18mm Blues (21 page)

Upon the counters, offered in individual lots, were the gemstones. Contained in unfolded paper briefkes like doilies placed on shallow glass dishes. Each lot was identified by an assigned number. There was no possible way for anyone to miss or mistake any of these corresponding numbers inasmuch as they were so largely and prevalently displayed. From behind the counters an attendant was assigned to watch over each lot and answer any inquiry.

Evidently the government had given considerable thought to the arrangement of everything. And to how to its best advantage the selling was to be conducted.

None of the lots of gemstones could be purchased outright. They'd be auctioned. Not in the customary verbal way whereby one bidder might top another and in turn be topped. There'd be no open bidding such as that. Rather, as each lot came up for sale in numerical order, buyers would be allowed to submit a single bid by noting upon a small printed form the amount they were willing to pay along with a number that had been assigned to identify each buyer. Then the form was to be fed into the slot of a large stainless steel receptacle located in the center aisle.

To let the buyers know when a particular lot was up for bidding a color slide of it and its number would be projected upon a screen fixed high above the front of the room.

Five minutes exactly was allowed for the bidding on each lot. When time had expired, the officials in charge would open the receptacle and go through the bids. Purportedly the buyer who bid highest would acquire the lot. His number would be announced and displayed on a second, smaller screen. Meanwhile bidding would be under way on the next lot.

At the moment, early on the first morning of the Emporium, being presented for sale on the screen was a lot consisting of a hundred pieces of ten-carat moonstones. These were several degrees bluer and therefore more desirable than the usual skim milk blue sort. The German dealers in particular were interested in the lot while others gave it hardly any attention.

About two hundred dealers were there. From just about every European country, and from India and Australia, Japan and Israel. Chinese dealers from Hong Kong and Taipei who'd come for Burma jade. Dealer-agents for the Saudis and Kuwaitis and for the sultan of Brunei, who if the mood struck could overpay merely for the satisfaction of financial bullying. The dealers from the United States were considered prime buyers. They numbered about fifty and were mainly from New York City and Chicago, men who were well acquainted and whose camaraderie was heightened by their being together in a place so far from home and so foreign.

The dealer Clifton from Chicago was one of these. Grady ran into him and they conversed briefly, but somehow the flavor of their exchange was different from the one they'd had on the flight, not nearly so outspoken, strained by the atmosphere. Grady also encountered a couple of Forty-seventh Street dealers he'd known fairly well from his Larkin days, but he didn't hook up with them and they didn't seem to want him to, just suggested vaguely getting together for drinks when it was convenient.

So, Grady was a loner. He didn't mind.

After all, he wasn't there to socialize, and besides, he told himself, he really wouldn't enjoy talking trade. He went around to the various lots alone, also telling himself as he examined them that he really didn't need anyone else's opinion.

His eyes were at their all-time best, his mind sharp. He'd slept close to twelve hours, without a toss or a change of position that he could remember. The most beneficial sleep he'd had in his adult life, it was as though some concerned spirit had overtaken and sedated him. Less fanciful, he thought, the reason he'd slept such a good necessary sleep was Julia. Her and her arms around, knee contacts, various ways of keeping in touch.

Anyway, when he'd awakened at dawn his lag symptoms were gone. He didn't have even a remnant of those, and the clock of his system seemed reset. He'd showered and all that and enjoyed a sense of well-being throughout his shave and while getting dressed in his sincere blue suit. He and Julia had an omelet breakfast in the hotel's main dining room. Then, after several parting-temporarily-type kisses and assuring him a half dozen times not to worry she could look after herself, she'd taken off in a taxi with a pad, charcoal sticks and other sketching necessities, and he'd headed for the Emporium armed with his trusty ten-power loupe and optimism.

Pink sapphires.

A lot of ten matching stones totalling in weight twenty carats on the nose. Two French dealers were examining them and Grady had to wait to have his look. He pushed them slightly about with his special tweezers, disturbed them and caused them to respond with scintillations. They were eye clean, he decided, but badly cut. He picked them up with the tweezers, all ten, one after another. Did so with the sure deftness of a professional, swiftly without fumble or drop. Sighted into each with his magnifying loupe and proved to himself these were not “Burma-like” but Burma top-grade. They were, without question, the finest pink sapphires he'd ever experienced. Hot pink, a real punchy pink, feminine. They brought Doris to mind. Doris, his assistant, who was back in San Francisco tending the office and who'd always been so taken with that lot of pinks in Harold's inventory. Harold's pinks were watery and weak by comparison.

Grady imagined himself returning to San Francisco with these Burmas among his buys. Doris would orgasm. He thought he might bid on the lot. According to its number, it wouldn't come up for bidding for a while yet, but he'd watch for its turn.

He continued down along that row and around to another row, getting a feel for the scope of the offerings, stopping here and there to examine certain lots that caught his interest. The peridots, amethysts, tourmalines, garnets and the like were excellent semiprecious goods, however they obviously were being used as fillers to make the event seem more extensive. The rubies and sapphires, emeralds and alexandrite, pearls and jade were what nearly everyone was there for.

There was much jade and much interest in it from the Chinese. Grady was amused at overhearing a group of Chinese dealers discussing the merits of a rough boulder that was the Emporium's jade centerpiece. The boulder was a good five feet high and three in diameter and had a small window polished on its surface for a clear view into its interior. The Chinese were taking turns looking into the window and from their rapid high decibels, one would have thought they were having a heated argument. Another such cluster of Chinese dealers, these from Hong Kong, were vociferously boiling over a lot of imperial jade beads, those of the finest quality and green (the green of Prell shampoo).

Grady knew very little about jade. He was aware that the far better was found in Burma, had been for centuries, but that was about it. Maybe he ought to learn jade, he thought as he bypassed jade lot after jade lot, but then, he told himself, never in his lifetime would he catch up with the Oriental expertise.

The lot of pink sapphires was coming up for bidding. The slide on the overhead screen changed, and there they were, suffering considerably in reproduction. Grady wrote his assigned dealer number in the proper space on a bidding slip, then figured how much he'd bid. Total weight, twenty carats. He'd have to recut them and lose about 20 percent, or four carats. He'd probably be able to get $6,000 a carat, $96,000 for the lot, $56,000 profit if he now paid $40,000 for it ($2,000 a carat). Those figures set in his mind. He printed $40,000 in the proper space on the bidding slip and dropped it into the stainless steel receptacle.

Well, he thought, I've gotten my feet wet.

He stood around, waited for the result of the bidding for the pinks, and when after it came up on the screen and the dealer number shown wasn't his, he felt a little drop in his spirit. He lifted that away with the thought that there were many other lots of fine goods here, plenty for everyone and he'd get his.

He roamed around a while longer and by then it was early afternoon. Went to the adjacent covered terrace where lunch was being served, chose a table off to one side next to an abundant growth of apricot-colored hibiscus. Ordered a Dewar's and water but on second thought a beer, a local brand called Mandalay, that turned out to taste better than Grady had expected. He drank one, ordered another.

As it turned out, the beer provided an entrée for the man seated at the next table. “You like our Mandalay,” he observed cordially in Grady's direction.

“It's quite good,” Grady said.

The man didn't need more than that to move in. He dragged his chair around so he was at Grady's table, more next to rather than across from Grady. “We also make a good gin. You should try our gin,” he suggested and in the same breath asked if he was intruding.

“Not so far,” Grady told him.

The man wasn't fazed. He was bronze-skinned, obviously Burmese. His short-cropped grayed hair and brush mustache were distinguishing, as was the Western way he was dressed, in a well-tailored vested suit, neat shirt, understated tie. Chipped, soil-occupied fingernails, however. He lighted a 555 brand cigarette and within the smoke introduced himself as General U Daw Tun, emphasis on general.

Grady had suspected as much and what he next anticipated wasn't long coming. After some brief neutral chat, General Tun got into his pitch. He was retired. During his later service years he'd been in charge of certain military efforts in the province of Shan. Many insurgents in Shan. Also many sapphire and ruby mines. And so on until he took a briefke from his shirt pocket, inserted it among the packets of sugar in the sugar bowl and pushed the bowl to Grady.

Grady louped the two six-carat oval-cut rubies contained in the briefke. He had to admit they looked good, had all the characteristics of fine Burma, even some minor convincing flaws. Indeed, first-rate pretenders.

General U Daw Tun was only asking sixty-five thousand for them. That was if Grady bought both. Otherwise thirty-five for either.

Grady passed, politely.

The general strained a smile, put the refolded briefke back into his shirt pocket, got up and went looking for easier prey.

Grady finished his beer and returned to the Emporium. He submitted an unsuccessful bid on a lot of blue oval-cut sapphires and he also got topped when he bid on some fairly fine blue cabochons.

The next day went just about the same for him. After making three bids he was still empty-handed. Was it because his bids were too low? He thought not. Then was it because other dealers were overpaying, the deep-pocketed Japs for instance? Maybe not. Maybe the auction was rigged. Maybe when those who were running the thing didn't receive a bid high enough to suit them they put up one of their own numbers. Grady's discouragement wouldn't put it past them.

On the third day he came across
the
pearls, lot 341. He'd looked at some other pearl lots but hadn't seen any that measured up to these. Rare not only in size (twelve millimeters) but, as well, in every aspect of desirability: luster, roundness, complexion, iridescence, rich white color. There were four twenty-inch hanks. Grady took his time, examined each pearl of each hank carefully. The longer he looked the more he felt that these were what he must have. If he went home with only one buy it would have to be lot 341.

Which was up for bidding.

Grady had to hurry to fill out his bid.

A hundred thousand dollars.

He crossed out that amount. Shot the works. A hundred fifty thousand. Done! He dropped the slip into the receptacle. Waited, watched the officials open the receptacle and remove the bids. There were quite a few, fifty or so it appeared. Grady didn't care how many there were. For him it was like after a horse race, waiting for the win number to be displayed when he'd just seen his horse finish lengths ahead. Sure thing. Put it up there, baby.

His dealer number was 112.

The number displayed was 92.

A mistake?

Fuck no.

The dealer numbered 92 was standing nearby. Grady heard him blurt victoriously, “Got it!” He was a Bond Street-attired Englishman with diamonds, two caraters linking his shirt cuffs.

Grady felt foolish, diminished. He went up to the room, changed into lightweight casual clothes, sneakers and no socks, and went out for a walk, down the grassy slope to an inlet of Lake Inye, where, with effort, he was able to appreciate some lemon-colored water lilies.

He didn't notice the young Burmese girl right off. Perhaps she'd been there and he'd been too preoccupied to notice her, or possibly she'd followed him down. She was seated on her haunches about thirty feet away at the edge of the inlet, distant enough for privacy, yet close enough to make out facial expressions. From the way she was dressed Grady took her to be a peasant girl, anyway someone poor. The plain short-sleeved green blouse she had on was faded, and she was wearing what in Burma is called a
longyi
, simply a couple of yards of cotton cloth (hers a blood red shade) wrapped and tucked at the waist to form an ankle-length skirt.

The girl's gaze was evidently fixed on the slicing courses of three windsurfers far out on the lake, although Grady once caught the turn of her head and got the feeling that even if it had been only a glance she'd taken all of him in.

What mostly intrigued Grady was the cheroot she was smoking. Twice as fat as the fattest cigar he'd ever seen and about ten inches long. A roll of dried white corn husk bound by a red thread. It seemed to contain a mixture of ingredients, including tobacco. It looked as though the jumbo cheroot would be too much for her to handle, diminutive as she was, but she was its boss, brought it to the center of her lips, holding it from below in the European manner, dragged on it so strongly that her cheeks went concave and her face was like a bellows being worked as she took puff after puff without inhaling, creating a minor cumulus around her head.

Grady watched deliberately, as though she were a permissible tourist attraction. The ash on the burning end of the cheroot became so great it dropped off. Grady decided to let that signify the end of the episode, went back up the slope to the hotel and the room.