The Mark and the Void (29 page)

‘Well, for starters, I’d like to hear more from this mysterious gentleman,’ Crispin says, and my blood freezes as I realize he means me. ‘Who is he? Who are you? You’re not a writer, are you?’

‘I’m a banker,’ I say.

‘Oh, snap!’ O’Hara exclaims.

‘You work in finance?’ I say to Crispin.

‘I dabbled, that’s all. Anyway, I’ve retired.’ He says this without
irony, though I doubt he is even forty years old; but before I can ask what he did, he has pointed his fork at Paul and me. ‘And the two of you are a pair?’

Does he suspect? I stare back at him, words dying in my throat.

‘That’s right,’ Paul steps in. ‘A pair, that’s what we are. A pair of men, two men, in a relationship.’

‘And tell us, where did you meet?’

‘In a sauna,’ Paul says. ‘A gay sauna.’

‘Which one?’ Crispin says.

‘Hmm, which one …’ Paul says, drumming his fingers and contemplating the chandelier. ‘Darling, do you remember which one?’

‘No,’ I say.

‘It was in San Francisco,’ Paul says, with a flash of what I suppose we must call inspiration. ‘I’d gone over for research. Claude was working as a go-go dancer, weren’t you, Claude? Claude, weren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I say, through gritted teeth.

‘He was just out of the French navy,’ Paul continues. ‘They called him the Arse de Triomphe. Our eyes met in the steam room. Next thing, we fell in love.’

‘Ah,
che bello
,’ William O’Hara says fondly.

‘Now we do everything together,’ Paul continues; it is like watching a runaway train, a runaway train that is pretending to be gay. ‘Holidays to Sweden to buy furniture, London every year for Fashion Week, the opera –’

Crispin pounces on this. ‘What’s your favourite opera?’

Paul, put on the spot, goes blank. His mouth opens and closes; the runaway train abruptly comes off the track, and with a certain amount of enjoyment I watch it fly through the air, wheels spinning fruitlessly. ‘That would have to be … ah …
Mamma Mia!
’

Crispin and William look at each other in surprise, then dissolve into guffaws. ‘Us too!’ Crispin squeals. ‘It’s our terrible secret!’

‘And Paul – did you say that you were working on a business venture?’ William inquires.

‘Yes, William, I did. In fact, it’s something you might find inter— ow!’ He looks accusingly at me. ‘Darling?’

‘You promised you wouldn’t discuss business tonight, darling,’ I say to him.

‘I’m not discussing business, darling, they asked what I’m doing and I’m telling them. Actually, I think I may have some brochures here somewhere – ow! Darling, would you please stop kicking me?’

‘Darling, I would like a word with you outside, please.’

‘What’s the problem, I’m just – hey, put that back!’ as I snatch away his wine glass.

‘I’ll give it back after we’ve had a little word,’ I say firmly; grousing under his breath, Paul gets out of his seat.

‘Obvious who wears the trousers in
your
household,’ Crispin teases.

‘I wear the trousers,’ Paul rejoins as I bundle him out the door. ‘And I go on top!’

Ignoring his protestations, I propel him down the hall and into a darkened sitting room where we are certain to be out of earshot. ‘What are you doing?’

‘What are
you
doing?’ Paul returns. ‘I thought you were going to help me!’

‘I am helping you. I have spent the last two hours pretending to be gay. But that was because I thought you were trying to win over your editor. I did not realize that you had constructed this charade in order to bilk our hosts out of their money – this is a word,
bilk
?’

‘How am I bilking them? I’m just making conversation.’

‘Answer this: did you come here this evening with the specific intention to drum up investments for Myhotswaitress?’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ he protests. ‘Myhotswaitress
is going to be huge, and I’m giving them the chance to get in on the ground floor! I’m basically thrusting millions and millions of euro into their hands, and you’re telling me I’m a bad guest?’

‘You told me you had come here to rebuild your relationship with your editor and restart your career.’

‘I said no such thing, Claude. I said they were influential people, and they are. Look at the size of this place! I could move my whole family in here and it would take those guys about six months to notice. They’re exactly the kind of investor we need.’

‘That may be so. Nevertheless, I am informing you now that my part in this deception is over.’

Paul grinds his fists against his temples. ‘I don’t understand you. You’re always on my case about doing something with my life, and then when I try, you’re completely unsupportive!’

‘Because I want you to write! And everything you do is just a way of avoiding writing! Don’t you understand –
you
are the great investment opportunity!
You
have the chance to get in on the ground floor – of yourself!’

‘What are you talking about?’ Paul exclaims.

It is true, this did not come out quite like I thought it would. ‘I am talking about the chance to create a work of art! Instead of merely adding to the transience and the falsity of our times, you can rise above them! Find some meaning within them!’

‘Oh, well, that’s just peachy for you, isn’t it? I’m sure from your perspective it looks like a great idea to crawl up my own ass, or however you put it –’

‘ “Get in on the ground floor of yourself” –’

‘So you and your banker pals can keep merrily turning the world to shit, and then any time you’re feeling bad drag in the poor old artist to find some meaning for you! You’re like the property developer who spends the year demolishing the countryside, then wants to go on holiday to somewhere
completely unspoiled
. Well, I’m not your meaning-monkey! I’m not here to make you feel better!’

‘That’s not what I’m saying –’

‘I’m living in
your
world, pal. I’ve got to play by
your
rules. If I’ve got to add to the falsity to feed my family, then falsity it is. And as for transience, I’ll say this for it, at least it’s over quick.’

‘Ah, young love,’ comes a voice from behind us. Standing in the doorway, framed by the light of the hall, is William O’Hara, wine glass perched between finger and thumb like a spheric, translucent butterfly. ‘Crispin and I used to fight like that,’ he says. ‘Now we’re like two old maids, making each other tea. But I see you’ve found it.’

He nods at the far wall. We turn around. Hanging over the fireplace is a painting. In the gloom it appears to be a rectangle of solid black; but now O’Hara switches on a lamp and I can see that the darkness is composed of minute inscriptions, accreting here a little more, here a little less, so that shapes seem to emerge, swim about and disappear again. The effect is surprisingly powerful, and quite beautiful.

‘I wanted to bring the guests in for a private viewing, but Crispin thought it would seem like showing off,’ O’Hara says. ‘He doesn’t understand that I don’t think of it as
mine.
How could anyone ever believe he owned something as monumental as this?’ He gazes up at the painting, as if he were speaking to it rather than to us, drifting across the floor towards it like a strand of inverted smoke pulled backwards into the unlit fire. ‘The instant I saw it, I knew I could spend the rest of my life looking at it. Crispin says that’s exactly why he doesn’t like it. “You never say that about me,” he says.’ O’Hara smiles. ‘He’s such a silly old duffer.’

I recognize the painting: after my failed encounter with Ariadne, I spent many nights online looking at this and others, taking some consolation, if that’s the word, from their charred and tortured surfaces, like selenographies of some bleak moon.

‘François Texier,’ I say.

‘The philosopher?’ Paul is staring up at the painting with a
certain amount of misgiving, as if shadowy hands might at any moment emerge from it and pull him in.

‘That’s right,’ O’Hara says. ‘You probably know the story?’

Paul shakes his head.

‘In the late 1990s he disappeared – dropped out of contact, left his job at the university. He’d been about to begin work on what was to be his definitive statement – he had a title for it, and indeed a contract. But the years went by and the book never surfaced – and neither did Texier. Instead these paintings began to appear in Paris – gifts to his friends, many of them, strange portraits, strange landscapes, strange abstractions. All very strange, and yet in some ways you could see the connection to his thought.’

‘And the book?’ Paul asks. ‘What happened to that?’

‘Well, this is the book,’ O’Hara says, gesturing to the painting. ‘
La Marque et le Vide.
The Mark and the Void. If you look closely, you can see –’

‘Words …’

Words upon words upon yet more words; hundreds of pages of text superimposed one on top of the other, rendering each other utterly illegible – creating instead a cascading darkness that seems to devour the very possibility of meaning.

‘He wrote it all out, you see. His book, the unfinished book, on the canvas, in pen and ink. When he had finished he burned the transcript and all his notes, and treated the canvas with the soot. And he stipulated that whoever owned it subsequently would have to expose it to smoke, which it’s been chemically designed to absorb over time – that’s why we’ve hung it over a fireplace.’

‘What happened?’ Paul says. ‘He’d had some kind of breakdown?’

‘He’d certainly grown wary of the idea of definitive statements,’ O’Hara says. ‘But in fact the painting fits his philosophy rather well. The mark, “making your mark”, this idea that to live in full means to leave some permanent evidence of yourself on the world, he’d become quite suspicious of that. And the
corresponding notion that the world is a blank page waiting to be inscribed, a void to be covered up with our doings. No, no. On the contrary. The void comes from inside us, from deep inside us. And the more we try to escape it, the more we turn the world into a mirror. Of that emptiness. That’s what he felt he’d done, while attempting to come up with his definitive statement.’

‘Dark,’ Paul says, his eyes still locked on the painting.

‘Well, that depends on how you look at it. You can transform it, you see. That’s the point of art, as he saw it.’

‘Isn’t art about making your mark?’

‘In a sense. But art is something you give away, that’s the difference. Instead of grabbing up bits of reality for oneself. He became very interested in the tribal cultures of the Pacific – his wife was an anthropologist, he used to travel around Polynesia with her. Anyway, he was very taken with these cycles of exchange they have, whereby objects are passed back and forth through generations, and nothing belongs to anyone in perpetuity. Or rather, that there is no “one” for things to belong to. He used to say that in that part of the world, you wrote your address backwards, that is, first you wrote the country, then your town, then your street, and only lastly your name. Which, when you think about it, makes much more sense. And art for him was an attempt to write his address backwards, so to speak.’

‘It’s so dark, though,’ Paul says, his eyes still locked on the painting.

‘Yes, the problem was those very cultures were in danger of being wiped out by all the others busy making their mark.’

‘Climate change?’

‘Travelling around the Pacific, they could already see it happening. That had a powerful effect on him. Not just the threat of floods and cataclysm and so on, but the fact that no one in the First World wanted to know. And then when his wife died, that seemed to compound everything. This was painted only a few months before his suicide.’

I hadn’t known this; I think of Ish and her islanders, and looking at the painting I feel a chill, as if behind the impenetrable black veil I can see drowned faces buried under relentless waves.

‘Crispin can’t stand it,’ O’Hara says, returning his gaze to the painting. ‘He says it’s depressing. And what it’s done to the insurance is just shocking – they’re insisting now we install some sort of ghastly alarm system, it’ll be like living in a bank vault. But looking at it makes me feel rather hopeful. There’s a sort of comfort in the thought of us all swimming around in this void together. The notion that our borders are porous makes me feel oddly complete. Like love, I suppose, isn’t it? It’s when you forget yourself that you’re most who you are. And conversely, as Texier said, there’s nothing so selfish as the urge to escape ourselves. Crispin can’t stand it when I quote him either,’ he concludes apologetically. And then, as a voice calls from elsewhere in the house, ‘Dessert!’ he says. ‘Come.’

Back in the dining room, the conversation has turned to the banking crisis.

‘Oh Lord, not again,’ O’Hara says.

‘When you cook the dinner, you can choose the topics,’ Crispin tells him primly.

‘That Miles O’Connor is the worst of the lot,’ Mary Cutlass says with an access of anger. ‘I don’t understand how he hasn’t been driven from the city.’

‘Oh, Miles isn’t so bad,’ Crispin says, as he portions out cake. ‘He helped us out of a hole when all the other banks were being beastly. Who is it you work for again?’ He directs this last question at me.

‘BOT,’ I tell him. ‘Or Agron Torabundo, as it is now.’

He is impressed. ‘Ever since old Blankly took over, you boys have been raking it in. Funny, he always struck me as a bit of a maverick. It just goes to show, I suppose.’ He digs into his dessert.
‘And now you’ve got this hedge fund – what’s the chap’s name again?’

‘Howie,’ I say. ‘Howard Hogan.’

‘This thing’s only been going a few weeks,’ Crispin informs the table. ‘But it’s taken off like a rocket. I wish I knew how he does it.’ He returns to me. ‘I’ve tried to work out his system, but I can’t make head or tail of it.’

‘Non-linear maths,’ I say, then confess, ‘I don’t understand it either. There’s a Russian.’

Mary Cutlass, who has been looking increasingly baffled by this conversation, breaks in. ‘What I would like to know is, when are our writers going to address the banking crisis?’

‘I do address it in my new book,’ William tells her. ‘Whacker’s elderly grandmother has her apple cart repossessed by the bank. Of course, those people don’t have a clue how to run an apple cart.’