The Tenant and The Motive (17 page)

But that no longer mattered. Sooner or later the police would end up accusing him of the crime; that was just a question of time. What was urgent now was to finish the novel before they interrogated and arrested him. How much time did he have left?

He looked back down at the little square. A child was playing on the swings under the clear midday light. As he turned, Álvaro thought he recognized the Casareses' younger son. He thought he was staring at him.

The next day he re-read everything he'd written up till then. He deemed that first draft to be riddled with errors in the choice of tone, point of view, the vision offered of the characters; indeed, the plot itself was faulty. But he said to himself that, if he was able to recognize his errors, perhaps not all of his work had been in vain: identifying them was already, in a way, to have rectified them. He revised the accumulated material and found it was vast and could be of great use. For that reason, despite the fact that it would be necessary to rewrite the novel from the beginning, not only could he use a large proportion of his notes and observations, but even whole pages from the original version. Certain fragments (for example the theoretical introduction) now sounded so pedantic that he'd barely need to retouch them, because a new context would endow them with a farcical air; the insufferable presumptuous tone that emanated from other passages should also be preserved, as a retrospective comic attraction. Finally, he understood that out of the material he'd written for the novel he would be able to construct its parody and refutation.

Then he began to write:

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.

Javier Cercas was born in 1962. He is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist, whose books include
El vientre de la ballena
(The Belly of the Whale, 1997) and
Relatos reales
(True Tales, 2000). In the 1980s he taught for two years at the University of Illinois, and since 1989 has been a lecturer in Spanish Literature at the University of Gerona. He writes a regular column for
El Pais.
His novel
Soldiers of Salamis
2001) was published to acclaim in Spain, has been made into a film by David Trueba, has been published in twenty languages so far and sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide. It was translated into English by Anne McLean and published by Bloomsbury in 2003. Author and translator were awarded the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2004 for
Soldiers of Salamis.

Anne McLean has translated Latin American and Spanish novels, short stories, memoirs and other writings by authors including Carmen Martín Gaite, Ignacio Padilla and Orlando González Esteva. She is currently working on books by Tomás Eloy Martínez and Julio Cortázar. She was awarded the Premio Valle Inclan for Literary Translation 2004 for her translation of
Soldiers of Salamis.

Soldiers of Salamis

First published in Great Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2005
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

The Tenant (El inquilino)
copyright © 1989 by Javier Cercas
Copyright © 2000 by Acantilado (Quaderns Crema S.A.)
The Motive (El móvil)
copyright © 1987 by Javier Cercas
Copyright © 2003 by Tusquets Editores, Barcelona
English Translation copyright © 2005 by Anne McLean

The moral right of the author and translator has been asserted

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3DP

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781408834732

www.bloomsbury.com/javiercercas

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