Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

I name a sum; I feel it is generous. But he seems unmoved. I don’t understand.

‘There is no downside here. Even if you think it’s a waste of time, you’ll still get paid. It isn’t exactly writing, but at the very least it’ll pay for you to reclaim your desk from the pawn shop.’ At the mention of the desk he flinches, but before he can speak there comes a cry from outside. From the top of an incline, Remington is shouting that he has found something. His father rolls down the window.

‘What is it?’

‘I found an ant!’ the boy shrieks. ‘Look, Dad, look!’

He hurtles down the hill and over to the car, holding out his cupped hands. A tiny black shape scurries back and forth over the pink dunes of his palms — antennae flailing, all its landmarks stripped away in an instant. I feel a surge of pity and recognition.

‘Can I keep him, Dad?’

‘What do you want an ant for?’

‘To be my friend.’

‘Hmm, I don’t know if we’ve got room in the apartment for pets.’

‘Please?’

‘All right, all right. Now shake off some of that water, we’re going home.’

‘Where will I put my ant?’

‘I don’t know, stick him in your pocket.’

‘I have a box,’ I interject hastily, and dig around in my coat. Emptying out a heap of breath mints, I present the plastic case to Remington, who tips the bewildered ant inside.

Paul gets out to put the boy into his seat, then climbs back into his own. But he doesn’t start the engine; he just sits there, contemplating the rain. Then at last he turns to me. ‘I’ll do it,’ he says. ‘But it’ll cost you —’

The figure he names is double what I proposed. His audacity makes me laugh. ‘Maybe you should be working for BOT.’

‘Maybe I shouldn’t have got in half a million euros’ worth of debt,’ he says without smiling. ‘Then I wouldn’t have had to start thinking like a banker.’

‘I think I’ll call him Roland,’ Remington says, dangling the breath-mints box before his nose in the back seat. ‘Sit, Roland. Stay, Roland. Play dead, Roland.’

‘What kind of name is Roland for an ant?’ Paul objects. ‘Think of something else.’

‘Hmm … Roland?’ Remington says.

Paul turns around in his seat. ‘Jesus Christ, Remington, the name you just thought of was Roland.’

‘What’s a good name for an ant, Dad?’

Paul thinks for a minute. ‘Anthony,’ he says.

Remington and I are forced to concede that this is a good name.

‘See, that’s what you’re paying for,’ Paul says.

I mean to keep it to myself, but am so excited that in a moment of weakness I let slip to Ish that I have engaged the writer’s services. She is not impressed.

‘I can’t believe you’re even talking to that slimeball,’ she says.

‘There didn’t seem any point in holding a grudge,’ I say. ‘After all, he didn’t actually do anything.’

‘He did plenty,’ Ish says. ‘Imagine if his plan had come off, where would we be then?’

‘Now I have seen how he lives I can understand it a lot better,’ I tell her. ‘He has a young family. He’s deeply in debt. He bought an apartment during the boom that is now worth a fraction of its original price.’

‘Join the club,’ Ish comments mordantly.

‘He’s stopped writing.’

‘Completely?’ This takes her by surprise.

‘He hasn’t written anything for seven years.’

‘So what does he do all day?’

‘Nothing. Drinks, goes to strip clubs.’

‘So you’re going to give him another crack at robbing the bank, is that it?’

I don’t answer. Ariadne has arrived with our orders. She smiles at me as she sets down the plate, I smile back at her …

‘Claude?’

‘Ah, yes, so …’ Without mentioning Ariadne, I give Ish the barest sketch of the plan, the idea of continuing the next months of my life ‘as if they were in a book’.

‘What’s the point of that?’ she says.

‘I suppose it’s a kind of life coaching. Embracing the moment, that kind of thing. Discovering my humanity.’

‘That chancer, what does he know about humanity? When’s the last time anyone saw his blimmin’ humanity?’

‘Well, this is only a pretext,’ I say. ‘My real hope is that if I ask him to create the scenarios for me, after a while he may be inspired actually to write the book.’

‘The book about the banking Everyman?’

‘That book. Any book. It seems to me that if he has a regular income, maybe he will no longer feel so disillusioned. He will remember he is happier as a working writer than as an unemployed con man. This is my — what do you say, ulterior motive?’

‘Be careful, Claude,’ she says gloomily. ‘You can’t try and change someone. My online psychic’s always telling me that.’ She chomps down on a stick of celery. ‘Are we going to be in these, whatyoucall, scenarios as well?’

‘Ha, I think I will keep him away from the bank this time. To avoid any temptation, you know.’

‘Probably right,’ Ish agrees. She crunches her food morosely for a moment, then says, ‘The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if I wanted to be in a book anyway. You know, what if I turned out to be one of those characters nobody likes? And they skip all the bits with me in them, and they complain on Apeiron about how boring I am?’

‘You’re not boring.’

‘If he was going to put me in a book, I’d much prefer it was the me from a few years ago. When I was travelling with Tog, going to all those amazing places.’ She twirls the celery vacantly in the air, lost in some sad dream, then suddenly brightens. ‘Oh, here, though. Did I show you my necklace? My mum just sent it over.’

She hooks the string with her finger, pulling it free of her neck so I can see it better. The necklace is composed of shells; they all appear white at first, but when I lean closer I see that they are very subtly graded, running from blue to pink.

‘It’s from Kokomoko?’

‘Yeah, one of the tribal elders gave it to me. Here, I’ll show you a picture.’ She takes her tablet from her bag and pulls up an image of an extremely wizened old woman. ‘Her name’s Kavitatni. She’s a king.’

‘Not a queen?’

‘No. She’s a king from about three centuries ago, called Viri the Fierce.’

I am confused.

‘Well, like I was telling you, on the island, everything and everyone’s all bound up together.’

‘In the gifts.’

‘Yeah. Everything circulates, which means nobody really dies. Instead, all the ancestors are still floating around. They’re in the gifts, they’re on the fishing boat, they’re at the feasts. And whenever there’s an important decision to be made, the dead kings speak through their chosen mouthpiece.’

‘So your friend here is … possessed by this King Viri?’

‘Well, she channels him. It’s quite funny when you’ve got some bigwig from Shell or whatever coming over wanting to talk about mining rights, and they find themselves having to make their presentation to the ghost of a king in the body of an old lady.’

There are more pictures, semi-naked people in coracles, or daubed in spirals, brandishing spears; I make appreciative noises, all the while watching Ariadne from the corner of my eye as she circulates between the tables.

Was Clizia right? Is my plan insane? Many of my colleagues have attended weekend seminars on picking up women, the kind that advise you to begin by insulting whoever it is you want to sleep with; others are signed up to Internet dating agencies that promise ‘perfect love without suffering’ by feeding your personal data into a computer to find your optimal match. Hiring a writer to mastermind my courtship does not seem significantly madder than these. And I wasn’t lying to Ish: I do nourish hopes that I can coax Paul back to writing. If his debts didn’t weigh so heavily, if he had time and space to think, why shouldn’t his creativity flourish once more?