Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

“Arbitrage?” Andret said. He set down his glass. “Is that an entheogen?”

Cle laughed aloud.

“Actually,” said Earl, “it might be.”

“No more poetry, then?”

To Andret’s satisfaction, Cle guffawed.

Andret turned to her. “And what about you ?” he said.

“Me?” she answered. “Me what?”

“What have you been doing with yourself all this time?”

“Oh, well, I haven’t done anything since Berkeley.”

“That’s not true, dear.”

“Of course it is.”

“You went to grad school, for one. Now you’re on the board of the foundation. And don’t forget—”

“Oh, Lord,” she said. “Grad school was dreadful. I never finished my dissertation.” She looked around, stopping at Helena. “In fact, I never started it.”

Helena smiled meekly.

In the silence that followed, Biettermann said, “Actually, it is a kind of poetry.”

“What is?” asked Helena.

“My work. The arbitrage. It really is a kind of poetry, as long as my friend here was asking. Futurist, if I had to label it. Although also formalist. With definite rules of prosody.” He smiled at his own wit. “What we do is game the risk of other entities. Companies. Organizations. Nations. Without assuming proportionate risk ourselves. That’s essentially the rhyme and meter. One takes as one’s subject what one finds in the world.” He turned. “And I run just one division of arbitrage,” he said to his wife. “Not the whole ship, dear. But yes, in fact”—here he raised his glass—“finance is indeed an entheogen. A modern-day entheogen, carried home from the jungle.”

“Fascinating,” said Helena.

“The fattest pig eats the best apples,” said Andret.

“Indeed,” said Cle.

“Wait just a moment,” Andret said to Earl. “I thought you were supposed to be a professor.”

Biettermann stared.

Cle burst out laughing. A short, rising aria that ended in a swallowed cough.

“That’s what your phone message said anyway — Professor Earl Biettermann. The message you left with my secretary.”

Helena flinched.

“I was joking, Andret.” He refilled their glasses. “I guess you didn’t get it. You never were quick with a joke.” Then he raised his wine. “Anyway, here’s to Hans Borland. A great mathematician. A great teacher. A great man.”

“To Hans Borland,” said Helena weakly.

“I see,” said Andret. “You were joking. Funny.”

“Oh, please, Milo,” said Cle.

“Look,” said Biettermann, “as a matter of fact, I employ professors now on a regular basis. Have several of them working for me at this very moment. They couldn’t pull the ejection cord fast enough from the academy .” He drew out the word. “Physics and mathematics and philosophy. Any field that employs sound logic — that’s my rule. To be honest, Andret, you might consider it. We do groundbreaking work.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“Geared derivatives. An unplayed field.”

“Sounds brilliantly interesting.”

“It is,” said Cle. “That’s why it has a French name.” She finished off her wine and poured herself another. “Château Latour. Lazard Frères. Arbitrage . Anything interesting involves a French word, haven’t you noticed? Here’s to everything that Hans Borland taught the two of you. Tout de quel. ”

“Enough now,” said Biettermann.

Helena dropped her eyes. Cle snickered.

“No negative cash flow at any probabilistic state,” Biettermann whispered now, leaning forward and tilting his head toward Andret, “and a positive cash flow in at least one.”

Andret turned the stem of his wineglass in his fingers. “In other words,” he said, “risk-free profit.”

“You’ve got to put into the bowl what the dog wants to eat, my friend.”

“Yes, I guess you do, my friend, don’t you?”

“You could do it, too, Milo,” said Cle. “You could mint money at what Earl does.”

“No thanks.”

“Honey,” said Biettermann, “remember that even in my branch of arbitrage, you have to enjoy risk. You have to thrive on it. Finance is based on it, for God’s sake. Milo here dislikes risk. We all know that.”

“And I don’t get jokes, either. You’ve said that before, Biettermann. It gets old.”

“Like the two of us, my friend?”

“Are we friends?”

“My, my,” said Cle. But she twisted her glass slowly in the candlelight, the way Andret had done a moment earlier. “Can we talk about something else now?” She picked up the expensive-looking cigarette case that her husband had set on the table. “Look at this,” she said, turning to Helena. “Isn’t the carving exquisite?”

“Oh, yes, it is, Mrs. Biettermann. It’s really lovely.”

“You recognize the artist, perhaps?” Cle held it up to the light. “It looks like a Fra Angelico, maybe? Or a Giotto? Or maybe it’s a Dürer?”

“Give me that,” said Andret.

“It’s a Maitani, in fact,” said Cle, turning a flirtatious smile to him. She held it out as Milo stared at her. Then she turned to Helena. “The frieze from the grand Duomo di Orvieto. In Umbria. A brutish vision, don’t you think?” She lowered her voice. “But it’s hard to take your eyes off it, isn’t it?”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Andret. When he took it from her hand, he saw that it had been made from a single slab of silver. Tiny, intricately carved figures writhed in violent copulation, their flesh torn by wounds. “It’s just hell,” he said. He dropped it back onto the table as though it hadn’t fascinated him in the least. “That’s all they painted in those days.”

“This is carved, Milo,” said Biettermann.

Cle set down her wine now and focused her eyes on Helena. “Do you enjoy risk, too?” she said. “Is there much risk in the history of art?”

Helena blinked. A clam steamed on her fork. Andret saw the humiliation confounding her. “This whole evening is ridiculous,” he said.

“Look, Milo,” said Biettermann. “Let’s change the subject then. How about it?” He shot his cuffs and ceremoniously refilled the glasses. “I’ve read your proof of the Malosz theorem,” he said. “It’s very, very good.”

“Okay, then, well — thank you, Earl.”

“I still keep up with research mathematics, you know. Yours is a spectacular piece of work. An unexpected approach to a famously evasive problem.” He raised his glass. “It’s brilliant, in fact. The most brilliant mathematical leap in a decade. No, not just in a decade — in our entire lives, perhaps.”

“I’m honored.”

“Well, don’t be,” said Cle, picking up the case again and tapping out a cigarette. “Earl’s trying to disprove it.”

“What?” said Andret.

“He works on your proof every night, Milo. It’s an obsession of his.”

“Cle, dear — please.”

“Well, you do, sweetheart. Might as well stand up to the facts. Even though there’s not a chance in hell you’ll find anything wrong with it.”

“What’s this about, please, dear?”

“Are you really trying to challenge my work, Biettermann?”

His old nemesis set down his fork. “All’s fair in love and war,” he said finally.

“At last then,” said Andret, “a little poetry. Thank you.” He rose, took Helena’s arm, and tossed his glass of wine across Biettermann’s suit.

Back at the hotel, he twisted himself into a rage. He was grateful for Helena’s presence, grateful that she’d gone along with the charade, grateful that she’d left the dinner with him and stormed out beside him into the night. He wanted to show his appreciation. He truly did. But his brain was unspooling. In the cab he’d been spun by all the glinting raindrops on the glass. Inside the hotel lobby now, his eye fell on a brass urn that immediately bulged into a spheroid. The spheroid elongated. At the elevator, he kept his gaze to the carpet. But the elevator wouldn’t come. He stepped forward and kicked the planter. Dirt covered the floor. The metal doors began to emit winks of light.