The Trick by William Leith

Author:William Leith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

4

Something is wrong, and I don’t know what it is. Or rather, I do know what it is, but I don’t know how it works.

The mechanism. I don’t know how it works.

I need to know how it works.

Tomorrow I’m going to see the Russian. I’m trying to understand what motivates the Russian. I’m trying to imagine what it’s like to be him. He did not have my advantages. He grew up in an apartment block in Leningrad. He defected to the West at the age of eighteen. Very early in life, he bolted towards the West – towards free exchange, specialisation, winner-take-all. He had focus. Clarity of thought.

He knew how the West worked. We native Westerners mostly don’t. We don’t see the lines of power and exploitation. We like to delude ourselves. We’re experts in self-delusion.

The Russian, whose name was Leonid Maxovich Rodovinsky, went to America and changed his name to Leon Max.

Leon Max did not delude himself. He made more than half a billion dollars.

I’m in my house, feeling jumpy, thinking about Leon Max.

I try to make myself a cup of coffee. I arrange the coffee grounds, the cafetiere, the spoonful of honey. Then the boiling water. My phone is switched off. People call and text me because I owe them money. They send me emails. They send me letters. Then I put the letters on the kitchen table.

Sometimes I open the letters. I look at the wording. We will come and take things from you; we can come and break your door down and take your things and sell your things at auctions.

They will break my door. They will take my things.

My things. I have very few valuable things. I have a work by the artist David Hockney which he gave me when I interviewed him in his lovely house in the Hollywood Hills. That’s about all I have. Later, I interviewed Damien Hirst in his lovely house on the north Devon coast. Now there’s a guy who understands how to get people’s attention. I asked him to draw something for me.

He drew a penis on a post-it note. And the thing is, I don’t know where this post-it note is. I think it might be in my garage, in a box, one of perhaps a hundred boxes of clutter in my garage. When they come for me, when they break down my door, I will take them to my garage, and make them wait while I go through the boxes. Here, I will say finally. Here it is. A penis. Drawn on a post-it note by the richest artist in the world. Take that to the auction. Take that, and wait for the bids to come in. And then bring me the change.

The coffee is still in the cafetiere. Now it’s too cold to drink. It’s a hot day. My coffee is too cold, and also too warm.

Something is wrong. Something is not working properly. I want to be rich, but I don’t want to be rich;

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