The 2084 Precept (21 page)

Mr. Brown came back. He was tired, he'd done
a lot, and he settled himself under the table to snooze or
philosophize or both.

I watched the river and the geese and the
ducks, the swans were off somewhere else for a while. The bank on
the other side was also green, also trees. The Main being a fairly
wide river, it has a lot of barge traffic, long industrial
transporters going east to west and vice versa, but even these were
peaceful, sunk deep into the water, a slight chugging noise
drifting over to where we sat as they passed us by. I watched the
people walking along, plenty of girls testing out their summer
dresses. Good for them; at that age jeans and slacks should be
banned between the months of May and September for all non-fat
women, and they would be if I were in charge of the world. Just
joking.

"Looking for a younger one?" Monika asked
with a grin.

"Monika, I am not joking," I said. "I
wouldn't want a single one of them to swap places with you sitting
on that bench. Not even five of them all at the same time, believe
me."

"I believe you," she said, "and in any case
you couldn't deal with five at the same time, you couldn't even
deal with two the way you smoke." At this she beamed, like me she
delights in the harmless sexual innuendoes. And in the not so
harmless ones also.

"Monika, if you and I were together, I
wouldn't be able to anyway. I would be walking around on crutches
every morning, consuming vast amounts of vitamins during the day,
swigging Viagra in the evening and dreading the next
life-threatening bedtime. And I would be permanently gaunt and
haggard-looking and none of those young girls would want to even
say hello, let alone anything else, unless of course they thought
that I was Mick Jagger after a night on the town, in which case you
might, but even then only might, be confronted with some kind of a
problem."

"Peter, you really are the sweetest man,"
she said.

No I'm not. What I was really thinking about
was one of the greatest short stories ever concocted, 'Girls in
their Summer Dresses', a story which is not a story, written by one
of the greatest masters of short fiction ever to live, an American
called Irwin Shaw. Read that and you will get the truth about what
and how we men think, irrespective of our age. And that's the way I
was thinking, like the husband in that story. Women don't know how
we think, or at least they don't think we think like that all the
time. Nor would they want to know anyway. And in any case they
wouldn't believe it, even if a bishop were to swear to the truth of
it a thousand times with his hand on his pump—his heart I mean to
say, my apologies. No, I can't blame them. Any female with a
reasonable set of neurons would have to consider it a grossly
fraudulent exaggeration. Which it is not of course, no way.

It was getting late, becoming cool again,
and so I collected a nice bone from Marie-Anne, paid the bill, and
we walked along the river for a while and then went home.

Back in the apartment, I gave Mr. Brown some
food, made sandwiches and a coffee for myself, put some Rachmaninov
into the player, and played some chess on the computer. And I
didn't forget to give Mr. Brown his bone before I went to bed. I
picked up a book of Roald Dahl short stories—I tend re-read his
stories from time to time and I'll re-read some of them several
times more before I die—and eventually dropped off into the land of
Nod.

I woke up at a civilized hour. It was
raining. Mr. Brown, I thought to myself, you don't realize what a
problem a bit of water is for us humans. But a walk is your due,
there's not much you ask for and you give more than that in return.
To me and Monika both. And to the children in the park. A pity
human beings aren't a bit more like you my friend, this poor old
suffering lump of rock of ours would appreciate the difference. No
threats of nuclear bombs blowing its guts apart for starters.

But the morning is not a good time for
philosophizing. It is the time for raincoats and umbrellas and
doggie walks and good moods. I took the usual route to pick up the
IHT, I collected the laundry, and I decided to have breakfast back
at the ranch.

Mr. Brown shook himself all over the hallway
and settled down on his mat in the living room. I made some coffee
and toast, Chivers orange marmalade oh yes, and started on the
newspaper. Today was going to be an easy day, I decided. I am one
of those lucky people capable of working very hard for very long;
but I am also one of those lucky people able to appreciate the
pleasure to be found in doing absolutely nothing, or at least
nothing of any import. Good for the soul, again, whatever that
is.

And here he was again, Jeremy Parker rising
up from the depths of my neuron cupboard. Right in the middle of an
article about why we should start to trust the nice, incredibly
honest Iranians. The same old human shit, century after century.
You would think the clowns had never even heard of the Trojan
Horse, or of Chamberlain in Munich or all the rest of it. You have
to bow down to that member of the 10% who said that history was
merely a record of the human species' inability to recognize its
own stupidity; let alone learn from it. Right on the nail.

Yes, Jeremy Parker. The €100,000 man, maybe
the €200,000 man. I'll check it right now in fact, leave them to
argue and argue and argue about the nice Iranians who would never
dream of blasting Israel into Allah's version of hell and back. I
opened the laptop, clicked away into my bank. And there it was,
another €100,000. Large credits in my bank account generate as much
joy for me as the joy experienced by a rat living in an army
shithouse. My mood metamorphosed from good to superlative without
further ado.

I used the whole lot to short the Eurostoxx
50 some more. This index has a lot of banks in it and if there is a
collapse by year-end or even next year-end, I will be selling off
and looking at some more nice credits to my account. Mind you, the
certificate I use was issued by the least risky bank, I make sure
of that, they are all capable of going bust these days, a result of
being managed by gambling morons who are not even obliged to risk a
small portion of their own money. And then you lose the lot, or
most of it at best. Because even their customer asset insurances
are a dishonest joke.

And so what about friend Jeremy now? His
money is real and he keeps his promises. But he is as deranged as a
rat when its army shithouse has been abandoned and it can't get
out. No doubt about it, he is shipping money all over the place in
a maniacal delirium.

I don't know why I've got rats on the mind
today, perhaps it’s because of the banks, or rather the bankers.
They gamble away because their banks can earn a lot more money by
investing in high risk products. Which means bigger bonuses for
them, millions of euros, dollars, pounds, whatever. It's like
putting your money on a single roulette number, the return is
bigger. And if the number doesn't come up? Ah hah, therein lies the
difference. This money is not theirs, it's yours and mine. And this
is what happens when you separate authority from responsibility, as
I keep trying to tell my consultancy clients. If the law required
the gambling bankers to personally risk financial ruin for the rest
of their lives, they wouldn't be taking those risks, they would be
investing safely, they would be taking a few million less in
bonuses and they wouldn't complain. But our lawmakers—the political
pin-stripes—don't have the brain to organize something like that.
And if you are a voter, no complaints please, because you are the
reason why the pin-stripes are where they are. And then the bankers
spend the rest of our money on beautiful and expensive bank
buildings in the most expensive parts of the most expensive cities
in the world, followed by those ridiculous and unearned
bonuses—never a problem, choose your board members well and overpay
them, and they'll approve your overpayments as well—and what's left
over goes on exorbitant dividends. So our voters don't need to
wonder where our money has gone or why our banks have insufficient
reserves, they voted for the pin-stripes, not me. Me, I don't have
any worries, I just watch the whole shebang from the comfort of my
theater seat. I let the waves carry me up and down. I don't
vote.

So let me analyze. Jeremy's fantasies do not
include money. The money is real enough. And the potential for
another €400,000 of this real money has now gone from possible to
probable. That is the upside, nothing to add. The downside is that
I have to attend a few more meetings and am open to whatever risks
a full-blown lunatic, whether escaped from his asylum or not, can
represent.

I considered. The meetings are not a
problem, nothing to add. The risks, on the other hand, are as real
as the money and are, in all logic, undefinable, so there's no
point in trying to define them. But he
seems
normal, and his
offices and the people in them
seem
normal, the dream
herself
seems normal
, and he himself
sounds
like a
non-dangerous specimen of this particular form of insanity. I
cannot be sure of course, the risks are there, no doubt about it.
But I estimate them to be of limited magnitude. Add to that the
fact that life is an adventure anyway, and I conclude that the size
of the potential benefits outweigh the size of the potential risks.
Decision taken. I would be returning to the Royal Strand Towers on
Wednesday.

I looked out of the window. The rain had
stopped, the sky had brightened, and my superlative mood said
coffee and a cigarette on the balcony, finish the newspaper.

And then, with the sky still behaving
itself, I decided it was cycling time for me and marathon training
for Mr. Brown. Along the river, along past Eddersheim, Mr. Brown is
fast and fit but he can't keep up, plus he has other interests
along the way. So I stop now and again to let him catch up. On the
way back he was tiring fast and was more than happy to do some
philosophizing under the table at the small restaurant where I
stopped for an early evening meal. And by the time we got back home
he was exhausted, not too exhausted for his food of course, but
after that he collapsed onto his mat and fell asleep, no
philosophizing this evening.

I dropped downstairs for a coffee with
Monika, say goodbye. When was I coming back? I didn't know but at
least in time for your birthday, don't worry, nothing will stop me.
You are not only a lovely man Peter, she said, you are a lucky one.
Tomorrow you get poached eggs on toast from me and you get a high
pressure weather zone for your driving, 25 degrees and sunny.

Back upstairs I typed and printed two
invoices for Jeremy, no VAT for charges from Germany to the U.K.,
my very great pleasure old chap. And off I went to bed.

I packed my luggage and took it down to the
car, hung two suits and two jackets in the back. I fetched Mr.
Brown and we went for a short walk, sunny sure enough but still a
bit fresh, and we came back to Monika's for breakfast. I love
poached eggs as Monika knows and she has good coffee as well, Illy,
as good as my Lavazza. I smoked a cigarette on her terrace while
Mr. Brown ate a rare and unhealthy breakfast; namely the other half
of the chocolate, I hadn't forgotten about it.

"I'll miss you Peter," she said as she
always did, "drive carefully and don't forget to come back."

"How could I ever forget?" I said with a
smile, "You know I would never abandon Mr. Brown."

"Brute," she said and kissed me very close
to the lips, avoided them by about a millimeter the clever lady,
and the squashing was definitely a trial, as it always is when I
leave, I'm sure she could feel me. One day I am not going to be
able to shove nature back into its dark and murky cave, I know it.
The effort required is too vast, too excruciatingly overpowering to
be permanently resisted by a normal male equipped with his normal
allotment of hormones. Lust is more powerful than sensitivity in
the long run. Don't blame me the day it happens, Monika.

I gave my buddy Mr. Brown a big, big hug and
then I was off. I stopped at the petrol station, tanked up and
purchased a carton of cigarettes and the IHT. The IHT is very
important on a Saturday. This is the day of the chess column and
the day of the difficult Sudoko compared to the easy ones during
the week.

I headed up to Hattersheim and onto the feed
road for the A66. Fewer trucks on Saturdays, I should be in London
by around 7 p.m.—or 6.pm. U.K. time. This feed road is quite a long
one and about half way along it there was a hitchhiker. I checked
it out, it was a female, a fairly young one. Now, as you know,
hitchhikers are something of a rarity these days, particularly
female ones, particularly unaccompanied female ones. But there she
was, a real-life female hitchhiker. I slowed down but I didn't
stop, kept my eyes on the mirror. You know what happens, some burly
asshole of a boyfriend jumps out from behind a bush and he hasn't
showered for a year and he's got their luggage, ten tons worth of
rucksacks and the like.

But no-one jumped out from behind a bush or
anything else and so I stopped about 50 meters further on, eyes
still on the mirror, some of these guys are experienced. She'd seen
my brake lights, she'd seen I'd stopped and she was walking toward
me, hesitantly, perhaps I would drive off again. But under no
circumstances was I going to drive off, no sir, there was no
boyfriend on the whole landscape, and a lone young female
hitchhiker happens to you maybe once or twice in a lifetime or
maybe never. I lowered the passenger window as she came up to the
car.

"Good morning sir," she said to me in
English, the language of the world, "are you possibly going
somewhere in the direction of Paris?"