The Capitalist

by Peter Steiner

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  For Jane

  History repeats itself: first as tragedy, second as farce.

  —Karl Marx

  I

  WHEN THE FIRE ALARM SOUNDED, Abinaash Chandha, a sixteen-year-old seamstress, jumped up from her Singer and ran toward the exit.

  “Back to your station!” yelled her supervisor. “It is only a test of the alarm system.”

  “Everyone back to work!” yelled the other supervisors, waving their arms and blocking the aisles. “It is only a test! It is just like on Monday.” It was true: There had been an alarm on Monday that had amounted to nothing.

  Abinaash went back to the Singer while the alarm continued sounding. She finished hemming the silk pocket square with the embroidered “Pascal” logo in the corner and slid it to the finishes box. She earned ten rupees for every ten pocket squares she hemmed. The hems had to be sewed neat and straight with tiny stitches, which took time. She had been hemming squares for more than a year. On a good day she could earn two hundred rupees, over two US dollars, which meant she could send money home to her family. Abinaash finished another square before she smelled the smoke.

  The Kavreen Style factory in Lahore, Pakistan, an immense six-story building next to the mosque a half block from the old Lahore Canal, was on fire. Bolts of cloth stored next to the generator had smoldered for a while before bursting into flames. The factory walls were brick, but the stairs and floors were wood and were littered with fabric scraps that ignited with explosive fury.

  The supervisors had disappeared. Abinaash ran with the others to the stairs, but the stairwell was filled with billowing black smoke. You could see flames below and hear the screams of the workers on those floors. Pandemonium broke out on the sixth floor. Women and men screamed and wailed and ran about, first in one direction then the other. One old woman—her name was Safia Atwal—sat at her Singer with her eyes closed, her lips moving, her hands folded on her lap, and her body rocking gently back and forth.

  Smoke was seeping up between the floorboards. All the windows were covered with iron bars. Abinaash ran to the farthest window where a young woman and a man squatted on the sill kicking furiously at the bars. A wailing siren came closer and then stopped below. The woman and man continued kicking. When the woman fell back exhausted, Abinaash took her place kicking at the bars. The bars did not move, but the two kept kicking.

  Down below, the firemen dropped the ends of their hoses into the canal and turned on their pumps. Great gouts of brown water surged through the hoses and struck the fire with a hissing noise. More fire trucks arrived and soon there were hoses crisscrossing everywhere. The firemen aimed the nozzles into the flames. But the building was an inferno that no water could quench.

  The firemen could not go into the building. They could not even get near enough to place a ladder against it. And even if they had been able to, their longest ladder would have reached only the third floor. They could only point the hoses and gaze into the fire with shiny, sooty, despairing faces. Many hundreds of people, mostly women, had come out of the building. They stood behind the firemen, staring into the roaring inferno or looking away toward some imaginary place where this could not happen. No one came out after that.

  On the sixth floor the bars on the window, which opened onto a side alley, suddenly came loose and crashed to the ground twenty meters below. The young man screamed at the crowd on the road until someone noticed and began yelling and pointing in his direction. The first person to jump was gravely injured, and people rushed in and carried her off. Abinaash and the young man tried to hold others back while people below piled up debris under the window—old furniture, palm fronds, mattresses, upholstered chairs, blankets, anything they could find that might break their fall. Some women had tried to make a rope from sheets of uncut silk pocket squares, but when they hung it from the window, it went down only eight meters. The heat was terrible. It made it hard to breathe.

  People pushed past Abinaash and jumped, sometimes two at a time, landing in the tangle of those who had jumped before them. Abinaash looked around. The sixth floor, mostly empty now, was burning. Through the thick smoke she could see all the sewing stations in flames, like so many pyres, along with the carts that had been used to carry away the finished work. Safia Atwal, the old woman, was still sitting by her Singer. She was on fire and still rocking back and forth, back and forth. Abinaash slid down the silk rope as far as she could and then, after a moment’s hesitation, let go.

  II

  THE COUTURIER PASCAL, with offices in Paris and New York and showrooms in Paris, New York, London, Berlin, and Hong Kong, learned of the Kavreen Style factory fire when The New York Times called. “I’m working on a feature about the safety conditions in the factories of your South Asian suppliers,” said the reporter.

  “Well, I can assure you,” said Serge Palmer, Pascal’s vice president in charge of public relations, “that we regularly inspect the facilities of all our suppliers to make certain they adhere to the highest safety standards.”

  “Did you inspect the Kavreen Style factory? If so, you must know that it was a fire trap. The alarms were faulty, there were bars on all the windows, there were no emergency exits, no fire extinguishers, and there was highly flammable litter everywhere.”

  “Why are you asking about Kavreen?” said Serge.

  “It burned to the ground in June,” said the reporter. “Two hundred and seventy-four people died, and many hundreds were injured.”

  “Two hundred and seventy-four?” said Serge. “My God. That’s horrible,” he said, and he meant it. “But Kavreen is not one of our suppliers. We used them once, but after an inspection of their factory, we stopped using them. We haven’t used them for two years.”

  “And yet,” said the reporter, “their logbooks show orders from Pascal, which were being fulfilled the week of the fire, which was just a few weeks ago.”

  “That isn’t possible.”

  “It is not only possible, Mr. Palmer, it’s true. Pascal has a new line of neckties and pocket squares, among other things, called ‘Insouciante,’ that came out this summer—a striped field with an embroidered logo—that was manufactured by Kavreen. I can show you the logbooks, the order numbers, the shipping bills.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line. Finally Serge said, “I’m certain your information is incorrect,” although he had a sinking feeling that it wasn’t as he hung up the phone.

  The Insouciante line, which included ties, scarves, skirts, shirts, blouses, bags, pocket squares, and other items, all with narrow charcoal and dove-gray stripes capped with the embroidered silver P, was enormously successful. The products were prominently displayed in exclusive shop windows. The pocket squares sold for two hundred and sixty dollars, the neckties for three-fifty, the scarves for nine-fifty. They couldn’t keep them in stock.

  Pascal had sent someone to inspect their Asian factories two years earlier. They ha
d then left it to their overseas agents to find new suppliers to replace those factories found wanting, either for quality or safety reasons. The agents mostly waited until the inspector—a junior executive—left the country, never to return. “And make certain that those items are taken care of,” said the junior executive one last time as he was being driven to the airport. He shook his finger to show that he was serious.

  “Yes, sir,” said one agent. “You will certainly see that has been done when you are next here. It will all be taken care of, sir.” Once the junior executive was gone, the agent renegotiated the company’s arrangements with the factories, including a small consideration for himself to ensure that the factory would remain in the supply chain into the foreseeable future.

  “Yes,” Abdur Pandit admitted, “of course ours is an old building.” He was the owner and founder of Kavreen Style. He had built the business from nothing, sewing on an ancient Singer he had bought while still a boy. The machine had been old and in serious need of repair and had cost him almost nothing. Abdur had taken it apart and replaced all the worn gears and frayed wires. He had collected cotton remnants and sewed aprons day and night, which he then sold to the local Mutual Department Store. Before very long he was able to hire others—first only those with their own machines—to do the sewing while he searched for new outlets. Through an agent he had finally gotten a contract for Russian aprons and housedresses.

  Abdur expanded his operation, moving from one cramped space to another, until the abandoned colonial hospital became available. He bought the building and had been making improvements ever since, adding a freight elevator to move supplies to the six floors and then to remove the bundles of finished products to the first floor, where they were inspected and packed for shipment. He reinforced the sagging floors, rebuilt the stairs, and installed dozens of sewing stations on each floor. He installed a generator to deal with the incessant power outages. “It is an old building, but it is perfectly safe, with exits on each floor that lead into wide stairwells. Not like our competitors, with their narrow, steep, unlit stairwells and cramped and dangerous work spaces. It was once a hospital, after all.” He was sweating. He mopped his brow.

  “It might be a jail the way it is now,” said Vikram Rob, the agent. “There are bars on the windows.” He studied the checklist of violations his junior executive had left behind. “There are no toilets.”

  “Without the bars, people steal my cloth by the yard. By the bolt, I should say. They throw them out the windows to their confederates below. Without the bars, I am out of business. What am I to do?”

  “And what are people to do if there is a fire?” The discussion had spiraled around in that manner with promises that toilets would be installed, that a fire escape ladder would soon be installed, until the revelation came that the junior executive had instructed Vikram Rob to find a more compliant supplier. “I am very sorry. It is out of my hands. If it were up to me…” Finally a figure had been named and Vikram Rob signed the new contract.

  III

  THE NEW YORK INVESTMENT BANKER, St. John Larrimer—he pronounced his name SIN-jun in the English manner—always wore a pocket square. The Insouciante by Pascal was his favorite. It added the perfect note of luxury and discernment, peeking from the chest pocket of a Savile Row suit.

  St. John had been born into modest circumstances, and yet, despite all odds and by dint of sheer hard work and struggle, had managed to build a thriving and successful enterprise. Of course luck had played a role. Things had gone his way often enough. But he had had his share of setbacks at well. Essentially he was the author of his own success. He thought of himself as a self-made man. He had built his career carefully, thoughtfully, conscientiously, paying attention to every detail. It was his conviction that if you studied your chosen field of enterprise thoroughly, left nothing to chance, worked harder than everyone else, you would succeed.

  St. John knew what was important, what made a difference between an ordinary investment banking operation and a superior one. He understood that his clients were the lifeblood of his enterprise, the means and reason for his success. So Miss Maypoll, the statuesque receptionist seated at the broad desk in the glass front office, greeted clients with a smile and by name the moment they stepped off the elevator, as though she had been waiting for them, and only them, to appear. Then Lorraine Usher, St. John’s longtime assistant, came out of her office and walked them down the thickly carpeted hall.

  St. John slipped into his jacket, stood before the mirror and adjusted his tie, and raked his fingers through his hair before he came out to greet them. He took their hands in both of his and led them into his capacious office. “Please,” said St. John, gesturing toward the chairs and sofa, “make yourselves comfortable.”

  His office, even more beautifully appointed than the anterooms through which the visitors had just passed, spoke to the caution and care he took with the assets he managed. There were fine antique Persian carpets on the floor and a leather and velvet sofa by the window. Several Barcelona chairs faced one another around a glass coffee table. There were fresh flowers in a Qing dynasty celadon vase in the center of the table.

  St. John’s desk and its chair, art nouveau pieces of beautifully worked oak and mahogany, had once belonged to Andrew Carnegie. The shell blue walls of the office were hung with prints by Dürer, Holbein, and Goya. A Rembrandt etching of Jesus driving the money changers from the temple hung on the wall behind his desk. The Rembrandt was a small irony St. John allowed himself, the money changers having been the investment bankers of their day.

  He and the clients sat making small talk until Miss Usher brought refreshments on a handsome silver tray: assorted cookies from Petrossian artfully arranged on a gold-rimmed Limoges plate and tea or coffee in matching cups. St. John treated each client as though they were his only client and nothing could be more important to him than their happiness and well-being. He never smoked in their presence, though he allowed them to smoke if they were so inclined. He lit their cigarettes with a Waterford crystal lighter carved in the shape of a swan.

  St. John was fond of reminding his clients how seriously he took their trust. “Your trust,” he said, leaning forward a bit, his voice dropping half an octave, “is your most precious asset. It is worth more than your money.” He paused a moment while this admonition sank in. “Guard your trust carefully. And don’t give it to anyone—anyone—who hasn’t earned it.”

  The minimum initial investment at Larrimer, Ltd. was two hundred thousand dollars, which guaranteed that every client, while not necessarily rich, had at least accumulated significant wealth. For some, it was their life savings; for others, it was less important money. But in every case, it was an amount that assured St. John that they had given the prospect of investing in Larrimer, Ltd. due consideration before committing to it.

  St. John insisted that every prospective client read through the firm’s prospectuses and disclaimers, including the audited financial statements and all the fine print. If possible he spoke with each of them in person, warning about the fluctuations that always occur in financial markets. “If you are extremely averse to risk,” he said, “then perhaps you should rather invest in bonds or treasury bills. Of course there is risk in every investment, including bonds and T-bills—the risk that inflation will consume your earnings and eat into your principal, for example. But there are levels and varieties of risk, and you should carefully consider which are appropriate for you.

  “In order to make use of the entire spectrum of financial instruments”—this was a phrase his clients loved; financial instruments implied something beyond crass money, something elegant, something surgical, or musical—“and in order to continue to provide the high levels of return to which our clients are accustomed, some risk is necessary, even desirable. However, this level of risk may make you uncomfortable. In that case our investment strategy may not be for you.” He warned them again and again against placing their money with him whenever they revealed even t
he slightest hesitation. But the more St. John sought to discourage prospective clients, the more they wanted him to manage their money.

  If a client asked to see Larrimer’s trading room, as some occasionally did, St. John escorted them upstairs, where Jeremy Gutentag, his chief trader, oversaw a roomful of men and women sitting in front of multiple computer screens with graphs and pie charts and numbers crawling across them. Jeremy walked smartly among the traders, gesturing left and right. He was slim and elegantly dressed. He had straight black hair and coffee-colored skin, a shy smile and large intelligent eyes that swam earnestly behind shell-rimmed eyeglasses. He explained in a whisper what the clients were seeing.

  The trading room was void of all decoration. There was no noise—no ringing phones, no shouting as one found in other trading rooms. It felt like a library. “Actually, it’s more of a scientific laboratory,” Jeremy explained in his plummy Oxford accent. He had gotten a first in economics and management at Oxford and then a master’s degree from the London School of Economics. He spoke with the kind of refinement guaranteed to make wealthy Americans swoon. “What goes on here is financial science. The invisible hand of the market at work on your behalf.” He nodded deferentially toward the clients. “No magic here; just a great deal of meticulous research and hard work.” The thick gray carpet, the sleek black and silver furnishings, the traders at their stations, and Jeremy Gutentag overseeing the entire operation gave the impression of a smooth and efficient enterprise.

  At the end of each month, every client received a statement printed on heavy, cream-colored stock with three holes punched along the edge. Each statement reminded them of the total amount they had invested, as well as its percentage of growth over various periods—months, quarters, years—and its actual growth in dollars over the time it had been invested with Larrimer, Ltd. The total value of their holdings was in bold type at the bottom of the statement just above the amount they had invested. The total value figure climbed steadily and never failed to impress. In each month’s statement, there were also charts with reassuring upward curves so that each client could see how well he was doing compared with the stock market, which was also rising but not at such a rapid rate.