Chapter 13
Episode 13
Participating loan
The air in Vilnius had thickened with the scent of rain and asphalt, but my mind was still by Lake Galvė, where the water had been a mirror for the sky. That afternoon in Trakai had planted something in me—a root, perhaps, or a seed that demanded attention. I found myself returning to the town on weekends, walking the same path past the red-brick castle, watching the swans drift. I spoke with a man who rented rowboats. He had a face like a cracked wooden plank, brown and lined, and he told me about a plot of land just north of the lake, where an old orchard still held fruit in the autumn.
“It could be something,” he said, squinting at the sun. “But money talks, and I have none.”
I had a little. I had saved for years in a currency that no longer existed, then watched it multiply and thin like a tide across a flat beach. The numbers in my bank account felt abstract—figures on a screen, not real weight. But a loan, a participating loan—that was different. That was skin in the game. I had learned the term from a former colleague, a man who spoke of finance the way others spoke of religion: with a fervor that bordered on the mystical. “You don’t just lend,” he said. “You share in the upside. You get a piece of the dream. But also the nightmare.”
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