The Mark and the Void

by Paul Murray

  Paul makes a show of racking his brains.

  ‘It is not to be confused with Forint Affairs, which is the journal of the Hungarian currency.’

  ‘Right,’ Paul says.

  ‘If I may say so, you have made an excellent choice of subject,’ Jurgen goes on. ‘Bank of Torabundo is one of the most fascinating institutions in all of capital allocation. And Claude is one of its most valued employees.’ He pauses, then turns to Ish. ‘Though all our employees are valued,’ he says.

  ‘I’m Claude’s best mate in this dump,’ Ish volunteers. ‘Which is funny, because people say that Frogs and Ozzies don’t get on? ’Cos the Frogs are all, you know, Shmuhh-shmuhh-shmuhh, and the Ozzies are all, Wa-hey! But we get on like a house on fire, don’t we, Claude?’

  I picture the flames, the screaming. ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘Anyway, if you want to know his secrets, you know who to come to!’

  ‘Claude’s got secrets?’ Paul eyes me with a half-smile.

  ‘There’s his drawer of Carambars,’ Ish says. ‘That’s the tip of the iceberg.’

  ‘We should definitely talk,’ Paul says.

  ‘I will show Paul the rest of the office,’ I tell them meaningfully.

  ‘If you’re writing about him, you have to put me in the book too, ha ha!’ Ish calls after us. ‘Only if you do, say I’m a size eight, ha ha!’

  I tug him away. Eyes glance over at us with carefully prearranged expressions of indifference as we cross the room; it seems everyone has heard about the visitor. ‘So this is the research floor,’ I tell him, gesturing broadly at the clocks on the walls, the muted televisions, the cubicles crowded with screens, phones, paperwork.

  ‘Where’re all the guys shouting at each other?’

  ‘The traders work upstairs, on the seventh floor, but we’re in contact with them all day. Part of our job is to provide them with information on the securities they’re trading in – the key drivers affecting share price, any relevant developments in the sector…’

  ‘Is that Torabundo?’ Paul points to a print hanging by one of the southerly windows, a verdant square of lush forests and effulgent sunshine. ‘It’s an island, right?’

  ‘It is basically an extinct volcano in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,’ I say. ‘A big extinct volcano with an extremely benevolent tax climate.’

  ‘Ever been?’

  ‘No. The headquarters are registered there, but most of our operations are directed from New York. So, as I was saying, our role here is to study the market on behalf of our traders, and also to advise the clients of the best investment strategy –’

  ‘Someone’s got some pretty interesting desk ornaments,’ Paul says, eyeing the cornucopia of shells, feathers, figurines and other relics that festoon the cubicle next to mine.

  ‘Yes, those belong to Ish,’ I say, experiencing simultaneously a flush of gratitude that he finds something in our environment interesting, and a pang of jealousy that it should be Ish. ‘She spent a couple of years travelling around Oceania.’

  ‘How’d she end up here?’

  ‘I believe she started at the bank shortly after she split with her fiancé. She will no doubt tell you the story herself.’

  ‘Came here to forget, eh?’ Paul says, as he examines a shark’s jawbone. ‘Like the French Foreign Legion.’ He turns to me. ‘What about you, Claude? You here to forget too?’

  I flinch inwardly, but keep my expression neutral. ‘You can make the argument that we have all come here to forget,’ I say. ‘Although in most cases before anything has actually happened to us.’

  ‘Nice,’ he murmurs to himself, and taking from his back pocket his little red notebook, he jots down the line.

  ‘So, if you look at this terminal here,’ I say, pretending I have not noticed, ‘you will see the very latest market information. And this one –’

  ‘You know what, Claude, I don’t want too much detail, it’ll overload it. Why don’t you just get back to what it is you do. I’ll pick it up by watching you. It’s better that way.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I say dubiously.

  ‘Please,’ he says, with an ushering gesture towards my chair. ‘Just forget I’m here.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, taking my seat and feeling, foolishly, as if I am an astronaut strapping himself into the cockpit of a rocket. Paul crosses the room and sits in an unoccupied chair; here – from a distance of about twenty feet away – he crosses his legs, lays the pad on his lap, affixes his eyes on me and waits.

  ‘So I will continue with my morning call-around,’ I turn to tell him. ‘This is when we give our clients the state of play in the market and the movement we are expecting –’

  ‘Honestly, I’ll pick it up.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Sorry.’ I summon a deep breath. Just be, I tell myself.

  Around me my colleagues are making their own calls, each passing on his own predictions for his own particular specialism – oil, utilities, telecoms. Clients pay tens of thousands for this daily service, but usually we go straight through to voicemail, so I’m taken aback when someone actually picks up.

  ‘Hello?’ he says.

  ‘Hello? Ah –’ I have forgotten who I called.

  ‘Is that Claude?’

  ‘Ah … oh, hello’ – possibly it’s Jim Chen? ‘Hello, Jim?’

  ‘Hello,’ he says, not contradicting me. Relief courses through me, until I realize I have also forgotten what I wanted to say. ‘It’s about the market,’ I say. That seems a safe bet.

  ‘Yes,’ Jim Chen says.

  But what about the market? My mind has gone completely blank.

  ‘Ah, I am just getting some news over the wires, I’ll call you back,’ I say.

  ‘Okay, whatever,’ Jim Chen says.

  I put down the receiver. My shirt is soaked in sweat.

  ‘Claude,’ a voice calls across the room.

  I revolve my head to see the silhouette of Paul against the window.

  ‘You’re trying too hard,’ he says.

  ‘I know,’ I say.

  ‘Stop thinking about it.’

  ‘This is not so easy as it looks,’ I say.

  ‘Just pretend I’m not here. In fact, you know what, I’ll go and roam around for a while, give you a chance to get into your stride. Is there a coffee machine around here somewhere?’

  I give him directions to the canteen.

  ‘Do you want anything?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ I say. Paul passes out of sight. Idiot! I chastise myself. Just be! Just be, can’t you? Yet even when he’s left the room the pressure is almost unbearable. I send an email to Ish and Jurgen, begging them to find time for lunch this afternoon. Then the phone rings. It is Geolyte, one of my clients. The board has called an emergency meeting for this afternoon after hearing rumours of an incipient takeover bid. How robust are its finances? Will it be able to fight off its attackers? For an hour and a half I am continuously on the phone, during which time I quite forget to be. Then, with a start, I remember. I look around hastily; from his chair, Paul nods at me, and toasts me with his paper cup.

  * * *

  Before we know it, it is lunchtime, and Paul and I are back in the lift, going down. ‘Everything is all right?’ I ask. ‘You are not finding it too dull?’

  ‘Are you joking? It’s perfect.’

  We push through the double doors.

  ‘So many people,’ Paul marvels.

  ‘Yes, the spectacle can be a little overwhelming,’ I agree. The plaza is a sea of suits and twinsets, identically dressed men and women milling about like the CGI crowd in some blockbusting movie, there to portray the mundane reality that will be shattered when Godzilla’s foot comes down; although as the companies this particular crowd spends its days working for constitute some of the most powerful forces in the world, it’s perhaps closer to the truth to say that we are Godzilla. This seems to me a rather clever thought; I try to think of some way of introducing it into the conversation. ‘Have you seen the film
Godzilla?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ Paul says.

  Of course he hasn’t! He is an artist! Why would he waste his time with such pabulum?

  ‘Why do you ask?’ he says.

  ‘The lunchtime crowd here sometimes reminds me of Godzilla,’ I say.

  ‘Oh,’ Paul says. The red notebook remains in his pocket.

  Jurgen, Ish and Kevin are already in the Ark.

  ‘You come here a lot,’ Paul observes, taking his seat.

  ‘It’s the only restaurant in the whole Centre you can get freshly prepared organic food,’ Ish says.

  ‘That’s why it’s usually empty,’ Kevin says. ‘That, and the art.’ He points to the canvas that hangs over our table, an enormous abstract that loosely resembles a crossword puzzle having sex with a pie chart.

  ‘Simulacrum 12,’ Paul reads from the label underneath. ‘Ariadne Acheiropoietos – wow, what a name. You’d hardly need to actually paint at all with a name like that, it’s like an artwork in itself.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call that painting anyway,’ Kevin says.

  ‘Right, and you’d know,’ Ish says.

  ‘Simulacrum 40,’ Paul reads from the label of the painting at the next table, then leans back to squint at the adjacent alcove. ‘Simulacrum 59 – are they all called Simulacrum? What’s that about?’

  ‘Obviously the work of someone with mental health issues,’ Kevin says. ‘Probably all the organic food. You can’t eat that much quinoa and stay normal.’

  There is a small throat-clearing noise: we look up to see the waitress has materialized at the table.

  It’s the same girl who served Paul and me on Friday, dark-haired, olive-skinned, rangy without quite being tall. ‘Ready to order?’

  ‘I’ll have the quinoa,’ Ish says. ‘And so will he,’ she adds, pointing to Kevin.

  When the waitress has gone, Jurgen asks Paul if he is getting good material.

  ‘I’m still finding my feet,’ Paul says. ‘It’ll take a few days, I suppose.’

  ‘The world of banking is full of complexity,’ Jurgen agrees. ‘But once you have understood the basics, you will find a story as exciting as any thriller. Look at Bank of Torabundo. Three years ago we were the little minnows. Now we have become the big fish on the block.’

  ‘I read something about that,’ Paul says. ‘What happened?’

  ‘A lot of our competitors were badly damaged by the financial crisis. Some collapsed entirely; others, judged too big to be allowed to fail, were given huge government bailouts. But BOT came through it untouched.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘We managed to avoid exposure to toxic investments. Our CEO at the time was deeply suspicious of complex derivatives, and forbade us to take big positions in those markets.’

  ‘Or property,’ Ish said. ‘He didn’t like the look of the global property market, so that’s another bullet we dodged.’

  ‘The result, anyway, is that the bank has been, as one might say, “punching above its weight”.’

  ‘You must be pretty grateful to your CEO,’ Paul says.

  ‘Yes,’ Jurgen says. ‘Although he has just been fired.’

  Paul looks surprised. ‘Fired?’

  ‘Yes, his conservative stance cost the bank a lot of investors.’

  ‘Even though he was right?’

  ‘There is a happy medium,’ Jurgen says.

  ‘Between right and wrong?’

  ‘Sir Colin’s a smart guy,’ Kevin says, ‘but definitely on the cautious side.’

  ‘In some ways he belonged to an earlier era of banking,’ Jurgen concurs. ‘It is true that his sceptical attitude saved BOT from financial catastrophe. But once we had survived, the board felt a more audacious leader was needed in order to press home our advantage. The new chief executive was appointed only a few days ago. His name is Porter Blankly.’

  Even speaking his name seems to quicken the atmosphere; our eyes glitter, as if we were sharing some magical secret.

  ‘Sounds familiar,’ Paul says, frowning.

  ‘He is quite a celebrated figure,’ Jurgen says. ‘He joined BOT from Danforth Blaue, which you may remember was one of the biggest casualties of the crash.’

  ‘It needed a fifty-billion rescue package from the US government,’ Kevin chips in eagerly. ‘Then it was bought for a dollar by Takahashi Group.’

  ‘This is the guy you made your new CEO?’ Paul appears confused. ‘Isn’t that like pulling the captain of the Titanic out of the water and asking him to skipper your catamaran?’

  ‘He has proved he is a man not afraid to take chances,’ Jurgen says seriously. ‘Sir Colin was very much a traditionalist. He had the classic view of the merchant or investment bank as a go-between, bringing together companies and investors for a fee. But in recent years, many investment banks have begun trading for themselves. That is, instead of just acting in their customers’ interests, they also bet on the market with their own money using complicated financial instruments called derivatives.’

  ‘A derivative is a contract derived from an underlying asset,’ I explain, seeing Paul’s look of bewilderment. ‘An asset being something you own – your house, your car, and so on. Instead of buying or selling the asset itself, a derivative allows you to do other kinds of deals based on it.

  ‘For example, one simple kind of derivative is an option. This is a contract that gives me the right, but not the obligation, to buy something from you for an agreed price at an agreed date in the future. I am calculating that when that date comes, the price will be more than our agreed price.’

  ‘Isn’t that just a bet?’ Paul says uncertainly.

  ‘If you do it in the bookie’s, it’s a bet,’ Ish says. ‘If you pay some twenty-three-year-old in an Armani suit two hundred grand to go to the window for you, it’s a derivative.’

  ‘Because there is no limit to how often derivatives can be sold back and forth, the market for them is astronomically bigger than the market for actual things. In fact, no one knows how big it is.’

  ‘And these derivatives are what your Sir Colin didn’t like the look of?’

  ‘Exactly. Wall Street banks were using instruments so complex that almost nobody understood how they actually worked. When their bets turned bad, they lost literally trillions of dollars. Sir Colin’s instincts were on that occasion proved right. However, the BOT board…’

  ‘… wants to give it another shot,’ Paul concludes, with a smile.

  ‘There is a feeling that things are different this time,’ Jurgen says.

  ‘Our share price has jumped three points since the news came out about Blankly,’ Kevin says. ‘A lot of people in the office are talking about buying in now. Take out a loan, even; if the price keeps going up at this rate, you’d make it back in a couple of months.’

  ‘Perhaps it is Fate that has brought you here at this time,’ Jurgen tells Paul. ‘To capture the bank at the moment of its metamorphosis from minor player into unstoppable banking force.’

  ‘And nobody’s worried about, say, history repeating itself?’ Paul asks.

  ‘History has already repeated with the last crisis,’ Jurgen says firmly. ‘We do not think there will be any more repeating.’

  After the strangeness of that first day, we quickly find our rhythm. I learn to work unselfconsciously; Paul, for the most part, observes in silence. Often, in fact, he leaves me to my own devices, as he walks around the office, making notes in his pad, occasionally taking pictures with his phone. Whatever fears I had – that I would be required to perform, or emote, or any of the things I came here to avoid – are quickly banished; he is at pains not to intrude on me any more than he has to.

  Unfortunately, not everyone is respectful of the artistic process.

  ‘I have begun reading your book,’ Jurgen says, adding, in case there is any confusion, ‘For Love of a Clown.’

  ‘Aha,’ Paul says.

  ‘I am loving the character of Stacy. She is based on somebody you know?’

>   ‘No, I made her up.’

  ‘Her little nephew Timmy, he is driving her crazy!’ Jurgen laughs. ‘Always he is getting into mischief. Stacy will be glad when her sister comes back from her research trip.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Paul says.

  ‘I wonder if she will commit to her promise to bring Timmy to the circus,’ Jurgen says, frowning. ‘Always she is making excuses.’

  ‘Obviously she is going to bring him to the circus,’ I say scathingly, when Paul is out of earshot. ‘How else are they going to meet the clown?’

  ‘That is a good point,’ Jurgen concedes.

  ‘If they didn’t go to the circus, there would be no book! It would end on page fifteen!’

  ‘Yes,’ Jurgen says, flicking through his copy as though to ascertain that it does, in fact, have words right up to the last page.

  Ish is even worse. She gives Paul constant updates on her progress through the novel; sometimes I hear her reading chunks of it back to him. On other occasions, she will relate anecdotes from her life before the bank, cornering him in order to show him the innumerable pictures of her ‘travels’ with Tog, her awful ex-fiancé.

  With me he speaks almost exclusively of the bank and its doings – the fees we charge, how much one of my research notes might sell for, the minimum assets a client must have in order to be taken on by BOT, and so on. He says he wants to understand my work completely before looking at any other aspects of my life.

  This suits me perfectly well; when you work a hundred hours a week there are few other aspects to see. Even at the weekend, you remain on call; there might be a golf game with a customer, or a VP will dump a client on you at the last minute, needing analysis on a potential buyer for a Sunday board meeting. Occasionally I’ll get a call from someone I knew in La Défense, visiting on business or posted here with one of the big French banks; I will go to a bar with them and listen to them complain about how bad the food is, how hard it is to sleep with Irish girls; I will find myself seeing them through my father’s eyes – their slick hair, their pointed shoes – and wonder if this is what he saw when he looked at me. But in general, investment banking is not an industry that fosters close relationships. Friendship exists here in a purely contingent way, on the basis of a mutual coincidence of wants; even to people you like, it’s best not to reveal anything that might be used against you.