Michener, James A. (197 page)

Garza gasped: 'You're kidding.'

Slowly, as if he were a priest conducting a ritual, Quimper opened his shirt, revealing a powerful chest on which was a deeply imbedded KJJ

is that a tattoo 7 ' Garza asked, to which Quimper replied forcefully: 'No! It's a brand, like you brand cattle. And when it was burned in, my father rubbed it with salt so as to make a real scar,

like they do after those duels in Heidelberg, and he told me in awed tones: "Now you're really one of us. Each of us carries the same brand." ' He reached for the brand, placed it against his chest, and allowed Garza to satisfy himself that the conformance was perfect.

Rebuttoning his shirt, he said: 'As you move about Texas you'll come upon many men in their sixties who carry this secret brand under their vested suits. Leaders of the state. We never speak of it. Never reveal who else carries it. But I will tell you this. At the regents' meeting tomorrow, I won't be the only one hiding it.' He paused: 'My father told me that night by the lake as he rubbed in the salt: "I'd not want to have a son who didn't carry over his heart the badge of the university." He loved the place you're about to help govern. And so do I.'

The night grew late, and he told Mayor Garza: 'We've needed you on our board for some years. Talk sense to us. Support the good proposals.' He sounded like a philosopher.

-But next morning, when he drove Garza onto the campus and saw the poster announcing that next week the university baseball team would play A&M, he reverted to type. Once more he became the florid, beefy, extroverted Texas rancher whom the undergraduates would noisily toast as the fifth inning came to a close: 'II Magnifico . . . the Bottom of the Fifth,' with the leader finishing off a bottle of whiskey. He hoped they would smother A&M.

Chuckling, he asked Garza: 'You ever hear about the time some years back when the state decided to make A&M a full-fledged university? Dreadful mistake. Ambitious A&M alumni wanted to upgrade the name of their town, College Station, to something more exalted. So I offered a hundred-dollar prize for the most appropriate suggestion. The winner? Malfunction Junction. A&M officials were not amused.'

Then he confided: 'Actually, I think it's a fine school. I help it whenever I can But our board expects me to turn up at every meeting with a new Aggie joke, and this time I have a zinger.'

So after Mayor Garza had been introduced to warm applause, for the regents were relieved to have the Hispanic barrier broken, Quimper said:

'This Aggie was infuriated by the way people in Texas downgraded him and he consulted a counselor, who advised: "Best way in the worid to demonstrate intellectual superiority is to salt and pepper vour conversation with French phrases." So off he goes to Paris to a tutoring school, and on the day of his return he marches boldly into the best store in Austin and says: "Garcon, I would like some pate de fois gras avec

poivre, four croissants, a coq-au-vin, and a bottle of champagne tres, tres sec."

'The clerk looks up and asks: "When did you go to A&M?" and the former Aggie sobs: "How did you know?" and the clerk says: "Son, this is a hardware store." '

He had barely stopped receiving congratulations on his latest masterpiece when a folded note was passed along the table to him:

1 don't think Aggie jokes are funny My brother teaches there and says it's a fine school. Next you'll be telling Mexican jokes, and 1 won't like that, either.

Your new friend, Simon Garza

Quimper flushed, recognized the propriety of this complaint, and concluded that the new regent was not going to be anybody's pushover. Bringing his palms together under his chin in the Buddhist gesture of deference, he nodded to his friend of the previous evening, then, using his right thumb in a gesture of cutting his throat, he indicated that there would be no more Aggie jokes.

Then he submitted his report as chairman of the finance committee, informing his colleagues that with the unexpected increase in oil prices, Texas now had a much higher return on its endowment than places like Harvard and Stanford: This has enabled us to bring onto our faculty winners of the Nobel Prize, outstanding figures in science like John Wheeler of Princeton, and a whole bevy of notable experts in law and business. We're headin' for the very top ranks of academia and will not be denied.'

As for the other financial aspects, he said: 'Like the comedian, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the program we launched to underwrite our professors has enjoyed amazin' success. As of today we have no room to accept any more five-hundred-thousand-dollar endowments in law, business or science, because all the chairs have been funded.' This brought applause from the board, some of whose members had funded endowments.

'The bad news is that we have not received one endowment in the liberal arts such as English, poetry and philosophy.' Allowing time for this striking news to percolate, he added: I've argued fruitlessly with successful lawyers and businessmen, till my tongue has cleaved to the roof of my mouth, remindin' them that they are able to succeed in life not because of the technical trainin' they received at our university but because of the solid instruction they

had in the meanin' of life ... in their basic courses in the liberal arts. They haven't understood a word I said.

'Gentlemen and ladies, if this continues, the great universities of Texas are goin' to become trade schools, places to train mechanics, centers for the crunchin' of numbers in computers. The ideas which will govern our society will be delivered to us from Harvard and Oxford and the Sorbonne.'

He became eloquent, Texas-ranch style, in defending those values which his father had outlawed, and after prolonged discussion he said: Til tell you what I'm goin' to do. I'm goin' to accept ever' one of the proposed contributions for additional endowments in law and business and divert 'em to the humanities.'

'But, Lorenzo,' a cautious regent asked, 'what will you tell the donors?' and without hesitation he snapped: 'I'll lie.'

i think we'd better consider this,' a lawyer said, and the others laughed, but Quimper silenced them: 'I feel so strong about this that I am herewith establishin' full endowments, half a million each, for two chairs, one in philosophy, one in poetry.'

It was in this spirit that Regent Quimper, II Magnifico, started to reverse the damage done by his father, that inspired builder of the university campus.

When Maggie Morrison, forty-seven years old, discovered how easy it was to borrow large sums of money in Texas, especially from big oilmen, she studied the real estate market in Houston with special care and learned that after the savage devaluation of the Mexican peso many fine buildings were near bankruptcy, so that remarkable bargains were available, but only if one had faith that the market would rebound. She had that faith.

Her fourteen years in what Houstonians liked to call 'our go-go town' had almost obliterated memories of Detroit. She no longer made comparisons between Michigan and Texas, being content to accept her new home as sui generis, obedient only to its own rules. She had grown to like Western dress, the informality of social life, the Texas brag, and she positively adored Mexican food, especially the tang of a fresh chile relleno or a really well-made enchilada. And her affection for Houston itself had grown solidly, so that when the figures for the 1980 census were extrapolated to 1981, she found positive joy in learning that Houston was now the fourth largest city in the United States, having displaced Philadelphia, with every prospect of surpassing Chicago before the century ended.

But now Houston's unoccupied office space had grown to 43,-000,000 square feet: The builders have built too much, too fast and

with funds that carried too high a rate of interest. With mortgages at seventeen percent, somebody must go broke.

Wherever she looked she found telltale signs of the city's perilous position. The big oil companies were cutting back on personnel; the little ones were solving that problem more simply: they were in bankruptcy. And this sent echoes throughout the business community, as leasing experts closed shop, drilling rigs were sold for ten cents on the dollar, and banks foreclosed loans. Registration at local colleges dropped because parents could not scrape together the tuition, and retail stores began to lay off salespeople.

But the crunch that interested Maggie was the one in real estate, and in the late afternoons when she sat in the fifteenth-floor condominium overlooking Buffalo Bayou, her attention focused on that splendid set of tall buildings erected by Gabe Klinowitz's Mexican politicians—The Ramparts. Their wraparound glass facings shone in the sunset, but they were only fifteen percent occupied; had rentals continued at the spectacular levels of 1980 the Mexicans would have made a killing, but now they faced disaster. 'I'm sure they have at least a hundred and seventy million dollars in the three towers,' Maggie had told her husband, but he was so involved with Roy Bub Hooker in their exotic-game ranch that he could not pay full attention to the interesting proposal she was making, so she sat alone and stared at the mesmerizing target.

One night as the moon shone on the shimmering glass she made up her mind, and early next morning she dressed in her best business suit and flew up to Dallas: The poor Mexicans have made this enormous investment, Mr. Rusk . . .'

'Never feel sorry for the other guy. If he's made an ass of himself, gig him while he's bent over.'

There's no way they can diminish their debt, and they may be paying as high as nineteen-percent interest.'

'You're sure they have a hundred and seventy million in it? What would they listen to? If we bailed them out?'

i have a gut feeling we could get it for fifty million, maybe even forty.'

'See what you can do.'

She returned to Houston with a tentative deal much like the one before, for Rusk had said: 'Maggie, I'll chip in as much as thirteen million if you add your two. But you must convince the Houston Danks to lend us the rest at a decent interest.'

Her first job was to confront the Mexicans with their perilous ;ituation and convince them that in bankruptcy they might lose everything. Wearing her gentlest and most feminine clothes, she ■ninimized the staggering difference between the $170,000,000

they had obligated themselves to pay and the mere $40,000,000 she was offering, and quietly she assured them that they had no reasonable alternative. 'Besides, gentlemen, as you and I well know, a great deal of what you call your loss is paper money only. This is a drying out of the market, and if you'd had your funds in oil, you'd have lost even more.'

With the banks she was soft-spoken but relentless: 'What alternative have you? Your loans are bust, but so are the ones you have in oil. Help my partner and me to refinance this disaster and you'll get back more than you had a right to expect.'

Just when she had everyone on the edge of the chair, each ready to jump forward if the others did, Beth announced that she was going to have a baby, and so Maggie dropped her negotiations for about a week, leaving Mexicans, Houston bankers and Ransom Rusk dangling; she had not planned it this way, but it was the cleverest move she could have made, for by the time she returnee 1 to the bargaining table, all the players would be nervously eager to reach a decision. Said one banker: Trust a woman to play a trick like this. We could use her on our board.'

But Maggie did not engage in tricks. For several years now, she had been aware that she was a much stronger person than her husband, much more attuned to the pressures and responsibilities of Houston finance; although she would never express it in this arrogant manner, she had character and he did not. If these delicate negotiations regarding The Ramparts evolved as she hoped, she would back them with every penny of her small fortune, every minute of her working life. Her deal would be meticulously honest and as fair to each participant as the exigencies of the economic situation allowed. She wanted a just share of the profits, but was prepared to suffer her share of the loss if her calculations were in error. A Michigan schoolteacher who believed in George Eliot had become a Texas manipulator who believed in Adam Smith.

In growing into this status, she was conscious of how far behind she had left her breezy, glib-speaking husband: he played at games; she juggled with empires. He had been a good husband and a better father, but she could not escape realizing that under pressure he had revealed himself as a shifty, small-caliber man. She hoped he would stay out of trouble and hold on to some of the easy money he had made, but on neither point was she confident.

And finally the tears came. Toughened in the brutal world ol Houston real estate, she had not allowed herself this indulgence since weeping with joy at Beth's wedding to Wolfgang Macnab, but now that she reviewed her own life with Todd, remembering how it had started with such love and mutuality, she could not

ignore the sad loss she had suffered: Oh, Todd! We should have done much better! And in this lament she generously took upon herself, improperly, half the blame.

While the Mexican politicians and the Texas businessmen fretted, she spent her days with her daughter, talking about marriage, and children, and responsibility, and one afternoon when Beth was visiting her mother, Maggie called her attention to The Ramparts: The buildings are not only beautiful, Beth. They're in excellent physical condition. But they're only fifteen-percent occupied. Frozen tears. Monuments to dreams gone wrong.'

'Mummy, why would you want to get mixed up with such a failure?'

'Because I'm convinced that Houston is the liveliest spot in America. Because I know it's bound to snap back.'

'But if you know this, don't you think they know it, too?'

'Yes, but I'm the one that has faith.'

'Are you gambling all your money on these towers?'

The two women looked at the shimmering beauty of The Ramparts, admiring the subtle manner in which the three spires formed a unit, with the curve of one iridescent expanse linking with the other two and complementing them. They formed a work of art, Houston modern, and Maggie would be proud to be its owner if she could acquire it, as seemed likely, at twenty-four cents on the dollar.