The Tenant and The Motive (4 page)

Joyce was the secretary to the head of the department. A mature woman, with hair so blonde it looked bleached,
eyes without brows, she was at least six foot two and easily weighed over 250 pounds: all this combined to give her a notorious cetacean air. The childish clothing she tended to wear (flowery dresses with flounces, silk ribbons in her hair and around her waist, flared or pleated skirts, kilts) and her innocent ponytails, as well as her habit of swaying down the corridors of the department like a subway car, humming charming popular children's songs, contrasted starkly with her age and the boundless dimensions of her body. She was a widow and had but one passion: her daughter Winnie, the ups and downs of whose life each and every member of the department could expect to be punctually and personally informed of. At the end of the previous year, however, she made an exception: the day that Winnie received her acceptance from the University of Iowa, Joyce stood in front of the elevator door, on the fourth floor, shouting the news in a tone sounding vaguely like a radio announcer. Later, when the university police – alerted by someone who'd told them a fundamentalist preacher was causing trouble in the building – came to arrest her, Scanlan had to intervene to clear up the misunderstanding.

‘Excuse me for interrupting, Joyce,' Mario cut expeditiously into the secretary's discourse. Then, with the impression that he was about to formulate a question that would remain unanswered, he added, ‘I'm in a bit of a hurry. Could you be so kind as to explain what Professor Berkowickz is doing in my office?'

Joyce seemed disappointed: her eyes dulled. She
sounded almost irritated. ‘Oh that,' she said, turning away to sit down behind her desk. ‘Professor Scanlan wants to talk to you. He'll probably explain it. I just follow orders,' she concluded while smiling in a way Mario thought either stupid or worrying.

He knocked on Scanlan's office door.

‘Come in,' he heard.

He opened the door. Scanlan stood up and came over to shake his hand. He asked about the state of his ankle and how the accident had happened. Then he asked him to sit down in one of the leather chairs facing his desk and said, ‘Just let me finish signing these papers and then we'll talk.'

Scanlan had been running the department with a firm hand for several years, combining demonstrable administrative capability with academic prestige cleverly carved out over the years not so much with intellectual tools as with political ones. He was getting on in years, a tall man, exaggeratedly slim, with complex, polite, almost cloying gestures. His hair, white and plastered down at the base of his skull and at his temples, lengthened, greying into a pointed goatee beard. Like fish swimming in a fishbowl, his eyes worried the lenses of his glasses. He dressed immaculately with a calculated touch of extravagance.

‘Joyce told me you wanted to speak to me,' Mario said when Scanlan set aside the papers he'd been signing.

‘Well, there's no rush,' said Scanlan, smiling with all his teeth. ‘Really, it's not so important. We can talk about it some other time more calmly.'

‘Whatever it is,' said Mario, ‘I'd rather do it now.'

Scanlan lowered his eyes, shifted in his chair, changed position, pensively straightened the papers he'd just signed and stroked his beard. When he raised his gaze, the fish flashed anxiously behind the lenses of his glasses.

‘You're right, it's better to do it now,' he agreed. His tone of voice had changed. ‘It can't wait till later. Allow me to get straight to the point.'

‘I'd appreciate it,' said Mario.

‘As I believe you know,' Scanlan began in a neutral voice, ‘the department is going through a difficult time economically. Actually it's not just the department: the whole university is over a barrel. The state teaching subsidy has been reduced by five per cent compared to last year and, this past month, we have been obliged to bear a series of expenditures and anticipate others that have put us in the firing line. I'll spare you the details: the circumstances don't differ fundamentally from those I described at the last meeting we held in June; if they have changed, it's for the worse. I don't know if the elections are going to improve the outlook; what I do know is that at this moment it's disheartening. I'm left with no option but to battle with it and, believe me, it's no easy task: the main thing is to protect the general interests of the department, even if this adversely affects one individual. Well.' He paused, ran his right hand over his hair, stroked his beard, went on in the same tone of voice. ‘On the other hand, as you must undoubtedly know as well, we have managed to attract a professor as prestigious as Daniel Berkowickz. I
must admit it wasn't easy. Between you and me, up to the last minute I didn't believe we'd be able to achieve it: the conditions he demanded were virtually prohibitive. Nor will I hide from you that I've spared no effort to secure what I had set out to achieve. As you'll understand, it's barely possible to exaggerate the significance that the presence of someone at the forefront of linguistic investigation and with such an enviable CV might have for the department. But, as well as improving the department's prestige, I am convinced that Berkowickz will be an invaluable stimulus for us all, even those who publish an article every five years in a third-rate journal.'

Since he'd seen the allusion coming, Mario was able to take it without batting an eye. He just pushed his glasses up his nose with one finger, and, as he noticed his right arm beginning to get faint pins and needles, he eased it off the brace of the crutch. When he heard Scanlan's voice again he wondered if he might have stopped listening as he changed position.

‘At last we have him here.'

‘What?'

‘I don't understand.'

‘What do we have here?' asked Mario, glancing over his shoulder.

‘Professor Berkowickz, of course,' Scanlan explained kindly, without apparently registering Mario's momentary lapse. He went on, ‘To do so we had to make him an offer that I wouldn't hesitate to describe as attractive. Once again I'll spare you the superfluous details and
summarize; among other things we've guaranteed him a minimum of three courses per semester. You'll understand that this affects you directly: your situation is going to have to change, but I'm convinced you'll be able to accept the sacrifice for the good of the department.'

‘No, I won't,' Mario heard himself say. ‘Cut it short.'

Scanlan looked annoyed. He explained, ‘At the moment, we're only able to offer you one course per semester. This means your salary will be reduced to a third of what you were earning. You'll also have to keep in mind that taxes have gone up: we'll all be feeling that. On the other hand, we mustn't rule out the possibility that, student numbers permitting, we could at some point (not, of course, this semester) open a new course; naturally, that class would be yours. Moreover you could always apply for one of the research grants the university offers, or even one of the administrative posts from the rector's office, although I fear they're all taken for the time being. And it goes without saying that you can count on the department's support and, if need be, on my own.

Mario didn't listen to the last sentence of Scanlan's speech. He blinked. He tried to put his ideas in order. Affecting a false self-assurance, he began, ‘Look, Scanlan, in my contract it states that the department –'

‘Mario,' Scanlan gently checked him, ‘don't make things any more difficult. I expect you realize you're in no position to demand anything: if we've been able to offer you three courses up till now it's because we had them. Things have changed now. As for your contract,
don't force me to tell you it's not worth the paper it's written on: it was hard enough keeping you here with all the pressure I've been getting. Rest assured you can be thankful not to have found your contract rescinded when you returned from your vacation.'

Mario blinked again. He mumbled something Scanlan didn't hear, or pretended not to hear.

‘I suppose I don't need to tell you either that any legal action would be counterproductive,' added Scanlan. ‘You'd find yourself out of a job before you knew what hit you.'

‘Sons of bitches,' Mario murmured in Italian.

‘What did you say?' asked Scanlan.

Mario erased the comment with a gesture. Scanlan sighed.

‘Anyhow,' he said, ‘it's a matter of tightening your belt for a while. I'm sure that by spring at the latest, if not after the elections, things will change.'

Mario stood up to leave. Perplexed, he noted that he didn't feel resentful: a strange calm overcame him, as if nothing he'd just heard could really affect him, or as if instead of it happening to him he'd been told about it. That's why he wasn't surprised by Scanlan's almost affectionate tone of voice.

‘I hope you'll be coming to the house this afternoon,' he said cheerfully. ‘Joan would like to see you. It's at five.'

‘Of course,' said Mario unthinkingly. ‘I'll be there.'

As he left the office he reflected: I've gone crazy. Scanlan just practically fired me and I'm going to go to his party. And instead of protesting I say nothing. I've gone crazy.

‘Professor Rota,' warbled Joyce at his back. ‘Let me show you your new office.'

Mario walked down the hall beside the secretary, whose voluminous body oscillated dangerously over the high heels of a pair of summer shoes, with tiny buckles. Joyce talked about a possible boyfriend for Winnie. They crossed paths with two graduate students who looked at Mario's bandaged ankle and the crutch that supported his vacillating steps. They said hello; he returned their greetings. As they passed the office that until recently had been Mario's, Joyce pointed, like someone finding a piece of information that confirmed a new hypothesis, at the pile of objects mounting up in the hallway: a portable fridge, books, cardboard boxes brimming with papers, dirty ashtrays. Mario said to himself that Berkowickz had found someone to help him with the clean-up. He also noticed that the office door was slightly open and caught a snippet of conversation, which he didn't understand.

His new office was at the end of the hall, among the
grad students' offices. The door had a metal plaque with a number – 4024 – and two names: Olalde, Hyun. Humming through her teeth, Joyce wrestled with the lock; finally she opened the door.

‘Good morning, Professor Olalde,' the secretary sang out. ‘I've brought you a new office-mate.'

Mario thought Joyce was making fun of him, but didn't say anything. At the far end of the office Olalde looked up suspiciously from the heap of papers he had in front of him, arched his eyebrows, emitted a grunt and lowered his gaze again.

Olalde was Spanish, overweight, almost completely bald and rather ungainly. He leaned to the right when he walked, with one shoulder higher than the other, and never smiled, but when he opened his mouth he revealed a double row of uneven, ochre-coloured, quite deteriorated teeth. He was a bachelor, and some attributed this fact to his notorious lack of attention to personal hygiene. But the most striking feature of his physical appearance was the black patch held in place by a band that crossed from one side of his virtually bare skull to the other, covering his right eye and making him look like an ex-combatant, an appearance his broken-down frame did nothing to contradict. He taught Spanish literature and, despite his being one of the longest-standing members of the department, Mario knew that his opinion barely counted at decision-making time. Mario also knew he was a sort of scrap the department had decided to keep on for some reason that escaped him.

‘Professor Olalde, as friendly and communicative as ever,' said Joyce, addressing Mario with a voice tinged with animosity. ‘But don't worry, Hyun is a charming young man. And you'll see that, even though it doesn't have air-conditioning, the office is very good. It's just a matter of tidying it up a little. Oh, and before winter sets in we'll get the heating fixed.'

The new office was no smaller than the old one, although Mario was going to have to share it with two colleagues. There were three desks covered in books and papers, with several drawers on each side, three revolving chairs, two metal cupboards, a filing cabinet with a coffee maker on top of it and some shelves built into the walls, where books piled up in perfect disorder. A picture window looking out on to a red-brick wall let in insufficient light. There were damp stains on the ceiling.

Joyce said, ‘I'm going to go get Sue to help us bring your things from the other office, Professor Rota. I'll be right back.'

As soon as the secretary had left, Olalde raised his gaze from his papers and looked at Mario with his one eye. Then, as Mario took a seat, he stood up, as far as his stoop would allow, and lumbered towards him.

‘Don't worry, young man,' he said in a laboured and complicit English, as if he were confiding a secret. ‘That's the way things work around here. What are you going to do?'

Since he thought Olalde wanted to console him, Mario replied drily, ‘I'm not worried.' Then he thought and
didn't say: But I should be. He asked, ‘What makes you think I am?'

‘Don't worry,' Olalde repeated, ignoring Mario's question. He went on without sarcasm, ‘Deep down this is paradise. You only have to look around: everything's clean, everyone's friendly, everything works – except this office, you understand. I suppose at first it was an accident, but later, when I saw that nothing worked here (pay no attention to whatever they might say, we'll spend the winter without heating and no one will fix the broken pipes that soak the walls), once I realized that, it was me who requested staying here.'

With a mixture of pity and scorn, Mario thought: He's crazy.

‘And tell me,' Olalde enquired, ‘why have they sent you here?'