Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

I wait until Igor is not around, then approach Paul at the desk he has commandeered. He is scribbling in the red notebook, which he now shuts and covers with his hand. ‘Yes?’ he says.

‘Lunchtime,’ I say.

He casts about him, looking for an excuse to refuse me, but he can’t find one and reluctantly rises from the desk.

I don’t know how significant it is that the very same waitress seats us at the very same table where we had our first conversation. It mightn’t necessarily mean that we have come full circle. Yet how changed he is from the ebullient, garrulous figure who stepped into my life that day! Now he barely speaks; when our food comes, he merely picks at it.

‘You are not happy,’ I say.

‘What?’

‘You are not happy with the project.’

‘I’m perfectly happy,’ he says. ‘I’m deliriously happy.’

‘You have not said a word to me all day.’

‘Maybe I just don’t feel like talking.’

‘I don’t believe that is why.’

‘Oh, you can read my mind now?’

‘It’s obvious things are not working.’

Paul puts his hands on top of his head and lets out a long, slow, whistling sound. ‘I told you, there’s a structural issue. We’ll figure it out, if you’ll just get off my case.’

‘My boss wants you to finish your research.’

This at least produces a reaction. He bangs his palms on the table. ‘What?’

‘He says it’s becoming disruptive.’

‘That’s crazy!’ Paul protests. ‘Who are we disrupting?’

‘Everyone,’ I say with a trace of sadistic pleasure, then regret it. He is beyond crestfallen; he looks utterly sick. ‘Maybe I can talk to him, win you an extra day or two,’ I say. ‘But only you. Igor must go.’

‘Okay,’ he mutters. ‘Thanks.’

I watch him for a moment, his thoughts visibly in disarray. ‘What happened?’ I ask.

Something in him seems to give: he sets down his fork, gazes back at me starkly. ‘There’s nothing there, Claude,’ he says. ‘I can’t find anything there.’

Now it is my turn to feel sick.

‘I knew it wouldn’t work,’ he reflects. ‘Deep down I knew it.’

‘There must be something we can do,’ I say. ‘Some way to salvage it.’

‘I don’t see what, if your boss is kicking me out,’ he says.

‘There must be something.’

He sighs, puts his head in his hands. He stays like that for a long time. Then he lifts his head again. ‘Unless,’ he says.

‘Unless what?’

‘Unless …’ He stares at me, studying my face, as if trying to read something there. ‘Unless we change the angle,’ he says at last.

‘Change it?’

‘Right now I’m seeing two serious, two very serious problems with the book. The first is that nothing happens . There’s no story there. In the past a novel didn’t always need a story. You could just make it about a day in somebody’s life. But that was when life meant people, movement, activity . You guys in front of your screens all day long, selling each other little bits of debt — it’s a whole different order of nothing. I know there’s a big story behind it, I know the bank is expanding and growing and so on, but I can’t see any of that. It’s like a hurricane, you know? It’s this incredibly powerful entity, storming all over the world, levelling everything in its path, but at the eye of it, where you are, it’s just … it’s just a void. A dead space.’

I nod bleakly; this does not seem an unreasonable assessment.

‘And obviously that affects our Everyman,’ he says. ‘Which is problem two. Readers like to feel a connection with the characters they’re reading about. Visit a book club, that’s all they talk about. I loved Pip, I adored Daisy, Yossarian is so funny, we all hated Snowball. But with you — there’s just not enough showing up on the page.’

‘Oh,’ I say.

‘I know there’s more to you than some anonymous salaryman. But from the reader’s perspective, it’s not so clear. Unless they see some evidence to the contrary, my fear is they’ll see a banker and immediately think the worst.’

‘Yes,’ I say, seething with embarrassment.

‘Look,’ he says, ‘it’s not irremediable. We just need to give your character more agency. We need to get him doing something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Something dramatic,’ he says. He looks down at his coffee, stirs it but doesn’t drink. ‘Everybody,’ he says slowly, ‘even the guy with the most boring job in the world, at some point finds himself in a situation where he has to make a choice. A choice between good and bad. That moment — when the clock strikes thirteen, when everything else drops away — that’s where we need to put you.’

Is it me, or as he says this does the air seem to tauten, to take on some tremulous energy? A cloud’s shadow rolls over the plaza; the dark-haired waitress stops at the window with her hands on her hips as the pigeons take flight.

‘For example,’ he says. He strokes his chin. ‘Okay, how about this. Rather than the Everyman just working in the bank, instead we have him rob the bank.’

‘Rob the bank?’ I repeat.

‘That’s right,’ Paul says, nodding.

‘Rob it?’ I say again, in case I have misheard.

‘Yes, rob it,’ Paul says.

‘This is Igor’s idea?’

‘No, it’s my idea. You can see where I’m coming from, right? It spices things up, gives the story momentum, as well as making your character a bit more attractive. Now you’re an outlaw, sticking it to the man!’

‘Yes, yes, I understand that.’ I dab my mouth with my napkin in case my expression gives me away. ‘But robbing a bank — is this really something that our Everyman would do?’

‘Why wouldn’t he?’ Paul returns. ‘Who hasn’t thought about robbing a bank?’

‘But nobody actually does it,’ I say. ‘It just doesn’t seem realistic.’

‘It’s not like I’m saying we send him back in time,’ Paul says testily. ‘He’s not breaking the laws of physics or anything.’

‘Nevertheless, it takes us far away from the authentic picture of modern life you wanted to create originally,’ I point out. ‘In fact it turns the story into exactly the kind of cliché you told me you wanted to escape. I am not trying to be negative,’ I say, seeing his face darken, ‘only, I don’t understand what kind of motivation our Everyman can have to do something as non-universal as rob a bank.’

‘Well, he’ll have motivation,’ he says. ‘I’m going to give him motivation, if you’d just let me finish.’

‘I’m sorry, please continue.’

Paul begins to speak and then stops, staring furiously into his coffee cup.

‘Because already the Everyman is paid very well for work that is quite legal,’ I clarify. ‘So it is difficult to imagine what will make him do something very risky like this.’

‘What if he wants something his money can’t buy,’ Paul says.

‘He wants to rob the bank to get something money can’t buy?’

Paul swears under his breath. ‘Okay, how about — how about he falls in love.’

‘In love?’

‘Yeah, with a … with a waitress. That girl there, for instance.’

We both turn to look. The dark-haired waitress is on the other side of the café, placing dirty crockery on to a tray; her long ebony tresses are tied up in a bun, from which a ballpoint pen pokes.

‘See, we need to be making better use of the resources we have. Fictionally speaking, someone like her is pure gold. She’s sultry, she’s exotic, she’s a struggling artist. A woman like that, as soon as she appears the story’s bumped up a couple of gears.’

‘She’s an artist?’