Jacob Wren - Rich and Poor

I met him again a few years later and, more out of curiosity than anything else, suggested we get together for a drink. I don’t know why he agreed, perhaps also out of curiosity, but we spent several hours together as I paid for round after round of the best scotch in the bar. I was clearly fascinated by him, but had the strange sense he was equally fascinated by me. As far as he was concerned I was the devil itself, but the devil always holds a variety of attractions. As he spoke I could tell he was running through his rhetorical gambits, trying to see if he could convince me of anything, if he could win the day on some small point. He wanted me to concede something, anything, and I tried to explain it as clearly as I could. It wasn’t that we disagreed on any fundamental aspects. Of course the profits we made caused harm, both to people and to the earth. Of course the harm was irreparable. From my point of view I didn’t see how such facts could be questioned. It was only that I saw nothing wrong with benefiting from things that were harmful. It seemed perfectly natural to me that some would benefit while others would suffer. I saw nothing in human history that suggested anything should, or could, be otherwise.

He thought about this for a long time. I don’t know what he was expecting, but nonetheless felt I had caught him by surprise. I wanted to laugh at his expression, since back at the ceremony he’d never been at a loss for words, and now he was so silent. It looked like he was thinking so hard he might burst. Finally he said: “We only think it’s bad when it happens to us, or to someone we love.”

“We only think what is bad?” I finally asked, since it seemed he wasn’t going to offer up much more on his own. I had found a way to shut him up.

“The destruction. The destruction you call business. The natural process of making a profit.”

“Is that a poem?” I asked wryly, but he ignored me.

“Have you ever loved anyone,” he asked. He was looking straight at me, suddenly sincere beyond belief. I actually didn’t know anyone could be so sincere, or could turn that way on a dime. But I was unfazed. I looked at his face. Before I’d thought we were pretty much the same age, but now realized he was at least ten years older than me.

“Yes,” I said without missing a beat, “I’ve loved everyone who’s ever worked for me. I love everyone who works for the company.”

He didn’t reply.

2.

With Emmett, there is always so much silence, the conversations grinding to a halt far more often than they restart. I would think: this is a man who, at some point in the recent past, always had a joke at the ready and yet, in the entire time I’ve known him, never once tried to make me laugh. Does anyone change so much in such a short period of time? Then again, the book was full of lies and exaggerations. Perhaps his infamous sense of humour was yet another deception.

I was grateful he had agreed to meet with me and that, gradually, some slight, strange friendship was being offered, or even created, between us. His mood was continuously tense, especially when speaking about his old job, the direction in which most of my questions seemed to drift. Other topics were difficult to detect. From what I could see he had few or no interests, so instead there was silence. There were dozens of moments I can clearly recall, points at which I thought to break the silence by revealing my plan, when I was right at the brink of explaining just who I wanted to kill and why. I became more and more certain he would find a way to support me in my endeavour, that he could help. But each time something stopped me.

It is difficult to admit you want to kill someone. To say it out loud. This was the first time I realized that, even though it had been my goal for so long, I had never cleanly admitted it to anyone. Of course, the less people who knew, the less who could stop me. And I believed I should build as much trust between us before confiding. Trust takes time. I had no idea how long was necessary or how I might eventually know. I tried to keep things relaxed. Meetings for coffee. Seeing if there was anything I could say or do that would make him laugh or even smile. (Smiles were rare and I don’t think I ever managed a laugh.) Waiting a few weeks before I called him again. I could see he had few friends, that since most of his friends had turned on him he had barely learned how to live without them. When you have money perhaps you don’t need friends.

I had known him almost a year before he first invited me to his house. It was the largest, most expensive house I had ever seen, with servants to clean, cook and maintain the grounds, but for the most part it felt deserted, like no one lived there. Room after empty room, the furniture dust-free and silent. It was a warm night, and as we walked up to the balcony, Emmett told me I was the first guest he’d had over in five years. He paused before the number five, counting to himself, calculating just how many years it had been, sounding surprised it had been so long. When he lost his job his wife left him; she had done all the entertaining, he didn’t have the knack for it alone. In fact, he wondered if he even had the desire to see people any more. He used to love people, could always make them laugh, but now he wondered if he still had the desire.

That night, after more than a few drinks, he also admitted that when we first met he’d hired a firm to look into me. That he knew about my family, about my years playing piano, about my descent into dishwashing. That he felt partly responsible for what had happened to my family. For the entire time he had known me he’d been trying to find the strength to apologize. He knew an apology didn’t mean much — what was done was long ago done, the past couldn’t be changed — but he was adrift in his life and, if I were to accept his apology, acknowledge that he had changed, it might be a first step towards some sort of decision.

I wondered what kind of decisions he now wanted to make. I thought this was the moment to tell him my plan but once again something stopped me. I accepted his apology, told him it wasn’t his fault, these catastrophes happen all the time. They represent structural problems with society, with the world, that were so much larger than either him or me. I told him it wasn’t his fault, since I was still working to further gain his trust, but at the moment he mentioned my family, granting him absolution was not my first instinct. My first instinct was to strangle him then and there. I still had the piano wire in my jacket pocket. My hand instinctively reached for it, just to feel it was still with me. Fortunately he was too wrapped up in his own hesitant apology to notice.

And then I turned the wheel, took us the first few steps towards what might soon be the right direction. Saying that it wasn’t his fault because he wasn’t in charge. And if we were to blame anyone, logic dictates we should blame the person who ruined his life, who ruined both of our lives. That this was something we very much had in common, him and I, both of our lives had been sabotaged by the same man. And as we began to speak of his former boss, more and more frequently as the months progressed, I could see that in so many ways the man who once screwed him over was still his best friend. Had been his only best friend and in many ways remained so. That even though they hadn’t spoken a word to each other in five, ten, I don’t know how many years, still somehow the friendship, for one of them at least, had survived. But at the same time this wasn’t entirely true.

I began thinking about friendship and betrayal. How one definition of a friend might be someone who was in a position to betray you more savagely, more painfully, than anyone else in the world. I was aware this was not the most common understanding. I’d had friends when I was a child, and later on the competition circuit, but now had none. In some sense Emmett was my only friend, but I knew it wasn’t real. My plan was to use him. After I had used him, if everything worked and I was in jail, I did not think he would continue to be my friend. In fact, when I considered the matter, I realized I no longer desired friends. I desired imitators. I wanted to kill a billionaire, and others to imitate by also killing billionaires. Another rough definition: a friend is the opposite of an imitator. A friend will call you out on your bullshit, but an imitator will simply copy it. A soldier is an imitator and we are at war. We need as many soldiers as possible. And we need someone to fire the first shot. Emmett was not a true ally. The way they treated him, he should have become a full-time traitor to his class, but he was not. He was not built that way. Perhaps none of us are. We do what we are told when we are children, and then, to a lesser or greater extent, just keep doing it for the rest of our lives. Perhaps I am exactly the same, since I vaguely remember my father telling me that in the playground, when someone hits you, you have to hit them back. The only way they will ever respect you is if you hit them back, as hard as they hit you, no harder but no less. Autobiography is politics. The only sincere reasons for action are personal.