The Tenant

by Roland Topor

  She was setting the table, and her back was momentarily turned to him. He walked up to her, very quietly, and surprised her with a kiss on the shoulder. His hands imprisoned her breasts and then moved slowly down along her sides as he turned her around to face him. He found the opening that separated her sweater from the skirt, and the snaps that held the skirt yielded one by one to his insistent pressure. His eyes were on a level with her navel now. He kissed it passionately, and then studied it for a long time, wanting to engrave every detail of it in his memory. She leaned forward slightly to see what he was doing. She had certainly thought that his intentions were quite different, and he had no wish to deceive her.

  The next day, while Stella was at work, someone knocked at the door. He did not go to open it, but the visitor refused to be discouraged. He simply went on knocking, at the same regular cadence, with no appearance of impatience. The sound became exasperating. Trelkovsky got down on his hands and knees and crawled over to the door, peering anxiously through the keyhole. He could see nothing but a small square of an overcoat, buttoned over a fairly portly figure. It was a man.

  “There’s no one home?” he heard the visitor say.

  The blood seemed to drain from Trelkovsky’s face, his neck, even his shoulders, leaving him white and shaken.

  He had recognized the voice. It was Monsieur Zy!

  So they had followed him!

  Impossible! He had taken all kinds of precautions. What could have happened? Did Monsieur Zy know Stella personally? And he didn’t know that Trelkovsky had taken refuge with her? But in that case, he would certainly learn about it, even though Stella did not know his address and had no reason to suppose that he knew Monsieur Zy. Unless . . .

  He shuddered.

  Suppose it was Stella who was responsible—suppose Stella had cold-bloodedly betrayed him, to punish him for having lied to her about the apartment? But how could she have learned his address? He clapped a hand to his mouth, just in time to stifle a cry of rage. In his pockets! She had gone through his pockets, the little cheat!

  There would surely have been one or two letters, and that would have been enough to tell her everything. She had been a friend of Simone Choule’s, she probably knew the neighbors, so she would have understood what Trelkovsky’s “problems” really were. She had betrayed him to get revenge.

  That must be it, because if Monsieur Zy actually did know Stella, he would know that she worked during the day and there was no one in her apartment then. He had come here solely because of Trelkovsky . . .

  The hypothesis he had fleetingly considered, and then rejected, was the correct one after all. Stella was one of the neighbors!

  She had been charged with his capture from the very beginning, ordered to lead him back to the slaughter! The mere thought of it frightened him. It was too monstrous, too horrible to be believed. But the more he thought of it, the more it seemed the obvious solution. He had been trapped from the first. And what a fool he had been!

  Standing here whispering, “Poor little Stella—dear little Stella!” He should have bitten off his tongue. He had felt sorry for someone who was trying to kill him! Why hadn’t he felt sorry for Monsieur Zy and all the rest of the neighbors, while he was at it?

  When he thought of his tenderness toward the girl—she must have had a good laugh from that, the little whore! And for all he knew, she might even be the one who had murdered Simone Choule. And she said she was her best friend!

  Monsieur Zy had finally stopped knocking. Trelkovsky listened to the sound of his footsteps, hesitant at first, as if he could not quite make up his mind to leave, seeming to turn back, and then vanishing.

  He would have to flee, again. But what would he do about money?

  Furiously, he set to work searching Stella’s apartment, pulling out the drawers of the chest, hurling the mattress on the floor, ripping the photographs and prints from the walls. He found some money hidden away in an old handbag. Not very much, but enough to go to a hotel. Without a shadow of remorse, he stuffed it all into his pocket. The little bitch deserved worse than this!

  He opened the door as noiselessly as possible, and explored the landing and stairway before venturing out. Everything seemed to be perfectly normal, and a few seconds later he was out of the building and safely in the street.

  To elude any possible pursuers, he took several different taxis, and when at last he was certain that no one could have followed him, he went into the first hotel he saw. It was the Hotel des Flandres, located just behind the Gare du Nord.

  He signed a false name to the hotel register—Monsieur Trelkof, from Lille—but fortunately no one asked for his identification papers. He began to breathe a trifle more easily. Perhaps he could find some way of escaping them, even now.

  16

  The Accident

  Trelkovsky paced up and down in the room, like a caged animal. Occasionally, he went over and peered through the window, which looked out on a kind of deep pit with walls pierced here and there by windows. The room was on the sixth floor, but received little direct light, since all of the surrounding buildings were taller than the hotel. For the rest of the day, he went out only to go to the toilet, which was down at the end of a gloomy corridor. He went to bed very early.

  He woke up in the middle of the night, of course, his body cold and damp with fear. He had had a whole series of horrible nightmares. Lying in bed with his eyes open, he searched the shadows around him, trying to find some steadying, reassuring objects. But the reality was at least as threatening as the nightmares. Having swallowed up all of the familiar shapes of the furniture, the darkness took on the aspect of some unearthly challenge: within this nothingness something monstrous and unknown was surely being spawned. The room had become a kind of breeding ground for monsters. For the moment, nothing specific could be detected, but that would not last. Like a communicating vessel in a chemist’s laboratory, Trelkovsky’s overflowing brain would spill its terrors into the void of the room, and as they passed from one recipient to the other they would take form and substance. The monsters Trelkovsky had foreseen would be living organisms, preparing to feed on their creator. He must not go on thinking like this; it was too dangerous.

  By the time morning came, he had made up his mind that he must somehow acquire a weapon.

  This was easy enough to say, but how was he to obtain it? He had read enough mystery novels to know that he would have to have a permit to carry a gun. Any arms shop he might go to would ask for it before he had a chance to finish his question, and when they found he did not have it they would simply refuse to sell to him. It was even possible that they would tell him to follow them to the nearest police station, or detain him in the shop on some pretext until the police could get there. And as for going to the police station and requesting the issuance of a permit to him, how would he justify it? If he reported the details of the neighbors’ plot against him, they would think he was crazy. They might even try to send him to an asylum.

  It would be far wiser to do nothing through official channels.

  He left the hotel, walking close in the shadow of the walls, and began a circuit of all of the shadiest-looking bars in the neighborhood. In every one of them, he almost succeeded in forcing himself to ask the barman if he had a pistol he would sell him, but in the end he didn’t dare. He paid his check hurriedly, slunk out like a thief, and made a new attempt in the café next door or across the street. In the early afternoon, he gave up. He was slightly drunk, because he had been drinking some kind of alcohol in every place he went into, trying to achieve the air of a man accustomed to this sort of thing. He had eaten nothing in the past twenty-four hours, and the alcohol had gone promptly to his head.

  As a last resource, he decided to buy a toy pistol. He had heard that some of these children’s playthings could do a great deal of damage. There were constant stories in the newspapers to prove it. He remembered one that told about a little boy who had been blinded by just such a toy. If that kind of resul
t could be obtained by accident, it should be a simple matter for him to do better. The saleswoman in the department store explained the workings of the little pistol to him. He tossed aside the box it came in and slipped it in his pocket. The saleswoman watched him leave, smiling and shaking her head indulgently.

  He felt greatly reassured by the presence of the weapon. He held his hand tight against his pocket, feeling its form molded to his palm through the cloth. He wanted to take it apart, and also to try it out, at once, but he could hardly do this in a public street, since other people might not realize that it was just a toy. He had to get back to the hotel, as quickly as possible.

  The sound of shouting brought him suddenly back to reality. He sensed that some kind of danger was threatening him, and thrust his hand into his pocket, but had no time to withdraw the pistol. The shock of impact threw him several feet. He felt the heat of the radiator grill against his body, but the car had stopped in time.

  It was a big American car, though not very new. The chromework was tarnished, one of the headlights was broken, the paint was flaking off in spots, and one of the fenders was newly dented.

  “That must have happened when it hit me,” Trelkovsky thought. “I just hope there won’t be any trouble about it.”

  He wanted to laugh, but the effort hurt too much.

  People were running up from every direction, pushing and shoving in a circle around him. They had not yet dared touch him, but it doubtless wouldn’t be long before they did. They were avid for details on the exact extent of the damage. Trelkovsky was glad he had remembered to wash his feet. That would spare him embarrassment when they took him to the hospital. A man was pushing his way determinedly through the crowd.

  “I’m a doctor,” he called. “Let me pass. Get out of the way, will you, he needs air.”

  Trelkovsky kept his teeth tightly clenched while someone examined him cautiously. The doctor was trying to get him to speak.

  “Are you in pain?” he kept asking. “Can you hear me? Where does it hurt? Can’t you talk?”

  Why should he bother to talk? It was delightful not to have to answer when someone spoke to you. And besides, he was completely amorphous, incapable of the smallest effort.

  He contented himself with waiting to see what happened next, not even feeling curious about it. It was all something of no concern to him. His head was turned so that he could see the car that had struck him, and suddenly a loud groan escaped his lips. He had recognized the man who still sat motionless behind the steering wheel. It was one of the neighbors.

  “He’s badly hurt,” someone cried.

  “Did you hear the way he groaned?”

  “He’ll have to be moved someplace. He can’t stay here.”

  “There’s a pharmacy right over there . . .”

  Some volunteers seized Trelkovsky by the arms and legs, to carry him to the pharmacy. Two policemen had joined the doctor and were walking with him at the head of the little procession. They laid him out on the prescription counter, hastily swept clean of its normal contents.

  “Are you in pain?” the doctor repeated.

  He did not answer. He was too preoccupied with the neighbor, who had followed the rest of the group into the store. He saw him go up to one of the policemen and begin talking to him in a confidential murmur.

  By this time, the doctor had undertaken a more thorough examination. He straightened up at last, apparently deciding to make public his conclusions.

  “You were very lucky,” he said. “There’s nothing broken. Not even a sprained ankle. All you have, in fact, is a few scratches, and those will be gone in a couple of days. We can take care of them right now. But it was a severe shock; you’ll have to stay at home and rest for a while before you’re completely recovered.”

  With the help of the pharmacist, he applied Mercurochrome and bits of adhesive plaster to Trelkovsky, and then said, “Naturally, it would be better if you had some X rays taken, but that isn’t urgent. The best thing at the moment is just for you to get as much rest as possible. Where do you live?”

  Trelkovsky was terrified. What could he say? But the neighbor spared him the necessity of answering.

  “Monsieur lives in the same building I do,” he said. “The least I can do for him is to drive him home.”

  Trelkovsky attempted to sit up and flee, but a score of hands immediately held him back. He went on struggling, but it was useless.

  “No,” he begged. “No, I don’t want to go back there with him.”

  The man smiled down at him as if he were a naughty child. “Oh, come now,” he said. “I’m responsible for what happened to you, and I know it. It’s only natural that I should try to make amends. I’ll drive you home, and later, when you’re better, we can come to some agreement about the damages.”

  He turned back to the policeman with whom he had been talking earlier. “You won’t be needing me any more, officer? You have my name and address?”

  The policeman nodded. “You can leave, monsieur. You’ll be asked to come in later. And you’ll take the responsibility for getting monsieur home?”

  “Of course—if you’ll just help me to carry him . . .”

  Trelkovsky began struggling again. “No,” he screamed. “Don’t let him take me away! You haven’t even taken my name and address!”

  “Yes, we have,” the policeman said. “Monsieur was kind enough to give them to me.”

  “He’s a murderer! He wants to kill me!”

  “It’s the shock,” someone murmured sympathetically.

  “He needs sleep,” the doctor said. “I’ll give him an injection.”

  “No!” Trelkovsky shouted. “No injections! No shots! They’re going to kill me! You’ve got to stop them; you’ve got to help me!”

  He burst into tears, and his voice trailed off to a pleading whimper. “Please—help me. Take me anywhere, anywhere at all, but don’t let them kill me . . .”

  They gave him the injection. He felt himself being carried off by men who walked very quickly. He was sleepy. The injection, of course. He wanted to protest, but he had to concentrate all of his strength on resisting the impulse to sleep. He was in the car. It was beginning to move.

  By an enormous effort of will, he succeeded in not falling asleep. It was as if he were clinging by one hand to the last rung on the ladder of consciousness. The automobile was picking up speed. He could make out the driver’s back through the fog that clouded his mind.

  And then he thought of the pistol.

  He turned over slowly, to free the side pocket in which he had kept it. His hand was trembling, but it seized the weapon firmly. He placed its muzzle against the back of the neighbor’s neck.

  “Stop this car immediately. I am armed.”

  The man glanced uneasily at the rear-view mirror, and then burst out laughing.

  “Who do you think you could frighten with that?” he said. “Is it a present for some child?”

  Trelkovsky pulled frantically at the trigger. Once, twice, then simply holding it back. The driver’s laughter was so loud in the muffled interior of the car that it seemed inhuman. The tiny bullets from the pistol slapped at his neck as harmlessly as flies, then bounced off and scattered across the floor.

  “All right—that’s enough,” the driver croaked. “You might make me die laughing.”

  Trelkovsky hurled the pistol at the glass of the windshield. It shattered into little bits of plastic. The driver turned around and clucked sarcastically.

  “Don’t cry,” he said. “You can buy yourself another one.”

  The car slowed down and stopped before the door of the building. The neighbor got out and slammed the door behind him. Two of the other neighbors joined him, and they began a whispered discussion. Trelkovsky just lay in the back of the car, resigned to his fate, awaiting their decision. Were they going to execute him immediately? Somehow, it didn’t seem probable.

  He realized then that the door on the other side of the car was not locked, and alm
ost before he knew what he was doing he had seized the handle and leaped into the street. He fell into the arms of a fourth neighbor, who had no trouble mastering him in his semi-drugged condition.

  “We’re going to carry you up to your apartment,” the man told him ironically. “You’ll be able to rest there; and you need a lot of rest. Just lean on me. Don’t worry about it—I like to be helpful.”

  “Let go of me,” Trelkovsky shouted. “Let go of me! Help! Help . . .”

  A heavy hand laid hard across the side of his face was the only answer he received.

  The little group of neighbors now included Monsieur Zy and the concierge. They were all watching him, their eyes gleaming wickedly, making no attempt to conceal their delight.

  “But I don’t want to go up to my apartment,” Trelkovsky said feebly. “I’ll give you anything I have, anything you want . . . Just let me go . . .”

  The man who was holding him shook his head. “Impossible,” he said. “You’re going to go quietly upstairs to your apartment. Without making any trouble, or I warn you . . . You know what the doctor said—you need rest, and you’re going to get it. You’ll see; it will do you good. Now come on, let’s go up.”

  He took Trelkovsky’s arm in a thoroughly professional grip, twisted it behind his back and began to press upward.

  “Now, you see, you’re already much calmer! You’re beginning to understand. That’s fine, just go on like that . . . Again, again . . . One step for Mama, one for Papa, go on . . .”

  Step by step Trelkovsky was forced across the threshold, through the entrance hall past the arch that led to the courtyard, and up the steps. The man behind him was still mocking him.

  “You didn’t want to come with me, eh? Why not? Don’t you like your apartment any more? Have you found something else? I thought apartments were scarce these days. But perhaps you made some kind of fake exchange. Well—that’s none of my business, after all.”