Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

I tell him the government has commissioned a report from us on Royal. He issues a comical huff of exasperation. ‘Reports,’ he says. ‘They can’t get enough of those things, can they?’

‘The last recapitalization didn’t work. You’re running out of money faster than they can replace it. They’re wondering if there’s any point giving you more.’

‘Well, if they don’t want to see yours truly fed to the sharks by a bunch of very fucking unhappy bondholders they’ll keep the taps on,’ he says. ‘You’re French, Claude, you know the famous German bonhomie doesn’t stretch all that far.’

Ariadne returns with her order pad; I ask for two coffees. The instant she turns away, Bruce goes into a routine, boggling, winking, panting in fake agony. ‘The point is, soon there won’t be any money left to give you,’ I say, ignoring this. ‘They can’t raise those kinds of funds any more.’

‘Dark times, Claudius, dark times,’ Bruce Gaffney says, and shakes his head, as if I have been telling him about some other bank in some other country very, very far away. ‘Aha!’ He brightens, as Ariadne returns with our coffee. ‘The goddess of the grounds. The Beatrice of the bean. Thank you, darling.’

I try again. ‘Can you survive without another recap?’

‘What, nothing at all?’ he says, as if affronted, then, seeing my expression, changes tack: ‘What I mean is, we’re almost over the hump! If we could get another, say, seven billion, we’d definitely be able to hold our own till this all blows over.’

‘You said that the last time.’

‘Yeah, but last time we should have said we needed fourteen billion. I don’t know where we got seven, frankly. Some trainee probably just made it up.’

‘But you see’ — I am struggling to keep my patience — ‘that’s exactly why they’ve asked me to write this report. They don’t trust the figures you’re giving them.’

‘Right, right,’ he says, his attention wandering across the plaza again; then, as I open a folder and pass a spreadsheet over to him, ‘Ah, here, don’t be dumping this stuff on me, not on a bloody Friday afternoon.’

‘I just wanted to know if you can clarify some things.’

He rolls his eyes, presses his lips, as if I had brought him to lunch and then tried to sell him a watch.

‘This figure here, do you know what it relates to?’

‘What, off the top of my head?’

‘It’s fifty million euro.’

‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Gandon.’

‘Gandon is here. Whitcroft is here. Dreyer’s, Gane International, all those are accounted for. But this money here, there’s no indication where it’s going. Instead someone’s tried to bury it by hiding it inside another transaction.’

Bruce Gaffney flicks his teeth with his fingers to produce the first two bars of ‘La Marseillaise’. ‘Must be one of those things, then, mustn’t it?’

‘What things?’

‘The things they have on aeroplanes. That they dig up when it crashes. What do you call it? A black box.’

‘A black box?’

‘Yeah, a black box.’

‘You are telling me nobody knows what this fifty million might relate to.’

He shrugs, looks me full on. The plaza passes translucent in his glasses, veiling his eyes.

‘I’m trying to help you,’ I say.

‘Oh Jesus!’ He throws up an exasperated hand. ‘Maybe Miles took a few quid out to invest or something. It’s a bank, Claude, it’s a highly complicated fucking, you know, operation. I mean, are you going to put every single rubber fucking band into this bloody report?’

‘With so many irregularities it will be hard to find a buyer.’

‘Fine, fuck the buyers. It’ll sort itself out. Like I’ve told you for the last two fucking years, what Royal has is a minor cash-flow problem. The real issue is that we’re being made the scapegoats. We’re carrying the can for the whole country turning to shit. Well, fuck that, Claude. Fuck that. It’s not like we went around putting a gun to people’s heads and telling them to take out a second mortgage. Everybody partied. Now they’re blaming us for their hangover.’ The flare of temper is quickly damped down; he becomes affable again, solicitous. He leans in closer to the table. ‘Look, I know the books are a bit of a mess. It’s fucking Royal, what do you expect? But the fact of the matter is the place is sound. I’m in there every day. I can tell you with my hand on my heart, it’s sound. Now I know you’re a straight shooter, I’m not going to tell you what to put in your report. But I would ask, as a colleague, that you give the full story. Don’t just be banging on exclusively about anomalies or black boxes or whatever the fucking secretary dropped behind the radiator.’

As he gets up I ask him about Dublex.

‘What about Dublex?’ he says.

‘Do they have a holding in Royal?’

This time his ignorance seems genuine. ‘First I’ve heard of it. Walter crawls out of his gravel pit the odd time for a round of golf with the board, but that’s about the size of it.’ Now a smile crosses his face. ‘Here, have you seen these lads dressed as zombies outside the new HQ? It’s fucking classic, there’s a zombie Miles and everything, this little lad with a silver wig and this suit covered in shit? Hilarious.’ He pauses judiciously at the door. ‘See, that’s the kind of protest they should have in Greece instead of chucking petrol bombs. They’re making their point but at the same time giving everyone a bit of a laugh. Fuck knows we could use one. Good to see you, Claude. If there’s anything else I can do for you, you know where to ask.’ He points at his bottom, then hurries (‘Fuck’s sake!’) back into the rain.

I gather the documents spread over the table, tap them straight, set them down again. There is nothing I can do that will make them make sense; they are not a black box, but a black hole, into which time, trust, meaning, other people’s money, disappear endlessly.

‘Another coffee?’ Ariadne has reappeared at my shoulder.

I smile stiffly. ‘I should go back to work.’

‘You can wait till rain stops,’ she says, and then, ‘Hey — you want to try something?’ Before I can reply she has whisked away, and then whisked back again with a plate. ‘Baklava. It’s my grandmother’s recipe.’

She hovers as I lift a forkful to my mouth. The cake is sweet and sticky, with crunches of almond and cinnamon. It’s hard to eat with her watching me, and also hard to swallow, and speak. Nevertheless, I am able to declare, mostly honestly, that I like it.

‘My grandmother makes it much better. I think it’s maybe the honey she use.’

‘No, it’s good,’ I say, taking another bite. ‘ Savoureux , as we say in France.’

‘In Greek, we say nostimo. Which means, hmm, something you want to come back to. You know, like nostalgia, the pain to want to return home.’ She laughs. ‘That’s Greece, you cannot even eat a cake without the past come looking for you.’

I smile. How green her eyes are, and bright; looking into them is like walking through an enchanted forest. It strikes me that I am alone with her; I feel an odd sense of unburdenment, as if we are two characters in a play meeting in the wings while the scenery is changed.

‘So, you are from Greece?’ I say, wincing internally at my accent, the dinosaur-clomp of the words. ‘What has made you come to Ireland?’

‘Ha ha, you watch the news?’

‘It has not always been like this.’

‘No, until this year we cover it up. And you, you’re from France?’

‘Yes,’ I say. There is a pause; I realize in horror that I have exhausted my entire conversational repertoire.

‘And your friend too?’ She nods at the empty seat.