The east coast of Madagascar is spectacularly straight when seen from the air. It makes the island look like a great ear that has been has been surgically sliced off some giant’s head. The ear in question would have a surface area twice the size of Great Britain, since Madagascar is the world’s fourth largest island. The west coast is more bulbous, and irregular, and off the north western tip, the four Comoros islands sit like little flecks of discarded flesh. When the sea is calm there are eddying swathes of red in the shining blue ocean adding to the notion that this land is bleeding. The billowing red flux might as well be blood, since it is made by the rich earth being swept away into the sea after the tropical rains. Much of the ancient forests that held the soil in place have been cut down to make way for cattle, or simply to provide firewood for the fast growing population. Flying inland towards the capital, Antananarivo, perched on its high plateau, you can’t miss the bare patches of earth. The red clay scars revealed where the Great Mother, as the Malagasy call their home, is being rubbed raw. Every time I see it, I feel a stab of pain.
Up close, the bare earth is the colour of dried apricots; a dramatic backcloth for the display of mudbrick houses topped with thatch. I can see water buffaloes pulling ploughs through terraced paddy fields and farmers bent double tending to their staple crop. The Malagasy love their rice, and proudly proclaim that they consume more of it, per capita, than the Chinese.
There were soldiers on the tarmac at Ivato airport as the plane taxied towards the terminal building. Close to where my plane parked there was another, rather shinier Boeing 737, than the one I had taken from Africa. The polished tail plane was decorated with the elegant fanshape of the traveller’s palm, and in man sized lettering the fuselage bore the words REPOBLIKAN’I MADAGASIKARA. The president, Marc Ravolonamana, had recently acquired the plane for his official use, a controversial move in a country with so many financial problems. The plane had reportedly cost twelve million dollars, something of a bargain, but it seemed like an ill-advised display of hubris, especially when the state airline Air Madagascar was in dire financial straits and had virtually abandoned much of its internal network due to a shortage of aircraft and aviation fuel. The plane also seemed an awkward asset for the man who had finally ousted the island’s corrupt former dictator, Didier Ratsiraka.
Ratsiraka, otherwise known as the ‘Admiral’, came to power in 1975, leading the Avant Garde de la Révolution Malgache (AREMA). The Admiral developed a peculiarly idiosyncratic brand of politics known as Christian-Marxism. With help from North Korea and the Soviet Union he effectively destroyed Madagascar’s economy, turning the island from a net exporter of rice into a country dependent on handouts from the Eastern bloc. Meanwhile, he fomented racial discontent between the Merina tribe of the central highlands and the more ‘African’ peoples of the coastal regions. It was an astute strategy, assuring him of votes from the impoverished, illiterate masses and at the same time allowing him to intimidate the intellectual and aristocratic highlanders. The Merina, (pronounced mairn), the clan which ruled Madagascar from the beginning of the nineteenth century, are distinctly un-African in appearance, tracing their origins back to the time when settlers from Indonesia first reached the islands two thousand years ago. They provided Madagascar with a feudal, aristocratic hierarchy and a monarchy which was abolished by the colonial French. Ethnically and economically, the Merina dominate the central plateau and the capital, Antananarivo, but Ratsiraka came from the coast, playing up his humble peasant origins in keeping with the spirit of socialism.
In good Marxist tradition Ratsiraka established a Supreme Revolutionary Council, and even produced his own little book of aphorisms, but unlike Chairman Mao, he made it green instead of red. Under his rule, the country fell quietly, but steadily, into a mire of poverty, corruption and infra-structural decay. Far from bringing power to the masses of the lowlands, the Revolutionary era allowed centralised state power to strengthen. Antananarivo, and its predominantly Merina elite became the epicentre of power, wealth and corruption. As the roads fell apart, the provinces became even more remote, and in many cases virtually inaccessible except for those fortunate enough to be able to travel by air. Antananarivo, with its picturesque clay bricks, pitched mediaeval roofs and rolling hills, might be one of the world’s most beautiful capitals. Instead, it became a twilit city beset by potholes, power cuts, bubonic plague and cholera. Arriving to report for the BBC in 1988, I still remember my first sight of hovels built from sticks on the pavement, with small groups of semi-naked children gathered outside. Nearby, their parents were tending fires for making charcoal, the whole family covered in soot like a miserable vision of Victorian urban squalor. The wealthier families barricaded themselves into their houses at night and employed watchmen and guards to protect them while they slept.
Vagabonds and cut-throats stalked the streets while Ratsiraka was holed up in his massive palace well away from the city. One day I took a taxi out of the city to catch a glimpse of the building. We stopped on a hill half a mile away to survey the presidential enclave from on high. Within minutes a military lorry thundered along the dirt road to where my driver had stopped. It blocked us in, and twenty soldiers leapt out brandishing AK47’s. They demanded to know what I was doing, and why I might be taking photographs of the presidential palace. I was able to convince them that I was simply a tourist interested in the view, and that I didn’t know that the monstrous, Korean designed palace was of any significance. They let us go after pushing my driver around a bit, warning him not to bring any more vazaha up this road.
In 1991, as the eastern bloc began to disintegrate, the Admiral was quick to proclaim that it was time for a change of philosophy, and he took steps to liberalise certain parts of the economy. The island was in dire straits, with the World Bank estimating that by 1990, seventy percent of the population was living in poverty, twice as many as at independence thirty years earlier. It was now officially amongst the ten poorest countries in the world. Pressure from the World Bank and other key donors was being put upon Ratsiraka to bring in economic reform. Without aid from the Soviet Union, the Admiral had no choice, and he agreed to liberalise key industries like petroleum, telecommunications and transport, as well as some aspects of food production. But crucially, vanilla would remain under state control. For years, foreign exporters had been forced to abide by a set price of around seventy US dollars a kilogram, most of which went into ‘government’ coffers. Ratsiraka wasn’t about to let anyone else take a share.
Vanilla and politics have never been far apart in Madagascar. Although the amount of vanilla produced worldwide is relatively small as an agricultural commodity, in Madagascar it is a vital part of the economy. Since 1900, vanilla has consistently represented a large share of the country’s export earnings, and it is the only economic area in which Madagascar has an opportunity to influence a world market. The island consistently accounts for half of the world’s vanilla production. Under Ratsiraka, the government imposed an eighty-percent tax on every kilogram of vanilla beans that left the island, making vanilla responsible for a staggering ten-percent of State earnings. The combination of monopolistic Marxist export control and the fact that Madagascar dominated the market by virtue of sheer size, led to interesting benefits for those controlling the industry. Ratsiraka inherited a system set up at the behest of French economic advisors at the time of Independence. A stabilisation fund, in the form of a parastatal company (the Caisse de Stabilisation) had been created to restrict exports, and so capitalise on Madagascar’s dominance in world production. In addition, the price paid to farmers was kept low, so as to discourage excess production, and any resultant fall in price. For a century, Madagascar had been the key player in the world market for natural vanilla, and as the largest exporter could easily influence world prices. The high quality of Bourbon vanilla also gave Malagasy exporters a lead. In addition, although there were at least sixty thousand vanilla farmers, the internal vanilla trade in Madagascar was dominated by a select elite; those with the financial muscle to deal in such a valuable cash crop. To cement their position, an international ‘Vanilla Alliance’ was created with its neighbours Réunion and Comoros. Each country then agreed to an annual quota of exports so as to further control the world price.
There were negative consequences to all this rigid control. First, Madagascar started stockpiling vanilla, beans that it didn’t want to export for fear of allowing demand to exceed supply. Malagasy exporters were in effect paid a subsidy for those vanilla stocks that were not exported. Allegedly, these would also serve as a buffer to be sold if the country ever experienced a poor crop year. The Caisse paid them a fee for storing this stock. Inevitably this led to corruption, with exporters and curers claiming the fee for stocks that never existed. As Ratsiraka’s regime became increasingly corrupt the Caisse starting paying fees only to those vanilla exporters in favour with the regime. Some exporters were given a better deal than others if they paid off the right people in the Ministry of Finance. It was not unknown for vanilla to be exported as ‘cloves’ so as to avoid paying the full complement of government taxes.
A further consequence of state intervention in the Malagasy vanilla industry was that Indonesian vanilla growers saw an opportunity. In competing with Madagascar, the Indonesians were faced with Bourbon beans of superior quantity and what economists call oligopsony: a situation where a small number of buyers influence the price paid for an agricultural product. Indonesia started to increase its own production, and sell them at a lower price. The Indonesians couldn’t compete on quality, but they could certainly increase the amount they grew. This was important, because buyers from the USA realised that when it came to making vanilla extract, there was no need to buy gourmet grade beans from Madagascar. As Georges Randriamiharisoa had explained to me in Antalaha: if the beans were simply going to be mashed up and have their flavour extracted, it didn’t really matter what they looked like. For many food applications, there was no reason pay top dollar for immaculately sorted and graded Bourbon beans. However, food manufacturers might still choose Bourbon beans for their consistently higher vanillin content. Indonesian beans would be cheaper, but manufacturers might need to use twice as many to achieve the same strength of flavour.
In the last decade of the twentieth century, Madagascar’s internal political upheavals were to have a devastating impact on the vanilla trade. In 1993, Ratsiraka was voted out of office, and replaced by President Albert Zafy, who promised true democracy and the birth of a genuinely free-market economy. The new president increased economic reforms, and abolished the Caisse de Stabilisation—replacing it with the Madagascar Vanilla Institute (IVAMA). The Institute did not have a monopoly over the amount of vanilla that could be exported, but it was staffed by essentially the same people who had run the Caisse de Stabilisation.
In 1996, disillusioned with continuing corruption, and the lack of economic progress promised by Zafy, the Malagasy electorate voted Ratsiraka back into power. It was a classic case of ‘better the devil you know’. The consequence for vanilla trade was that Ratsiraka promptly abolished IVAMA, hoping to get his hands on the vanilla industry once again. However, pressure from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund meant he could no longer insist on total state control over the crop. With official price fixing no longer in force, the government had to content itself with imposing a tax of around twenty-one US dollars per kilogram on vanilla exports. Those who had pressurised the government to adopt free market principles in the vanilla trade also made a mistake. They assumed that the market was inelastic, that world demand would remain at similar levels no matter the price. In fact, the vanilla business showed great elasticity of demand, and prices fell in the face of excess supply. By 1996, the price of vanilla had more than halved, to roughly $25 a kilogram. In the following year it dipped below $20 a kilo and remained at that level until 2000. The peasant farmers of the SAVA were being paid fifty cents a kilo for green beans.
No-one knows how much corruption there has been in Madagascar’s vanilla market, but it seems highly unlikely that such a key industry would have escaped the kind of financial skulduggery that characterised many government operations during Ratsiraka’s reign. It seems probable that businessmen with vested interests in the export trade would have had to make a deal with the ancien regime. The Admiral’s era coincided with the period when Madagascar supplied just over seventy percent of the world’s vanilla. Fortunes had been made with vanilla, and the men in charge of selling the crop to foreign buyers were unlikely to give up their role in its trade. Thanks to Ratsiraka, they had no local competition.
Although the 1996 elections had returned the Admiral to power, his new role as a democratically elected president left him considerably weaker than he had been in the Seventies and Eighties. Having had a taste of freedom, ordinary Malagasy people were no longer afraid of showing their displeasure at government inefficiency and crumbling living standards. In Antananarivo the collapse of communism had spawned a remarkable cult of civil disobedience and a culture of truly massive public demonstrations. It was not unusual to see half a million people blocking the streets of the capital whenever the government made an unpopular decision. In the 1990’s general strikes also became something of a popular pastime.
At the very end of 2000, a parliamentary election was held, and although Ratsiraka’s AREMA party did well in the provinces, a boycott by opposition voters rendered the poll almost meaningless. However, Ratsiraka remained in power as Madagascar adheres to the French system of one round of legislative, or parliamentary elections, with a separate contest for the presidency. When it was time for presidential elections in December 2001, the opposition candidate, Marc Ravalomanana, claimed victory. His party represented something new, the promise of a fresh start for the island. Ravalomanana was a self-made millionaire, a man who had built his fortune on dairy products, especially yoghurt. A devout Christian, he called his party Tiako i Madagasikara— I Love Madagascar. If nothing else it had a more appealing ring to it than most of the other one hundred and thirty three parties contesting the election which included names like the “Party Uniting Common Efforts” and “Work, Justice and Development in Harmony”.
Victory at the polls was not enough to displace the Admiral. Didier Ratsiraka simply refused to acknowledge defeat, brazenly claiming that Ravalomanana was corrupt. For the first few months of 2001, violent protests and riots between rival factions caused chaos in Antananarivo. The Supreme Court ruled that the votes should be recounted, and the two rival presidents agreed. The court found in Ravalomanana’s favour, but then the Admiral simply refused to go. He declared a state of martial law, and for seven months, Madagascar effectively ceased to function as an economy. There were two Presidents, with Ravalomanana installing himself in the government offices in the capital, and Ratsiraka setting up a rival regime on the coast at Toamasina. Apart from being his home town, Toamasina is also the main port of entry for ships arriving in Madagascar. And the only port from which supplies can easily reach the capital by road. Troops and supporters of Ratsiraka mounted a blockade, and bridges and power lines were blown up to cut off access to Antananarivo. The capital ground to a halt. The two rival presidents each created their own administration, including naming their own governors for the Central Bank. Neither man could gain access to Madagascar’s finances however, since almost all of the national cash was kept in the Federal Reserve of the USA. Unsure of whose administration was the legitimate government, the USA simply blocked access to the funds until the political dispute could be resolved. Air Madagascar ran out of fuel.
While the political situation in Madagascar was chaotic and the road to true democracy decidedly rocky, the vanilla growers, curers and exporters were also contending with the forces of nature. On the night of the second of April 2000, an intense tropical cyclone hit the vanilla growing region on the north east coast. Cyclone Hudah was two hundred fifty miles wide, and travelling at almost two hundred miles an hour. Centering in on Antalaha, it destroyed an estimated one thousand acres of vanilla plantations, perhaps a fifth of the total, prompting fears that the 2001 season would see a shortage of beans available for export. Since the demise of the government cartel, several years earlier, Madagascar had been gradually, and covertly, getting rid of its surplus stock of vanilla. There was little, if any, left with which to make up the shortfall. In 2000 the vanilla price doubled, hovering close to $50 a kilogram. Vanilla dealers watched in alarm as an historic economic bubble began to grow.
At one stage during the impasse between Ravalomanana and Ratsiraka in their rival capitals, it was mooted that Madagascar might split into a collection of provincial federations, each running their own economy. Rumours spread that Ratsiraka would keep the SAVA region, and its all-important vanilla industry for himself. The political chaos of 2002 and the uncertainty over the amount of vanilla likely to come onto the market following the previous year’s hurricane, combined to create understandable nervousness in the market. Without state control of the export price, the stage was set for this mixture of nerves, civil unrest and canny exporters to send the price of good quality vanilla sky high. Speculators, eager to push up the price to foreign buyers, were happy to exaggerate the potential negative impact of both the weather and the civil war when talking to foreign buyers. They created a frenzied atmosphere in which foreign buyers were desperate to secure supplies of cured beans, and committed themselves to contracts at prices that were more than double what they had paid the year before.
Far from stabilising the price, as some analysts had predicted, the free market had caused the price to go into uncharted territory. In 1999 foreign buyers had been accustomed to retail values of between twenty-five and forty dollars a kilogram for their cured vanilla, but by 2001 the figure had shot up to one hundred and fifty dollars. By 2002 Malagasy exporters were expecting $250 a kilo, and by 2003 the price had reached almost $400. Similarly, heavy rains during the 2002 season led to a shortage of beans reaching the market in 2004. The rains had a doubly negative effect; they caused flowers to drop from the vines preventing them being pollinated, and they lowered the air temperature, causing the vines to produce fewer flowers. Due to the delay between picking the beans and when they appear on the supermarket shelves the vanilla traders knew that the weather in 2002 would have a serious impact on supermarket prices in 2004, another factor to include in their negotiations. Some buyers feared that premium grade vanilla would reach a retail price $500 a kilogram. They were correct.
Meanwhile, the political crisis between Ratsiraka and Ravalomanana was finally resolved in July 2002, when the Admiral agreed to go into exile in France. Ravalomanana’s victory in the previous year’s elections was recognised by the international community and he set about establishing his new ‘corruption free’ government for the island. Government officials were given large pay rises in an effort to obviate the need for them to accept bribes.
Ratsiraka might have fled the country, but the sight of the soldiers on the tarmac at the airport reminded me of the first time I had come to Madagascar. Back then, dozens of rather scruffy looking soldiers had been in attendance at the airport, and they also manned the immigration booth inside the terminal.
I had been in Seychelles, and my flight connections meant spending a night in Mauritius. Early that morning, just three hours before I was due to catch the Air Mauritius flight to Antananarivo, I had fallen and injured my ankle, tearing the ligaments on both sides and, as I learned later, causing a slight break in the bone. I couldn’t put any weight on my foot at all, but I was so determined to get to Madagascar that I refused to go to a hospital for treatment, as missing my flight to Antananarivo would have meant a three-day wait for the next one. I assumed that within a few hours I would be able to see a doctor in Antananarivo. At least I would be on the magical island I had always wanted to visit. My ankle had swollen to three times its normal size, and the Mauritian hotel had summoned a pharmacist from a nearby village to give me first aid. He inspected my grotesquely swollen joint and grandly pronounced that a fracture was almost certain. On learning that I was insisting on going to the airport, he disappeared and return a little while later with some gel, which he said would help the pain. It turned out to be haemorrhoid ointment, but it did have the effect of numbing the skin. I remember clearly the long walk from the aeroplane to the terminal building, shuffling and hopping along on my good leg as best I could. The night before I broke my ankle I had also developed an extremely volatile stomach upset, necessitating frequent and violent visits to the lavatory. Now I would have to allow extra time to get there.
My only contact in Antananarivo was Voahangy Rakotoarivelo, a journalist who worked for the BBC on a freelance basis, and she had come to the airport to meet me. Her eyes widened in dismay when she saw my swollen leg. I assumed I could go to a clinic and receive treatment, but she shook her head. “No, Tim,” she said sadly. “There is no clinic I can recommend. If it needs an operation, you would have to go back to Mauritius or England.”
I wondered if Voahangy was being overly cautious, but while I was in Antananarivo I met the British ambassador. He reassured me that seeking medical assistance in Antananarivo was not advised. His deputy, whom I knew slightly, had just been flown to Mauritius for medical treatment. The man had been accidentally stabbed while rehearsing an amateur dramatic presentation of an Agatha Christie play. During our meeting, the ambassador said something that I have never forgotten. “This country has minerals, oil, and an amazing natural environment. It also has a sophisticated population. It is a land of enormous potential. And,” he smiled benignly. “It always will be.”
My memories of that first visit consist, in part, of an endless succession of extended visits to extremely primitive lavatories, and of taxi rides in the ubiquitous Renault 4’s, along the worst roads I had ever encountered within a city. I had seen bad rural roads in Africa, but I had never seen a capital with countless potholes along the main streets that were big enough to swallow a car. There were no streetlights that worked, and no foreigner dared journey out at night without a torch. Driving seemed only marginally safer. At night, the drivers had the disconcerting habit of flicking their headlights on only if they were approaching a major junction. Otherwise, they drove without them, telling me that headlamp bulbs were impossible to obtain. The taxis would also switch off their engines whenever there was the prospect of a decent glide downhill, economising on petrol. Because of my broken ankle I often took relatively short taxi journeys, rather than present myself as a slow moving target to the muggers, and potholes, that riddled the streets. Once, a taxi-drive took me from an office on a hill all the way into town at night without ever switching on his engine, coasting all the way and laughing wildly at the effort of controlling the car without letting it lose momentum. He laughed even more wildly when I suggested that the fare should be reduced in accordance with what he had saved on petrol.
Air Madagascar also made an impression on me. Attempting to fly to Antsiranana at the northern tip of the island, I had spent an entire day shuttling between the capital and Mahajanga on the west coast. Twice we took off for Antsiranana only to return to Mahajanga because the pilot had been warned of an approaching storm. Unfortunately radio contact with Antsiranana was unreliable and he didn’t want to risk flying into the airport in case the weather was truly bad. On our second landing at Mahajanga I hobbled over to the airport control tower. There was no impediment to visiting the tower, and I shuffled up the steps to the control room. It was one of those towers with a mushroom shaped blob at the top where, ordinarily, the controllers would have large picture windows on all sides giving a clear view of the tarmac. The windows were there but they were all broken and the lone controller was exposed to the elements. He seemed happy to have a visitor, and he explained to me that he was attempting to make contact with his colleagues at my destination, Antsiranana. He was using a telephone, one of those old cumbersome models with a large wobbly cradle for the heavy Bakelite handset. On the side there was a little handle which he whirled energetically to obtain a line. It wasn’t working, and we chatted for a few minutes about the difficulties of flying in Madagascar. He explained to me that my flight would have to return to Antananarivo. Then he gave me a wink, and looked at my heavily bandaged ankle. “Monsieur should go to the front of the queue,” he said amiably. “There may be some trouble.”
Unfortunately, we were now so late that there were people jostling for space on the plane, passengers from Mahajanga expecting to join our aircraft on its return flight from Antsiranana to the capital. I took the controller’s advice and eased myself close to the metal barrier which prevented passengers wandering onto the apron. Pointing at my bandaged ankle I asked the soldier at the barrier if I could be allowed through ahead of the crowd. A small cash advance paved the way. I was halfway across the tarmac when I heard the stampede behind me. It had been announced that seating for the return flight to Antananarivo would operate on the place libre basis. In other words, whoever found an empty seat and claimed it, could have it. In spite of my ankle, I managed to make it to one of the last free places on board and watched as those left standing in the aisle were ordered off the aircraft by soldiers with guns. It wasn’t pleasant, and I then felt guilty for getting a seat. Women with babies cried. Men in suits produced papers claiming they needed to reach the capital on urgent business. It was all to no avail, and eventually, the hapless stragglers were removed and we returned to Tana, ten hours after we had left on what was scheduled to be a two hour journey.
Madagascar had a deep affect upon me, and I returned several times to witness some of the political transformations that followed the collapse of Christian Marxism. Some things improved, others did not. In 2003 I noticed that apart from the President’s spanking new aeroplane, the collection of rusting Soviet built military aircraft that had always decorated the periphery of Ivato airport had been removed. The soldiers mounting guard and casting a wary eye of the arriving passengers were still heavily armed, but they were now smartly dressed.
Driving into Antananarivo also brought a pleasant surprise—the giant potholes which had blighted the capital had all been repaired. Traffic hazards still included men pulling rickshaws laden with bricks and firewood but all along the route there were new buildings in various stages of construction, and many of the ancient Renault 4’s seemed to have been replaced with new Japanese models. People told me that the political crisis of the last few months had kept tourists away from the island but there were plenty of vazaha to be seen around town. In Antananarivo I met oil prospectors, airline industry executives and agricultural exporters all trying to make contact with the President’s office in the hope of securing entrée into the newly liberated markets abandoned by cronies of the old corrupt regime. There was definitely an air of hope and renewal in the air.
At the Antananarivo Hilton little had changed. The building itself is not attractive, a rather straight up and down block with a large open foyer and a couple of restaurants. On previous visits I had sought refuge in the foyer as a place to conduct interviews for the BBC, relatively sure I would find a reliable supply of electricity and comfortable sofas on which to sit. BBC travel budgets did not however allow me to stay there.
Even in the dark days of AREMA led corruption, the hotel had always been one of the places where the city managed to retain a little glamour. In a small arcade next to the lobby there were small boutiques selling crocodile leather shoes and handbags, finely embroidered linen and silk shawls all made in Madagascar. It was the place where foreign businessmen stayed, and where those with a little spare cash could use the casino on the top floor. I had once done rather well at roulette there, parlaying my small travel allowance into a satisfyingly large pile of Malagasy Francs.
This time I wasn’t counting my pennies quite so avidly. From my room there was a view over Lake Anosy, where the French built their memorial to Madagascar’s First World War dead. Surmounted by Winged Victory the tall column of the memorial sticks up from its little island in the centre of the lake like a candle. It is a noble thing, in direct contrast to the hovels and shacks where the poor of Antananarivo live out their lives. There was a thunderstorm approaching, making the sky a dark mass of fulminating rain clouds. The lake is surrounded by jacaranda trees and their purple blossoms made a garland fit for any hero. That night the rain cleared the streets of all traffic, and as there was no point in trying to leave the hotel I decided to revisit the casino.
The croupiers were petite young Malagasy women, with shining black hair and smooth brown skin. The air was thick with the smell of strong cheap tobacco, and the clientele were predominantly oriental men, chain-smoking and sipping at tumblers of whisky brought to their tables by elegant waitresses in short skirts and waistcoats. The men, many of them visiting Taiwanese sailors and traders, played blackjack or jostled for a space at the roulette tables, slapping down their chips in a frenzy, stretching their stocky torsos across the baize to slip in an extra bet even as the croupiers cried rien ne va plus. The men made croaky har har sounds when the wheel stopped spinning, and the noise didn’t seem to vary much whether they won or lost. The croupiers, with their large brown lemurian eyes were impassive, scooping up the losing chips with blank expressions and never smiling at the gamblers. I played roulette for an hour, staying at the table only until I started to lose. On this visit it was my own money at stake, and I wanted to keep it. I also wanted to get a good night’s rest. There was more travelling to do, and I was waiting for the arrival of Henry Todd, the world’s most important vanilla buyer.