Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

We shake hands, make vague promises to meet again; then Paul turns, child in his arms, towards the north. I stand and watch him disappear into the waves of rain — seeming to walk right out of the world, as if there were no more of his story left to play out.

Continuing down the quay, I discover a Carambar in my pocket. The joke on the wrapper is the George Clooney one again. On my phone, a baffled message from Ish, asking if these crazy stories about AgroBOT buying out Royal Irish are true; several humorous texts from co-workers, increasingly incoherent as the celebrations go on; a long voicemail from Walter Corless, ranting that the Caliph still owes him money. He makes no mention of AgroBOT’s death and resurrection, as if the events of the last two days had never happened. Maybe, from his perspective, they never did.

I delete the message, turn the phone off.

What happens to the banker? Nothing happens to the banker. The banker is paid to be a person to whom nothing happens.

Walking across the plaza, I see an A4 page in a plastic protector taped to the metal shutter of the Ark, thanking the café’s customers for their loyalty and wishing them well. A customer: that’s all I amounted to in the end. Her customer, Paul’s customer, someone who pays his money, takes his goods and then walks away.

Now the glass citadel of Transaction House rises before me, shimmering through the rain like a ghostly privateer; I think about Ish’s tribe, scouring the waves for souls to make away with. Tomorrow we will be back in business: I can hardly bear to think about it.

As I pass the door, though, something stops me, pulls me back. What is it? The security desk is unmanned, the lights are off, all is in darkness. Yet some strange energy emanates from within, tugs at me with invisible fingers. Without knowing why, I push the door and find that in all the excitement it has been left ajar.

Inside, the strange pressure only grows; and as I climb into the lift I feel the same tension a surfer must feel, stalking barefoot over the shingle while a storm brews above the waves — still hidden in clear skies but there to touch, an electricity that crackles along the surface of the water, a blanket of static beneath which every drop buzzes.

I step out on to the sixth floor.

No one is here — no Asia team, no frantic interns, no midnight strategists building some invincible trade; I walk through the desks feeling like a visitor from the future, a tourist in some bureaucratic ruin. On my desk I see Walter’s cheques and bank drafts, the ones he gave me a couple of days ago, still sitting there, uninvested. I never did anything with them; with the bank going down, there hadn’t seemed a point.

Is there a point now?

Am I going to do this?

Somewhere out in the night a clock strikes thirteen.

The next day the storm has lifted; the office is filled with sunshine. It slants through the windows in great radiant sheets, burnishing white shirts to such a brightness that from certain angles the room appears to be filled with angels, floating about their heavenly station, reciting beatific litanies of numbers.

‘I still don’t get it,’ Ish says. ‘I thought we were going bust. How can we buy a bank if we’re going bust? And why would we want to buy Royal Irish?’

‘Optics,’ Gary McCrum says, sucking a choc ice, leafing through a watch catalogue. Now that we’re being rescued, everyone’s acting like they expected it all along.

‘Okay, for the last time,’ Jocelyn says heavily. ‘Everyone knows Royal Irish is dead in the water, right? But the government’s been afraid to let it go under, because the whole world’ll hear about it and no one’ll ever put their money in this country again. So a buyout like this suits them perfectly. They can proclaim the bank’s been cleaned up enough to sell on, Royal’s absorbed into a well-respected firm, its name is never spoken again, everyone gets on with their lives.’

‘But what’s in it for us? Why would we buy Royal, if it’s such a basket case?’

Because we’re not really buying it, is the answer. The doomed investments, the enormous book of bad loans, the copious lawsuits as well as Walter’s festering 25 per cent stake have all been quietly parcelled up and transferred to a government agency. ‘Basically, all we’re buying is the name, and the HQ building there.’ Jocelyn jabs his thumb at the monolithic edifice on the far quay, presently invisible behind the window-dazzle.

‘And we’re getting it for practically nothing,’ Gary adds. ‘The site alone’s worth twice what we’re paying.’

But still. Isn’t AgroBOT broke? What about all that Greek debt? Well. This is the clever part of the deal. At the heart of its extremely complicated mechanics is a swap: in return for taking the PR millstone that is Royal off their hands, the government has agreed to exchange all of AgroBOT’s toxic waste for guaranteed state bonds.

‘They’re just going to take it from us?’ Ish says incredulously.

‘I’m not sure they know what it is,’ Jocelyn says.

‘They know,’ Gary contradicts him.

‘Then why would they take it?’

Gary lifts up his watch catalogue, puts his feet on the desk. ‘Not their decision any more, is it?’ he says, rolling the stick of his choc ice with his tongue.

Whose decision is it? The IMF, the EU, the ECB? Some other conglomeration of acronyms? That is not for us to know. The bottom line is that our balance sheet will be clean again and AgroBOT made whole; and the Irish people — along with their unstaffed hospitals, their potholed roads, their overstuffed classrooms, medieval prisons, dying pensioners — will become the proud owners of six billion euros’ worth of, as Jocelyn likes to call it, radioactive Greek shit.

This doesn’t go unremarked upon. Though the government tries to spin it as a happy ending for Royal Irish, many commentators see the AgroBOT bailout for what it is, and are asking why Ireland has been lumbered with rescuing a bank that is not itself Irish, nor European, nor, when it comes down to it, in the northern hemisphere.

A more pressing point is that Ireland simply cannot afford to take on AgroBOT’s debts. The deal, if it’s voted through, will effectively bankrupt the country. So why are they doing it?

‘My surmise is that taking on AgroBOT’s debt is the condition of Ireland receiving aid from higher up,’ Jurgen says.

‘So they’re deliberately bankrupting themselves so they can get a handout from Europe? How does that make any sense?’

‘You are perhaps making the mistake of judging Irish actions by an external standard.’ Jurgen’s smile has the same brilliant opacity as the sunlight in the window. ‘You must remember that unlike the French, the British, the’ — with a little cough — ‘Germans, the Irish have never commanded their own empire. For the greater part of their history, they have been the subjects of foreign powers. Of course, we must go through the motions of equality und so weiter . But the fact is that the Irish are at root a slave race. We have seen this during their brief period of good fortune, when they are acting like the servant who has found the key to the wine cellar while his master is away. Even then it is clear they are not fit to be rulers of themselves. And they do not wish it either. This is why, although it seems to you and me the terrible injustice, they will carry their new debt without grumbling, even with gratitude.’

‘They’ll be … grateful? For paying off AgroBOT’s debt?’

‘Exactly so. Do not forget, Claude, this is a country until very recently ruled by priests. Thanks to them, the Irish already believe they are born in debt, a terrible debt of sin which they can never pay in full. A people like this is more comfortable wrapped in chains. For this reason, I am believing the deal will pass through parliament without issue.’