The Tenant

by Roland Topor

  Trelkovsky stammered thanks, and then said, “When will I be able to move into the apartment?”

  “Right away, if you want to—on condition that you give me an advance on the fee. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but after all, I don’t know you, do I? In my business, if I were to trust everyone who came along I wouldn’t get very far. Put yourself in my place.”

  “But it’s perfectly natural!” Trelkovsky protested. “I’ll bring some of my things tomorrow.”

  “As you like. You can see that no one has any trouble getting along with me, so long as he behaves properly and pays the rent regularly.” The landlord paused briefly, and then added, as if he was imparting a confidence, “It’s not a bad thing you’ve got here, you know. The family has informed me that they don’t intend to send for the furniture, so it will all be yours. That’s something you certainly didn’t expect. The whole amount of my fee wouldn’t have paid for that.”

  “Oh,” Trelkovsky shrugged, “a few chairs, a table, a bed and a chest of drawers . . .”

  “You think so? Well just go out and buy them and come back and tell me what you found. No—believe me, you’ve got a good thing here. And you know it very well!”

  “I’m very grateful to you, Monsieur Zy,” Trelkovsky murmured humbly.

  “Oh, gratitude!” Monsieur Zy laughed loudly again, and pushed Trelkovsky back onto the landing, closing the door in his face.

  “Good-by, Monsieur Zy,” Trelkovsky shouted, but there was no reply. He waited a moment or two longer, and then slowly walked down the stairs.

  When he returned to his old studio room, a vast weariness overcame him. He stretched out on the bed, without even taking off his shoes, and remained there for a long time, with his eyes half closed, just looking around him.

  He had lived so many years in this room that he still could not quite grasp the idea that now it was finished. He would never again see this place which had been the very center of his life. Others would come into it, destroy the order of things that existed now, transform these four walls into something he would not even recognize, and kill off forever any lingering assumption that a certain Monsieur Trelkovsky had lived here before. Unceremoniously, from one day to the next, he would have vanished.

  Even now he no longer felt really at home in this room. The uncertainty of his situation had intruded on his last days here. It was like the final minutes spent in a compartment on a train, when you knew that you would arrive in the station at any moment. He had given up such concerns as cleaning and dusting, filing his papers, or even making his bed. The result had not been a state of wild disorder—his possessions were too few to cause that—but an atmosphere of vacancy, of a suddenly canceled departure.

  Trelkovsky slept uninterruptedly until early morning. He set to work then, gathering together all of his personal belongings, which he had no trouble packing into his two suitcases. He handed the key to the concierge, and took a taxi to his new address.

  He spent the rest of the morning withdrawing his money from the savings bank and concluding the necessary formalities with the landlord.

  At noon, he turned the key in the lock of the apartment for the first time. He set the two suitcases just inside the door, but did not go in. He went down the stairs again, and out to a restaurant, because he had eaten nothing since luncheon of the day before.

  After lunch, he telephoned his department head to say that he would be back at work the next day.

  The period of transition had ended.

  4

  The Neighbors

  Toward the middle of October, after repeated exhortations from his friends—notably Scope, the lawyer’s clerk, and Simon, the household appliance salesman—Trelkovsky organized a small party, as a sort of housewarming. Some of his friends from the office were also invited, and all of the available young girls. The party took place on a Saturday night, so that they could relax and enjoy themselves, without worrying about the morning to come.

  Everyone had brought something to eat or drink, and all of these provisions were scattered across the surface of the table. Trelkovsky had difficulty finding chairs for so many people, but it finally occurred to him to pull the bed up next to the table, and some of the guests then settled down there, to the accompaniment of laughter from the girls and double-edged pleasantries from the men.

  If the truth be told, the apartment had never before been so pleasant, and had never seemed so brightly lit. Trelkovsky was deeply moved at the thought of being the beneficiary of all this. Like the apartment itself, he had never before been the object of so much attention. Everyone was silent when he told a story, they laughed when it was funny, and they even applauded. But above everything else, he heard his name being spoken constantly. Someone would say, “I was with Trelkovsky . . .” or, “The other day, Trelkovsky . . .” or, “Trelkovsky was saying . . .” He was really king for the time.

  Trelkovsky could not take much to drink, but in order to be sure that he would not spoil the pleasure of the others he drank more than they did. The number of empty bottles grew steadily larger, and the girls went right on murmuring encouragement to the drinkers. Someone suggested that the light in the room was too harsh and it would be a good idea to turn it out and light the one in the adjoining room, leaving the door open. After that, everyone collapsed on the bed. Trelkovsky could very easily have fallen asleep in this twilight light, but the proximity of so many females, plus the fact that he was beginning to have a headache, kept him awake.

  A discussion began between Scope and Simon, on the subject of which was best for a holiday—the seashore or the mountains.

  “The mountains, of course,” Simon said, in a voice that was more than a trifle thick. “That’s the most beautiful thing in all the world. The landscapes! The lakes! The forests! And the air is so pure—there’s nothing like it in the city. You can walk for miles if you like, or you can climb. When I’m in the mountains, I get up at five o’clock in the morning, I fix myself a cold meal, and then I go out for the whole day, with my pack on my back. I tell you, just being by yourself up there, thousands of feet in the sky, with a magnificent view spread out at your feet—that’s the most wonderful feeling I know.”

  Scope laughed. “Not for me! Every winter—and every summer, too—you hear stories about people falling off of cliffs, being buried in avalanches, or stalled for days in a cable car.”

  “The same thing is true of the seashore,” Simon answered. “There are always people being drowned. Every time you turned on the radio this summer there was another one.”

  “There’s no connection between the two. People who drown are just idiots who want to show off, and swim out too far.”

  “It’s exactly the same thing in the mountains. They go off alone, without proper preparations, or without training . . .”

  Little by little, everyone began to take part in the argument. Trelkovsky said that he had no particular preference, but it did seem to him that the mountains were healthier than the seashore. Some others echoed his opinion, adding their own modifications, and eventually turning it around completely. Trelkovsky listened absent-mindedly. He was concentrating much more intensely on a girl at the other end of the bed. She was lying back in a half-reclining position, removing her shoes without using her hands at all, pushing against the heel of the right shoe with the toe of the left. When it finally fell to the floor, the nylon-sheathed toes of her right foot attacked the left heel, plucking at it stubbornly until it too fell off. Then the girl turned over on her side, pulled her knees up against her chest, and remained absolutely motionless.

  Trelkovsky tried to make out whether she was pretty, but did not succeed. He did notice, however, that she was moving again. Thrusting her legs out straight, then drawing them back against her chest, almost as though she were swimming, she was gradually drawing closer to him. Too dazed by wine and the ache in his head to make a move, he simply watched her in astonishment.

  Snatches of the conversation around him occa
sionally reached his ears, seeming to come from a great distance.

  “Oh, no, you’re wrong . . . the sea . . . humid . . . more moderate climate.”

  “I beg your pardon . . . oxygen . . . two years ago . . . with some friends . . .”

  “Bulls . . . cows . . . fishing . . . sickness . . . death . . .”

  “Let’s change the subject . . .”

  The girl rested her head on Trelkovsky’s knees and remained there. Almost automatically, he began to amuse himself by rolling strands of her hair around his fingers.

  “Why me?” he thought. “All of a sudden, fortune is smiling at me and instead of taking advantage of it I have a headache. What an idiot I am.”

  Losing patience with him at last, the girl seized Trelkovsky’s hand in a determined grip and placed it firmly over her left breast.

  “What next?” Trelkovsky thought, and decided on the spur of the moment that it would be very clever on his part to make no move at all.

  Confronted with the failure of her efforts, the girl pulled herself up a little further, so that she could rest the back of her head on Trelkovsky’s chest. She then began rubbing her head back and forth, in the hope of exciting him, but when he remained obstinately motionless she started pinching the flesh of his thigh through the cloth of his trousers. With lordly indifference, Trelkovsky simply allowed himself to be enticed, smiling haughtily. What could the poor little fool want? To seduce him? Why him, of all people?

  He started abruptly, and leaped to his feet, pushing the girl’s head away almost angrily. Now he understood. It was his apartment that interested her. He recognized her now. Her name was Lucille. She had come with Albert, who had told him that she was just divorced. The husband had kept the apartment. So that was it—he was being courted for his apartment!

  Trelkovsky burst out laughing. In order to hear each other in the midst of the general hubbub, the defenders of the seashore and the mountains were forced to raise their voices. The girl on the bed began to sob. It was at that moment that someone knocked on the door.

  Instantly sober, Trelkovsky went to open it.

  A man was standing on the landing. He was tall, thin—very thin—and abnormally pale. He was wearing a long, dark-red bathrobe.

  “Monsieur . . . ?” Trelkovsky murmured.

  “You are making a great deal of noise, monsieur,” the man said, in a threatening tone. “It’s after one o’clock in the morning and you are making a great deal of noise.”

  “But, monsieur,” Trelkovsky said, “it’s just a few friends . . . We were talking quietly . . .”

  “Quietly?” The man was indignant, and his voice rose proportionately. “I live up above you and I can hear every word you are saying. You drag chairs around, and you walk up and down, making a dreadful racket with your shoes. It’s insufferable. Do you intend to carry on like this much longer?”

  He was almost shouting now, and Trelkoysky was tempted to tell him that he was the one who was waking up everyone else. But that was doubtless exactly what he would have liked: to attract the attention of the entire building to Trelkovsky’s behavior.

  An old woman, tightly wrapped in a dressing gown, was standing on the staircase that led to the fourth floor, leaning forward in an attempt to observe the scene in the doorway.

  “Look, monsieur,” Trelkovsky said hastily, “I’m terribly sorry if we woke you. I’m very embarrassed. I assure you that we’ll be more careful . . .”

  The man was not to be appeased. “What kind of business is this, waking people up at one o’clock in the morning? What kind of manners is that?”

  “We’ll be careful,” Trelkovsky repeated, raising his own voice a trifle, “but you should . . .”

  “I’ve never seen such a thing! I’ve never heard such a row before! Don’t you give a damn about anyone else? It’s all very well to amuse yourselves, but there are some people who have to work!”

  “Tomorrow is Sunday. I don’t see any reason why I can’t have a few friends, on Saturday night.”

  “Even on Saturday night, monsieur, there is no excuse for such a racket as this!”

  “We’ll be more careful,” Trelkovsky muttered again, and closed the door.

  He could still hear the other man grumbling, and then apparently talking to the old woman, since a feminine voice answered. After two or three minutes, however, silence returned.

  Trelkovsky put a hand against his heart, and found that it was beating at twice its normal speed. A cold sweat beaded his forehead.

  His friends, momentarily silenced by the appearance of the man at the door, began arguing among themselves again. Everyone wanted to voice an opinion of neighbors like that. They told stories of friends who had had to put up with the same sort of problem, and of what they had done about it. Little by little, they arrived at a discussion of the best means to combat such annoyances. Then, from literal methods they passed to imaginary ones, which were vastly more effective. One highly satisfactory solution was to bore a hole in the ceiling and introduce a host of venomous spiders or scorpions into the apartment above. They all laughed boisterously at this.

  Trelkovsky was in agony. Every time they raised their voices, he went “Ssh!”, so violently that they began to make fun of him and laugh and talk even louder, in a deliberate attempt to provoke him. By this time he detested them all to such an extent that he no longer gave the slightest thought to his manners as their host.

  He went to get their coats from the other room, handed them out without caring who got whose, and then almost pushed them out on the landing. By way of revenge, they made as much noise as possible all the way down the steps and never ceased laughing at the fact that he should be so upset. He would have taken great pleasure in pouring boiling oil down the stairwell on their heads. He went back into the apartment and locked the door behind him. As he turned around, he brushed an empty bottle on the table with his elbow. It shattered on the floor with a sound like a gunshot. The consequence was not long in coming—there was a violent pounding from the ceiling beneath. The landlord!

  Trelkovsky was ashamed; so deeply ashamed that he felt as if he were blushing from head to toe. He was ashamed of himself and of everything he had done. He was an odious person. The indescribable din of his revelry had waked up everyone in the building! Could it be that he had no respect for the rights of others? That he was incapable of living in a normal, civilized society? He felt like sitting down and weeping. What could he possibly say in his own defense? And how, for that matter, could he plead his case against the unanswerable testimony of the pounding on his floor? How could he say, “Yes, I’m guilty, I admit that, but there were extenuating circumstances”?

  He didn’t have the strength to attempt putting the apartment back in order. He could picture the neighbors only too clearly, listening and waiting for the slightest pretext to pound on his ceiling or his floor. He took off his shoes right where he stood, and crept silently across the room to turn out the light. Then he felt his way back through the darkness, his fingers exploring the space in front of him to avoid any noisy collision with the furniture, and collapsed on the bed.

  Tomorrow he would have to confront the neighbors. Would he have the courage for it? Simply thinking about it now, he could feel his strength draining away. What could he say if the landlord demanded an explanation?

  He was furious with himself. The stupidity of having organized such a party in his apartment! It was the best means he could have thought of to lose it. He hadn’t enjoyed himself, he had spent a good deal of money, and on top of that he had jeopardized his entire future. He had alienated everyone in the building. A splendid beginning!

  With this whirling through his head, he finally managed to get to sleep.

  The fear of encountering some of his irritated neighbors kept him rooted in the apartment all of Sunday morning. But for that matter, he was far from being consumed with energy. Even the roots of his hair seemed to be sore. He had the feeling that his eyes might drop out of their sock
ets if he so much as glanced around.

  The apartment had an air of almost blasé desolation, offering him a cynical review of the seamy side of the evening. Wreckage littered its every corner, like the sodden objects deposited by the waves on a beach, and left behind when the tide goes out: empty bottles, ashes swimming in the dregs of coffee at the bottom of a cup, bits of a broken plate, limp slices of cold cuts ground into the floor by careless heels, glasses stained with a thick sauce of red wine and butts of cigarettes.

  Trelkovsky did his best to clean things up, but he found himself, at the end, with an overflowing pail of garbage. The thought of taking it down before nightfall terrified him; until then, he would just have to tolerate the stale and nauseating odor, mercilessly reminding him, with every breath he drew, of what he had done.

  He realized at last that he could not do it. Even a battle with the neighbors was preferable to this. He made a valiant effort to whistle as he went down the steps. Certainly no one would dare rebuke him if they were to see him in such a gay and confident mood. Unhappily, however, he arrived on the second floor landing at the precise moment Monsieur Zy opened his door to go out. It was impossible for Trelkovsky to turn back.

  “Good afternoon, Monsieur Zy,” he said hastily. “What a beautiful day!” Then, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, “I’m terribly sorry about last night, Monsieur Zy, I give you my word that nothing of that sort will ever happen again.”

  The landlord glanced at him coldly. “I should hope not. You waked up both my wife and me, and we couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. And all of your neighbors have complained. What was the meaning of all that?”

  “We were celebrating . . .” Trelkovsky hesitated. “. . . my enormous good fortune in having found this splendid apartment. Just a few friends and myself—we thought we could have a kind of—well—a kind of housewarming, without bothering anyone else. Yes, that was it—it was just to be a little housewarming celebration. But you know how things happen—with the best will in the world, and never dreaming of disturbing anyone else, you get to talking, you’re having a good time . . . and then everyone starts talking at once, and before you know it you’re talking louder than you should . . . But I’m terribly sorry about it, and I assure you it will never happen again.”