towns.
Some time later tram tracks glimmered and diverged in the road. Four-storey townhouses on each side, too quiet to be the city centre, too old to be the suburbs. I had an idea.
"Are we passing close to the centre? I need online dictionaries to do the translations."
"Of course. Sure you'll be able to make your own way back to the hotel," John said. "Indeed we should all get out and get something to eat. See if we can get a proper steak or something."
We had entered a stretch with several bars and gaming halls. The driver looked bemused at the choice of stop-off point but said nothing. He understood English, I was sure, though he waited for all instructions to be translated to him. We pulled in at a medical centre. It was after hours, they wouldn't know.
I couldn't look Jim in the face as we got out. I gave a quick wave, turned back momentarily to shake hands with the driver, and walked in the direction I happened to be facing. I was a free man. For the first time in thirty-three hours my time was my own. I reached the next street, a shady part of town where the bright red and yellow carvings on Chinese restaurants were overwhelmed by brighter neon. I felt the temptations of a foreign city and two hundred euro in my back pocket. But it was only five in the afternoon, I was only playing with the thought. A kebab seller nodded to me and resumed slicing at the rotating sod. I ordered a large one, garlic sauce. When I'd finished it half an hour and several blocks further on, I was too greasy and stinking to do anything other than walk, follow the tram tracks, just glad to be on my own. I thought abut McT and the stories I would tell him when I got back. For a long time I'd had nothing much to say to him. You've gone boring, he told me. He always liked to hear of new and mad things.
Eight hours later we were in a strip club off Cathedral Square. John sat with his arm around a brunette, Jim with a more mature lady with frizzled blonde hair, and I sat with Leda. I examined her glossy fingernails. They were too perfect and smooth to be real, but I couldn't find any joint. They felt like tiny wheels across my lips. I threw an arm around her, asked her where she was from. "Did you have a happy childhood?" she asked. I stroked her side and told her. "What do you think of this place? she asked. I cupped a breast, weighed the question carefully. "Will you have children some day?" she asked. Her nipple is a bud, a buddy. "These men, I think they are not bad men. Is this their first time in Germany" She was thirty-five. Yes, why would she lie? She has a ten-year-old daughter. Drink liquid after a meal, not before. The only practice dancing requires is dancing. Cabaret, ballet, choreography, she'd done all the training, but here it was mainly striptease.
"Mainly?" I asked.
Jim struggled onto the couch with his frizzled blonde. His eyes brimmed with tears. "This is a very naughty girl," he said. John leaned across to me. "If you want to bring your girl into the private booth I'll pay."
A short moment later they had all disappeared into the booths. "What happens in there?" I asked Leda. "Nothing," she said, "really nothing." I poured myself some more from the bottle. "Take it easy," she said. "I can only sit and talk to you as long as there's champagne left on the table." I had drunk quite a bit of it, at ¤248 a bottle as it turned out. Then Leda left me too and I was alone in the room. Staring at the red walls and plush and feeling quite at home. The only thing that was dazzlingly extravagant was the price. Thank god the booths were sound-proofed. The boudoir Madame emerged from the bar and set a plate of peanuts on the table.
"Where is everybody gone?" she asked, looking about puzzled. She had an outfit like a lion tamer on her, eyebrows so severe that when I looked away I couldn't remember if she was a blonde or brunette. I was embarrassed to mention the cubicles, and so simply shrugged. She gave the bottle a shake and emptied the ashtray.
The music started up and my Leda was dancing on the stage. A dress of electric blues flowed over her maternal body. The complex twists of her legs inside was an extravagance of skill - only a hint showed through the fabric. She slipped the shoulder of her dress so it was held up solely by the pressure of her breasts. Impossible curves, etched from some template buried deep in the psyche. I was dangerously giddy - they say an unleashed imagination would make a hell on earth. No shame, no conscience restrained me. I wished her daughter could be here to see this, wished that she would grow up to inherit such a radiance, such kindness, such arts. Leda was looking right at me now as she pressed herself against the wall. It was impossible to believe that she had been sitting beside me some minutes before, my arm around her. I was on an outer sphere around her. All my life, it seemed I had been conditioned to look on women as fellow beings. The blasphemous truth was unleashed and yet I was not depraved. I clapped, swollen with pride that I could be so refined an aesthete as to appreciate this. The dress dropped to the floor and she played with her g-string. Making creases appear and disappear. Maybe any woman could transform herself like that - it couldn't really be the case that the most beautiful end up in a club like this. Yes, I could imagine Leda typing in a lawyer's office - like the one I stood in for the first time just a day later.
The music stopped. Leda skipped off the stage and reached the bar in three swift steps. Crouched beside the empties crate, breasts squeezed against her knees. The ordinary wrinkles of flesh revealed themselves. much as they do when I look at myself in a bathroom mirror. She was after all only a year older. Back on stage she stretched herself, bent the upper half of her body slowly to one side. I could not begin to guess what magic was next. Madame threw a scowl from behind the champagne flutes she was polishing. A high thin tinkling of music. I thought it was the lift doors, but it was classical music, swelling louder from the hidden speakers. Ballet. And Leda was stretching each limb from the hairless crease to the polished nails, vibrating energies beyond the extension. The conjunction of formal movement with the nakedness confused me. A power was exposed to me but I felt cheated. I didn't know what purpose there was to this performance, where to place it. This was not for me. I would have to have taken a lot more than a pinch of cocaine to believe this was for me. I clapped my hands, once more becoming the refined aficionado, the wealthy client, whatever she took me for. No, she didn't take me for any of these.
"Whore," she said, sitting back beside me.
"Who?"
"The manager. She took away the last of the champagne to make your boss buy more."
I shrugged. "He can afford it." I didn't put my arm around her this time. It was a Ukrainian-style ballet, she told me, as though she expected me to know the difference.
"The Ukrainian style is to dance naked?" I joked. She laughed and I felt I could ask her anything.
Jim shook the Madame's hand profusely, telling her repeatedly she had a well-run establishment. Clarified by the weak champagne we clambered up the stairs - had we been in a cellar all along? - and met the clarity outside. With all the street lights blazing I could not tell if it was dawn. A woman on the bottom step, pulling a wrap tighter around her shoulders, wished me luck.
We stared at rows of display cases in the centre of the pedestrian street. Clocks and kitchenware, sound systems and cameras under miniature spotlights. Waterford crystal, platinum pens, lead glass paper weights. The men walked around the display cases in awed silence.
"How the fuck can they leave these out all night?" said Rob. He slapped a case soundly until pulled away from it. "How the fuck do they not get robbed?"
"I don't care what you say," said John in the taxi home, "it takes some courage for a girl to dance naked on a stage. They earn their money. They do."
"That's what I call a well-run establishment," said Jim.
Only Rob was discontented. Eyelids and nose were swollen with drink. Some unhappy event from the past troubled him. He bowed his head and his lips blubbered.
"Might as well have been in a confession box," he wailed.
The situation was this: there had been a previous buyer who had gone through the whole process, even up to the signing of the contracts. Then he pulled out at the last minute.
"What I want to know is, why did he pull out? When I first got interested in this deal, I was told the contracts were on the table ready to be signed, only the names needed changing. Now when I ask about it they say no, there's no readymade contracts, no previous buyer. They play it down, saying it was just some eejit who expressed an interest but it was all mouth. And then look at these contracts. See the change in the typing there?"
It was that same night. Grey light showed through the windows. We were sitting on a landing of Die Alte Muehle, on three chairs pulled around in a circle. John rifled through papers and had me translate on the fly. He sucked on a cigarette. I would read out in syntactically skewed English, verbs all coming at the end. At a certain point John would shake his head, "Nothing there. Go on to the next." Using this system we had worked our way through a good three pages. In between I learned the fund manager did not exist. He was a ploy in case John had to pull out at short notice.
"If the place can earn so much money, why does the Bavarian want to sell?" John mused.
This was the type of question I didn't dare ask for fear of looking stupid. I stared incredulously at the queue of empty bottles he had worked through. It occurred to me that these could not be investors at all. They were some friends of McT's who were playing at being big shots. Or if they really had money, it was millions that fell into their laps when the family farm was rezoned to be an exurb of Dublin. The grandfather's legacy, or perhaps his parents were dead. I couldn't see then handing over millions to be invested in some German inventors' new process for extracting diesel from kitchen rubbish.
These people might be gone in the morning before I woke up. They had no office that I had heard of, no secretary, no employees. Just a few men in contact by mobile phone who had too much money sitting idle in the bank. The nature of the deal was this: if the sale was successful I had a chance of getting paid. If there was no profit in the sale then the two hundred in my pocket was all I would ever get. All I deserved in fact.
I had not even spoken to them yet of my rates. I continually 'forgot' to bring the matter up. Now I saw why. It was the self-same embarrassment as ever plagued me to the core. I would apologise if a kid elbowed me in the street. That's what I am deep down, though I struggle against it every moment. At least Jim was real. Unless he would go to the extent of pretending to talk to someone at the Egyptian embassy. I had heard he owned several sites leased out to Dunnes. His name could be tracked, there would be an office somewhere.
"John, it's five in the morning. It's a bit beyond the eight pm finishing time."
John looked like he'd been caught playing with a toy train. "Right right," he said. "Sorry, Aidan, for keeping you up. Time to give it a rest."
The next morning I was filled with a new feeling of determination. These were practical men, straight-forward, and appreciating directness when they came across it. For me not to mention my pay rates would be seen as caginess. Cute hoorism. Waiting for the opportune moment to announce a substantial fee. Or maybe it would be just seen as proof I was an amateur. - A boozing pal of McT, someone grateful for a couple of days work but who is not in this business for a living. In that case they might throw me another hundred and a bottle of whiskey. What had I done after all only about two hours work?
I resolved to act more professionally. Keep my distance from the in-jokes. I would excuse myself early from the breakfast table, saying I had a phone call to make to the office. Give the impression there were people trying to get in contact with me. I would mention emails waiting to be tackled, drop a few hints of other jobs on the line. There was a time when it was appropriate to joke about drinking sessions with McT, and a time when it was advantageous to keep one's distance.
Then again, I didn't want to suddenly turn formal on him. We'd been in a strip club together.
This bare fact startled me. I had no context to put it in. The events of the previous night seemed disjointed from the present. No mention of it could ever be made again. A revelation of myself that would be sealed off from the real life. Already it seemed several days in the past when - I counted on my fingers - it was seven hours ago. Already her name escaped me.
Klaus was in the breakfast room. Cigarette smoke hung in horizontal strata above his head. The air reeked of patient waiting. His eyes blinked red, but the rest of his face was dry and wrinkled. His plate was piled with smoked ham.
"The inventor", John had referred to him, with no irony, just as there was "the translator" and "the driver". It was one of the details that made that this whole business slightly surreal. But apparently Klaus had a patent on the diesel conversion process.
I wondered briefly if it was he who set the tables and made the coffee in the mornings. I had not seen any serving staff.
"Do you think these men will lay down the money?" he asked as soon as I sat down.
"I think he will in the end. But he has his doubts."
"The low temperature smoulder process is beyond doubt. Someone just has to be the first one to use it on an industrial scale."
"No, I meant doubts about the other investor. Jim."
He sighed. "I thought they were old friends. Do you know John? How did he get his money?"
"He mentioned a gravel pit. He kept a few trucks for a while. Then he sold off some plots of land."
Klaus nodded with increasing vehemence. "Property," he said with stark resentment. The obsessive nod died off slowly. I reached for the milk. Strong coffee upsets my stomach.
"And you. Were you just an observer last night or did you 'participate'?"
"Sorry?" I said with studied politeness.
"Were you just the translator or did you actively join in with what went on last night?"
"And what went on last night?" There was no other safe response.
"I'll tell you. First you went to Weissgerbers for big steaks and several beers, then you went to the Irish bar for Guinness, then you went to a brothel."
"Then you know everything already."
"I know Jim. I know how you all suddenly found yourselves in the brothel yet nobody had decided to go there. I know how he likes to play the naughty boy. I know him from the last trip in October. Yet still he doesn't make up his mind. What more does he want? Why are they coming over if they know nothing about the operation of the plant?"
"They just want to shake hands with the people involved."
"They shake hands, they shake hands."
"The three hundred mile trip to the notary seems to mean they're serious about going ahead."
"That means nothing. Nothing at all. Time is money they try to tell me, but these men have plenty of time."
I nodded, made a face expressing sympathy.
"They ask me nothing - nothing - about the process. They come over and spend thousands on hotels and chauffeurs and solicitors. Do you know how much personal money I have put into this project? I sold my house to finance a pilot plant. I sold my house and moved into a little wooden cabin. On a vegetable plot. Do you think I can tell these people that?" His voice progressed with a grinding rancour. "No. That might make me look strange. I would not let them see what place I live in, not these men. If I go drinking with them and laugh at their jokes, yes, that will help me. Who is this John who is coming over now? Who is he, who's holding the money? He holds the money."
He balled a fist and slapped into his left palm. This was a man who didn't care what I thought of him now. All formalities had fallen away. I sat opposite, the role of opponent thrown upon me. The mood had the raw intensity of a street brawl, except his hands were trembling, his eyes watered. He was a sixty year old man, and still waiting for the big break.
I had an impulse to tell him honestly who I was, as though there was a secret I was holding back. But there was no secret to tell. There was nothing to say.
"Aaach," he said. He stood up and walked out. I felt like I'd been thrown out.
There were no staples so I twisted a dog ear to hold the papers together. The businessmen had not come down for breakfast and I didn't know what the plans were for the day. We were in a hotel that cost two hundred a night, and they had stayed another night. My pay would be only a fraction of the bills. That thought gave me confidence. I knocked on Jim's door.
"Who is it?" he said. It was his telephone voice.
"Aidan here."
An adjustment of bed springs, a short pause, then the door opened.
"I brought you a couple of those documents translated. I only translated the most significant parts - some parts are standard legal text. I can get those later."
"Oh excellent excellent." He inhaled deliberately, looked attentively through the documents. I was conscious of imposing a formal atmosphere on him. "And these would be the lease contracts for the sitting tenant, and these the maintenance. Aidan, would you be able to just jot a note of what each document is, and just a note of what you didn't translate? Take your time, I'll be back in a moment." He struggled into a suit jacket. It became something of an ordeal. He stretched his arms back and searched for the sleeve entrance. "My goodness, my goodness," he whispered.
I heard his padded footsteps down the corridor, then a knock, voices, jokes and laughter. Was my company so intolerable that he'd fled from the room? I squashed such ridiculous thoughts. Why would such an idea occur to me? If anything he felt slightly embarrassed about the night before. I'd forgotten about that, again.
I flicked the catch and opened his suitcase. There was a folder pocket on the underside of the lid. I lifted out the documents and stood by the door where I could hear his return. Very quickly I leafed through them and memorised a few names. I slipped them back in the case and sat down, my heart thumping. Then I recalled my new sense of resolve. If you're going to do it, do it right, Aidan. I took the documents from the suitcase once more and wrote details of names and dates. When I was finished I scribbled out the translation notes Jim had wanted. When that too was done I waited in the quiet room listening to a distant nasal voice intone words like 'appropriate', 'advantageous' and 'requisition'.
When I joined them they were talking about visiting the plant. It was a foolish man, John averred, who would buy a property without even looking at it. It was the last step, now that they'd seen the surveyor's report, the engineer's report, and met the seller. Always look at what you're going to buy. Four million is after all a lot of money. He spoke on in this manner, as though trying to convince somebody.
There was a small problem in getting everybody together; Rob was off shopping. The inventor had rung in and said he didn't have time to visit the plant.
John paced up and down in the widening of the corridor. He seemed suddenly conscious of how late in the day it was, the flight back home the next morning. I could see in his face the decision time was near. Everything was leading up to the signing of those contracts, all the meetings and phone calls and eye contact was to help him make that decision, and now and in the last moment he was looking for an exit, for no other reason than to prove that it was still in his power to decide.
"What time will we head out there?" I asked.
"Another hour maybe. Another two. You'll come out to the plant? With this inventor not around there'll be no German except the driver. We'll give it a thorough checking. We'll be carrying that inventory with us and tick it off - we'll need you for that. You see Aidan, we might not be wearing a suit and tie every day, but me and Rob, when we make a decision, we count every penny, we keep track of every cent."
He stopped pacing, conscious of some discrepancy. "I don't mean things like last night. That's something separate."
I changed topic to save him. "I think Klaus is getting a bit anxious about whether this deal will go ahead. I think he's getting a bit doubtful and that's why he cancelled coming out today."
"Is he? Is he? Well he can get as anxious as he likes. Because I'm doubtful too up till the last moment. You don't just hand over four million unless you know where it's going."
Four hours later I was sitting on a raised spigot, reading about the conversion of plant from smoulder treatment to enzyme-processing. The vast plate-steel tanks would hold tonnes of household waste. A stinking mess of paper packaging, leftover food, potato peelings. It would stew at fifty-two degrees for a week, then a centrifuge would spin the catalysed mass and black oil would ooze out. This seemed the most infeasible part of the whole business.
I watched the thinning crown of John's head as he followed Rob in ducking and weaving through the piping. There was something of the adventure park about the suspended pipes, lozenge-grid walkways and red-labelled valves. The men slapped the pipes and fittings in passing, occasionally shaking them vigorously. Rob was the fitter of the two, but only on account of his youth. He was perhaps twenty-eight but already thickening about the waist. His jowls had taken on a steak-and-two veg slackness. The night before he had spoken about training for a football match, getting in shape, and a friend from school who now played in the English league. But you could tell he would never really get in shape. He would be content to track the successes of his footballer friend, and think to himself, I'm the same age as he is. A few months of training is all that divides us.
A hollow drip-dripping sound consoled me. But why would I be in need of consolation? I had broached the subject of my payment that morning and John had offered a generous amount per day. Multiplied by three, John had added, meaning the full rate applied to the first day, even though we'd arrived towards five in the evening. Reason to be cheerful. Second reason was to be out here, the observational lord of a maze of piping and cisterns.
A thin black trickle of viscous liquid collected below a u-bend in the pipe. It looked like crude oil was already beginning to ooze from the apparatus. I smeared it between finger and thumb and brought it up to my nose. It was burnt residue from the smoulder process, possibly formed that last night of operation when the temperature rose above critical and a dark noxious cloud drifted towards Munich.
"Will the inventor's plans work?" John had appeared from around a blockhouse. He was grinning broadly. Though it was the one most crucial question of the whole investment, for reasons unfathomable it was a rhetorical joke to John. "Come on, we're going to meet him in a guesthouse for dinner. He says he wants to talk to us in private. Jaysus he's a strange man. Sure he could have been talking to us here all morning . He was supposed to show us around. Maybe he had a bit of a head on him."
I folded the plans, jumped down. Food was the last thing I needed. I was running on energy of a different order. Food would make me feel fat and bloated. We joined the footpath to the car. We had come in the side entrance, along a country road. It occurred to me this rural appearance was part of the design of the factory, a place for employees to stroll during lunch breaks.
John whistled, clipped at the thistles. Broke into words.
"O stony grey soil of Monaghan
The laugh from my love you thieved. - I'd say you know that one? Hey?"
I was caught out in the open. "Would I know what?" I said, "What would I know?"
He looked at my burning gaze.
"It's poetry," he said, "that's all," and then I knew he had meant nothing by it, it was just a chance remark, and I could feel my inner gauge veer back to equilibrium again. Normality restored. For an instant though, I thought I'd been betrayed: that bastard McT on the phone to John. The midlands melody of his voice insinuating a readymade bond. Aye, nice fellow. Went to college with him - a hesitation. He writes poetry you know - a little laugh. - Used to be a bit of a poet. But he knows his German, there'll be no problem there.
It was wrong of me to think that McT would try to embarrass me like that. He would never do that on purpose. And if he did, by accident, what harm in it? I had nothing to fear from these men. John and Rob were treating me like a friend. I should drop the pretence that their ways were alien to mine.
"It looks well enough," John said. "That's some hi-tech looking stuff around, what?"
"The previous buyer," I said, "was back in October. A man named Ian Myers. He fell out with Jim at the last minute, but he thought the project itself sound."
John considered this a moment. "Where did you get this information?"
First the organic waste. Klaus sketched block diagrams on a sheet. The government grants us money for buying household waste. Then the oil begins to flow. Then more money is invested. He drew heavy arrows, a fat cartoon droplet, dollar symbols. The currency of course would be euros. Finally he curved a line back to square two. Profits reinvested in the plant.
We sat on the edges of our seats. Klaus was smiling comfortably now, presenting his pitch.
"It's like priming the well. We get the black gold flowing boys," said John.
Klaus laughed heartily.
"We already have an arrangement with the refinery at Hamburg that they will accept this product at a hundred-twenty dollars a barrel. You've been out at the site today? It's all good equipment, yes?"
"It looks great."
"Wonderful. The residue from the process is inert and can be disposed of with no special regulations. The interesting thing about this plan is it earns money both on the input side and on the output side. You cannot lose."
"That's great Klaus."
"This is my plan." He finished curtly, set down the marker.
"I understand that. It looks good. If I can ask you though, why would you not get a bank loan if it's all so solid?"
"My God! This is venture capital. This is ... You are an investor. What do you want? You want the profits in your pocket before you commit any money?" Klaus was in danger of losing his balance. In a physical sense too, for both sat straight-backed at the edge of the seats. The waitress came and stood beside us, holding her tray across her breasts like a shield. She smiled at me and I smiled back.
John was once more establishing the point that four million is a lot of money. I observed Klaus with a morbid fascination. Perhaps I wanted to see him break. Perhaps it would prove to me that it is possible to break. How far would he go for his idea? I wanted to see the truth wrenched from him, see him release his roar.
"No no, I understand it's not something the bank would be interested in. We've gone through it. The deal looks good. It looks good. But it's Seramat that I'm worried about. How can I put four million in Seramat when I know nothing about them?"
Klaus' eyes grew big. He raised his hands as though he meant to grab John by the collar.
"You ARE Seramat," he said. "That is what you ARE." That was the limiting point of his exasperation. This strange new word struck me as the last twist of absurdity. I pictured a being stumbling through the detritus of a ruined city, howling at the raw wind, not knowing his own name. That being was me. No money for a cafe, no map in my head. How many times had I wished for someone to stop me in my trail through the suburbs and tell me You ARE Seramat. Except the word would not just be an enigmatic sound.
I looked at John curious to see how he would react to this revelation.
"I know yeah, I'm on the board. But I'd rather scratch out the Seramat and put the money in under my own name. You see Seramat is basically a holding company for Jim."
"But that's excluding the other major shareholder."
"Jim, yeah. The shares are not worth anything yet. Nothing exist until I put the money in it."
"Jim is already in the company. This cannot be done without his signature. This will not work."
"Basically, if the cake is good there's enough in it for everyone. Don't worry about Jim. I can speak to him. It's up to me - I mean my fund manager - to release the funds for this."
That was when I leaned over to John. "Can I have a word with you for a moment?"
I said it in a straight-forward way. Klaus looked at me, not with a tolerant smile for an untimely interruption, but with the cornered look of someone who sees all routes being closed off. His animosity was as pure and naive as a teenager's.
That was the moment I took my future in my hands. It would seem more significant later, when instead of thinking of them as Klaus and John I thought of them as the multi-millionaire investor and the process engineer. I took my future in my hands and swooped in to force entry to the real world. I had refused to don a suit, seeing it as the final submission. Now I saw the suit as just another disguise.
The hotel landing, late that night. John is taking a break from the beer, letting Rob do the drinking. I had rung Fiona, told her I was transferring the ¤22,000 house deposit savings. Are you sure, she had said, that was all.
The idea took root. I paced the narrow space between window and stairwell.
"It can be combined with recovered waste oil," I said. "and agricultural waste that otherwise would just left in a slurry pit. The Greens have a big influence in Cork. The way I see it, the idea doesn't have to show big profits, it just has to show it won't lose money. And it's time Ireland wasn't copying everything direct from the UK. We're in the euro zone now, that'll go down well."
I stopped. John was staring at my hands. I had been making an ad-lib complex of gesticulations, improvising a non-verbal code of point and counterpoint. I had never been one for hand-waving.
A sudden vision of myself: this was the new me. This is how I would appear in conference halls across a dozen regional colleges and chambers of commerce. Council engineers would see me and be convinced.
"That's it," John said. "You'll be a good man to present the process. In a plain simple way. At a certain level PR becomes if anything more simple. You don't try too hard to convince. You're telling them, this is the plan, this is how it works. You have the facts. You'll have all the technical stuff to refer them to. You see you were worrying about not having a science degree. That's not the way to think about it."
Both Rob and John were relaxed, blinking out from swathes of cigarette smoke. They talked as though their words were only an exercise in imagination. Their tone was like men in a pub musing over a boxing match. I felt I was alone in seeing the direct connection. This would happen. Whatever we agreed on would be. From this smoky landing of a Munich hotel, a chain of events would have their origin.
The extra information I gave John was that patent ownership had become an issue in the previous contract. Klaus had refused to let them go. Jim and he had agreed to keep quiet about ownership of patents this time round. When the German plant proved itself feasible, the process could then be licensed and marketed by Klaus, or a company with him at the wheel.
John forced him to a juncture. Yield the process patents or the plant would not be built. Time was running out. It was not like Klaus had split the atom. It was just a process that worked, that could be done with the equipment at hand. In another six months the fixtures and fittings would be rusted to uselessness; all that adventure park of twisting pipes would be a mountain of scrap. And other inventors with equivalent processes would have advanced to the marketing stage.
So we got the rights to the process. I would market it in Ireland, possibly the UK later. The fantastical side of it only struck me much later, when talking to others about it, and I came to emphasis it. A brilliant inventor. Worked on it in secret for fifteen years. It broke his marriage, then broke his health. We looked at the plans and said, OK we'll give you a chance.
Except it never occurred to me to doubt it, not having encountered Klaus as I did, and seen the core of him when squeezed.
"People look at me," John was saying, "and they think he's a millionaire. But I'm an ordinary guy too. I rang Michael Neary once about a leisure centre for Cavan town. Why should I put my money into that? he said to me, I can get more putting it into property in Sussex. Because it's in the border area, because we're both Irish from around there. That means fuck all to me, he said, I just want to see the return. I mean that's wrong. Like I'm a millionaire now but I might not be tomorrow. If I was doing this just for the money I'd buy houses in Drumcondra and go round every week would you have the bit of rent? I'll get a man to fix that toilet next week. If that's what being a millionaire is, then no thanks. Like I have three kids, and I want to see them provided for like anyone else. But I'm not putting a silver spoon in their mouths. And who knows what money I'll have by then anyway? If you have a steady job you know where you are and how much you'll have. Your pension alone is worth half a million. But to be honest, I couldn't work at a steady job. It's because there was no job there for me that I went from one deal to another and here I am today. Each deal bigger than the last, but it's about moving forward constantly, not about accumulating money. Money is only a figure on your balance sheet. At the end of the day you get only one crack at the whip and then you're gone and you're not bringing it with you.