The Dream Merchant (28 page)

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Authors: Fred Waitzkin

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garimpeiros
showed up at the camp. They came out of the trees in bunches. Jim offered them a cold beer and a hearty pat on the back and Martha had her big pot of rice and beans and something cooking on the barbecue; often it was monkey, which the men favored. The miners came through the jungle flashing victory and tired smiles as if they'd crossed a big ocean in a little boat. Each month, one or two were killed by jaguars. Almost always they were men who tried to brave it through the jungle alone. Within several miles of the camp, there was an unusual infestation of little cats the local Indians called
jaguatiricas.
Likely, it was the smells of garbage and cooking that lured them close. These ferocious animals, the size of large house cats, attacked in small packs of three to five, and if a man survived he recalled the sound of whining babies, but almost always a single man was doomed. The small cats sprung out of the underbrush with thin devil faces and raced up a man's body, ripping and biting. Even these horrible creatures didn't keep the miners away. After a year, there were three hundred
garimpeiros
working on the land and selling their gold to Jim.

Sixty percent of Jim's men came down with malaria or dengue fever, which was even worse. Occasionally, an Indian dropped down, hemorrhaging, and died beneath the trees. Some of the sickest workers flew out, but most of them suffered for a few weeks and then went back to work. Men didn't want to leave. The life was so exciting and fraught with the chance for wealth and glory.

Luis was the exception. In camp, his expression was forlorn. He felt feverish half the time and was afraid to bathe in the river where there were too many things waiting to kill him. Luis couldn't distinguish between the heat, malaria, and worry. He was miserable without his wife and mistresses. In the camp he avoided Jim because he was embarrassed by his weakness, and he felt overshadowed by Ribamar. Luis hunted for shady spots to keep cool. He did a little construction work or waited around, wiping the sweat from his eyes until, finally, Jim signaled it was time to return to Manaus for a few days or a week. Then, Luis could emerge from the shadows and become, once again, the progenitor of business associations and intimacies, if he could only survive until then.

 

28.

At first the prospect of running a cantina had made Jim uneasy. But he was advised that he needed to have a place with music, drink, and girls or the men would become moody and go off to other
garimpos
to find gold. Even Ribamar agreed that it was so. The cantina was a part of the life here, a gift for the men in this harsh place; that's how Jim justified it to himself. There really wasn't any choice if the camp was going to run effectively.

Jim paid his girls 50 percent of their take. He might have kept a larger cut for himself, but it appealed to him to make poor women wealthy, as if the Lord had stepped in to change a woman's destiny. In a year working in Jim's camp, a girl cleared about two hundred thousand dollars. It was an inconceivable sum for a poor person from Manaus.

In return, the eighteen- or nineteen-year-old delivered her gifts in a tiny, hot cubicle only large enough for a small mattress and a washbowl to clean her men. She began each session with a kind of foreplay by dipping her thumb and two first fingers into the miner's narrow leather pouch and slowly withdrawing as much gold as she could hold in one pinch. The men loved this starter that proved their virility in the jungle, something that went beyond sex, and the girls were very impressed by what they felt with their fingers in the pouch and teased the men, took a little extra with the hint that what would follow would be indescribable bliss. Usually, it came to about three hundred dollars for twenty minutes of love in this wild outpost where greed and privation pushed desire to the limits.

The men were always falling hard for girls and would sometimes pay a favorite fifteen hundred dollars for the entire night, as much as a man earned digging and sifting for two months or more. Men fought over girls. Jim stayed clear of these drunken battles, even when one of the men took out a pistol and shot another worker. This happened several times. But Jim dolled out harsh punishment if a man abused one of his whores.

It was true, all the men loved the cantina. Some
garimpeiros
made monthly visits as if taking a short holiday in the city. What a treat after suffering weeks of wretched mosquitoes and slinging mud from a hole. A few of the older men walked to the clearing two or three nights a week for conversation and a cold beer. Setimbrano was one who no longer visited the girls. He was a tall, imposing white-haired figure of about fifty with the gravitas of Ribamar. Jim liked to sit with him and Ribamar drinking beer like three old fishermen at the end of the day. The
garimpo
is a psychological illness, the tall man reflected, and then he smiled, just barely, to affirm it was a malady that captivated him still.

Ribamar knew Setimbrano from thirty years earlier, but recently this impressive self-educated man had been working in a
garimpo
three hundred kilometers to the south where the gold was found by divers dredging in the Madeira River. The riverbed was called the big hole of pain because many workers got sick and died. For years the illness in the muddy river was linked to black magic, but eventually
garimpeiros
learned that the hole of pain gave them radiation poisoning along with gold nuggets. Nonetheless, most
garimpeiros
remained on the job, the river's peril heightening their gold fever along with the passion of cantina nights. The life here is an illusion, Setimbrano would say, savoring his beer while Ribamar nodded gravely. Each night men crowded into Jim's cantina as Frank Sinatra crooned into the dark rain forest.

After eighteen months, there were more than five hundred men camping out on Jim's land, digging holes; some of them were twelve or fifteen feet deep. It was hot, punishing work. Eventually, every one of the men walked into the clearing to sell gold to Jim for 60 percent of what it would get in Manaus and to book passage home in Jim's plane. There was no other way out. Even in groups, walking out of the forest was very risky because of animals and the likelihood of being killed by bandits for their savings.

To return home, a man put his name on Jim's list and waited around the camp until there was a seat available. It usually took four or five days. Meanwhile, the worker rented a hammock, ate Martha's delicious food. At night he drank a beer and felt intoxicated by the music, and the girls were so young and playful. Not just sexy, they were tender and caring. They asked about his hardship and great plans, caressed his face. Luis was right about the girls. How could a man resist, particularly a man who had endured the jungle for five months? A small lump of gold dust hardly mattered when a miner was bringing home a kilo. And just beyond the clearing, the jungle was saturated with more gold. It was like fruit. There were nuggets out there worth ten thousand, even more. If only a man kept digging he would strike it rich and never work another day.

After four days in camp, drinking
pinga
and enjoying the girls, the
garimpeiro
had no more gold left to exchange with Jim for reals, not even enough for a seat on the plane to Manaus. He needed to tramp back to his deep hole in the forest and begin shoveling more mud and gravel, slowly accumulating gold until he could return to the city and his family. Then the same thing happened again unless his difficult work was interrupted by an anaconda in the river or he succumbed to malaria.

The life in this place is an illusion, Setimbrano said. All the men knew it. And yet they savored it. They dreamed of striking it rich until they could no longer manage the backbreaking work. When elderly
garimpeiros
lived out their days in Manaus they reminisced about the perils they'd braved, the cantina nights and fervent dreams while sleeping deeply in a hammock between the trees.

*   *   *

One morning Phyllis was awakened by the chauffeur's wife. There were fifteen men standing outside the gate to Jim's estate, one of them with a warrant. Soon the attack force of cops and IRS agents was combing the main residence and Jim's game house for hidden wall safes. They found three. They looked for cash, securities, jewelry, and any records that might help their case, but all they discovered were a few porno tapes and two small bags of marijuana. One of the men snickered. The agents catalogued Jim's boats, cars, furniture, everything of any value. They pretended Phyllis wasn't there, watching. They went through her underwear. They took Jim's paintings off the walls. She worried they'd be damaged and raised her voice. The agents were dismantling her world, piece by piece. Everything Phyllis owned was handled. They took her engagement ring. She should have sold it. Jim was right.

Many months earlier, before he'd left for Brazil, Jim said to her, If the police come hide your passport. When she had the chance, she took the passport from her makeup drawer and slipped it into her pocketbook. She believed in Jim. She was listening for his voice for guidance. The passport would save her. She could fly to him in Manaus. The police gave her and the boy two hours to leave the house.

Michael shivered violently while he clutched Ava's ratty little dog. What he must have thought while Phyllis rushed up the stairs to pack some of their clothes. The chauffeur and his wife were right after all. Hell and madness and cruelty had descended upon them. The boy's mother was gone. The house was gone, almost gone. Soon they would take his dog.

One of the men drove off with Phyllis's car. In a minute, she had been dealt a whole new reality. She had this crazy teenager, no money, and no home. There wasn't any way to reach Jim. He was still living his life in the jungle as though he had millions up north to back up his play.

She made a quick call to her sister. By nightfall, Phyllis, the boy and dog were staying with her sister in a small one-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto. The chauffeur and cook were gone. The dream house was gone. The only things of value Phyllis had been able to save were two signed Monet prints Jim had given to her before he'd left for Brazil. They had been sitting in a framing shop in Toronto.

*   *   *

Phyllis tried to befriend the boy, but he was fierce and very strange. He was repelled by tenderness. Michael simmered and you didn't want to touch him. He would burn you. Phyllis wondered if he could accept love from anyone, his mother? He fixated on the idea of dyeing his hair green as though it were crucial to his welfare. Phyllis gently tried to talk him out of it but ended up helping him do it in the bathroom. They made a mess and laughed at the green dye on the tiles. It didn't matter to Michael that people on the street looked at him. But he let Phyllis in, just a little, maybe because she was harmless, just barely managing, and she was trying to understand things that were beyond her horizon. Michael had this cutting off-the-wall humor that made her laugh and cringe until tears were rolling down her cheeks. Then, in a heartbeat, he'd close down. She could not imagine Jim tolerating such a person.

*   *   *

Every eight or nine days, occasionally he could stall it off for two weeks, Jim, Luis, and three gunmen flew back to Manaus with gold Jim had collected from his
garimpeiros.
Seeing the girl was the best part of these trips. Jim was eager to tell her what was happening at the camp. Soon they would build an enormous sluice box, a hundred and fifty feet long. Everything would change for the better with the sluice box in place. The gold would flow into their hands. The real life would begin.

She nodded, tried to imagine what he was talking about. She felt his urgency. Jim no longer had patience for the view outside his picture window of fruit trees and lethargic caimans. His whole manner had changed. His body had grown harder.

Jim could not afford impediments. He was running out of cash. He tried to pick up the pace. He urged his men to work harder, the small construction crew and the gunmen who resented doing manual labor. He needed Luis to make phone calls, find a more trustworthy gold buyer, locate a shop to fabricate aluminum cross members for the sluice box that would make his fortune. The sluice box became everything. There was a long list of things to do. He needed Luis to get moving. But there was a distracted look in Luis's eyes that Jim didn't like. Jim pushed them all. Although Luis he had to coddle along.

Jim pulled out the scroll of old promises. He was well practiced, having recited them, with variations, for more than thirty years. The gold was for all of them, he pledged. Soon, very soon, Jim's gunmen would never again need to risk their skins for ten bucks a day. Jim became emotional. He cared for all of his guys. It was true.

He lured them ahead. That was also true. He offered them attractive packages. He'd pay them a little less now, five or six dollars a day instead of ten, and give them much more later. Jim could negotiate deals, even in the steaming jungle. Soon they would all be driving around Manaus in big, powerful sedans. He spoke beneficently of bonuses and little partnerships. He'd take them all to Rio for lavish vacations or he'd take them to Vegas, why not? He'd fly them to Las Vegas.

Jim summoned the endless future of lavish cars and boats and idyllic islands off the beaten track. Jim had always mainly sold happiness and optimism. The gold was for all of his children, not just Jim. Just work with him, put in the hours, take a little less now. Because it's coming. He talked to each man. He probed for the hot button, even in the absurdly remote camp. What do you want out of life, really want? Jim's hired guns smiled at him with their fat greasy faces and sweaty camouflage shirts; they shook their heads and grinned, even the ones who hadn't visited emotion in half a lifetime. They called him Jim in a lingering way that implied
gringo maluco,
crazy American, who will do anything to win.

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