Most working days would see him sitting in his little office, fiddling around with figures in his notebook, or, simply, doing as little as he possibly could. Occasionally he would emerge from hiding in order to attend to his workers, frequently shouting abuse at them with a booming, guttural voice that challenged the roar and whir of the machinery by which they all were dominated.
In the evenings, Maximilian would shuffle back to his room, his clothes and hands covered with ink, his limbs aching from the day’s boredoms and exertions, his mind exhausted and spent. When in this state, he was barely capable of any intellectual activity at all. Slumping on his bed, dejected, he would stare vacantly up at the ceiling, following the elaborate maze of cracks gradually forming there. Lighting a cigarette, he would watch the smoke rise and curl into spirals before him as he attempted to marshal energies he usually found he no longer possessed.
After spending a couple of months teaching himself how to pick locks, Maximilian began to break into the printing works in the middle of the night. He was working on a private project, a pursuit which kept him almost as busy as his “real” work: learning the art of counterfeiting. It was only through counterfeiting that he saw any likelihood of obtaining freedom. In all, he spent just over a year breaking into the works, entirely between the hours of two and four A.M. on weekday evenings only, hours when he was certain to encounter no one, but which were nevertheless wracked with paranoia and adrenaline. Returning to the building later in the morning, he would fight through waves of exhaustion, doing his best to pretend that he was alert and attentive.
Once he felt assured of his abilities as a counterfeiter, he began to produce an enormous quantity of currency that he initially kept inside a number of boxes hoarded underneath his bed. Once these had accumulated to the extent that he could afford to buy his own printing press, as well as property in which to operate it, he would turn his back on the premises of Mr. Bradley. However, it seemed to take a preternaturally long time for that point to be reached. His progress was exceedingly, unexpectedly slow and many months of boredom and toil ensued, until it seemed as if each working day was spent sleepwalking, and that there would never be any end to his ordeal.
It was during this period that Maximilian first found himself drifting into a state of complete solitude. Wary of his pastime being discovered, he no longer allowed anyone to enter his room. Feeling a general contempt for the direction that society was taking, he turned his back on the very few friends that he had, eventually refusing all meetings without exception. After only a few months of this, he could no longer even contemplate any other way of living.
Finally, in March 1953, he believed that he had printed enough banknotes to resign from Bradley and Co. That spring, Maximilian made a number of preparations for his future. Visiting a tailor in Marylebone, he bought himself his first suit of any genuine quality. Attired thus he began to scour properties all over the East End, paying particular attention to the factor of privacy. Settling upon a warehouse overlooking Hackney Marshes, he soon installed the equipment that he required and began his lifelong task of printing a relentless stream of illegitimate banknotes.
By paying great attention to every last detail of design, as well as keeping abreast of every change enacted upon UK currency, Maximilian produced replicas that were so exact, so perfect in every respect, that only the most attentive and experienced of cashiers noticed that a given slip of paper being passed between one hand and another was not in fact the authentic work of the Bank of England. No business ever found itself in trouble on account of Maximilian’s actions. For forty-seven years he was entirely successful in using his notes without the slightest problem arising.
He took many elaborate precautions, of course, with the whole enterprise, not wanting to put the life that he was building for himself at risk. He would always wear a pair of leather gloves when handling the notes, and he was careful to wear only drab, plain clothes, always assuming an expression of bland contentment. His manner and appearance were so ordinary that it was almost impossible to remember him afterwards.
As a rule, he would never make a purchase in the same shop within a span of ten years. This required an enormous amount of travelling from one part of the city to another, an activity which he pursued doggedly on a regular basis for a number of decades, often passing through the hundreds of forgotten London suburbs, an itinerary that included Wanstead, Ilford, Barking, Bexley, Farnborough, Sidcup, Teddingon, Hayes, Ruislip, Stanmore, Enfield, Wanstead . . .
He only printed notes of a low denomination because these aroused fewer suspicions. When spent they would generate a great deal of legitimate small change which he would discreetly collect in his briefcase and then take back to deposit in one of the many crates of money that were secreted in his warehouse at Hackney Marshes. If he wished to make a major purchase, he would always draw upon his pile of legitimate currency, most of which found its way over time into one of the many bank accounts that he kept, each bearing relatively paltry sums.
Maximilian often marvelled that the majority of people pay so little attention to the money that passes through their hands. Few people bother to hold a banknote up to the light and examine just what it is they’re holding. This seemed more and more remarkable to him over time. How could so many manage to be blind to the forms that these slips of paper took?
Frequently, he found himself admiring the complexity of British banknote designs, particularly those which had arrived after the onset of decimalisation in 1971, an event which had necessitated several months of extremely hard work in order to produce suitable replicas. Only rarely did anyone consider that on the banknotes printed after this date the Queen mysteriously manages to maintain her youth; that on close scrutiny her eyes are revealed to be composed of a series of spirals, making her look like a victim of hypnosis; that detailed illustrations of various historical figures are made up of a complex series of colours, dots and lines; that the paper is thick and waxy, printed on a special cotton weave rarely encountered in any other context in British life; that each banknote has a separate number, a thin strip of silver, a watermark, a shining hologram; that on each side of each banknote a variety of different typefaces are employed—sometimes for the space of a single word alone; and that on each banknote is printed the phrase “I Promise to Pay the Bearer”—an entirely out-dated reference to the origins of paper money as simple promissory notes . . .
Maximilian often had cause to consider all of this. He came to the conclusion that to even notice such details was to challenge the moral authority of the banknote. Thoughts such as his might potentially move an individual towards the idea that their banknotes could exist in different forms, that, indeed, they did not have to appear in the world at all. Which is not a line of thinking that most citizens want to pursue for very long. Perhaps because it leads in short order to feelings of confusion and anger, to feelings of alienation, to a sense of separation from all of the many other people willing to accept the role of the banknote within their lives. Maximilian presumed that most people were anxious to protect themselves from the cognitive dissonance that might be caused by pursuing the many potential convolutions of thought hidden beneath the surface of the world. Instead, he felt, everyone instinctively taught themselves to ask as few questions as possible, in the hope that this would bring as much lightness and prosperity as they were capable of attaining.
He never had any qualms about his career as a counterfeiter. Maximilian thought that it was absolutely necessary to challenge the moral authority of money. In his opinion such a system had to be held responsible for many instances of suffering, exclusion, degradation, ignorance, vanity, ugliness, violence, and poverty. In his own oblique way, by behaving as a criminal, he felt that he was staging a protest against this state of affairs.
Every time that he spent one of his own banknotes, he bought himself a newspaper. Over time he gathered these together on the second floor of his warehouse, arranging them in bundles and rows, carefully labelling them by month and year, keeping the tabloids separate from the broadsheets. The newspapers provided an index to his life. Sometimes he liked to walk from one end of the collection to the other, beginning in 1952 and ending in 1998. As he progressed, the colour
