Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

‘I’m not discussing business, darling, they asked what I’m doing and I’m telling them. Actually, I think I may have some brochures here somewhere — ow! Darling, would you please stop kicking me?’

‘Darling, I would like a word with you outside, please.’

‘What’s the problem, I’m just — hey, put that back!’ as I snatch away his wine glass.

‘I’ll give it back after we’ve had a little word,’ I say firmly; grousing under his breath, Paul gets out of his seat.

‘Obvious who wears the trousers in your household,’ Crispin teases.

‘I wear the trousers,’ Paul rejoins as I bundle him out the door. ‘And I go on top!’

Ignoring his protestations, I propel him down the hall and into a darkened sitting room where we are certain to be out of earshot. ‘What are you doing?’

‘What are you doing?’ Paul returns. ‘I thought you were going to help me!’

‘I am helping you. I have spent the last two hours pretending to be gay. But that was because I thought you were trying to win over your editor. I did not realize that you had constructed this charade in order to bilk our hosts out of their money — this is a word, bilk ?’

‘How am I bilking them? I’m just making conversation.’

‘Answer this: did you come here this evening with the specific intention to drum up investments for Myhotswaitress?’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ he protests. ‘Myhotswaitress is going to be huge, and I’m giving them the chance to get in on the ground floor! I’m basically thrusting millions and millions of euro into their hands, and you’re telling me I’m a bad guest?’

‘You told me you had come here to rebuild your relationship with your editor and restart your career.’

‘I said no such thing, Claude. I said they were influential people, and they are. Look at the size of this place! I could move my whole family in here and it would take those guys about six months to notice. They’re exactly the kind of investor we need.’

‘That may be so. Nevertheless, I am informing you now that my part in this deception is over.’

Paul grinds his fists against his temples. ‘I don’t understand you. You’re always on my case about doing something with my life, and then when I try, you’re completely unsupportive!’

‘Because I want you to write! And everything you do is just a way of avoiding writing! Don’t you understand — you are the great investment opportunity! You have the chance to get in on the ground floor — of yourself!’

‘What are you talking about?’ Paul exclaims.

It is true, this did not come out quite like I thought it would. ‘I am talking about the chance to create a work of art! Instead of merely adding to the transience and the falsity of our times, you can rise above them! Find some meaning within them!’

‘Oh, well, that’s just peachy for you, isn’t it? I’m sure from your perspective it looks like a great idea to crawl up my own ass, or however you put it —’

‘ “Get in on the ground floor of yourself” —’

‘So you and your banker pals can keep merrily turning the world to shit, and then any time you’re feeling bad drag in the poor old artist to find some meaning for you! You’re like the property developer who spends the year demolishing the countryside, then wants to go on holiday to somewhere completely unspoiled . Well, I’m not your meaning-monkey! I’m not here to make you feel better!’

‘That’s not what I’m saying —’

‘I’m living in your world, pal. I’ve got to play by your rules. If I’ve got to add to the falsity to feed my family, then falsity it is. And as for transience, I’ll say this for it, at least it’s over quick.’

‘Ah, young love,’ comes a voice from behind us. Standing in the doorway, framed by the light of the hall, is William O’Hara, wine glass perched between finger and thumb like a spheric, translucent butterfly. ‘Crispin and I used to fight like that,’ he says. ‘Now we’re like two old maids, making each other tea. But I see you’ve found it.’

He nods at the far wall. We turn around. Hanging over the fireplace is a painting. In the gloom it appears to be a rectangle of solid black; but now O’Hara switches on a lamp and I can see that the darkness is composed of minute inscriptions, accreting here a little more, here a little less, so that shapes seem to emerge, swim about and disappear again. The effect is surprisingly powerful, and quite beautiful.

‘I wanted to bring the guests in for a private viewing, but Crispin thought it would seem like showing off,’ O’Hara says. ‘He doesn’t understand that I don’t think of it as mine. How could anyone ever believe he owned something as monumental as this?’ He gazes up at the painting, as if he were speaking to it rather than to us, drifting across the floor towards it like a strand of inverted smoke pulled backwards into the unlit fire. ‘The instant I saw it, I knew I could spend the rest of my life looking at it. Crispin says that’s exactly why he doesn’t like it. “You never say that about me,” he says.’ O’Hara smiles. ‘He’s such a silly old duffer.’

I recognize the painting: after my failed encounter with Ariadne, I spent many nights online looking at this and others, taking some consolation, if that’s the word, from their charred and tortured surfaces, like selenographies of some bleak moon.

‘François Texier,’ I say.

‘The philosopher?’ Paul is staring up at the painting with a certain amount of misgiving, as if shadowy hands might at any moment emerge from it and pull him in.

‘That’s right,’ O’Hara says. ‘You probably know the story?’

Paul shakes his head.

‘In the late 1990s he disappeared — dropped out of contact, left his job at the university. He’d been about to begin work on what was to be his definitive statement — he had a title for it, and indeed a contract. But the years went by and the book never surfaced — and neither did Texier. Instead these paintings began to appear in Paris — gifts to his friends, many of them, strange portraits, strange landscapes, strange abstractions. All very strange, and yet in some ways you could see the connection to his thought.’

‘And the book?’ Paul asks. ‘What happened to that?’

‘Well, this is the book,’ O’Hara says, gesturing to the painting. ‘ La Marque et le Vide. The Mark and the Void. If you look closely, you can see —’

‘Words …’

Words upon words upon yet more words; hundreds of pages of text superimposed one on top of the other, rendering each other utterly illegible — creating instead a cascading darkness that seems to devour the very possibility of meaning.

‘He wrote it all out, you see. His book, the unfinished book, on the canvas, in pen and ink. When he had finished he burned the transcript and all his notes, and treated the canvas with the soot. And he stipulated that whoever owned it subsequently would have to expose it to smoke, which it’s been chemically designed to absorb over time — that’s why we’ve hung it over a fireplace.’

‘What happened?’ Paul says. ‘He’d had some kind of breakdown?’

‘He’d certainly grown wary of the idea of definitive statements,’ O’Hara says. ‘But in fact the painting fits his philosophy rather well. The mark, “making your mark”, this idea that to live in full means to leave some permanent evidence of yourself on the world, he’d become quite suspicious of that. And the corresponding notion that the world is a blank page waiting to be inscribed, a void to be covered up with our doings. No, no. On the contrary. The void comes from inside us, from deep inside us. And the more we try to escape it, the more we turn the world into a mirror. Of that emptiness. That’s what he felt he’d done, while attempting to come up with his definitive statement.’