[…] The stuffing was all white paper carefully cut to the size of banknotes. Folded with less care than we use when it is necessary to separate by color, hugged by an identical elastic band. A cake of flour. […]

excerpt from The Tent, by Carla Zaccagnini.
^{part of Cuentos de Cuentas, published by K. Verlog and commissioned by Amant, 2022.}

La plata y el plomo (Cash and lead) – São Paulo, 2021- 2022, is a mobile constructed with objects used to hide money. A cigar box, a battery-operated toy, a flashlight, a book – all hiding devices that the artist has been collecting and also mentions in the different accounts in the book which lends its title to the show (original title in Spanish: Cuentos de cuentas). With their weight altered by lead hidden between the banknotes, the objects create an arbitrary equilibrium, like those that structure and move the economy.

The Fleeting Fleet installation, 2021-2022, is composed of a collection of banknotes from American countries that have been out of circulation since 1973, the year Zaccagnini was born. These are not withdrawn notes that have been replaced by new notes of greater value and new design; they are extinct banknotes. In these notes with no monetary value, just pieces of paper, folded like little boats, the social and political experience of money as a catalyzing praxis of domination becomes evident.

The Fleeting Fleet installation, 2021-2022, is composed of a collection of banknotes from American countries that have been out of circulation since 1973, the year Zaccagnini was born. These are not withdrawn notes that have been replaced by new notes of greater value and new design; they are extinct banknotes. In these notes with no monetary value, just pieces of paper, folded like little boats, the social and political experience of money as a catalyzing praxis of domination becomes evident.

Accounts of Accounting, 2020-2022, is a 5-channel video installation in which choreographies made for hands accompany the narrative of the short stories The Shack, True or False, The Vest, The Pot, and Black Dollars. Written by Zaccagnini, these tales are also part of the book Cuentos de cuentas [Accounts of accounting] published by Amant and K Verlag, Berlin. Each episode of the installation is structured around a specific object – a tent, a flask, or a vest – suggesting a secret economic transaction. Although told with a childlike innocence and detailed attention to material reality, the stories illuminate a context where the US dollar dictated, as it still dictates, the world economy.

Choreography and performance
Marina Dubia

Camera
Petra Bindel

Music
Søren Kjaergaard

Special participation
León Zaccagnini Lagomarsino

1 – The Tent

“What color was the tent we traveled with to the south?” I asked. “It was an army tent,” he replied. Green, I thought, olive-green. Or military green. The next question would have been, “How did an army tent end up in our possession in 1977?” I didn’t ask.

I imagine it might have belonged to his brother Jorge, my uncle. Jorge died young, of cirrhosis, and the memories I have of him are few and discolored, yet vigorous. I remember seeing him spinning around an imaginary axis starting at the top of his head and ending between his two feet in order to roll up the belt of the impeccable gaucho trousers that he used to wear on the farm. I remember following the delicate and precise movements of his hands for days on end, when he was building an extremely complex kite in the shape of a bird—an eagle, I think—while my maternal grandfather, following instructions from the same book and using materials that the main project discarded, made a pink star with my name on it. “Carla,” in leaf-green. It was behind a bed in the farm for years—the star, not the eagle. The eagle had a short life. It couldn’t gain height on the first attempt and neither on the second, and there wasn’t a third one. Jorge walked firmly towards the place where it landed and trampled on it until there was nothing that could be recognized in the remaining mixture of eagle, earth, and grass.

Jorge used to collect weapons and practiced shooting; I recall he once hurt his own knee when trying to hit a can. I think I remember when he invited some friends in uniform to the farm. Army-green. I remember seeing him break the blade of a carving knife in half, with his bare hands; it happened during a fight with my grandmother that I followed from a stool in the kitchen. My cousin remembers another fight—or, maybe it was the same fight seen from another angle and stored by another memory—in which our uncle drove a knife through the pullover our grandmother was wearing. Every time I was alone with her, my grandmother would want to tell me about her youngest son. “I remember,” my grandmother would say again and again, “the last time I saw Jorge entering through that door.” And she would point at the door of the dining room in the house where she lived, and where we had lived before her. I remember (I do) the night when my father woke me, telling me that Jorge had died. My mother was traveling, and he cried alone, even though I would have liked to accompany him.

Shortly after, we found out that he used to write poetry.

***

We traveled south with a tent. The idea was to go as far as Ushuaia. My father drove a Renault 6—light green—with a hole in the place where my mother would otherwise have rested her feet. I sat in the back—surrounded by luggage, I imagine. Not only the pieces we brought with us from Buenos Aires but also those we must have accumulated along the way. Among other things, we had a 20-liter canister filled with gasoline. I still know how it smelled and the sound it made each time the liquid hit the plastic, like a delayed reflex after every curve or bump. It proved useful the day we got lost driving on the Patagonian Meseta towards the Road of the Seven Lakes. Everything around us was flat, and we didn’t pass a single soul. Only by nightfall, when he climbed onto the car’s roof, did my father see one light on the horizon. We drove towards it. It was a house by a lake. Its single inhabitant took fuel from his own boat to feed our car and showed us the way.

I heard this for the first time the other day, when I asked about the color of the tent, the model of the car, and the trajectory of our trip. What I always get to hear is the anecdote that supposedly proves how I, already at age four, wasn’t made for camping.

It is said that I fell ill and was taken to a doctor in the first village that appeared on our way. It was called Tres Plumas (Three Feathers)—or possibly Tres Chapas (Three Plates). The waiting room was lugubrious—I think this is where I learned the word, or maybe it was when we were already back and tried to describe where we had been. In my mind, the illustration of “lugubrious” will always be the waiting room of a village doctor who doesn’t like natural light. My father wanted to open the curtains to let the sunlight in. The receptionist refused. “The doctor doesn’t like it,” she said. We left. In the next village, called Tres Chapas (Three Plates)—or most likely Tres Plumas (Three Feathers), we met a pediatrician who didn’t shun light. After examining me, she concluded that all I needed was to spend a few days in the same place. It is told (insistently so) that when we entered the hotel room at the Automobile Club in Trelew, I jumped on the mattress shouting: “A bed! A bed!” “A bed,” my father invariably repeats it in a high-pitched voice.

***

I always thought this was the reason why they had decided to sell the tent (which, until recently, I imagined to be red and blue). But it turned out to be different; the army tent was kept in the family. Until a few years ago, Jorge still had it. This is my other uncle Jorge, my mother’s brother—the mountain climber—who now lives in La Cumbre (The Summit).

The tent this story is about, however, never came from or went to any Jorge. Because this story is not about my relationship to camping and hotels. Neither is it about the coincidence of having two uncles with the same name who have always been like two opposite sides of a mirror. Neither is it about flying kites or driving south. This story is about the selling of a tent, but as I was presenting it as the military tent, I found out it was actually another.

The tent for sale belonged to the Bergeret family. My friend and schoolmate Magdalena’s father, Bernardo, had asked my father to sell it—because “Guillermo was an expert.” Their tent had hardly been used. Maybe the Bergeret kids also preferred hotel rooms. None of this I remember. In fact, I rebuilt the story from scattered pieces of badly kept information: the collateral clues I got when asking about the color of the first tent and those I gathered in a few other triangulated messages. This second tent does not have a color. I don’t think I ever saw it opened. Magdalena said, “It could have been cream,” though it could also have been red and blue.

Guillermo placed an announcement in a weekly paper called Segunda Mano [Second Hand], which, if I am not mistaken, used to be published on Mondays (or Tuesdays). Years later, the same Bernardo took a copy of this paper with him on one of his frequent business trips to Rio de Janeiro. He threw it on a friend’s desk and said, “Look, I brought you an idea.” The friend, or one of this friend’s friends, then started publishing the equivalent in Brazil—it was called Primeira Mão [First Hand] and was issued on Tuesdays (or Mondays). The title of the Brazilian version was a euphemism, as both publications were dedicated to announcing used objects for sale.

The first to come and see the tent was a man who, at that time, seemed big. He had one hand in plaster and a briefcase in the other. A hard-shell attaché with a code, like the ones used back then by businessmen and spies. He also had a nephew with him. He liked the tent (it’s possible that we saw it open after all). He gave her a closed envelope. I followed the conversation from a distance; interested but wanting to pass unnoticed.

I remember seeing my mother taking the bills out of the envelope and counting them at the kitchen table. Her expression was that of someone wanting to appear as having done this before, as if this time wasn’t more than simply once more. I can still picture her polished nails, her attentive eyes, her lips moving fast but little, letting a flow of thin air escape, sounding more like wind than like numbers. I can still hear each note evoking a partial result instead of its own name; each bill added to all the previous ones and waiting for the next to come, like a link in a chain. I still sense the sound of the paper raising and stretching, detaching itself and then leaning against the bundle again. She counted without unfolding them, without undoing the wad of bills, without shuffling the color order. Just like the way in which each different layer in a cake has its own taste and texture, so also does each layer of color in a well-built stack of bills have its own density and sweetness. Tsssfts tssscfst trssstsffs trssstvtcs, and, finally, the sound of the agreed sum. The money then disappeared back in the envelope.

“Very well, thank you, I will show you to the door.” The man took the briefcase from the kitchen table with his healthy hand. The nephew took the tent.

I think I also followed them to the door. And when we came back my mother opened the envelope, held the wad, and noticed that it wasn’t the same anymore. The man who then seemed big to me had taken the bills that had been caressed by my mother’s fingers and named by the wind coming from her lips. As in a magic trick, a sleight of hand, he had transformed those notes into others, into a stack with only one real bill, the one on the outside. The filling was made of white papers, carefully cut into the size of banknotes. They were folded with less precision than when separated by color and embraced by an identical rubber band—a cake made of nothing but flour.

My mother ran to the door, unlocked it, opened it, and looked down the street in both directions. They were nowhere to be found. Gone. Gone the man who probably wasn’t that big after all; gone the briefcase that may have had a false bottom; gone the arm that may have been healthy and strong; gone the young man who instead of a nephew may have been an associate (or a lover). Gone the tent, which may not have had the colors of the French flag. Gone the money with its volume and smell.

Carla Zaccagnini

2. True or False

Between the kitchen and the dining room, there was a hall with a beige, pinkish floor (or maybe light green with black corners) from where one could enter five different doors. On one side, the door to the kitchen and that of my room, the windows of which had a view towards the garden. On the other side, the doors to the dining room and my parents’ bedroom, with windows looking out to the central patio. In the middle was the door to the bathroom, in front of which were two stairways. One was big, full of light, made of white marble and leading to the second floor. The other one was dark, narrow, finished in raw cement and leading down to the basement.

I was once coming down from the second floor, when I heard my mother’s exalted voice arguing with the woman who then worked in the house a few days a week. I think she had lost a silver bracelet and was accusing the closest suspect, probably without reason. Offended, I suppose, to be accused of this and who knows how many other reasonless claims; cornered, or perhaps feeling powerless for being unable to prove her innocence; the woman said, quite calmly: “If I would want to, I could make your daughter fall down the stairs.” I took a false step and rolled down the last six or five steps, surrounded by white marble. We never saw her again. The bracelet, on the other hand, reappeared a few days later.

The other stairs, the ones I almost never used, led to a basement with a persistent smell of mold. I didn’t like the place at all. It felt lonely and full of ghosts. I remember going down the whole way only once, accompanied by the familiar voices and laughter that rose from the underground. I saw my father’s back and his friend Jorge, who was almost like an uncle, looking at him with the face he used to wear for parties. In every basement or cave, ghosts are compensated with treasure trunks.

In this case it was cardboard boxes. And they were not filled with precious stones and noble metal, carrying the brightness and the sound they carry in films. Inside the boxes were these little black machines: personal, portable, and newly fabricated. Each came in a leather case designed for easy access, they could be quickly opened and closed with Velcro, and worn on one’s belt. The machine set comfortably in an adult hand and could be turned on and off with a simple movement of the thumb. When running over bank bills with the ideal pressure and speed, they would react to the minuscule metal particles present in the ink used to print dollars, and reveal, by means of a tiny robotic light, if the paper treasure was true or false.

Carla Zaccagnini

3. The Vest

In the 1980s it was fashionable to wear puffy jackets that looked like they were inflated. Sometimes they were stuffed with feathers or artificial substitutes, but they could also be filled with nothing, and just have air between the skin and the nylon. My mother had one—a light one—without a filling or lining, I think. It had three wide horizontal stripes in the colors of the French flag: liberty, equality, and fraternity. She liked it, as she did with everything that had to do with that country: Charles Aznavour, the nouvelle vague, chicken à la crème, duck à l’orange, rabbit à la mode de Dijon, and Lacan’s seminars.

The days before the trip were hectic. My grandmother had installed herself with her sewing machine in the kitchen of our house, already getting used to occupying the spaces she would later inhabit. You could hear the rhythm of the needle when she pushed down the pedal. And when she didn’t, you could hear her voice commenting, giving advice, or reciting rhymes. It was the same constant tone in the voice as in the machine.

I would walk along the lines that the sea-green tiles drew on the floor¬¬—or rather, along the lines that were drawn on the floor between the sea-green tiles—insisting on the thought that I would like to have a sister. Sometimes I said it and repeated it out loud, which filled the atmosphere with a certain discomfort that I, without fully understanding, was drawn to explore. I also spoke of numbers, made sums, and imagined being older.

My mother would come in and out, passing fluidly from one environment to another, not in a rush but in continuous movement. She went down the white marble stairs, her arms full of clean laundry, too dry and a little rough because of long exposure to the sun on the roof terrace. She opened the fridge, filled a glass of water, answered my grandmother, closed the fridge. She searched in drawers, she packed the suitcase. She crossed the hallway, opened my closet, crossed the hallway, packed the suitcase. The glass was sweating.

Every once in a while, almost without entering the kitchen, she would try on the vest. The paper pattern. The necessary adjustments. The cut of the back in the lining fabric—in a neutral shade called “skin color.” The back, the double fabric. The pins. The chest. The necessary adjustments. The double fabric. The stitching drew lines like the tiles in the floor. Or rather: it was the opposite of the tiles, which leave empty lines where there are none. The stitches drew lines in the path where the needle would fixate the thread, separating empty spaces between the double fabric.

It was in those pockets—closed on four sides and evenly sized like the tiles—that the filling would go. In each partition 30 bills of 100. Enough money to pay for the second half of the house with a pool, a condition imposed by my mother in order to move to the tropics.

On top of the vest, a dark t-shirt; on top of the t-shirt, the nylon jacket in the colors of France. On top of everything, silence. The secret. Few things could not be told: the story of the burned newspapers and the story of the vest.
In the left hand, the suitcase; in the right hand, my left hand. In my right hand, my handbag. In the purse, the tickets, the passports, the wallet, the cigarettes. In the doorway, the goodbye. Afterwards, the line, the tickets, the fear of flying. The boarding call, the line, passport control, the metal detector, the fear of flying. In my left hand, her hand was sweating.

Carla Zaccagnini

4. The Jar

The house in São Paulo–the house with the pool–had an outlet with a hidden safe. What looked like the neutral, the hot slot, or the ground, was in actual fact a lock. It was possible to take out the entire metal box from the wall by turning a long nail. And in that hole was the key that would open the box to reveal what we had learned to call “the burglar’s dollars.” The idea was that, in case of an armed robbery, and after a certain resistance the length of which had to be defined in situ, the contents of this safe would be surrendered.

Meanwhile, the true treasure was much better concealed. The savings, in US dollars and some German marks, were rolled up in cylinders of the same height and different thickness, and stuffed inside a plastic jar with a screw cap that I recall to be red, sealed with silicone. The jar was buried, like a good treasure, in a hole covered with a fine layer of cement. It was hidden underneath the bidet in my parents’ suite. The bathroom, in turn, was accessible through a door that was behind another door. Almost a secret passage: it was a wall with closets, the third wardrobe was a hallway.

The bathrooms of this house were enormous, almost the size of the bedrooms. And back then they still had the floors, tiles, and artifacts chosen by the previous inhabitants at the end of the 1970s. In the master bathroom the tiles on the floor were brick color, and those on the walls were bright orange, more intense at the edges and subdued in the center. They had white arabesque decorations made with little white dots similar to sesame seeds in relief. That early morning, I found them covered in torn dollars.

My maternal grandmother used to dry the handkerchiefs like this. She washed them and put them on the bathroom walls, stretching them with the pressure of her long fingers. Because of the water, they stuck to the tiles and became “so well ironed,” she said. She would say this with a hidden sense of pride, with a smile that wasn’t common on her face. It was the subdued pride a scientist may display when explaining to a colleague, in a bar, the enviable results of an experiment about which he doesn’t want to brag but which he can’t resist to partially reveal among other themes and below other voices.

My father had bought a few cars and needed money. He unscrewed the bidet and moved it to the side. He broke the cement and took away the dirt. He snapped the seal, put his hand inside and pulled it back immediately. Inside the jar, the money had become a paste, as if it had returned to a previous state. From dust to dust, only more humid.

One by one–or rather: fraction by fraction–he separated the bills. As if he were peeling a very fine and brittle onion layer by layer. In the center he found a ball that had already become a solid object, like the stone of an avocado that also holds its secrets. He stuck the bills he could save, in pieces, to the tiles. They stayed there the whole next day and maybe even one more. My father remembers ironing them; I don’t think that would have been necessary.

He called his friend Jorge, the one who was almost like a brother, who then came from Buenos Aires to travel with him to New York. Even when completely ironed out, money that has been moist takes up more space. It requires more air around it, as if it’s afraid of drowning again. They stuffed the dollars inside VHS cases and hid those between clothes in their luggage. I imagine the kind made of plastic, that opened like books. If the dates coincide, it’s possible that they were cases of the many tapes my father had bought from the local video store when DVDs became the norm and they had to switch out their entire holdings. There were movies of all kinds, from Snow White to Amarcord. Over time, the tapes had become moist: on both sides of the rolled-up film you could see white lines in a spiral shape. Never again were these tapes rewound, as one had to do prior to returning them.

They opened a bank account in the Banco de Galicia, where he could deposit the most passable half of the dollars, those that were, as Nacha Guevara sings in Vuelvo, “rotos pero enteros” [“broken but in one piece”]. The rest they brought by train to Washington D.C. to exchange in the US Mint.

In the first office, they were referred to another one. But on their way out and seeing a bank on the corner, they thought they would try to deposit them at once and avoid yet another taxi ride. They started by showing two 100 bills. The clerk went inside to consult and came back a while later to say that, if they would be so kind to wait, a staff member would come to assist them. And no, that they shouldn’t leave for lunch.

The staff was a man and a woman, both young, tall, and beautiful, according to the description I recently obtained. They asked if there were more bills, they asked how many, they wanted to hear the story, they asked my father and Jorge to follow them. They all got into a blue sedan (I imagine it to be of a dark metallic hue). The back doors did not have door handles inside, nor did they have controls to open the windows. Any month of the year, it would feel too warm on that backseat. They arrived at a garage and were received by men in dark suits. They were accompanied to a small room that had a wall with an inscription warning: “anything that is said can be used against you.” They were invited to take a seat on chairs fixed to the ground with silver-colored chains. Opposite them, one of the men sat down, unbuttoning his jacket so as to reveal the grip of a handgun.

Pretty much the same questions: how many bills, why did they hide them pretending to bring movies. Why did they not declare them? It was 30,050 US dollars, they hid them because in their countries it was forbidden to have foreign currency, and, yes, they had in fact declared them by ticking the box next to “more than 10,000.” No-one had asked them how much more, which was later confirmed by a customs agent.

He left and came back. He rocked back and forth in the chair. He looked askance, a half smile. “Do you want to hire a lawyer?” He left and came back. Serious-looking. “They are all false.” He rocked in the chair. “With all due respect, that’s not possible. They were acquired in different years, from different sources, they can’t all be false.” He left and came back. As he sat down, he straightened his suit. Serious-looking. “Half are false.” He looked them in the eyes. “That’s still not possible, as I told you, they arrived in my hands in different moments, in different places. Moreover, we know dollars, we have made a little machine–see how interesting–that reacts to the magnetic ink and warns you when a dollar isn’t real.” He made himself comfortable in the chair, stretching backwards. “Call us tomorrow and we’ll give you more news. We suggest you don’t leave Washington.” He recommended a hotel.

It’s important to clarify that all of this is remembered by someone who believes to have ironed those dollars (and maybe a few German marks, too), even if they had already been stretched by the prolonged contact with the tiles. It’s possible that nothing actually occurred in this particular way.

Jorge called at 10 am and didn’t get any news. He called again and they were expected. This time, they were seated in chairs without chains. They received a brown envelope, requests for apologies, a kiss on the cheek from a tall, beautiful, young woman, wishes for a nice afternoon, and the correct address for the Mint.

I picture a room with a marble floor in different shades of grey. A woman welcomed them, she was neither friendly nor unfriendly, she had a wide body and dark skin. “How many?” She filled out a receipt with numbers and letters that corresponded to the mentioned total, without even glancing inside the envelope.

A month later, a check arrived in the mail.

Carla Zaccagnini

5.Black money

The dealership was on Avenida Pompeia, in front of a gas station and next to the most elegant car mechanic I have ever seen. It was in a bend, at the end of the downhill slope (or at the beginning of an uphill slope, when moving towards the river). It was one of those slopes that, at a certain speed, makes the car wheels get off the asphalt, causing a sensation in the belly that in Brazil is known as “sigh of a virgin.”

It was a stretch that was prone to accidents. On the one hand, summer rainstorms would make the valley flood at times. On the other hand, the sensation of the downhill drive combined with the turn often caused collisions, sometimes against the gates of the dealership and the cars parked near the perimeter.

But not that day. It was a quiet day, when my father read the newspaper or played solitaire on the screen while he waited for the next potential client. Someone looking for a new car, selling an old car, or looking for a change. A foreign man came in and he inquired about the price of several vehicles. “This one?” “And that one?” “And the one over there, the silver one?” “And that black Ford?” He took down the price of each.

The man’s accent and his disperse interests called my father’s attention. He didn’t seem to know what he was looking for. My father asked the typical questions: “Do you want it for work?” “Do you have a family?” The answers were vague, sometimes evasive. Just a curious guy, my father thought. Or someone who is studying the market, maybe a future competitor.

Three or four weeks later, he returned with his brother (or cousin), who was particularly friendly. The new relative carried a book in French under his arm, as if he was in the middle of reading it. A novel, probably. My father doesn’t remember the title or the author, but it was the language of the book that helped him in placing their accent and that initiated a conversation ending with “we are from the Ivory Coast.”

The relative with the book was equally eclectic in his interests, but a bit more precise in his research. He discretely directed what appeared to be a random walkthrough. They both walked between the cars to ask for prices and to check their teeth. My father followed them with his eyes, coming as close as allowed by his foot in a cast, without being able to get through the narrow passages between the cars that had been carefully parked, as if they had been put in place from high up above by giant but delicate hands. They chose five cars of different makes, models, years, colors, and engine capacities.

Apparently, the combination of makes, models, years, colors, and engine capacities that could be resold in Ivory Coast. They had come on a business trip, they said. The family member with the book spoke most: “We have been importing used cars from Germany,” (some details which my father doesn’t remember would fill in the coming lines) “we were studying options, running numbers, and it seems that it is more convenient bringing them from here, by boat. We are waiting for the money to arrive and soon we will be able to close the deal. How about we meet at your home tomorrow and we explain in further detail how we can arrange the payment?”

My father was a bit nervous about this visit. It was a bit strange that they wanted to meet in his home, and that the form of payment needed that much explanation. He asked a friend to come over, so that there would be two players on each side, and he asked his girlfriend to be upstairs, as if keeping a card up his sleeve.

His friend didn’t arrive at the agreed time, though he could still arrive at any moment. The two brothers (or cousins) arrived with a briefcase that my father calls 007. The one talking was still the one with the book, even though this time he didn’t bring it: “What happened is the following, Mister Guillermo: the money is already here, it is in the boat. And it is all like this.” He showed a bill dyed in black.

He showed four or five bills, all of which were totally black. And the relative who had never carried a book under his arm asked for some water. My father made a gesture to get up. His leg in a cast made moving much more difficult, so he pointed to the kitchen and said: “If you don’t mind, could you go get a bowl with water?” The man didn’t mind. My father sat back down in the seat. The relative with the book (who hadn’t brought the book) looked at him with a smile.

His cousin-brother came back from the kitchen with a bowl filled with water. He took out a little flask from his pocket, poured some drops of a transparent liquid in the water that didn’t change color, and said: “This liquid is the only thing able to clean the dye.” “It doesn’t come off with water alone?” “No, no, no, no, no.” Green hues started to appear, the ornaments, the portraits, the numbers: two or three bills of 20 or 10, and one of 100. Clean. Like magic.

The captain of the boat didn’t want to hand over the money until they paid his part of the deal. My father didn’t understand, or pretended not to understand, the problem. They just needed to clean the necessary bills to pay the captain in his cabin (like they had just shown in this living room). But no, they couldn’t clean the money in the port, no, no, no, no, no. And the captain was steadfast: as long as he hadn’t received his part of the clean dollars, the black dollars wouldn’t come off the boat. They also needed money to buy the liquid, which was extremely expensive. My father doesn’t remember how much they said it cost, he never had a good memory for numbers.

The plan was that my father would advance the captain’s amount, plus the cost of the secret liquid. He doesn’t recall the numbers, but these also wouldn’t reveal much, after so many years. It was a percentage of the profit from the sale of five used cars in a transatlantic trade. Once the captain would be appeased, they would recuperate the full sum with which they were to pay for the five reserved cars. They would leave my father the black dollars and the necessary amount of the chemical to clean them. And they would return to Ivory Coast, by boat, with the five cars and the stubborn captain, now satisfied.

To show my father they were trustworthy, they left him the bill of 100, so that he could check its authenticity. “You can have it checked,” said the one with the book. My father had already checked it: he knew dollars, he had even fabricated a little machine that lit up when detecting the magnetic strip used in dollars printed by the Mint. There was no reason for it to be false. It would be like a magician who, wanting to prove that there was no trick, showed a marked-up card.

They told him to think about it and they agreed to return in the afternoon. They rang the bell and he opened again. They came without the briefcase. My father noticed that and thought that it was in order to be free of incriminating evidence in case he had contacted the police. They sat down again at the same table. “Interesting,” my father said, “but I think you will have to find someone a bit more naive, it is not going to work with me.”

They kept up their niceness, and left with a smile, without knowing very well what to say. At the door, they said goodbye in a friendly manner and my father kept the 100 dollars. A while later he read in the newspaper that a group of swindlers had been arrested in São Paulo. The article described in detail the trick of the black dollar bills and included a picture of the squad. My father thinks he recognized the first one who visited him, the one who went into his kitchen and filled the bowl with water. The relative with the book was not in the photo.

CarlaZaccagnini

In the series Horizontes USA [Horizons USA], title and images that constitute the work were taken from the publication Horizons USA distributed by the US embassies in Latin America in the 1970s and 80s. In this series, Zaccagnini specifically used the issues numbers 6, 26 and 27, purposely employing only the images and leaving out the original texts that constituted the narratives chosen by the North American empire at the time.

In the series Horizontes USA [Horizons USA], title and images that constitute the work were taken from the publication Horizons USA distributed by the US embassies in Latin America in the 1970s and 80s. In this series, Zaccagnini specifically used the issues numbers 6, 26 and 27, purposely employing only the images and leaving out the original texts that constituted the narratives chosen by the North American empire at the time.