Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections

“Ouch,” Chip said.

Gitanas nodded fiercely. “Yeah! Yeah! Ouch! Too bad you can’t fly a truck undercarriage! OK, and then. Then an American conglomerate called Orfic Midland liquidates the Port of Kaunas. Again, overnight. Whoops! Ouch! And then sixty percent of the Bank of Lithuania gets eaten up by a suburban bank in Atlanta, Georgia. And your suburban bank then liquidates our bank’s hard-currency reserves. Your bank doubles our country’s commercial interest rates overnight — why? To cover heavy losses in its failed line of Dilbert affinity MasterCards. Ouch! Ouch! But interesting, huh? Lithuania’s not being such a successful player, is it? Lithuania really fucked things up!”

“How are you men doing?” Eden said, returning to her office with April in tow. “Maybe you want to use the conference room?”

Gitanas put a briefcase on his lap and opened it. “I’m explaining to Cheep my gripe with America.”

“April, sweetie, sit down here,” Eden said. She had a big pad of newsprint which she opened on the floor near the door. “This is better paper for you. You can make big pictures now. Like me. Like Mommy. Make a big picture.”

April crouched in the middle of the newsprint pad and drew a green circle around herself.

“We’ve petitioned the IMF and World Bank for assistance,” Gitanas said. “Since they encouraged us to privatize, maybe they’re interested in the fact that our privatized nation-state is now a zone of semi-anarchy, criminal warlords, and subsistence farming? Unfortunately, IMF is handling complaints of bankrupt client states in order of the size of their respective GDPs. Lithuania was twenty-six on the list last Monday. Now we’re twenty-eight. Paraguay just beat us. Always Paraguay.”

“Ouch,” Chip said.

“Paraguay being for some reason the bane of my existence.”

“Gitanas, I told you, Chip is perfect,” Eden said. “But listen—”

“IMF says expect delays of up to thirty-six months before any rescue can begin!”

Eden slumped into her chair. “Do you think we can wrap this up fairly soon?”

Gitanas showed Chip a printout from his briefcase. “You see, here, this Web page?’ A service of the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs.’ It says: Lithuanian economy severely depressed, unemployment nearly twenty percent, electricity and running water intermittent in Vilnius, scarce elsewhere. What kind of businessman is going to put money in a country like that?”

“A Lithuanian businessman?” Chip said.

“Yes, funny.” Gitanas gave him an appreciative look. “But what if I need something different on this Web page and others like it? What if I need to erase what’s here and put, in good American English, that our country escaped the Russian financial plague? Like, say, Lithuania now has an annual inflation rate less than six percent, per capita dollar reserves same as Germany, and a trade surplus of nearly one hundred million dollars, due to continued strong demand for Lithuania’s natural resources!”

“Chip, you’d be perfect for this,” Eden said.

Chip had quietly and firmly resolved never to look at Eden or say a word to her again for as long as he lived.

“What are Lithuania’s natural resources?” he asked Gitanas.

“Chiefly sand and gravel,” Gitanas said.

“Huge strategic reserves of sand and gravel. OK.”

“Sand and gravel in abundance.” Gitanas closed his briefcase. “However, so, here’s a quiz for you. Why the unprecedented demand for these intriguing resources?”

“A construction boom in nearby Latvia and Finland? In sand-starved Latvia? In gravel-starved Finland?”

“And how did these countries escape the contagion of global financial collapse?”

“Latvia has strong, stable democratic institutions,” Chip said. “It’s the financial nerve center of the Baltics. Finland placed strict limits on the outflow of short-term foreign capital and succeeded in saving its world-class furniture industry.”

The Lithuanian nodded, obviously pleased. Eden pounded her fists on her desk. “God, Gitanas, Chip’s fantastic! He is so entitled to a signing bonus. Also first-class accommodations in Vilnius and a per diem in dollars.”

“Vilnius?” Chip said.

“Yeah, we’re selling a country,” Gitanas said. “We need a satisfied U.S. customer on site. Also much, much safer to work on the Web over there.”

Chip laughed. “You actually expect American investors to send you money? On the basis of, what. Of sand shortages in Latvia?”

“They’re already sending me money,” Gitanas said, “on the basis of a little joke I played. Not even sand and gravel, just a mean little joke I played. Tens of thousands of dollars already. But I want them to send me millions.”

“Gitanas,” Eden said. “Dear man. This is completely a point-incentive moment. There could not be a more perfect situation for an escalator clause. Every time Chip doubles your receipts, you give him another point of the action. Hm? Hm?”

“If I see a hundred-times increase in receipts, trust me, Cheep will be a wealthy man.”

“But I’m saying let’s have this in writing.”

Gitanas caught Chip’s eye and silently conveyed to him his opinion of their host. “Eden, this document,” he said. “What is Cheep’s job designation? International Wire Fraud Consultant? First Deputy Co-Conspirator?”

“Vice President for Willful Tortious Misrepresentation,” Chip offered.

Eden gave a scream of pleasure. “I love it!”

“Mommy, look,” April said.

“Our agreement is strictly oral,” Gitanas said.

“Of course, there’s nothing actually illegal about what you’re doing,” Eden said.

Gitanas answered her question by staring out the window for a longish while. In his red ribbed jacket he looked like a motocross rider. “Of course not,” he said.

“So it isn’t wire fraud,” Eden said.

“No, no. Wire fraud? No.”

“Because, not to be a scaredy-cat here, but wire fraud is what this almost sounds like.”

“The collective fungible assets of my country disappeared in yours without a ripple,” Gitanas said. “A rich powerful country made the rules we Lithuanians are dying by. Why should we respect these rules?”

“This is an essential Foucaultian question,” Chip said.

“It’s also a Robin Hood question,” Eden said. “Which doesn’t exactly reassure me on the legal front.”

“I’m offering Cheep five hundred dollars American a week. Also bonuses as I see fit. Cheep, are you interested?”

“I can do better here in town,” Chip said.

“Try a thousand a day , minimum,” Eden said.

“A dollar goes a long way in Vilnius.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Eden said. “It goes a long way on the moon, too. What’s to buy?”

“Cheep,” Gitanas said. “Tell Eden what dollars can buy in a poor country.”

“I imagine you eat and drink pretty well,” Chip said.

“A country where a young generation grew up in a state of moral anarchy, and are hungry.”

“Probably not hard to find a good-looking date, if that’s what you mean.”

“If it doesn’t break your heart,” Gitanas said. “To see a sweet little girl from the provinces get down on her knees—”

“Uch, Gitanas,” Eden said. “There’s a child in the room.”

“I’m on an island,” April said. “Mommy, look at my island.”

“I’m talking about children,” Gitanas said. “Fifteen-year-olds. You have dollars? Thirteen. Twelve.”

“Twelve years old is not a selling point with me,” Chip said.

“You prefer nineteen? Nineteen comes even cheaper.”

“This frankly, um,” Eden said, flapping her hands.