If he could only get Sunday back … It was something he couldn’t quite explain, but this was the nub of it. Why did he have no more Sundays? Shoshana had stuck by him and he was proud to be with the cheerleader he had dated as a teenager, the girl with the big breasts who had cheered him from the sidelines, but her admiration, which had once fascinated him, given him confidence, spurred him on, was gone now. She still loved him, he didn’t doubt that, but perhaps all they had in common was a comfortable life where money was no object, a nice house (not as big as his father’s, but nice) with a pool (not as big as his father’s, but nice) and a European car, a BMW (not as big as his father’s, but nice). Yes, he had things, he owned things, but … And that was the problem. But. A life filled with buts was a satisfactory life but was constantly undermined. Like himself. Spoiled by the bad taste in his mouth.
Maybe the bad taste came from the fact that a ‘satisfactory life’ was not really living. Not being Mark Ruffle. On those faraway Sundays, in the roar of the crowds, he had been Mark Ruffle and everyone he passed would say ‘Good game, Mark, good game.’
‘You’re the best, Mark, you’re the best, champ.’ The intoxicating feeling of living, of being noticed.
What was he now? Mark Ruffle Jnr. On the football field, his father had been Mark’s dad. In business, Mark was his father’s son. Daddy’s boy. Oh, he had started at the bottom, he had mopped floors, run off photocopies, made coffee. Of course. He had to work his way up, climb the company ladder on his own merit. It was taken for granted. He played along. He mopped offices that had already been scrubbed clean by workers who did not want the boss’s son to think they were dirty. He had played the coffee boy with admirable sincerity. For a whole day. He had spent time as a real-estate broker and the branch manager worked him hard. Obviously. The boss had said, ‘No favouritism. I don’t want you treating him any different just because he’s my son.’ So it must have been out of sheer respect for his talent that Mark was given the best properties to sell, the ones where you only had to open the door for the client to sign a cheque. The branch manager told his boss, ‘I don’t know how he does it. It’s like he only has to open the door and he’s got the client eating out of his hand. All that’s left is for them to sign the cheque.’ And Mark Ruffle Snr gave a proud satisfied laugh …
Mark was a winner. A natural, whether on the football field or with a client. Every job. Every rung. On his own merits. He was appointed manager of the real-estate agency. Everything was going fine. He hadn’t got Sunday back, but Monday was now his glory day, when he walked into his agency, got his team all fired up, got his tired employees to work.
‘Come on guys, you can do it. These are your targets … anyone doesn’t make his target gets a personal ass-kicking from me!’
And he’d laugh. Everyone laughed with him. He was a good guy, the boss’s kid. A bit of a hothead but a good guy. Always got someone pulling strings for him, but a good guy. He was the boss’s son …
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, they were all Sunday now. So why did he still have that bitter taste in his mouth? Why could he still hear that but? Why did he still feel incomplete, like someone watching his own life, someone who has not found himself?
It is always difficult not to have a first name.
This is perhaps why he became a young father, to the delight of his own parents. It was such a wonderful story … Everything glided so easily through the shimmering of these perfect lives: a site foreman becomes a property tycoon, marries a dependable, faithful wife with whom he has a son who grows up to be a football pro, or would have if it hadn’t been for the accident, and a pro in business who quickly proves himself and will one day take over the family business and expand it further. And now the champion has fathered a child, and with a beautiful girl too, Shoshana, yes, that’s right, his childhood sweetheart. A handsome strapping child. Nine and a half pounds.
No longer his father’s son but his son’s father. Hearing himself called ‘Dad’. Rediscovering Sunday for someone. Through the eyes of his son. Being a former champion, a boss, a husband, a father. Accumulating the symbols of respectability. Having the house, the pool, the BMW. Strolling the streets of Clarimont with his wife and his child.
Mark Ruffle’s lawns were immaculately mown, watered on spring and summer evenings by sprinklers tracing perfect arcs. The child, growing up now, loved to leap into the spray. It was one of his favourite games. The child would pass through the liquid fan, laughing at the coolness of the water, the sweep of water, making rainbows against the setting sun before returning to its usual course.
And everything glided through the shimmering.
But no one felt this desire for reinvention as keenly as Matthieu. He could not stand himself. From the beginning and perhaps to the end. He needed, like a snake, to shed his skin, his life. He would say that things around him had started to smell, to rot like a life losing its youth and its drive.
‘It stinks, Simon. We have to get out of here. This country isn’t for us any more. We need new horizons.’
The country stank all the more given that his dealer had been arrested. Matthieu had read it in the papers. He had been calmly eating breakfast when he stumbled on a sly, mocking article in Le Parisien clearly delighted at the fall of the ‘bourgeois gang’, as the police had nicknamed it. A nightclub owner Matthieu knew well had set up a drug-dealing racket, initially in his own club, later in other clubs. Since most members of the gang, like their customers, came from rather posh families, in locking them up the police had enjoyed a very pleasant social settling of scores. And it would be several years before they got out. One of them had been Matthieu’s dealer.
‘There’s no decency left,’ he joked to himself, reading the paper. ‘To think that he was working for the competition. How completely immoral!’
But even as he joked, Matthieu worried. He knew he could very easily have been one of them. For two months, he panicked every time the doorbell rang and hated going to Le Miroir. Thankfully the dealer kept his mouth shut.
Even so, the episode heightened the sense of guilt that ate away at him and fed his desire for change. Despite his arrogance, Matthieu constantly felt himself in the wrong, diminished, and this was another reason he was constantly boasting and trying to impress. He felt threatened by the police and, deep down, by all forms of authority. He found hierarchies intolerable and could not bear a boss’s stare. Even the slightest degree of power was unbearable for him because he constantly felt guilty. While he was arrogant towards lesser mortals, sneering at servants and lashing them with a contempt verging on insult as often as possible, he reserved an almost equally surly disdain for their masters, which though less aggressive, and akin to pretension, clearly marked out the social no-man’s-land he inhabited, dreaming of summits without having the means to attain them while living in a permanent fear of disparaging looks and confrontations.
But Matthieu was not devoid of character. And when he made a decision, it was final.
‘We need to be in finance. That’s where the money is.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Simon. ‘You don’t know the first thing about finance and neither do I.’
‘So what?’
‘If you’re going to work in a profession it’s better to know something about it, don’t you think?’
‘Stop thinking like a civil servant. You’re intelligent, you can adapt.’
‘And why finance rather than something else?’
‘Because the world changes. And because if we want to stand under the rain of gold, that’s where we need to be these days.’
Simon rolled his eyes.
‘You don’t get it, Simon. You don’t get it because you don’t monitor things. The world has changed. It changed over ten years ago, but since the fall of the Berlin Wall it’s become more marked. Huge tides of money are flowing around the world – legal and illegal, but money just the same. Russia has exploded, Asia is waking up, everything’s changing. Eve
n France has got into deregulation. Markets are being deregulated. Because we need money. People have got things the wrong way round, they think we should make the most of opportunities. Actually, it’s the reverse: we have to make opportunities that suit us. People needed money so we found a way to create it. By throwing open all the doors, we found a way to make some cash. That’s what finance is: people want to get rich and they find a fantastic way to do it, they make money work. They make money with money. We’re going to get into banking.’
Simon said nothing.
‘I’ve given it a lot of thought,’ Matthieu went on. ‘I’m leaving.’
‘What?’ said Simon, taken aback. ‘To go where?’
‘London. The English really understand how money works. I’m joining them.’
‘But have you got a job? Anything?’
‘No, I’ll sort something out when I get there. I’ll check things out, worm my way in and then mount an assault.’
‘You’re just going to desert me?’
The heartfelt cry of an abandoned child made Matthieu smile.
‘No, but you have to move your arse. I’ve always told you you’ve got the brain of Einstein but the arse of a diplodocus. So I’m going to move for both of us. You’ll join me later.’
‘In England?’
‘You know how to catch a train, don’t you? I’m leaving tomorrow.’
There was a degree of arrogance about this sudden departure. Matthieu wanted to have a story to tell, the story of the determined man who is capable of uprooting himself overnight. But he was sure about it, the time had come for the snake to shed its skin. He had been going round in circles for years, late nights and one-night stands, he needed a new world, needed to be a new person. In a city where no one knew him, in a different language, he would be able to reinvent himself.
The next day, in London, when his landlady asked him his name, he answered: ‘Matt B. Lester.’
And this is who he became. The abbreviation of Matthieu, the American B. and his English mother’s name. A different man.
Part Two
9
Hotel Cane, Paris, June 1995
The man ate. The courses kept coming, graced by curious names carefully articulated by waiters: murex, tuna tataki with obsiblue prawns, lacquered pork belly, Sicilian snakes, Buddha’s hand, merinda with rare herbs, goujons of sole in a cornflour veil, white summer truffles … Precious poetry. And the flavours, mingling delicate ingredients into a coherent multiplicity, melted on the tongue in explosions of flavour, constantly conjuring new subtleties.
But the man, who was about thirty, heavy-set and broad-shouldered, was as insensitive to words as to taste. He consumed this culinary bliss with complete indifference. From time to time he exchanged a few words with his partner, a young woman with a careworn expression, or glanced over at his son, a boy of six or seven wearing a baseball cap who was finding it difficult to sit still.
‘That guy isn’t really eating, he’s just guzzling,’ said Sila, coming back into the kitchen.
‘And he doesn’t look like a big tipper,’ said another waiter.
‘He’s about as friendly as a rattlesnake. Not a smile, not a thank you. And the kid seems like a chip off the old block,’ said Sila.
‘Like father, like son,’ said an elderly head waiter sententiously.
‘He’s not getting any,’ interrupted a tall, thin, brusque waiter.
‘Whatever.’
‘I’m telling you, he’s not getting laid. That’s always the problem.’
‘I’m working the Russians’ table,’ said another waiter as he came back in. ‘Russians are big tippers and this guy, he’s the jackpot.’
‘That’s Kravchenko,’ the maître d’ said gravely, ‘one of the oil oligarchs. He’s filthy rich.’
‘Where do you know him from?’
‘He always comes here when he’s in France. His wife speaks very good French, actually, she teaches it.’
‘A teacher?! With all the money her husband’s got?’
‘She’s something of a genius, apparently. She does research or something … She told me she gives lectures at the Sorbonne.’
‘She can lecture me any time,’ quipped the tall thin waiter, ‘she’s hot.’
The door swung closed. Sila had already left, carrying a large tray.
At precisely that moment, Matt was raising his champagne glass.
‘To your new job.’
Simon smiled diffidently.
‘And at Kelmann. You couldn’t have done better.’
It had taken a little time, but Matt’s influence over his friend was such that Simon finally took the plunge. The decision had been made easier by the fact that his career at the maths laboratory was stagnating. He hadn’t managed to get a post at the CNRS – and though he suspected that recruitment for the research post had been rigged in favour of another candidate, the result merely confirmed what he already suspected: he was not a first-rate academic, he would never win the Fields Medal. He was a good, maybe a very good mathematician, but would never rise beyond the level of a decent researcher. He was careful not to mention any of this to Matt, preferring to preserve his brilliant reputation, but it was what he believed.
The day he found out he hadn’t got the job at the CNRS, he contacted the École Polytechnique’s Alumni Association.
‘I want to work in banking,’ he said.
‘Now that’s original!’ sighed a voice on the other end of the line. ‘Anywhere in particular?’
‘London.’
‘A French bank?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘What year did you graduate?’
‘1986.’
‘What have you been doing up to now?’
‘Maths research.’
‘Oh, okay … so, financial engineering, then?’
‘Yes,’ said Simon, who didn’t know what this meant.
‘I’ll give you the numbers of three students from your year. They’re at J.P. Morgan, Kelmann and SocGen. They might be able to help.’
Simon carefully noted down the names, job titles and phone numbers.
‘Good luck,’ said the drawling voice on the phone. ‘Polytechnique forever!’
Simon phoned J.P. Morgan where he was coolly received by a fellow-graduate who in a smug, disagreeable tone informed him that his profile was too parochial, not sufficiently international.
‘You’ve never worked the markets, your whole life is a maths lab, you’ve never even been out of France. Forget about J.P. Morgan.’
He was told he would be better off contacting SocGen, who were always interested in the Polytechnique graduates. He called the Société Générale but the woman he spoke to there clearly remembered him as a nerd just about capable of spouting formulae.
‘I don’t think SocGen is right for you. Maths would lose a first-class researcher and you wouldn’t gain anything. I don’t think it would work out. You know, I think what you’re doing is very noble. The best Polytechnique graduates have devoted themselves to research, not to making money.’
At Kelmann, his fellow-graduate gave him a warm welcome.
‘Hey, Rimbaud! So you want to work in finance? Well, it’ll make a change from reciting Les Illuminations, that’s for sure, but I’m happy to do anything I can to help.’
Once again Rimbaud had saved him. Sometimes at the École Polytechnique, when he felt particularly isolated and helpless, unable to communicate with the other students, ill-equipped to join the casual, urbane conversations which to him seemed so Parisian, he would start reciting Rimbaud. This idiot-savant routine sometimes had him bracketed with the idiots, sometimes with the savants. His classmate, it seemed, had fond memories.
He told Simon that there were openings at Kelmann, that the financial sector was attracting the best brains on the planet and that this was just the start.
‘They’re buying up everyone. No one says no to the banks because they’re the ones with the money and they’re prepa
red to pay top dollar. Everyone who gets sucked into the system likes money and that’s what the banks count on. They’re going to get everyone, apart from the saints and suckers. But there’s a hefty admission price to pay.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘First off, Kelmann is very particular, they’ll scrutinise you like you’ve never been scrutinised. You’ll have to pass a series of gruelling interviews and, take my word for it, even then nothing’s guaranteed. On top of that, to make senior grade you’ll have to work like you’ve never worked in your life, even for the Polytechnique entrance exam. You can kiss your private life goodbye.’
‘That’s handy, I haven’t got one.’
‘Perfect. Lastly, and this might be a sticking point for a poet like Rimbaud – you have to accept the rule of the game, the single rule.’
‘Which is?’
‘Money, money, money. Making money for the bank, making money for the team, making money for yourself.’
‘I’m no Rimbaud. But then again I can’t say I’m obsessed with money.’
‘Okay, first, that’s something you keep to yourself. You never admit it in interviews. Second, you say that now but in a couple of years, you’ll be like the rest of us. Money will be the only thing you talk about. You’ll be constantly talking about the level of your positions, thinking about your bonuses, you’ll be a money-making machine. Either that or you’ll be out on your arse,’ concluded his mentor.
Simon worked on his English in preparation for the interviews. The bank had done some research on him, talked to his fellow Polytechnique graduate, scrutinised his career, grilled him about concrete examples. Bizarrely, he came through it all with flying colours. Perhaps it was the years spent with Matt, and Simon’s chameleon-like efforts to be more like his friend, to emulate his quick-wittedness, his poise. He surprised himself. Without being brilliant, he managed to answer satisfactorily – without blushing and in English – questions that would previously have left him speechless. Only one question genuinely flustered him: an elderly man in glasses asked pompously whether he played sports. Simon managed to stutter that he loved sport.
Sila's Fortune Page 9
