Notary Mulder's office had rosewood furniture and plastic flowers and grey Venetian blinds. The many happy faces of the Dutch royal family beamed down from the panelled walls, and Notary Mulder beamed with them. Langbourne and the substitute lawyer, Moranti, sat at a table, Langbourne his usual sullen self, leafing through a folder of papers, but Moranti watchful as an old pointer dog, following Jonathan's every movement with his shaggy brown eyes. He was a broad-headed Latin in his sixties, white-haired and brown-skinned, with a pitted face. Even motionless, he brought something disturbing to the room: a whiff of popular justice, of peasant struggles for survival. Once, he let out a furious grunt and smashed his big paw on the table. But it was only to pull the paper across the table to inspect it, then shove it back. Once, he tilted back his head and peered into Jonathan's eyes as if he were examining them for colonialist sentiments.
"You are an English, Mr. Thomas?"
"New Zealander."
"You are welcome to Curaçao."
Mulder by contrast was plump and Pickwickian in a risible world. When he beamed, his cheeks twinkled like red apples. And when he stopped beaming, you wanted to hurry forward and ask him tenderly what you had done wrong.
But his hand shook.
Why it shook, who shook it, whether it shook from debauchery, or disability, or drink, or fear, Jonathan could only guess. But it shook as if it were someone else's hand. It shook as it received Jonathan's passport from Langbourne, and as it painstakingly copied the false details onto a form. It shook as it returned the passport to Jonathan instead of Langbourne. It shook again as it set the papers on the table. Even his pudgy forefinger shook as it indicated to Jonathan the place where he should sign his life away and the place where just initials would do the job.
And when Mulder had made Jonathan sign every sort of document he had ever heard of, and many he had not, the shaking hand produced the bearer bonds themselves, in a tremulous bundle of weighty-looking blue documents issued by Jonathan's very own Tradepaths Limited, each numbered and embossed with a ducal seal and engraved in copperplate like bank notes, which in theory they were, since their purpose was to enrich the bearer without revealing his identity. And Jonathan knew at once ― he needed no confirmation from anybody ― that the bonds were of Roper's own design: for gas, as he would say; to raise the ante; to impress the clowns.
Then, on Mulder's cherubic nod, Jonathan signed the bonds too, as sole signatory to the company's bank account. And in the afterglow, he signed a little typed love letter to Notary Mulder, reaffirming him in his appointment as Curaçaoan resident manager of Tradepaths Limited in accordance with the local law.
And suddenly they were finished, and all that remained was for them to shake the hand that had performed so much hard work. Which they duly did ― even Langbourne shook it ― and Mulder, the rubicund schoolboy of fifty, waved them down the steps with vertical motions of his chubby hand, practically promising to write to them each week.
"I'll just have that passport back, Tommy, if you don't mind," said Tabby with a wink.
* * *
"But Derek and I have already met, I think, Dicky!" the Dutch banker carolled to Roper, who was standing before the place where the marble fireplace would have been, if Curaçaoan banks had had fireplaces. "Not only last night, I think! We are old friends from Crystal, I would say! Nettie, bring Mr. Thomas some tea, please!"
For a moment the close observer's mind refused to engage. Then he remembered a night at Crystal, and Jed seated at her end of the table in low blue satin and pearls against her skin, and this same oafish Dutch banker who now stood before him boring everybody with his connections with great statesmen of the day.
"But of course! Good to see you again, Piet," the smooth hotelier exclaimed, a little late, offering his signer's hand. And then, as if he had never set eyes on them before, Jonathan found himself shaking hands with Mulder and Moranti for the second lime in twenty minutes. But Jonathan made nothing of this, and neither did they, because he was beginning to understand that in the theatre he had entered, one actor could play many parts in a single working day.
They sat down, using all four sides of the table, Moranti watching and listening like an umpire, and the banker at the head doing the talking, because he apparently saw it as his first duty to acquaint Jonathan with a mountain of useless information.
The share capital of a Curaçaoan offshore company could be denominated in any currency, said the Dutch banker. There was no limitation on foreign ownership of shares.
"Great," said Jonathan.
Langbourne's lazy eyes lifted to him. Moranti's didn't flinch. Roper, who had his head back and was studying the old Dutch mouldings on the ceiling, pulled a private grin.
