A History of Money: A Novel by Alan Pauls, Ellie Robins Page A

the puddle of blood. How much more money than the dead man was carrying in the helicopter? How much less? The same amount? (In his mind, and this is an illness he won’t be cured of until much later, and even then only by chance, any unknown quantity of money is by definition the same sum.) Three times this scene is replayed, and three times his father gives the same answer when, at the breakfast table the next morning, he gathers his courage and takes advantage of the state of idiotic beatitude his father sinks into on seeing the encyclopedic variety of fruits on offer at the hotel to ask him the question that has been macerating in his terrified imagination for, what, ten, twelve hours? Whether he finally got the money his friend owed him. All three times, the same answer: No. All three times, the same explanation: He couldn’t find him. He went to his house, he rang the bell, nobody answered.
    This answer seems possible, logical. That could happen, he thinks, while his little right hand—which is very skilled at drawing and sculpting monsters out of modeling clay and other such feats of dexterity, but astonishingly clumsy when it comes to more basic practical matters—struggles to spread butter on a long, vaguely oval slice of pumpernickel that looks like the sole of one of his shoes. But the third time he hears it, he freezes, stunned, with the piece of bread suspended midway between the plate and his mouth. What did he say? What’s he talking about? It’s not the fact that he’s being lied to that shocks him. It’s the wild disproportion he senses between the answer—which, incidentally, his father gives without even thinking about it, totally unfazed, while his hands pile up slices of
abacaxí
on his plate and his eyes flit eagerly to the platters of mango, papaya, guava, passion fruit, fruits that drive him crazy, as he often says in Buenos Aires,where they’re nowhere to be found, but whose names he can’t remember, and never will be able to—and the three nights of torment he’s been made to endure. Something inside him darkens, as when a cloud drags its long, slow shadow across a scorched terrace. He no longer thinks of his father as a nocturnal adventurer who distracts night watchmen, forces windows, and slips, armed, into other people’s houses to reclaim what is his at the risk of violent retaliation and even death. What if he’s a coward? He considers the possibility for a second, and the image that had filled him with happiness earlier, when he woke up and almost crashed into it—his father by his side, safe and sound and acting as though nothing had ever happened, sitting on the edge of his bed in the early morning to recruit him for a breakfast orgy of fruit—becomes a proof of disgrace. He survived, which means he didn’t have the courage to see it all the way through. He goes out, stops the taxi, gives the address, but when the taxi driver repeats it, loudly, the alarmed tremor in his voice makes him hesitate. The neighborhood’s dark streets frighten him. He sees a light on in one of the apartment’s windows and worries that his debtor friend is not alone. He arrives just as the other guy is coming out, and realizes that he didn’t remember him being so tall, so stocky, so ready for anything.
    The more he thinks about it, the surer he is that he’s been tricked. But by now, after three nights of lying awake until dawn with his heart in his mouth, thinking he’s been left fatherless in a hotel room in Rio de Janeiro, what apart from the scene he fears most could possibly satisfy him? This is how the imagination operates: by submitting its guinea pigs to extreme challenges of its own invention and recognizing their heroism only when they succumb, never when they survive. It’s also how the period operates: those who make it back from the dead come back because they’re cowards, because they’ve sold out or paid up, because they’ve struck a dealwith the enemy, never because