Sterling Silver Cockroaches (standard:adventure, 6040 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Jul 28 2007	Views/Reads: 3449/2722	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A romantic adventure full of ambitions, intrigue, jewelry and silver in exotic Bucaramanga.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

was nearly done for. At last it ran!  Inside the house, I locked the 
door, stripped to the skin and turned on the air conditioner. 

I soaked in the makeshift shower.  While the house cooled off, I tried
to put it all into perspective.     It was time to walk away from 
defeat.  There wasn't any more I could do here.  The wax patterns kept 
sticking in the gummy molds. After mounting, they wouldn't keep their 
shape in the heat. Every casting we made was either warped or bulging. 
Molten metal in the pot sucked up morning moisture from the misty, 
humid air and put blow holes in the castings.  Each part was full of so 
many blow holes, it looked like Swiss cheese. 

On holidays, the men stayed home drunk; the women stayed home to
celebrate every new moon.  What began as a fifteen-minute morning 
coffee break sometimes ended as an all-day orgy.  Two of the women 
nursed babies as they worked.  Others interrupted their work to play 
with the children, or to run an errand for Mama, or to flirt with a 
passing paramour.  We convinced the priest he didn't have to bless 
every heat of metal we poured ... once a week was sufficient.  Even the 
telephone was a sometime thing. Little things were always missing: this 
or that tool, grinding wheels, desk drawers, fans, light bulbs. 

The owners never came down from Quito to answer questions or see what
was going on.  Responsibility was all mine. It pained me to admit it, 
but the time had come to call it quits: shut down the plant, give 
everyone a bonus and send them home. 

What a contrast!  My last project in Bucaramanga, Colombia, two years
ago and a thousand kilometers to the north, was so successful by 
comparison! 

To set the record straight, I came to Colombia two years after
graduation.  My degree said I was a  metallurgist,  so I tested iron 
ores and I worked in steel mills.  I taught students in Bogotá how to 
melt and cast brass and aluminum and silver; dug up pockets of chromium 
ore in Antioquia; flew to Nariño to sample gold veins. 

Back in Bogotá, I supervised the casting of magnificent bronze bells. 
In Soacha, I rolled sheet metal pipe and fashioned it into hospital 
beds.  Over in Manizales I trained men to weld hot water heaters and 
tricycles. Down in Cali, I tested tin billets for extrusion into 
toothpaste tubes.  I sharpened steel machetes in Palmira and soldered 
copper telephone cables in Barranquilla.  One day my hands were dirty 
with cast iron; the next day, manganese bronze. 

In January, I set up machines to cast zinc zippers; in July I set up a
press-line to stamp out stainless steel knives and forks.  Over a 
five-year period, I learned more about metalworking than I did in five 
years of college.  Then I met José, or, rather, his wife, Marina. 

I was in Bucaramanga visiting a charcoal iron foundry that cast hollow
household irons. They were heated by glowing charcoal. The owner, a 
bewhiskered old Paisa, never removed his straw hat. His family in 
Bucaramanga had been making these irons for three hundred years, but 
the old man was having terrible problems.  He really didn't know what 
he was doing.  After fifteen minutes in his shop, I didn't know what he 
was doing, either: nothing I could help him with.  I returned his 
advance deposit and told him that electric irons were the coming thing. 


He grew furious and denied it vehemently, blew out the candle on his
desk and ushered me out, locking the door with a big bronze key.  So I 
went to scare up some lunch. 

The big central market was the same as any other city.  Sides of beef
and pork hung from the low roof.  Cages of live chickens were stacked 
high around a big central chopping block while the butcher sharpened 
his ax.   Crude wooden stalls, rubbed smooth by countless shoppers over 
the years held rows of tripe and kidneys, pigs knuckles and beaded 
yellow chicken legs.  Along one side were stalls holding white and 
yellow cheeses, strings of raw noodles, marzipan wrapped in banana 
leaves.  Outside, under a big square sunshade, vendors squatted amidst 
piles of fruits and vegetables. 

I was haggling with a big-busted woman in a red bandanna for a good
price on tomatoes when Marina joined us.  Her jet-black hair was piled 
high in an elegant, airy coiffure, and she wore six strings of silver 
ornaments around her neck.  One had little blue beads; another was made 
 from  jet-black  lozenges; another consisted of interwoven filigree 
cylinders that matched her pendant earrings.  Her bracelets were 
clusters of bright orange seed-pods, inset with tiny glistening green 
emeralds.  In short, she was dressed for market.  A pixie smile tickled 
her lips, more like a kiss than a pout.  Her long eyelashes fluttered 
and her black eyes flashed at me.  She cut right in and began to 
bargain for tomatoes.  I stepped back and watched, to see if I could 
learn something from her. 

"You have such beautiful tomatoes, Señora," she said sweetly.  "How
large this one is, and how red.  Look, here is one that is very red.  
Oh, so red, it will be ripe in a day!  And then, Señora, you will have 
to eat it. But that must be delicious eating all of your own tomatoes.  
Allow me to take this one, Señora.  It will make a good lunch for my 
family today. Two centavos, right?"  She took the two centavos hidden 
in her hand and placed it in the woman's, cupping her hands over the 
vendor's fist. 

"Oh, no!" replied the tomato-seller, "that tomato has to be weighed
first."  She reached for the tomato and plopped it on a hanging scale, 
where it weighed over a pound. 

"Fifty centavos!" she announced. 

Marina looked straight into her eyes.  "My dear," she fluted with her
silver voice, "I love that tomato, and indeed I love all of your 
tomatoes. With the greatest of pleasure I would offer you whatever you 
ask.  But how can I buy other vegetables if I spend all my money here.  
The prices have gone up so high.  Only last month these tomatoes were 
selling for ten centavos a pound."  She dug into her little change 
purse. 

The tomato lady reached around behind her and grabbed a couple of small
misshapen green tomatoes then tossed them on the scale. "For ten 
centavos a pound, you can buy half-ripe tomatoes.  I'll sell you all 
you can take home. My husband will wrap up ten kilos just for you.  
Green tomatoes we deliver free." 

Marina smiled more sweetly than ever.  "You are so right, my dear.  If
green tomatoes are half ripe at ten centavos, then I can take three of 
these big ripe red ones for twenty centavos, right?" 

The vendor-lady hesitated just one instant too long.  I knew at once
that twenty centavos was going to be the price.  Finally she spoke up, 
"Twenty-five", and then turned her head away. 

Marina looked up at the scale, which now read four pounds with all the
tomatoes in it. "So! Twenty!  Said and done!" she announced, dropping a 
whole peso on the table.  The woman set her tomatoes in Marina's net 
basket, but when she came to the green ones, Marina added: "Oh, throw 
in a few green ones, too.  I need them for the soup."  She turned and 
looked me directly in the eyes, "Remind me", she said, "I have to get 
carrots and soup greens." 

I replied, "I won't forget.  Count on me."  The vendor added some green
tomatoes and we went off, arm in arm.  Marina bought soup greens, 
pineapples, yucca, calves liver, lulo fruit, bananas ... enough to fill 
two market baskets; then we had cocktails in the Hotel bar across the 
square, followed by coffee in a delightful little bistro -- coffee 
sweetened with spicy conversation.  It was dark when we took a taxi to 
her house.  One thing led to another..... 

We were having a midnight snack in the kitchen - fully dressed, I might
add - when her husband came home. If José noted anything amiss, he 
never mentioned it. Instead, he brought out another bottle of wine and 
sat down to join us.  When dawn broke, we were still engaged in earnest 
conversation.   The servants awoke and made breakfast.  When I finally 
left at noon, José hugged me and kissed both my cheeks, like a 
Frenchman.  Marina hugged me and kissed me like a French woman. They 
certainly knew the meaning of hospitality. 

José was a born salesman. He never mentioned what he sold, but it
brought in plenty of money.  Besides, he understood metals and 
minerals. 

We met next day at José's house and talked politics and engineering long
into the night, while Marina served coffee and little cakes.  I slept 
in the guest bedroom.  Next day, José begged me to stay over, and 
Marina heartily agreed.  That week, I had my stuff -- clothing, tools, 
books -- shipped to Bucaramanga, where I settled in to share the big 
house with José and Marina.  They had few friends and no relatives.  
The servants were discreet and efficient. 

José was short, but a natty dresser.  That made him appear taller than
he was.  He was bald, but I never saw him without his wig.  He was 
perhaps fifteen years older than me, and much older than Marina.  
Jose's piercing blue irises were hard as diamantine -- sharp quartz 
slivers -- and his urgent persuasive voice was convincing.  I admired 
the man.  He could sell anything. 

But I really admired Marina more: she knew how to get anything she
wanted!   She used her charm to get her way at every opportunity -- and 
I loved it!  Yet, outside the house (and with the servants) she was 
open-minded, decisive, assertive, level-headed and commanding. 

Our relationship was idyllic.  On Tuesdays and Fridays José left early
in the afternoon and returned after midnight.  Marina and I had plenty 
of time to grow very close.  José was her bread and butter, she 
explained, a wonderful provider. He never so much as glanced at another 
woman. 

"I'm really quite fond of him," she admitted.  "He's given me everything
-- well almost everything -- I've ever wanted in life.  Really, we're 
quite fond of each other, like brother and sister.  I wouldn't leave 
him for the world." 

Over the first few weeks, I learned there were many more sides to the
story. One day Marina had me try on one of Jose's good-looking suits.  
I fingered the costly fabric and noticed the jacket and pants had 
pockets everywhere: inside the breasts and sleeves, behind cuffs and 
lapels; the waistline was a money-belt; even the pants pockets had 
hidden pockets.  I said nothing and she made no explanation -- but the 
suit could never be altered to fit me. 

One afternoon, at the Country Club swimming pool, José introduced me to
a splendid-looking young man.  He had dark curly hair and the physique 
of a Greek god; his brief, golden swimming trunks left nothing to the 
imagination. The man was very quiet. He spoke little, and I didn't 
catch his name.  When he left, several pairs of eyes followed his 
gracious movements until he disappeared into the clubhouse. "My 
business partner," explained José proudly.  It was the first time he 
ever mentioned his "business". 

Later, when I spoke of it to Marina, she laughed -- and her laugh was
the rustle of tinsel, the clarion tinkle of gay chimes.  "You mean 
Carlo, don't you?"  Her broad smile won my heart all over again.  
"Carlo is José's lover.  Where do you think he goes on Tuesdays and 
Fridays?"  I couldn't answer, but it explained a lot. 

As our friendship grew, I learned that José had managed to amass quite a
bit of wealth in only a few years. I concluded that he dealt in jewelry 
when he invited me down the wine cellar one day and showed me bagfuls 
of white zircons, bold blue turquoise and red-orange citrine: thousands 
of sparkling semi-precious stones. The valuable gems were stored in 
bottles.  An ancient magnum of champagne held, perhaps, eight thousand 
finely cut emeralds.  Another held an equal quantity of tiny rubies.  
One 5-liter jug was filled with pale blue aquamarine prisms; another 
with cut yellow topaz. He poured out a handful of pink and blue 
sapphires from a wine carafe.  Flasks and decanters full of onyx and 
tourmalines stood here and there.  Despite their diminutive size, the 
gems must have been worth a half million, at least. 

Another time, José led me up into the hills above Bucaramanga, to an old
boarded-up silver mine.  He had inherited the abandoned mine some years 
back, together with hundreds of hectares of barren hill slope.  Even 
though it stood in full view of the city, nobody ever went there.  With 
some effort, he unlocked the padlocks on the mine's sheet-iron door; we 
lit lanterns and explored.  Deep inside one of the galleries, between 
rusted tracks and wrecked mine cars, he shunted aside the rail points 
with a pry bar and uncovered a steel plate buried in rubble.  After a 
little digging, we lifted the plate to reveal hundreds of slabs of 
silver hoarded in a pit.  Each slab bore the seal of the Republic of 
Colombia and a serial number. 

One small ingot carried the words, "Acuñado en el Año del Señor 1868.
Propiedad del Banco Cafetero de Manizales."  Coined in the Year of our 
Lord.  Property of the Coffee Bank. 

Later, José explained. "My great-great- Grandfather was Bolivar's
Quartermaster.  He bought supplies for the Army and paid the soldiers.  
After him, great-Grandfather became Bucaramanga's city treasurer, and 
passed the mine on to my Grandfather.  He turned it over to me when my 
father was killed in the uprising of 1946.  All the records were 
burned.  I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the silver." 

Even as he uttered the words, I had glimmerings of a solution.  The
final pieces fell into place one of those languid Tuesday afternoons.  
A heavy rain was falling and Marina curled up comfortably against me in 
the big bed under a warm coverlet, chatting quietly. 

"José took me in when I was twelve," she admitted.  "My family lived on
a small farm near Cúcuta.  We were very poor, and there were fifteen of 
us.  José's father had a small coffee plantation near where we lived, 
but when he was killed, José had to look after it.  He put my family in 
charge, and took me back to Bucaramanga." 

"It must have been strange for you, living in a city," I commented. 

"Yes, of course, but it was much safer, and very exciting.  He dressed
me in beautiful clothes, like a doll, and put me into school.  I was 
very proud and learned quickly.  He was like a father, very 
affectionate. The servants fed me well and taught me manners.  They are 
very dear to me.  More like family than my own." 

"So you grew up wealthy and spoiled ..." I began, but she put a finger
to my lips. 

"I never forgot what it was like when I was a child -- to beg and steal
and fight and run and hide.  Nobody cared whether I lived or died.  But 
José cared.  He gave me jeweled bracelets and a little diamond crown 
for my graduation. Six years ago, bandits massacred my family, all in 
one night.  They shot my mother and father, and then cut up my brothers 
and sisters with machetes.  I cried for a month.  There was nobody left 
in my life but José.  He cared for me, and taught me things you never 
learn in school -- how to live and enjoy life.  On my eighteenth 
birthday, we were married.  Just the two of us, at the City Hall, with 
a notary as witness.  We used to fly to Maracaibo often, and go to 
night clubs together.  He taught me to dance, and bought me beautiful 
clothes.  He introduced me to wonderful good-looking men like Carlo.  
Everyone was so good to me." 

I began to understand Marina's view of life.  As she grew to become a
woman, José gave her everything but the kind of love she needed -- 
until I came along.  And she chose me herself! 

"Where did José get all his wealth?," I asked bluntly, "was it inherited
or ..." 

"No," she replied abruptly.  "Well, yes and no."   I waited until she
was ready to go on. 

"This house, of course, the family home," she continued, "and the silver
-- I suppose he told you about the silver." 

"He showed it to me." 

"But of course, that could never be sold or melted down.  The
Authorities would know immediately ." she hesitated. 

"And the gems?" I asked innocently. 

"Oh," she laughed, "Those are stolen, of course. Didn't you know?" 
"Stolen?" I couldn't fathom it.  "Who would steal such tiny gems?"  Her 
frankness amazed me. 

"You must have guessed.  José is a middleman.  A fence.  At least he was
until two years ago.  Carlo and his father worked with him." 

Her story spun on into the night.  Thieves from all over Latin America
passed jewelry to José's partners.  They broke apart the settings and 
melted the metal down in their little foundry.  From it, they made 
rings and decorative pins, hair clasps, necklaces, earrings ... and the 
gems went to José.  Every two weeks, he stuffed his pockets and flew to 
Maracaibo where he sold the larger gems profitably.  But of course, the 
smaller gems had less value, and posed too much of a risk -- so they 
accumulated for years in the wine cellar!  Marina knew the business 
inside out: she always went with him, carrying a few gems of her own. 

"Why did you give up such a lucrative business?" I asked.  Her answer
was simple. 

"We got caught." 

I was not surprised.  They had pushed their luck to the limit.  "You're
not locked up," I said, "How did you get out of it?" 

"Oh, the usual way," she laughed.  "When the customs officials turned us
in, José seduced the Magistrate, and split the take with him.  We were 
home the next day." 

"You mean this happened before!"  I was incredulous. 

"Only a couple of times. But this time the Judge made José promise to
lay off for two years, and it has been driving him crazy.  He would 
give anything for a legitimate way to get rid of all those tiny gems 
and the bars of silver." 

We went back to making love, very thoughtfully. 

Bucaramanga, in the Colombian State of Santander, has long been known as
an entomological paradise.  Surely, everyone has seen the splendor of 
its giant colorful moths, which thrive in the coffee fields of the 
surrounding mountains.  Amid the foliage, large walking sticks mimic 
tree twigs.  Click beetles and scarabs scurry over the ground.  Yellow 
jackets sing in their paper nests.  Here and there, a mantis prays.  
Japanese beetles glow green and gold in the sunlight. Damselflies and 
ladybugs are my favorites. 

And then there are the cockroaches.  Bucaramanga crawls with roaches
from every slit and crevice.  Not only slim, flat brown ones with filmy 
wings, or speckled German roaches with salt-and-pepper feelers who 
build nests in flour sacks -- but the big, fat Latin cucarachas, in 
sizes ranging from two inches and up.  Not counting the feelers.  These 
cleverly articulated chitinous insects sport mandibles and pincers big 
enough to nick your thumb, with barbs on the hind side of all six legs, 
and tough, slender feelers like tiny whips. Each roach tucks its 
delicate wings beneath a horny carapace. 

Most grown-ups hate roaches with a vengeance -- but not the kids.  They
make great toys.  I used to watch them racing cockroaches in the 
gutter.  The kids kept each roach in its kitchen matchbox.  They would 
line the boxes up in a row, someone would whistle, and each kid would 
push open the sliding drawer to let the roach free.  Any roach slow to 
escape was spurred on by a lit match.  The insects scampered down the 
street and over one another, hemmed in by the curb at one side and a 
trickle of water in the drainage channel.  They fled in panic from the 
shrieks and screams behind the matchboxes. 

Quite a variety of roaches took part in these marathons: one kind was
dark brown, another black, a third one gray with long spots.  The 
larger ones, I noted, weren't as fast as the smaller ones, and they 
were clumsier.  I thought of the thousands of eggs hatched from each 
laying, and like many a biblical character, my heart hardened against 
them.  Some day, I knew, these fecund insects would outnumber humans a 
million to one. 

If roaches filled me with disgust and loathing, there were reasons.  My
inner hatred stemmed from the depression years in New York City.  When 
I was a kid, we had to move out of the "upper class" West Bronx and 
move to the "lower class" East Bronx with my Aunt Rosie.  All the 
tenements were infested.  When I raided the breadbox for oatmeal 
cookies, filthy brown roaches scattered everywhere.  Were those poppy 
seeds on the rolls roach turds?  When I slept with my cousins, roaches 
crawled into bed with us.  Each morning we found dead roaches in the 
washbasin and the toilet bowl.  I learned to bang my shoes on the floor 
before putting them on, so my toes wouldn't squash a roach-nest.  Like 
most kids, we drank soda pop from the bottle -- a habit I quit cold 
turkey when I swallowed a roach and vomited it back up. 

Years later, in high school and college, I had this recurring dream
where I frantically fought off giant cockroaches. Sometimes I woke 
screaming, choking with fear.  I plotted revenge in a thousand devious, 
paranoid, diabolical ways.  I fantasized myself with the powers of 
Midas, turning every roach I touched into gold. Here in Bucaramanga, 
sterling silver would do.  I was going to have that revenge. 

José came home late Friday night, and we settled down to chat. The
servants had gone to bed long ago, so Marina -- looking especially 
radiant -- served us vintage claret, accompanied by little cheese 
canapés and pepperoni sticks.  José appeared to be in particularly good 
humor, too. 

I told them my idea: a legitimate way to dispose of the silver and the
tiny gems at one fell swoop. 

"Legitimate?" queried José skeptically. 

"Legitimate!" I affirmed. 

"You see," I explained, "Carlo and his father have laid the groundwork. 
All we have to do is upgrade their metal casting operations and expand 
the plant.  The permits should be no problem." 

We talked and drew sketches all night.  From somewhere, Marina brought
out charcoal sticks, paper and water colors.  She began designing the 
most original line of jewelry any of us had ever seen.  It didn't take 
long to convince José.  He had the investment capital and the raw 
materials.  I had the time.  And the experience.  And the incentive.  
Marina kept sketching and by 5 a.m., the floor was covered with her 
drawings.  We agreed on the details and drew up a business plan.  The 
three of us spent the weekend celebrating and on Monday morning we set 
to work. This project was my vendetta -- the fulfillment of a lifelong 
craving. Each little silver casting would be a monument to my memory of 
that awful time in my life. 

Two months later, with the aid of Carlo and his father, the new plant
was melting metal, ready to cast our first marketable product.  It came 
about easier and faster than I believed possible.  I challenged all the 
children in the neighborhood to bring the biggest roaches they could 
find, at fifty centavos the jar.  Next, I trained a couple of 
teen-agers how to dip each cockroach -- legs first -- into a saucepan 
of hot sticky wax.  He had to hold the roach, alive and kicking, up 
against a flat wax stick. Little by little, as the wax congealed, it 
immobilized the flailing legs and feelers, leaving the roach glued to 
the stick, standing up firmly in place.  Another teen-ager plunged 
twenty or thirty two-roach sticks into a wax peg and dipped the cluster 
into ceramic slurry. 

Corrosive chemicals drowned each roach by clogging its breathing
passages, choking its mandibles, crusting over its beady little eyes.  
After burning out the horny bodies in the oven, we cast molten silver 
into each cluster of molds.  From the first, our results were 
near-perfect!  Hundreds of sterling silver roaches were born, risen 
like the Phoenix from the sepulcher of their predecessors. 

Each roach entered the world complete, with hairlike cilia visible on
each feeler, little barbs on the hind side of each leg, and an original 
expression of horror on its face.  I hired an old oyster fisherman to 
bore open the eyes with a hand awl.  A part-time housewife wedged 
emeralds and rubies into them.  Every casting was original, unique, 
distinct from all the others. 

We mounted some roaches, the largest ones, on four-inch polished wood
bases, each with its commemorative plaque and roach specifications -- 
the length in millimeters, the weight in grams,  how many carats for 
each emerald and so on.  Others had silver loops for a string or chain. 
 A fair number were finished as brooches, with a spring pin on the 
back.  The hollow ones made irresistible earrings.  We mounted roaches 
rearing up, roaches dancing, roaches raising a hind leg beside a little 
silver tree.  Some cockroaches were locked in battle, emerald eye to 
eye.  Others were coupled in roach ecstasy.... 

José was a genius at converting these geegaws into cold, hard cash. I
delighted in photographing Marina wearing or holding sterling silver 
cockroaches for the display catalog.  Our initial display was sold out 
at the Jeweler's Congress in Bogotá.  The same thing happened in Quito, 
then La Paz, then Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo and Rio.  Within six 
months, our cockroaches were available in every luxury trinket shop 
throughout the Western Hemisphere.  Up to now, our prices had been 
moderate.  A medium-sized roach brought five or six thousand pesos.  
When José took off with a consignment for Paris, he telegraphed back 
that he was getting sixteen thousand francs per cockroach.  Marina and 
I were delighted. 

Hundreds of roaches vanished behind the Iron Curtain and millions of
rubles found their devious way into our numbered Swiss bank accounts.  
One roach had an extra emerald set between its feelers.  It became part 
of England's Crown Jewels collection.  Another giant roach, wearing a 
tiny emerald crown, bearing an emerald-head scepter and wearing a robe 
of scintillating amethysts, wound up in the historical museum of 
Richmond, Indiana.  The receipt from that transaction  was  my  
keepsake:  officially, Richmond paid fifty six thousand dollars for one 
cockroach. 

Apart from the money, which just kept rolling in, José was away on his
sales junket for seven months.  Once, when I asked Marina if she missed 
him, she laughed so hard I thought she was having a fit.  By running 
the foundry only three days a week, I managed to stretch out our silver 
supply.  Before Christmastime, however, nearly all the silver was used 
up and our emerald joujoux had saturated the market.  We had captured 
the world's fancy by storm.  The novelty of stuffing my numbered Swiss 
bank account was beginning to wear off.  Marina was spending a lot more 
time shopping at the market these days, and I was getting pretty sick 
of cockroaches. 

Finally, José returned.  We divvied up the winnings and spent the
holidays amusing each other with tall tales. 

The fireworks on New Years Eve were spectacular.  When a shower of
sparks from a stray rocket sent the foundry up in flames, nobody wept.  
José had actually milked it for every cent he could.  Now, it was only 
fair to let some other crazy bastard have a crack at it.  To this day, 
I'll never know how he managed to get those tons of silver and gems 
across so many National borders without arousing suspicion. The customs 
agents must have found our products too cute to resist, and simply 
assumed that the raw materials we used were legitimate! 

The adventure was over.  Each of us had wealth enough to eat, drink and
make merry -- freedom from want -- for all the rest of our natural 
lives.  We could buy yachts, travel around the world, live anywhere, do 
anything.  Money gave us the key to power.  We could buy influence and 
alter the destiny of nations -- after we paid our taxes, of course.  In 
January, Marina and I flew to Zürich, to settle the taxes on our 
accounts.  We enjoyed a long lunch with a senior board member of the 
bank.  He lectured us severely on "the responsibilities of wealth" and 
admonished us to study a little book in Italian, "The Prince" by 
Niccolo Somebody. 

Marina's knowledge of Latin came in handy, and we read most of it that
evening.  It left me sad and unfulfilled.  Wielding power and influence 
-- uplifting impoverished souls -- changing the face of nations meant 
nothing to me. 

I couldn't speak for Marina, but the things that held meaning in my life
were not bought with money: they were found in nature, crafted by my 
hands and imagination.  Perhaps my feelings were selfish, but I 
believed in self-realization and practiced it.  All the wealth in the 
world couldn't change that.  All it did was impose responsibility and 
detract from the thrill of personal challenge. 

When we returned to Bucaramanga, Marina and I came home to a houseful of
happy young bachelors, all fawning on José.  They waited on him hand 
and foot.  It was so sad: all that wealth would never recapture his 
lost youth.  A few days later, I moved out.  Marina stayed with José.  
They didn't need me any longer.  The money had come between us. 

Idle, without companions, I looked for something meaningful to do -- a
new way to apply my skills.  A telegram caught up with me at the hotel. 
 New oil fields were being developed in Putumayo, on the Ecuadorian 
border, and the drilling rigs needed pipe couplings.  Could I make 
them? 

"You bet!" I wired back.  Next week, I was building a plant in Tres
Rios.   But this time, my self-assurance led me astray.  The hot, wet, 
dusty climate conspired to defeat my best efforts.  In less than a 
year, the new plant had failed.  So right now, I had come to the end of 
the line in Ecuador.  Time to close out the project.  Maybe I could 
sell it off to some local people and get out while they were still 
struggling with the problems.  Christmas holidays were just around the 
corner, and I sorely missed Marina.  Perhaps a telegram would bring her 
to Quito.  I resolved to do something about it tomorrow.  All my 
winnings were still sitting in a Swiss bank account, so what was I 
doing here, killing myself in Tres Rios?  Suddenly, it felt cool and 
comfortable inside the hut.  I welcomed the coming of night and dozed 
off. 

*  *  * 

Afterword 

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending we
lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours. We have 
given our lives away; a sordid boon. 

-- William Wordsworth 

Seattle, November 3, 1990 Gerald X. Diamond


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