The Tenant

by Roland Topor

  With a final shove, he sent Trelkovsky sprawling on the floor of the front room. The door slammed, and a key turned twice in the lock.

  It would undoubtedly be tonight.

  17

  The Preperations

  Trelkovsky struggled painfully to his feet. Every bone and muscle in his body ached. His tongue had discovered a broken tooth and was mechanically attempting to polish its craggy edges. He spit out a slender stream of blood, which kept growing longer and longer as he pushed himself up, stretching from his mouth to the floor, becoming no more than a thread, an imaginary line which refused to break.

  The chest of drawers, the armoire, the chairs were all exactly as he had left them at the time of his precipitate flight. He could feel the air coming through the broken windowpanes. The neighbors had not thought to board them up. They had made a mistake. He dragged himself to the window and inhaled deeply, preparing to scream for help.

  He didn’t have the time to do it. A torrent of music flooded from every window in the building. The radios had all been turned to maximum volume, and all were playing the Beethoven Ninth Symphony. He screamed and shouted, but his ineffectual appeals were drowned in the thunder of music. He put his hands to his ears, trying at least to shut out this music he detested so, but even this was in vain. The wind through the courtyard swept it in through the broken panes, filling every corner of the room.

  The Ninth Symphony exploded all around him, bursting with a stupid glee, like the march of the executioners in a comic opera. Nine hundred singers and musicians were exulting in Trelkovsky’s approaching death. The neighbors had doubtless considered it a delicate tribute to the memory of Simone Choule, who had been such an admirer of Beethoven. He was swept by a tidal wave of futile rage, and began racing about the apartment, systematically destroying everything that still remained of Simone Choule. First the letters and the books. He tore them apart, reducing all these things that had cast the spell on him to little shreds of paper, scattered them on the floor, and then trampled on them. The impotent fury of an animal caught in a trap seized him by the throat, and he could scarcely breathe. He began hiccuping violently. He went to look for the two incisor teeth in the hole in the wall, but when he got them out and looked at them he saw that they were now two canine teeth. He regarded them for a moment in horror, and then ran back to the window and hurled them out. But as he bent down to throw them as far from him as possible, his attention was caught by the spectacle taking place in the toilet on the other side of the courtyard.

  A woman he had never seen before had just come in. She knelt down on the tile floor in front of the bowl, and her head disappeared into its filthy circle. What was she doing? She lifted her head, and there was an expression of utter bestiality on her face. She stared straight at Trelkovsky and smiled repulsively. Then, without taking her eyes from his, she plunged her hand into the toilet bowl, withdrew it filled with excrement, and deliberately smeared it across her face. Other women came into the little room, and they all went through the same procedure. When there were thirty or so hideously daubed and smeared women crowded into the toilet, a black curtain was drawn across the oval window and he could see nothing more.

  Trelkovsky’s eyes were fixed and glassy, his lids seemed weighted with lead, he no longer had the strength to flee. He knew that the witches in the room across from him had been sent there to terrify him and drain off his last remaining strength, but he could not escape them. He was too weak, too sick, too worn out.

  It was in the courtyard that the rest of the spectacle took place.

  A neighbor wearing a workman’s blue overalls came in, riding a bicycle. He went all around the court in circles first, and then began cutting back and forth in a figure eight. Each time he passed beneath Trelkovsky’s window, he glanced up, smiled broadly, and winked. There was a length of cord attached to the seat of the bicycle. The cord was pulling a wax dummy representing a woman. It was the type of mannequin used to display dresses in the windows of shops. It leaped and jerked convulsively as it struck against the uneven paving stones, and its arms waved up and down, so that it appeared to be alive. But the wax crumbled rapidly beneath the constant attack of the stones, and the form of the mannequin grew blurred and indistinct. The woman disappeared, as if her flesh had been eaten away by acid. When there were only two legs still trailing behind the bicycle, the neighbor gestured ironically to Trelkovsky and disappeared through the arch.

  After him came two men carrying an enormous fish impaled on a pole. They made several circuits of the courtyard before setting down their burden and looking up at Trelkovsky. Without taking their eyes from his or looking to see what they were doing, even once, they split and gutted the fish. The cast-off entrails piled up until there was a little mound of them on either side of the two men. Then they began laughing delightedly and decorating their hair with them. They formed crowns of the entrails of fish, they hung them from their ears, and draped them around their necks. When they had finished they went off, hopping on one foot like young girls playing a game.

  One of these same two men reappeared almost immediately. He was blowing into an enormous horn. The sounds he produced resembled those of some giant farting.

  A lion wearing a crown then came through the arch. It was obvious that it was nothing more than an old skin concealing two of the neighbors. Riding on the lion was the boy Trelkovsky had seen handing the cape to the executioner on that other night. Two women dressed in white walked across the courtyard to meet the lion. They climbed inside through an opening in the hide, and from the violent contortions of the animal after that Trelkovsky realized that an orgy was taking place beneath the skin. The man with the horn seized the lion by the tail and dragged him out of sight.

  Three masked men appeared. Trelkovsky saw with horror that one of the masks clearly resembled his own face. The three men took up positions to form a living picture, but he could not understand what it was meant to be. They remained like that, motionless, for almost an hour. Evening came, and then night and darkness.

  The pounding of a horse’s hoofs echoed from somewhere behind the arch.

  Trelkovsky shivered.

  Someone was scratching softly at his door.

  Already? It wasn’t possible. The executioner was just about to dismount from his horse. A sheet of white paper had been slipped beneath the door, and someone was whispering words he could not make out.

  Could someone be coming to his aid? Did he possess an ally in the building? He reached for the paper suspiciously. It was a sheet of perfumed letter paper. He unfolded it carefully. There were just three lines, in a woman’s handwriting. He could not decipher what they said. The characters with which the words were formed must have been Sanskrit or Hebrew. He bent down and whispered through the door.

  “Who are you?”

  There was an answer, but again he could not make out the words. He repeated his question, but all he could hear was a furtive, scurrying sound. Someone must be coming.

  And, in fact, a few seconds later a key turned in the lock.

  18

  The Possessed

  It was broad daylight when Trelkovsky’s body seesawed across the sill of his window. It crashed through the new glass roof, shattering it into a million tiny shards, and struck the stones of the courtyard in a grotesque position, arms outflung.

  He was completely disguised as a woman. The dress, pulled up around his waist by the fall, revealed the outlines of the lace panties and the little rubber fasteners for the stockings. The face was carefully made-up, but the wig had been torn to one side, so that it covered his forehead and his right eye.

  The neighbors gathered quickly. The concierge and Monsieur Zy stood at the center of the group, shaking their heads and gesturing despairingly.

  “What an unfortunate young man,” Monsieur Zy said. “Yesterday an automobile accident, and today . . .”

  “It’s the shock of the accident that caused it!”

  “We’ll have to call the
police emergency squad.”

  A little later, a police car and an ambulance drew up before the building.

  The driver of the police car held out his hand to the landlord, who was an old friend, and said, “You seem to rent all of your apartments to suicides.”

  “Would you believe it?” Monsieur Zy lamented. “And I had just finished repairing the roof!”

  The two ambulance attendants were hurriedly unloading their stretcher. There was a doctor with them, and as soon as they were ready all three of them walked over to the motionless body. The doctor shook his head in disgust.

  “What kind of a masquerade is this?” he grunted. “He dressed himself up like that to commit suicide?”

  Suddenly, as the attendants, the doctor, the policemen, and the neighbors watched in stunned bewilderment, the body moved. The mouth opened and a little blood dribbled out. The jaw opened and the mouth said, “It isn’t a suicide . . . I don’t want to die . . . It’s murder . . .”

  Monsieur Zy smiled sadly. “The poor young man—he’s delirious.”

  The doctor shook his head again, growing more and more disgusted. “It’s a fine time to decide he wants to live. If you want to live, you don’t throw yourself out of a window.”

  A trifle more forcefully this time, Trelkovsky’s mouth said, “I tell you it was murder . . . I was pushed . . . I didn’t throw myself out of the window . . .”

  “All right, all right,” the doctor agreed. “So it’s murder.”

  The policemen laughed, and one of them said, “He jumped out of the window because he’s pregnant.”

  The doctor apparently did not appreciate this little joke. He signaled to the attendants to lift the body onto the stretcher.

  With surprising vigor, Trelkovsky pushed them away. “I forbid you to touch me!” he screamed hysterically. “I am not Simone Choule!”

  He managed to stand up, stumbling and shaking, and then seemed to find his balance. The hypnotized spectators dared not intervene.

  “You thought everything would happen just the way you wanted it to,” he stammered. “You thought my death would be neat and clean. Well, you were wrong. It’s going to be filthy, it’s going to be horrible! I did not commit suicide. I am not Simone Choule. It was a murder—a hideous murder. Look here, there’s the blood!” He paused, and spat on the ground. “That’s blood, and I’m dirtying your courtyard with it. I’m not dead yet. You can’t kill me that easily!”

  He was sobbing like a child now. The doctor and the attendants approached him, moving slowly and awkwardly.

  “Come now,” the doctor said, “don’t make any more trouble. Come on; we’re going to take care of you. Just get into the ambulance.”

  “Don’t touch me,” Trelkovsky screamed. “I know what you hide behind those white aprons. You disgust me, and your white ambulance disgusts me too. You’ll never be able to clean it of the things I’ll do to it. You’re a gang of murderers! Assassins!”

  He started toward the arch that led out of the courtyard, staggering drunkenly. The crowd of neighbors moved aside to form a path for him, staring at him in terror, as if he were a ghost. Alternately laughing and sobbing, Trelkovsky waved his slashed left arm at them, spraying them with blood.

  “Did I get you dirty?” he said. “Forgive me—it’s my blood, you know. You should have drained the blood first, and then I couldn’t have gotten you dirty now. You forgot that, didn’t you?”

  The crowd followed him into the entrance hall at a respectful distance. The policemen looked questioningly at the doctor. Should they subdue him and get him into the ambulance by force? The doctor shook his head.

  Blood and tears bubbled together in Trelkovsky’s throat.

  “Just try to stop me from talking!” he screamed. His voice broke, and then came back, on a shriller, higher note. “Murderers! Assassins! I’m really going to make some noise for you now! The kind of scandal you won’t forget! And just try to keep me quiet! You can pound on the walls all you like; it doesn’t matter to me now!”

  He began to spit in every direction, spraying everyone who came too close with a mixture of blood and saliva.

  “Murderers! Kill me, just to keep me quiet! But I’ll leave something for you to remember; don’t think I won’t!”

  Still staggering, he had reached the foot of the staircase. He clutched at the railing and put one foot on the first step. The neighbors had grown a little bolder. They were standing just behind him now.

  “Don’t come too close, or I’ll get all of you dirty!”

  He spat at them and they recoiled hastily.

  “Be careful, or you’ll soil your Sunday clothes! Why don’t you go home and put on your red clothes, your working clothes, your murderer’s clothes? If you don’t, the blood is going to show. And it’s hard to get rid of, did you know that? It was easier the last time, wasn’t it? But I’m not Simone Choule!”

  He had arrived at the first landing. He spat into his open palm and smeared it across the door on the left.

  “Assassins! Try to clean that off! It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

  He dragged himself painfully over to the door on the right, rubbed his bleeding arm across its surface, and then spat on the doorknob. A piece of a tooth fell out of his mouth.

  “Ah!” he shouted. “That’s fine! You’ll have a nice tidy place now!”

  The neighbors were climbing the steps behind him, beginning to let out a threatening rumble of voices. He tore off the upper part of the dress and scraped his fingernails violently across his chest. Blood began to pour from the wound. He gathered some of it into his left hand and shook it from his fingers over the door mat.

  “You’ll have to change your door mat now. You can never remove bloodstains!”

  He fell to his hands and knees to climb to the second landing, leaving a trail of blood on the steps.

  “You’ll have to change the staircase too—there’s blood on that. You’ll never be able to clean away all this blood!”

  One of the neighbors managed to reach through the railing and grasp his foot, attempting to pull him back.

  “Get your hands off me, murderer!” He hissed like an angry cat and spat full in the man’s face. The neighbor released his foot and clasped both his hands to his face.

  Trelkovsky laughed. “If you wipe at it like that, you’ll have it all over you. Who would like some blood? What? No one? But you eat your steaks bloody rare, you love rabbit stewed in its own blood, you know which shops have the best blood sausage, and you worship the blood of the Lord, don’t you? Then why don’t you want some of Trelkovsky’s good blood?”

  On the second landing, he smeared both of the doors with blood and saliva, just as he had on the first.

  The policemen had brought out their clubs and were clutching them in their hands, in spite of the doctor’s order. They were obviously just waiting their chance to strike out at this madman, this creature possessed by devils, and silence him once and for all. But the crush of neighbors in the narrow staircase blocked their passage and prevented them from intervening. They tried to push through them, but the neighbors refused to budge. They were muttering angrily now, showing their teeth. The doctor and the attendants got no further than the police. They had no real desire to take part in this painful comedy, so they simply stopped where they were and began exchanging their impressions of it all with the policemen. On the third landing, the neighbors had surrounded Trelkovsky. Gleaming instruments shone in their hands. Instruments with razor-edged blades, like those in an operating room. They pushed Trelkovsky through the door of his apartment.

  “So!” he said. “You do like blood, after all! Where is Monsieur Zy? Ah, there he is . . . Come on, come on, Monsieur Zy—you don’t want to miss getting your share. And the concierge? A lovely morning, isn’t it, madame? And Madame Dioz! I see you’ve come to collect your pint of blood!”

  He burst out in a spasm of demented laughter. The instruments glistened in the hands of the neighbors. A streamer of blood raced
across his abdomen . . .

  For the second time, Trelkovsky’s body seesawed across the window sill, and crashed through the debris of the glass roof into the courtyard.

  Epilogue

  Trelkovsky was not dead, not yet.

  He emerged very slowly from a bottomless abyss. And as he recovered consciousness he became aware again of his body, could feel its pain. It seemed to come from everywhere; from every direction at once, hurling itself at him like a mad dog. He knew he would never be able to protect himself. He was prepared to admit defeat, but his own resistance surprised him. The pain persisted, and then, wave after wave, it drew back and at last disappeared completely.

  He fell asleep, exhausted by the struggle. He was awakened by the sound of voices.

  “She has come out of the coma.”

  “She may still have a chance.”

  “After what she’s gone through, it would really be a chance!”

  “Did you know that they used the whole of the blood reserve for her?”

  Gently, with infinite precaution, he opened one eye. He could make out a blurred group of silhouettes. White shadows moving back and forth in a white room. He must be in a hospital. But who was it the silhouettes were talking about?

  “She lost an enormous amount of blood. It’s a good thing it isn’t a rare type. If it were . . .”

  “We’ll have to raise the leg a little bit more. She’ll be more comfortable.”

  He sensed that someone or something was pulling at one of his limbs, very far from him, miles away. And he did feel more comfortable. Then these phrases he had overheard—they were talking about him! But why would they speak of him as if he were a woman?

  He thought about it for a long time. He had great difficulty gathering his thoughts into any sort of concrete form. Sometimes he went on thinking without being able to remember what he was thinking about. His brain turned endlessly around a void, and then it began to come back to him, he began to pick up the threads of his own reason.