Other People

by Martin Amis

  * * *

  Boy. Have you ever had it as bad as Alan had it the next day? Do you know that kind of pain? It’s a really bad kind, isn’t it, right up there in the top two or three? That kind of pain isn’t very popular these days and some people pretend not to feel it. But don’t fall for that one. The trouble with pain is that it hurts. Ow. Ow! ow! ow! Pain hurts! It hurts. If love is the most you can feel, then this is the worst. But pain is what can happen when you fall in love with other people.

  Boy, Alan has it bad today. Boy, Alan is hurting bad today. When you’re in love and trying to make someone love you back, you can hear the texture of your own footfalls, the whistling passage of your breath. Invisible eyes monitor you constantly: even at night something presides over the shape of your sleep. Every thought carries a tick or a cross.

  But then failure falls and you feel its weight. You see the stark facts of your loathsomeness. This is what pallid Alan is going through now, in the hunched hell of his cubicle. He is locked in punishment park. Each flicker of his hands, each muffled cough, each falling hair is radiant with his hideousness—and he is hideous, he is, because love renders you hideous when the weight of failure falls.

  Now his ears have started joining in the terrible fun: they are having hallucinations. Alan doesn’t need this. Things were quite bad enough already. And he daren’t turn round to see if what he hears is true. A gentle plop of water in the sink is a kiss exchanged by Russ and Mary; a ruffle of the dishcloth is the slide of his hand along her dress; each silence is their joyful shared peace, together among those sentinels of light and all their secrets. With Russ, or with somebody else—it doesn’t matter. The whole world is feasting on her, and she loves it. Alan’s thoughts are riding shotgun, his body is a rodeo, a riot. Each breath is fire. Boy, is he suffering. Boy, is he having a bad time. Boy, does pain hurt in love when the weight of failure falls.

  * * *

  Mary felt the crackle of Alan’s radioactivity, his wrecked force field, like the sky at night after the death of kings, all lightning-flashes and hysterias of blazing meteorites. But she couldn’t understand it, she couldn’t understand its inordinateness. Her instinct was straightforward enough: to help, to be kind. But every word or gesture she offered him was instantly mangled by this new power of hers. What was this power? It was the power to make feel bad. Mary’s smiles weren’t smiles any more, not to Alan.

  Perhaps there just wasn’t any way to make other people feel better at such times. Would talking about it help? Russ talked about it.

  ‘What the fuck’s the matter with you today?’ he asked Alan disgustedly as the three of them ate their quick meal during the afternoon lull. ‘Look at his hands! Look at them!’ Russ leaned back and put his arm round Mary’s shoulders. ‘You know what he’s got, don’t you, darlin. Wanker’s lurgy! Eur. Look at him. Creeping wanker’s lurgy is what he’s got. You’ll have to cut down, my son—onna and jobs. Look, fuck off, Al, and deal with it, will you? Who needs you here looking like that.’

  That didn’t help. That didn’t help one bit.

  At seven o’clock they trooped through the empty café. Russ ducked off to the lavatory—and for the first time that day Mary and Alan were alone. Losing no time, Mary took Alan’s hand and squeezed it. He turned to her with his eyes closed in pain. I’ve done the wrong thing, she thought, but I’ll do the next thing anyway. She leaned towards him and said, as meaningly as she could,

  ‘Yes.’

  His eyes opened. But then they both saw the black car pull up, and Prince sliding out; he rested his shoulder against the door, smiling calmly with his head at an angle.

  They moved uncertainly towards the door, and now Russ came trotting after them. Once in the street, Mary hesitated briefly, but of course she knew she had no choice.

  ‘Who’s this dude?’ said Russ as Mary walked away.

  ‘Come on, Russ,’ said Alan.

  Russ lingered and stared for a few seconds, then hurried on beside his friend.

  13 Live Action

  ‘Look,’ said Prince as Mary approached him. He turned. He pointed with a finger, and flattened his forearms on the roof of the car, glancing sleepily at his watch. Mary came up beside him and looked.

  Through a half-open doorway across the street a man lurched clattering out onto the pavement. He tensed to start forward headlong but before he could straighten out along the line of his speed a half-clad woman came after him and with a leap, an inhuman or animal leap, was on his back, seeming to ride him to the ground. As he wrenched himself clear his jacket tore audibly in her hands. They were both shouting, the woman continuously and on a higher plane of sound. The man bundled her back towards the doorway, where a second woman appeared, and reaching out in assistance or betrayal held her shoulders until the man had slapped himself free. He jogged off, glancing back twice. The women now embraced, though one still wailed. It was a greedy, tethered sound, growing louder on itself; they heard it even after the women had gone back inside and the door slammed shut behind them.

  ‘Strange things,’ said Prince lightly. ‘This place is full of strange things if you know where to look. Weird things. Come on.’

  He opened the door and watched Mary climb into the car—she did it awkwardly, feet first.

  ‘Mind your hands,’ he said.

  The door closed with a thud of air and Prince’s shadow moved round outside behind her head. He slipped in beside her and twisted the key in its lock. Mary looked out of her window; the café dropped back, averting its dark face. The machine put its head down and started lapping up distance. They climbed quickly on to the concrete beams that meshed the city, the car plunging forward with all its might, trying to get to the head of the herd.

  ‘Of course. You’ve never been in a car before, have you.’

  ‘Oh I think I must have been some time,’ said Mary to the windowpane. She turned sharply.

  Prince was smiling at the ravelling road. ‘I’ve got lots of time for you, Mary,’ he said. ‘I told you that before. Lots of time.’

  Life nearly overloaded Mary that night. She had never guessed at the city’s abysmal divides and atrocious energies, its furniture, hardware, power and glut. And there could be no doubting Prince any more. He knew about her. He knew about everything.

  ‘Look,’ he said in the bar on the forty-fourth floor. Mary turned to see a red-haired girl in a pink dress, laughing on the arm of a fat man with one dead eye. The pink of the girl’s dress was childish but her hair was as red as meat. ‘He paid an agency fifty pounds to bring her here tonight. She will keep five, perhaps less. Five pounds, for going out with fat guys. Later they will make a deal. He will give her a hundred pounds, maybe a hundred and fifty. She will spend four or five hours of her time in his hotel, then go home to her children and her husband, who doesn’t mind, who can’t afford to mind.

  ‘Look,’ he said in the dungeon beneath the streets. He had pulled up under a bridge and opened a door in the ground with his keys. He had dozens of keys on his ring, keys for all things, perhaps, or just jailer’s keys. ‘This is where the lines of the city’s power run. These are the copper veins that keep things working—water, electricity, gas.

  ‘Look,’ he said in the chaotic dormitory of a guarded compound near the airport, where the black hulks of planes screamed plangently overhead, their lights wired to the dark air. Mary turned to see an ochre-faced woman walking from bed to bed with a bundle of sticks and a shrieking baby in her arms. ‘The sweeper-woman pinches the boy to make him cry louder for money. But she pinches him also to punish him for his sins in previous lives. He must have been a very bad boy to be born the son of a sweeper-woman. That’s assuming there’s life after death—natch.

  ‘Look,’ said Prince. Mary looked through the windscreen but she still couldn’t believe it. A man standing in the middle of the dark street, peeled raw naked, weeping—and burning money. He had a lighter, and a handful of notes. Other people had gathered to watch. ‘Now he looks really well-adjusted.
But then, what is there to be adjusted to? Oh man . . . what brought you to this? What made this seem like the next thing to do? That’s it—run! Go on. Run, pal!’

  They ate in a cavernous restaurant spanning a city block of festering Chinatown. Thousands of Chinese ate with them. Until then Mary had thought it no more remarkable that people were from Sweden or Sri Lanka than if they had long legs or short hair or were in luck or were out of it. Now she saw that it mattered where you came from, not just to you but to the greater balance. Other peoples . . . dish-faced sprites with their numb glow . . . Prince used his knitting needles skilfully on the sweet food. Mary was too full to eat, though she had eaten little that day. Not only food fills you up. Sometimes the present is more than enough; sometimes the present is more than you can keep down. She drank the tea and tried to prepare herself.

  ‘Shall we begin?’ he said.

  Mary nodded.

  ‘How much do you know about Amy Hide?’

  ‘Enough. The photograph was enough.’

  ‘Well we know a little. We know the sort of things she did, the sort of people she was with. One night she went too far. Something happened. We’re not sure what. You know what murder is, don’t you?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘Usually we find a body and have to look for a murderer. With Amy Hide we find a murderer and have to look for a body. We don’t find it. We’ve got a confession, a guy in a cell saying what he did and why. But we haven’t got a body. Where is Amy Hide? Then you come along. Show me your teeth.’

  Mary made a rictus of her mouth. It felt like someone else doing it for her.

  ‘Mm, pretty teeth. No help though. It seems that Amy never had any trouble that way—anyhow we can’t find any records. Ditto with the doc. So it’s a hell of a fix.’

  ‘Is it a crime to be murdered?’ Mary asked.

  ‘What?’ Mary thought that nothing could startle Prince; but this startled him. ‘Why did you say that?’

  ‘I just wanted to know. Is it a crime? Can you be punished for it?’

  ‘Well it’s a strange way to break the law. You see, the thing . . .’ He hesitated and wiped his forehead with his palm. ‘No. You needn’t know that yet. That’ll come later.’

  ‘What will?’

  ‘You’ll see.’ He was calmer again now, and amusement reappeared in the line of his lips.

  Mary said, ‘What do you get if you break the law?’

  ‘Time,’ he said.

  ‘What do you get if you murder someone?’

  ‘Life.’

  ‘What’s life like?’

  ‘Murder.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Hell,’ he said and laughed. ‘Don’t ever try it. Hey, Mary.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you good or are you bad?’

  ‘. . . I’m good. I am.’

  ‘. . . Are you?’

  She made her eyes contest him with all their light. She said, ‘Have you ever done a terrible thing in a dream, and then woken up still believing it was true?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  ‘I feel like that all the time. All the time.’

  ‘Poor Mary,’ he said, ‘poor ghost. Come on. I’m afraid there’s one more thing you must see tonight.’

  They drove in silence. Prince was no longer disposed to talk and made some show of intentness at the controls. Mary watched the way they came with care. The river again, writhing and orderless in the lunar night, the plumed snout of a still-rumbling factory, warehouses that marched past slowly on either side and seemed to glance back over their shoulders at the car, a stretch of black grass in which an elliptical pond glinted and winked. Then the streetlights snuffed out, and she could see only the smoky beams thrust forward by the black car.

  They got out and walked. Mary felt the massed volume of nearby water. Was this another river, or had the river that she and Sharon crossed subtly curled round to head them off again? There was a smell of vegetable dampness and a feeling of liquid in the air. Water dripped and trickled musically. She noticed that dark faces with white eyes watched like masks from misty doorways. Feeble, threadbare dogs—more like recently promoted rats—stared up from a split bagful of rubbish they were eating and barked weakly. The dogs looked bashful about their sudden elevation within the chain of being—as if they wished they hadn’t excelled quite so brilliantly in the rodent kingdom and could quietly go back to being rats again. One limped up to sniff at Mary’s feet, then tiptoed off again.

  ‘The dog doesn’t wag its tail,’ said Mary nervously.

  ‘Probably scared it’ll drop off,’ said Prince.

  A heavy bird flapped overhead, and they could hear the hum its wings made against the damp air. Mary thought of the photograph she had once seen of an American eagle, its oriental trousers, the old eyes and their faith in the power of the ripping beak. Mary hurried on. They turned into an alley, and immediately Prince ducked through a low door, beckoning her to follow. She went in after him. The darkness and its dust made a connection with something in her head or throat, a tickle in the veins that feed the nose, the movement of a familiar but disused vent in the track of her blood. Ringed by candles, his face seemingly eyeless in their light, an old black man sat at a table by the inner door. He saw Prince and got to his feet with a sigh. Gingerly he slipped the bolt, stepping back to let Prince in. Prince could go anywhere. Everywhere had to let Prince in. Mournful, embarrassed music timed their ascent on the mis-angled staircase. Through a hole in its floor they came up into the arching shadows of the long room.

  This is a slower world, thought Mary, where cause and effect never need to come around. Here people try to live on fever and magic; they can’t, but they try. She looked about, then stared at the black floorboards, letting Prince guide her by the arm. There were twenty or thirty people there, perhaps many more. In a far corner film flashed. The talk was low and drowsy with all the fever in the air.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Prince, leading her towards the music and the floppy, clumping dancers, miming chaos against the dusty lights. ‘It’s a quiet night tonight. Nothing live.’ They sat down on bendy chairs round a small square table. An old man sidled up and banged a bottle and two glasses down in front of them. ‘Christ, I hate this place,’ he said, leaning forward and starting to drink quickly.

  Mary watched the dancers. There were only two couples on the floor. An eerily tall black man shuffled slumped over a little ruined blonde. His eyes were quite dead. The girl seemed to be supporting all his weight, hauling him as if in eternal punishment round the littered floor.

  ‘You know what they do here, Mary? Do you?’

  ‘No,’ said Mary exhaustedly. ‘What do they do here.’

  ‘All the usual things, all the trite things. You’d think people with these needs would pay other people to have them on their behalf, and just sit back and watch. Really this is the last place of boredom. When the world has bored you flat, you come to this place and have it bore you here. Remember?’

  Mary watched the dancers. The second couple was different: it still harboured energy. They swayed together with the remains of method, the man forming elaborate patterns on the girl’s back with his tensed claws, trailing them up the knobbled curve of her spine and down past the underhang of her breasts. As they worked round the floor the girl stood facing Mary, treading air for several slow beats. She smiled. One of her eyes was puffed and purple; her hollow mouth fell open slackly with silent laughter. In her face was all the relief of having no further to fall. The man jerked her head up to his and they kissed. The girl’s good eye still held Mary—see? See? it seemed to say. I’m lost at last, lost.

  ‘Amy used to get down here pretty often, I think,’ said Prince.

  ‘Did she?’ said Mary.

  ‘That’s right, that’s right. Amy used to like it best when they had live action here.’ His voice moved closer. ‘Don’t you remember? Are you finding this boring? But vice is—it is. What’s your special interest, Mary? Voodoo
, video, violence, vagrants, vandals, vampires? What’s your interest, Mary, what’s your special interest?’

  Mary turned away. She couldn’t deal with the agitation of his tone. It wasn’t anger but perhaps the eagerness of woken despair.

  ‘Then they find people who already know what a few teeth are worth. And after they’ve been roughed up and batted about and peed on, then you get to go up on stage and kick them about a bit yourself. The kickbags get paid—oh good, good. It’s fine, fine. Don’t you remember? Don’t you?’

  Mary said nothing. The dancers were still kissing, with redoubled violence, as if eating each other’s tongues. The man was urging her to the corner where the room was darkest. Wait—there was a door there, a low door almost consumed by shadow. Still kissing, still dancing, still urging, he steered her to the door. Suddenly the girl’s head snapped back; she had seen the door and seen it open. Yes, this was further, this was a lot further, this was more, this was a whole new ledge on the way down. But she laughed and stretched her shoulders as if they were wings for flight. They were through and on the other side. The door swung shut behind them.

  Mary turned to Prince. She could tell that he had been staring at her for a long time.

  ‘What’s behind that door?’ said Mary, as they drove back.

  ‘I’ve been behind the door once. You have too, I believe.’

  ‘Stop playing with me. Why don’t you leave me alone? Whatever I was I am me now.’

  ‘That’s my Amy,’ said Prince. ‘That’s the opposition talking.’

  ‘Stop it. Leave me alone. I’m not doing anyone any harm. And I can’t have been murdered, can I, because here I am.’

  Prince laughed. After a while he said, ‘Is there life after death? Who knows. Actually I wouldn’t put it past life, would you? That would be just like life, to have a trick in its tail . . . Okay. Okay. We’ll let you be for a while. In fact, the only thing behind the door these days is a mattress or two, as far as I know. For fucking on. You know about all that, Mary?’