Rochesport, S. L. was the name of the international trading company in which I worked for a year, and when it was constituted, a little before I went to work there, nobody knows well how, the legal name became esport at the end, one s instead of one x, as it must be after export, from exportation. When I began to work there, Mr. Molino, the manager, gave me the keys of the office for me to open it every morning. We had agreed my working-time wouldn't have to be strict, but a convenience to have the office opened from nine o’clock, and I always fulfilled this increased, even with great satisfaction. That is to say opening up the office at fifteen to nine, quarter of an hour sooner than opening time Molino suggested. First months I was enthusiastic going there everyday. Among other works I had to get in touch with potentials and possible customers from all around the world and it obliged me to express myself in English and in French, languages I handle also and my pactising them has always made me happy. As I was saying, I used to open before nine. Until that time I used to put in order my files and documents that had come to my hands. At about nine came in Max, a gentleman about seventy years old, moroccan of jew origin. Some times he entered into my bureau and we talked a little. He went to his bureau at once and from there he made phone calls to Barcelona, Morocco and Israel everyday. At about nine as well, some times before and others after Max, came in Almaleh, a gentleman about seventy years old or more, romanian of jew origin. He entered into my bureau and talked to me about obscenities in a Spanish difficult to understand. After this he went to the secretaries bureau and picked up the receiver to call to Romania twice or thrice one after the other everyday. The two telephone lines were busy because of Max and Almaleh until ten, time Molino used to come in.

This gentleman seventy seven years old had been more than thirty manager of another international trading company in the same headquarters we occupied now, and he had had to submit payments suspension for his bad managing more than another reason, since the balance reflected debts to suppliers of eighty million pesetes and some invoiced amounts unpaid worth two hundred millions. What happened was no doubt something amazing. Molino used to sell on credit whatever customers from Nigeria and Cameroon asked for, but these customers didn’t pay. To suppliers he handed out drafts and cheques which were not accepted for payment in the bank, yet after having negotiated and got the best payment conditions. And the situation was being repeated in this new company, that was pulling the sentence of having among its customers, none the less, the same the old one had, apart from other new ones, whom Molino had confessed to me from the start seemed to him opportunists alike. Two months after I began working for the company we had sent cement and wine to Nigeria and aluminium profiles and wine to Cameroon for a total amount of forty million pesetes and suppliers claimed to us twenty. If customers don’t pay, corresponds to delay payments to suppliers, because what we cannot do is losing money clumsily, Molino reasoned. Of course, the very moment Molino came in I had to go to his bureau to make the necessary phone calls to Nigeria’s and Cameroon’s distinguished customers who could not and yet did not want to pay, to whom I transmitted Molino’s beggings so that they should order a transfer, at least to cover the expenses of a new shipment of more Spanish wine containers, with which they could do business in their countries and settle at last all their debts with our company.

The truth is there were several customers’ types: one who paid, on a placements basis, the aluminium profiles we sent to him to Cameroon, those who said they wanted to pay but could not, and the ones who said insolently they wouldn’t pay. Molino’s face when I told him that Egbulem, a very expensive cradles cameroonian customer on the phone, said he didn’t want to pay and besides he was laughing, was to be alarmed. He became red in his face completely, his veins dilated. How is it possible?, he asked me and kept looking at me like not believing it. He’s a wretch!, he shouted after. I don’t want to speak to him, he said with displicent gesture. And seeing I was going to say something on the phone to very expensive cradles’ cameroonian customer he said. Or better I will, Yes, yes, he said. Give me the phone, I want to say two words to him.

Mr. Egbulem, began Molino snorting for long, Nous n’avons pas temps à perdre. Écoutez-moi, s’il vous plaît. Je pense... Je pense que nous devons faire un effort pour mettre fin à cette situation. Écoutez, écoutez, écoutez, s’il vous plaît. Here he took breath and continued then: Je vous invite à venir en Espagne. Je vous payarai le passage d’avion via Zurich comme la dernière fois et le même hôtel près de notre bureau pendant une semaine. D’accord, Mr. Egbulem? Écoutez, écoutez. Merci. Merci. De rien. De rien. Écoutez-moi, s’il vous plaît. Then silence and after: Avez-vous pensé quel montant vous me donnerez quand vous êtes à Madrid? Here another silence, listening, and after: Bon. Bon. D’accord. D’accord, Mr. Egbulem. De rien, de rien, Mr. Egbulem. Un instant. Un instant, s’il vous plaît. C’est très important. N’oubliez pas m’envoyer le montant que vous pouvez pour diminuer la dette, un peu au moins. Combien? Dix mille francs. La semaine prochaine? Ok, Mr. Egbulem. D’accord. Merci. Merci. Au revoir, he said putting down the receiver and saying after: How quick he was to promise ten thousand and hung up!

I remained worried for I knew already by then our phone call had cost more than three thousand pesetas, and that ten thousand francs the cameroonian said he was going to send were two hundred thousand pesetas that didn’t cover the charges for the round way airplane ticket Douala-Madrid via Zurich, and his staying at the hotel would cause as much at least in charges. On top of this it didn’t occur nothing to good Molino but search in his drawers for a picture he had of Monsieur Egbulem for me to see, he said, what aspect our debtor had. When I saw him in the picture I thanked everybody and God especially for not having him in front of me, but to thousands of kilometers distance. More than a human being he looked like a very black gorilla and smiled showing his prodigious teeth as though having in front an appetising dish ready to chew venting his anger on it with jawbone’s strikes. Half joking I commented to Molino that the aspect of Monsieur Egbulem might cause me a paranoia or an extreme fixed idea and that it would be possible my going to denounce him to a police station submitting to policemen the picture as a proof for them to see I wasn’t inventing anything. Why?, Molino wanted to know. He has a beast’s face, he went on saying, but I don’t think he has eaten anyone so far, he concluded smiling. Then I made use of my abilities to do what's my duty with no fear of vengeances and said: I’m not referring to our customer Monsieur Egbulem, but to you, Molino, who being the boss asked me to speak to him for a good while not knowing I how Monsieur Egbulem was, and not associating his aspect with the detail that he owed us money, and besides having to insist to him to pay us, by your command, of course. Molino laughed a lot and said to me that if I could get Monsieur Egbulem settle his debt with us I would in return be compensated.

The curriculums matter was something I followed with special interest, the truth is I did this because all them sent their own pictures and I used to spend some time a few moments imagining the French girls appearing in the pictures in my bureau or in the one next door. We received curriculums from other countries as well, mostly from women and men with experience in international trading companies. There was an indian writing from New Delhi pretending to work with us exposing in his letter his great experience at two Spanish companies, one in Málaga and another in Barcelona. In a rather poor Spanish assured to us the owner of Málaga’s company had ruined because he had been cheated in a business the indian himself had carried out. The owner of Barcelona’s company had suffered two heart attacks in less than a month and disgracefully one last heart attack that sent him to his tomb. He said also the two owners were big characters and he was in good competitive consideration by them both. Seeing the company’s pitiful situation I proposed Molino to send a circular by mail to companies all around the world to offer ourselves as suppliers and offering Spanish products and items. Also due to the big quantity of curriculums getting in daily, most from female French students who ought to demonstrate a practising period at an international trading Spanish company, I convinced Molino to make a contract to one or two. We made a contract to three, all them French students, for a three months period. After the three first and during the year I was working there, other French students were coming to do a practising period they needed to accomplish. This way I got the office’s atmosphere become something younger and cheerer, thinking myself that with this initiative too I could move ahead the company. Among the curriculums, or rather among the curriculums’ pictures I chose two brown hair French students to do the practising period with us and the agency in charge of finding companies to students to do the practising periods convinced me so that they would be three instead of two. As time went by other students came too, but I got more impressed by the three first especially. First was beautiful and plump, and always blushing, Pardo was her surname, same as Emilia Pardo Bazán, the known galician writress to whom the Galicians so much tenderness prodigates and to whose family she belonged. I made her a lot of questions to improve my commercial French level as much as possible. Second had little tits dancing almost constantly inside a chosen yellow T-shirt with a long necklace. The sight made me laugh and I feigned when getting nearer to her and she looked at me askance and with an impish face smiled to me knowing I was pending about her tits. Besides she wore glasses fitting her general aspect of bombom-secretary. Third one was impertinent or she seemed it, for one day she arrived late, she had been dancing and singing all night long in a concert with her argentinian boyfriend and she finally had gone with him to having some squid which smelled throughout the office and she hadn’t slept. She smelled to marijuana also and as she came too between flightly and rushed, I said to her she may go to her place to take a shower and sleep, but she said to me her argentinian boyfriend was waiting for her at the office’s entrance door, if I wouldn’t mind his entering and waiting for her inside, that he would not disurb, he would stand shut up in a corner, she didn’t want to lose a day’s work although she was very sleepy. I said to her that amongst all the odours I was able to distinguish there was too the one of her argentinian boyfriend, what she’d better do was going to her place to take a shower and sleep or sleep and take a shower after and forget her boyfriend and her work to be capable of doing both things.

Almaleh’s business trip to Romania was an apotheosis. We got in touch with more than fifty Spanish companies from which we asked for products’ samples so that Almaleh could offer them during his staying for two weeks at a Bucharest’s hotel. He finally couldn’t take them all with him because the volume of them was extraordinary. The hotel was Bucharest’s best and Almaleh spent most of his time somewhere else, for we had to be for four days after him until we could speak to him. When we get through at last he told us he had a lot of high level appointments at very important companies’ headquarters. Between the trip, the staying and other Molino spent a million pesetes. As a result of this trip Almaleh brought with him some proforma invoices of what supposedly was an order from a romanian pharmaceutical company interested in sanitary towels and diapers. It was impossible for me not to understand the Romanian in a fax by which they said they were a small pharmacy and they could try to sell sanitary towels and diapers to other pharmacies, but it would take them time, and then in another too where they said they were negotiating a bank’s credit letter from the orders placed with them, what we could do was to send a truck to Romania with sanitary towels and diapers for them to start doing business, but under no circumstances they could send no amount in advance. I could also listen how, upon Almaleh’s insistence in calling them by phone everyday, last times they felt themselves obliged to insult him, kindly and all, so that he should leave them in peace. In short, the business wasn’t carried out and Molino cursed the day he had disposed a million to open our market in Romania sending Almaleh and all the time lost too and all the useless and very expensive phone calls. Some times, with Almaleh making his round in the office, he summouned me to his bureau and asked me if I believed like he did that Almaleh had cheated us, that in fact he had gone to his country for holidays, living like a king and giving himself much importance. I replied there was no doubt, for when now he spoke with Romania he laughed a lot as he usually did, and besides he breathed as though the null and void results of his mission would have to be taken as good, and also that he hoped to be soon the main actor of a new commercial adventure on our own, and that I had heard him say that the ones in Bucharest’s pharmacy only had had good words but he was sure they had sold all the samples he had brought to them. I did also mention to Molino that Max, who didn’t get on well with Almaleh since they reproached mutually of using the telephone unmeasuredly and only in their own interest, what I didn’t comment with Molino because he could see in telephone company’s invoices on which days, where to and for how long the phone calls had been made, had told me to be sure the other had been planning his trip to Romania for months with the intention of living as a king and giving himself much importance, that he couldn’t understand how he, Molino, didn’t realise it.

Certain day just coming in to the office at about ten, once neither Max nor Almaleh were speaking on their phones, he told me he had received a pharmaceutical products’ quotation request for a client of Nigeria, and thus it was how for some days I was sticked up to the phone, to the fax and to the telex in touch with a lot of pharmaceutical companies that sent us their prices and informed us about discounts which would be made depending on the size of the order we placed. I did the job not understanding very well why our client, a nigerian pharmacist, fell back on us to import pharmaceutical products instead of doing it through companies makers or distributors of them. When I wanted to know why this Molino told me the client would come from Nigeria two days later to follow up the shipment of products of which we had given him a price already, so I waited for two days to see how in fact things were. As I suspected things were not as they seemed. The client came to the office accompanied by Molino, who had picked him up at a nearby hotel in his Mercedes and had parked in our warehouse with some ceremony. He gave me a couple or his company’s cards which made me doubt from the start, the name being Donangu, according to him his wife’s surname, its address was convoluted to the point I thought it couldn’t exist, the telephone number was not the right one because they wronged it when the cards were made and besides he hardly paid attention to products’ names and prices I was quoting to him assigning a discount negotiated by Molino so that everyone could have a margin. The second day I asked him why he insisted so much about a concrete product called Pemoline. Then he solemnly said to me the moment had come and asked me to listen to him and later to translate to Molino what he was going to say. He confessed speaking slowly and using English and French his true intention was to buying uniquely and exclusively Pemoline, which was made by the company Pliva Zagreb in Croatia, by then in the midst of a war against Serbia. The pils’ bottles of 50 pils of Pemoline cost about 2,5$ and it turned out in Nigeria people who bought Pemoline’s pils and drank alcohol later to increase their intoxication paid the dealers 10$ for each pil. We might have an idea about how much benefit could be obtained if he had got in his power Pemoline’s pils bottles to satisfy requests. As I had been asked, I translated to Molino what he had confessed to me. Molino’s reaction was kind of especially interested. He told me to get in touch with whom it was necessary to be well informed of how the business could be done and stayed in his bureau with the nigerian client. I got in touch by telex with the croatian factory, from where they replied in the midst of the war we needed a Health’s Ministry authorisation from the destination country, I phoned the Health’s Ministry, the Chamber of Commerce and spoke with a lot of people to finish by being informed the business could only be done with a Health Ministry’s authorisation. Once knowing this the client told us he had come over to Spain hoping to have the possibility of getting Pemoline and he was already warned about it would be more than probable the croatians would ask him for an authorisation, but he had chosen us for the name Rochesport, S. L. of our company and being almost unknown and a small company, so that if not Pemoline we could get for him another alternative pils in the Spanish black market. Molino and I did not understood each other with a simple glance. And after this the client went away to his hotel and we both lingered in his bureau speaking about drugs and drugs’ byproducts. I finally had to admit I knew something about the pils that were taken in certain ambiences and about the one that were mixed up with alcohol. Too late I realised Molino had craftily taken this information from me with some intention and that night we both finished by going through Malasaña’s zone looking for pils dealers who may supply us big quantities. So I saw myself obliged while sweating to mention the client next day the distress in which Molino and I had come into walking through drogadicts quarters searching for pils until night late. At this point we three realised we could not rely on one of the other two to do this kind of business and the client said goodbye at once saying he should be back to his hotel inmediately. A little after same day Molino rang him up to offer himself to take him to the airport the day of his flight back to Nigeria and they at the hotel didn’t know already where the client had gone to.

After this I suggested Molino to advertise in a newspaper’s business section to attract the attention of a capitalist partner who invested his money in our nearly five hundred square meters warehouse which was empty since a long time ago. By Molino’s bureau came some presumed partners presumed capitalists who said they may be interested in making use of the warehouse. One of them whose name was Megino, small and slender man who always wore the same clear grey suit that didn’t fit him well, offered himself to bring goods to carry out a commercial labour, he as sales boss, and relying on a chosen group of salesmen. He said he was canned food distributor of several commercial houses and although I took it for granted this was a lie, as Molino came to an agreement with him and I was indignant, I made inquiries of my own and ascertained that actually nobody knew who Megino was at these commercial houses; more yet, everybody wanted to know who he was, because I told them he went saying he might get goods under a deposit basis and very interesting special discounts. He was coming to the office for two or three days to say hello and to promise goods would be brought in soon. One day, finally, he brought in three buns little boxes that were taken ceremoniously to the warehose, I don’t know what for, twenty buns in each little box, sixty buns in total. Next week he came to visit us everyday to be sure the buns were in the warehouse, for his visits, inevitably, finished always in the warehouse just beside the small table were the three little boxes buns were. And here we have the buns, they haven’t escaped, so-called Megino even once said. As one day he didn’t come to the office Molino asked me if I thought we could do business with this character. I responded the character had made us believe he was capitalist partner, that he had lied when he said he represented some companies that might supply goods to us, and that he was making use of the warehouse now, that it wasn’t worth wasting time. In good time it occurred to me: Molino picked up the phone right away and from a paper on his desk he went reading a number at same time he dialled it. I was silent waiting for the other to be through the phone to listen to what Molino said to him. He asked for him very politely, and then said: Please tell him I’ll ring up again in a few minutes. And after to me: He’s busy at the moment. Molino spent his time reasoning about the amount we could ask him for for making use of the warehouse, because not yet, but in future he may fill up with goods our warehouse. I insisted in accusing him of liar and opportunist. Yes, yes, he said to me, he’s got to pay his part of the rent since he disposes of our place. When he phoned again and spoke with Megino he started saying he hoped the other was all right, that it wasn’t important he couldn’t attend the phone before, the woman had already told him he was in the toilet, that that was being busy, and he asked the other for an appointment half an hour later, but he couldn’t but get a date for next day, even after repeating a thousand times it was very important and he would pay for coffees. I finished by not understanding, but Molino wanted to be convinced the other would be a long lasting partner. The following day they had coffee and spoke about business. Molino told me the other had spoken to him of a friend of his who would come to the office to be introduced to us, that as far as he had been told this last was a great salesman. They were expected in a few minutes. The new type was drunker than the vinestocks wherever thay are. He smelled from the distance and swaggered to have sold one of the three buns little boxes and to have had something in a very good bar with his client after the sale. That client had been the shop’s owner for a long time and buys everything to him and always invites him to the famous bar where one can have the best. I told myself I knew something important had happened. The warehouse had been witness of a mess. Molino took advantage of the situation to lead Megino into his bureau and ask him for money reminding him there were two buns little boxes in the warehouse and he had already sold one. The other was scared and said he understood he asked him for money, that he knew too business between them should be discussed to reach a mutual agreement some time sooner or later. The day after he came with two extracts of his two current accounts where there were reflected the amounts he may count with. 17 pesetas in one and 3.000 some in red numbers in another. He said, with pitied face he could afford no money at the moment, that we could see he had his accounts shivering, but he laughed much when finishing by saying he had a nephew millonaire in Australia. Just what he needed, I said to myself. A little after two capitalist partners, a mature argentinian man with hair and moustache a mixture of grey and blond, a retired Spanish policeman who always wore a navy blue jacket and later this last companion’s son, were introduced to each other for the first time in our office and came to an agreement with Molino to start doing business. They would be in time a legally constituted company, how mightn’t be not so, for distributing food products. These new partners didn’t put any money and began at once a campaign for requesting samples of canned food, cold meat and wines from a good number of companies of makers and distributors and interviewed some salesmen to have them coming out to the streets to sell goods as these were coming. How Megino must be raging, the new partners said when goods came in, for they knew this had proposed the same to Molino and he hadn’t gotten not even a can. In a week’s time they got about 15.000 pesetes they kept in a bottle. We had food for a month more or less: all kind of canned food, cold meat and a good collection of wines not everybody could touch. They were waiting for cheese. You’ll see when we have the cheese, was the partners’ saying. They spent a lot of time speaking by phone some days in the morning and in the evenings with Molino’s consentment.

One day I found a trailer in our warehouse, full of israelite beer Maccabi blend. When they had sold only ten boxes of beer cans twenty cans each in the nearest bars from the warehouse, they realised all the trailer’s cans had an expiry date for next month. Max said Molino had become mad and Almaleh took the advantage of offering Molino Romanian products of Romanian companies established in Spain. The three partners couldn’t stand the one by then yet two buns little boxes, and this didn’t want to do neither cold meat nor wines business, because he had a salesman friend who would drink it up all, for the moment he had enough with buns and his canned food sales net needn’t have partners. I didn’t know how to say goodbye. I couldn’t wait one day and I said to Molino I would leave the company or whatever it was. He gave me a cheque I waited two months to get cash, because there was no money in the account, he was at a tight position and only thing I could do was waiting for the cameroonian alluminium profiles customer, only one who sent up money now and then, should send a promised sum and that was how I helped Molino nearly every day for two months not getting any money while waiting to receive the transfer from Cameroon. I spent my time with the French students, with Max, with Almaleh, with the partners, I had no choice. I went to the bank every day too in case I could get cash the cheque, although Molino told me there was no money, and the cashier always looked at me on seeing me and always moved his head in a negative gesture, until the day Molino showed me the account’s net amount and said to me with a good man’s glance and half joking to hurry up to get the cheque cash, and that day the cashier smiled and said Come on, give it to me.