The Tenant and The Motive (10 page)

That's when he saw the bed of dahlias where he'd twisted his ankle last Monday. He didn't think anything.

Panting, sweating and almost happy, he arrived home. He took a shower, made some breakfast (peach juice, scrambled eggs with bacon, toast, coffee with hot milk) and ate hungrily as he listened to the news on the radio. As he left the house he told himself that the physical exercise had done him good, banished his anxiety and perhaps the fear as well: he felt spirited.

At a quarter past nine he parked the Buick in front of the foreign languages building. He picked up his leather briefcase from the passenger seat on his right and went into the building. The hall was half empty: just a few
young people, sprawling on the carpeted floor, leaning against the walls, studying or dozing while waiting for the next class.

He went up in the elevator alone. When he got to the main office of the department Branstyne and Swinczyc were speaking in low voices. They stopped talking as soon as they noticed Mario's presence: they turned to him, said hello. After a few innocuous comments on the weather or the tedium of weekends (or maybe about the Conference of the Association of Linguists), to which he barely paid any attention, Mario got to his cubbyhole. He picked up an envelope, he opened it: Scanlan asked to speak to him right away. Resigned, he thought: This is it.

Since he didn't see Joan, he knocked directly on Scanlan's door.

‘Come in,' he said.

Scanlan was sitting behind his desk; he didn't stand up. With a gesture he indicated that Mario should sit down across from him. Mario sat down. The morning sunshine lit up the office: the white walls, the leather chairs, the desk covered in papers, the poster advertising a retrospective of the work of Botero, Scanlan's eyes, dark and intelligent behind the thick lenses of his glasses.

Scanlan stroked his beard and blinked.

‘Well, Mario,' he said softly. ‘I suppose you can give me an explanation.'

Mario looked him in the eye without understanding.

‘Of what?' he asked.

Scanlan stared back for a moment, blinked again,
sighed. Then he opened a drawer in his desk, took out a piece of paper and handed it to Mario. He read it: the students from the first and second sections of phonology informed the head of the department that the professor in charge of the courses had not shown up for any of the lectures since term began.

‘What do you want me to say?' said Mario, handing the paper back to Scanlan and feeling a slight tingle of satisfaction in his stomach. ‘Ask Berkowickz.'

‘Who?' asked Scanlan, wrinkling his brow slightly.

‘Berkowickz,' Mario repeated. ‘He's in charge of those two sections.'

‘Have you gone crazy, or what?' bellowed Scanlan, beside himself, standing up and pounding on the desk. ‘Who the hell is Berkowickz, might I ask?'

Confused, not knowing what to answer, almost asking, Mario declared, ‘The new phonology professor.'

Scanlan stared at him incredulously.

‘Look, Mario,' he said at last, containing the rage that was making his hands tremble, ‘I assure you that I can understand your attempts to shift the responsibility to someone else: it's petty, but I can understand it. What I can't get through my head is you taking me for an idiot. You really think I am, or what?' He paused, took a deep breath, pointed at the door with an admonishing finger and added, ‘And now listen closely: if you don't get out of my office this instant and go and teach those two classes, or if I receive one single further complaint about you, I swear I'll tear up your contract right here and now and
throw you out on the street. I hope I've made myself clear.'

Mario stood up and left the office. Scanlan stood staring at the door, visibly shaken. Then he sat down, stroked his beard gently, looked at the papers he had on his desk, signed a few of them. After a few minutes he raised his eyes and blinked. ‘Berkowickz,' he murmured, staring off into space, abstracted. ‘Berkowickz.'

Mario walked quickly down the corridor, without saying hello to anybody. He got to the office; with trembling hands he took out a bunch of keys, chose one, tried to open the door but couldn't. He tried to stay calm; he looked for the key engraved with the number 4024, which corresponded to the number of the office, in vain: the key did not appear. He immediately noticed the door opening from within. Olalde's hunchbacked silhouette stood out against the insufficient light of the office; he smiled with a grimace that ploughed his forehead with lines and allowed a glimpse of his nicotine-stained teeth.

‘This time you were lucky, young man,' he said, still sneering. ‘But watch out: next time you might not be.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' Mario said hastily, without thinking what he was saying, almost in fear.

‘You know perfectly well what I'm talking about,' said Olalde. ‘But that's your problem: you're old enough to know what suits you. At least you'll have realized that
sometimes life gets complicated by the silliest little things.'

Mario didn't say anything; he walked back up the corridor. When he passed in front of Berkowickz's office he stopped, scanned the corridor left and right, examined the bunch of keys, found the one engraved with the number 4043. He opened the door: he recognized the open books squashed on the desk and the shelves, the portable fridge, the cardboard boxes crammed with papers, the dirty ashtrays, the general disorder and closed-up smell; he understood that all his things were there.

He gave three lectures.

When he got home he dialled a telephone number.

‘Mrs Workman?'

‘Yes.'

‘This is Mario Rota,' said Mario. ‘I'm calling about a delicate situation.'

‘Tell me.'

‘It's about the new tenant.'

‘The new tenant,' Mrs Workman repeated with a tired voice.

‘Mr Berkowickz, I mean.'

‘Mr Who?'

‘Berkowickz,' repeated Mario. ‘Daniel Berkowickz. The linguistics professor, my colleague, the tenant who moved into Nancy's old apartment.'

There was a silence.

‘I'm going to be frank with you, Mr Rota. I hope you
won't take it the wrong way,' Mrs Workman said at last. ‘You know better than anyone that when Nancy spoke to me about your . . . eccentricities, shall we call them, I chose to be tolerant. She acted like a good tenant should, and I'm not going to consent to you bothering her, not her or any of the rest of the tenants, as you certainly did me the other day calling me at an unreasonable hour, probably drunk.'

‘Mrs Workman –'

‘Don't interrupt me,' Mrs Workman interrupted him. ‘You were lucky I was half asleep and don't really remember what you said. Or I probably don't want to remember. Anyway, let me tell you something: I accept that you and Nancy don't get along, you've had problems, but although I don't blame you entirely, Nancy has been a tenant here longer than any other and has more right than you to stay here; furthermore, she's never given me any reason to worry. I'd rather my tenants got along, but I assure you if I have one single further complaint about you or you start behaving strangely again I won't have the slightest reservation about throwing you out.'

‘But Mrs Workman,' Mario complained weakly. ‘It was you yourself who introduced me to Mr Berkowickz and –'

‘Look, Mr Rota,' said Mrs Workman in a final-sounding tone of voice. ‘Stop talking nonsense. I don't know who Mr Berkowickz is, nor do I care. I don't want to discuss the matter further; it's all been said. But I repeat
for the last time: I hope I don't have another complaint about you. And my advice to you is to give up drinking.'

Mrs Workman hung up. She went to the bathroom, washed her face and hands, looked in the mirror, put a bit of colour on her cheeks and lips, brushed her hair, then she dabbed a bit of perfume behind each earlobe. She returned to the room and picked up a beige handbag and a linen jacket that she put on in the kitchen as she took a last look around the house.

She drove out of the garage and took Ellis Avenue up to Green. At the intersection she stopped at the traffic lights. Then, as she waited abstractedly for the lights to change, she murmured, ‘Berkowickz.'

Sitting on the sofa in the dining room, Mario lit a cigarette; he inhaled the smoke contentedly. Then he dialled a telephone number.

‘Ginger?' he said when a feminine voice answered. ‘It's Mario.'

‘How are you, Mario?' said Brenda. ‘Ginger hasn't come home yet. Do you want me to give her a message?'

Mario hesitated, then he said, ‘Tell her I called and that . . .'

‘Oh, you're in luck,' said Brenda. ‘Ginger's just coming in. I'll put her on, Mario. See you.'

Mario heard an indistinct murmur down the line.

‘Mario?' said Ginger a moment later. ‘How are you?'

‘Fine,' said Mario. ‘I was just wondering if you were doing anything this evening.'

‘Nothing special,' said Ginger. ‘Why?'

‘I don't know,' said Mario. ‘I thought you might like to come over here for a bite to eat.'

‘Sounds like a great idea,' said Ginger. ‘What time do you want me to come over?'

‘Whenever suits you,' said Mario. ‘Right now, if you want.'

‘I'll be right over,' said Ginger. And hung up.

Mario took a last puff of his cigarette and put it out in the ashtray. He looked at all the books and papers in a disorderly pile on the arm of the sofa; he thought about sorting them out, taking them through to the study to fill the time till Ginger arrived.

Then he got an idea. He stood up and stealthily opened the apartment door; he crossed the landing. Pressing his ear to the door opposite, he held his breath, listened in silence.

‘I've had it up to here with you, you Italian pig!' he heard thundering behind his back. ‘Up to here!'

Weighed down with shopping, Nancy dragged the mass of her body up the stairs laboriously. Mario held out his hands, apologized clumsily while retreating into his apartment, then offered to help Nancy with her bags.

‘You little turd,' answered Nancy, dropping her packages on the floor. She breathed heavily as she hunted around in a pocket of her very ample dress that in vain sought to sow confusion with respect to the true dimensions of what it hid. She took out a bunch of keys, adding, ‘That's far enough, you Italian swine. I'm phoning the old lady right now.'

‘No, Nancy, please,' begged Mario, stepping towards her, his arms outstretched in an almost imploring manner. ‘Not Mrs Workman.'

Nancy had opened the door. She turned to confront
Mario: he noticed the drops of sweat pearling on the woman's brow.

‘But what the fuck were you doing there?'

‘The new tenant,' Mario mumbled. ‘I just wanted to see if Berkowickz . . . was . . . um.'

Mario smiled without finishing his sentence. Nancy regarded him with resignation, almost with pity.

‘You're not just a pig,' she diagnosed, shaking her head gently from left to right. ‘You're also going crazy.'

Nancy slammed the door. Mario returned to his apartment, closing the door softly.

After a short time Ginger arrived. She was wearing a blue sweater with red buttons, a black miniskirt and slightly worn black shoes; her eyes shone. Mario thought: She looks lovely. They sat down on the sofa in the dining room. Mario offered a whisky. Ginger accepted. Mario poured whisky over ice in two glasses in the kitchen and went back into the dining room.

They talked animatedly, laughing and drinking.

‘I'm pleased,' said Ginger at one point, after a silence, looking at Mario with serious, blue, love-struck eyes.

‘What about?' asked Mario, sipping his whisky.

‘I don't know,' said Ginger. She smiled weakly. She added, ‘You've been so strange this week.'

‘I can imagine,' said Mario.

There was a silence.

‘I thought we were through,' declared Ginger after a while.

‘Me too,' said Mario.

He set his glass of whisky down on the floor, he moved closer to her, put his arm around her neck, stroked the nape of her neck and her hair, kissed her softly on the lips. Lengthening the kiss they slid over to rest against the right arm of the sofa, and laughed as they heard the books and papers heaped there fall on to the floor: an Italian–German dictionary, outlines for lectures, notes, a phonology manual and a photocopied article entitled ‘The Syllable in Phonological Theory, with Special Reference to the Italian', by Daniel Berkowickz.

 

Il y a une locution latine qui dit à peu près: ‘Ramasser un dénier dans l'ordure avec ses dents'. On appliquait cette figure de rhétorique aux avares, je suis comme eux, je ne m'arrête à rien pour trouver de l'or.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Álvaro took his work seriously. Every day he got up punctually at eight. He cleared his head with a cold shower and went down to the supermarket to buy bread and the newspaper. When he returned he made coffee and toast with butter and marmalade and ate breakfast in the kitchen, leafing through the paper and listening to the radio. By nine he was sitting in his study ready to begin the day's work.

He'd made his life subordinate to literature: all friendships, interests, ambitions, possibilities for professional or economic advancement, days or evenings out had been displaced in its interest. He disdained anything he didn't consider an impetus to his work. And, since the majority of well-paid jobs he could have had with his law degree demanded almost exclusive dedication, Álvaro preferred a modest position as consultant in a modest legal agency. This job allowed him to have the whole morning at his disposal to devote to his labours and freed him from any responsibility that might distract him from writing; it also gave him indispensable economic peace of mind.