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decreaseWhat Love Costs an Old Man
Fred’s description of the girl he was trying to trace was not helpful: “long black hair, black eyes, beautiful, about five feet tall” as it described half of the female population of Manila. However, a discreetly leaked cell phone number (arranged by Carl through a business acquaintance) produced results sooner than he expected, and a visit to Esther’s apartment was arranged.
Fred admitted to sixty, but was the wrong side of sixty-five – so it was not without difficulty that he recaptured at least some of the appearance of youth. He spent an hour, from noon till one, in dyeing his hair, and at nine in the evening, having taken a shower, he gargled with Listerine, deodorised his armpits and feet and splashed himself with scented aftershave – an improvement, but not quite a Johnny Depp!
When he arrived at Esther’s apartment she burst into tears at the thought of being unfaithful to Lucian – not that she was being unfaithful; Lucian knew full well the outline of the plan (though Carl had naturally spared him the gory details) – it was just that she had dreamed of putting the life of the puta behind her and devoting herself exclusively to him. She knew what she had to do, but she was determined to put off the fateful moment as long as she could.
She remained sitting on a couch, motionless, drying away her tears one by one, and never hearing a word of the crazy speeches poured out by the banker. He fell at her feet, and she let him kneel without saying a word to him, allowing him to rub her feet to warm them; for Nucingen found that they were cold.
This scene of scalding tears shed on the banker’s head, and of ice-cold feet that he tried to warm, lasted from midnight till two in the morning.
“Eugenie,” cried Fred at last, “can’t you persuade her to come to bed?”
“Listen, sir, I know her, and she’s good at heart,” said the maid. “Only you mustn’t rub her up the wrong way; you must get at her sideways – she’s been so miserable here in this poor apartment – look how worn the furniture is...”
This was a ploy that had been suggested by Carl as a way of getting money out of the banker. To Esther, the apartment, with its two bedrooms, living room, kitchen and bathroom was the height of luxury; to the banker, fresh from his Makati penthouse, it was the depths of squalor – in reality, it was just a run-of-the-mill Manila apartment.
“...find a better apartment for her. Perhaps when she sees a new place full of new things she will think you better looking than you are, and reward you – you know how. But don’t be too hard on her just now. She’s in debt and her creditors are pressing her. Poor little thing, she’s not herself.”
Here Eugenie was setting up the banker for the next little scam that Carl had planned – but more of that later.
“Esther, Esther; go to bed, my angel! I’ll stay here on this sofa,” cried the Fred, fired by the purest devotion, as he saw that Esther was still weeping.
“I will then,” said Esther, taking Fred’s hand, and kissing it with an impulse which brought a tear to his eye, “I’m grateful that you are so understanding...”
And she fled into her room and locked the door.
“There’s something very strange about all this,” thought Nucingen, as he tried to make himself comfortable on the sofa. “My friends would laugh at me if they knew how I spent tonight!”
He pressed his ear to the bedroom door, thinking that he had given up too easily, and that Esther and Eugenie would be laughing at him.
“Esther!”
No reply.
About ten minutes after sunrise, the banker was aroused with a start by Eugenie from one of those unsettling dreams that most of us have when sleeping in an uncomfortable position.
“Oh, God help us!” she shrieked. “Esther! Police – bailiffs! They’ve come to arrest us.”
At the moment when Esther opened her door and appeared, hurriedly, wrapped in her dressing-gown, her bare feet in slippers, her hair in disorder, a group of men pushed roughly into the room. One man, in police uniform, laid his hand on Esther’s bare shoulder.
“Madam, I arrest you!” said he to Esther.
“And what am I arrested for?” said Esther.
“Your debts,” said another man, a bailiff.
The banker placed himself between Esther and the men, and said, “What's the problem?”
“Three hundred and twelve thousand pesos – charges for the arrest not included,” said the bailiff, reading from a document.
“Three hundred thousand pesos!” cried the banker.
“That is a very expensive awakening for a man who has passed the night on a sofa,” he added in Eugenie’s ear.
“I’ll pay,” he said piteously, as he drew out a wallet from which he took a cheque book.
“Payment must be in cash!” said the bailiff.
“Then you must meet me later today at the bank. Here is my card.”
“We’ll accompany you to the bank,” said the officer.
“The devil!” said the banker. Then turning to Esther he said, “I’ll come back this evening – and I hope you’ll remember what I’ve done for you.”
But Esther hid her face. Fred thought it was because of her embarrassment in having her debt so rudely exposed – in reality, it was from shame at how she was ripping him off so blatantly, and for so much.
About an hour later, Carl appeared at the apartment.
“That did the trick!” he said, showing Esther three hundred and ten thousand pesos in a huge roll of notes.
“Oh God, oh God!” cried poor Esther.
“Don’t be upset,” said Carl, “you've done well – you can see Lucian now.”
Esther saw a glimmer of light in her darkened life; she breathed once more.
“But back to work this evening. Play the puta again. Three hundred thousand pesos is nothing – Lucian needs another 700,000.”
Then to Eugenie he outlined the details of his next plan: “We will keep this debt scam going a bit longer. The jeweller, Samuel, in Ayala Avenue, will lend you some pawn-tickets; we must pretend to owe him twenty-five thousand pesos, and we must pretend to need five thousand for jewels pledged at San Piete. We will return the stuff to the jeweller, half the stones will be imitation, but Nucingen won’t know that – we’ll make him fork out another thirty thousand within a week...”
Eugenie nodded.
“...and keep on at him about the new apartment. Make sure he buys, not rents, and persuade him to put the deeds in Esther’s name.”
“Esther might give me a little help,” said Eugenie. “Tell her - for she sits there like a tailor’s dummy. It’s a wonder the banker paid out so much this morning as she hardly let him touch her last night.”
“If Esther turns prudish, just let me know,” said Carl.
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