by Paul Murray
‘I do not think my life would make a very interesting book,’ I say. ‘I feel I can speak with a certain amount of authority here.’
He laughs. ‘Well, in a way that’s the point. The stories we read in books, what’s presented to us as being interesting – they have very little to do with real life as it’s lived today. I’m not talking about straight-up escapism, your vampires, serial killers, codes hidden in paintings, and so on. I mean so-called serious literature. A boy goes hunting with his emotionally volatile father, a bereaved woman befriends an asylum seeker, a composer with a rare neurological disorder walks around New York, thinking about the nature of art. People looking back over their lives, people having revelations, people discovering meaning. Meaning, that’s the big thing. The way these books have it, you trip over a rock you’ll find some hidden meaning waiting there. Everyone’s constantly on the verge of some soul-shaking transformation. And it’s – if you’ll forgive my language – it’s bullshit. Modern people live in a state of distraction. They go from one distraction to the next, and that’s how they like it. They don’t transform, they don’t stop to smell the roses, they don’t sit around recollecting long passages of their childhood – Jesus, I can hardly remember what I was doing two days ago. My point is, people aren’t waiting to be restored to some ineffable moment. They’re not looking for meaning. That whole idea of the novel – that’s finished.’
‘So you want to write a book that has no meaning,’ I say.
‘I want to write a book that isn’t full of things that only ever happen in books,’ he says. ‘I want to write something that genuinely reflects how we live today. Real, actual life, not some ivory-tower palaver, not a whole load of literature. What’s it like to be alive in the twenty-first century? Look at this place, for example.’ He sweeps an arm at the window, the glass anonymity of the International Financial Services Centre. ‘We’re in the middle of Dublin, where Joyce set Ulysses. But it doesn’t look like Dublin. We could be in London, or Frankfurt, or Kuala Lumpur. There are all these people, but nobody’s speaking to each other, everyone’s just looking at their phones. And that’s what this place is for. It’s a place for being somewhere else. Being here means not being here. And that’s modern life.’
‘I see,’ I say, although I don’t, quite.
‘So the question is, how do you describe it? If James Joyce was writing Ulysses today, if he was writing not about some nineteenth-century backwater but about the capital of the most globalized country in the world – where would he begin? Who would his Bloom be? His Everyman?’
He looks at me pointedly, but it takes me a moment to realize the import of his words.
‘You think I am an Everyman?’
He makes a hey presto gesture with his hands.
‘But I’m not even Irish,’ I protest. ‘How can I be your typical Dubliner?’
He shakes his head vigorously. ‘That’s key. Like I said, somewhere else is what this place is all about. Think about it, in your work, you have colleagues from all over the place, right?’
‘That’s true.’
‘And the cleaning staff are from all over the place, and the waitresses in this restaurant are from all over the place. Modern life is a centrifuge; it throws people in every direction. That’s why you’re so perfect for this book. The Everyman’s uprooted, he’s alone, he’s separated from his friends and family. And the work that you do – you’re a banker, isn’t that so?’
‘Yes, an analyst at Bank of Torabundo,’ I say, before it occurs to me how strange it is that he knows this.
‘Well.’ He spreads his hands to signify self-evidence. ‘I hardly need to say how representative that is. The story of the twenty-first century so far is the story of the banks. Look at the mess this country’s in because of them.’
Ah. I begin to understand. ‘So your book will be a kind of exposé.’
‘No, no, no,’ he says, waving his hands as if to dispel some evil-smelling smoke. ‘I don’t want to write a takedown. I’m not interested in demonizing an entire industry because of the actions of a minority. I want to get past the stereotypes, discover the humanity inside the corporate machine. I want to show what it’s like to be a modern man. And this is where he lives, not on a fishing trawler, not in a coal mine, not on a ranch in Wyoming. This’ – he gestures once again at the window, and we both turn in our seats to contemplate the reticular expanse of the Centre, the blank façades of the multinationals – ‘is where modern life comes from. The feel of it, the look of it. Everything. What happens inside those buildings defines how we live our lives. Even if we only notice when it goes wrong. The banks are like the heart, the engine room, the world-within-the-world. The stuff that comes out of these places,’ whirling a finger again at the Centre, ‘the credit, the deals, that’s what our reality is made of. So, with that in mind, can you think of a better subject for a book – than you?’
* * *
Essentially, he tells me, the process would be a more intensive version of what he has been doing already: following me around, observing at close quarters, focusing, as much as is possible, on my work for the bank.
‘What would I have to do?’
‘You wouldn’t have to do anything,’ Paul says. ‘Just be yourself. Just be.’ He glances at the bill, takes a note from his wallet and lays it on the plate. ‘I don’t expect you to make a decision like this on the spot. To lay yourself out for a perfect stranger – that’s a big thing to ask. I wish I could say that you’d be handsomely rewarded, but right now all I can offer is the dubious honour of providing material for a book that might never get published.’ He cracks a grin. ‘Still, I bet the girls in the office’ll be interested to find out you’re a character in a work of fiction.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Think about it – Heathcliff, Mr Darcy. Captain Ahab, even. Women go nuts for them.’
‘Although those characters are imaginary,’ I say slowly.
‘Exactly. But you’ll be real. Do you see? It’s like you’ll be getting the best of both worlds.’
As if to bear out his words, the beautiful dark-haired waitress flashes me a smile as she glides past.
My head is spinning, and it really is time for me to get back to the office. But there is still one question he has not answered. ‘Why me? There are thirty thousand people working in the IFSC. Why did you choose me?’
‘To be honest, that’s what caught my eye initially,’ he says.
‘That? Oh.’ I realize he’s pointing at my jacket, which I am in the course of slipping back on.
‘The black really stands out, especially with the tie. Most people here seem to go for grey. Must be a French thing, is it?’
Yes, I say, it’s a French thing.
‘Makes you look very literary,’ he says. ‘And when I got closer I could see you had a certain … I don’t know, a sensibility. I got the impression that you were different from the others. That you weren’t just going through the motions. That you were searching for something, maybe. It’s hard to explain.’ He rips a scrap of paper from a little red notebook and scribbles down his number. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘I could be completely wrong, but I think there’s a really important book to be written about this place. And I think you’d be perfect for it. If it doesn’t feel right to you, for whatever reason, I promise I’ll disappear from your life. But can I ask you at least to think about it?’
* * *
‘Here he is!’ Jurgen says as I enter the Research Department. ‘We were beginning to think we must send out the search party!’
‘Where d’you disappear to?’ Ish inquires, through a mouthful of paper clips.
‘Nowhere,’ I shrug. ‘I ran into someone and went for a coffee.’
‘Casual Day.’ Jurgen shakes his head. ‘Anything can happen.’
Kimberlee comes in from Reception. ‘Claude, Ryan Colchis called about some numbers on a Ukrainian outfit you were digging up for him.’
‘Okay,’ I say.
‘And Walter’s PA called to say he’s coming in.’
‘There goes your weekend,’ Ish says.
I sit down at my terminal, confront the wall of fresh emails. Already the writer and his strange proposal are beginning to seem distant and unreal, one of those hazy episodes you can’t be sure you didn’t dream. And yet the familiar objects of the office have acquired a curious sheen – appear to resonate somehow, like enchanted furniture in a fairy tale that will dance around the room as soon as you turn your back.
‘Hey, has Claude heard the news?’ Kevin calls from his desk.
‘What news?’ I say, with a curious feeling of – what, synchronicity? As though someone is looking over my shoulder?
‘Blankly’s the new CEO,’ Ish says. ‘Rachael’s office just sent down word.’
‘Blankly got it,’ I say. ‘Well, well.’
‘Things will be changing, Claude,’ Jurgen says. ‘This is the whole new beginning of the Bank of Torabundo story.’
‘Yes,’ I say, and then, ‘I should call Colchis.’
‘Are you feeling better?’ Ish catches my arm. ‘You looked a bit off earlier.’
‘Yes, yes, I just needed some air,’ I tell her, but she is not deterred: she continues to scrutinize me.
‘Are you sure?’ she says. ‘You seem, I dunno, different somehow.’
‘Claude is never different,’ Jurgen says, clapping me on the shoulder. ‘Claude is always the same.’
‘Yeah…’ Ish wrinkles her nose thoughtfully; and I turn my eyes to the screen, as if I have a secret to keep.
The Pareto principle, also known as the 80–20 rule, is one of the first things you learn in banking: for any given area of life, 80 per cent of the effects come from 20 per cent of the causes. Thus 80 per cent of your profits come from 20 per cent of your clients, 80 per cent of your socializing is with 20 per cent of your friends, 80 per cent of the music you listen to is from 20 per cent of your library, etc. The idea is to minimize the ‘grey zone’ that devours your day, the 80 per cent of your reading, for instance, that yields only 20 per cent of your information.
Walter Corless is very much aware what side of the rule he’s on. He knows he is the wealthiest and most powerful man you have ever met, and as such he demands 100 per cent of your time and attention. A meeting with or even a call from Walter is like some supermassive planet materializing in your little patch of space – blocking the sun, overwhelming your gravitational field, so that you can only watch as the entire structure of your world goes hurtling off to rearrange itself on his. He started off selling turf from the back of a flatbed truck; thirty years later, he is chairman and CEO of one of the biggest construction companies in the British Isles. Even the worldwide slump hasn’t hurt him: while his peers put all their chips into housing, Dublex diversified into transport, logistics and, most profitably, high-security developments – military compounds, fortifications, prisons – which, as unrest sweeps across Europe and Asia, constitute a rare growth area. That a company he named after his daughter now builds enhanced interrogation facilities in Belarus gives a good indication of the man’s attitudes to business and life in general. (That daughter, Lexi, now runs a string of nursing homes known informally as the Glue Factory.)
His driver calls me shortly after six; I go outside to find Walter’s limo parked – in contravention of all of the Centre’s rules – on the plaza in front of Transaction House. Walter is sprawled across the back seat. He stares at me as I squeeze into the fold-down seat opposite him, breathing heavily through his nose. He is a dour, grey-faced man, who looks like he was dug up from the same bog he got his first bags of turf. Newspaper profiles refer to his ‘drive’ and his ‘focus’, but these are euphemisms. What Walter has is the dead-eyed relentlessness of the killer in a horror movie, the kind that lumber after you inexorably, heedless of knives, bullets, flame-throwers. Though his fortune runs into the billions, and he employs a team of accountants in tax havens around the world, he still enjoys calling on his debtors personally, and the pockets of his coat are always full of cheques, bank drafts, rolls of notes in rubber bands. Sometimes he’ll present me with a fistful, with instructions to invest them in this or that. This is not strictly my job, but then Walter doesn’t care what my job is; or rather, as our biggest client, he knows that my job is whatever he says it is.
Tonight he wants to ask my thoughts on a tender. Dublex has been approached by the interior ministry of the Middle Eastern autocracy of Oran to fortify the private compound of the Caliph.
‘They are expecting trouble?’ I ask.
Walter just grunts. He knows, of course; he has specialists in every conceivable field, but he still likes to canvass opinions from as wide a spectrum as possible before making a decision, in order, Ish says, to maximize the number of people he can yell at if something goes wrong. ‘Is there money in this fucker’s pocket, is what I’m asking you,’ he says.
‘It’s one of the biggest oil producers in the region. I imagine his credit is good,’ I say.
Walter scowls. I tell him I’ll look into it, and he signals his approval by changing the subject, launching into a familiar tirade about ‘regulations’.
When we are done, I return to my apartment, where I can finally start investigating the mysterious writer in earnest. Searching online, I discover that the novel he mentioned, For Love of a Clown, is real; an image search confirms, in a picture that shows him shaking hands with a giant papaya at something called the Donard Exotic Fruits and Book Festival, that its author and the man who approached me are one and the same. His Apeiron page has two customer write-ups, both negative: the first compares his clown-themed novel unfavourably to Bimal Banerjee’s The Clowns of Sorrow, and gives it a rating of two snakes and a cactus; the second offers no rating at all, and consists solely of the line ‘On no account should you lend money to this man.’ Beyond that, there is nothing. As far as the wider world is concerned, for the last seven years he might as well not have existed – which is consistent with what he told me about hitting a wall.
I go onto my balcony, try to look out with the eyes of a novelist. My apartment is in the International Financial Services Centre, a stone’s throw from the bank. The city centre lies upriver; if I lean over the rail, I can glimpse the Spire, jutting into the darkness like a radio transmitter from the heart of things, but it’s only on rare evenings, when the wind is blowing in a particular direction, that I hear its broadcasts – the whoops, the screams, the laughter and fights – and even then only faintly, like the revelry of ghosts. Usually, when night has fallen and only a few lights remain, chequering the dark slabs of the buildings, it is easy, looking over the deserted concourse, to believe the world has upped stakes and gone, followed the baton of trade west, leaving me here alone.
Before I came here I knew little about Dublin. I had an idea it was famous for its dead writers; I remembered the name of the river from arguments in school over whether it’s Liffey or Lethe the singer floats down in ‘How to Disappear Completely’. I entertained vague notions about Guinness and authenticity.
It turned out to be very different from what I expected. At university, I had read about the virtual, the simulated world that abuts and interpenetrates our own – ‘real without being actual, present without being there’, in the words of the philosopher François Texier. I didn’t think, after graduating, that I would require the concept again; I certainly never dreamed I’d find myself living in it.
That said, there is some argument as to whether the International Financial Services Centre is truly part of Dublin. It lies only a few minutes’ walk from O’Connell Street, but the locals don’t come here; many of them don’t even seem to know it exists, in spite of the torrents of capital that flow into it every year. It was built twenty years ago as a kind of pacemaker, an ingenious piece of financial and legal technology embedded in Dublin’s thousand-year-old body. A jumble of stumpy glass buildings, it stretches along the river like a pygmy Manhattan, on what used to be dockl
ands. Its main function is to be a kind of legal elsewhere: multinationals send their profits here to avoid tax, banks conduct their more sensitive activities with the guarantee of a blind eye from the authorities. Many of the companies here have billions in assets but no employees; the foyer of Transaction House is crowded with brass nameplates, all leading to a single, permanently empty, office. They call this shadow-banking, and the IFSC is a shadow-place – an alibi that will say you are here when you are not, and cover your presence when you don’t want to be seen.
Could you really set a book in such a place? In a city that is not a city? Filled with people who are paid not to be themselves? He says he wants to find the humanity inside the machine, to track down the particular amid the golden abstractions; he says he can see something different about me, and standing on the balcony I thrill at the thought that I might see it too. But what if he’s wrong? What if he holds up the mirror, and nothing is there?
* * *
Jurgen shares none of my reservations. ‘An author?’ he exclaims, when I mention it casually after the Monday meeting. ‘A real-life author? And he wants to put you in his book?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘You?’ Kevin the trainee says.
I shrug. ‘It seems that I just … fit the bill, is that the phrase?’ (In fact I know perfectly well it is the phrase.)
‘Do you think he’ll put us in it as well?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I will ask him.’
‘Doesn’t it sound a bit weird?’ Ish is more circumspect. ‘Some bloke following you around, writing down everything you do?’
‘What’s weird is that it hasn’t happened before,’ Kevin says. ‘When you think about it, there ought to be a lot more novelists wanting to write books about banks.’
‘But he’s not planning to slag us off, is he?’ Ish says. ‘You know, say we’re all wankers and fat cats and so on.’
