The Book of Other People

by Zadie Smith

  Not that he’d been anybody special.

  And this evening he was apparently even less: the sort of man who’d sit in a cinema but never be shown a film.

  The projection box had quietened, the rattling stilled. There had been a few ill-defined thumps a while ago and then silence and the sensation of being watched. Frank was quite sure the projectionist had decided not to bother with the movie and was waiting for Frank to give up and go away.

  But that wouldn’t happen. Frank was going to get what he wanted and had paid for. Overhead, deep mumbles of amplified sound were leaching through the ceiling, so the other feature had begun. Still, he suspected that no one was watching upstairs, either - he’d not heard a soul in the foyer.

  Half an hour, though - if the comedy had started, that meant he’d been stuck here for half an hour.

  He removed his hat and then settled it back on again.

  Being left for half an hour was disrespectful, irritating. Any longer and he would be justified in growing angry and then making his displeasure felt.

  He coughed. He kicked one foot up on to the back of the chair in front, followed it with the other, crossed his legs at the ankle. He burrowed his shoulders deeper into the back of the seat. This was intended to suggest that he was fixed, in no hurry, willing to give matters all the time they’d take. The next step would involve conflict, tempers, variables it was difficult and unpleasant to predict.

  Only then a motor whirred and the lights dimmed further then evaporated and the screen ticked, jumped, presented a blurry certificate which adjusted to and fro before emerging in nice focus and showing him the title of his film, the entertainment he had picked. Silently, a logo swam out and displayed itself, was replaced by another and another. Silently, a landscape appeared and displayed itself, raw-looking heaps of brown leaves, blades of early mist between trees, quite attractive. Silently, the image altered, showed a man’s face: an actor who’d been famous and attractive some decades ago and who specialised these days in butlers, ageing criminals, grandfathers, uncles. Silently, he was looking at a small girl and silently, he moved his lips and failed to talk. He seemed to be trying to offer her advice, something important, life-saving, perhaps even that. But he had no sound.

  The film had no sound. What Frank had thought was an artistic effect was, in fact, a mistake - perhaps a deliberate mistake.

  He kept watching. Sometimes, when he’d been abroad, he’d gone to the cinema in foreign languages and managed to understand the rough flow of events. He’d been able to enjoy himself.

  But this was an artistic piece, complicated. People seemed to be talking to each other a good deal and with a mainly unreadable calmness. As soon as the child disappeared, he was lost.

  So he stood, let the chair’s seat bang vaguely as it flipped out of his way, and strode up the incline of the invisible floor towards the invisible wall and its hidden doorway.

  Outside, the projectionist’s box was clearly labelled and its door was, in any case, ajar, making it very easy to identify - an unattended projector purring away there, a dense push of light darting out through the small glass window, thinning as it spanned the cinema and then opening itself against the screen. It was always so cleanly defined: that fluttering, shafted light. Frank briefly wondered if the operator had to smoke, or scatter talc, raise steam to make sure it stayed that way, remained picturesque.

  In the foyer, there was the boy with the dirty shoes, leaning against a pillar and looking drowsy.

  ‘There’s no sound.’

  ‘What.’

  ‘I said, there’s no sound.’

  The boy seemed to consider saying what again before something, perhaps Frank’s expression, stopped him.

  ‘I said, there’s no sound.’ Frank not enraged, not about to do anything, simply thinking - no one helps and you ask and it doesn’t matter because no one helps and I don’t know why. He tried again. ‘I can’t hear. In the normal way I can hear. But at the moment I can’t. Not the film. Everything else, but not the film. That’s how I know there’s something wrong with the film and not with me.’

  The boy was eyeing him, but didn’t seem physically strong or apt to move abruptly.

  Frank believed that he felt calm and was not at risk. He continued to press his point. ‘There is a problem with the film. The film is playing, but there’s no sound.’ And to explain what he’d been doing for all of this time: ‘It’s not been started long and it has no sound.’ Although this maybe made him seem foolish because who would have normally waited more than half an hour in a cold, dark room for a film to start?

  ‘There’s no sound?’ The boy’s tone implied that Frank was demanding, unreasonable.

  Frank decided that he would like to be both demanding and unreasonable. If he wasn’t the man he had been, then surely he ought to be able to pick the man he would be. ‘There’s no sound.’ Frank swallowed. ‘I would like you to do something about it.’

  This wasn’t a tense situation, he’d thought it might be, but he’d been wrong. His potential opponent simply shrugged and told him, ‘I’ll go and find the projectionist.’

  ‘Yes, you should do that.’ Frank adding this unnecessarily because the boy had already turned and was dragging across the foyer carpet.

  Something would be done, then.

  Frank sat on the small island of seats provided, no doubt, for short periods of anticipation - people expecting to be joined by other people, parties assembling, outings, families, kids all excited by the prospect of big pictures, big noise, a secure and entertaining dark. The door to the larger auditorium was open and he could see a portion of the screen, the giant chin and mouth of a woman. There were also figures in some of the seats, film-goers. Or models of film-goers, although that was unlikely. They must have been stealthy, creeping in: or else they’d arrived before him, extremely early. Either way, he’d not heard them, not anticipated they’d be there.

  That was surprising. Frank prided himself on his awareness and observation and didn’t like to think they could fail him so completely. In a private capacity this would be alarming, but it would be disastrous in his work. He was resting at the moment, of course. Everybody who’d said that he ought to rest had been well intentioned and well informed. He’d needed a break. Still, there would come a day when he’d return and then he’d need his wits about him.

  Expert. That’s what he was.

  ‘There are other things you can do.’

  She hadn’t understood. When you’re an expert then you have an obligation, you must perform.

  ‘There are other things to think about.’

  She’d never known the rooms he’d seen: rooms with walls that were a dull red shine, streaking, hair and matter; floors dragged, pooled, thickened; footprints, hand prints, scrambling, meat and panic and spatter and clawing and smears and loss and fingernails and teeth and everything that a person is not, should not be, everything less than a whole and contented person.

  Invisible rooms - that’s what he made - he’d think and think until everything disappeared beyond what he needed: signs of intention, direction, position; the nakedness of wrong; who stood where, did what, how often, how fast, how hard, how ultimately completely without hope - what exactly became of them.

  Invisible.

  At which point, his mind broke, dropped to silence, the foyer around him becoming irrelevant. A numbness began at the centre of his head and then wormed out, filling him with this total lack of anything to hear. He tried retracing his thoughts but they parted, shredded, let him fall through into nowhere. And the man he’d been before was gone from him absolutely, he could tell, and whatever was here now stayed suspended, thoughtless.

  No way of telling how long. Big numb space, not even enough to grip hold of and start a fear. Maybe mad. Maybe that’s what he was. Broken or mad. Broken and mad.

  Then in bled a whining: a thinner, more pathetic version of his voice and his mind seemed to catch at it, almost comforted.

  No one h
elps.

  It felt like a type of mild headache.

  No one ever helps. I just stay at home and the light bulbs die and the ceilings crack and everything electrical is not exactly as it should be - there are many faults - and I call the help lines and they don’t, I call all kinds of people and they don’t help, I spend hours on the phone and I get no answers that have any meaning, I get no sense - there are constantly these things going wrong, incessantly, every day, and I want to stop them and I could stop them but no one helps and I can’t manage on my own.

  Like that evening with the blood - he couldn’t very well have been expected to deal with those circumstances by himself.

  He’d done all he could, waited in the kitchen and kept the soup on a low heat so that it would be ready for her. Except that wasn’t the main point.

  His finger was the more important detail. He washed that under the tap and then wound it round with an adhesive dressing from the first-aid kit. He’d used the kit in the hallway cupboard rather than go and maybe disturb her in the bathroom.

  The bathroom, that was more important than his finger. He’d been guessing she was in the bathroom, because the hot water was running, he could tell from the boiler noise, and she’d probably be in there adding bath oil, enjoying the steam, getting the temperature right for steeping in - he hadn’t known. He never had seen her bathing, the details.

  The bathroom was connected with his finger because he’d bound his injury downstairs so as to avoid her and had possibly not done this well, maybe he should have taken better steps to close the wound, because the scar that he’d eventually grown was quite distinct. If anyone examined his hands closely they would see it - an identifying mark.

  Then - a key detail - he’d noticed that his shirt was bloody and he should change it, padded upstairs, and that had meant changing his plans and going upstairs, sneaking into their bedroom, pulling out any old sweater and wrestling it on.

  The smell of her in the bedroom. Same thing you’d get when you hugged her, or rolled over on to her pillow when she wasn’t there. Frank had seen men hug their wives, the way they’d fit their chin down over the woman’s shoulder and there would be this smile, a particular young-seeming grin with closed eyes - always made him think - bliss.

  That one soft word, which in every other context he did not like or use.

  Going up to the bedroom had been a risk - she might have been there, too, resting on her pillow, or undressing and having some kind of large emotion that she didn’t want to be observed. But he’d been careful to listen at the bathroom door as he passed it and had heard the sound of her stirring in the bath, a rise and fall of water, some kind of smoothing motion.

  Somehow, that was another point to emphasise. It should not be forgotten, that moment of leaning beside the door and listening to a movement he could not see and imagining his wife’s shoulder, side of the breast glimpsed, her cheek, the lift of her ribs - always a slim girl - and a glimmer of water chasing over and down, being lost.

  Once he’d put on his sweater, Frank thought he was hungry and so he’d gone down to the kitchen, cut into the bread he’d baked - a moist, yeasty loaf made with spelt, which was a little difficult to get, but worth the effort - and he’d ladled out some soup. When he took the first spoonful, though, it tasted salt, peculiar, and a fierce weakness of his arms and throat disturbed him and he ended up throwing his soup away.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t realise she was upset.

  He did know her and did understand.

  She’d brought no one home and they had no children, no child, and she was the only person who’d seen him, just her, and they were married, had been married for years, so that should have been all right. But her feelings did exist, of course, and should be considered. She was upstairs bathing and having emotions. Undoubtedly the most important thought that he could have, should manage to have, would be that she had feelings. These feelings meant she didn’t like his soup, or his bread, or his hat, and she blamed him for terrible things, for one terrible thing which had been an accident, an oversight, a carelessness that lasted the space of a breath and meant he lost as much as her, just precisely as much.

  He wanted to go to her and say: I’ve watched this before, been near it - the way that a human being will drop and break inside, their eyes dying first and then their face, a last raising of light and then it goes from them, is fallen and won’t come back. They walk into our building and whatever they think and whatever we have told them, there is a person in their mind, a living, unharmed person they expect to greet them and return their world. Then our attendants lead them to the special room, to the echoing room, and they see nothing, no one, no return, a shape of meat, an injury. Some of them cry, some accept the quiet suggestion of tea and the plate of biscuits we set down to make things seem homely and natural and as if life is going on, because it is, that is what it does - picks us up and feeds us with itself, drives us on until we wear away. Some of them are quiet, inward. Some I can hear, even in my office. They rage for their lovers, their loves, for their dead love, their dead selves. And they rage for their children. And they fail to accommodate their pain. And they leave us in the end, because they cannot stay. They go outside and fall into existence. Our town is full of people running back and forth in torn days and every other town is like that, too. Our world is thick with it, clotted in patterns and patterns of grief. And, beyond this, I know you’re sad. I know your days are bleeding, too. And I know I make you sad. I don’t understand how not to, but please don’t bring in more of the grief, don’t add to it. If there is more, then I won’t be able to breathe and I’ll die.

  And I miss her, too.

  And I miss her like you do.

  The no one who comes home with you holding your hand.

  The girl who isn’t there to mind when I hurt myself.

  ‘That’ll be okay, then.’

  Frank saw the young man’s sneakers, the intentionally bedraggled cuffs of his jeans. Frank looked at them through his fingers, keeping his head low. ‘I’m sorry.’ This emerging less as a question than a statement, a confession. He rubbed his neck, his helpless sweat, and said again, more clearly and correctly, ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The projectionist’s just coming back. You can go in and wait.’

  Oh, I know about that, I’ve done that. Wait. I can do that. Past master.

  Frank swallowed while his anger crested and then sank. These spasms were never long-lasting, although they used to be less frequent. That could be a cause for concern, his increased capacity for hatred.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  The boy staring with what appeared to be mild distaste when Frank straightened himself and looked up. ‘No. At least, yes. I am okay. I have a headache, that’s all.’

  Standing seemed to take an extremely long time, Frank trying not to fall or stagger as he pressed himself up through the heavy air. He was taller than the boy, ought to be able to dominate him, but instead Frank nodded, holding his cap in both hands - something imploring in this, something anachronistic and disturbing - and he cranked out one step and then another, jolted back to the doorway of the cinema and through.

  The dark was a relief, peaceful. He felt smoother, healthier as soon as it wrapped him round, cuddled at his back and opened ahead to let him pad down the gentle slope and find a new seat.

  It was actually good that his film had been delayed. This way, his evening would be eaten up - back to the hotel after and head straight for bed. Double bed. Only one of him. No need to pick a side: her side, his side. He could lie where he wanted.

  She preferred the left. He’d supposed this was somehow to do with the bedroom door being on the right. Any threat would come in from the right and he would be set in place to meet it. Frank had thought she was letting him guard her while she slept: Frank who was perfectly happy on whatever side was left free, who might as well rest at the foot of the bed like a folded blanket. It didn’t matter. He didn’t mind.

  Really, thoug
h, she didn’t expect Frank to defend her. Her choice had nothing to do with him. In fact, they’d had other bedrooms with the door in other places and with windows that could be climbed through, you had to consider them, too - their current window was to the left - and she’d still always lain on the left. She was left-handed, that was why. Easier to reach her book, her water glass, her reading lamp if she was over there.

  She hadn’t read on their last night, at least he didn’t think so. He’d waited for her in the kitchen with the soup and she’d never come down. He’d cleaned up his blood and repotted the plant and listened to the sound of the water draining from her bath and her naked footsteps on the landing, not moving towards the stairs. Then he’d decided his first cleaning hadn’t been thorough and he’d scrubbed the place completely - work surfaces, floor, emptied out the fridge and wiped it down, made it tidy. The cupboards needed tidying, as well. That took quite a time. Finally, he decanted the soup into a container, washed the pot, looked at the container, emptied it into the bin and washed the container.

  It was two in the morning when he was done.

  And when he had slipped into bed he had expected her to be sleeping, because that would be best.

  ‘What were you doing?’ Only she wasn’t asleep, she was just lying on her back without the light on and waiting to ask him, ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘I . . . cleaning.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you.’

  And Frank couldn’t tell her because he didn’t know and so he just said, ‘I understand why people look at fountains, or at the sea. Because those don’t stop. The water moves and keeps on moving, the tide withdraws and then returns and it keeps on going and keeps on. It’s like - ’ He could hear her shifting, feel her sitting up, but not reaching for him. ‘It’s like that button you get on stereos, on those little personal players - there’s always the button that lets you repeat - not just the album, but the track, one single track. They’ve anticipated you’ll want to repeat one track, over and over, so those three or four minutes can stay, you can keep that time steady in your head, roll it back, fold it back. They know you’ll want that. I want that. Just three or four minutes that come back.’ Which he’d been afraid of while he’d heard it and when he’d stopped speaking she was breathing peculiarly, loudly, unevenly, the way she would before she cried. So he’d started again, because he had no tolerance for that, not even the idea of that. ‘I want a second, three, four seconds, that would be all. I want everything back. No stopping, I want nothing to stop.’ Only he was crying now, too - no way to avoid it. ‘I want her to be - ’ His sentence interrupted when she hit him, punched out at his chest and then a blow against his eye causing this burst of greyish colour and more pains and he’d caught her wrists eventually, almost fought her, the crown of her head banging against his chin, jarring him.