Trust

by Hernan Diaz

And interspersed with these political advertisements, bulletins, pamphlets and documents, in no particular order, I found some of the beautiful posters my father had made to cheer me up or celebrate the accomplishments of my childhood. “Ida Partenza! Ten Wild Lions! One Performance Only! This Thursday! Carroll Park!” “EXTRA! Miss Partenza Emerges Victorious from Third Grade!” I remembered with almost tactile vividness each one of these occasions. Misty eyed, I kept going through these disorganized prints, among which, toward the end of a bottom drawer, I saw the papers. Letter size. Uncrumpled. Typed. The “e” was a bit over-inked, with a blacked-out eye. The “i” often undotted.

Not only was Jack spying on her, but he was in cahoots with her father! Fuck.

A few days after leaving, I sent my father a short letter. There was more work than anticipated, and I was needed at all times, even during the weekend. I would come over to Brooklyn in a week or two, as soon as things calmed down at the office. “I miss you,” I wrote at the end. He would never know how deeply I meant those words. I did not miss Jack, though. Learning that he had not stolen my papers did not change that. I was not proud of myself for having forced him out of town, but still, given that he had followed me and sent someone to extort and terrorize me, I was relieved to know he was gone.

Oh, so maybe her father and Jack were not in it together? But separately, each individually not trusting her. This is somehow even worse, two of her closest people betraying her, rather than one betrayal by the two of them together.

“You know I don’t much care for books, but what a delight it was to hear her retell one of the novels she had just read and enjoyed.” He went back to his salt shaker. “Murder mysteries. A mere pastime, of course. But she was always trying to outsmart the detectives. She’d remember every detail, every piece of information and narrate the whole plot back to me. A book could take up a whole dinner. And

This is the third time this has come up. Now I’m wondering if Mildred will leave some clues hidden in her room as to what really happened to her. Did fucking Andrew murder her?

knew I was not drunk. But that was the first explanation that came to my mind. I put my pen down and looked at Bevel, who was still twirling the salt shaker. That was my story. The retelling of detective novels over dinner. Bevel had read it in my pages. It was one of the scenes I had made up for Mildred, following his request to create homey episodes using my “feminine touch.” I had based it on my dinners with my father, who listened, riveted, to my recounting of the latest Dorothy Sayers or Margery Allingham book I had borrowed from the Brooklyn Public Library branch on Clinton Street. And here was Bevel, telling me my story to my face.

What??? Jesus, this dude is fucking delusional!

Andrew called from Zürich. Wondering about best approach to Kolbe. Told him we could only get him through Lenbach. I could hear the whole thing coming together in his head as I explained it.

Mildred is the one in charge here; guiding Andrew through both her cancer and his business.

Their faces disfigured as they squinted + grinned with the impossible effort of thinking up problems larger than their minds. They kept going until I was defeated by their absurdities. Once it was all over, they pinched my cheeks + patted my head, congratulating me for my efforts, like gracious victors. I was 11. This went on for about a year. Ended because I no longer looked like a child. Never told this to anyone in its entirety. Especially after marrying A.

Her penchant for language and memory was in Vanner’s book. But her math abilities? Wait, is Mildred’s book named “Futures?” Why did it only now occur to me its financial meaning?

Some journals are kept with the unspoken hope that they will be discovered long after the diarist’s death, the fossil of an extinct species of one. Others thrive on the belief that the only time each evanescent word will be read is as it’s being written. And others yet address the writer’s future self: one’s testament to be opened at one’s resurrection. They declare, respectively, “I was,” “I am,” “I’ll be.”

I love this insight on journaling! I write for all these reasons, too!

PM Andrew back. Happy with outcome in Z, which he now (as usual) describes as the result of his “intuition.”

“The woman behind the man.”

Despite the trite selection, it was plain the musicians were 1st rate. They somehow managed to “find” something even in that overtrodden répert. After perf., I approached them for a chat. Violist studied under Hindemith. Cellist played at Verein. 2nd violin collaborates regularly with Barcz. They all met in Berlin, but left after Hitler became chancellor. How lovely to talk to true artists! Told them they could come to me for whatever they needed. Cellist suggested, with shy humour, one-way tickets to America + visas for all. I said they could consider it done. A looked at me from the back of the room as I talked to the musicians. Stoically sulky. Just like back home.

Fuck yeah. Mildred kicks ass!

PM A just called from Z (again), asking for advice. Kolbe, Lenbach, London, NY, etc., etc., etc., etc. As always, he mistakes doubt with depth, hesitation with analysis. I drifted away. “Are you there?” He thought we’d been disconnected during my long silence after his long q. “No,” I said. I can’t explain the relief that word gave me. Not all the opium in the world. “Hello?” True. I was not there. “I’m such a brute,” he said. “You should rest.” “I’ve been doing this for too long. Done.” Silence between 2 is always shared. But 1 of the 2 owns it and shares it with the other. “But you live for this,” he said at last. “You . . .” He regretted his words. “Exactly. And now it’s over.” I hung up, gently, before we got trapped in another silence, which would say nothing except that there was nothing else to say.

Whoa. He totally depends on her mathematical abilities to make business decisions. She even makes the business decisions. She is not only a savant, she’s an artist and humanitarian. This makes me wonder what part did she play in the stock market crash? It had occurred to me that there were parallels in the way Helen and Mildred (from Andrew’s story) both faded and died after the crash. I had thought it was because of her indirect involvement via her husband, a sort of misdirected guilt. But maybe the guilt was not so misdirected?

But after he saw my books, we started a collaboration of sorts. He taught me the rules of investment. I showed him how to think beyond their boundaries. I found great pleasure in the work. For 1st time, we were true companions. And, I should say, happy. With full access to funds, results were almost instantaneous. Numbers so large there were few things outside the realm of nature they could’ve been applied to.

Like Ida’s father’s theories about how money represents everything. With an important difference: Mildred says “outside the realm of nature,” whereas Ida’s father always said money controls *everything,* and even Ida is convinced it shapes reality. Mildred realizes nature is real and money is a social construct. She does not confuse the menu with the meal.

Toward the end of this period (early ’26?) I turned my attention to an increasing flaw in the Exchange, a flaw that became more pronounced as our transactions + profits grew: traffic. During rallies + plunges, the ticker always fell far behind. There could be a gap of up to 10 points between selling price on the floor and ticker quotation. I decided to make these delays mine. By trading in outsized amounts + inciting bursts of general frenzy, I started creating the lags. The ticker fell behind me, and for a few minutes I owned the future.

“For a few minutes I owned the future.”

obsolete + overwhelmed machinery: brokers couldn’t cope with the flood of orders; then clerks fell behind phoning in the brokers’ backed-up orders to the floor; then each order had to wait for its turn to be executed; then the updated quotations went to the ticker keyboard operators, also backed up; then more time went by between the release of the already obsolete quote and a new order based on that quote; then the circle of delays started all over again, increased. This deficient mechanism created arbitrage opps. Bizarre that nobody had thought of profiting from these lags before. I made the most of them.

Mildred’s trick.

Imagine, I said, if 1 of the 4 keyboard operators could be bribed to provide all the quotes before punching them into the machine. The delays would make it possible to act on this information unnoticed. Some weeks later, Andrew did just that. It was obvious, looking at the tape. The scheme lasted only for a few months. But he made an incalculable fortune. And the myth of Bevel grew till he became a god. I called him a criminal. He said I couldn’t suffer his success.

Yes, they fucked so many people.

God is the most uninteresting answer to the most interesting questions.

I love this; it captures Mildred’s artistic and creative spirit.