The Mark and the Void

by Paul Murray

  ‘Oh, Miles isn’t so bad,’ Crispin says, as he portions out cake. ‘He helped us out of a hole when all the other banks were being beastly. Who is it you work for again?’ He directs this last question at me.

  ‘BOT,’ I tell him. ‘Or Agron Torabundo, as it is now.’

  He is impressed. ‘Ever since old Blankly took over, you boys have been raking it in. Funny, he always struck me as a bit of a maverick. It just goes to show, I suppose.’ He digs into his dessert. ‘And now you’ve got this hedge fund – what’s the chap’s name again?’

  ‘Howie,’ I say. ‘Howard Hogan.’

  ‘This thing’s only been going a few weeks,’ Crispin informs the table. ‘But it’s taken off like a rocket. I wish I knew how he does it.’ He returns to me. ‘I’ve tried to work out his system, but I can’t make head or tail of it.’

  ‘Non-linear maths,’ I say, then confess, ‘I don’t understand it either. There’s a Russian.’

  Mary Cutlass, who has been looking increasingly baffled by this conversation, breaks in. ‘What I would like to know is, when are our writers going to address the banking crisis?’

  ‘I do address it in my new book,’ William tells her. ‘Whacker’s elderly grandmother has her apple cart repossessed by the bank. Of course, those people don’t have a clue how to run an apple cart.’

  ‘I mean the whole thing. What it’s done to society and so on. There must be a great novel to be written about that.’

  ‘The banking crisis is unrepresentable,’ Banerjee says severely. ‘These people are not even human.’

  ‘Guilty as charged,’ Crispin says with a sigh.

  ‘They’ve done some terrible things,’ Victoria Galahad intervenes. ‘Still, I don’t know if it’s a good idea to go around calling them inhuman.’

  ‘It is their own doing,’ Banerjee insists. ‘Worse, their vacuous thinking has spread out of the world of finance like an epidemic. Now, people are barely capable of sustaining a genuine emotion, or communicating anything more complex than pictures of cats. Cat pictures and pornography, that is what we have now instead of art. Excuse me.’

  With that he gets up and leaves the room.

  ‘Probably gone to hang himself,’ Crispin says once the door closes.

  ‘Is he always like that?’ William inquires.

  ‘Oh, he’s probably just a bit tired, that’s all,’ Robert Dodson says vaguely. ‘Misses his wife.’

  Ariel begins to cough, as if her cake has gone down the wrong way. But she quickly recovers, and – perhaps taking advantage of Banerjee’s absence – inclines herself over the table towards Paul, rather like a flower bowing under the weight of a raindrop. ‘I meant to tell you earlier,’ she confides. ‘I adored For Love of a Clown.’

  Paul, who since our conversation in the dining room has been subdued, starts up, blinking in surprise. ‘Eh?’ he says.

  ‘Your novel,’ Ariel, who evidently is used to conversing with writers, explains.

  ‘Oh – what, really?’

  ‘I reread it recently,’ she elaborates – she speaks in a soft low voice that makes everything she says sound like a confession of love. ‘That line about how we’re all clowns in love’s circus – tumbling through sawdust in clothes that don’t fit us, waiting for the day we can wipe off our false smiles … gosh, just so perfect.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Paul says, seeming to expand before my very eyes. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Are you working on something new?’ she asks. ‘I know you said you’d started a business, but there is a new book on the way, isn’t there? I’ve been waiting such a long time.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Paul says, staring into her eyes, which are almost indecently huge and open, like lilies in bloom – petals spread, pollen-flecked pistils exposed to the elements. ‘Well, I have been tinkering with something, on and off.’

  ‘Oh!’ Ariel applauds softly.

  ‘Really?’ Robert Dodson has been listening in. ‘A novel?’

  Paul looks back and forth, from his former editor to his former editor’s sublime assistant: in this instance, at least, beauty defeats truth. ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘Can you tell us what it’s about?’ Ariel asks.

  ‘Hmm, I’d prefer not to go into it at this stage…’

  ‘Just give us an idea,’ Dodson cajoles.

  ‘What’s this?’ William inquires.

  ‘Paul’s telling us about his novel.’

  ‘Oh, a new one?’

  ‘A word,’ Dodson says. ‘The bare bones.’

  Victoria Galahad, Mary Cutlass and the others are all craned forward on their elbows, as though to catch the words as soon as they appear. Paul looks increasingly panic-stricken. ‘It’s about, ah … it’s about, ah…’

  ‘Tell them what you told me, that first day we met,’ I encourage him.

  He looks round at me wildly.

  ‘About the bank. All that.’

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Exactly. It’s about a banker, working in an investment bank in the IFSC.’

  ‘Just what we’ve been talking about,’ Mary Cutlass notes.

  ‘So you don’t think it’s unrepresentable,’ Robert Dodson says with a smile.

  ‘With all due respect to Bimal,’ William puts in, ‘I don’t think you can just write off a whole swathe of the modern world like that.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Paul says. ‘The way I see it, it’s the writer’s job to try to find the meaning in it, find the humanity in people like Claude here. And if it’s not there, to try and understand where it’s gone.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ William says.

  ‘Well said,’ Victoria Galahad smiles.

  Ariel just gazes at him, as though from the bed of a swoon.

  ‘What’s it called?’ Mary Cutlass says.

  ‘Called?’ Paul repeats.

  ‘You must have a title, a working title at least?’

  ‘Of course,’ Paul says, a little hoarsely, as the table’s eyes swivel on to him again. ‘It’s called, ah … it’s called Anal Analyst.’

  There is a moment of silence.

  ‘Anal Analyst,’ Dodson says, trying it out.

  ‘Anal Analyst,’ Mary Cutlass repeats to herself.

  ‘Well, it’s certainly memorable,’ O’Hara concludes.

  ‘He’s a poofter, is he?’ Crispin asks. ‘Your banker.’

  ‘He’s gay, he’s been promiscuous, as so many of us have,’ Paul improvises. ‘But now all that meaningless sex turns out to have a consequence, a terrible consequence. And in his isolated world of money and accumulation, he doesn’t have the tools, as it were, to deal with it.’

  The heads around the table nod solemnly.

  ‘It sounds fascinating,’ Dodson says. ‘Has anybody seen it?’

  ‘To be honest, Robert, I’m trying to keep it quiet for now. You know, focus on the writing, get the book finished before the whole market frenzy takes over.’

  ‘That’s wise,’ Dodson agrees. ‘Still, if you wanted to give me an outline, or just have a general chat – Bimal and I are going back to London tomorrow, but we’ll be here again for the Black & White Festival in a couple of weeks. William’s going to be doing an interview with him…’

  ‘I’d like that, Robert,’ Paul replies. ‘I’d like that very much.’

  ‘You would be better off setting fire to your manuscript and throwing the ashes in the Liffey than publishing it with Asterisk Press.’ A caustic voice behind us signals that Bimal Banerjee has returned. ‘And if you’ve been bewitched by the Whore of Bloomsbury here, I should warn you that she can never deliver on her false promises, because she is a creature made entirely of ice.’

  ‘My dear, I don’t think you need worry about any of us running off with your woman,’ Crispin says, leaning back in his chair. ‘But I can’t say I haven’t wondered if you’re going to finish that cake?’

  * * *

  The party winds down shortly after midnight; Robert Dodson explains apologetically that he and his author have an early fli
ght tomorrow. As we leave, William promises to send tickets for the upcoming festival, and Dodson repeats his offer of a private meeting. Walking down the street, Paul seems buoyant. Is it just that he’s enjoyed two free meals today? Or something more?

  ‘Well, Claude,’ he says after a while. ‘We didn’t snag any investors. Still, I suppose I should thank you for not letting the cat out of the bag.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ I say. ‘I enjoyed the evening very much. At the dinner parties I usually go to, everyone just talks about golf.’

  ‘Yeah, writers don’t play much golf. Though mostly because they can’t afford the green fees. Otherwise they’d never pass up an opportunity to procrastinate like that.’

  ‘Is that right.’

  ‘Probably that’s why the clubs keep the subs so high, because they don’t want the place clogged up with writers day and night.’

  We walk a little further, and then, as it doesn’t seem that he will raise it himself, ‘Anal Analyst?’ I say.

  ‘It was all I could think of,’ he says apologetically.

  ‘Still, it does not seem to have done any harm,’ I say. ‘I mean, your editor still wants to see it.’

  He doesn’t reply. I don’t understand – why is he so determined to downplay what has happened? ‘He wants to meet you and talk about it – this is a big opportunity, no?’

  ‘Anal Analyst doesn’t exist, remember? I just said that to get him off my case.’

  ‘But it’s a positive sign, isn’t it?’

  ‘A sign of what? You think he’s going to pay big money for a novel that I just made up?’

  ‘Aren’t all novels made up?’

  Paul rolls his eyes.

  ‘I’m serious,’ I persist. ‘If you know he likes the idea, why not try to write the book?’

  ‘Books don’t pay, Claude. I’ve got a family to support.’

  ‘How can you say they don’t pay? Look at the house we have just been in! With a Texier on the wall worth half a million euro!’

  Paul comes to a stop, there on the street. ‘Half a million? For that thing?’

  ‘More, after the retrospective in New York next year.’

  ‘Half a million euro!’ He puts his head in his hands. ‘I can’t believe you stopped me from bilking them.’

  ‘Aha, you admit it, you were trying to bilk them!’

  ‘I was bilking them into making the best financial decision of their lives! With that kind of money behind it, there’s no way Myhotswaitress could have failed. We could all have been rich, and had hideous paintings in our living rooms. And had living rooms.’

  ‘That’s not the point. The point is that it is still possible to support yourself and your family by writing. And now there may be a chance to do so. Why not take it?’

  ‘Haven’t we discussed this?’

  ‘Yes, but you have never given me any plausible answer.’

  He lets out a gasp of exasperation. ‘Because I don’t like being reminded I’m obsolete. How about that, for starters?’

  ‘But if you write the truth about our time? How can the truth ever be obsolete?’

  ‘People don’t want the truth,’ he says, waving a hand at the streets around us. ‘They want better-quality lies. High-definition lies on fifty-inch screens. I wrote the damn truth already, Claude. Maybe I didn’t write it well, but I wrote it. And not only did no one want to see it, they made me feel like a fool for even trying. They laughed out the window at me as they sped away on the gravy train.’

  ‘That was during the boom. Now the gravy train has stopped.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I can’t unsee what I saw. The money poured in, and it was like suddenly everyone in Ireland took off their masks, and they were these horrific, rapacious alien beings who if you fell down in the street would just leave you there to die.’

  ‘Maybe it was the rapacious alien that was the mask. And now they need someone to help them find their true faces again.’

  He doesn’t reply to this.

  I pace alongside him a moment, considering what he has said. Then, slowly, I nod in agreement. ‘No, you’re right. It’s just as Banerjee said: the world we live in has fallen too far to be saved by art.’

  ‘It’s not as Banerjee said,’ Paul objects. ‘It’s got nothing to do with Banerjee.’

  ‘Of course not. I only mean that his point was well made, that in this environment you should not feel bad to have failed as a writer.’

  For a second time, Paul stops in the street. ‘Failed as a writer. Can you believe he said that?’

  ‘Although in some ways it is a shame,’ I reflect. ‘Robert was very excited to read your new work.’

  Paul mumbles ambiguously.

  ‘And his assistant as well,’ I note.

  The mutterings take on a more wistful cast.

  ‘She certainly seemed to prefer your writing to Banerjee’s,’ I observe.

  There is a turbulent silence, and then Paul blurts, ‘Look, I’ll be honest, there are times when I wish I hadn’t spent seven years playing online poker and stalking waitresses. But to write a book … to go back into that world…’

  ‘He just wanted to see a proposal,’ I urge him. ‘It will only be one or two weeks of work. And I can help you – listen to your ideas, check the spelling – whatever it takes.’

  ‘It’s not that simple. I’m in debt, Claude. I owe money left and right. I can’t just drop everything to go and write a novel.’

  ‘What would you be dropping?’ I say.

  ‘The website!’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’

  ‘If Myhotswaitress were up and running, it’d be a different story,’ he says. ‘I’d know I had some money coming in. But we’re at a crucial stage now. We need to find investors! If I walk away, the whole thing will just collapse!’

  How can the same mind that produced For Love of a Clown have come up with Myhotswaitress? How can he not see the difference between the two? Is this simply the artistic personality? But it’s true: I have no right to criticize, until I have put some skin in the game. ‘If you want,’ I tell him, ‘I will speak to my clients about investing in Myhotswaitress. And I will personally pledge —’ I name a sum. ‘But you must submit your proposal to Dodson first. Do we have a deal?’

  Paul appears genuinely moved. ‘You would do that? You’d really do that?’

  ‘If it means you’ll have the freedom to work on your proposal.’

  Paul laughs. ‘I guess we do. And you know that pledge gets you straight into our Gold Circle of investors.’ He bites on a nail. ‘Though not our Platinum Circle.’

  ‘I am happy to stay in the Gold Circle.’

  ‘It means you don’t get the tiepin.’

  ‘I will live with that.’

  The news on Monday morning opens with the story of an elderly couple who starved to death in their apartment; their landlord found them, after calling to see why the rent hadn’t been paid. Evidently the couple’s daughter had got mixed up with a loan shark; her parents had spent everything they had trying to dig her out. They had been living on cat food, until the cat food ran out. Every day brings another bleak austerity fairy tale like this one, and makes the pot-and-pan charivari of our neighbours the zombies sound all the louder in our ears when we cross the plaza.

  ‘Last week I have called the police,’ Jurgen says, looking down through his binoculars, ‘and given to them ten different public-order offences these miscreants can be charged with. Still they do nothing.’

  ‘Outrageous,’ I say. Although police indifference is perhaps not so hard to fathom; they too have had their wages cut to pay for the failed banks. ‘Nevertheless, compared with New York and London it’s of little significance, no? There are thousands in the camps over there.’

  ‘One must always clamp down on disobedience before it has a chance to take hold,’ Jurgen says; then, still staring out through the binoculars, ‘Have you noticed anything odd about Ish’s behaviour lately?’

  ‘Odd?’ I repeat.
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br />   Jurgen lowers the binoculars and turns to me, his colourless eyes scanning my features like an infrared beam.

  ‘She has been her usual self,’ I say.

  ‘Very good,’ Jurgen says.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ I say casually.

  ‘No reason.’ He lifts the binoculars again. ‘Porter likes to be sure that all his employees are happy.’

  I retreat to my desk, then, lowering my head so I am invisible from the windows, grab Ish by the wrist and pull her towards me. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t…’ A terrible thought occurs to me. ‘You didn’t say something to Blankly, did you? About Kokomoko?’

  Her façade of incomprehension lasts all of ten seconds. ‘It was just a short email!’ she cries. ‘A short, politely worded –’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ I bury my head in my hands.

  ‘It’s right in his backyard! How’s that going to look, if a whole bloody island goes under in his backyard?’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with us!’

  ‘We can help! He’s always saying how we create our own reality, isn’t this exactly the kind of thing he means?’

  Of course it’s not what he means. Blankly would drill his mother’s own grave if he thought there was oil underneath it. In so far as bankers think about nature at all, it’s as the originator of the ruthless survival-of-the-fittest model on which the market is based. If a species becomes extinct, a river runs dry, a civilization is wiped out, by famine or flood or earthquake or volcano, that is usually regarded as reflecting some essential flaw in its business plan. Ish knows that. Why is she acting like this?

  ‘Wait a second.’ She turns pale herself, looking at me as if she’s just woken from a dream. ‘How did you hear about it?’

  ‘Jurgen asked – look, it’s all right’ – as the enormity of what she has done hits her in a single wave that throws her back in her seat.

  ‘Fuck,’ she whispers, and then, imploringly, ‘I didn’t say anything bad! I just thought he ought to know. What did Jurgen say? What’s going to happen to me?’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ I say, but then frustration overtakes me again. ‘Didn’t you think of this before? Why do you care so much about people ten thousand miles away?’