Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

‘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 15!’

‘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.

‘It sounds so cynical,’ Paul says.

‘As long as everyone understands those are the rules, it does not cause any issues.’

‘And even of Ish you’d say this?’

‘I’d say it’s something she needs to learn.’

Paul watches me with a kind of veiled amusement, rocking gently in his chair.

‘So what’s the point of it?’ he asks.

‘The point?’

‘Why put yourself through all this? Why starve yourself of a life? Just to make money, is that it?’

‘Howie says that if you have to ask why, then you are in the wrong game.’

‘But what do you say?’

He waits, notebook in his lap. It is dusk: fluorescent lights stud the darkening sky outside like imitation jewels.

‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘It’s just to make money.’

‘I wonder what he’s like,’ Ish says. ‘You know, what his life is like.’

I don’t reply. A couple of heavyweight Spanish banks, rumoured to be facing significant write-downs on non-performing property loans, are being aggressively targeted by speculators; the effect is rippling outwards to affect the entire sector, unravelling Europe’s latest bid to stabilize itself.

‘I bet he lives in a huge mansion,’ Ish says. ‘With a pool. And a Bentley. And in his garden, he’s got those — you know those bushes, where they’ve shaped them into animals?’

‘Topiary.’

‘Topiary,’ Ish repeats dreamily, as if pronouncing the name of some mythical land. ‘What do you think, Claude? Has he said anything to you?’

‘No.’ I say it in a bored voice, but the truth is that I too yearn to learn more about Paul’s life. He gets to work at eight, he leaves around six; beyond that I know almost nothing. ‘Do you think Billy Budd knew where Melville lived?’ he’ll say if I press him. ‘Do you think Emma Bovary knew what Flaubert did all day?’

‘I suppose not,’ I concede.

‘I want you to act as if I’m not there. The less you know about my life, the easier that’ll be.’

‘Have you got to the part yet where the clown brings Stacy and Timmy backstage at the circus?’ Ish says now.

‘No,’ I say.

‘It’s so beautiful,’ she says. She sits smacking her gum for another minute. Then she gets up. ‘I think I’ll go and ask him how he thought of that scene.’

‘I wish you would stop distracting him.’

‘Who says I’m distracting him?’

‘He is trying to work on his project. And you have a report to finish.’

Ish tiptoes around behind me, then crouches down and whispers into my ear, ‘I think the real problem is that someone’s jealous.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You’re jealous!’ she exclaims, straightening up.

‘Who’s jealous?’ Jurgen says, passing by.

‘Claude’s jealous of me talking to his boyfriend,’ Ish says.

‘Paul is not my boyfriend,’ I say.

‘Look what I have,’ Jurgen says, and takes from his briefcase a hardback copy of For Love of a Clown . ‘A first edition. And it’s signed!’ I open it to the title page, where Paul has crossed out his name and written, ‘For Jurgen … With irie, Paul.’ I look up at him blankly. ‘Irie?’

‘It is a reggae reference,’ Jurgen says. ‘I have been telling Paul about my old reggae band.’

‘I didn’t know you had a band,’ Ish says.

Jurgen nods. ‘Back in Munich. Gerhardt and the Mergers. Mostly German-language covers, but we had original numbers too. We were regarded as being one of the best reggae and rocksteady crews on the Bavarian financial scene.’

‘Were you the singer?’ Ish asks.

‘No, that was Gerhardt. He was at the time the number one risk analyst at Morgan Stanley. Our rhythm section came from the Credit Suisse Syndicated Lending Department. Then there was me, on guitar and mortgage-backed securities.’

Their conversation fades out; I remain entranced by the inscribed page. I have never seen Paul’s handwriting before. It is sprawling, straggly, like briars over a tombstone. Unprompted, an image appears in my head: the author at a cherrywood table, his hand moving across the page, depicting the minutiae of our lives in thickets of ink. For the first time it strikes me: we are being narrated .

Ish snaps her fingers. ‘Let’s bring Paul to Life tonight! That way we can find out more about him, and it’ll give him a chance to see our crazy side!’