The secretary to the director of the viability commission was pounding away madly at the typewriter. A flurry of paper was piled on her desk, and five buttons on her telephone display were on hold. She looked up at J.B. in exasperation and said, “He’s in a meeting. He’s in meetings all day.”
J.B. smiled and leaned over her desk with two of his arms. “How about an appointment tomorrow?” he asked, observing several envelopes clipped together with an unusually large, and what J.B. considered attractive, stainless-steel clip, the top envelope stamped all over with the word “CONFIDENTIAL.”
“Next week,” she answered, “and that’s if he isn’t traveling.”
J.B. nodded, folding his two arms with a mixture of understanding and worry.
The secretary looked up and apologized, “I’m sorry.”
J.B. smiled sympathetically. With his third hand, he pocketed the clipped envelopes stamped “CONFIDENTIAL.”
That was how J.B. made the amazing discovery that the development resources research and viability department and that understaffed mess of 9.99 files was, at this moment, the most important department in the company. J.B. returned to the staccato of filing in his own office. Somewhere in all that paperwork was an answer, the discarded card from Geoff Gamble’s pocket, the missing microchip, the very pea of the matter. J.B. thought, excitedly, that it might be paper clips, so he decided to take action.
In the following days, J.B. wrote a series of memos of his own:
“To: B. Carp, Computer Services Department Manager. From: J. B. Tweep, Asst. to Asst. Manager, DRRVD (Development Resources Research and Viability Department). Please make three computer terminals available to our filing department ASAP.”
“To: R. Gold, Communications Department. Effective immediately, the DRRVD requires worldwide satellite feeds on 24-hour basis for research and viability scan. Please make necessary arrangements by moving three color-television monitors into room 311 with VHS VCRs and 12-channel memory capacity. Hookup to satellites and decoding devices required.”
“To: S. Perkins, Human Resources Director. Request the status of three temps changed to permanent, plus request hiring of three more temporary clerical personnel. See attached memo for approved budgetary changes for critical additional personnel for DRRVD.”
J.B. simply attached another memo and marked everything “URGENT.”
It was a simple but auspicious beginning, and for some reason probably only known to the ex-presidents Georgia and Geoff Gamble, things actually began to roll. In less than two days, monitors and computer terminals were rolling down the corridors to the development resources research and viability department. Maintenance men were crawling over and under the floors and attaching wires to everything. Computer and electronics experts were interfacing office personnel to software programs, software programs to terminals, terminals to VCRs, and VCRs to satellite computer systems, which J.B. imagined were probably interfaced with God.
With these enlarged capabilities and the extended interfacing of several more hands, J.B. could now orchestrate a symphony. Sifting with extreme ease and confidence through the 9.99 files, J.B. began to categorize and narrow the options. That the end result might not be clips of any kind occurred to him, but he had become, in the process, involved in a new method of thought that he referred to as “trialectics,” sorting problems into three options and always opting for the solution in the middle. His application of trialectics to his job was, he realized, experimental, but J.B. was willing to assume responsibility (something that, heretofore, no one at GGG had been willing to do). He was beginning to think that trialectics would eventually revolutionize modern thought and philosophy, and he envisioned, when the time came, backing up his decision by a firm hand-hold in the Theory of Trialectics.
J.B.’s gamble (Georgia and Geoff would have been pleased) paid off. In a short period of time, the development resources research and viability department was the booming center of the GGG operations, and J.B.’s position became increasingly powerful, in the manner of a crescendo. Office space and computer terminals—not to mention secretaries, receptionists, clerks, runners, supervisors, and assistant managers—were added to the growing personnel of the department. J.B. revolutionized the office routine by setting everyone up in groups of three. The personnel from J.B.’s department were easily recognized because they all went to lunch, coffee breaks, and the copy machine in groups of three. J.B. even went so far as to hire a team of triplets for special projects.
But, contrary to the original Gamble plan for a sort of creation in perpetual motion, J.B. was essentially goal-oriented, and he supposed that plans were made for a purpose. Trialectics was simply a way to reach an answer. That is why, one day, J.B. found the very thing in the 9.99 files that was at once the triumph of months of hard work by this now-bustling office, and, at the same time, the discovery that meant the annihilation of that same office. And it was not a paper clip.
J.B. sat at one of the many three-terminal settings and punched in the standard input. He could hardly believe the line-up across the monitors. This 9.99 item actually met all the requirements for shape, packaging size, clothing, and accessory development; matched the psychological and philosophical makeup of a wide range of prospective buyers; collaborated sympathetically with a high percentile of patented and patent-pending inventions; and met all short-term and long-term planning projections for investment, loan, and taxes. The computer terminals blinked and beeped joyously. While the computer spilled its contents onto the printer, zipping back and forth across the pages of tractor-fed paper, J.B. quickly had an assistant pull the stored video material on this item.
To J.B.’s surprise, the video material was in a foreign language. His assistants all gathered around the screen to watch what looked like a documentary report of some sort.
A woman with a diamond earring was saying something while a man held a green feather near her ear.
“What’s that language they’re speaking?” asked someone.
“Sounds like French, but it’s not,” someone speculated.
“A Romance language. Cross between French and Spanish, I’d say.”
“Where’s the transcription on this tape?” asked J.B. excitedly. “We need to know what they’re saying. We need an interpreter. Maybe we can get someone from the un. This is of utmost importance!”
J.B. rewound the tape and viewed the entire piece again. It was Mané Pena on national television demonstrating the medicinal attributes of his wonderful feather on reporter Silvia Lopes.
“Where are they?” puzzled J.B., looking past Mané and Silvia Lopes and trying to get a clue from the background. There wasn’t a tree or a shrub, but it wasn’t really a desert; nor could it be a parking lot. The ground around them looked strangely shiny.
CHAPTER 10:
Fortune
In the days that followed our descent with Lourdes from that fourteenth-floor window, the results of all Kazumasa’s gambling became evident. Kazumasa’s cousin, Hiroshi, came over and spoke excitedly with Lourdes and Kazumasa. Kazumasa had single-handedly won the national sports lottery and the national numbers lottery, not to mention the numerous illegal lotteries that Lourdes had had him bet on. Kazumasa’s total winnings seemed to rise with each passing moment, and Kazumasa’s cousin feverishly took Kazumasa in taxis everywhere to deposit the money. It all seemed to be an incredible dream.
In a country where the disparity between wealth and poverty is great, the news of instant wealth spread in and out of every obscure crevice of that massive and unexplored land. Kazumasa became a household name, like a character in a nightly soap opera, on the tip of every Brazilian tongue. The media milked his story for everything it was worth, from the story of his boyhood on the shores of the Japan Sea to weird speculations about the nature and uncanny accuracy of the pigeon messages and their possible connection to me, Kazumasa’s ball. When the hysteria surrounding the amassing of the greatest fortune ever obtained through the lotteries and the fear of m
e, Kazumasa’s personal satellite, had undergone the natural process of sedimentation, Kazumasa himself emerged, a simple and solitary Japanese immigrant with a shy smile and a growing desire to experience more of life. Brazilians from everywhere flocked enthusiastically to Kazumasa, adorning him with offers of friendship, both sincere and laced with greed.
I continued to be eyed with extreme curiosity. Most people were sure that I undoubtedly had something mystical, magical, or electronic to do with Kazumasa’s enormous fortune. A recent graduate of electronic engineering in the southern state of Santa Catarina had happened to make an electronic replica of me (a flattering representation, I might say), which was cleverly attached to one’s head by a thin wire and a transparent headband and operated by a tiny battery wired into the inside of the band. When looking at the wearer of this contraption head-on, it did indeed appear as if a ball were spinning free in the air. The graduate student had contrived the replica as part of his costume at Carnival, but a friend immediately recognized the gadget as their ticket to riches. Together, they began to produce the headbands with the electronic whizzing ball by the hundreds and, later, by the thousands. Soon the lottery shops were filled with people wearing artificial spinning satellites, circling numbers with abandon and indefatigable self-assurance. Of course, when the artificial balls did not produce instant riches, many abandoned the strange headgear, but others, like Kazumasa, found a inexpressible comfort in the ball, a relationship, I can assure you, unmatched by human or animal counterparts.
In the meantime, there was all the money and the problem—if such be a problem—of what to do with so much money. Everyone seems to have an idea of what he or she would do with sudden wealth, but Kazumasa was a true exception. What does a man with a ball need with money? Some people must have realized the value of a ball like me because in a questionnaire asking what you would do if you had won Kazumasa’s great wealth, 10 percent of those questioned said they would buy a ball like me.
Kazumasa had Hiroshi and Lourdes read the answers on the questionnaire and listened carefully to every sort of suggestion. There were, of course, the extravagant cars and the mansions with a hundred maids just like Lourdes. Then there were the great causes and small causes, businesses and hotels, plantations as large as the island of Shikoku, great poverty, great politics, great futures. Kazumasa muddled through all these suggestions, nodding and scratching his head in confusion.
“Karaoke bars,” suggested Hiroshi. “How about it? You and me, Kazumasa. Open karaoke bars all over Brazil. You’d like karaoke bars.”
“Okay,” nodded Kazumasa, happy for this suggestion.
“Okay? Just like that?” asked Hiroshi. “It was just an idea off the top of my head.”
“Okay. Okay,” Kazumasa waved his cousin off maybe because it was just the beginning. “Lourdes, what do you want?”
Lourdes swallowed. “It’s not for me to say, Seu Kazumasa.”
“I remember what you said that day we went to buy the tickets,” prompted Kazumasa. “About Rubens.”
“Rubens? A wheelchair?” Lourdes gasped and glowed with delight. “You would give him a wheelchair?”
“Wheelchair? More than a wheelchair,” said Kazumasa. “Maybe we can find a way for Rubens to walk again.”
“But it is only a dream,” Lourdes protested and hoped all at once.
“Maybe we can take him to a specialist,” suggested Hiroshi. “Maybe there is a cure.”
“Yes,” Kazumasa and I nodded. Then Kazumasa walked over to our old window site and looked down at the Djapan’s back porch. “And,” he said, nodding in the general direction, “Hiroshi, you give money to the pigeon couple. Buy more pigeons.”
Hiroshi nodded, “Sure.”
“What about the man who said he would buy a hospital bed for his invalid mother?” reflected Kazumasa. “Send him a bed. And that little girl who wants to own a bakery so her family will always have bread to eat. Buy her a bakery.” So it began. Kazumasa instinctively began to give his money away. There were countless people with interesting propositions who began to line up at our door. While crowds filled the back street awaiting the weekend pigeon messages, around the corner Kazumasa faced an ongoing stream of people hoping to find an audience with him and his ball. Kazumasa listened patiently to everyone, and everyone stared at me. He did not turn away anyone; everyone left with something. A group of boys got a soccer ball and team shirts. A man got a prosthetic leg. A young girl got dancing shoes and lessons. A boy got a clarinet. A woman got a gas stove. Kazumasa granted gift after gift like a big giveaway department store. People called him the Japanese Santa Claus. And this was fun for a while.
In the meantime, Kazumasa followed Lourdes and Rubens to doctors and specialists. Rubens was poked and prodded and tested, but all the doctors said the same thing. “Rubens’s paralysis is irreversible. There is nothing we can do for him.”
Lourdes wept, and Kazumasa felt terrible. If he could not give something special to Lourdes, what did it all mean?
Kazumasa shook his head. Every day, there were those who had wishes he could not grant because they wanted things beyond his capabilities, such as health, a lost arm, vision, hearing, babies. Kazumasa could not perform miracles. More than anything else he wanted to share the happiness he felt with others, and it pained him to see so many sick and homeless and hungry people. How many hospitals, how many soup kitchens, how many housing projects would it take? Government politicians, private foundations, and a myriad of social agencies approached Kazumasa with great plans. Kazumasa signed check after check, but still, half the people who came to see him needed the impossible.
“Only a miracle, Kazu. Only a miracle can help most of these people,” Hiroshi consoled Kazumasa gently. “What can you do about it? You have done more than anyone. Pretty soon, you will have given up most of your fortune!”
“Only a miracle,” Kazumasa agreed.
“What I want to know is when are you going to stop? You can’t keep on giving your money away like this, can you?” Hiroshi wanted to know.
“Why not?” asked Kazumasa. “Why do I need it? What is it all for anyway?”
“Your retirement? I don’t know. Don’t you want anything for yourself?”
Kazumasa had to think about this. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he shook his head. He thought about all the things that people wanted, but he could not think of anything he, too, wanted. He went to the window and looked below on the Djapans and their pigeons. He felt he wanted something that the Djapans had, but he did not know what this might be. No, he thought, it was not pigeons.
Lourdes bit her lip. Balls don’t know much about these things, but even I realized that Lourdes liked Kazumasa very much. Kazumasa did not quite know this and would not have known what it meant anyway. In the meantime, Hiroshi was always bringing Lourdes little gifts: tapioca flour to make her coconut tapioca cakes, a ripe pineapple, embroidered handkerchiefs. Lourdes thanked him kindly, but so did Kazumasa. Lourdes sighed. This Japanese with his ball was different from other men.
As one would have suspected, but Kazumasa did not, people were likely to invent their wonderful proposals or their sad, complicated stories. In the beginning, people who might have intended to lie were forced, out of uneasiness or perhaps fear in my presence (as if a ball like me could be judgmental), to tell Kazumasa the truth. Actually, I had no way of warning Kazumasa of the truth or falseness of the people he met, but I could see that after a while, people, emboldened by the marvelous stories others recounted of the Japanese Santa Claus, had decided to test the spirit of this phenomenon. Even Kazumasa could see that some people had been through the line twice, that certain stories bore a remarkable resemblance to the current tragedy on the prime-time soap opera, that politicians were using his money for their own campaigns, that the foundations had invested the money in coffee and soybeans, that altruism had been corrupted by greed. By the time Kazumasa realized the sad truth, another year had passed, and he had spent much of his great fortun
e.
Batista and Tania Aparecida had accepted Kazumasa’s gift to buy some prize-winning pigeons and were busily breeding what would soon became known as the finest pigeon corps in the country. To thank Kazumasa, Batista had taken the elevator up fourteen flights with three cages of pigeon couples and personally hung them on the wall just below and outside Kazumasa’s window.
It was the invalid boy, Rubens, who took a special interest in the pigeons at the window. At Kazumasa’s invitation, he and his sister, Gislaine, had come with Lourdes to live in Kazumasa’s spacious apartment. Every day after school, Lourdes or Gislaine leaned out the window and brought up the cages for Rubens. Sometimes Rubens could not wait for anyone’s help, and Lourdes would find the boy hanging out the window from his waist and reaching for the cages himself. “Rubinho!” Lourdes would cry. “I’ve told you! You’re going to fall out of that window!” But Rubens was impatient to see the birds. He took each bird from its cage and cradled it in his lap, inspecting it carefully as Batista had taught. He moved back and forth in his wheelchair from the kitchen and interrupted Lourdes’s cooking to fill the water feeders and the small troughs with Batista’s special seed. Despite Lourdes’s protests, Rubens liked to set a pan of water on the kitchen table and watch the birds splatter about in a daily bath.
Rubens also liked to follow the news about pigeons. He had asked Lourdes to frame the glossy cover of the second quarterly issue of Pigeon Illustrated, on which Batista and Tania Aparecida’s prizewinner was proudly featured. In the most recent issue of the National Pigeon Society newsletter Columbidae, there was a feature article in which Batista was quoted at length about grooming techniques, birdseed mix, flight training, and homing patterns. Rubens followed all this avidly. Batista was now considered a new authority in the field, and every boy in the neighborhood was proud to say he knew Batista personally. Rubens was even prouder because he had been given pigeons whose lineage could be traced to the original pigeon that Batista had saved from being pressed between the heavy tire of a three-speed bike and a concrete overpass. And, more importantly, this pigeon had brought the message home about the Japanese with the ball.
Through the Arc of the Rain Forest Page 7
