Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

It was the bank that came to my rescue. They called one day, on my parents’ phone (I’d kept my mobile switched off) — someone from management whose name I didn’t recognize, wanting to know where I was. I was shocked: how long had I been here? Yet when I checked the calendar, everything was in order. I’m on compassionate leave, I told the caller; I still have five days left.

‘Yes,’ he said, in a tone that suggested he knew this already, and then, rather cursorily, ‘I’m sorry.’ The line was silent for what seemed a long time. I wondered if I’d been cut off, or put on hold. Then he said, ‘Claude, we would like to offer you a 50 per cent raise in your salary.’

‘Oh yes?’ I said, confused.

‘I can also offer you a guaranteed bonus,’ he said. He named the amount; it was significant.

‘Oh,’ I said. It took me a moment to realize he was waiting for a reply. ‘Yes, yes,’ I said, mostly so I could get off the line.

‘I’ll courier you over the paperwork right now,’ he said.

It wasn’t until I was on the return flight that I realized what had happened: that BOT believed or feared that I was using my compassionate leave to speak to banks in Paris with a mind to finding a new and better-paid position. I was surprised, but I didn’t suppose it mattered. The plane began its descent; I saw the black river snaking through the city. Liffey or Lethe? That didn’t matter either. I found I was relieved to get back to Dublin, where even if I wore black every day for a year no one would ask why, where I was free — free to be a persona ficta , free to lose myself in the labyrinth of the present. Or maybe I was imprisoned in the present, in the persona; either way I got paid, and the difference seemed of little consequence.

The zombie was right. The next morning the government announces a further bailout for Royal Irish.

The Minister delivers the news from the steps of the Dáil. ‘After a careful study,’ he says, ‘it is clear to us that Royal Irish Bank is of systemic importance. As its failure would have severe consequences for Ireland and Europe, the government commits to meet all of the bank’s present and future capital requirements until liquidity is restored …’

‘What the fuck?’ Ish says. ‘He’s digging out those dirtbags again ?’

‘Systemic importance, baby,’ Gary McCrum says. ‘Too big to fail.’

‘But the whole point of our report was that it wasn’t important,’ Ish says. ‘It’s like he went through it and did the exact opposite of everything we recommended.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first client to do that,’ Gary says.

‘Perhaps he had information that was not made available to us,’ Jurgen says.

‘Or he’s being counterintuitive,’ Kevin suggests.

‘He doesn’t know what he’s doing,’ Jocelyn Lockhart says. ‘Poor bastard, look at him.’

Still gabbling meaningless statistics into the morning sunshine, the Minister’s bleached face is lathered with sweat; the heavy three-piece suit bulges unconvincingly, as if it’s filled with straw.

‘What’s he even doing there?’ Ish says. ‘Why hasn’t he handed over to someone else?’

‘Strategic,’ Gary McCrum says.

‘Nobody without a terminal illness would’ve been able to get this bailout through,’ Jocelyn Lockhart agrees. ‘But people feel sorry for him.’

A journalist asks the Minister about possible IMF intervention if Ireland’s fortunes continue to decline. The Minister appears irritated. ‘I’ve already made it clear that there will be no third parties …’ But as he speaks, the camera pans to his left and reveals, in the scrum of apparatchiks behind him, the little Portuguese man again.

‘ They’re already here … ’ Jocelyn Lockhart sings.

‘Bullshit,’ Ish says.

‘All over government buildings,’ Jocelyn says. ‘And I heard they’ve booked a whole floor of the Merrion Hotel.’

‘There’s no way IMF’d let him chuck more money at Royal Irish,’ Ish objects. ‘It’s economic suicide.’

The media reaction to the Minister’s announcement is apoplectic, terminal illness notwithstanding. The radio waves are clogged with hard-luck stories deriving from the last wave of cuts: grandmothers and children and chronically ill whose pensions were slashed or whose special-needs assistants were withdrawn or whose care was cancelled overnight by governmental austerity, even as yet more billions flow in decidedly unaustere fashion to the notoriously corrupt bank.

Market reaction is divided: bondholders are glad to hear they will be getting their money, but there is an increasing sense of mystery as to where this money will be coming from. The country’s budget is running at almost a third of GDP, and any appearance of Ireland in the bond market is accompanied by the financial equivalent of an involuntary shudder.

The market is very, very happy, at the same time, about BOT’s takeover of Agron. The incredibly complicated deal, involving literally hundreds of subsidiaries, has been turned around by the Dublin office in record time (the rumour is that three temps were hired just to sign Porter’s name on the contracts). At a stroke, BOT has acquired six thousand new employees, ranged all over the world, and from the share price it appears the spectacular gamble has paid off.

‘Of course it’s paid off,’ Ish says. ‘The market loves spectacular gambles, it’s all bloody men. It’s the deals that make sense they get pissy about.’

‘What are we going to call ourselves now?’ Kevin says. ‘We can’t really be AgroBOT, can we? Sounds like some kind of android hooligan.’

‘That’s right up the market’s sodding street as well,’ Ish says.

She, however, appears to be the only person in the world with any misgivings. As the days pass, the financial world’s love for Frankensteinian newcomer AgroBOT only grows, and with it our market capitalization. Message boards fizz with conjecture about Porter Blankly’s next innovation, investors battle each other for expensive slivers of the bank’s stock — and for holders of that stock, such as the BOT staff, the boom times, as the Irish premier said back in the days of the Celtic Tiger, are getting even more boomer. In fact, the atmosphere in our tiny bubble increasingly comes to resemble that of the Tiger; that is to say, a certain amount of irrational exuberance becomes noticeable.

‘Evening all.’

‘There’s Kev — whoa, check out Kevin’s watch, everybody!’

‘What — oh, you mean this?’ Diamonds glitter from a panoply of unnecessary dials.

‘Isn’t that the one James Bond wears?’

‘Look out, Russkies! Kevin’s got the James Bond watch!’

‘Aren’t you on a temporary contract?’ Ish says. ‘How could you possibly afford that?’

‘I work for BOT, don’t I? I leveraged my position, that’s all.’

Every evening there is a client presentation or a birthday or a new fat deal to celebrate — and even if there isn’t, I find myself drinking anyway, in Life Bar or somewhere more exclusive. In the past, these outings bored me; now, I am glad to eliminate the danger of a few hours on my own, to avail myself instead of the city’s many avenues of forgetting.

Tonight we are in the penthouse bar of a boutique hotel, one of the few that managed to survive the crash; a debate is in train over whether a boom or a bust is a better time to be rich, with Brent ‘Crude’ Kelleher arguing that during a boom there are more luxury goods available, a ‘better atmosphere generally’, and, although there is a smaller gap between your wealth and that of others, people slightly less rich than you understand exactly how nice your stuff is. Dave Davison, on the other hand, maintains that luxury is debased by being widely available. ‘That was why the boom was such a nightmare. You couldn’t take a business-class flight without being stuck next to some dishwasher salesman telling you about his 7 Series.’