Free The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray

bankers were all rocket scientists.’
    ‘That’s just the traders,’ I say. ‘My background is philosophy – François Texier, do you know him?’
    Paul shakes his head.
    ‘In fact he might be a useful person to think about for your book,’ I say. ‘He had many fascinating ideas about simulacra, and the derealization of modern life.’
    ‘Derealization?’ Paul repeats, with a half-smile.
    ‘Yes. He was interested in a Buddhist concept called
sunyata
, or voidness. According to this
sunyata
, reality as we perceive it is an illusion. We see the world as divided up into objects – this glass, this table, this person. But in fact, these are merely snapshots of processes that are in a constant state of change, all parts of a great intermingling flux.’
    ‘That does sound pretty derealizing,’ Paul admits.
    ‘Actually, the derealizing comes as an attempt to cover over this notion of flux,’ I say, excited to feel these thoughts coming to life
in my mind again. ‘To a culture centred on the individual, the idea that we are all just transitory surface effects on some great sea of emptiness has not been popular. Texier’s argument is that most of Western civilization has been an attempt to build over the void with huge, static systems of thought, religious, economic, scientific, that divide everything into facts, each with its own specific place. We call it analysis, but really it is escape. Or as he puts it, “We write the encyclopedia to explain the world, and then we leave the world to live in the encyclopedia.” The simulacrum is a kind of a derivative of these –’
    ‘Oi! What’s going on here?’ Ish arrives with a tray of drinks. ‘You know the rules, Claude. Friday night – no Frenchness!’
    ‘I’m just explaining that we have all come to banking from different disciplines,’ I say.
    ‘Kevin here was halfway through a medical degree,’ Ish says. ‘Imagine, he could actually have been useful to somebody.’
    ‘Doctors don’t make shit these days,’ Kevin says.
    ‘It used to be the smartest people didn’t always want to be the richest people,’ Paul says.
    ‘Maybe the smartest people got smarter,’ Kevin returns.
    ‘
I’m
not going to spend the rest of my life at it,’ Ish says. ‘I’ve still got a box of my old clothes at home. As soon as I get my next bonus, I’m going to chuck my whole wardrobe of daggy work shit straight into a skip and fuck off to the Pacific. It’ll be like Corporate Ish never existed.’
    ‘What about your apartment?’ I say.
    ‘Oh yeah.’ Her face falls. Turning to Kevin she says, ‘Here, want to buy an apartment? It’s got a bidet.’
    ‘Property’s finished,’ Kevin says. ‘I’m putting all my money into global pandemics.’
    As midnight approaches, I see Paul put on his coat.
    ‘The end of your first week,’ I say. ‘It is all going well?’
    ‘Sure,’ he says – but I detect a hesitation.
    ‘Only … ?’
    ‘It’s nothing,’ he reassures me. ‘I’m just trying to figure out how it all hangs together.’
    ‘If you have questions, maybe I can help.’
    At first he blusters nothings, then he pauses, looks at me, as if deciding whether to take me into his confidence: ‘I feel like I’m
missing
something,’ he says. ‘I’ve got the characters, what you do, the rhythm of the day. But I still – I feel like I’m not getting to the
heart
of things, you know?’ I must look very worried, because he claps me on the shoulder. ‘It’ll come. Maybe I just need to change my focus a little bit.’
    ‘We will see you on Monday?’ I say.
    ‘Of course.’ He grins. ‘Have a good weekend. You’re off-camera! Let your hair down.’
    Not long after, the lights come up; Life begins to empty, its pinchbeck promises having slipped away, as always, through the cracks of the night.
    We gather our things and make our way outside. I am deep in thought: what Paul said about missing something bothers me, and as if picking up on that, Jurgen