Russell Hoban - Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

She started putting potatoes into the electric grater. Through her alchemy these humble things out of the earth, compounded with onions, eggs, flour and salt, would sizzle as golden-brown pancakes on the griddle of their transformation. They would smell of their ingredients but beyond that they would smell of fidelity, of being steadfast and true to what really mattered. I couldn’t help salivating a little. And all the while her movements had been revealing the subtle roundnesses of her that one didn’t notice at first glance. ‘Serafina,’ I said. ‘I never stopped loving you.’

‘I’m thrilled to hear that — it’s very flattering to know that you had a little room in your heart for me. You must be a very big-hearted man.’

Again I had no words. I wanted so much to take her in my arms!

‘What?’ she said. ‘The Excelsior star salesman speechless?’

‘What if, I said, ‘you found that I had only a year to live?’

She tilted her head a little to one side and looked at me narrowly. ‘Are you going to tell me you have got AIDS?’

‘No, Serafina, I haven’t got AIDS.’

‘What is it, then?’

‘Never mind. You’re busy now, I’ll go.’ I left the kitchen, went through the restaurant and out into the hall. The shop was at one end of it, the street at the other. I was halfway out into Earl’s Court Road when I had an impulse to buy some rose-hip tea. I spun around and was almost in the shop when I heard Mr Rinyo-Clacton talking to Ron, the owner.

‘Is it true,’ he was asking, ‘what they say about ginseng?’

Was it actually Mr Rinyo-Clacton? At first I didn’t want to know, I just wanted to shut him out of my consciousness. Then I had to know; I turned around and went out into Earl’s Court Road and stood looking into the Vegemania. In a few minutes I saw him stick his head into the restaurant from the hallway. Rima pointed to the clock and said they weren’t open yet and he withdrew. I turned away quickly and walked down Earl’s Court Road without looking back.

Why was he here? Was he going to turn up wherever I happened to be from now on? What did he want at the Vegemania? Serafina? Was he going to suck up my whole life like a vampire before he killed me? Serafina! I could see him having lunch at the Vegemania, complimenting her on her cooking, being charming, chatting her up and inviting her to the opera, the ballet, whatever. There’s nothing you can do about it, I told myself — the shop and the restaurant are open to the public and you can’t prevent Serafina from talking to him. Don’t think about it now, put it out of your mind and get on with whatever you were going to do today.

Around me a sketchy surreality put itself together with sounds and colours, buildings, cars, faces, footsteps, and the smell of exhaust fumes and roasting chestnuts. Contracting to be dead in one year definitely made everything look different; gigantic soft watches draped over trees and a downpour of bowler-hatted men with umbrellas would not have surprised me.

Steady on, I said to myself. Right now we’ve got to decide what to do with the money. You’ve got nine hundred and ninety-seven thousand, five hundred pounds and a whole year to live, less one day. Right, I said. A tall rucksacked girl with her blonde hair in two plaits strode past me swinging her mineral water. What if I were to live more than a year? Nobody could be dead sure of anything in this life: Mr Rinyo-Clacton might choke on a pearl in one of his oysters and never get around to harvesting me at all.

I bought a copy of the Financial Times and ran my eye over the front page. Nash & Weapman saw the recession receding; Morgenstern was expecting a downturn in the upturn. Morgenstern seemed to me the brighter of the two so I went back to the flat, averted my eyes from the plants, and rang them up. I told the telephonist I needed some investment advice and she turned me over to a Mr Reilly.

‘Jim Reilly here,’ he said. ‘How can I help you?’ He had an Excelsior kind of voice.

‘I’ve come into some money,’ I said, ‘and I need investment advice.’

‘Yes. And how did you hear of us, Mr Fitch?’

‘I saw your firm quoted in the Financial Times.’

‘Right. I’m sure we can work something out for you, Jonathan. Just so I can begin to put a frame around this, may I ask what sort of amount you’re thinking of investing?’

‘Close to a million, give or take a few bundles.’

‘I see. That kind of money has considerable potential, Jonathan, and our job is not simply to realise that potential — what we’re here for is to maximise it.’

‘That’s what I want, Jim: maximisation of my potential.’

‘We’re going to give it our best shot, Jonathan, and we’ve got a pretty good track record. This is going to require careful planning, and the best way to begin is for you and I to meet … ’

‘You and me to meet,’ I said. ‘Sorry to be pedantic.’

‘No problem. As I was saying, the best way to begin is for the two of us to meet here at our offices so we can look at your whole financial picture and assess your needs as fully as possible. Would that be convenient for you?’

‘Fine. When can you see me?’

‘I’ve got a cancellation at three o’clock this afternoon. How’s that for you?’

‘That’s good. You’re in Gray’s Inn Road, nearest tube station Chancery Lane?’

‘That’s it. Coming up Gray’s Inn Road from the tube station you’ll see a modern building on the right. We’re on the third floor.’

There was still the matter of the shopping trolley and three carrier bags full of banknotes. I trundled the lot over to Lloyds, made out a deposit slip, and queued up at a window. An alert-looking young member of the staff approached and became interested in the trolley. I opened the flap and showed him the contents. ‘You think they’re real?’ I said.

‘Not my problem. Do you want to deposit that in your account?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’ll have to be counted. Come with me, please.’ He recruited a teller named Brenda and we went to a room where my seventy-nine sealed packets and the one opened one were unpacked and laid out on a desk.

‘Aren’t there a lot of fake fifties about now?’ I said to Brenda. ‘Won’t you have to put them under ultra-violet light or something?’

‘Not unless they feel funny.’ She sighed, tore open the sealed packets, and began to count the nineteen thousand, nine hundred and fifty fifty-pound notes. She was wearing a navy-blue woollen dress and a little string of pearls; her dark hair was cut in a Lulu-style bob. Her hands were graceful and articulate, her long fingers themselves seeming to count as she murmured hundreds into thousands and replaced the elastic band around each stack as she finished. While pondering the paperness of money, I thought of Serafina peeling onions and the way her hand took hold of a potato.

The silence around Brenda’s quiet voice purred softly; my breathing seemed very loud. The young man — his name was Steve — stood by with canvas bags into which he put the banded stacks as she finished with them. It was a scene that was part of the surreality that was by now the usual thing for me — just another sequence of moments in the new life and death of Jonathan Fitch.

After a while the counting and bagging stopped, the three of us went back to the teller’s window, the bags were sealed, and Brenda stamped my deposit slip. ‘That’s the biggest I’ve had so far today,’ she said.

‘How was it for you?’ I said.

‘Just numbers. In this job you’ve got to stop thinking of money as money or you’ll go crazy.’