Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

‘Ten million euro!’ Kevin nudges me joshingly. ‘That’d buy a lot of frog’s legs, eh, Claude?’

The news lifts everybody’s spirits — partly Schadenfreude , partly bankerly superstition, the belief that at any given time there are only a limited number of Bad Things that can happen, which if they’ve already happened to someone else therefore can’t happen to you.

I try to use it to break the ice with Ish, who ever since the Howie episode has been monosyllabic. ‘This rogue trader will hurt Pécuchet,’ I say.

‘Good on him,’ she says. She is glowering into her computer as if attempting to destroy it telepathically.

‘Good on him for stealing ten million euro?’ I repeat.

‘Yeah.’

‘And losing it all on futile bets?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Money that was enough to build a whole school, that instead goes up in smoke?’

‘Oh yeah, like they were going to use one cent of it to build schools.’

‘Well, they were not just going to throw it away.’

‘You’re right, Claude. They were going to use it to add a few more inches to some squillionaire’s fucking money mountain, so he could stand on top of it, waving his dick at everybody below. That’s what they were going to do. That’s all any of us ever do.’

I think about this, rocking gently in my chair. Ish hammers at her keyboard, ignoring the lights on her phone. ‘Is everything all right?’ I say.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing here any more,’ she blurts. ‘I feel like a prostitute — worse than a prostitute, I mean, at least prostitutes have the excuse of really needing the money.’

‘But you do need the money,’ I say. ‘For your mortgage.’ I intend it as a consolation, but that is not how it sounds.

A little later, Jurgen appears, descending in a kind of hail of false heartiness. ‘Claude, Claude, Claude,’ he says, clapping me on the shoulder. ‘How is everything, Claude? What are you working on at the moment?’

I explain that, in anticipation of more fallout from Pécuchet, I’m changing from a Neutral to a Sell recommend on several Continental banks — then tail off. Jurgen is not listening; instead he is merely nodding vacantly while staring over my shoulder at my terminal.

‘Are you looking for something?’ I ask.

‘Hmm? Me?’ he says innocently, now scrutinizing the documents on my desk.

‘Are you … are you spying on me?’

‘Of course not,’ he says, and then, ‘What areas, specifically, did you think I was spying on?’

‘What’s going on?’ I snap upright in my chair.

‘Nothing,’ Jurgen assures me. ‘Except that HR has confirmed you used to work in the back office, like Pécuchet’s rogue trader did.’

‘That was years ago,’ I protest, ‘in a different bank, in a different country. I have never even been in the BOT back office.’

‘Exactly,’ he agrees. ‘So it is safe to say you are not embezzling funds from your present clients.’

‘Are you seriously asking me this?’

‘It has come down from Compliance,’ Jurgen says apologetically. ‘Everyone with a back-office history is being checked, across the whole bank.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Ish says. ‘Claude’s as straight as a die. He won’t even take sugar home from the canteen.’

Jurgen’s interrogative gaze swivels on to her. ‘Sugar sachets are company property,’ he says.

‘You have my word, I have not been embezzling, forging or making unauthorized trades,’ I say.

‘That is good enough for me, Claude.’ Again he pats my shoulder. ‘However, we will need to take your hard drive, just to make sure.’ He motions over two men in black T-shirts, who set about detaching plugs and cables, and finally lift my terminal off the desk.

‘Is this absolutely necessary?’

‘Phone,’ one of them says to me, holding out his hand.

‘How am I supposed to work?’

‘It won’t take long,’ Jurgen promises.

‘This fucking place,’ Ish says when they have finished. ‘I swear, as soon as I get my next bonus I am gone .’

‘Right,’ I say.

‘I mean it this time.’

I dig out some old paperwork and spread it over my denuded desk, but am too furious to do anything. I turn to the TV: it is showing a report from Oran, where an airstrike on rebel positions is believed to have secured the region at last. A clip of the Caliph and the British ex-PM smiling together, ringed by Imperial Guards, is followed by shots of smoking wasteland, weeping women, charred body parts. Oil prices have stabilized following the news, a voice tells us.

I get up, go to the window. The rain is pouring down interminably, turning the world into thin, shifting vertical bands like monochrome ribbons, as if the whole day’s been fed into the shredder. Where is Ariadne? I think with a pang. And where is Paul? Has he given up on me? Did he decide the banker was unsalvageable after all, even in fiction?

‘Call for you, Claude,’ Kimberlee says.

The voice on the line is heavily accented, and sounds upset. It takes me a moment to identify it as Clizia’s.

‘He got a review,’ she says.

‘Paul?’ I’m confused. ‘For the proposal?’

‘For Clown ,’ she says. ‘Some idiot on Apeiron. He is going crazy. Please, Frenchman, you must come!’

I fetch my tablet from the apartment so I can read the review in the taxi. Posted last night by someone styling himself Wombat Willy, it is headed ‘A Fiasco Is Not a Circus’ and consists of a long list of criticisms, which includes, though is not limited to, the unfunniness of the clown, incorrect inspection procedures followed by the health and safety officer, the implausible ending (in which Bobo saves Timmy from a subdural haematoma by performing a one-man show that keeps him laughing until the ambulance arrives (‘SHOW ME ONE MEDICAL TEXTBOOK THAT SAYS THIS!!!’)) and a misleading comparison on the jacket copy to Bimal Banerjee’s The Clowns of Sorrow . He also notes that the book was delivered two days late and that he got a paper cut taking it out of the box, before giving it a rating of two thistles and a swastika.

Strange bestial noises can be heard as I come up the corridor.

‘Daddy’s writing his book,’ Remington tells me as he lets me in.

‘Is that right.’

A loud crash issues from somewhere behind him.

‘I’m writing a book too. Look.’ He hands me a sheet of paper, on which he has scrawled REMINGTIM REMNINGTONTON REMEMINSON and other variants in crayon.

‘Very good! Is your mother … ah.’

Clizia, in a dressing gown, comes out of the nursery with a phone to her ear. ‘Because I can’t,’ she is saying. Her expression is anguished and there are tears in her eyes. ‘I just can’t. Maybe next week. I have to go.’ She rings off, looks up at me exhaustedly.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know who else I can call.’

‘That’s all right.’

A bellowing comes from the bedroom, followed by a series of thuds.

‘When did he see the review?’

‘An hour ago. But this whole week, he is acting strange. Not sleep, not eat, walking around talking to himself — then he sees this Internet, and …’

‘All right. Don’t worry.’

I knock on the bedroom door, then enter. A Louis Quatorze chair lies on its side; many of the towers of books are now scattered over the floor.

‘What’s the point, Claude?’ Paul cries on seeing me. ‘You work and you slave for years, you make sacrifices and put your family through hell, just to get it in the neck from some guy calling himself Wombat Willy?’

Clizia is right: he looks quite disturbed. His hair, clothes, even eyebrows, are askew, as in some allegorical figure of Frazzlement.