Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

I would be happy to attend, I say; I have never been to a literary dinner before. ‘Although, to avoid more confusion, we should explain to everyone that we are not romantically attached.’

‘Why, are you planning to make a move on Totally Tremendous Bimal Banerjee?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Do you wish I wasn’t here any more, is that it? You’re going to use me up and then throw me away?’

‘Please, do not remind me.’

‘Well, you can have him! You can have him, you heartless beast!’

‘I am serious. I found that episode quite traumatic.’

‘You made me love you.’

‘I assure you, it was quite unintentional.’

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if Paul’s apathy at seeing Dodson was merely a front, aimed at covering up a hope he doesn’t dare to express. However it unfolds, I have the feeling that tonight will be significant.

The reading is at seven, and I have a lot of work to get through if I’m to make it on time. No sooner have I emerged from my meeting, however, than Ish descends on me.

‘Oh, Claude!’ she cries, and throws her arms around me.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ My first thought is that she has been sacked.

‘It’s the island!’ she sobs.

‘What island?’

‘Kokomoko.’

‘Oh,’ I say, relaxing somewhat, then remembering and looking concerned again. ‘What’s happened?’

Ish tells me that following our conversation the other morning, she decided she would look into the possibility of a transfer after all. In the course of her research, though, she came across a recent Greenpeace report that put Kokomoko near the top of its list of places most endangered by rising seas.

‘And every day it’s getting worse!’ she says, eyes and nose streaming. ‘The islanders can’t fish because the Torabundo government sold the rights to some European consortium and now there’s nothing left in the ocean and they have to buy their food from sodding Australia! But they don’t have any money, and the only thing they have to sell is the sand off their beaches!’

They have been exporting sand by the ton, principally to Torabundo, whose success as an international tax haven has led to a construction boom; but the mining of their own coastline, already at risk from global warming, leaves them perilously exposed.

‘They’re literally digging their own graves! The report says the next king tide could wipe them out!’

‘Who’s King Tide?’ Kevin says, arriving on the scene.

‘It’s not a who,’ Ish says, and she launches into a complicated account of perigees and perihelions , alignments of sun and moon that could bring about the twenty-centimetre rise in sea level that would be enough to swamp the island. Her eyes are white, and I think again of that strange conversation a few days ago when she claimed she was just having a moan.

‘We have to do something,’ she says.

Kevin and I look at each other. ‘Do something? Like what?’

‘We should tell Porter,’ Ish says; then, to our goggling faces, ‘BOT’s the biggest employer in the whole archipelago, don’t you think he’d want to know?’

‘But what’s it got to do with him?’

‘He can’t just stand there with his arms folded while they all drown, can he?’

‘In fairness, Ish,’ Kevin offers, ‘it’s not like they’d actually drown. Obviously, if the island actually started sinking, the UN or somebody would airlift them out of there.’

Ish looks from one of us to the other. ‘Christ!’ she exclaims, and marches away.

‘She’s not really going to go bothering Blankly with that stuff, is she?’ Kevin says.

‘She’s just having a bad day,’ I say.

‘I bet they’re wishing now they hadn’t spent all their time faffing about, swapping shells.’

‘Get back to work,’ I tell him.

I go to the bookshop alone: Paul has informed me that he won’t be attending the reading itself ‘as a matter of principle’, although he also tells me that if I run into his editor before he gets there I should say he’s gone to the men’s room.

The shop is packed almost to bursting. A pyramid of Ararat s is stacked for sale by the till, but most of the audience are already clutching their own copies to their breasts. No one is talking about asset prices or bond yields or basis points; nobody is promising to crush or rape or dismember some absent third party. Excitement bubbles in the air, and I am just wishing Paul were here to experience it for himself, when on the other side of the room, like an orchid emerging from the thick jungle foliage, I spy Ariadne! She has come directly from work: her hair is tied back, and floury fingerprints smudge the lapels of her parka. In the ecstatic atmosphere my first impulse is to go and talk to her — but then my eyes light on the rangy gaucho by her side, and the happy glow in my heart is extinguished. So this is Oscar. It is little consolation to see he looks exactly like I imagined him: tall, austere, bristling with being. They are not speaking, but his silence is voluminous; in fact his mere presence seems scandalously sexual. I lower my hand and withdraw to the shadows. Maybe I should invest in Paul’s start-up after all, I reflect glumly. Watching from a distance is probably as close as a lot of people come to love; if you overlook the exploitation aspect, it is actually a very good idea.

The room is full now; late arrivals are being turned away, and as the clock ticks to the hour, the chatter becomes simultaneously feverish and hushed. Two booksellers arrive at the threshold and, not without difficulty, begin to clear a path through the bodies. Following a few paces behind them — to a thrill of silence from the assembly, like an inverted cheer — come the editor I met this afternoon, a willowy, platinum-blonde girl, a red-faced man with tortoiseshell glasses, and lastly (a rustle of delight now) Bimal Banerjee — short, with a tight, pugilistic frame, a bald head and an air of not suffering fools. Microphones are adjusted, water poured; Banerjee stands to the side, glowering at his feet, as one of the booksellers makes a stammering introduction. Finally, to rapturous applause, the writer takes the podium. He presses his lips together, fiddling with the button on his cuff and darting sceptical glances at the adoring crowd. At last the bookseller raises his hand for silence; the noise abates, the author leans into the microphone and utters: ‘Word.’

We, the listeners, nod to ourselves. It is the first word of the novel’s first New York section, set in the roiling heat of the summer of 2001, and following the book’s rodent narrator, the hip-hop-loving would-be MC Jephot, as he attempts to overcome ratism and master ‘flow’ in order to take part in a humans-only freestyle battle, which will be the first step on the path to becoming a chart-topping cross-species sensation. There is literally not a sound as Banerjee reads, until very near the end when a man appears in the door and, although there is patently no room for an extra body, proceeds to insinuate himself into the crowd, with a great amount of rustling, and drawing a wake of disapproving mutters from those whose view he has impeded and cries from those whose toes he has evidently stood on.

I deliberately refrain from looking in his direction, but there is no doubt in my mind as to who it is; three or four minutes later he hoves up behind me, smelling of rain and alcohol and still contriving to rustle, even though he is now standing quite still.

‘Don’t think anyone noticed me,’ he whispers heavily in my ear.

‘Shh!’ hisses a nearby woman.

‘Wow, a lot of people here,’ Paul murmurs, unzipping his raincoat.

‘Will you be quiet?’ a man says severely.