by Roland Topor
“I would like to know who registered a complaint about me,” he said. “Do you know who it was?”
Her lips came together in a tight line. “If you didn’t make all that noise, people wouldn’t complain about you,” she said. “You’ve got no one to blame but yourself. As for me, I don’t know anything about it.”
“Was there a petition?” Trelkovsky insisted. “Was it that same old woman who came to see me about the other one? Did you sign it?”
The concierge turned away from him, deliberately rudely, as if she could no longer bear the sight of him. “I told you I don’t know anything about it. Now stop asking me questions; I have nothing more to say to you. Good night.”
He would have to act quickly if he wanted to escape the neighbors. The net was rapidly drawing tighter. But it wasn’t a simple matter. He tried to act perfectly normally, just as he had before, but he constantly caught himself in the act of doing things he would never have done before, of thinking in a manner that was not his. Already, he was not entirely Trelkovsky any more. But what was Trelkovsky? How could he learn the answer to that? He had to discover himself, so that he could be sure he would not wander from the right path. But how?
He no longer saw any of his old friends, and he never went to the places he had liked to go before. He had gradually become an indistinct shadow of a man, blotted out by the neighbors. And what they were constructing in the place of his own personality was the ghostly silhouette of Simone Choule.
“I have to find myself again!” he kept telling himself.
What was there that was uniquely his, that made him an individual? What was there that differentiated him from everyone else? What was his label, his point of reference? What was it that made him think; this is me, or, that’s not really me? He sought the answers in vain, and was forced to admit at last that he didn’t know. He tried to remember his childhood. He could recall the punishments he had received and some of the ideas that had come to him, but there was nothing unique or original in all that. The thing that seemed most important, because he remembered it so clearly, was an incident that could hardly be called a beacon light pointing to his identity.
Once, at school, he had asked permission to go to the toilet, and because he was gone so long they had sent a little girl to see what had happened to him. When he came back into the classroom, the schoolteacher had looked at him and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Well, Trelkovsky, we were beginning to think you had fallen in!” His classmates had laughed and jeered. He had been scarlet with shame and embarrassment.
Was something like that enough to define him as a man? He remembered the sense of shame clearly enough, but he was no longer sure he understood the reasons for it.
13
The Old Trelkovsky
Scope and Simon were already seated in their usual places in the restaurant, near the radiator. They greeted Trelkovsky with boisterous shouts, calling to him from across the room.
“Well, look who’s here! Have you decided to pay some attention to your friends at last? Where the devil have you been?”
Trelkovsky was annoyed and hideously self-conscious, but he went over to join them at their table. They had just started on their hors d’oeuvres.
“Have you finally escaped from your neighbors?” they asked, almost in chorus.
He murmured a vague explanation of his absence, and sat down at the far end of the table.
“What are you doing, sitting there?” Scope said. “Don’t you like your regular place any more?”
He had always sat on the banquette, with his back to the wall.
“Oh,” he said, “yes, of course.” He pushed back his chair and moved over to the banquette. He had completely forgotten this little detail.
“I hear you’ve been sick,” Scope was saying. “I bumped into Horn, and he told me you hadn’t been to work for a week.”
Trelkovsky was staring at the menu, so he just nodded automatically and said, yes, that was right. The menu was written out in violet ink, and there were almost always mistakes in spelling in the names of the various offerings, furnishing a ready-made and continuing topic of conversation. The varieties of hors d’oeuvres had not changed since he was last here. There was the traditional potato and herb salad, the homemade pâté, garlic sausage, and the raw vegetables—radishes, carrots, and the like. He felt a tremor of disgust. The old Trelkovsky would invariably have ordered a fillet of herring with some of the potato salad, but he knew that now he would be incapable of swallowing so much as a bite of it. Just this once, he would allow himself to cheat, to wander a little off the path. Scope and Simon were watching him, trying to pretend that they were not. They seemed enormously interested in what he was going to order. The waitress, a strapping Breton girl with a very pink complexion, came over to the table.
“We’ve missed you, Monsieur Trelkovsky,” she said, banteringly. “Don’t you like our food any more?”
He forced himself to smile, answering her in kind. “I was trying to get along without eating, but I’ve given up. It’s too difficult.”
She laughed dutifully, then immediately assumed an air of professional seriousness. “And what can I bring you, Monsieur Trelkovsky?”
Scope and Simon were literally hanging on his words. He swallowed desperately and blurted out, without a pause, “Some of the assorted raw vegetables, a steak with steamed potatoes, and a yoghurt.”
He didn’t dare look at the others, but he knew they were smiling.
“The steak medium rare, as usual?” the girl said.
“Yes . . .”
He would have liked to ask for it well done, but he didn’t have the courage.
Scope was the first to break the silence. “What’s happened to you?” he demanded. “You seem to have changed somehow.”
Simon burst out laughing. He always laughed when he was on the point of making a joke. This time it had something to do with the fact that they had been talking about foreign exchange and now Scope said Trelkovsky had changed. He repeated it several times, to be sure they understood: exchange, changed . . .
Trelkovsky made an effort to laugh at himself. In vain. He was too preoccupied with the bits of cork or something or other that had fallen into his glass. He lit a cigarette and carefully arranged to drop the ash into it. The waitress brought him another glass.
As he ate, he tried to find something to say to the others. Something pleasant, a phrase that would at least show them he was still their friend. But he could think of nothing. The silence was becoming unbearable. He had to do something to break it.
“Have I missed any beautiful customers in here?” he asked, having had a sudden inspiration.
Scope winked at him. “There’s one new one who is really something. Out of this world. She left just before you came in.”
He turned to Simon. “And speaking of that, what’s happening with Georges?”
“Oh, he’ll get out of it all right,” Simon answered, “but he’ll never be able to work it the way he wanted to. You know that . . .”
From then until the very end of the meal, Scope and Simon discussed this Georges and his incomprehensible maneuvers. They laughed a great deal, but occasionally they also lowered their voices, as if to prevent Trelkovsky from hearing. If it hadn’t been for this evidence of their mistrust of him, he would have thought they had completely forgotten him. He was relieved when he could at last leave them. Before they went their separate ways, they asked if he intended to come back the next day. Their uneasiness made him feel sorry for them.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m very busy.”
They made a convincing show of disappointment, but when they walked off they were laughing and talking delightedly. He watched them until they turned the corner.
He began walking slowly along the quays that border the Seine. In the old days, it was always here that he came when he had a few hours of freedom, just to stroll and to look at everything. But now the quays seemed mournful, and the Seine dirty. The book
stalls were as repulsive to him as an endless row of garbage cans. Intellectual ragpickers probed unconcernedly through all the refuse on display, searching for some morsel of spiritual nourishment. When they found it, an expression of animal-like cupidity crossed their faces, and they snatched it up as if some enemy were lying in wait to steal it from them.
This area depressed him too much. He crossed to the other side of the quay, but there he was confronted with the bird and pet market, with all the sounds and smells of caged animals. The idlers in the street were prodding at the turtles, teasing the parakeets, and doing their best to stir up the guinea pigs. Snakes were draped listlessly against the glass walls of their cages, and a little farther on a group of white mice observed their sinuous movements with rapt attention.
He walked for a long time. After having covered the entire length of the walls of the Louvre, he went into the Tuileries gardens. He sat down on an iron chair near the great stone basin, so that he could watch the children sailing their little boats. They ran around the circle of water shouting to each other and waving the poles they used to guide the boats. He noticed one little boy who had a powerboat—a miniature ocean liner with two funnels and lifeboats all along the deck. The child was not one of the more active ones. He limped badly, and because of this he arrived at the opposite side of the pond some time after his boat was already there. It was this delay that caused the tragedy. A badly directed sailboat crashed into the side of the little ocean liner, which promptly capsized. It began to fill with water at once, and the unhappy child could only stand helplessly by, watching it as it sank. Tears ran down his cheeks in a steady stream. Trelkovsky expected that he would run to his parents for help, but he must have been alone because he just sat down on the ground and went on weeping. Trelkovsky derived a curious pleasure from his tears, as if they were a kind of vengeance for himself. He had the feeling that the child was crying for him, and watched happily as the tears formed in the corners of his eyes. In his mind, he was encouraging him, exhorting him to cry even harder.
But now some young, vulgar-looking girl was walking over to the child, bending over him, whispering something in his ear. The boy stopped crying, lifted his head toward the girl, and smiled.
Trelkovsky felt unbearably frustrated. Not only had the child stopped crying, he was actually laughing now. The woman was still whispering to him mysteriously. She seemed to be very excited about something. Her hands caressed the boy’s cheeks and the back of his neck, she took hold of his shoulders and hugged him to her, and in the end she kissed him suddenly on the chin. Then she left him and went over to a wooden stall where an old woman was selling toys.
Trelkovsky left his chair and walked over to the child. He went out of his way to jostle him. The boy looked up, wondering what had happened.
“Rude little . . .” Trelkovsky hissed.
And without saying another word he slapped him twice across the face. He walked away rapidly after that, leaving the child crying again, overcome by the injustice of his fate.
He spent the rest of the day wandering through the streets of his old neighborhood. When he was tired, he sat down on the terrace of a café and drank a glass of beer and ate a sandwich. Then he began walking again. He tried to remember, but he did not succeed. He paused at every street corner, hunting for memories of something, anything, that might have happened here, but he recognized nothing at all.
It was quite late when he came back to the building on the rue des Pyrénées. He hesitated at the thought of crossing the threshold of this gloomy place, but he was exhausted from his long walk and wanted only to sleep. He pressed the button that controlled the opening of the door. There was total darkness in the courtyard inside the door. The button for the light that would stay lit just long enough for him to get upstairs was somewhere on the wall to his right. He was extending an uncertain finger toward it when he was suddenly conscious of another presence, somewhere extremely close. He stood absolutely motionless, listening and waiting. Was someone breathing? No, it was himself. But he was still afraid to move his finger—afraid that it would encounter something soft or yielding; an eye, perhaps. He listened even more attentively. He couldn’t just stand here like this; he had to do something. He held his arm out straight, taking a chance on the location of the button, and hit it right away. Light flooded through the entrance hall.
Sitting very close to him, on a garbage pail, a very dark woman was staring at him with demented eyes. He uttered a strangled cry. She gasped fearfully, and her lips began to tremble like the crackled surface of a glass of jelly. He wanted to get away, but his foot slipped on something on the ground and he lost his balance and stumbled toward her. Her body jerked with the violence of her effort to avoid him, and the cover of the garbage pail rocked crazily. She fell backward, screaming, and he screamed too as he fell on top of her. The garbage pail rolled over and its contents spewed out, almost burying them. The light went out.
He rolled over on the ground, trying to extricate himself. Something brushed against his face as it fled. He finally succeeded in getting to his feet. But in what direction should he run? Where was the button for the light now? Two clawlike hands encircled his neck and began to throttle him.
His tongue was bursting in his mouth, and he could hear the gurgling sounds of his own voice. Then something hit him on the head, very hard, and he lost consciousness.
He awoke in his apartment, stretched out on the bed. He was dressed as a woman, and he had no need even to look in the mirror to know that he was carefully made-up.
14
The Siege
He had been made ready for the sacrifice!
Because he had tried to escape, they were counter-attacking. And they had not hesitated to use outright aggression to achieve their ends. Whether he willed it or not, he was to be transformed into Simone Choule. They had left him no alternative.
Trelkovsky managed to stand up at last. He ached in every joint and his head was throbbing painfully. He dragged himself across the room to the washbasin and splashed cold water on his face. He felt a trifle more lucid after this, but the pain was still there.
The last act of the drama was already in progress. The climax must now be frighteningly close. He went over to the window, opened it, and peered out into the obscurity beneath.
The glass roof must be finished by this time. How were they planning to drive him to the point where he would kill himself? He did not want to die, but could that be considered a defeat for the neighbors? If their trap had functioned perfectly, Trelkovsky should really have transformed himself into Simone Choule and, like her, committed suicide completely spontaneously. But this was not the case; he had only been pretending, he knew very well that he was not Simone Choule. So what could they hope for now? That he would also pretend to die? He considered this solution for a moment. If he were to feign suicide—an overdose of barbiturates, for instance—would they be satisfied and allow him to go on living? The answer was almost certainly no. Illusion had no place in the dark plot in which he had been assigned the role of victim. The only possible climax was the destruction of the glass roof, pulverized by his shattered body.
What would happen if he should refuse to play his part, refuse to accept this as the only possible ending? The answer to this was no more of a mystery to him than the answers to his earlier questions. They would push him through the window. If suicide proved impossible, it would become murder. For that matter, there was no proof that the same thing had not been true in the case of the former tenant!
Down below him, the lights in the courtyard had suddenly gone on. The sound of a galloping horse’s hoofs broke through the silence. Trelkovsky leaned forward a trifle, wondering what could be happening.
He was astonished to see that a man on horseback had actually ridden into the courtyard. He could not make out his features, because he was wearing a mask over his eyes, and a broad-brimmed hat of deep red felt cast the lower part of his face into shadow. A body was slung across the hors
e’s rump, hanging face down. Trelkovsky could not be sure, but he had the impression that its hands and feet were bound. The courtyard was swarming with people now. Groups of neighbors surrounded the masked stranger, seeming to converse with him by unintelligible signs and gestures. A woman with a pale blue shawl across her shoulders pointed to Trelkovsky’s window. The man dismounted and walked around his horse, moving slowly to a point directly beneath. He cupped his hand across his forehead, as if there were a strong sun, and stared up at Trelkovsky. A boy wearing short, olive-green pants, a yellow-brown sweater, and a mauve beret walked up to him and ceremoniously held out an enormous black cape. The man adjusted it on his shoulders, and then disappeared through the arch that led to the entrance hall. The rest of the people in the courtyard followed him, leading the horse, which still carried the inert form of the prisoner. The lights went out. Trelkovsky might have thought he had been dreaming, but he knew that he had just witnessed the arrival of the executioner. He was undoubtedly climbing the steps to the apartment at this very moment, unhurriedly, moving with the same deliberate pace with which he crossed the courtyard. He would simply throw open the door, not waiting for any invitation, and walk into the room, with all the calm detachment of a man going about his normal daily work. Trelkovsky knew what that work would be. In spite of his cries and pleas for mercy, he would be hurled out into the void. His body would crash through the glass roof, splintering it to a million fragments before being crushed on the ground.
Panic seized at him, plucking him from his apathetic resignation. He raced over to the armoire, his teeth chattering wildly, and began pushing and pulling at it, struggling to move it into position in front of the door. Sweat rolled down from his forehead, blinding him, leaving black streaks of mascara running down his face and onto his neck. The dress they had clothed him in hampered his movements, so he ripped it off and tore open the fastenings of the brassiere. As soon as the armoire was in place he ran back to the window and blocked any entrance through it with the chest of drawers. His lungs seemed about to burst, his breathing was no more than a despairing croak.