A History of Money: A Novel by Alan Pauls, Ellie Robins Read Free Book Online

collecting more dirt than money. He’s not looking for anything in particular, and this lack of purpose aggravates his disappointment in all these little books of poems, scrawny vanity publications, and colossal, idiotic novels with garish covers that nobody will ever buy, not him nor anybody else. Not holding out much hope, simply to entertain himself a little, he moves to the table opposite, which holds a series of large cardboard boxes containing a jumble of period newspapers, old magazines in plastic sheaths, film stills, sheets of stamps, and postcards. And while he looks at his blackened fingertips, which the layers of dust seem to have hardened, the bookseller, a burly asthmatic in ancient suspenders who’s been walking around the shop putting more stock on the tables, stops beside him for a moment and drops a transparent envelope full of old postcards into the box his hands are sunk in. On top of the pile, balancing on one corner and staring straight at him, is the postcard of the beach in Torremolinos. He takes the envelope out of the box and shows it to the bookseller. He wants to buy it. The lot’s being sold whole, or not at all. He asks how much and listens incredulously: it costs a hundred and twenty times what his fugitive grandfather paid to send the original postcard. He’s willing to buy it even so, but when he puts his hand in his pocket, he realizes that he’s not carryingthat much money on him. He passes the envelope containing the postcards to the bookseller and asks him to put it aside, so that nobody can come along while he’s gone and take a liking to it, and goes in search of an ATM. The closest one is out of service; there’s a line at the second one; the third has run out of money. He wanders around for another fifteen minutes before coming up with the cash. By the time he gets back, the bookstore has closed. He rests his forehead on the glass, makes a visor with his hands, and spots the envelope on top of the cardboard box, lying with an air of disdainful superiority on an old copy of a political weekly—from back when the early years of the seventies were flying, or rather shooting, by—on whose cover a ’73-model yacht designed by the Martinoli shipyard is being blown to pieces by twenty kilos of trotyl, while a police chief suspected of torturing political prisoners waits on board, ready to set off on his weekly outing to Tigre. The cyan blue of the Torremolinos sky dazzles even through the triple filter of the transparent envelope, the dirty glass of the shop’s door, and the iron shutter-curtain. But the farther he gets from the bookstore, the hazier the details of the photo become. The half moon of the beach trembles and evaporates like a landscape seen in passing from a distance, and the colors of the bathing suits start to fade. How can he be sure that it was the one, that it was
the
postcard? His grandfather and his father, the only people who could confirm it, are dead. He never goes back to that bookshop.
    No bank account; checks are unthinkable; pension, taxes—his father isn’t made for all that. He has married and divorced, had cars and apartments, renewed his ID card, signed rental contracts, worked for companies, and signed business letters on letterhead. But he keeps his money in rolled-up socks and only applies for his tax ID number when he’s over seventy-five years old, and even then reluctantly, after doingeverything in his power to avoid it, before finally being convinced by a neighbor who lives two floors above him and offers to help him with the paperwork. He’s a classic misfit, the type his father would blindly follow anywhere: he has only a few teeth left, calls himself a public accountant, and wanders around the block in old sweatpants, dragging along a pair of plastic sandals. He’s a fanatical supporter of San Lorenzo, like his father, and an expert in numbers by vocation too, but he’s also sufficiently artful with shady numbers to understand a basic