Word: lobo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Very little happens in The Black Book; it is all murk and manifesto. One meets a menagerie of physical and spiritual cripples-Tarquin, a homosexual; Lobo, a whoremonger; Clare, a gigolo; Gregory, a poet whose feelings chafe against a talent one size too small. These tortured grotesques are insignificant, but they prefigure the Alexandria novels. So does the fetid brilliance of the passages in which
...operate openly, since Portugal consistently refuses to sign an international agreement to regulate gold. Since 1946, by the colony's own report, some $601 million worth of gold has poured into-and through-Macao (pop. 200,000). Most of it also passed through the hands of Dr. Pedro Lobo, onetime chief economic officer of Macao, who is credited with monopolizing gold import licenses for Macao's "gold syndicate...
...nearly 70, Lobo (Portuguese for wolf) is gradually turning the business over to his son Rogerio. 36, who is one of the owners of the single-plane airline that flies gold in from Hong Kong, only 15 air minutes away. On arrival each shipment of gold is meticulously weighed by Portuguese authorities determined to collect the import duty of 42? an ounce, the biggest source of Macao's revenue. After the weighing, the authorities discreetly withdraw. Then the syndicate's employees melt down the international gold bars (usually weighing around 27 lbs.) into the portable 9-oz. bars...
Over & Back. Chief suppliers of Macao's gold are a clutch of old-line Hong Kong trading firms, which buy it legally on the London gold market at a pegged price, then pass it along to Lobo's syndicate for a "service charge." Gold dealers in Hong Kong say that it is the Portuguese who let the gold slip into illegal channels. The Portuguese, in turn, blandly declare that the bulk of the gold brought into Macao is immediately smuggled back to Hong Kong in junks or on ferries...