The Mark and the Void

by Paul Murray

  This time he does not react, other than to continue chewing and then, evidently with some difficulty, swallow.

  ‘You should come,’ I suggest. ‘It will be exciting to see a real writer, how do you say, in the flesh.’

  ‘I’d like to, Claude,’ Paul says, recovering his composure. ‘I’m always interested to see what feat of mediocrity the bourgeoisie have canonized now. Unfortunately I can’t manage to put out of my head what a vile excrescence that vile excrescence is. So for me, it’s like every word is written in pus, you know?’

  This impressively unambiguous image brings the exchange to a close, and with it any further desire to eat; I push away my plate. The waiter comes over to clear the table. ‘Will that be all, gentlemen?’ he asks hopefully.

  I have a meeting in less than an hour; nevertheless, out of bloody-mindedness, I order a digestif, which Paul watches me drink with unconcealed malevolence.

  ‘Had enough?’ he asks sourly.

  I give the question some thought. His eyes widen fearfully. I decide to be merciful. Paul motions to the waiter for the bill.

  ‘They always insist on hiding it inside these stupid leather books,’ he grumbles when it comes. ‘Like maybe you’ll mistake it for some magical fairy tale.’

  Clearly on this occasion the fairy tale does not have a happy ending. His face turns ashen; he rubs his eyes, and scans the bill again. ‘How can this be?’ he whispers.

  ‘Let me see,’ I say, and take the leather book out of his limp, unresisting hand. Everything appears to be in order. ‘Service is not included,’ I say, and pass it back to him.

  ‘And Ludmila wasn’t even here!’ Paul laments.

  I sit back and fold my hands peaceably over my stomach.

  He thrums his fingers on the tablecloth, then glances up at me. ‘Full disclosure. I only have twenty euro on me.’

  ‘Do you,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says.

  ‘How did you intend to pay for the meal?’

  ‘I really hadn’t thought that far ahead,’ he says. ‘I suppose I figured that if I got you to invest right now, in cash, I could pay for it out of that.’

  ‘I see. That is unfortunate, because I left my wallet in the office.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right.’ He looks troubled. The waiter, who is not eager for us to stay, glides close, glances at the still-unaddressed bill, glides on. Paul shoots me an up-from-under look and says in a low voice, ‘What if I told you I had a foolproof way for us to walk right out of the restaurant without us paying them a penny?’

  I roll my eyes.

  ‘I’m serious. We walk out of here – walk, not run, with our heads held high – and it doesn’t cost us a thing.’

  ‘Look, just let me pay,’ I say, and reach for the bill.

  ‘I thought you didn’t have your wallet.’

  ‘Obviously I have my wallet. I will pay, and put it on expenses.’

  ‘No!’ Paul whips it away. ‘There’s a principle at stake here. These fuckers are totally scamming us.’

  ‘How are they scamming us? We have just eaten an enormous meal.’

  ‘They said Ludmila would be here and she wasn’t. I’m not letting them get away with it. All we have to do –’

  ‘I don’t want to hear your plan.’

  ‘Listen, it’s simple – all we do is, we pretend to have an argument. We have this big flaming row, then I storm out, and then you chase after me, trying to get me back, see? And when we hit the street, that’s when we run for it.’

  ‘We run for it, with our heads held high.’

  ‘It works, Claude. I’ve tried it before, in Turkey?’

  ‘I don’t care, I am not doing it.’

  ‘Although that was with Clizia – the thing is, it’s probably a bit more convincing if it’s a lovers’ tiff. That way, people are more reluctant to intervene.’

  ‘I am simply going to put the meal on my card. Excuse me!’ I call to the waiter.

  ‘Oh, you like the look of him, do you?’ Paul declares, yanking his chair back from the table.

  ‘What?’

  ‘All through the meal you were staring at him – devouring him, with your eyes!’

  ‘Excuse me, waiter –’

  ‘A boy, Claude! A mere boy! And you flirt with him right in front of me – like I’m not even here!’

  ‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ I say. At the neighbouring tables the conversation has petered out, and patrons glance over with that combination of embarrassment and glee characteristic of eavesdropping on an argument.

  ‘Don’t play innocent!’ Paul exclaims. ‘You wish you were rid of me, don’t you! That’s the kind of person you are, you just use people up and toss them aside!’

  ‘Waiter!’ My credit card sits conspicuously on top of the leather book, but the staff are now giving us a very wide berth.

  ‘I was once a pretty boy like him,’ Paul notes sorrowfully. ‘Is it my fault I’ve got old?’

  ‘Please!’ waving my wallet in the air.

  ‘You can’t stop yourself, can you? Even now, you can’t stop yourself! Well, you can have him! You can have him, you heartless monster!’ He jumps to his feet and thrusts on his jacket. I realize that he is going to go through with this, and I will be left here with the whole restaurant staring at me.

  ‘Wait!’ I say faintly.

  ‘It’s too late for that!’ Paul sobs. He turns to go, then momentarily turns back; in a low, husky voice he says, ‘You made me love you.’

  The staff and clientele look on, appalled; I push back my chair and lurch towards the waiter, proffering my credit card, but he flinches back as if I have just risen out of a swamp. Paul, meanwhile, has flounced over to the exit, a tiny gleam of triumph detectable beneath his ersatz heartbreak – when from a table near the door a man springs up and seizes him by the arm. ‘Paul?’ he says.

  The man is in his mid-forties, with curly hair greying at the temples. An array of wrinkles gives his face a kindly, careworn appearance, of a piece with his rumpled suit. Its effect on Paul, however, is Medusa-like: instant paralysis.

  ‘Possibly not the best time,’ the man says apologetically, in a tobacco-rich English accent, flicking a glance backwards at me and the roomful of staring diners. ‘But I just saw you there and I couldn’t, ah … I mean, how long has it been? Six years? Seven?’

  Paul simply stares back at him, as if pinned to the air.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m being terribly rude,’ the man says, turning to me. ‘My name is Dodson, Robert Dodson. You must forgive me for barging in on your, ah, on your meal like this. It’s just that … The thing is, you see, I’m Paul’s … I was Paul’s editor.’

  His editor! A ghost from his former life – no wonder Paul looks so shocked.

  ‘Claude Martingale,’ I say, shaking his hand. ‘Delighted to meet you.’

  ‘Likewise,’ he says. He looks me up and down. ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘Look, Robert.’ Paul has begun to revive. ‘If it’s about the money, I meant to contact you…’

  ‘What? Oh goodness, I never – that’s all water under the bridge,’ the editor says graciously, nodding his greying head.

  ‘And the car, I meant to contact you about that too –’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ the editor says placatingly. ‘I completely understand. Sometimes things don’t, ah, especially when the old, er, artistic temperament’s involved – are you an, um, artist, Claude, or…?’

  ‘I’m a banker,’ I tell him.

  ‘Ah.’ The editor gives me a conspiratorial smile. ‘So you pay the bills.’

  For a moment I am at a loss as to his meaning; then over his shoulder I see Paul ferociously gurning at me, and I realize what is happening. After witnessing our staged fight, this man has mistaken me for Paul’s homosexual lover! ‘No, no,’ I explain, ‘I am just –’

  But Paul has grabbed him by the elbow. ‘What brings you to Dublin, Robert?’ he asks.
<
br />   ‘I’m here with an author, as it happens – perhaps you’ve heard of him? Bimal Banerjee?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Paul scratches his head. ‘No, can’t say I –’

  ‘Bimal Banerjee, author of The Clowns of Sorrow?’ I blurt over him. ‘And Ararat Rat Rap?’

  ‘Yes, that’s him,’ says the editor. ‘Do you know his work?’

  ‘Very well,’ I tell him, ignoring the withering look Paul is giving me. ‘He is truly a tremendous talent.’

  ‘Oh! How kind of you to say,’ says the editor. ‘He’s just over there, actually.’ He gestures at a nearby table where a swarthy figure glowers at his cutlery. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come over and say hello?’

  ‘We’re in a bit of a hurry,’ Paul says.

  ‘I could go over,’ I say hopefully.

  ‘You’re coming with me,’ Paul says. ‘I haven’t forgotten about that waiter, you know.’

  ‘Might be for the best,’ Robert Dodson says, thoughtfully twisting a jacket button. ‘Caviar didn’t agree with him, he’s not in the best of humours. But he’s giving a reading later, and afterwards we’re going to William O’Hara’s for dinner – you must know William?’

  ‘Only by his writing,’ Paul says. ‘Tremendous talent, truly tremendous.’

  ‘Yes, well, his partner’s the most marvellous cook. We’re staying with them for a few days – I’m sure they’d be only too pleased if you and your, ah, if you and Claude came along?’ He looks from me to Paul and back; Paul’s ferocious gurn switches on and off in synch. Surely he is not intending that we extend this farce?

  ‘We’d be delighted,’ Paul says. The editor beams like the biblical father at his prodigal son. ‘I’m so happy to have seen you,’ he says. ‘Seven years!’

  ‘Me too,’ Paul says. ‘Well’ – he reaches for the door, but then –

  ‘Sir?’ The timorous waiter has reappeared beside us. ‘Ah, the, ah…?’

  ‘Oh good Lord! The bill!’ Paul cries, and pats about in his pocket for a wallet whose very existence I am now beginning to doubt.

  ‘Won’t you let me?’ the editor suggests.

  ‘No, no, Robert, I couldn’t possibly – where did I put that damn wallet?’

  ‘Please, let me,’ Robert repeats. ‘To celebrate this serendipitous meeting.’

  ‘No, Robert, I won’t hear of it, I simply won’t – oh, you brute, I can’t believe you did that.’ Paul’s shoulders slump in defeat as the editor passes his card to the waiter, who retreats gratefully.

  ‘You can repay me by telling me about all the exciting new ideas you’ve been working on,’ the editor says, with a rumpled smile.

  ‘Ha ha! No shortage of those!’ Paul laughs. ‘See you at the reading!’

  He pushes through the door, and I follow him onto the street. ‘Well, Claude, let the record show, I did technically buy you lunch,’ he says. ‘I mean, you came for lunch with me, and you didn’t have to pay.’

  ‘I suppose that it is true, if you take the word “technically” to its logical limits,’ I reply. ‘Although, one can say also that technically I did have to pay, by being humiliated in front of a crowded restaurant and then forced to pose as your homosexual lover.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you should be glad you’re not my homosexual lover, or you’d have some explaining to do after all that fawning. Oh, Bimal Banerjee, he’s so terrifically talented! He’s so totally titanically true!’

  ‘I am glad I am not your homosexual lover for many different reasons.’

  As we set off along the canal back towards the Centre, Paul seems preoccupied.

  ‘Your editor is very charming,’ I say. ‘Why is it you have not spoken to him for so long?’

  He coughs artificially, and squints over at the far bank as if searching for a landmark. ‘We had different ideas, I suppose.’

  ‘Different ideas about what you should do with your advance?’ I suggest.

  ‘I don’t really want to talk about it.’

  ‘Was his idea that you should use it to write your second novel, and your idea that you should sink it all into your Internet start-up?’

  Paul doesn’t reply.

  ‘What did you do to his car?’ I ask, but he doesn’t appear to want to talk about that either. ‘Anyway, he does not seem to hold grudges,’ I say. ‘He wanted to hear about your new book.’

  ‘That’s just what editors say. It’s part of the job, like a priest saying God bless you.’

  ‘To me it sounded sincere.’

  ‘He was just being polite. Anyway, I told you, I don’t do that anymore.’

  I can’t understand it: to me the chance meeting seems pure serendipity, but Paul just scowls and stuffs his hands in his pockets.

  ‘So you will not go to the soirée?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll go all right. William O’Hara’s dinner parties are legendary. Although his books, God, they’re like taking a bath in Rohypnol. You fall asleep after a couple of pages, wake up not remembering anything but feeling somehow violated.’ He turns to me. ‘You’ll come too, I hope?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You’re invited, aren’t you?’

  I would be happy to attend, I say; I have never been to a literary dinner before. ‘Although, to avoid more confusion, we should explain to everyone that we are not romantically attached.’

  ‘Why, are you planning to make a move on Totally Tremendous Bimal Banerjee?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Do you wish I wasn’t here anymore, is that it? You’re going to use me up and then throw me away?’

  ‘Please, do not remind me.’

  ‘Well, you can have him! You can have him, you heartless beast!’

  ‘I am serious. I found that episode quite traumatic.’

  ‘You made me love you.’

  ‘I assure you, it was quite unintentional.’

  The more I think about it, the more I wonder if Paul’s apathy at seeing Dodson was merely a front, aimed at covering up a hope he doesn’t dare to express. However it unfolds, I have the feeling that tonight will be significant.

  The reading is at seven, and I have a lot of work to get through if I’m to make it on time. No sooner have I emerged from my meeting, however, than Ish descends on me.

  ‘Oh, Claude!’ she cries, and throws her arms around me.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ My first thought is that she has been sacked.

  ‘It’s the island!’ she sobs.

  ‘What island?’

  ‘Kokomoko.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, relaxing somewhat, then remembering and looking concerned again. ‘What’s happened?’

  Ish tells me that following our conversation the other morning, she decided she would look into the possibility of a transfer after all. In the course of her research, though, she came across a recent Greenpeace report that put Kokomoko near the top of its list of places most endangered by rising seas.

  ‘And every day it’s getting worse!’ she says, eyes and nose streaming. ‘The islanders can’t fish because the Torabundo government sold the rights to some European consortium and now there’s nothing left in the ocean and they have to buy their food from sodding Australia! But they don’t have any money, and the only thing they have to sell is the sand off their beaches!’

  They have been exporting sand by the ton, principally to Torabundo, whose success as an international tax haven has led to a construction boom; but the mining of their own coastline, already at risk from global warming, leaves them perilously exposed.

  ‘They’re literally digging their own graves! The report says the next king tide could wipe them out!’

  ‘Who’s King Tide?’ Kevin says, arriving on the scene.

  ‘It’s not a who,’ Ish says, and she launches into a complicated account of perigees and perihelions, alignments of sun and moon that could bring about the twenty-centimetre rise in sea level that would be enough to swamp the island. Her eyes are white, and I think again of that strange conversation a few days ago when
she claimed she was just having a moan.

  ‘We have to do something,’ she says.

  Kevin and I look at each other. ‘Do something? Like what?’

  ‘We should tell Porter,’ Ish says; then, to our goggling faces, ‘BOT’s the biggest employer in the whole archipelago, don’t you think he’d want to know?’

  ‘But what’s it got to do with him?’

  ‘He can’t just stand there with his arms folded while they all drown, can he?’

  ‘In fairness, Ish,’ Kevin offers, ‘it’s not like they’d actually drown. Obviously, if the island actually started sinking, the UN or somebody would airlift them out of there.’

  Ish looks from one of us to the other. ‘Christ!’ she exclaims, and marches away.

  ‘She’s not really going to go bothering Blankly with that stuff, is she?’ Kevin says.

  ‘She’s just having a bad day,’ I say.

  ‘I bet they’re wishing now they hadn’t spent all their time faffing about, swapping shells.’

  ‘Get back to work,’ I tell him.

  * * *

  I go to the bookshop alone: Paul has informed me that he won’t be attending the reading itself ‘as a matter of principle’, although he also tells me that if I run into his editor before he gets there I should say he’s gone to the men’s room.

  The shop is packed almost to bursting. A pyramid of Ararats is stacked for sale by the till, but most of the audience are already clutching their own copies to their breasts. No one is talking about asset prices or bond yields or basis points; nobody is promising to crush or rape or dismember some absent third party. Excitement bubbles in the air, and I am just wishing Paul were here to experience it for himself, when on the other side of the room, like an orchid emerging from the thick jungle foliage, I spy Ariadne! She has come directly from work: her hair is tied back, and floury fingerprints smudge the lapels of her parka. In the ecstatic atmosphere my first impulse is to go and talk to her – but then my eyes light on the rangy gaucho by her side, and the happy glow in my heart is extinguished. So this is Oscar. It is little consolation to see he looks exactly like I imagined him: tall, austere, bristling with being. They are not speaking, but his silence is voluminous; in fact his mere presence seems scandalously sexual. I lower my hand and withdraw to the shadows. Maybe I should invest in Paul’s start-up after all, I reflect glumly. Watching from a distance is probably as close as a lot of people come to love; if you overlook the exploitation aspect, it is actually a very good idea.