Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

Paul mumbles ambiguously.

‘And his assistant as well,’ I note.

The mutterings take on a more wistful cast.

‘ She certainly seemed to prefer your writing to Banerjee’s,’ I observe.

There is a turbulent silence, and then Paul blurts, ‘Look, I’ll be honest, there are times when I wish I hadn’t spent seven years playing online poker and stalking waitresses. But to write a book … to go back into that world …’

‘He just wanted to see a proposal,’ I urge him. ‘It will only be one or two weeks of work. And I can help you — listen to your ideas, check the spelling — whatever it takes.’

‘It’s not that simple. I’m in debt, Claude. I owe money left and right. I can’t just drop everything to go and write a novel.’

‘What would you be dropping?’ I say.

‘The website!’

‘Oh yes, of course.’

‘If Myhotswaitress were up and running, it’d be a different story,’ he says. ‘I’d know I had some money coming in. But we’re at a crucial stage now. We need to find investors! If I walk away, the whole thing will just collapse!’

How can the same mind that produced For Love of a Clown have come up with Myhotswaitress? How can he not see the difference between the two? Is this simply the artistic personality? But it’s true: I have no right to criticize, until I have put some skin in the game. ‘If you want,’ I tell him, ‘I will speak to my clients about investing in Myhotswaitress. And I will personally pledge —’ I name a sum. ‘But you must submit your proposal to Dodson first. Do we have a deal?’

Paul appears genuinely moved. ‘You would do that? You’d really do that?’

‘If it means you’ll have the freedom to work on your proposal.’

Paul laughs. ‘I guess we do. And you know that pledge gets you straight into our Gold Circle of investors.’ He bites on a nail. ‘Though not our Platinum Circle.’

‘I am happy to stay in the Gold Circle.’

‘It means you don’t get the tiepin.’

‘I will live with that.’

The news on Monday morning opens with the story of an elderly couple who starved to death in their apartment; their landlord found them, after calling to see why the rent hadn’t been paid. Evidently the couple’s daughter had got mixed up with a loan shark; her parents had spent everything they had trying to dig her out. They had been living on cat food, until the cat food ran out. Every day brings another bleak austerity fairy tale like this one, and makes the pot-and-pan charivari of our neighbours the zombies sound all the louder in our ears when we cross the plaza.

‘Last week I have called the police,’ Jurgen says, looking down through his binoculars, ‘and given to them ten different public-order offences these miscreants can be charged with. Still they do nothing.’

‘Outrageous,’ I say. Although police indifference is perhaps not so hard to fathom; they too have had their wages cut to pay for the failed banks. ‘Nevertheless, compared with New York and London it’s of little significance, no? There are thousands in the camps over there.’

‘One must always clamp down on disobedience before it has a chance to take hold,’ Jurgen says; then, still staring out through the binoculars, ‘Have you noticed anything odd about Ish’s behaviour lately?’

‘Odd?’ I repeat.

Jurgen lowers the binoculars and turns to me, his colourless eyes scanning my features like an infra-red beam.

‘She has been her usual self,’ I say.

‘Very good,’ Jurgen says.

‘Why do you ask?’ I say casually.

‘No reason.’ He lifts the binoculars again. ‘Porter likes to be sure that all his employees are happy.’

I retreat to my desk, then, lowering my head so I am invisible from the windows, grab Ish by the wrist and pull her towards me. ‘What have you done?’

‘What?’

‘You didn’t …’ A terrible thought occurs to me. ‘You didn’t say something to Blankly, did you? About Kokomoko?’

Her façade of incomprehension lasts all of ten seconds. ‘It was just a short email!’ she cries. ‘A short, politely worded —’

‘I don’t believe it.’ I bury my head in my hands.

‘It’s right in his backyard! How’s that going to look, if a whole bloody island goes under in his backyard?’

‘It’s got nothing to do with us!’

‘We can help! He’s always saying how we create our own reality, isn’t this exactly the kind of thing he means?’

Of course it’s not what he means. Blankly would drill his mother’s own grave if he thought there was oil underneath it. In so far as bankers think about nature at all, it’s as the originator of the ruthless survival-of-the-fittest model on which the market is based. If a species becomes extinct, a river runs dry, a civilization is wiped out, by famine or flood or earthquake or volcano, that is usually regarded as reflecting some essential flaw in its business plan. Ish knows that. Why is she acting like this?

‘Wait a second.’ She turns pale herself, looking at me as if she’s just woken from a dream. ‘How did you hear about it?’

‘Jurgen asked — look, it’s all right’ — as the enormity of what she has done hits her in a single wave that throws her back in her seat.

‘Fuck,’ she whispers, and then, imploringly, ‘I didn’t say anything bad! I just thought he ought to know. What did Jurgen say? What’s going to happen to me?’

‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ I say, but then frustration overtakes me again. ‘Didn’t you think of this before? Why do you care so much about people ten thousand miles away?’

‘I don’t fucking know, do I? Maybe because no one any closer will let me care about them.’

My phone lights up; I am grateful for the reprieve.

The caller is a man — a reporter. ‘My name is Ron Hallissey, I work at the Record — Mr Martingale, your name has been given to me as one of the authors of a recent report on Royal Irish Bank compiled by Agron Torabundo for the Department of Finance. Is that correct?’

‘Yes, but —’

‘I just wondered if you could expand on some of the recommendations your report makes. You advise government to inject a further eight billion euro of direct liquidity to Royal Irish —’

‘I — what?’

‘I wondered, given the cuts that’ve already been made —’

‘Wait, I advise them to what?’

‘— to, for instance, palliative care, cervical cancer vaccinations, back-to-work schemes, rehousing for at-risk minorities — whether you had specific ideas where the next cuts should come from, in order to pay for this latest bailout —’

‘Wait, wait,’ I interrupt. ‘I didn’t recommend any bailout …’ I break off: someone’s tapping my shoulder. It’s Rachael’s secretary.

‘Can you come upstairs?’ she says.

‘I’m on a call,’ I tell her.

She reaches over to the phone station and pulls the plug. The red light, and all the other lights, dwindle instantly into darkness. ‘It’s not actually a question,’ she says.

Rachael is standing in her office with her back to me, gazing out the window. ‘Sit down, Claude.’

I do so. On her desk, festooned in red crêpe paper, is a bottle of Irish whiskey, with the government harp on the label.

‘The Minister’s office sent it over by way of thanks. They were extremely pleased with your work.’ She looks back at me over her shoulder. ‘Perhaps that surprises you.’

‘From the press conference it sounded as if they had ignored most of my suggestions.’

‘That’s because we rewrote them,’ she says.

A gull swoops down to land outside her window; it scrutinizes the office with an eye the same livid corpse-green as the river below.