The Mark and the Void (19 page)

‘I think I will go over here and cut some more cheese,’ Igor declares, and I am just wondering why he felt the need to announce this, when my arm is twisted behind my back and a blade pressed to my throat.

‘Don’t move, dog!’ Igor hisses, his rancid breath in my nostrils like an encyclopedia of stenches.

‘What are you doing?’ I hear Paul cry in horror from behind him.

‘Quick, tie his hands!’ Igor commands. And then, to me, ‘Talk, pig!’

‘Talk about what?’ I am genuinely at a loss.

‘The safe, where is it?’

‘What safe?’

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Paul shouts.

‘I am trying to find out where the safe is.’

‘Jesus, Igor, would you let it go? There is no safe, I explained that to you a month ago.’

‘But … you say we come here for the plan,’ Igor says. He sounds confused, though he keeps the blade to my throat.

‘The
new
plan, Igor! The
new
plan! I told you, we’re helping Claude to get with the waitress, remember?’

‘Oh,’ Igor says. He lays the knife down on the counter. There is what may be safely described as an awkward silence.

‘Why was Igor killing Claude?’ Remington whispers to his father.

‘It was a joke,’ Paul tells him, and then, inspired, says, ‘Right, Igor? It was a practical joke!’

Igor hoists his lips into an unconvincing grin. ‘Look, not even sharp!’ He waggles the cheese knife at me with what is meant to be a comical expression. ‘No way to cut a man’s throat with this! Only child’s throat!’

‘Ha ha ha!’ laughs Paul.

‘Ha ha ha!’ laughs Igor.

‘Ha ha!’ Remington joins in. Now all three of them are laughing.

‘I think it might be better if Igor left now,’ I say.

‘No more veal?’ Igor’s eyes well with disappointment.

Paul shakes his head. Igor turns to me for clemency. With a gasp of disgust, I look away.

‘May I use bathroom once more before I go?’ he asks humbly.

‘You may,’ I reply, still without looking at him.

Igor trudges to the bathroom. The awkward silence prevails again.

‘Dad, was Uncle Igor ever a person?’ Remington asks.

The toilet flushes, and Igor shambles sheepishly back into the room. His rain mac is on again and has been buttoned right up to the throat; with difficulty he stoops and picks up his bag. At the door he turns. ‘No hard feelings,’ he says, and lifts his hand in farewell. Four fresh toilet rolls and a veal cutlet tumble from under his coat. The four of us look at them on the ground. ‘Okay,’ Igor says, and lets himself out.

I make coffee, and Remington returns to the television.

‘So, all’s well that ends well,’ Paul says.

‘From now on, I prefer if it is just you and me working together,’ I tell him.

‘What are you saying?’

‘I am saying, no more Igor.’

‘What? Why? Because he came at you with a cheese knife?’ Paul attempts to work up a plausible tone of incredulity. ‘We’re trying to make art here, Claude! It’s not going to be like working in the bank! Some days you’ll feel inspired, some days you won’t! Some days Igor will come at you with a cheese knife, some days he won’t! That’s the creative process!’

I confine myself to pouring the coffee.

‘Look, I don’t want to pull rank, but I would respectfully remind you that I’m the artist here. You commissioned me to direct your life artistically and now I must respectfully ask you to let me do my job.’

‘I am not stopping you from doing your job. I would love to see any evidence at all of you doing your job.’

He gasps, then there is a silence. I glance over my shoulder, but he is not looking at me. Instead, he seems to be staring at something on the far side of the room.

‘Claude, what is that?’ he says.

‘What is what?’

‘That, on the table there.’

‘That is a novel by Bimal Banerjee, called
The Clowns of Sorrow
.’

‘I can see that. What I’m asking is what it’s doing in your
house
.’ His tone is that of a wronged lover who has discovered traces of a rival in his mistress’s boudoir.

‘I am reading it,’ I say, feeling apologetic all of a sudden without knowing quite why. ‘It’s about circuses,’ I add, thinking this might endear the book to him.

‘I know that, Claude. I know because that fucker
completely ripped me off
.’

He is genuinely angry; it surprises me, especially as Banerjee’s book has only very superficial similarities to his own.

‘Are you kidding? They’re both about circuses! They both have clowns in the title, for God’s sake!’

‘Yes, but your novel is a bittersweet romance about a clown and a starchy office worker, for which the circus provides an occasional backdrop.
The Clowns of Sorrow
is’ – I turn to the back of the book for assistance here – ‘ “both an allegory for the poverty and wonder of the India of the early twenty-first century, and a brilliantly constructed arena in which language itself is set to perform breathtaking feats of daring and imagination.” ’

Paul listens to this with his head bowed and his hands on his hips, like a truculent footballer receiving a telling-off from the referee. ‘You don’t get it, Claude,’ he says. ‘This is a writer thing. I spent years putting together the first serious clown novel – breaking down that wall, opening people up to the idea of a book about that world. And then he sweeps in and takes all the glory!’

It is true that Banerjee’s novel received praise and prizes that Paul’s did not; however, both books came out at the same time, so it is difficult to see how the Indian could have deliberately stolen Paul’s idea.

‘Exactly!’ Paul pounds his fist into his palm. ‘How?’

‘What I meant was, it seems more likely that he
didn’t
steal your idea.’

‘Oh, he stole it all right. He stole it, he sold it, and then he disappeared with a big pile of money before anyone got wise. And nobody’s seen him since.’

‘Mmm.’ I am not sure whether I should tell him or not; but I suppose he will find out sooner or later. ‘Of course, he hasn’t actually disappeared. He has a new book coming out.’

‘What?’ Paul goggles, flushes, goggles some more, until he looks rather like one of the creatures in
Rainbow Mystery Epic
.

‘There was an interview only a few days ago – you didn’t see it?’ I wake my laptop, and a moment later a caramel-skinned man with thinning hair and opalescent gold eyes is glowering out at me. ‘Here we are – Mary Cutlass meets the award-winning novelist Bimal Banerjee.’

‘Mary fucking Cutlass,’ Paul says disgustedly. ‘That’s the witch who slaughtered my book.’

‘This is what she says: “After seven long years, the most brilliant writer of his generation has made his triumphant return. His new novel,
Ararat Rat Rap
, is a work so masterful and compendious as to make everything else written in the last twenty years seem redundant –” ’

‘Oh Christ,’ Paul says.

‘ “– with the exception, that is, of his own
The Clowns of Sorrow
, a groundbreaking imagining of India and the originator of the ‘circus-novel’ genre, subsequently much imitated –” ’

‘What!’

‘ “The new book, to whose scale and ambition only the work of Tolstoy comes close, presents both a pulverizing denunciation
of the last three thousand years of civilization, and, in its inexorable beauty, its jocundity and its breadth of emotion, a glimmer of hope –” ’

‘ “Jocundity”? What the fuck is “jocundity”?’

‘ “I travelled to London –” ’

‘This woman writes like a fucking hernia,’ he expostulates. ‘It’s like they gave a fucking hernia a weekly column and told it to be as excruciating as possible until all of their readers have hernias too.’

‘ “I travelled to London last week,” ’ I read again, then stop. ‘Well, that is not technically how hernias work.’

‘What?’ Paul says.

‘Reading a hernia’s column could not possibly give one a hernia. Perhaps a better likening might be to a virus, which passes itself on to everyone it comes into contact with.’

‘Everyone’s a critic!’ Paul declares to the ceiling.

‘ “I travelled to London last week to meet the writer. Still a young man, Banerjee is exotically handsome, his leviathan intellect complemented by the looks of a Bollywood idol and a surprisingly powerful frame. I asked him how he had spent the past seven years.” Banerjee replies: “Writing, writing. People ask, how can it take seven years to write a book, but to me, clock time, calendar time, is mere shadow play. The true marker of time is the creation of the novel. Each is as it were an oak-ring in the tree-trunk of my soul.” ’

‘Aaagh!’

‘Do you want me to keep going?’

He gurgles; I take it as a yes.

‘Mary Cutlass: “
Ararat Rat Rap
takes as its starting point the Armenian genocide of 1915 –” ’

‘Oh, so that’s what’s got her so excited,’ Paul chimes in sardonically. ‘Genocide, that’s what she most loves to read about as she chomps on her croissant in her enormous fucking mansion in genocide-free Killiney –’

‘ “– travelling forward in time to the present-day follies in the Middle East, and backwards to the days of the Old Testament – all of it seen through the eyes of an uncommonly talented rat. Did you find it difficult to keep so many disparate strands together?” Banerjee: “No.” ’

‘That’s all he says? “No”?’

‘ “
Difficult
is not the word. It was agonizing, heartbreaking. So many pages were lost because my tears made them illegible. Yet, even then, the novel continued to sing to me, and by listening closely I found I could go on, just as by following his own song Jephot finds his way through the maze of history.” ’

‘Well, that’s just meaningless,’ Paul says. ‘That just doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Mary Cutlass: “Jephot is the narrator and hero of the novel, a rat with a gift for rapping who becomes a hip-hop superstar. His voice is brilliantly achieved. Like Banerjee himself, Jephot the rat is charismatic yet unknowable, seductive and at the same time capable, one feels, of brutal force –” ’

‘Jesus, just give him your knickers, why don’t you?’ Paul, who is now lying on the floor, exclaims. ‘Stop, Claude, I can’t take any more of this.’

This irrational hostility to a fellow author’s success does not seem to me the attitude of a man who has turned his back on writing for ever. I don’t draw attention to it, just note ingenuously, ‘According to this, the new book is published by Asterisk Press – didn’t they publish your book too?’

From the floor comes a short, ironic laugh. ‘Sure did. Daresay my old editor’s behind this one. He always was a sucker for a fast-talking Indian with a novel about a singing rat.’

‘It says here that Banerjee is reading in Dublin next week. Do you want to go along?’

‘Why would I want to go to that?’

‘Maybe your editor will be there. You could catch up on old times.’

Paul is silent for a spell; then he says, in a quieter tone, ‘No, I don’t think that’d be such a good idea.’

‘You don’t think he would be glad to see you?’

‘We had a sort of falling-out.’

‘Artistic differences?’

Paul waves his hand vaguely. ‘Who knows? It could have been anything. These publishing people are totally inscrutable. But anyway,’ he says, rolling up into a sitting position and rapping on the floor, ‘why are we even talking about this stuff? We’ve got work to do.’

The fact that the Minister is not going to get better, unavoidably apparent every time he speaks on camera, seems to have woken the Irish from their state of denial regarding the future of the country. Now they have gone to the opposite extreme: rumours are circulating that the government will very soon run out of money and require an intervention.

‘What does that mean, intervention?’ Yet another panicked investor on the line.

‘If Ireland can’t pay its bills, the International Monetary Fund will step in as they have done in Greece. They’ll take over all major political and economic decisions until the books are balanced again.’

Most of my clients, whose patriotism doesn’t extend beyond the bounds of their golf club, quite like the sound of this, although if they turn on their televisions they will see the IMF’s current project is not running so smoothly: another day, another riot in Athens, thousands of citizens waving banners, hurling projectiles, collapsing to the ground in paroxysms as canisters of tear gas clatter around them. Though for me, this footage has taken on a romantic light, sparking fantasies of Ariadne and me running hand-in-hand from a masked and baton-wielding policeman …

‘Claude? You there?’

‘Oh. Yes. We don’t think the IMF’ll need to come here. Ireland’s not Greece. The Minister’s issued a robust denial. Seemed plausible.’

I have arranged to meet Paul at lunchtime for what he terms ‘initial blocking’. It’s only when I let him into my apartment that I discover this means he wants me to go and talk to Ariadne.

‘Now? Today? But we have not prepared,’ I remonstrate, following him into my bedroom, where he starts rifling through the wardrobe.

‘Of course we’ve prepared! What were we doing last night? Jesus, Claude, how many black suits can one man own?’

‘But we have not decided – I have not thought this through …’

‘You don’t need to think it through! That’s why I’m here, remember?’ Paul turns, places his hands on my shoulders and in a sonorous voice says, ‘ “Claude adjusted his stylish black suit in the mirror and smiled. The moment had come, and he was ready. Striding across the plaza, he threw open the door. The beautiful waitress started, then blushed. Taking her hand, he said –” ’ The doorbell sounds. ‘That’ll be Igor.’

‘ “He said that’ll …”? Oh,’ I say, as he bustles past me to the door, and then, ‘Wait, what’s Igor doing here?’

‘I ran into him last night in Private Desires – come on up!’ he shouts into the intercom.

‘Private Desires?’

‘Yeah, it’s a little lap-dancing club on Capel Street.’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘I’m barred from Velvet Dream’s, remember? Don’t look at me like that, Claude. Getting a lap dance helps me think.’

‘You told me you had no money.’

‘It’s one of the cheaper places. Mostly Romanians. Anyway, while I was there I ran into Igor, who had also come there to think, and we agreed that we shouldn’t let some silly misunderstanding get in the way of the three of us working together.’

‘Oh, I am very glad you agreed that.’

‘I promise, he’s got it all straight this time,’ he says. A moment later, Igor lurches in with his clinking bag. If he is feeling remorse or embarrassment about last night’s events, he does not show it. Placing the bag on the coffee table, he unzips it and removes a series of grey objects, rather like bleak industrial flowers with
long metallic stamens. I presume this is the surveillance equipment he talked about.

‘I asked you to do this because I wanted an artist’s perspective,’ I tell Paul quietly. ‘Not all this technology.’

‘This is the artist’s perspective,’ Paul insists. ‘It’s the twenty-first century, you think writers are still running around with inkwells and quills?’

‘I think you are introducing a lot of unnecessary complication to give Igor something to do.’

‘Listen, maybe hiding behind a bush and whispering to his buddy worked for Cyrano in the seventeenth century, but if your girl, or for that matter any of the numerous security guards patrolling this place, catch sight of me hissing at you from under a table it’s not going to look good for either of us. Look, relax, this time out I won’t even speak. I just want to get a read on how the two of you interact. Think of it as a dry run.’

‘Hold still,’ Igor says. He leans in to affix a bulky plastic earpiece. Paul says something unintelligible about radio signals; Igor responds with something opaque about transmitters, and goes to tap on an antediluvian laptop.

‘Now remember,’ Paul says, clasping my shoulders, ‘you’re the hero. The whole story flows from you. Plot is just the illustration of character, your character. You’re the guy making it happen.’

‘What am I going to say?’

‘It doesn’t matter what you say. What matters is that she knows you’re in charge. Women don’t want some wishy-washy type who doesn’t know his own mind. They want someone authoritative, manly, who’s not afraid to take control.’

‘Are you sure an authoritative, manly man is what Ariadne is looking for? Given that she works in a feminist cooperative.’

‘Pff, this feminism is all an illusion,’ Igor rumbles. ‘Only for depressed womans who cannot find man, and so must dress like lesbian, and not the good kind of lesbian.’

‘What Igor’s saying is that a strong narrative appeals to everyone, no matter what their politics or persuasion. I’m not suggesting you go in there and hit her over the head with a club. Just be direct, confident. Own the scene.’

I try to break into my new masterful persona by squinting manfully into the middle distance. Spots dance before my eyes.

‘Testing.’ As he speaks, Igor’s voice is fuzzily replicated in my earpiece. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes, I can hear you, you are standing right beside me.’

‘And I can hear you,’ Paul confirms, cupping his hand around his own earpiece. ‘Okay, looks like we’re ready to go.’

‘Are you sure that thing is safe?’ I look dubiously at the ancient transmitter humming ominously on the balcony. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier just to use my Bluetooth?’

‘Stop delaying,’ Paul says. ‘Let’s do this.’

It must be said that as I make my way towards the café, I feel even less authoritative than usual. Out here, away from my models and spreadsheets, everything feels flimsy and contingent, at the mercy of riptides and crosswinds, the random vicissitudes of nature.

‘How are you getting on there?’ Paul’s voice sounds in my ear.

‘Fine,’ I say tightly.

‘That’s great. Now you just keep cool. Remember, she’s a character in
your
story. She’s there for you. And we’ll be with you too, every step of the way.’

I turn and look back up at my balcony. Two figures wave down at me, like mocking, malefic insects. What am I doing? Am I really going to go up to her and just start talking? It feels so crude and anachronistic! To my left, Transaction House croons to me seductively. I could go back to my desk, think this through properly; maybe I could friend her online, find out her likes and dislikes, then in six months or so take the next step, it wouldn’t be so dramatic in terms of the story, of course, but realistically –

‘Keep going, Claude.’

The door of the Ark. I push it open, a ton weight. Happy diners gabbing to each other, the compressed bedlam of the coffee machine, the clank of cutlery on porcelain. ‘Claude strode into the café,’ a voice – Paul’s? My own? – urges inside my head. My body feels alien, unwieldy, like an enormous robot that I am controlling with levers from a tiny chamber behind the eyes. As I lurch over the floor all sound disappears, save for the industrial suck and
hoosh
of my breathing; I stumble through a forest of disconnected sense-impressions until, like a beacon, Ariadne comes into view.

‘Hello,’ I say, but it comes out as a cough.

‘Hi you!’ she says, sliding a tress as rich and dark as coffee back behind her ear. ‘You want a table?’

‘Yes,’ I say, though this is not what I want at all – already the narration is slipping out of my grip! Ariadne turns away to find me a seat, my cheeks flame with failure, it’s all gone wrong – and then something distracts me. ‘New painting?’

Ariadne glances behind her to where the canvas hangs, I imagine illegally, on the fire door. ‘Yes,’ she says, lowering her green eyes bashfully. ‘I just finish this weekend. I don’t know if it works, or what.’

The painting features a series of warped helices knotted into each other, like the DNA of some painfully malformed beast: it seems to protrude bulkily out of space itself. ‘I like it,’ I say.

She laughs. ‘This morning, I heard a customer say it’s like a zebra ate a whole load of fractals and got sick.’

‘
Bof
, they said the same thing about Van Gogh’s
Sunflowers
,’ I tell her.

‘Maybe,’ she says, and she smiles – not her usual waitress smile, it seems to me, but a deeper one, incorporating her whole being. A sudden wave of joy wells up in me. Here I am! This is happening! How did I ever believe there was anything to fear? Ariadne is everything that is good, therefore only good things can come of this. ‘What’s it called?’ I ask her.

‘
Simulacrum 122
.’

I nod, tapping my nose thoughtfully. Out of nowhere, Paul’s old idea has popped into my head: that we bond over French philosophy. ‘I wonder, by any chance are you familiar with –’ I begin. But at that moment there is a loud and painful buzzing in my ear, and then Paul’s voice says, ‘Sorry, Claude, we lost the connection for a minute there. Are you in the café?’

‘Yes,’ I say, trying to incorporate it into my question for Ariadne, ‘yes, I wondered if –’

‘Okay, Claude, you’re doing great. Now, are you ready to approach the subject?’

‘I have always wondered,’ I repeat, trying to dig the earpiece out of my ear without calling attention to it, ‘whether, ah –’

‘Wait, were you talking to her already?’

I cough deliberately.

‘What was that? The connection’s not that good here.’ In the background there is a popping sound, rather like a cork from a bottle.

‘What do you wonder?’ Ariadne cocks her head and regards me bemusedly.

‘Just stay calm, Claude, and remember you’re in charge. I’m going to go out on the balcony and see if I can fix this transmitter. Igor, you take over here for a second.’

‘I wondered if you have ever read –’

‘You have great big dick,’ a gravelly voice booms in my ear.

‘What?’ I can’t stop myself blurting.

‘I didn’t say anything,’ Ariadne says, surprised.

‘You have biggest dick in world, you are striking her with your firmness.’

Frantically I pull at the earpiece, but it is wedged in tightly by its many points. Ariadne’s beautiful forest-green eyes cloud with concern.

‘Is everything all right?’ she says.

‘Your wood is so hard, you are the master.’

‘Yes, yes,’ I tell her, desperately poking myself in the ear.

‘You are lion between the sheets with your mighty length.’

‘Please stop,’ I whisper.

Ariadne flinches, ever so slightly. ‘I have to take an order,’ she decides. ‘I come back to you.’

I watch in agony as she hurries away, and at that moment it seems to me as if the whole café were merely a stage set after all, now collapsing and disintegrating before my very eyes. I reach after her – but before I can speak, a tremendous peal of static explodes in my ear. Just barely managing to suppress a scream, I turn and flee, offstage, out of the theatre, into the null space of the outside.