The Comfort of Strangers

by Ian Mcewan

  They dozed, then dressed hurriedly. While Colin went to the bathroom, Mary returned to the balcony to wait. The hotel sign had been turned off. The street below was deserted, and on the pontoon two waiters were clearing away the cups and glasses. The few customers who remained were no longer drinking. Colin and Mary had never left the hotel so late, and Mary was to attribute much of what followed to this fact. She paced the balcony impatiently, inhaling the musty smell of geraniums. There were no restaurants open now, but on the far side of the city, if they could find it, was a late-night bar outside which a man sometimes stood with his hot-dog stand. When she was thirteen, still a conscientious, punctual schoolgirl alive with a hundred ideas for self-improvement, she had kept a notebook in which, every Sunday evening, she set out her goals for the week ahead. These were modest, achievable tasks, and it comforted her to tick them off as the week progressed: to practise the cello, to be kinder to her mother, to walk to school to save the bus fare. She longed for such comfort now, for time and events to be at least partially subject to control. She sleepwalked frommoment to moment, and whole months slipped by without memory, without bearing the faintest imprint of her conscious will.

  ‘Ready?’ Colin called. She went inside, closing the french window behind her. She took the key from the bedside table, locked the door, and followed Colin down the unlit staircase.

  2

  THROUGHOUT THE CITY, at the confluences of major streets, or in the corners of the busiest square, were small, neatly constructed kiosks or shacks which by day were draped with newspapers and magazines in many languages, and with tiers of postcards showing famous views, children, animals and women who smiled when the card was tilted.

  Inside the kiosk sat the vendor, barely visible through the tiny hatch, and in virtual darkness. It was possible to buy cigarettes here and not know whether it was a man or a woman who sold them. The customer saw only the native deep brown eyes, a pale hand, and heard muttered thanks. The kiosks were centres of neighbourhood intrigue and gossip; messages and parcels were left here. But tourists asking for directions were answered with a diffident gesture towards the display of maps, easily missed between the ranks of lurid magazine covers.

  A variety of maps was on sale. The least significant were produced by commercial interests and, besides showing the more obvious tourist attractions, they gave great prominence to certain shops or restaurants. These maps were marked with the principal streets only. Another map was in the form of a badly printed booklet and it was easy, Mary and Colin had found, to get lost as they walked from one page to another. Yet another was the expensive, officially sanctioned map which showed the whole city and named even the narrowest of passageways. Unfolded, it measured four feet by three and, printed on the flimsiest of papers, was impossible to manage outdoors without a suitable table and special clips. Finally there was a series of maps, noticeable by their blue-and-white striped covers, which divided the city into five manageable sections, none of them, unfortunately, overlapping. The hotel was in the top quarter of map two, an expensive, inefficient restaurant at the foot of map three. The bar towards which they were now walking was in the centre of map four, and it was only when they passed a kiosk, shuttered and battened for the night, that Colin remembered that they should have brought the maps. Without them they were certain to get lost.

  However, he said nothing. Mary was several feet ahead, walking slowly and evenly as though measuring out a distance. Her arms were folded and her head was lowered, defiantly contemplative. The narrow passageway had brought them on to a large, flatly lit square, a plain of cobbles, in the centre of which stood a war memorial of massive, rough-hewn granite blocks assembled to form a gigantic cube, topped by a soldier casting away his rifle. This was familiar, this was the starting point for nearly all their expeditions. But for a man stacking chairs outside a café, watched by a dog and, further off, another man, the square was deserted.

  They crossed diagonally and entered a wider street of shops selling televisions, dishwashers and furniture. Each store prominently displayed its burglar-alarm system. It was the total absence of traffic in the city that allowed visitors the freedom to become so easily lost. They crossed streets without looking and, on impulse, plunged down narrower ones because they curved tantalizingly into darkness, or because they were drawn by the smell of frying fish. There were no signs. Without a specific destination, the visitors chose routes as they might choose a colour, and even the precise manner in which they became lost expressed their cumulative choices, their will. And when there were two together making choices? Colin stared at Mary’s back. The street lighting had bleached her blouse of colour, and against the old blackened walls she shimmered, silver and sepia, like an apparition. Her fine shoulder-blades, rising and falling with her slow stride, made a rippling fan of creases across her silk blouse, and her hair, which was partly gathered at the back of her head with a butterfly clasp, swung backwards and forwards across her shoulders and nape.

  She stopped at the window of a department store to examine an enormous bed. Colin drew level with her, lingered a moment, and then walked on. Two dummies, one dressed in pyjamas of pale blue silk, the other in a thigh-length nightie trimmed with pink lace, lay among the artfully dishevelled sheets. The display was not quite complete. The dummies were from the same mould, both bald, both smiling wondrously. They lay on their backs, but from the arrangement of their limbs – each lifted a hand painfully to its jaw – it was clear they were intended to be reclining on their side, facing each other fondly. It was the headboard, however, that had caused Mary to stop. Upholstered in black plastic, it spanned the width of the bed with a foot to spare on either side. It was designed, on the pyjama side at least, to resemble the control panel of a power station, or perhaps a light aircraft. Embedded in the shiny upholstery were a telephone, a digital clock, light-switches and dimmers, a cassette recorder and radio, a small refrigerated drinks cabinet and, towards the centre, like eyes rounded in disbelief, two voltmeters. The nightie side, dominated by an oval, rose-tinted mirror, was sparse by comparison. There was an inset make-up cabinet, a magazine rack and a nursery intercom. Balanced on top of the refrigerator was a cheque on which was written next month’s date, the name of the department store, a huge sum and a signature in bold strokes. Mary noticed that the dummy in pyjamas was holding a pen. She took a couple of paces to one side and an imperfection in the plate glass caused the figures to stir. Then they were still, their arms and legs raised uselessly, like insects surprised by poison. She turned her back on the tableau. Colin was fifty yards along, on the other side of the street. Shoulders hunched, hands deep in his pockets, he was watching a book of carpet samples methodically turning its pages. She caught him up and they walked on in silence till they came to a fork at the end of the street and stopped.

  Colin spoke in commiseration. ‘You know, I was looking at that bed the other day too.’

  Where the street divided there stood what must have once been an imposing residence, a palace. A row of stone lions stared down from beneath the rusting balcony on the first floor. The high-arched windows, flanked by finely grooved, pitted pillars, were blocked with corrugated tin which had been fly-posted, even on the second floor. Most of the announcements and pronouncements were from feminists and the far Left, and a few were from local groups opposed to the redevelopment of the building. High up, above the second floor, was a wooden board which announced in bright red lettering the name of the chain store that had acquired the site, and then in English, in quotation marks: ‘The shop that puts you first!’ Ranged outside the grand front door, like a line of premature customers, were plastic rubbish sacks. Hands on hips, Colin peered down one street, then crossed to peer down the other. ‘We should have brought those maps.’

  Mary had climbed the first steps of the palace and was reading the posters. ‘The women are more radical here,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘and better organized.’

  Colin had stepped back to compare the two streets.
They ran straight for a considerable distance and eventually curved away from each other. ‘They’ve got more to fight for,’ he said. ‘We came by this way before, but can you remember which way we went?’ Mary was translating with difficulty a lengthy proclamation. ‘Which way?’ Colin said slightly louder.

  Frowning, Mary ran her forefinger along the lines of bold print, and when she finished she exclaimed in triumph. She turned and smiled at Colin. ‘They want convicted rapists castrated!’

  He had moved to get a better view of the street to the right. ‘And hands chopped off for theft? Look, I’m sure we passed that drinking fountain before, on the way to this bar.’

  Mary turned back to the poster. ‘No. It’s a tactic. It’s a way of making people take rape more seriously as a crime.’

  Colin moved again and stood, with his feet firmly apart, facing the street on their left. It too had a drinking fountain. ‘It’s a way’, he said irritably, ‘of making people take feminists less seriously.’

  Mary folded her arms, and after a moment’s pause set off slowly down the right-hand fork. She had regained her slow, precise pace. ‘People take hanging seriously enough,’ she said. ‘A life for a life.’

  Uneasily Colin watched her go. ‘Wait a minute, Mary,’ he called after her. ‘Are you sure that’s right?’ She nodded without turning round. In the far distance, picked out momentarily by a streetlight, a figure was walking towards them. Somehow reassured by this, Colin caught up with her.

  This too was a prosperous street, but its shops were huddled and exclusive, dedicated it seemed, to the sale of single items – in one shop a gold-framed landscape in cracked, muddied oils, in another a hand-made shoe, further on, a single camera lens mounted on a velvet plinth. The drinking fountain, unlike most in the city, actually worked. The dark stone of the surrounding step and the rim of its great bowl had been worn down and polished by centuries of use. Mary arranged her head under the tarnished brass faucet and drank. ‘The water here’, she said between mouthfuls, ‘tastes of fish.’ Colin was staring ahead, waiting to see the approaching figure reappear beneath another lamp post. But there was nothing, except perhaps a rapid movement by a distant doorway, and that may have been a cat.

  They had eaten their last meal, a shared plate of fried whitebait, twelve hours previously. Colin reached for Mary’s hand. ‘Can you remember if he sells anything apart from hot dogs?’

  ‘Chocolate? Nuts?’

  Their pace quickened and their footsteps resounded noisily on the cobbles, making the sound of only one pair of shoes. ‘One of the eating capitals of the world,’ Colin said, ‘and we’re walking two miles for hot dogs.’

  ‘We’re on holiday,’ Mary reminded him. ‘Don’t forget that.’

  He clapped his free hand to his forehead. ‘Of course. I get too easily lost in details, like hunger and thirst. We are on holiday.’

  They dropped hands, and as they walked on Colin hummed to himself. The street was narrowing and the shops had given way on both sides to high, dark walls, broken at irregular intervals by deeply recessed doorways, and windows, small and square, set high up and criss-crossed with iron bars.

  ‘This is the glass factory,’ Mary said with satisfaction. ‘We tried to come here on our first day.’ They slowed down, but did not stop.

  Colin said, ‘We must have been round the other side then, because I’ve never been here before.’

  ‘We queued outside one of these doors while we were waiting.’

  Colin wheeled round on her, incredulous, exasperated. ‘That wasn’t our first day,’ he said loudly. ‘Now you’re completely confused. It was seeing the queue that made us decide to go to the beach, and we didn’t go there till the third day.’ Colin had stopped to say this, but Mary kept on walking. He caught up with her in skipping steps.

  ‘It might have been the third day,’ she was saying as though to herself, ‘but this is where we were.’ She pointed at a doorway several yards ahead and, as if summoned, a squat figure stepped out of the dark into a pool of streetlight and stood blocking their path.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Colin joked, and Mary laughed.

  The man laughed too and extended his hand. ‘Are you tourists?’ he asked in self-consciously precise English and, beaming, answered himself. ‘Yes, of course you are.’

  Mary stopped directly in front of him and said, ‘We’re looking for a place where we can get something to eat.’

  Colin meanwhile was sidling past the man. ‘We don’t have to explain ourselves, you know,’ he said to Mary quickly. Even as he was speaking the man caught him cordially by the wrist and stretched out his other hand to take Mary’s. She folded her arms and smiled.

  ‘It is terribly late,’ said the man. ‘There is nothing in that direction, but I can show you a place this way, a very good place.’ He grinned, and nodded in the direction they had come from.

  He was shorter than Colin, but his arms were exceptionally long and muscular. His hands too were large, the backs covered with matted hair. He wore a tight-fitting black shirt, of an artificial, semi-transparent material, unbuttoned in a neat V almost to his waist. On a chain round his neck hung a gold imitation razorblade which lay slightly askew on the thick pelt of chest hair. Over his shoulder he carried a camera. A cloying sweet scent of aftershave filled the narrow street.

  ‘Look,’ Colin said, trying to detach his wrist without appearing violent, ‘we know there is a place down here.’ The grip was loose but unremitting, a mere finger and thumb looped round Colin’s wrist.

  The man filled his lungs with air and appeared to grow an inch or two. ‘Everything is closed,’ he announced. ‘Even the hot-dog stand.’ He addressed himself to Mary with a wink. ‘My name is Robert.’ Mary shook his hand and Robert began to pull them back down the street. ‘Please,’ he insisted. ‘I know just the place.’

  After much effort over several paces, Colin and Mary brought Robert to a standstill and they stood in a close huddle, breathing noisily.

  Mary spoke as though to a child. ‘Robert, let go of my hand.’ He released her immediately and made a little bow.

  Colin said, ‘And you’d better let go of me too.’

  But Robert was explaining apologetically to Mary, ‘I’d like to help you. I can take you to a very good place.’ They set off again.

  ‘We don’t need to be dragged towards good food,’ Mary said, and Robert nodded. He touched his forehead. ‘I am, I am …’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Colin interrupted.

  ‘… always eager to practise my English. Perhaps too eager. I once spoke it perfectly. This way, please.’ Mary was already walking on. Robert and Colin followed.

  ‘Mary,’ Colin called.

  ‘English’, Robert said, ‘is a beautiful language, full of misunderstandings.’

  Mary smiled over her shoulder. They had arrived once more at the great residence at the fork in the road. Colin pulled Robert to a halt and jerked his hand free. ‘I’m sorry,’ Robert said. Mary too had stopped and was examining the posters again. Robert followed her gaze to a crude stencil in red paint which showed a clenched fist enclosed within the sign used by ornithologists to denote the female of the species. Again he was apologetic, and seemed to assume personal responsibility for everything they could read. ‘These are women who cannot find a man. They want to destroy everything that is good between men and women.’ He added matter-of-factly, ‘They are too ugly.’ Mary watched him as she might a face on television.

  ‘There,’ Colin said, ‘meet the opposition.’

  She smiled sweetly at them both. ‘Let’s go and find this good food,’ she said, just as Robert was indicating another poster and preparing to say more.

  They took the left-hand fork and walked for ten minutes during which Robert’s boisterous attempts to begin a conversation were met by silence, on Mary’s part self-absorbed – she walked with her arms crossed again – and on Colin’s faintly hostile – he kept his distance from Robert. They turned down an alley wh
ich descended by a series of worn steps to a diminutive square, barely thirty feet across, into which ran half a dozen smaller passageways. ‘Down there,’ Robert said, ‘is where I live. But it is too late for you to come there. My wife will be in bed.’

  They made more turns to left and right, passing between tottering houses five storeys high, and shuttered grocers’ shops with vegetables and fruit in wooden crates piled outside. An aproned shopkeeper appeared with a trolley-load of cases and called out to Robert who laughed and shook his head and raised his hand. When they reached a brightly lit doorway, Robert parted the yellowing strips of a plastic walk-through for Mary. He kept his hand on Colin’s shoulder as they descended a steep flight of stairs into a cramped and crowded bar.

  A number of young men, dressed similarly to Robert, sat on high stools at the bar, and several more were arranged in identical postures – all their weight on one foot – around a bulging juke-box of sumptuous curves and chromium scrolls. A deep and pervasive blue emanated from the back of the machine and gave the faces of the second group a nauseous look. Everyone appeared to be smoking, or putting out his cigarette with swift, decisive jabs, or craning his neck forwards and pouting to have the cigarette lit. Since they all wore tight clothes, they had to hold their cigarette in one hand, the lighter and pack in the other. The song they were all listening to, for no one was talking, was loud and chirpily sentimental, with full orchestral accompaniment, and the man who sang it had a special sob in his voice for the frequent chorus which featured a sardonic ‘ha ha ha’, and it was here that several of the young men lifted their cigarettes and, avoiding each other’s eyes, joined in with a frown and a sob of their own.

  ‘Thank God I’m not a man,’ Mary said, and tried to take Colin’s hand. Robert had shown them to a table and had gone to the bar. Colin put his hands in his pockets, tipped back his chair and stared at the jukebox. ‘Oh come on,’ Mary said, prodding his arm. ‘It was only a joke.’