The Mark and the Void: A Novel Page 12

  ‘Under the – oh, for God’s sake.’ Paul crouches down and addresses the owner of the eyes: ‘Damn it, Remington, what are you doing down there? Why aren’t you in bed?’

  ‘I am in bed,’ a high-pitched voice replies.

  ‘You’re not in bed, you’re under the table. I can see you quite clearly.’

  ‘This is my bed,’ the voice explains. ‘Because I’m a dog.’

  ‘You’re not a – just get out of there.’ Paul stretches his hand between the chairs and extricates a small boy with grubby knees. ‘How long have you been down there? Were you listening to Mummy and Daddy’s private conversation?’

  ‘Dogs hear things people don’t hear,’ the child says mysteriously.

  ‘Go to bed,’ Paul says. ‘Your human bed.’

  ‘Who is this?’ I ask.

  ‘This is my son, Remington,’ Paul says. The boy is slight and resembles his mother, though in a softer, more benign way, the sharp edges rounded out and the porcelain skin spangled with amber freckles.

  ‘I’m four,’ Remington says to me. And then, ‘Dogs can’t talk.’

  ‘Very nice to meet you,’ I say, shaking his diminutive hand.

  ‘Do you have any bones?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Bow-wow-wow-wow!’ Remington exclaims. ‘Dogs like bones!’

  ‘That’s enough, Remington – now, as to the novel, I’ve had some very –’

  ‘Dogs like barking! Bow-wow-wow!’

  Paul turns to his wife with a pained expression. ‘Can’t you do something with him?’

  ‘Certainly, darling,’ Clizia says. ‘You want I take him to nursery? Or bring him for stroll around garden?’

  ‘Bow-wow-wow!’ barks Remington, tearing around the limited floor space. ‘Bow-wow-wow-wow-wow!’

  Paul pulls his hands down his face. ‘I’m losing my fucking mind here.’

  ‘Why don’t I just ring for Nanny?’ Clizia says brightly. Her husband responds with an expletive, and in an instant, while I stand there in a paroxysm of embarrassment, the argument begins all over again.

  ‘Mum and Dad are always fighting,’ Remington whispers to me confidentially. ‘It’s because I’m bad.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not bad,’ I say.

  Remington pauses a moment, contemplating this; then he slaps his two hands over his eyes and will not reappear, no matter how I cajole.

  Clearly the best thing is for me to go. But as I make my way out of the apartment – picking my way past Louis Quatorze chairs, black chandeliers, other signature excesses of the Celtic Tiger – something catches my eye. On a stack of loose papers scattered over an approximately desk-sized area of floor sits the red notebook. I flinch: it’s like seeing Excalibur resting in the umbrella stand, or the Maltese Falcon propping up a lowboy.

  I glance over my shoulder. Clizia is issuing a torrent of foreign words that sound vaguely like backwards French; Paul is shouting that he will have her deported. I look back. The notebook calls to me like a siren from a rock, enjoining me to turn its pages. I know I shouldn’t; yet something is not right here, and it may hold the answer. Nobody pays any attention to me as I edge over and lift it from the floor. With a dizzying sense of anticipation and dread, I go to the first page.

  It is blank.

  I turn to the next page.

  It is blank.

  I begin to feel a queer sort of chill, like a draught blowing down the hallways of my being. Fuck you, Clizia is bellowing at Paul. Fuuuuuuuckkkk youuuu!

  The next page, the one after, and the one after that – blank. The page following is filled with handwritten text: a single word, blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah, repeated to take up the whole page. Opposite it is a crude cartoon, a stick-man in the basket of a hot-air balloon. The stick-man wears a crown and holds a bag marked with a euro symbol in either hand. On the page after that, a doodle of a camel, then more pages featuring similar doodles, either of breasts or of erect penises, or of erect penises defiling the breasts in one way or another. Then I come to a sequence of what seem to be measurements. Measurements, diagrams that seem ominously familiar, and a few pages later, a heading in capitals: WHO’S OUR MARK?

  ‘Whoa-ho-ho, what are you doing with that?’ Before I can read any further, Paul has appeared and snatched the book out of my hand.

  My head snaps back; my vision swims. WHO’S OUR MARK? The question jigs mockingly before me.

  ‘You know you’re not allowed to see that,’ Paul scolds, stowing the notebook in a drawer.

  ‘It’s empty,’ I say, though my voice seems to come from elsewhere.

  ‘Well, it’s just rough notes,’ Paul says. ‘A word here and there, aides-memoires, as you’d call them.’

  ‘Our conversations, our stories, the time you spent with us…’

  ‘All up here.’ He taps his head with an index finger. ‘Locked away in the vault, don’t you worry.’

  I barely hear him. I feel like I’ve been drugged, and that line keeps flashing up at me. ‘Who is Mark?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You have written, WHO’S OUR MARK? What does this mean?’

  ‘Oh, that – that’s nothing, just an old idea I didn’t end up using –’

  ‘Perhaps you thought it might be a good name for the Everyman, before you met me,’ I reason faintly.

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly it,’ he agrees, guiding me towards the door. And it sounds plausible; yet I can still feel the question descending through me, WHO’S OUR MARK?, rearranging everything, like some powerful agaric hidden in a plate of food.

  ‘Now why don’t you head back home’ – he reaches for the door handle – ‘and first thing tomorrow I’ll come in and tell you all about this new direction I’ve thought up –’

  WHO’S OUR MARK? Fragments whirl before my eyes, snatches of old films, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Cagney – what are they saying to each other? I lean in to read the subtitles …

  ‘Claude?’

  Rather than just working in the bank, instead we have him rob the bank.

  ‘Claude, is everything…?’

  And up from the dark depths, silent and swift as a shark, the truth now surges into view. The mark: the patsy, the mug, the sucker. ‘Le gogo,’ I hear myself whisper.

  ‘What?’

  ‘C’est bon pour les gogos.’ The words come out without me knowing why; and as if I’d uttered a magic spell, or whatever is the exact opposite of a magic spell, in an instant I understand everything. ‘There’s no novel,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ He seems baffled. ‘What are you talking about? Of course there’s a novel!’

  How I yearn to believe him! Yet even as I look at him he seems changed: the artist of the last weeks vanished, his place taken by this other man, furtive, contingent, mired in the trash of the everyday. It’s like when you find out your lover has been unfaithful: in one horrible instant everything she was to you, the whole beautiful enchantment, falls away, and you see her as she really is – mortal, machinating, tethered like everyone else to a little patch of space and time. And the worst of it is that you knew all along.

  He is still making protestations of innocence. I let them wash over me. Everything is clear now, terribly, unforgivingly clear. The novel was simply a ploy, to win my trust and get him into the bank. From there he would have free rein to plan his theft. ‘And Igor – or whatever his name is – he is not an experimental poet.’

  ‘Well, I mean, not precisely –’

  ‘He’s a pest exterminator,’ Clizia says. ‘He is the brains of the operation,’ she adds sardonically.

  ‘You’re not helping – Claude, listen, we can still make this happen. Nothing has changed!’

  He goes on: he entreats and implores, he issues a myriad of offers and possibilities. But the words have become meaningless, as if he were speaking another language. For a moment I watch his mouth gobble, without hearing what it says; then I rise to my feet. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘You don’t know w
hat it’s been like for me these last years – the pressure I’m under…’

  I trudge heavily back around the table. He lays a hand on my arm. ‘Look – it’s true, I needed something to tide us over. But just so I can finish what I’m working on. I’ve got something up my sleeve so big it’ll make all of us rich. Rich!’

  I shake him loose and open the door, walk through the darkness to the stairwell.

  ‘There’s no need to involve the authorities!’ Paul cries after me, as I begin my descent.

  2

  In the Abyss

  Life is something so hideous that the only way to endure it is to escape it. And one escapes by living in art.

  Gustave Flaubert

  ‘Wow.’ Ish sits back in her chair, fingering the chain around her neck.

  ‘Mercurial,’ Jurgen says. ‘Very, very mercurial.’

  ‘And you’re sure about all this?’ Ish says. ‘You couldn’t just have – I don’t know, got your wires crossed?’

  ‘Perhaps this is just another part of his research,’ Jurgen suggests. ‘Perhaps he is now working on the story of a novelist who tries to rob a bank.’

  ‘It was a scam,’ I say. The monotonous sound of my own voice infuriates me. ‘All of it.’

  ‘Just like a man!’ Ish, with a sudden access of fierceness, gets to her feet, setting her earrings a-jingle. ‘They promise you the moon and the stars, but they’re only after the one bloody thing.’

  ‘They are seeking to burgle your safebox?’ Jurgen says.

  ‘Too bloody right,’ Ish says.

  ‘I am wondering now what is the next step,’ I say. ‘I suppose we must tell the police.’

  Jurgen pulls thoughtfully on the end of his pen. ‘I am not so sure. On one hand, it seems clear that Paul’s plan was a failure. On the other – did you take the notebook with you?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Yes – I suspect in that case his plot will be difficult to prove. Without hard evidence, it will come down to his word against yours. Furthermore, the negative publicity for the bank would be significant. The idea that BOT’s top analysts were fooled by such an obvious trick, that they sat idly by while prospective bank robbers measured the walls, is not one shareholders will enjoy. My preference would be to keep the incident to ourselves. I will have the small word with security to make sure everything is in order. If it is, we will drop the entire matter. Anyone asks, we can simply tell them the project did not work out.’ His calm surprises me. I expected him to be apoplectic – to hurl office equipment across the room, to plot revenge using the whole mighty legal machinery at our disposal, to express all the rage that I, consumed by shame, cannot.

  ‘I know that Paul has done a terrible thing,’ he says. ‘Taking advantage of our trust, manipulating us for his own ends, to say nothing of attempted robbery – these are undeniably heinous acts. At the same time, we must remember that artists are not bound by our conventional morality. To a bourgeois sensibility, trying to rob a bank is plainly wrong. But for an artist it is different. In fact, didn’t a famous poet once say, “Bad artists borrow, great artists steal”?’

  ‘I don’t think he was talking about stealing money,’ I point out.

  ‘Perhaps not. Nevertheless, we cannot condemn the panther for killing the gazelle. That is simply its nature. The artist is fundamentally a transgressive figure. Michelangelo, Bob Marley, in fact the entire original line-up of the Wailers: these were all men censured by their times. In banking too there are moments when we must act in ways that ordinary Johns would condemn as dishonest or unethical in order to succeed. So let us not rush to judge. Maybe he came among us under false pretences. Maybe he lied to us about putting us in a novel. But Paul changed us, and because of him life will never be the same again.’

  ‘My life hasn’t changed one bit,’ Ish says.

  ‘Mine neither,’ I say. ‘It is exactly the same.’

  ‘A plant does a lot of its growing underground,’ Jurgen says mysteriously. ‘Anyway, as soon as one story ends, a new one is beginning. This morning I have heard from Rachael’s office that an extremely powerful private investor has taken an interest in the Irish financial sector. Apparently, BOT is near the top of the list of investment banks under consideration to be his agent.’

  And with that, Paul and his book are put back on the shelf; the oddity, the intrigue of the past weeks, simply dissolves, as if it had been merely a divertissement, like a juggler on the plaza whom the temps observe as they eat their panini, before the security guards arrive to chase him away.

  Normality returns. I send emails and study reports; I attend meetings and write notes; I pay my credit-card bill and upgrade my broadband speed. At night, I put myself on the rack, demand to know how I let myself be taken in. Yet there is no mystery to it. My life is interesting; my life has meaning; other people, strangers, will want to know about my life. He told me what I wanted to hear: it’s the same trick we use with clients every day. They prefer buying to selling. They prefer gaining a little to losing a lot. They want to invest in Apple because they like their iPhone. And we say, ‘That’s just what you should do,’ and take their money. People will believe anything, if it’s what they want to hear.

  * * *

  The ‘extremely powerful private investor’ turns out to be none other than Porter Blankly’s old friend the Caliph of Oran – or, to be exact, Tordale, his sovereign wealth fund.

  ‘The Caliph of Oran,’ Ish frowns. ‘Isn’t he some sort of dictator?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Jurgen says. ‘He is one of the most successful dictators in the world. His personal wealth is believed to be in the tens of billions, and in the current situation that is growing by the hour.’

  ‘What’s the current situation?’ Ish says.

  ‘Unrest,’ I say. ‘Uprisings.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Jurgen says. ‘Anti-government demonstrations throughout the Arab world have had a highly disruptive effect on oil production. Oran’s capacity, however, has not been affected. Instead the hike in prices has brought the Caliphate spectacular profits. Now his sovereign wealth fund is seeking to diversify.’

  ‘How’d he find us?’ Ish says. ‘Blankly?’

  ‘I think on this occasion we may have Walter to thank,’ Jurgen says.

  ‘Walter Corless?’

  ‘He’s doing some construction work out there,’ I remember.

  ‘Yes, the Caliph is taking measures to fortify his oilfields and private city in case the unrest spreads,’ Jurgen says. ‘My surmise is that Walter may have spoken informally to his finance people. Officially they are interested in investing in the Irish banking sector. Unofficially, I hear that they are considering shifting their entire operation to Dublin. The light regulatory regime may suit their needs. A delegation is coming over at the end of the week to hear presentations.’

  ‘They’re not giving us much time to prepare, are they?’ Ish says.

  ‘No doubt this is a part of their evaluation process. Consequently it is very important that we –’

  But his words are drowned out by a tremendous pounding. What could it be? Construction work in the plaza? A controlled explosion on a nearby building? I look about for an explanation and then find it poised, sculpturally, in front of me. Ariadne has come to our table; the sound is the beating of my own idiotic heart.

  ‘You are ready to order?’

  The others go first; I pretend to study the menu, in order to hide my blushes.

  ‘And for you?’

  I start to speak, but it turns into a cough. Finally I struggle out, ‘Nothing for me, thank you.’

  ‘Very good.’ She smiles, sashays away.

  ‘Not having anything, Claude? Are you feeling okay?’

  ‘I’m fine. Just not very hungry.’ I sink back into my chair, attempting to conceal my laboured breathing. ‘So, this presentation…?’

  ‘Yes – so Liam wants them to meet Rachael first, and then our team. Afterwards…’

  I concentrate as best I
can, but talking about investment with Ariadne in the room is like trying to read the business news by the light of a meteor shower. Finding out the novel was a fake hasn’t dimmed her appeal. On the contrary, every day as lunchtime approaches I find myself getting giddy; I turn brick-red when she greets me, then squeak like an adolescent when she asks for my order. What is happening? It’s as if, simply by making the suggestion, Paul had set something in motion – as if the story had taken on a life of its own, like a genie freed from a lamp. It makes no sense; I’ve spent many hours patiently talking myself out of it. Still the feelings refuse to leave me.

  And I keep coming back to the fact that this is where Paul said the story should go. True, he said it in the course of trying to rob the bank. But could it be that his instincts remained sound, even when used to deceive? Could he have picked up on something between us, a latent connection waiting to be made? Is it my imagination or has Ariadne noticed it too? Does she look at me now with a clouded sort of a frown, as though there’s some fact about me that she can’t quite lay her hands on? On some unconscious level, is she too waiting for our story to begin?

  As the meeting with Tordale draws closer, though, it squeezes out everything else. No more lunches, no staying up late, reading philosophy; we are in the office till the small hours, making calls, talking to the number-crunchers, pulling together every available scrap of information on the Irish banking system.

  Most of our meetings are pedestrian affairs, quibbling over financial models with pension managers, fund managers, treasury people. This is different. The Caliphate’s fund is worth several billion dollars. The day before the presentation, Rachael calls me to her office and promises me a guaranteed bonus if Tordale signs up with BOT. The figure she names is astronomical; she makes it sound like a threat.

  ‘These guys are not messing around.’ Howie, who finds most of our work laughably dull, has taken an interest in this particular encounter. ‘They’re averaging a 13 per cent annual return on a fund bigger than some countries’ GDP. You need to go into that conference room and slaughter them. You need to literally take your figures and stab them in the eyes with them, and when they scream, reach down their throats and yank out their hearts. Then you can start talking.’