My banker
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 22: MoneySexPower
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Wayne McLennan
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Wayne McLennan's biography and other articles by this writer
Money isn't everything!'
‘Bloody nice when it just falls out of the sky, though.'
‘You're still doing alright.'
‘I won't starve. Only one thing, mate. I never appreciated how bloody good I had it.'
‘People never do.'
‘I will next time.'
‘No y'won't.'
The weather in Amsterdam in 2006 was unseasonably warm. When I left the bar, stumbling on the uneven brick road running beside the brackish canal, prostitutes stood outside their doorways. It was rare that I noticed them anymore, but the heat and the intimacy of being able to reach out and touch them if I dared encouraged me to stare, appreciating their different-coloured underwear, the way some wore items of clothing to cover rolls of fat, emphasise a curve, a crevice.
I wove my way through groups of vulnerable, mesmerised tourists herded along by their guides like sheep on a feed run, skirted the mobs of drunken Brits who were intent on nothing else but reaching the next bar, ignored the offers of pot, cocaine and heroin from emaciated, frenetic junkies, caught the skilled patter of the live sex spruikers, and after fifty metres the noise eased. After another fifty metres it became altogether something else, more mundane ... humane.
I walked beside a wide canal towards my apartment, choosing the side of the road shaded by the thick summer foliage of tall alder trees. Houseboats were anchored along both sides of the water as if awaiting word to lift anchor, loose ropes, and motor powerfully out into midstream to begin again their duties as the cargo transporters of Europe.
Amsterdam was a puzzle made up of remarkable pieces, each piece a work of art, a masterpiece when fitted together. It had been my home since leaving Costa Rica twenty years before. It was there in 1983 that I had first heard about the Brothers in the port city of Golfito on the Pacific Coast not far from the border of Panama.
THREE PER CENT A MONTH, that's 36 per cent a year,' Pat answered indifferently, shifting uncomfortably on his barstool
‘More than forty if you let the interest add up,' Whitey answered.
‘No one can pay that.'
‘The Villalobos do.'
‘Get another beer,' Pat said turning to me. ‘I've got to piss.'
I watched him weave through the tables and chairs scattered throughout the bar as if he were an out-of-control train, and then turned towards Whitey standing ready. ‘Two beers, thanks, mate.'
The Miramar had been constructed on the water's edge and looked out over Golfito's inner bay. Under the late afternoon sun, the bay appeared crimson. On the other side of the water was an island, but it was too far to make out details, only that it shimmered like a field of crushed green glass.
Whitey placed two Imperials on the bar and scratched at his snowy beard before folding his arms across his bare chest. It made them appear larger, his tattoos of faded, naked women fatter, less bewitching.
‘How do you know about these Brothers?' I asked Whitey.
‘All the gringos know about them.'
‘But who are they?'
‘Christians! They've got a helicopter business. That's what they say. All I know is they've convinced a lot of people.' Whitey coughed wetly, reached into his shorts and pulled out a crumpled packet of smokes. He continued again only when a lit cigarette hung loosely from his mouth, its smoke drifting thickly upwards past his eyes. ‘I'd put some cash with them if I had any, but I ain't got it. It's all in the bar,' he mumbled again after a small hesitation.
Whitey's wife Barbara kept her hair pulled tightly in a ponytail. She smiled infrequently. Barbara watched us closely as if she suspected Whitey of planning to squander their last wealth. She frightened me.
I twisted my head to watch four girls shuffle slowly in. They were dressed in shorts and small, flimsy tops. Two were so heavy that their bellies, swollen like chocolate-coloured balloons, protruded farther than their breasts. All four were gaudy ... desirable.
‘Helicopter company ... got to be drugs or some sort of pyramid scheme,' Pat said, springing on to his stool and spinning around to look at the girls who sat at one of the tables staring sweetly, almost romantically towards us.
‘They're Christians,' Whitey repeated to the back of Pat's head.
‘Christians are the fucking worst,' I mumbled.
But I didn't really care one way or the other about the Brothers: I was barely making a living panning gold on the Penninsula de Osa, a two-hour boat ride, forty-minute truck ride and five-hour walk through jungle from Whitey's bar. My biggest money concern was whether I could afford the dear rooms that Whitey charged $3.50 a night for or settle for one of the two dollar rooms that were preferred by men with girls. The walls of the cheap rooms were full of finger-sized holes that permitted panoramas of the copulation and accompanying squeals and moans.
‘Then you're not interested, Pat?' Whitey asked as if he were selling insurance.
‘That's how people who wear suits earn their money. I work for mine,' Pat answered, still staring at the girls.
Pat was living on the same peninsula as me – only further out. He supported a wife and raised three children by buying and selling gold, and supplemented his gold earnings with a small shop that supplied the miners with rice, tobacco, rum and other essentials. Men sometimes fought with machetes outside his shop. Some were shot. Once a man was killed.
It was Saturday, payday, and groups of local men started crowding into the bar and attracting more women. Salsa music blared from the jukebox: it was so loud our discussion became useless. Couples began to writhe together between the tables, clinging as if their bodies were fused. The hot, wet air had suddenly become an elixir of passion and dash.
The hotel, built of rusting tin nailed to rotting wood, suddenly rocked back and forth. I looked at my watch: the last banana train of the week had just steamed past, right on time.
‘One day the whole hotel will just fall down,' Pat said to no one in particular.
It was getting late when two girls left their table and walked towards us. I watched them come, unable to move. It sometimes happens the same way when you are in danger. Imagine how many of them we could afford if I had money with the Brothers, I ruminated before they reached us.