Free The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray Page A

says, ‘So he has told you what’s going to happen?’
    ‘Happen?’
    ‘In the book.’
    ‘We know what is going to happen in the book,’ I say. ‘It is about me, a modern Everyman, experiencing a typical day.’
    ‘Yes, but there will be some kind of story also?’
    ‘That is the story,’ I say.
    ‘That is the story?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You, sitting at your computer, writing research notes about banks.’
    ‘That’s right.’
    Jurgen says nothing to this.
    ‘It’s not supposed to be one of those books where things happen,’ I explain. ‘It’s about discovering the humanity in ordinary lives.’
    ‘Oh,’ Jurgen says.
    There is another silence.
    ‘It’s not going to be boring,’ I say.
    ‘Of course not,’ he says.
    Around us the Centre looms, darkened and empty like a Perspex necropolis. I think again of Paul’s parting words, and anxiety quickens in my sinews once more. ‘Did he say anything to you?’ I turn to Ish. ‘What were you talking to him about for so long?’
    ‘He was asking about the Torabundo archipelago. I travelled around there a bit with Tog back in the day. She pauses, then says, ‘
I
reckon he’s got something planned for you.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Like … I don’t know … maybe you fall in love.’
    ‘I’m not going to fall in love,’ I say categorically.
    ‘In a book this is exactly the kind of thing the main character will say right before he falls in love,’ Jurgen says.
    ‘Yeah,’ says Ish. ‘Plus, you’re French. You lot practically invented love. French kissing. French letters. It’s the whole French thing.’
    ‘How would you feel if I said the “whole Australian thing” was kangaroos and tinnies and daytime soap operas?’
    ‘That
is
the whole Australian thing, Claude. Why do you think I left?’
    ‘Yes, well, then you will understand that not everyone fits into the national stereotype.’
    ‘I certainly do not think that when people speak of the “typical German”,’ Jurgen chuckles, ‘they are imagining a crazy man who loves reggae music, and writes articles about medieval economics while listening to reggae music on his computer!’
    ‘My point is that adventures, escapades, dramatic reversals, falling in love – these are the hackneyed tropes that Paul’s trying to get away from,’ I tell Ish, though I am perhaps trying to persuade myself as much as her. ‘He wants to depict modernity as it genuinely is.’
    ‘Love’s not hackneyed,’ Ish says obstinately.
    ‘What does love have to do with this place?’ I throw my arms up at our surroundings, great glass panopticons surveying all the other panopticons. ‘I am serious, what does love have to do with anything we do all day long?’
    ‘Well, that’s what he’d better work out,’ Ish says. ‘If he wants anyone to read his book.’
    ‘There are plenty of good stories without love.’
    ‘Like what?’
    I think for a moment. ‘
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
.’
    We have emerged on to the quay. Over the river, beneath the concrete skull of the unfinished headquarters, the zombies sleep in silence.
    ‘Just because you don’t have it doesn’t mean you don’t need it,’ Ish says, staring into the dark water. ‘Every story needs love. Even at the bottom of the sea.’

Over the weekend,
Forbes
publishes a long article about our new chief executive, Porter Blankly. The accompanying photographs show a man in his sixties, with the craggy, portentous good looks of the star of a Hollywood Bible epic, and white hair in a sculpted wave, like a roll of ice cream caught mid-scoop. In every picture he is shaking hands with someone, as if that’s all he does for a living; anyone in the industry will know that each of those handshakes represents a game-changing new synergy, a market stampede, and a multimillion-dollar windfall for his shareholders. The piece is titled
Blank to the future
, and it runs as follows:
Four years ago this summer, Porter Blankly achieved a dream he had cherished