‘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.’