Firmino nodded and spread his arms as if to say: ah yes, I know it only too well.
“We began with marble,” said the old man, “seven years ago it was just the boss and me, an Alsatian dog and a tin shack.”
“Ah yes,” said Firmino to urge him to further confidences, “marble really goes, here in this country.”
“If it goes,” returned the old man, “if it goes. But you have to find the right market. The boss has an extraordinary flair for these things, maybe he’s had a bit of luck as well, but I can’t deny he’s got a real business sense, and that’s why he thought of Italy.”
Firmino’s face took on an expression of wonderment.
“It seems to me a pretty queer notion, exporting marble to Italy,” he said, “the Italians are up to their eyeballs in marble.”
“So you think, my dear sir,” exclaimed the old man, “and so I thought myself, but this means that we don’t have a flair for these things and don’t know the laws of the market. I’ll say one thing: do you know which is the most highly prized marble in Italy? That’s easy enough, it’s the marble from Carrara. And what does the Italian market demand? Easy again: marble from Carrara. But it so happens that Carrara is no longer able to satisfy the demands, my dear sir, I don’t know the exact reasons, let’s say because labor is too expensive, the quarrymen are anarchists and have very demanding trade unions, that the environmentalists are making life hell for the government because the Apuan Alps have been riddled with holes, things of that sort.”
The old fellow drew greedily at his cigarette.
“Well then my dear sir,” he resumed, “do you by any chance know anything about the marble of Estremoz?”
Firmino gave a vague nod.
“Same characteristics as Carrara marble,” said the old man complacently, “same porosity, same veining, same reaction to machine polishing, the same in every way as Carrara marble.” And the old man heaved a sigh as if he had revealed the secret of the century.
“Do I make myself dear?” he asked.
“Perfectly,” said Firmino.
“Please explain,” said Firmino.
“Good,” continued the old man, “it’s like Columbus’s egg. The boss sends Estremoz marble to Carrara and they resell it on the Italian market as Carrara marble, and so there you have the atriums of Roman apartment houses and the bathrooms of wealthy Italians tiled with fine Carrara marble which comes from Estremoz in Portugal. And it’s not that the boss has to do the thing on a vast scale, you know, he has simply subleased a firm in Estremoz which cuts the blocks and ships them from Setúbal. However, with the cost of labor in Portugal being as low as it is, do you realize what that means to us?”
He waited with an air of impatience for Firmino’s answer, which never came.
“Millions,” he said in answer to his own question, and then went on: “And as one thing leads to another the boss started looking for another market, and he found Hong Kong, because the Chinese also are mad for Carrara marble, and since a thing that leads to another leads to another again, the boss thought that since we were in the export business the moment had come to import as well, so we became an import-export firm, it doesn’t show on the surface, we have these modest premises, but that’s only so as not to flaunt the fact that we have one of the biggest annual turnovers of any firm in Oporto, you who are in business can understand that the financial police have to be kept at arm’s length, but you know my boss has two Ferrari Testarossas, he keeps them out at his farm in the country, and d’you know what he did before this?”
“I have no idea,” replied Firmino.
“Worked for the Council,” said the old man with great satisfaction, “in the stewarts’ office, at the Town that means having a flair for business, of course he’s had to play at politics a bit, it’s only logical, without politics you can’t get anywhere in this country, so he got himself made election campaign manager of the aspiring candidate for the mayorship of his town, took him by car to every political meeting in the province of Minho, the mayor was elected and as a reward gave him this piece of land for thruppence and arranged for the license to start up the business. Speaking of which, what exact line is your firm into?”
“Clothing,” replied Firmino craftily enough.
The old man lit another Gauloise.
“And so?” he asked.
“We’re opening a chain of shops in Algarve,” said Firmino, “mostly jeans and T-shirts, because Algarve is a place for young people, all beaches and discotheques, and we’ve decided to market the most bizarre T-shirts, because the kids nowadays want them as bizarre as you please, if you try and sell a T-shirt saying Harvard University no one would buy it, but with T-shirts like yours maybe they would, and we could mass-produce them.”
The old man got up, made his way to a closet with a folding door, rummaged around in a big box.
“Is this what you mean?”
It was a blue T-shirt bearing the words Stones of Portugal. The very thing described by Manolo.
The accountant gave him a look and then handed it to him.
“By all means take it,” he said, “but have a word with the secretary about it next week, I can’t tell you anything.”
“What is it you import?” asked Firmino.
“High technology instruments from Hong Kong,” replied the old man, “equipment for hi-fi and for hospitals, and that’s the reason I’m in trouble.”
“Why is that?” asked Firmino in the most tactful of tones.
“We had a robbery five days ago,” came the answer, “it was during the night, they disconnected the alarm system and made straight for the container with the equipment in it as if they knew exactly where to look, and they only stole two highly sophisticated components for CAT machinery, do you know what the CAT is?”
“Computerized axial tomography,” answered Firmino.
“Our guard dog,” continued the old man “the Alsatian, didn’t notice a thing, and the thieves certainly didn’t drug him.”
“They’d have some trouble selling components for CAT,” objected Firmino.
“You’d be surprised,” said the old man, “what with all the private clinics springing up in Portugal like mushrooms, forgive me but do you know anything about our health services?”
“Vaguely,” said Firmino.
“It’s sheer piracy,” said the old man with conviction, “that’s why medical equipment is so expensive, but the fact is this theft was really odd, as odd as could be. Just imagine, two electronic switches for CAT machines smoothly removed from our containers and abandoned on the roadside only half a kilometer away.”
“Abandoned?”
“As if they’d been chucked out of a car window, but reduced to pulp, as if a car had run over them.”
“Have you notified the police?” asked Firmino.
“Of course,” said the accountant, “because though it’s a matter of two tiny little components, they’re worth a lot of money.”
“Really?” said Firmino.
“And what’s more with the boss in Hong Kong and the secretary on holiday,” grumbled the old boy with some exasperation, “the whole thing falls on my shoulders, even the errand-boy seems to have fallen ill.”
“What errand-boy?” asked Firmino.
“The errand-boy who make deliveries,” replied the old man, “at least I had an underling to send off on errands, but he hasn’t come to work for five days.”
“A young fellow?” asked Firmino.
“That’s right,” confirmed the old man, “a temporary, he came here a couple of months ago looking for work and the boss took him on as an errand-boy.”