by Teddy Wayne
Kapitoil
A Novel
Teddy Wayne
To my grandmother, Bess
There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things.
Karl Marx, Das Kapital
Contents
Epigraph
October 1999
November
December
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
OCTOBER 1999
JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: OCTOBER 3
The Atlantic elongates below us like an infinite violet carpet.
However, the American teenager dividing me from the window does not observe it. He is plugged into earphones and recreates with a video game simulation of an airplane flight. It is strange that someone would focus on a minimal flat monitor of artificial flying when you are truly flying and have a big-picture view of the world. Possibly it is because he has traveled in an airplane multiple times and this is my initial experience.
His name is Brian, and acne covers his face like islands on a map or discrete red points on a graph. After we relaunch from London, he asks if I have any games on my computer.
“No,” I say. “I use it merely for programming.”
He unplugs one earphone. “What do you program?”
I am still in the brainstorming phase for the programming window currently open, so I have coded only a few lines. “I work for Schrub Equities at their office in Doha, Qatar.”
“Really, for Schrub?” He unplugs his other earphone. “You make financial programs for them?”
“I sometimes create programs.”
He looks at my screen. I reach for the airplane’s consumer magazine in the chair’s netting and intentionally contact my laptop so that it rotates away from the angle of Brian’s eyes. “What do they use them for?”
“I typically do not show them to my superiors,” I say.
“Why, they don’t work?”
“It is complex to describe.” I minimize the programming window. “Sometimes programs require—”
He shifts through different channels on his personal television. “Then what are you coming to New York for, if you’re not a real programmer?” he asks.
“I am here until December 31st to help them prepare for the Y2K bug so their systems do not malfunction.” It sounds less impressive than when I practiced stating it at home.
“So that’s why you’re in business class,” he says, and I think he is complimenting me until he replugs both earphones and adds, “Only the serious businessmen fly in first.” I restrict myself from telling him that it is in fact critical work and they are transporting me because I am the cream of the cream Y2K specialist in Doha, and instead I look outside, where the ocean mirrors the plummeting sun like toggling quartz in concrete or an array of diamonds, and reminds me of why our mother gave Zahira her name, because she parallels a diamond in various ways.
When I retrieve my new voice recorder/electronic dictionary from my pocket later to certify it is functioning, Brian inspects it and asks how it works. I explain that if it detects human voices nearby it records for up to 12 hours, and if it detects silence it powers off. He asks if I am also a reporter. “I am recording a journal while I am in the U.S., and this will help me to study the American voices I hear and to transmit their conversations without error.”
Brian laughs loudly enough for the people behind us to hear. “You keep a diary?” he says. I wish his parents were on the airplane, but he seems like the class of teenager who does not adjust his behavior even in front of his parents. “The only person I know who does that is my sister.”
Several of the American financial magazines I read advise recording a journal for self-actualization, and I am additionally doing it to enhance my English, but he will not appreciate that or my two other motivations: (1) I hypothesize that writing your thoughts is a way of deciphering precisely what you truly feel, and it is especially valuable if you have a problem, similar to how writing a computer program helps you decipher the solution to a real-world problem, and (2) recording my experiences is also integral to remembering precise ideas and moments from my time in the U.S. I have a robust memory for some details, but it is complex to continue acquiring data and archive them all, and even I now am forgetting some older memories, as if my brain is a hard drive and time is a magnet.
The captain says we should complete our customs forms “ASAP,” and I research the term in the book I contain a copy of in my other pocket, which I also gave to Zahira: The International Businessperson’s Guide to English, which self-defines on the reverse cover as “An indispensable compendium of English financial jargon and idioms for the global businessperson, from actionable to zombie bonds.” There is also a void in the rear for the owner to record more jargon terms, as I do frequently, even though my knowledge base of English financial jargon is already broad for a foreigner because of my nighttime classes in programming and mathematics and economics.
The chief flight attendant commands us to power off electronics. We angle down to New York City, and the skyscrapers of Manhattan aggregate like tall flowers in a garden and the grids of orange lights look like LEDs on a circuit board.
The previous landing from Doha to London slightly panicked me, so to reroute my brain I reinitiate conversation with Brian, although my ideal partner for logic problems is Zahira.
“I have an interesting math problem,” I say. “Is an airplane a greater gas-guzzler per passenger than a car? Here are some data that I received from the captain when I transferred, converted to American measurements: (1) We will consume approximately 17,000 gallons of gas on this flight; (2) it is 3,471 miles from London to New York; and (3) there are 415 total passengers and employees.”
Brian yawns, but I continue, as sometimes people become stimulated by a subject once they learn more.
I write the equation on a napkin for him:
“Therefore, if a car has four passengers, what must its gas mileage be to equal an airplane’s per-person efficiency of approximately 84.7 passenger-miles per gallon?”
“I don’t know,” Brian says. “I suck at math.”
It is frustrating when people do not have faith in their skills, because this is a simple problem he could solve if he tried. I explain that a car must consume 21.2 miles per gallon to be as efficient with four passengers, and that a new hybrid car from Honda is more efficient with just two passengers.
“But there is no car that is as efficient if you are solitary,” I say.
Brian opens the airplane’s journalism magazine as we descend. I tell him there is an article on Derek Schrub, which delighted me to discover and which I am saving for Zahira to practice her English comprehension, but he is reading about an English actor’s preferred restaurants in Tokyo. I especially enjoy the beginning:
YO HO HO AND A TWO-LITER BOTTLE OF SODA
On a windswept, perfect-for-sailing Saturday at the Indian Harbor Yacht Club in Greenwich, Connecticut (lat. 41° 00' 40" N, long. 73° 37' 23" W), Derek Schrub—founder and CEO of Schrub Equities, the financial services and investment goliath whose net revenues topped $29 billion last year—makes an executive decision: asking his wife, Helena, to buy a two-liter bottle of soda for their day on the yacht. “It’s cheaper than the six-packs,” he rumbles as he checks the tides. A man of such impressive wealth doesn’t really count cents when it comes to carbonated beverages—does he?
“That’s how I grew my company,” says the tanned and salt-and-peppered 64-year-old, who resides in an Upper East Side penthouse in Manhattan during the week but chooses the subway over cabs and limos (“The subway is fast
, cheap, and entertaining; a car is none of those”). “Counting cents.”
Known in business circles as “the Hedge Clipper” for his innovative hedging strategies in the 1970s, when his fledgling company soared while nearly everyone else faltered, Schrub is the closest thing the financial world has to an ambassador. Confidant to senators and celebrities alike, board member of dozens of charitable organizations, and the face of perhaps the most successful financial company of the last quarter century, he ranked first in a recent poll asking graduating MBAs which business figure they sought to emulate.
For now, though, he is looking forward to an afternoon on the high seas aboard his relatively humble—by Greenwich standards—35-foot yacht (named Clarissa, for Schrub’s mother) with Helena and their two sons, Wilson, 21, and Jeromy, 19, on summer break from Princeton. “Sailing is my passion,” opines Schrub, “but I don’t need a fifty-foot boat to prove that to others. I’m not one for conspicuous consumption. There’s nothing inherently wrong with accumulating money, unless that’s all that matters to you.”
The rest of the article is about sailing, and it does not indicate if the soda is Coke, which would interest me more than sailing does, but I like the last quotation, and I consider mailing the translation to Uncle Haami, because of what he said one year ago when I had the opportunity to labor at Schrub’s Doha office. He was eating dinner at our home on a Friday and we were roundtabling my job offer. After being polite for the majority of the meal, Haami finally became upset when I discussed Schrub’s recent record growth. “You will be divesting money from Qatar and into the hands of greedy Americans,” he said as he swallowed the hareis I had cooked.
I was very prepared for this argument. “First, how are they more greedy than Doha Bank?” I asked. “They both aim to create more wealth. Schrub merely possesses more equity. Second, how are we paying for this lamb?”
“It is not money I object to,” he said, which is slightly different from Mr. Schrub’s quotation but has some intersection. “It is the imbalanced distribution. And it is the American economic policy of imperialism.”
I said that companies like Schrub create the largest pool of money, and they can do so only because there does exist an imbalanced distribution of equity, so that the innovators, e.g., Derek Schrub, have enough capital to impact the world around them. I did not say it then, because it might have negated my argument, but the article is correct when it calls Mr. Schrub the Hedge Clipper. It would of course be optimal if everyone infinitely produced wealth, but sometimes only a zero-sum game is possible, and you must hedge to create wealth while others are losing it. And I agree with Mr. Schrub: I am trying to earn impressive wealth not for conspicuous consumption, but to certify that I can pay for half of Zahira’s tuition and so our father can retire from his store before he becomes very old.
“And the correct word is not ‘imperialism,’ but ‘globalization,’” I said. I believe I pronounced the English translation as well. “Globalization creates more trade and jobs for everyone, in both the U.S. and Qatar.”
“I will not argue with you anymore in your father’s home,” Haami said. “What do you think, Issar?”
My father breathed on his gunpowder and mint tea and drank from it and scratched his gray beard before he replied. He looked at my uncle although he was discussing me.
“Karim is a grown man,” he said. “He can make his own decisions.”
He did not say another word then about Schrub, and he has not said anything about it after.
I appreciate that Zahira supported me by saying that I was not designed to labor in a garage, like our uncle, or to sell food and items people want that they cannot purchase elsewhere, like our father, and although that is true and I have more robust plans for myself, I told her after dinner that she should not devalue their jobs, which are integral even if we desire more from life than merely waking up, eating breakfast, laboring for someone else at tasks most people could do, and repeating the same actions daily without personal growth.
The airplane contacts the ground with force, and I close my eyes and contain my breath until the wheels smoothly merge with the concrete and we decelerate.
After I retrieve my luggage, which is minimal because I do not have much clothing and only one additional suit, I see a black man holding a sign that displays “KARIM ISSAR” with large quotation marks and at the bottom is the logo for Schrub Equities of a flying black hawk transporting the letters S and E in its two feet, which infinitely makes me feel proud, but especially now, when I see my name publicly linked to my company. He is approximately 15 years older than I am and has a full mustache and a mostly voided beard, probably because he shaved in the morning.
“I am Karim Issar of Schrub Equities,” I say. I put down my luggage to shake his hand. The name sign on his left pectoral displays BARRON without quotation marks.
Barron does not shake my hand but picks up my luggage. “This all?” he asks.
I nod, because this is the first American here I have talked to besides Brian and the airplane workers and the customs official, and I am nervous about making an error even though his own sentence is incomplete.
“I can carry them,” I say. But Barron is already leaving. I follow him out of the automatic doors of the airport onto American concrete, and my lungs consume the cool air that is like the initial taste of a Coke with ice.
Barron drives a black car, but it is not a limo, and the interior leather is the color of sand and feels like Zahira’s stomach when she was an infant. A photograph inside the sun-protector over his head displays a little girl with braided hair, although it is unlike the fewer and less rigid braids my mother sometimes used to produce for Zahira when our father was at the store.
In the front mirror I see Barron has a small scar above his right eyebrow, which looks like his left eyebrow in the mirror. It is like debugging a program: Sometimes you do not truly observe something until you study it in reverse.
We are on the highway now, although there is not much to see and the sun has already descended. The speedometer is at 55, the optimal rate for consuming gas, so I recall the problem on the airplane. This car is probably not efficient enough with two people to be as efficient as the airplane, but I am curious.
“Excuse me. How much gas does this car guzzle?” I ask.
“Guzzle?” Barron says. “You mean its fuel efficiency? I don’t know.”
“It is not 42 on the highway, is it?”
Barron laughs, but it does not make me feel the way it did when Brian laughed. “Not even close. But if you find one like that, let me know. They make us pay for our own gas.”
The car zooms through the streets of Manhattan like a circuit charge, and the buildings maximize as we get closer. From a distance I identify my new apartment building, Two Worldwide Plaza. On its top is a glass pyramid, and pyramids intrigue me for four main reasons:
1. The Great Pyramid of Cheops is one of man’s superior ventures, yet we do not know with 100% certainty how it was constructed.
2. The perimeter of the Great Pyramid divided by its perpendicular height approximately equals 2.
3. The circumference of a circle divided by its radius also equals 2, which may or may not be a coincidence.
4. Pyramids are elegant images of best practice hierarchies for organizations.
Barron deposits me at my entrance. He exits the car and angles his head back to see the building, although his perspective is from the ground, which is inferior to an elevated view. “Not bad.”
“My company is paying for it,” I say.
He removes my luggage from the rear, and I give him a gratuity. “Thank you,” I add. “I hope I have not interrupted your dinner plans.”
“No, I’ve got dinner waiting at home,” he says. “Have a good night.” He reenters the car and drives away.
The material in the entrance is made of dark wood and brass or possibly gold. All the surfaces mirror light, and there is a guard in a suit of greater quality than Barron�
��s behind a desk. My room is 3313, which makes me think of the RPM of records, and the record to the CD is an analog for the pyramid to the skyscraper, and although the modern invention is of course more efficient, there is still something intriguing about the obsolete device. E.g., I have positive memories of my mother playing the few Beatles records she was able to acquire in Doha when I was a child and of the sound of the instruments merging with the interference and especially of how she played them at higher volume when my father was not at home, but I do not have any positive memories of CDs, possibly because I have little leisure time now to listen, and also I do not know anyone who loves music as much as my mother did.
ASAP = as soon as possible
JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: OCTOBER 10
On Monday, when I exit the elevator on the 88th floor of World Trade Center 1 (the floor number there also delights me, because 88 has perfect symmetry, as the most elegant objects and ideas do), I immediately see the S and E and the black Schrub logo of the hawk attached to the wall, as if it were trying to fly away. In the Doha office the logo is not so large and it is merely painted on the wall. This is a three-dimensional plastic object, and before I enter the office I touch the hawk briefly when no one is nearby, although a sharp corner of its wing slightly pains my finger.
A hallway curves around the main circular laboring room, and there is a small nucleus in the center of six desks in a circle. The sides of the room have sections divided by walls like the lines connecting to numbers on an analog clock, and in fact there are 12 sections called pods. Each section contains four gray desks and workers arranged in the shape of a non-compressed staple. Therefore, the workers in the center, who are the superiors, can observe the other employees at all times.
