Ruffle finally realised what he had to do. His vocation in life was not to be his father’s son, to take over the family business as and when his father saw fit – which would be as late as possible – but instead to set himself up in the high-risk mortgage market. He would turn the houses and the apartments his father had built into fabulous high-yield investments. Like D.F. Investment, he would lend to the poorest of the poor and become the high priest of American prosperity to everyone.
This, in the end, was what it was all about. What the former Clarimont running back was searching for was not so much money as a role, a voice. He couldn’t stand it any longer, he needed to find a way to talk about his football triumphs again and the interview with Fesali had just given him the words. He needed so badly to talk, to talk about himself, to have an audience, to find recognition. From others and from himself. If he pulled this thing off, he would be rich without needing any help from anyone then he too could claim he was an American dream maker, he too could welcome the poor, the huddled masses. Like Fesali he would pose, hand on his heart, and his words would coil around him like so many beautiful garlands.
From that moment, things moved quickly for Ruffle, and he experienced what was without doubt the happiest period of his life. No security and no particular authorisation were necessary to set up a loan company, he could have worked out of a shack on a patch of waste ground as long as he could find borrowers to trust him. But he didn’t need to. Banks welcomed him with open arms and he found several Wall Street investors, people he’d met during his years working for his father’s firm, who were happy to help him set up in business.
In 1996, with his wife and son, he moved to Miami. He had briefly considered New York but the global city, its universal appeal, a magnet for the whole world’s talents and desires, made him nervous. His Fesali-like armour was not yet strong enough; behind these steel plates, as thick and tough as the football pads of his teenage years, lurked the anxieties of the uneducated provincial boy from Clarimont. He feared the eloquence, the intelligence of the big New York entrepreneurs, whether American or European. Miami was an ideal stopover between Clarimont and the world. It was a large, cosmopolitan city but bore no comparison with the gigantic proportions of the truly big American cities. A city shot through with water and sunlight, nestled in the tropical atmosphere of his childhood, bordered by swampland. And a region where, thanks to his father’s wealth and connections, his name was not completely diluted by the vastness. What’s more, for the first time in his life Ruffle proved to be genuinely clear-sighted. Miami was at a turning point in its recent history, midway between the ravages of the hurricane of 1992 and the property boom of the 2000s. Everything was possible, and before the construction cranes became a permanent part of the landscape, before skyscrapers, each taller than the last, rose above the Miami skyline, there were vast fortunes to be made.
Ruffle set himself up in offices of worrying size, which marked out his ambition from the get-go. He hired brokers to scour the poor neighbourhoods and from that point, anyone who was not already a client of D.F. Investment signed up with Ruffle Universal Building, the company he founded.
Over the years, Ruffle had come to recognise his father’s top agents, the ones who could be friendly, cheerful and reassuring. The consummate professionals who could sell the dingiest, ugliest properties. Offering them more money than his father ever had, he lured them to Miami and at a huge meeting for ever known in the company as ‘White Thursday’, promised colossal bonuses to the highest performers. And being the new Fesali, Ruffle entrusted them with a mission to go into every home, into every seedy building, every hovel, and save these people in spite of themselves.
‘People don’t want the American dream, they sit around on their asses because they haven’t got the balls to change their lives. So you’re going to kick down the door of their nightmare and turn it into a dream. You’ll move in with them and hang out in their shit-tip kitchen until they sign the fucking contract. You are the architects of the American dream. Thanks to you, thanks to us, these people’s lives will be transformed and, as you drive down the coast to see them, remember that this is a mission, a mission to do good.’
And the brokers, seeing dollar signs flashing, kicked down the doors, and if they were sent packing they went back again the next day. Like vultures, they hung around stairwells asking the kids playing in the street when their parents would be home. Since they worked all hours, they had all the time in the world. They sensed their time had come, that Ruffle Junior would pay for their beachfront houses, their Mercedes convertibles. They sensed that the life they’d dreamed of was theirs for the taking if they could only get names on contracts. They knocked on the doors of the poor, of Blacks and Hispanics in run-down neighbourhoods, they exploited every Cuban contact they had in search of newly arrived immigrants. Then they camped out in their kitchens. They went one better than Fesali in the Bronx. They persuaded the senile, the feebs and the drunks to sign up, but they also convinced the young couples and the gullible. They talked like they’d never talked, their smile sunnier, their manner more reassuring than it had ever been in their lives. They offered thirty-year variable interest mortgages with the first two years interest free. Eyes fluttered at the thought of these two glorious years with nothing to pay; the most clear-sighted minds were opened and they signed up, even those who had been suspicious from the start, thinking it didn’t matter, that they would sell on, that property prices were constantly rising, that they had nothing to lose. They’d sell on because trees did grow to the sky, because the world had discovered a universal winning formula, one that guaranteed everyone could be rich and sustained growth could carry on for ever. Life was a cinema screen. They had zero earnings? It didn’t matter. All they had to do was sign a little contract, and two years from now, they’d earn big time. Two years in the USA was a lifetime. So what if they only earned 15,000 a year? They deserved a 200,000 dollar mortgage. And those first years weren’t just interest free, they could be payment free if necessary. The money was theirs, all they had to do was sign. All they had to do was surrender, here at their kitchen table, finally worn down, just append their signature to the bottom of the contract. And then it was all over, all the brokers had to do was smile and say, ‘You made the right decision. It’s for your own good.’ Then they’d have a drink, a toast to their future prosperity, their beautiful houses. And the realtors would say goodbye, close the doors behind them and dash down the stairs. Picking their way through the ravaged streets, past kids skulking on street corners, thinking it was best to get gone before they had their tyres stolen. The day was a success because the contracts kept piling up, because they’d sold the American dream by the truckload. And all this was right and good.
What Ruffle truly wanted was a transformation: he wanted it enshrined in bricks and money. His house in Clarimont had been nothing but a pale imitation of his father’s wealth. His house in Miami shattered any possible notion of comparison, scotched any idea that the son would be happy to follow in his father’s footsteps. Instead of a big suburban house, the Ruffle family opted for a white dream on the seafront with a vast, blue swimming pool some distance from downtown Miami. This was the word Ruffle used to described it, the only word on his lips now: ‘This is my dream.’
The dream in question was wide and low, a little like a flying saucer, with a projecting roof supported by pillars like animals’ paws. Inside, everything was white, dazzling, shimmering with sunlight with wood fittings of staggering richness. Ruffle had preferred this house over Shoshana’s choice, a colonial mansion in the European style. Still he had hesitated, both because Shoshana had developed a passion for Europe since their trip to Paris, and because he wondered whether a more classical building would confer on him the air of sophistication he so clearly lacked. But in the end he rejected the colonial house which was so unlike him. The circular spaceship on the other hand, modern and luxurious, surrounded by water, perfectly embodied the spirit of Miami: a
young, constantly developing city, a crossroads between worlds where people of every nationality melted into an immaculate modernity.
There was one thing to be said in Ruffle’s favour: he had felt no fear. His faith in the future was such that he had racked up debts for several generations to come. He was supremely confident: he sold credit and he lived on credit. His business was connected to the banks by a constant IV drip. Expenses were colossal but he believed in his own success.
When his father came to visit, in a rental Chrysler from the airport, he stood open-mouthed, staring at the house. Then he sniggered, his fat paunch jiggling as though someone had just told him a dirty joke, and announced boorishly: ‘Now that, my son, is some house, that’s really some house.’
And it was impossible to tell whether he was thrilled by this spectacle, which humiliated him and made the Clarimont house look like a ridiculous suburban monstrosity. But perhaps it was simply his ingrained common sense as a foreman – however wealthy he’d become - protesting at such Pharaonic extravagance. For all its glittering, brilliant appearance, the house before him was neither as substantial nor as lavish as he had imagined; on the contrary it was open, gossamer-like, luminous, something that obscurely disturbed his small-town American values forged by dogged years of hard work, as though all this were tainted by the sin of excess. This house, so white, so modern, as though wafted onto the seafront … This business with its absurdly pretentious name, Ruffle Universal Building. Ruffle Senior was a working man, crafty and cutthroat, obscenely rich, yet he was still rooted in the clay of the first house he had built with his own hands, still deeply committed to ensuring the survival of his business, of his family, and now here before him loomed the new America, a globalised country where no one spoke English any more, where he was met at the airport by a babble of languages, Spanish, obviously, but Russian, French and Chinese too, a wild, extravagant land, completely out of kilter; and now here was his own son moving into this gewgaw, this thing nestled by the sea, as though the whole country was doomed to be swallowed up with all its delusions of modernity.
Perhaps somewhere in the wrenching anxiety he felt a stab of pride, since both father and son agreed on the essential values: business and money, they whispered the hallowed word ‘entrepreneur’ between them like a secret code. Nonetheless, now, as they all gathered in the dining room to be served exotic, ostentatious dishes by copper-skinned Cubans, the former building-site manager, huge elbows planted on the table, exchanging worried glances with his wife, could not help but feel a vague sense of impending ruin which was simply the portent that a new world, one utterly alien to him, was emerging, one in which men like him, men of the old generation, would be nothing but dinosaurs.
The following morning he was astonished to find they had been joined for breakfast by a past pupil of Clarimont High School, someone he didn’t recognise and who Mark had barely known at school but who, through the convolutions of the city of Miami, like the coils of a snake, had ended up in touch with his former classmate. Ruffle Senior did not know that Mark had invited him in order to crush him with his wealth and opulence, by his extravagant display of friendship, because the head of R.U.B. still saw him as the cruel teenager whose mocking laugh had been genuinely hurtful. And Mark had been good enough to invite him round like a buddy to talk about old times in this spaceship about to blast off, and to watch this man struggle in order to exist, to sell his story, his scheme, his dream here on the lip of this vast swimming pool, this guy who’d got into fashion and was running the local franchise for a French jeans company and trying without much success to launch a line of distressed vintage T-shirts. Oblivious to this secret settling of scores, Ruffle Senior gawped at the tall gangling man in front of him in his ripped jeans and his paint-spattered T-shirt, who talked like a teenager about the ‘raves’ he went to where he mingled with famous stars. His boss in France, he explained, the man who owned the franchise, used stars as a marketing strategy, he knew a lot of stars and paid them to come to his parties so people would talk about him, talk about his jeans, because it was all about the stars. And since people wanted to look like stars, they started wearing his jeans and the brand was really taking off big-time. He and Mark high-fived and Ruffle Senior, who’d never met a star and never had the slightest interest in that world, stared at them in astonishment.
‘My question is this,’ he said later to his wife. ‘Is that what passes for a man these days? You saw the guy, he had paint splashes all over him, he talked like a teenager, all that stuff about stars and nightclubs and parties, and his clothes – you couldn’t leave the house dressed like that … He was a sort of mutant, you know, with his tattoos and his stories about fashion. He’s not what I’d call a man, I can tell you. All this stuff, it’s not good, and I’ll tell you something else, it’s not making Shoshana happy. And you know me, I can sense these things, I can tell when something’s not right in the family.’
Was something not right with Shoshana? Marooned in this dazzling white spaceship, did she spend her days longing for her lofty European mansion? Let’s just say that with the move to Miami, she’d lost the reference points she’d had in Clarimont. There was nothing here for her to hold on to. If nothing else, the dreary little gardens of her home town brought back memories of childhood, and even if these gradually faded, at least they were a familiar backdrop, garlanded with the glory of memory. The monotony of her life was marked by memories of her childhood, her adolescence, her first tentative steps as a young woman. Clarimont was where she had grown up. But here in Miami she had lost her bearings, trapped as she was between a child so gripped by television and tantrums that he didn’t do what he was told, didn’t even listen to her any more, and a husband, a gargoyle bloated with rage, whom she had come to despise over dinner in that Paris restaurant. Oh, there was the house to take care of, but she had lots of help, what with the cook and the maids; who really needed her? What was her purpose in the world, with no career, living with a husband whose whole life was taken up with his search for recognition? His life as the football pro of business, playing a new game every day. From time to time he noticed her, but only when he wanted her to make herself beautiful, to dress up, so he could have the pleasure of seeing her, of flaunting her, showing off her breasts, like a camel being paraded for tourists. This obsession with her breasts he’d had since they first met, his constant comments about how beautiful, how firm they were, his suggestions that she wear tight sweaters to show them off, contrasted with the slight reluctance in his eyes now when she was naked, when he saw them limp and sagging, his faint embarrassment as though for a faded star. Time and motherhood … It was true she could catch his eye when she put on a bra, and under her sweater her breasts were as firm as they’d ever been. But when she needed love, when she finally needed to make an intimate connection with someone she loved, she couldn’t turn to Mark because what she felt for him was no longer really love, more a vague affection soured by irritation and contempt. No, it was her son, this pasty, blond child that she wanted to kiss, to hug.
‘Chris, baby! Sweetie!’
She smiled hopelessly, unconsciously remembering his early childhood when the bond between them had seemed natural, almost organic, but the pale robot who now turned to look at her was not the child he had been, his eyes were vacant, apathetic, already jaded as though sated with love.
What could she do? How was she supposed to fill her days? Apart from keeping herself in shape, obviously, swimming in the pool and taking aerobics classes in town, which meant she got to meet other women. For half an hour, to a musical soundtrack, Shoshana sweated and panted, shaking her body, finishing off with slow stretching exercises on the floor, chatting to the women next to her. She liked meeting women who were as idle as she was, and preferred to avoid the midday class at which there were too many businesswomen skipping lunch for a quick workout before heading back to the office. Too many busy, strong-minded women whom she assumed were much more intelligent than she was, and not as l
ost.
When she came out of her fitness sessions, she’d walk around down town, gazing in the shop windows, frequently buying things and coming home with bags full of clothes which she used to fill the yawning wardrobes in the house.
One day, leaving the leisure centre at noon, eager to avoid bumping into her hard-working foes, she took a stroll down Lincoln Road. She was wearing dark glasses and luxuriating in the warmth of the sun. Strolling past a French restaurant, she stopped, thinking perhaps she and Mark might go there some night. She took off her sunglasses and peered through the window to see inside. Suddenly, she froze.
The man in the suit moving between the tables; it was the waiter her husband had punched.
13
Across the vast steppe, huge metal insects siphoned their plunder from the bowels of the earth. With regular movements, the horse-heads rammed into the soil; as far as the eye could see these steel monsters slashed the ground to bring the oil to the surface.
It was late 1997, and Lev had come on an inspection visit. He stood, motionless, fascinated by the spectacle, gazing across this mechanised plain where the very earth itself seemed to shake with strange, incessant spasms, as drills pounded the boreholes, and rock-bits hacked and chewed away the rock and sucked up the precious liquid. There was nothing now but these insects, they stretched across the horizon, a vast swarm of predatory locusts. Hundreds of metres down, they ate and drank, soaked up the crude oil, bringing it to the surface to be transferred to the refineries of ELK, Lev’s company.
Sila's Fortune Page 12
