Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

Is that the kind of spicing up he meant? I keep coming back to our conversation in the café. At the time it made me angry (he spends weeks poring over my life, then tells me there’s nothing there?) but I’m starting to see the problem from his point of view. He wants to give an honest account of life in the International Financial Services Centre; but he also has a duty to frame some sort of a narrative, to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. In a way, we face a similar dilemma with our clients. On the one hand, we commit to giving them an accurate account of what’s happening in the market. On the other, we know that an accurate account is too complicated to be of any use to them. And so instead we tell stories: turn companies into characters, quarterly reports into events, the chaos of global business into a few simple fables ending with a buy or sell recommendation which, if followed, will hopefully result in a profit. The truth is fine in principle, but stories are what sell.

The robbery is unfeasible on any number of levels (although he is not the first to suggest it: my father had often proposed a bank heist, though he also suggested I go in with a machine gun and ‘just shoot everyone’.) But the love story? On its own that would show the banker’s rich inner life, without requiring any major changes to the rest of the plot. Waiting for a client one morning, I watch Ariadne from behind a menu and weigh her up. Her limbs are long, her movements, as she glides down the narrow aisles of the restaurant, fluid and graceful; she carries herself with a sort of gladiatorial kindness, smiling implacably at all comers. And her eyes: from her complexion, I expect them to be brown, but instead they are a startlingly vivid green, like a stormlit sea, restive and electric. They continue to wrongfoot me every time I catch a glimpse of them — until she notices me staring, and smiles, and I blush and pretend I wanted to order another coffee.

Then something happens that puts the book out of everyone’s mind. A little after midday — 7.05 a.m., New York time — Ish jumps out of her seat. ‘I just got an email from Porter Blankly!’

A moment later, similar exclamations can be heard about the room. I look at my inbox. ‘I’ve got one too.’

Kevin comes rushing up. ‘Porter Blankly’s sent us all emails,’ he says.

‘It must be one of his inspirational memos,’ Gary McCrum says.

‘Fuck!’ Ish says.

‘Have you read it yet?’ Kevin asks.

‘I’m too excited,’ Ish says. ‘Claude, you open it.’

Tentatively, as if handling a live wire, I move the cursor over the envelope icon and click on it. The email consists of two words. ‘ “Think counterintuitive,” ’ I read aloud.

‘ “Think counterintuitive,” ’ Ish says.

‘ “Think counterintuitive,” ’ Kevin mutters to himself.

Around the office the phrase can be heard repeated over and over, like a murmurous breeze circulating between the cubicles.

‘Is that inspirational?’ Ish asks. ‘Do you feel inspired?’

‘I definitely feel something ,’ Kevin says, frowning and assuming an odd posture, as though searching for his keys. Before there can be any further discussion, however, Jurgen appears to tell us that a very important email has just come in from Porter Blankly.

‘We know,’ Ish says.

‘Good,’ Jurgen says. ‘Rachael has been in touch to say that each department must submit one major counterintuitive strategy by the end of the week. Until further notice, counterintuitiveness should be considered your top priority.’ He is on the point of bustling off again, but Ish calls him back.

‘What does it mean?’ she says.

Jurgen pushes his glasses up his nose, surprised. ‘I have received only the same memo as you, but I am guessing it means that instead of bowing to the prevailing wisdom and following the herd, we will now be innovating exciting new outside-the-box-type alternatives.’

‘Oh,’ says Ish.

‘How counterintuitive does he want us to be, exactly?’ Jocelyn Lockhart asks.

‘How counterintuitive?’ Jurgen says.

‘Well, say if my intuition is telling me it would be a bad idea to punch you in the face. Does that mean I should punch you in the face?’

‘Or set fire to the computers?’ Gary McCrum chips in.

‘Or stop working now and go to the pub? You know?’

Jurgen strokes his chin thoughtfully. ‘These are good questions. Porter has not specified his parameters. Perhaps we should limit the counterintuitiveness to our respective fields for now, and later, if we find we are still bogged down in conventional, mainstream thinking, we can experiment with more radical options, such as face-punching.’

Initially the response to the new imperative is not entirely serious: free pizza is mooted, paid naptime, daily meetings before the markets open in order to study staff dreams for potentially important data. A couple of days later, however, the strategy becomes less abstract. That morning, Kimberlee the receptionist comes hurtling into the Research Department to tell us that a tramp is asleep in the supply cupboard. She wants to call security; the analysts, however, see an opportunity to demonstrate their machismo, and an Armed Response Unit is quickly put together in the shape of the Oil team leader, Brent ‘Crude’ Kelleher, and his mountain-biking cronies, Andrew O’Connor and Dwayne McGuckian. ‘How are you “armed”?’ Ish asks. In unison, the Armed Response Unit roll up their sleeves and begin copious flexing of biceps.

Not long after, though, they hurry back in, looking decidedly less intrepid. There is a tramp on the premises, they confirm; however, he is no longer asleep, or, for that matter, in the supply cupboard. A moment later, with a guttural roar, a ragged figure lurches in. He is tall and spindly, with blazing eyes and a voluminous thicket of black beard that gives him the look of a medieval mendicant, flagellating himself around Europe. Long streamers of duct tape hang from his shoulders; I can’t understand what he’s saying, but it is clear that he is very, very angry. He charges down the aisle between the cubicles in pursuit of the Armed Response Unit, who career out of Research into Sales; a moment later they reappear in the lobby, frantically jabbing the button for the lift, when its doors open and two enormous security guards jump out and dash after the tramp, who turns and speeds back towards his supply cupboard. Too late! We watch from our cubicles as the guards rugby-tackle him, bringing him crashing to the ground; then one of them springs up to kneel on his back, while the other one prepares to hit him with his baton. The tramp howls out some kind of unintelligible imprecation — and the guard stops, baton frozen in the air.

‘ Deystvitelno? ’ he says.

The tramp issues another screed.

The security guard climbs off his back and says something apologetic. Now the tramp rises to his feet and straightens himself. The first security guard says something to the second security guard. Then both the security guards start obsequiously dusting down the tramp, who stares away into the middle distance with an imperial hauteur. Through the glass of the lobby we see Liam English coming in our direction, fists clenched by his side; the Armed Response Unit follow after him, looking chastened. Liam English dispatches the security guards with a single jab of his thumb. Then he embraces the tramp.

BOT has a new employee. Grigory Erofeev, or Grisha as he prefers to be called, although he makes it clear that ideally no one would speak to him at all, has been flown in directly from Moscow’s Institute of Advanced Mathematics to head our new Structured Products Department, where he will come up with mind-bending combinations of currencies, futures, swaptions and other such entities, which the bank can sell on to clients and use on its own account.