Читать книгу Funny Money: In Search of Alternative Cash - David Boyle - Страница 13

It was time to seek out my lodgings in a bed and breakfast in Dupont Circle, a bright area of bars, minor embassies and inquisitive dogs on very long leads. Walking from the Dupont Circle metro station, past the usual array of Scientologists and bizarre newspapers, the first thing you notice is the vast potholes in the streets – almost enough to engulf a British Mini. Then there are the real estate notices outside the houses for sale, many with photos of the smiling estate agent you would be dealing with. Could these people really believe their hairstyles would help sell houses? It hardly seemed possible. Dupont Circle is also a city centre outpost of Irish bars –‘give us your thirsty, your famished …’ says one of them; a neighbourhood of ice cream vendors in shiny basements and strangely unkempt photocopy centres.

Every Washingtonian has a detailed inventory of exactly how safe each street can be. The subject seems to obsess them. Dupont Circle was described to me as ‘pretty safe’. But since it is near the more dangerously cosmopolitan district of Adams-Morgan, I was urged to be careful. Yet when I arrived at my bed and breakfast lodging to find everybody out, there was an envelope addressed to me sticking out of the letter box. Inside was the front door key and a note. ‘Hi,’ it said. ‘Welcome. The round key opens the front door, but please lock it when you get inside. Thanks. Irene.’

I struggled with the door once I had got through it, trying to work out how to lock it again. I thought it was worth following the instructions. Up the stairways, there was an unexpected clutter of statuettes, Indian wall-hangings with fake precious stones, sentimental pictures of fin de siècle actresses, heroic pictures of elephants. It was a bed and breakfast tour de force, all gathered around a worn red stair carpet and a large number of tiny faded handwritten notes of instructions for the guests. ‘Please use the shower for no more than three minutes to conserve water. Thanks. Irene’, said one. ‘Please turn off the light in the bathroom. Thanks. Irene’, said another.

When I made it to my bedroom on the top floor, there was a similar East-meets-West collection in there, setting off the white iron bedstead to advantage, cooled by the breeze from two fans. I stared out of the window watching people in the surrounding apartments relaxing in front of the television or pottering around the kitchen. This was rather nosy of me, I admit, but Washingtonians don’t seem to favour curtains, and it was purely in the interests of research.

My eye was drawn away by the sight of a most unusual bearded Buddha figure on the top shelf of the rattling white bookshelf in the corner. There was a note on it, and fascinated, I climbed gingerly on to a stool to find out what it was. I had hoped it would explain what was clearly an object of great antiquity, but the note said: ‘Please don’t put wet clothes over the furniture. Thanks. Irene’.

I met Irene the following morning, as she made me breakfast. She was an ebullient character, with a mound of carefully crafted dyed black hair and an encyclopaedic knowledge of English stately homes, which she expected me to reciprocate. She was not very interested in my quest, or about new kinds of money. She urged me instead to go and see a number of local galleries, and in particular, Dumbarton Oaks, where the original agreement to set up the United Nations had been signed half a century before. And I’m afraid I never did.

I even told her about Edgar Cahn. ‘He sounds like a commie, pinko socialist,’ she said, with a little laugh to show she was only half-serious.