by Roland Topor
In addition to the puzzle of the disappearing trash, there was another mystery in the building that fascinated Trelkovsky. It concerned the toilets. From his window—as the concierge had told him that first day—he could see everything that took place in the little room across the courtyard. At first, he had struggled valiantly against the temptation to watch, but the mere fact that the observation post was there had eventually broken down his resistance. After that, he fell into the habit of sitting before the window for hours on end, with all of the lights in the apartment turned out, so that he might see without being seen.
He became an ardent spectator at the continuing parade of his neighbors. He saw them all, men and women, lower their trousers or lift their skirts, totally unself-consciously, squat down, and then, after the inevitable gestures of necessary hygiene, button or zip up their clothing and pull the flush chain. He was too far away to hear the resultant rushing of water.
All of this was normal. What was not normal was the strange behavior of some of the people who entered the room. They did not squat down, almost out of his sight, they did not adjust their clothing in any way; they did nothing at all. Trelkovsky would watch them closely, for several minutes at a stretch sometimes, and could never discern the slightest trace of movement. It was both absurd and disturbing. Even to have seen them indulge in some obscene or indecent activity would have been a source of relief to him. But no, there was nothing.
They would simply remain standing, absolutely motionless, for a period of time that varied from one occasion to the next, and then, as if they were obeying some invisible signal, they would pull the chain and leave. There were women as well as men, but Trelkovsky was never able to make out their features. What reasons could they possibly have for behaving like this? The need for a period of solitude? Vice? An obligation to conform to some peculiar ritual, if by chance they all belonged to a sect of which he knew nothing? How could he find out?
He bought a secondhand pair of opera glasses, but they taught him nothing. The individuals whose conduct intrigued him so were really doing nothing at all, and their faces were unknown to him. Moreover, they were never the same, and he never saw any one of them a second time.
Once, when one of these individuals was engaged in his incomprehensible task, Trelkovsky resolved to set his mind at rest once and for all, and raced across to the toilet. He arrived too late; there was no one there. He sniffed the air, but there was no odor, and the toilet seat showed no sign of having been used.
Several times after that he tried to take one of these mysterious visitors by surprise, but he always arrived after they had left. One night, he thought he had at last succeeded. The door would not open; it was held fast by the little steel bolt which guaranteed the occupant’s privacy. Trelkovsky waited patiently, determined not to leave before he had learned who that occupant was.
He did not have to wait very long. Monsieur Zy came out, nonchalantly buttoning his trousers. Trelkovsky smiled at him amiably, but Monsieur Zy ignored him completely. He walked off with his head held high, every inch a man who has no reason to be ashamed of his actions.
What was Monsieur Zy doing here? He must certainly have a toilet in his own apartment. Why, then, didn’t he use that?
Trelkovsky gave up trying to solve these mysteries. But he went on studying them and forming conclusions which never completely satisfied him.
6
The Robbery
Someone had knocked again. This time it came from the apartment above. And he had not caused any great amount of noise. This is what had happened.
On that particular night, Trelkovsky had gone directly home from the office. He was not hungry, and since he was also a little short of money, he had decided to spend the evening getting his few belongings in order. Although he had been in the apartment for two months now, he had never unpacked anything beyond his daily necessities. As soon as he arrived, therefore, he opened the two suitcases, but then he forgot about them and began examining his surroundings with a critical eye. The eye of an engineer about to embark on some vast project of reclamation.
Since it was still early, he decided to move the big armoire from the wall against which it stood, but he was extremely careful to make as little noise as possible. He had never before attempted anything like this in the apartment. Until tonight, the arrangement of the furniture had seemed to him as unchangeable as the walls themselves. He had, of course, moved the bed out into the front room on the unhappy night of the housewarming, but a bed wasn’t really a piece of furniture.
Behind the armoire, he made a strange discovery. Beneath the fleecy layers of dust that covered the wall, there was a hole. Just a small excavation, really, about three feet above the floor, but he could see that a little grayish ball of cotton wool had been stuffed into it. Intrigued by this new mystery, he went to get a pencil, and used this to pry out the wad of cotton. There was something else behind it. He was forced to prod about for a minute or two with the pencil before the object finally rolled out into the palm of his left hand. It was a tooth. An incisor tooth, to be exact.
Why was he so suddenly overwhelmed by emotion when he remembered the yawning cavity of Simone Choule’s mouth as she lay on her bed in the hospital? He could still see, with startling clarity, the empty space where an upper incisor should have been, a breach in the rampart of teeth, through which death had entered. Staring down at the tooth, and rolling it mechanically back and forth in his palm, he tried to imagine why Simone Choule would have put it in a hole in the wall. He vaguely remembered some childhood legend in which a tooth hidden in this manner was mysteriously replaced by a gift for the child. Was it possible that the former tenant had still believed in such childish fantasies? Or had she just been unwilling—and Trelkovsky could have understood this perfectly—to part with something that was, after all, a part of herself? Trelkovsky recalled having read about a man who had lost an arm in an automobile accident and wanted to bury it in a cemetery. The authorities had refused permission and the arm had been incinerated, but the newspaper had not reported what happened after that. Had they also refused to return the ashes of his arm to him? And if so, by what right?
Naturally, a tooth or an arm was no longer part of a person, once it had been removed. But it was not really as simple as all that.
“At what precise moment,” Trelkovsky asked himself, “does an individual cease to be the person he—and everyone else—believes himself to be? Let’s say I have to have an arm amputated. I say: myself and my arm. If both of them are gone, I say: myself and my two arms. If it were my legs it would be the same thing: myself and my legs. If they had to take out my stomach, my liver, my kidneys—if that were possible—I could still say: myself and my organs. But if they cut off my head, what could I say then? Myself and my body, or myself and my head? By what right does the head, which isn’t even a member like an arm or a leg, claim the title of ‘myself’? Because it contains the brain? But there are larva and worms, and probably all sorts of other things, that don’t possess a brain. What about creatures like those? Are there brains that exist somewhere, and say: myself and my worms?”
Trelkovsky had been on the point of throwing the tooth away, but at the last minute he changed his mind. In the end, he just changed the ball of cotton wool for a new and cleaner one, and replaced it in the hole.
But now his curiosity had been aroused. He began exploring the room inch by inch, and he was soon rewarded. Underneath a small commode he found a package of letters and a pile of books, all of it black with dust. He found a rag and gave them a preliminary cleaning. The books were all historical novels, and the letters seemed of no importance, but Trelkovsky promised himself that he would read them later. In the meantime, he wrapped the whole bundle in yesterday’s newspaper and climbed up on a chair to put them out of sight on the top of the armoire. It was then that the catastrophe occurred. The package slipped out of his hands and fell noisily to the floor.
The reaction of the neighbors was almos
t instantaneous. He had not yet stepped down from the chair when there was a series of furious thumpings on the ceiling. Was it already after ten o’clock at night? He looked at his watch: it was ten minutes after ten.
He threw himself down on the bed, literally consumed with rage, determined not to make a move for the rest of the night and thereby deprive them of the pleasure of any new pretext for intervention.
Someone knocked at the door.
It was the neighbors!
Trelkovsky cursed the panic that swept over him like a wave. He could hear the sound of his own heart, echoing the knocking at the door. He would have to do something. He stifled the flood of curses that rose unbidden in his mouth.
So he was going to have to justify himself again, to explain everything he did, to ask forgiveness for the mere fact that he was alive! He was going to have to be sufficiently weak-willed to rid himself of his hatred and remain indifferent to anything that was said. He was going to have to say something like: look at me, I’m not worthy of your anger, I’m nothing but a dumb animal who can’t prevent the noisy symptoms of his decay, so don’t waste your time with me, don’t dirty your hands by hitting me, just try to put up with the fact that I exist. I’m not asking you to like me, I know that that’s impossible, because I’m not likable, but at least do me the kindness of despising me enough to ignore me.
Whoever it was at the door knocked again, and he went to open it.
He saw at once that it was not one of the neighbors. He wasn’t arrogant enough, not sure enough of his own rights, there was too clear a light of uncertainty in his eyes. The sight of Trelkovsky seemed to surprise him.
“Isn’t this Mademoiselle Choule’s apartment?” he stammered.
Trelkovsky nodded vaguely. “Yes—that is, it used to be. I’m the new tenant.”
“Oh. She’s moved then?”
Trelkovsky didn’t know what to say. Obviously the man knew nothing of Simone Choule’s death. But what were his ties of friendship with her? Just friendship, or perhaps love? Could he just come right out and tell him about her suicide?
“Come in,” he said at last. “I didn’t mean to keep you standing out there like that.”
The stranger murmured thanks, in a kind of confused jumble. He was clearly very upset.
“Nothing has happened to her, I hope,” he said hesitantly.
Trelkovsky was almost equally distressed. What if he should start screaming, or something like that? The neighbors would never miss an opportunity like that. He coughed, trying to clear his throat.
“Please sit down, monsieur . . .”
“Badar, Georges Badar.”
“I’m delighted to meet you, Monsieur Badar. My name is Trelkovsky. I’m afraid there has been an unfortunate . . .”
“My God, Simone!”
He had almost been shouting. “They say the greatest sorrows are silent,” Trelkovsky thought. “I only hope it’s true!”
“Did you know her well?” he asked.
The man leaped to his feet. “Did you say, did I know her? Is she—is she dead then?”
“She committed suicide,” Trelkovsky murmured, “a little over two months ago.”
“Simone . . . Simone . . .”
He was speaking very softly now. The thin line of his mustache was trembling, his lips clenched together convulsively, his Adam’s apple slid up and down behind the starched collar of his shirt.
“She threw herself out of the window,” Trelkovsky said. “If you would like to see . . .” Almost unconsciously, he was repeating the words of the concierge. “She hit a glass roof over the courtyard, on the first floor. She didn’t die right away.”
“But why? Why would she have done that?”
“No one seems to know. Do you know her friend Stella?” Badar shook his head. “She doesn’t know either, and she was her closest friend. It’s a terrible thing. Would you like a drink?”
He realized as soon as he had said it that there was nothing to drink in the apartment.
“Let’s go down to the café,” he suggested, “and I’ll buy you a drink. It will do you good.”
Two things had induced Trelkovsky to make this proposal, in spite of his impoverished condition. The first was the really disturbing state of mind of the young man, and his frightening pallor. The other was fear of an outburst that would attract the wrath of the neighbors.
In the café, he learned from Badar that he had been a childhood friend of Simone’s, that he had always loved her secretly, and that he had just returned from his military service and decided to confess his love and ask her to marry him. Badar was a dull young man, and almost inconceivably trite. His distress was clearly sincere, but it was expressed in phrases he had borrowed from cheap novels. To his mind, the ready-made formulas he used doubtless constituted a more important tribute to the deceased than anything he might have thought of himself. He was curiously touching in his ignorance. After the second cognac, he began to talk of suicide.
“I want to be with the woman I love,” he stammered, with tears in his voice. “Life isn’t worth living any more.”
“You mustn’t think that way,” Trelkovsky said, adopting Badar’s cliché-ridden form of speech. “You’re young; you’ll forget . . .”
“Never,” Badar answered, staring into his glass as though it contained a lethal dose of poison.
“There are lots of other women in the world,” Trelkovsky announced. “They may not take her place, but at least they can help to fill the void in your heart. You should go away, do anything at all, but force yourself to keep busy, to meet other people. You’ll see—you’ll be all right then.”
“Never!” Badar repeated, and swallowed the last of his cognac.
After this café they went to another, and then to still another. The man was desperate, and Trelkovsky did not dare leave him alone. So they wandered from one bar to the next all night long, while Trelkovsky supplied the proper dogmatic responses to the long litany of Badar’s despair. And finally, as the sun was coming up, he secured a postponement of the projected suicide. Badar reluctantly agreed to go on living for at least another month before making any final decision.
As he walked back home alone, Trelkovsky began to sing. He was exhausted, and slightly drunk, but in excellent humor. The almost ritual phrasing of the conversation had delighted him. It had all been so deliciously artificial! It was only reality that found him unprepared and defenseless.
The doors to the café across the street from his apartment were just being opened when he arrived. Trelkovsky went in to have some breakfast.
“Do you live across the street?” the waiter asked him.
Trelkovsky nodded. “But I haven’t been there very long.”
“You’re in the apartment of the girl who committed suicide?”
“Yes. Did you know her?”
“I sure did. She came in here every morning. I never even waited for her to order—I just brought her her chocolate and dry toast. She didn’t drink coffee, because it made her too nervous. She told me once that if she drank coffee in the morning she couldn’t sleep for two days.”
“That’s true,” Trelkovsky agreed. “It does make you nervous. But I’m too used to it now; I couldn’t get along without my morning coffee.”
“You can say that because there’s nothing wrong with you now,” the waiter said smugly, “but the day something happens and you get sick, you’ll drop drinking it.”
“Perhaps,” Trelkovsky said.
“No doubt about it. Of course there are some people who can’t drink chocolate, on account of their liver, but she wasn’t one of those. There can’t have been anything wrong with her in that way.”
“No, I guess not,” Trelkovsky said.
“It’s too bad, though. A woman like that, who’s still young, and kills herself, and nobody knows why. And probably for nothing at all. A fit of depression, the feeling you’ve had it and—hop!—you give up. Shall I bring you a chocolate?”
Trelkovsky di
d not answer. He was thinking about the former tenant again. He drank the chocolate without realizing that it wasn’t coffee, paid his check and left. When he reached the third floor landing he noticed that the door to his apartment was standing slightly open. His eyebrows came together in a puzzled frown.
“That’s odd,” he thought. “I was certain I closed it.”
He pushed the door open and went inside. The grayish light of early morning filtered wanly through the curtains at the solitary window.
He was not worried, but greatly surprised. He thought of the neighbors first, then of Monsieur Zy, and then of Simon and Scope. Was it possible that they had actually carried out one of their idiotic plans? He pulled back the curtains and surveyed the room around him. The door to the armoire was wide open, and its contents were strewed across the bed. Someone had searched through everything he owned.
The first thing he knew to be missing was the radio. And shortly after that he realized that his two suitcases were gone.
He no longer had a past.
Not that there was anything very valuable in the suitcases—just an inexpensive camera, a pair of shoes, and some books. But there were also some snapshots of himself as a child, as well as some of his parents and the girls he had loved when he was still an adolescent, a few letters, a collection of souvenirs of the farthest reaches of his memory. Tears flooded his eyes when he thought of them.