Paul Murray: The Mark and the Void

‘Wait!’ I hiss after them. ‘Are you crazy?’ They are already out of sight. For a moment, I remain hovering in the garden, then with a curse hurry inside.

The house, so convivial and warm before, is as cold as a tomb. I pursue Paul’s dim ghost down the hall as he shepherds Remington, who is clutching his bottom with both hands, into the bathroom. Depositing the boy on the toilet seat, he turns to me sternly. ‘What are you doing here? Why do you have to keep sticking your nose into my business?’

‘Because you are about to make a terrible mistake! If you steal that painting, you will never again have peace in your life.’

‘Oh, you mean like the fantastically wonderful peace I’m enjoying now? Getting into my own home by the fire escape to avoid the bailiffs? Is that the kind of thing you mean?’

‘I know you have problems,’ I say, as he wipes the boy’s bottom. ‘But this isn’t the way to solve them!’

‘Fuck you, pal. If you were so concerned about my problems, why didn’t you help me with the website?’ His eyes bore into me. ‘You promised you’d pitch it to your clients. Did you tell anyone? Did you tell a single person?’

I gape back at him dumbly.

‘See? With friends like you, no wonder this is what I’m reduced to.’

‘It’s been busy … and my investors — it’s not as simple as just calling them up …’

He grunts disgustedly, refastening Remington’s trousers and scooping him into his arms.

‘But what about your proposal?’ I say. ‘ Ulysses II ?’

He grimaces. ‘Let’s just say I came to my senses.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, if I’m going to prostitute myself with some idiotic idea, I at least want to make some money from it.’

‘But there would be money,’ I call after him. ‘Dodson would pay! Look at this place! Doesn’t it prove a writer can still have a good life —?’

He rounds on me so sharply I almost crash into him. ‘What are you, a child?’ His eyes flash at me through the darkness. ‘You think O’Hara paid for all this with his crappy books? Don’t you know who Crispin is?’

I have no option but to gape again.

‘He’s one of you! He’s on the board of the bank that gave me my loan! Every time I open one of their eviction notices there’s his name in the small print on the bottom of the page!’ He turns away again. ‘So you’ll forgive me if I don’t shed any tears.’

‘What about Clizia? You think she wants a thief for a husband?’

‘I’m hardly going to tell her, am I?’

‘So what will you tell her? That you’re still working on your book? You’re going to lie to her for the rest of your life?’

He spins around again. ‘Jesus, will you get off my case? You’re not going to make me feel guilty about this. If I was some big bank going bust I’d have governments around the world throwing money at me. Instead, because I’m just some ordinary defenceless Joe Schmoe, I’m left to rot. Society has given me no choice but to steal this painting. So will you please get out of my way.’

I want to tell him what I learned in the club: that alone might make him think again. But the words stick in my throat. Somehow Clizia’s secret career seems much more damning than infidelity; and even if he knew her intentions, he has missed his chance with Dodson, so what could he do to make things right?

A door flies open; Igor barrels out like a methylated Sasquatch. ‘What is delay?’ he rasps. ‘Hurry, hurry!’

I follow them into a room I recognize from our previous visit. Over the fireplace hangs The Mark and the Void , its myriad darknesses sparking blackly; my skin prickles in response, making me shiver.

‘Dad, can I help steal the painting?’

‘We’re not stealing anything. It’s a trick, remember? We’re just playing a trick on Daddy’s friend. Now why don’t you sit down there on the couch and watch the TV.’ Paul goes over to the corner and switches on the set. Remington sits down dutifully.

‘A child at an art heist,’ Igor grumbles again. ‘Who has heard of such a thing?’

‘Who’s heard of getting a babysitter for an art heist?’ Paul rejoins. ‘Plus do you know how much they cost these days?’

‘That’s a false economy!’ Igor bellows — but Paul holds up a hand, cutting him off.

‘Wait a second,’ he says.

A familiar voice is issuing from the TV. ‘We live in a civilization in the late stages of necrosis,’ it is saying. ‘What we take for life is in actuality its decomposition.’

‘Dad?’

‘Shh.’

‘Technology is the noose that mankind swings from.’ A bronzed, austere face fills the screen. ‘Too in love with its own erection to notice it is being asphyxiated.’

‘Dad, this isn’t cartoons.’

‘Shh, be quiet.’

‘And the writer, where does he fit into this?’ prompts another, more diffident voice — belonging, I realize, to the man whose living room we are currently standing in.

‘The writer is the most tragic figure of all,’ Bimal Banerjee says. ‘The parasite that does not realize its host is dead.’

‘Speak for yourself, pal!’ Paul tells the TV. ‘Can you believe people actually pay money to hear this guy? It’s like getting a civics class from Charles Manson.’

‘Hey! Let’s get to work!’ Igor claps his hands.

‘All right, all right …’

In the faint glow of the television, the Texier radiates a strange and not entirely wholesome lustre, a kind of paradoxical darklight that as they draw near it makes the two men look shadowy and insubstantial.

‘What we call progress is in fact a vast and unprecedented project of dissociation,’ Banerjee intones from the television. ‘A separation into individual units, technologically cocooned.’

‘You are sure it’s not alarmed?’ Igor growls, studying the back of the canvas.

‘That’s what he told me. Though that was a couple of weeks ago.’

‘Right,’ Igor decides, and in unison both men raise their hands to the frame.

‘No!’ I cry — but it is too late: they have lifted the painting away from the wall and lowered it to the floor.

‘Where nothing is at risk, what need is there for art?’ Banerjee says.

‘Ach, I leave knife in van!’ Igor says. ‘Hold on, I return.’

He clomps out of the room. I turn quickly to Paul. ‘There is still time to stop this. Think! Even if you get away with it, what does it bring you?’

‘If Igor’s buyer comes through, twenty-five thousand euro.’ He looks down at the painting; laid out on the carpet it resembles a fissure, a personalized abyss we are about to tumble into.

‘And you genuinely believe this will solve all your problems?’

‘No, but it’ll solve twenty-five thousand of them,’ he says.

‘But people still want stories … ?’ On-screen, William O’Hara is looking bewildered.

‘Oh yes, they still want stories,’ Banerjee replies. ‘But increasingly those stories are coming from the Third World, from the past, from the lives of people who have not yet sold their souls to machines. More and more, art resembles a kind of narrative colonialism. That is why I have come to my decision.’

‘What decision?’ William O’Hara asks.

‘What decision?’ Paul echoes.

‘To stop writing,’ Banerjee says.

‘Ha!’ Paul exclaims.

‘Stop writing?’ On the TV screen, William O’Hara is agog.

‘I do not see my art as a consumer product,’ Banerjee says. ‘Therefore I am removing it from the marketplace.’

‘Can’t take the heat, eh?’ Paul jeers at the TV, evidently without awareness of any irony.

‘But surely the writer has a duty.’ William O’Hara takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. ‘That is, we can’t simply abandon the world to its fate … ?’