Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

‘Well, yeah.’ He stares at me as if I am an imbecile, then points around the room at the various Simulacra .

‘Those are hers?’ I look over at the waitress again, then back at him. ‘She’s Ariadne Acheiropoietos? How do you know?’

‘Because I asked her.’

‘Oh.’ I sit back dizzily.

‘See? It’s a good twist, isn’t it?’

I am thinking of the many uncomplimentary things my colleagues and I have said about her paintings while she was standing right beside us.

‘So our lonely, bored, overpaid banker runs up against this beautiful but impoverished painter,’ he goes on, warming to his new theme. ‘He finds they have something or other in common — it doesn’t matter what it is, French philosophy, say. Next thing he knows, he’s fallen head over heels in love with her. He’s breaking out of his sterile world of numbers, experiencing feelings he hasn’t had in years. But how’s he going to win her heart?’

I find I am gripped in spite of myself. ‘How?’

Paul spreads his hands summatively. ‘By robbing the bank.’

The intrigue dies away again. ‘I am not sure I see the connection.’

‘You don’t think robbing a bank will get her attention?’

‘There must be easier ways to do it,’ I say. ‘What about their shared interest in French philosophy?’

Paul rolls his eyes heavily. ‘Jesus, Claude, a woman like that, every dude who comes in here is going to be hitting on her. He needs to bring out the big guns. So how about this? He finds out her father — her father’s going to die unless he gets a vital operation. But it’s an extremely expensive operation, so expensive that even the banker doesn’t have enough money to pay for it. So he robs the bank. I know it sounds unrealistic on the face of it,’ he continues, before I can object. ‘But in terms of showing his inner life, it’s actually more realistic, do you see what I mean? She inspires him. She’s everything he’s not. She believes in things, in art, in love, in life! He looks at her, and he sees a chance to begin again!’ He’s gazing across the room at the waitress, his cheeks flushed, as if it is he, in fact, who’s being brought back to life. ‘From talking to her — because she’s Greek, so we can put in all the stuff about the financial crisis, what it’s done to her home and her family — the Everyman begins to become aware of all the injustice he’s part of. He’s not going to take it any more! He’d rather rob the bank and risk going to prison than see the woman he loves suffer another minute. Suddenly we’ve got a hero we can get behind!’

He falls silent, poring happily over the empty space of the café as if seeing the story enact itself in front of his eyes, until at last I clear my throat; he looks up, startled, then waves his hand. ‘Well, anyway, those are just the broad strokes,’ he says. ‘The real question,’ his voice lowers; resting his elbows on the table he clasps his hands tightly together, as if warding something away, ‘is how he robs the bank.’

He looks at me expectantly.

‘How?’ I repeat.

‘If you were in that position, where you wanted to pay for an operation for Ariadne’s dying father, what would you do?’

‘Probably I would speak to the head of department about an advance on my bonus.’

Paul exhales sharply. ‘No, if you were robbing the bank , Claude.’

I give the question some thought. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘If I can be honest, since he decided to rob the bank, I have felt more and more estranged from our Everyman.’

‘Claude —’ With a murderous expression, Paul lifts his arms above his head, like an orchestra conductor at the thunderous apex of some violent symphony; then he lowers them again and slumps back in his chair, and he says, in a wan, tired voice, ‘I’m not going to lie to you. I need this. It’s been a long time since Clown . I need this book, and this book needs a story, and right now it doesn’t have one.’

I blink back at him. I want to help him, but his story no longer makes sense to me.

‘It doesn’t have to be your character, even,’ Paul says with a touch of desperation. ‘Say there’s a very wicked banker in there. That guy, what’s his name, the arsehole from the bar, he wants to rob the bank. What does he do?’ He is pale now, and his voice has a dry, prickly quality, like a fabric charged with static electricity. ‘I suppose what I’m asking you is, where’s the safe in this place?’

‘The safe?’

‘The safe.’ His eyes are locked on mine; his fingertips bounce up and down on the tabletop.

‘Well, there is no safe,’ I say.

‘What?’ He puts his hand to his ear, as if he were a long way away.

‘There is no safe,’ I repeat, louder.

‘There’s no safe?’

‘No,’ I say.

Paul stares at me for a long moment. Then he glances over his shoulder to the table by the window where Jurgen has just sat down with one of the senior managers. ‘I get it,’ he smiles, giving me a wink. ‘Classified information. Okay, put it this way, then: Where isn’t the safe?’

This ontological riddle throws me. I contemplate it for a long time, before replying slowly, ‘Well, I suppose it isn’t everywhere.’

Paul stops smiling and kneads his brow. ‘Look, when I ask where isn’t the safe, I mean where is the safe. When you say there is no safe, what is it exactly that you mean?’

‘I mean there is no safe,’ I say.

He exhales a long, thin breath, his body at the same time seeming to drift a little to the side. ‘So where,’ he says softly, ‘do you keep the money?’

‘There is no money,’ I say.

‘There is no money,’ Paul repeats, nodding. And then, ‘What kind of bank has no money?’

‘A merchant or investment bank,’ I say.

Paul goes very quiet. He lifts his coffee cup to his mouth, but his hand is trembling so hard that he lowers it again without it reaching his lips. ‘Oh,’ he says.

‘You must remember that unlike a high-street bank, an investment bank does not take deposits from customers. Instead we fund our operations primarily with short-term or even overnight borrowings.’

‘Right,’ Paul whispers.

‘Of course, we don’t like to talk about this, because it means that we’re a lot less secure than we pretend. In fact we are all just twenty-four hours away from a funding crisis! This is investment banking’s “dirty little secret”! ’

‘Ha ha,’ Paul’s laughter is low and hoarse, as if he had a rope around his neck. ‘So now the question we have to ask ourselves is, given that it’s an investment bank, with no money on the premises, how is he going to rob it?’ He looks at me with eyes half-dazed and half-desperate. ‘That’s the question we have to ask, isn’t it?’

I chew on my knuckles thoughtfully. ‘I fear it will be difficult for our Everyman,’ I say.

‘It will?’

‘Very difficult.’

‘Right,’ Paul says. For a long moment he doesn’t say anything else or even look at me; he merely sits in his chair, twitching.

‘But there are other ways for you to spice up the story,’ I say, realizing that I have made him even more discouraged than he was already. ‘For example, maybe there is a fire in Transaction House, and I am the Bank of Torabundo fire warden, so I must make sure everyone escapes.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ Paul agrees, rising unsteadily to his feet. ‘A very good idea.’

‘Or we could keep the love story with the waitress and the French philosophy, but leave out the robbery.’

‘Yes,’ Paul says. ‘That’s worth looking at.’

‘And meanwhile my character is dealing with the ongoing crisis in the eurozone — nobody knows how much the currency will depreciate, it is a very tense situation —’