Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

‘It’s not him,’ Remington gurgles through incipient tears.

‘It is him!’ Paul remonstrates. ‘Of course it’s him!’

‘It’s not,’ Clizia chimes in.

‘Whose side are you on?’ Paul says.

‘It’s not even an ant,’ she says exasperatedly. ‘It’s a spider.’

Paul examines the tiny creature crouched in his palm. ‘So it is,’ he says. ‘Actually it looks a little bit like your mother.’

‘My mother would cry bitter tears if she knew that I have shackled myself to a man who cannot even tell an ant from a spider,’ Clizia attests.

‘Let’s try and think positively about this,’ Paul says. ‘Remington, how would you like a brand-new pet spider?’

From his wails it is evident that Remington would not like this very much.

‘What if we pull a couple of its legs off?’ Paul says in an undertone to me. ‘Think that’d fool him?’

‘Wouldn’t it be better just to find Roland?’

‘Forget it,’ Paul says. ‘That ant is history.’ Hearing this, Remington’s howls double in volume.

Clizia gazes from one of us to the other in utter disgust, then, picking up her son, ‘Come on, Remington, you help Mama dry her hair,’ she says, and carries him, still bawling, to his bedroom. The door slams behind her. Paul and I find ourselves in silence.

‘So,’ I say.

‘Yeah,’ Paul says. ‘Well, look, thanks again for helping with the search. I’ll let you know if there are any new developments.’

‘You’re welcome,’ I say. ‘But while I am here, maybe we should have a quick discussion of the plan.’

‘The plan?’

‘The plan you were devising — for me and Ariadne?’

‘Oh, that,’ he says, face clouding.

‘We had arranged to talk about it tonight, if you remember.’

‘Right, right, of course — I’ll be perfectly honest, Claude, what with the whole Roland situation, this place has been kind of a madhouse.’

I do not follow. ‘When did Roland escape?’

‘About half an hour ago. But it’s been brewing for a couple of days now.’

‘I see,’ I say, though this is not quite true. ‘So we are slightly behind schedule.’

‘Slightly,’ Paul says.

‘Well, perhaps we should review what we have so far.’

‘Yeah, you know, as an artist, I’m not entirely comfortable with showing work before it’s ready. But rest assured, I’m making serious headway with your story.’

‘Ha,’ Clizia comments, sweeping out of the nursery like a svelte, ironical bush fire.

‘Pay no attention to my wife. I’m giving this my fullest attention.’

‘If you are paying him to look at whores on the computer, then I can confirm that he gives it his full attention,’ Clizia says. She looks at the clock, swears, then clips off into the bathroom.

‘Are you going somewhere?’ Paul asks. Clizia barks something fierce but unintelligible from the other room. ‘What?’ he shouts back.

She reappears in a tracksuit with a nylon sports bag on her shoulder. ‘Volleyball try-outs.’

Paul looks nonplussed.

‘I have told you twenty times,’ Clizia says. ‘There is try-out tonight for volleyball team. Cleaners’ league.’

‘I don’t remember you mentioning —’

‘That’s because you don’t listen to anythink I say!’ she shouts back, with surprising vehemence. ‘Too busy wasting time with the idiot plans!’

‘It’s not an idiot plan,’ he says. ‘Jesus, Clizia, you complain when I’m not working, then when I am working you’re standing around all the time making sarcastic remarks —’

‘Working, ha,’ she says, taking a hairbrush and furiously attacking her hair.

‘Yes, working, we’re not in Ectovia now, people have jobs other than peeling potatoes and digging mass graves —’

A whimper emerges from Remington’s room; she throws her arms up. ‘I’m going to be late!’

‘I’ll take care of him,’ Paul says. ‘Go to your try-out.’ She stomps off without saying goodbye. ‘Sorry about that,’ he says to me as the door slams shut. ‘She’s been kind of tense lately.’

‘She doesn’t approve of our arrangement.’

‘She doesn’t approve of much that I do, Claude. I wouldn’t worry about it.’

The nursery door opens and Remington pads out. ‘Dad, can we play Rainbow Mystery Epic ?’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?’

‘Just for a minute? I’ll be Pikaboom, Number One Rainbow Collector. You be Purple Aqualing.’

‘Okay, okay.’

‘Now steal my rainbows.’

‘I’m going to steal your rainbows!’ Paul roars. Remington shrieks, and runs off behind the couch. His father turns to me wearily. ‘So anyhow, there’s the progress report.’

‘I see.’ I stroke my chin. ‘Well, I imagine it takes a little while to find your way into a project. Let’s meet again in a few days’ time, when you’ve had more time to think. Why don’t you come over to my apartment? We can have dinner, and afterwards we will be able to talk undisturbed.’

‘That’d be great, Claude. I’ll have everything locked down by then, I promise.’

I suppose I should be disappointed, but as I let myself out I am tingling with excitement. The symbolism of the redeemed writing desk seems to me incontrovertible; I make my way down the hall, lost in happy fantasies of rescuing his career (and quite possibly his marriage).

And then something calls me from them. It is so subtle that at first I can’t tell what it is or even which sense has perceived it, but with every onward step it grows stronger. Perfume: the same heady scent that gilded the edges of the steam in the bathroom now dances languorously through the stale air of the hallway. On the landing, it becomes denser, more insistent, directing me to follow it down the stairwell … but then I notice something else. In the dust beneath the plastic sheeting that closes off the unfinished rooms are fresh footprints — two different kinds, one set (trainers?) going in, another set (heels?) going out.

I push aside the plastic sheet, step on to bare planks. Everything is dark; perfume pours from the doorless entrance to the right. I follow it, stepping through the frame into the shell of an apartment. The light of the city moon shines through the window to bleach the unsanded floorboards. In a corner lies the nylon sports bag, inside it the tracksuit, trainers and top that Clizia wore when she left the apartment. I’m sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation, but I can’t think of it. Nor can I think why she would bathe, or wash her hair, or put on those scandalous knickers before a volleyball game. I stand by the window for what seems a long time, but the answers don’t present themselves; there is only the opaque shimmer of the night and the city, and her perfume wrapping itself round and round me, purring like a cat.

Life is so loud that it takes a few moments to realize it is almost empty. Everyone is packed into one little corner where the BOT celebrations are in full swing. ‘Rachael’s started a tab,’ Ish explains, pointing to where the Chief Operating Officer stands deep in conversation with Howie. Outside the bank, she appears even more like a hologram, the digital reprise of something happening far, far away.

‘If I was Howie, I wouldn’t drink anything that she’d bought me,’ Joe Peston says.

‘Rachael doesn’t see him as a threat,’ I say. ‘A deal like that makes everyone look good.’

‘I don’t know, Claude,’ Gary McCrum says. ‘If Porter wants to keep him at BOT he’d better come up with something pretty special. And Rachael’d better hope it’s not her head on a plate.’

Word of Howie’s spectacular coup has passed beyond BOT and into the greater financial world. Trading forums are alight with it, investment bloggers ballyhoo it, Howie’s name bounces through time zones from one continent to the next. Many commentators see the trade as a vindication of Porter Blankly’s controversial counterintuitive approach: in an article entitled ‘Wrong about Wrong?’, Bloomberg praises Blankly’s discounting of data and logic as ‘a Copernican revolution in active credit management’. Today saw a whole series of similarly counterintuitive positions around the world, traders betting against the market, common sense, their own best instincts.