The Mark and the Void

by Paul Murray

  He begins to speak, then relents. ‘Okay, come on.’

  Clizia is by the refrigerator, brandishing, for reasons I do not inquire into, a frying pan. The air is decidedly fraught, and a repetitive croaking issues from the next room.

  ‘I hope I am not interrupting…’

  ‘Haven’t interrupted anything, Claude. Just enjoying a peaceful, non-violent breakfast here with my totally functional family. Can I get you something? A coffee, maybe? Clizia, would you mind fixing our guest a coffee?’

  ‘We don’t have coffee,’ she says.

  ‘Well, how about tea then? Tea all right with you, Claude?’

  ‘Whatever is convenient,’ I say.

  ‘No tea either,’ Clizia says. Her accent makes everything she says sound contemptuous, as if every statement were preceded by a long pull on a cigarette and a defiant billow of smoke. Paul half-turns in his chair. ‘We don’t have tea or coffee?’

  ‘You vant me to steal some?’ she says.

  ‘A glass of water would be perfect,’ I say.

  Remington wanders through the bedroom door, burping. Paul pours a glass of brownish water and plonks it down in front of me. ‘It tastes a bit strange, but we think it’s basically okay,’ he says. ‘Okay, so what do you want to talk to me about? Remington, for God’s sake, stop burping.’

  ‘It’s my burp-day.’

  ‘It’s incredibly annoying,’ Paul says. ‘Sorry, Claude, go on.’

  ‘I want to ask you about Ariadne.’

  ‘The waitress? What about her?’

  I tell him about our conversation in the café yesterday, its strangely pregnant undertone.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘But what’s that got to do with me?’

  ‘That time in the Ark you said she would be the perfect love interest for the Everyman.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So I want to know – what happens next?’

  ‘Next?’

  ‘In the story.’

  Paul looks mystified. ‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at,’ he says.

  ‘What I’m getting at is, I have somehow found myself in the plot of your novel. And I want to know what I should do.’

  ‘You’re asking me for love advice, is that it?’

  ‘I’m asking what you think will happen next in the novel of the Everyman.’

  ‘There is no novel,’ he says, with a touch of desperation. ‘We’ve been through this.’

  ‘What if I asked you to write it,’ I say.

  There is a long silence; even Remington stops his burping. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ Paul says.

  ‘No joke. When we spoke in the café you told me my life lacked a story. Obviously you had your own agenda. Nevertheless you were right. What I am asking you now is to write that story.’

  He glances back at his wife, as if to assure himself he isn’t dreaming. Leaned against the fridge, Clizia stares down at me impassively. In the morning light, the apartment’s veneer of opulence is thinner, and I can see signs of decay all around: drawers off their runners, nails poking jaggedly from floorboards, a long silver split in the obsidian countertop.

  Paul gets up, backs away to the sink, looks at the floor. ‘I’m very flattered that you should ask me,’ he says slowly. ‘But I don’t write books anymore. I told you that.’

  ‘I’m not talking about a book.’ I take a sip of brackish water, lean forward on my chair. ‘You said that what the Everyman needed was a love story. Now I want you to help me plot that story.’

  ‘In real life?’

  ‘In real life. Move the narrative forward, create scenes, maybe some dialogue. Essentially, nothing different from what you have done before, only that, instead of putting my life into your book, you would, so to speak, put your book into my life.’

  Remington burps thoughtfully. Paul pulls his hands through his hair and down his face, as if I have set him some fiendish mathematical problem. ‘Claude – look – I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but that is a really fucking weird idea.’

  ‘It’s unusual,’ I agree. ‘But it is quite rational. When we want medical advice, we go to our doctor. When we want financial advice, we speak to our broker. We are happy to delegate many areas of our lives to people better qualified. Why should relationships be any different? When we fall in love, why not have a specialist to advise us? Someone who understands human nature, who can help us to express the right feelings?’

  ‘Pff, is crazy talk,’ Clizia says.

  ‘Of course, I would be willing to pay whatever you feel such a service merited,’ I add.

  ‘Not interested,’ Clizia says.

  ‘Hold on,’ Paul intervenes. ‘Didn’t you hear him? He says he’s going to pay!’

  ‘It will never work,’ she says. ‘No one falls in love with a disguise.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ I say, ‘people fall in love with disguises all the time.’

  ‘And what happens when this woman finds out truth? You want this man make you scripts for the rest of your life? He is not even any longer writer!’

  ‘Well, hold on a second,’ Paul objects. ‘I can write if I want. If someone’s going to pay me, then I’ll write.’

  ‘Ha, you have not written word in seven years!’

  ‘Look, would you please just – Jesus, Remington, what are you doing to that rug?’

  ‘I want to see if the grey bits taste different from the blue bits.’

  With a gurgle of exasperation, his father picks him up and carries him to the sink, where he begins wiping fluff from his tongue.

  ‘If you want to become close to this woman, you bring her a nice bunch of flowers,’ Clizia says to me. ‘Not idiot conspiracy.’

  ‘It’s his money, isn’t it? He can do what he wants with it,’ Paul says, over his shoulder. ‘Look, this is impossible. Come on, Claude, let’s go somewhere we can talk about this in peace.’

  ‘Wait!’ With a swift sidestep, Clizia blocks his passage. ‘Bring the boy!’

  ‘But we’re trying to have a meeting!’

  ‘He needs fresh air.’

  ‘Clizia, the whole reason we’re going somewhere else is that neither of you will be there!’

  Clizia folds her arms.

  ‘Can we go to the park, Dad?’ Remington tugs his sleeve. ‘Can we feed the ducks?’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ Paul says. ‘Sorry about this, Claude.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I say. ‘The park is a perfectly good place for a meeting.’

  Remington runs to the fridge and comes back with a bag which he presents to his father. Paul looks displeased.

  ‘We have no tea or coffee, but we’ve got a whole loaf of stale bread?’ he says. ‘We’ve nothing for the humans, but a fridge full of food for the ducks?’

  Clizia chooses not to hear this.

  Scowling, Paul puts Remington’s coat on and leads us out to the hall. ‘Let me give you a piece of advice, Claude,’ he says, pulling the door closed. ‘Never marry a lap dancer.’

  ‘Right,’ I say uncertainly, and follow them down the dimly lit corridor.

  The lift is still broken, and on the landing the plastic sheeting that covers the portal to the unfinished wing whispers and sways. ‘Are there other people living here?’ I ask.

  ‘That depends what you mean by living,’ he says, starting down the stairs. ‘And by people.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  ‘Ours is the only apartment they actually managed to sell. We bought it off the plans.’ He laughs. ‘That was the boom for you. A first-time novelist and an ex-stripper could get half a million from the bank for an apartment that didn’t exist yet. Now we’re in so much negative equity we’ll probably be stuck here for the rest of our lives.’

  ‘It’s a nice apartment.’

  ‘It’s a classic Celtic Tiger piece of shit. There’s a Jacuzzi, but the water’s brown. There’s a heated towel-rail in every room, but the radiators don’t work. That’s not the worst of it, either.’ He pushes through a heavy metal door, t
o a vast, inky space; at first I have the bizarre notion that we are underwater, then in the distance I spy a car. ‘Look at that.’ He points to the wall. A long, ragged crack stretches all the way from the ground to the ceiling. ‘And there’s another one, on that side. And another one there.’

  ‘What happened?’ It looks as if there has been an earthquake.

  ‘Pyrite. In the walls, in the foundations. It expands when it gets wet. They might as well have built the place with icing sugar.’

  ‘So…’ I frown, not wanting to draw the obvious conclusion.

  ‘The whole building’s worthless. Totally worthless. Ten years or so it’ll probably fall down with us in it. Until then, of course, the bank still wants its mortgage repayments.’

  ‘Dad, can I have the keys?’

  Remington runs off to a point right in the centre of the grey morass, where he raises his arm stiffly, like an orchestra conductor; in its corner, the car bleeps and flashes obediently. He scurries over to it and opens the door.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do?’

  ‘Not much. The builder’s gone bust. The insurance say they’re not liable. We don’t have the money to bring it to court.’ He climbs into the car. Remington has already belted himself in at the back. ‘It could be worse,’ he says. ‘As a former novelist, I do get some enjoyment out of living in a giant metaphor. Pyrite. Fool’s fucking gold. If you put it in a book, no one would believe it.’

  He starts the engine; we pull out into the wan sunshine. The neighbourhood doesn’t look much better by day. A new selection of garbage lines the footpath; the street is deserted, but in the heavily graffitied playground a succession of cadaverous figures shuffles up to a man in a leather jacket, while a solitary child amuses itself on the broken merry-go-round.

  ‘Dad, how many ducks are there in the park?’

  ‘Twenty-six.’

  ‘Do you think there was ever a boy who had a pet duck and he kept it in his bedroom?’

  ‘No, I don’t think there was.’ He cranes his head around. ‘Now, Daddy and Claude have important things to talk about, so I want you to play at being quiet, okay?’

  ‘Okay. Dad?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Who would win in a battle between Aslan and a dinosaur?’

  ‘Aslan would win.’

  ‘Even if the dinosaur was really big?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even if he was bigger than the universe?’

  ‘Is this you being quiet?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Remington remembers.

  The car noses onto a bridge; the river glints sullenly below us.

  ‘So your wife,’ I say.

  ‘What about her?’

  I want to ask him about what he said in the hallway about marrying a lap dancer, but can’t quite summon the courage. ‘She is from Eastern Europe?’

  ‘That’s right. Little place called Ectovia. Used to be part of Makhtovia, then when Transvolga seceded from Makhtovia it became a subdistrict of Transvolga. Then it seceded from Transvolga, to become the Ectovian Free Democratic Republic. Though “Free” is a bit of a stretch, they’ve had the same president for the last fifteen years. He used to be a carpet salesman. In fact, he sold us the rug in the living room, the one Remington was licking, I don’t know if you saw it?’

  ‘And how did she come to be in Ireland?’

  ‘Well, the Ectovian economy’s been in a bad way for a long time now. No jobs, no money, young people queuing up to leave. Clizia was one of the lucky ones, she was recruited to come here and work as a waitress. But then when she arrived, she found out she’d actually been contracted to a lap-dancing club. She couldn’t get out of it till she’d paid off the people who brought her over.’

  ‘And is that … how you met?’

  He laughs. ‘I’m afraid so. I was out celebrating my book deal with some friends; Velvet Dream’s is where we ended up. My friends got me a lap dance with Clizia as a joke. You can’t imagine how embarrassed I was, this woman who looked like she’d just come down from Mount Olympus, and she’s stuck in this little cubicle with me, doing this ridiculous … Anyway, I was so nervous I started jabbering away to her about my book, and then she, who’s standing there in her underwear, starts telling me about Dostoyevsky and the dialogic imagination. I didn’t even know what the dialogic imagination was. I still don’t. But by the time I left that cubicle I was head-over-heels in love with her.’

  We come off the bridge and nose our way slowly along the quay, in the opposite direction to the river.

  ‘In Ectovia, they take literature very seriously, that’s what I found out later. They used to have a special firing squad just for novelists.’

  ‘And does she still work there? In Velvet Dream’s?’ Thinking this might explain my bizarre encounter with him last week.

  ‘No, she hasn’t done that stuff for a long time. A couple of weeks after I met her I bought her out of her contract. Took half my advance, probably the most romantic thing I’ve ever done.’ He pauses, and then says, ‘I’m not sure she ever forgave me.’

  I study his face, but in profile it’s hard to read his expression. ‘She works as a cleaner now,’ he continues. ‘Offices, private residences.’

  ‘Does she like it?’

  ‘Like it?’ He turns to me as we pull up at a traffic light. ‘Getting up at 5 a.m. to clean toilets for minimum wage?’

  ‘Sorry, silly question.’

  ‘Clizia’s got two degrees, Claude. She’s read more books than anyone I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  The light turns green. To the left, the tanks and towers and vats of the Guinness factory loom zanily over a high stone wall, like something from an alcoholic fairy tale. ‘It could be worse,’ he says. ‘At least as a cleaner she doesn’t have people looking at her. She’s basically paid to be invisible. Although it’s not nearly as much as she got paid for taking her clothes off.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me what?’

  ‘You are working too?’

  ‘I have a few irons in the fire.’

  ‘A book?’

  He wags his head. ‘That ship has sailed. Maybe in a country like Clizia’s, where they’ve only got three hours of electricity a day, you can still make a living writing books. Here people don’t want them anymore. They’ve got other things. Phones. Games. Porn. Horse tranquillizers. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying, these are the market realities.’

  ‘And it is these market realities that persuaded you to stop writing?’ I say.

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘It was not, for example, because of the review?’

  ‘What review?’ His head snaps round.

  ‘The Mary Cutlass review of For Love of a Clown.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ he says. His tone is indifferent, but his face has turned the colour of a London bus. ‘I didn’t pay much attention to it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘All that woman likes to read about is genocide,’ he says. ‘The Holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia, Srebrenica, if you’re writing about some soul-harrowing nadir of human depravity you get a big gold star. My book is about a girl who falls in love with a clown. How could she not hate it? It was like sending a dog to review Cats.’

  He still hasn’t explained what he meant by irons in the fire, but before I can ask him an enormous peal of thunder shakes the sky; a moment later, water sluices down with a kind of exultancy.

  ‘Dad, it’s raining.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘Are we going home?’

  ‘No, we’re not.’

  Signalling right, he brings us back over the river and up through an imposing gate. On either side of a long avenue, behind cascading veils of rain, the park materializes as a damp shimmer of colours, viridian, jade, ochre and crimson bleeding into one another and pulsating weakly as if through static. ‘A duck!’ Remington cries. He is right: between a pond and a bed of rose bushes stands a lone mallard, his motionless beak pointed proudly
skywards. The car pulls up; grabbing his bread, Remington makes a bid for the door. His father yanks him back by the hood of his coat.

  ‘It’s pouring rain! What’s your mother going to say if I bring you home soaking wet?’

  ‘We could tell her I fell into the pond?’ Remington says hopefully.

  ‘We’ll just have to wait till it stops,’ Paul says. As he speaks another peal of thunder cracks through the sky.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Remington says in the back seat.

  ‘Remington.’

  ‘I’m just saying what you say,’ Remington replies innocently.

  Paul mumbles darkly to himself.

  ‘Christ, what a country,’ Remington says.

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ, this fucking country.’

  ‘Okay, look’ – Paul unbuckles his seat belt, then opens the door to extricate Remington – ‘try and find a dry part to play in, will you?’

  With an exclamation of pure joy, Remington tears away across the grass, throwing fistfuls of bread at the surprised duck.

  ‘He is a very energetic little boy,’ I say.

  ‘He certainly is.’

  ‘Remington,’ I repeat. ‘Is that a family name? Or from your wife’s homeland, perhaps?’

  ‘Not exactly, Claude,’ he replies, with false pleasantness. ‘Tell me, have you ever heard of a TV detective called Remington cocksmoking Steele?’

  ‘Of course, although in France he is just called Remington Steele.’

  ‘Well, it turns out that in a certain corner of the former Soviet Union old Remington Steele is still very popular. In fact, it’s the number one show over there, bigger even than Celebrity Gulag and Top Ten Interrogation Bloopers. I thought it was a ludicrous name for a boy. But I was overruled.’

  Out on the lawn, the duck has escaped; Remington entertains himself by running around in long, uneven ellipses, making quacking noises. He seems not to notice the rain. Looking out at him, Paul folds his hands atop the steering wheel. ‘Okay, Claude. This proposal of yours. I’m presuming it’s some kind of revenge, right? Some kind of sting or hidden-camera-type deal, where you can show my web of lies to the world?’

  ‘No,’ I say, disconcerted. ‘It is just as I said to you in the apartment. I have developed feelings for Ariadne, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had any kind of relationship, and I fear that, as you said, there is not enough of me showing up on the page.’