Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

He pauses dramatically, and it strikes me, just as it did on the hotel balcony that night, that this is a performance. But I can’t tell what kind; I can’t tell whether he believes what he’s saying, or even whether he wants us to believe it.

‘How is it the point?’ I say at last.

‘I’m glad you asked me that, Crazy. Now, you two might want to hold on to your seats, because this is some heady stuff. So I told you before about how our little fund here operates. That by using a lot of very, very complicated maths, Grisha’s established a financial instrument that can essentially reverse the polarity of losses, meaning that if you invest with us, you’re guaranteed to make money. Which in today’s uncertain investment climate is an attractive proposition. And we’ve been doing pretty well for a couple of greenhorns, haven’t we, Grisha?’

Grisha doesn’t reply, just blazes darkly by the door.

‘Until now, we’ve been using the instrument defensively, as a safeguard. This losses-to-profits operation isn’t just a matter of changing minuses into pluses, after all. It’s a difficult process. But for a while now we’ve been looking at other options, other ways to maximize our returns. None of them seemed quite right. And then you came along with your island, and everything just fell into place.’

He drains his whiskey, pours himself a fresh measure. ‘This is actually very good,’ he notes.

‘The island,’ Ish presses.

‘Oh yeah. So I thought to myself, what if, instead of using the instrument as a backup, we used it offensively ? You’ll remember Wall Street did that with credit default swaps — first they used them to insure their own loans against default, and then they started using them to bet on other people’s loans defaulting. What if we started deliberately targeting losing propositions? Sank our money into investments we knew were going to fail, that no one else would touch — could we use providential antinomies to turn those losses into profits? So that the worse something did, the more we’d make?’

‘Wait,’ Ish says, in a high, strained voice, ‘are you talking about investing in the island … because it’s going to sink?’

‘I’m talking about going beyond the counterintuitive.’ Howie’s voice shrugs off its ironic mantle, takes on an oracular resonance. ‘I’m talking about monetizing failure . If you could do that … what would it mean?’

‘But that is pure alchemy,’ I say. ‘Monetizing failure — it’s completely irrational. I can’t understand how such a thing could be possible.’

‘Of course you can’t. You’re not a mathematical genius. And much as I like you, Claude, you’ll understand if I don’t tell you our secret formula. You know what something like that is worth? As it is we’ve got to keep Grisha here under lock and key. Good thing he doesn’t like going outside, right, Grisha?’

The Russian smiles an empty smile. Ish shakes her head, wilts back in her chair like a flower sprayed with a toxin.

‘Genius or not, no one’s going to invest in something they know will lose money,’ I say. ‘It’s like asking them to throw their savings in the fire.’

‘You’re right about that, Crazy.’ Howie commends me with the whiskey glass. ‘Getting people on board, that’s the drawback. But say to start out we don’t pick something utterly hopeless. Instead we come up with something that could theoretically turn a buck. For instance, we put a golf course on the island, and a five-star hotel —’

‘A golf course?’ Ish repeats in a half-shriek.

‘Well, sure. It’s all right there in your email. The rolling meadows, the sand dunes, all that. It’s perfect.’

‘But the island’s tiny,’ Ish protests. ‘And the meadows are where the islanders graze their goats.’

‘In fairness, people aren’t going to travel thousands of miles to see a bunch of goats,’ Howie says. ‘Anyway, the point is that this time round it’s the investment proper that’s the insurance. See? If the big wave never comes, we can make money from the hotel — a conventional return, call it. But if the wave does come, as seems statistically likely, and if the island goes under with our investment — that’s when we really cash in. Call that’ — with a bow to me — ‘your irrational return.’

Neither Ish nor I speak. She is pinned back in her chair, eyes huge, as if she has witnessed an atrocity.

‘Come on, guys! Show some enthusiasm!’ Howie half-laughs, half-shouts. ‘Don’t you see the bottom line here? Even when it all goes tits up, you still get paid! Profit is finally liberated from circumstance! It’s the Holy Grail! It’s the singularity!’

‘It’s madness,’ I say.

‘The investors don’t think it’s madness, Claude.’ Howie shakes his head. ‘That last meeting I had’ — he gestures towards the door the stubby man with the moustache recently exited — ‘he’s putting a million in it. A million of his own money, for something that doesn’t even have a name yet.’

‘Then he is mad too.’

‘Maybe it sounds mad now. But that’s because you’re ignoring the existing information. The smart investor knows that in a few years from now there aren’t going to be any more conventional profits. What’s on the cards for Ish’s little island isn’t a one-off. This is just the beginning.’

‘You’re talking about global warming.’

‘I’m talking about the whole fucking shooting match, Claude. Seizures in the electricity grid, degradation of ecosystems, the spread of epidemics, the disintegration of the financial system — they’re all part of the same phenomenon. Civilization has become a bubble. When it pops, it’s going to be very, very messy. Even in the best-case scenario, no one’s going to make a cent for three hundred years — unless they can work out how to make loss pay.’

‘But that means profiting from human misery!’ Two bright spots have appeared on Ish’s cheeks.

‘Profiting from conditions we did nothing to create,’ Howie says. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Obviously it’s fucking wrong, Howie. How’s anything going to get better if your stupid fund pays out every time there’s a humanitarian disaster?’

‘I don’t understand why you’re getting so emotional,’ he says. ‘It’s maths, that’s all. It’s a new mathematical model, according to which capital will no longer be adversely affected by developments in the non-banking world. How can that be a bad thing?’

‘Because we live in the non-banking world! The non-banking world is the world , don’t you get it? What’s the point of making millions if in a few years the whole planet will be underwater?’

Howie just looks at her, with the dumb, bestial eyes of a lamb; Ish emits a furious gurgle, then jumps to her feet and stamps out of the room.

‘You’re welcome,’ Howie says. Grisha chuckles approvingly. ‘Okay, Ivan, off you go,’ Howie tells him. Still chuckling, the Russian lurches out.

‘Christ, he gives me the fucking creeps,’ Howie says. ‘I don’t think he’s washed once since he got here.’

I take a last sip of my whiskey and rise to my feet. ‘I should get back too,’ I say. ‘This has been very entertaining. Between ourselves, though, you don’t honestly believe it can work, do you?’

Howie laughs. ‘I’m just giving people what they want, Claude. That’s all I’ve ever tried to do.’

‘You think this is what they want? To invest in catastrophe?’

‘Of course it is. A great big flood’s coming, we’ve got the lifeboat? An Ark for the chosen few, where they can relax with a martini, watch everybody else drown? It’s exactly what they want. It’s what they’ve wanted their whole lives.’