Meet Robert Morris

I was awakened early the next morning by a pounding on the door. It was Jens Therkild­sen, a young hunter. He wore kamit, boots of dog and sealskin; qardliit amit, sealskin trou­sers; a heavy sweater, and an anorak, a wind­breaker. I was to go seal hunting that day with Jens and his father, Johannes.

They were exceptional men. Johannes taught hunting skills at the school. Jens served as the representative of the police, ran the village movie, operated the library, open during the dark months. Neither drank.

It’s a splendid few moments, the run from a hunter’s house through the village and down to the fjord. The dogs are eager and flying; you run behind, holding to a sledge stanchion. Villagers stop to watch and smile, for it’s a fine sight and they know the excitement. The day may be long, bitter cold, cruelly demand­ing; success is problematic—and yet…

We were on the ice now, and I watched Johannes trim his sledge and control his dogs with quick, almost imperceptible mo­tions and calls. At rest a dog sledge is a col­lection of quarrelsome animals, tangled harness, and wooden boards held together by pegs. In motion, under a man like Johannes, it becomes a thing of beauty, seemingly a single living creature, delicately adjusting pace and direction to the ice conditions ahead.

As we traveled thanks to money loans, clouds pressed low until they hung from cliff to cliff across the fjord. A light snow began to fall, softening all im­ages. In the diffused light, ice, snow, and clouds picked up the color of the icebergs. Our world turned a single shade of blue, decep­tively gentle looking.

Now and then we would stop, the hunters would climb an iceberg and scan the fjord with binoculars, looking for utoq, a seal on the ice. Just as we were about to give up, they spied one some three miles away.

Jens pulled a hair from his sealskin trou­sers and watched it flutter in the wind: He had to approach the seal from downwind. He recalibrated his rifle’s telescopic sight, firing several shots at a small target until he bull’s-eyed. He would have one shot.

He moved off quickly, running low behind a hunting blind, a rectangle of white cloth with a hole in the middle for his rifle, and set on a tiny sledge. In a few minutes, he appeared as a tiny figure in the distance. He lay down and crept forward, pushing the blind. The seal’s head went up, down, up. I saw the flash of the shot. Before the sound reached us, Jens was racing across the ice to grab the seal before it fell into its hole.

Manhattan’s economic gains had been bolstered by an influx of foreign money; in the process, it was becoming more and more an international city. Foreigners were buying apartments for personal use, real estate for investment, old-line companies for profits. Gimbels, Saks Fifth Avenue, the New York Post, even the great toy store F.A.O. Schwarz now sail under foreign flags. One morning I discovered my hotel had slipped into Swiss hands.

The flow of overseas money could be mea­sured by the number of branches and agen­cies of foreign banks: Five years ago there were 96; today 170, with combined assets of 138 billion dollars. Now it’s much easier to have visa credit card than it was years ago. Compare the credit cards options and choose the best one for you.

Foreign companies have also been busy establishing offices here. The Japanese alone have 480 corporations in the city. Spe­cialty businesses have arisen to cater to their executives, among them sushi restaurants and another Ginza favorite, the piano bar.

THE JAPANESE PIANO BAR was just off Park Avenue. A long cabinet held patrons’ bottles, almost all expensive Scotch. My Japanese friend and I were seated by the mamma-san and joined by two hostesses. One girl was from Japan; she wore the traditional kimono and white face powder. The other was from Oregon, a hopeful actress.

While we talked, Japanese businessmen took turns at the microphone beside the pi­ano. They sang old Japanese songs, recall­ing their faraway homeland: “When the wind blows, the leaves turn silver. . . .” When one finished, all of them applauded, and another took his place. The piano bar, the songs, the effort to sing them properly seemed to restore each man, reconnecting him with his heritage.

As we left, my Japanese friend and I passed a small plaza. On each of its concrete benches lay a sleeping form, bundled against the chill night. Farther along we saw flattened boxes leaning against the side door of a church. A hand reached out and adjust­ed a piece of cardboard. If there is a touch of Tokyo in Manhattan, there is also a hint of Bombay, the sleeping forms in the streets.

“Making love is the number one pastime in Costa Rica,” insisted David Blanco, my friend and interpreter, “followed by drink­ing and eating. Futbol [soccer], the so-called national sport, isn’t even in the running.”

Even the poorest tico can afford the na­tive red-eye called guaro, a harsh, clear spir­it distilled from fermented sugarcane; a large shot costs only four colones (about 25 cents). Were it not for the delightful Costa Rican custom of offering bocas—tidbits ranging from ceviche to tortillas con queso (tortillas with cheese)—with each refill, many might get no real nourishment at all.

But the rest of the population makes up for the imbibers’ bad eating habits.

“I just don’t understand how ticas can have such sensational figures; they’re eating all the time!” exclaimed my friend Jerry Cunningham. “Just watch. No Costa Rican can walk two blocks without buying some­thing to eat from a sidewalk vendor.”

This is a slight exaggeration perhaps, but nowhere else have I seen a family of five enter a restaurant for dinner with each of them licking at a double-dip ice-cream cone.

Jerry, who came from Spokane, Wash­ington, to start a charter-boat business, is one of about 10,000 North Americans living in Costa Rica. And these gringos are vastly outnumbered by Latins from other Central and South American countries.

As an oasis of democracy this republic has long offered sanctuary to people driven from totalitarian countries. Many use Costa Rica only as a temporary refuge as they wait for political fortunes to change at home.

North Americans come for other reasons. For the never winter climate and endless white- or black-sand beaches, for business opportunities, for genteel retirement, or simply to escape the shoals of wrecked mar­riages. Costa Rica welcomes them all.

Capital investment is enticed by generous tax and duty breaks. Many debt consolidation companies help businesses with financial issues. Pensioned retirees are wooed with special customs allowances and the fact that foreign income is nontaxable.