The Tenant

THE TENANT

Trelkovsky rented the small and shabby apartment—even though the former tenant had hurled herself screaming through the window. Even though her presence—and her madness—seemed to seep through the damp walls. Even though the dead woman still lived in that apartment. A superstitious person, a fearful person, would not have rented it. But Trelkovsky did. For better, or for worse, he was
The Tenant
.

THE TENANT—
A NOVEL OF NIGHTMARE TERROR

“A really up-to-date thriller—as closely coiled, as cold and quiet and deadly as a snake in the bed.”

—John Collier, author of
Fancies and Goodnights

“This story will lift you out of your seat with its grotesqueries . . . Whatever echoes there are of Kafka, Poe, and Hitchcock, Mr. Topor is a writer of the new breed of down-to-earthness which accepts a vulgarity for what it is worth and describes it without emotion. For that reason the book is not recommended to any average reader who may be easily shocked . . .”

—
Bestsellers

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

presents

A ROMAN POLANSKI FILM

THE TENANT

starring
ISABELLE ADJANI
MELVYN DOUGLAS
JO VAN FLEET

and
SHELLEY WINTERS
as The Concierge

Music by
Philippe Sarde
Produced by
Andrew Braunsberg
Screenplay by
Gerard Brach
and
Roman Polanski
Directed by
Roman Polanski

A Paramount Picture

THE TENANT

A Bantam Book
/
published by arrangement with
Doubleday & Company, Inc.

PRINTING HISTORY
Originally published in France by Buchet-Chastel in 1964
under the title
LE LOCATAIRE CHIMERIQUE
Doubleday edition published February 1966
2nd printing . . . February 1966
Bantam edition
/
March 1967
2nd printing . . . August 1976

All rights reserved.
Copyright
©
1966 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.

ISBN 0-553-10200-1

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 656 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE
T E N A N T

Part One
THE
NEW  TENANT

1
The Apartment

T
relkovsky was on the point of being thrown out in the street when his friend Simon told him about an apartment on the rue des Pyrénées. He went to look at it. The concierge, an ill-tempered woman, refused to show it to him, but a thousand franc note changed her mind.

“Follow me,” she said then, without altering her surly attitude.

Trelkovsky was an honest, polite young man in his early thirties, and above everything else he detested complications. He earned a modest living, but the prospect of losing the roof over his head was nothing less than a catastrophe, since his salary would not permit the extravagance of living in a hotel. He did, however, have a few savings in the bank, and he was counting on these to pay the under-the-counter fee he knew the landlord would demand. He could only hope it would not be too high.

The apartment consisted of two gloomy rooms, with no kitchen. A single window in the back room looked directly out on an oddly shaped oval window in the wall on the other side of a courtyard. Trelkovsky thought it must be the window of one of the toilets in the building next door. The walls of the apartment had been covered with a yellowish paper on which there were now several large stains, caused by dampness. The whole of the ceiling seemed covered with a network of tiny cracks, spreading out and crossing each other like the veins of a leaf. Little bits of plaster which had fallen from it crunched beneath their shoes. In the room without a window, a mantelpiece of fake marble framed a small gas heater.

“The tenant who used to live here threw herself out the window,” the concierge said, seeming suddenly to have become more friendly. “Look, you can see where she fell.”

She led Trelkovsky through a jumbled labyrinth of furniture to the window, and gestured triumphantly toward the wreckage of a glass roofing over the courtyard, three stories below.

“She’s not dead,” she said, “but she might just as well be. She’s at the Saint-Antoine hospital.”

“And what if she recovers?” Trelkovsky murmured.

“There’s no danger of that,” the odious woman laughed. “Don’t give it a thought.” She winked at him, and added, “it’s a piece of luck for you.”

“What are the conditions?” Trelkovsky asked.

“Reasonable. There’s a small fee to be paid, for the water. The plumbing is all new. Before, you had to go out to the landing for running water. The landlord had it done.”

“What about the toilets?”

“Just over there. You go down, and then you take the B staircase. From over there you can see the apartment. And vice versa.” She winked again, obscenely, “it’s a view worth looking at!”

Trelkovsky was far from being overwhelmed with delight. But even as it was, the apartment was a windfall.

“How much is the fee?” he asked.

“Five hundred thousand. The rent is fifteen thousand francs a month.”

“That’s expensive. I couldn’t pay more than four hundred thousand.”

“That’s not up to me. You’ll have to work it out with the landlord.” Another wink. “Go and see him. He lives on the floor beneath this, so you won’t have to go far. I have to get back now—but don’t forget what I told you. It’s a chance you don’t want to miss.”

Trelkovsky followed her down the steps to the landlord’s door. He rang the bell, and an old woman opened, peering at him suspiciously.

“We don’t give anything to the blind,” she snapped, before he could say a word.

“It’s about the apartment . . .”

A look of cunning narrowed her eyes. “What apartment?”

“The one on the floor above. Could I see Monsieur Zy?”

The old woman left Trelkovsky standing at the door. He heard the murmuring of voices, and then she came back to tell him Monsieur Zy would see him. She led him into the dining room, where Monsieur Zy was sitting at the table, meticulously picking at his teeth with the sharpened point of a matchstick. With a little gesture of a finger he indicated that he was busy, and went on rummaging among his upper molars. After a moment he withdrew a tiny bit of meat, speared on the pick, studied it attentively, then replaced it in his mouth and swallowed it. Only then did he turn his attention to Trelkovsky.

“Have you seen the apartment?” he said.

Trelkovsky nodded. “Yes. That’s why I wanted to see you—to discuss the conditions.”

“Five hundred thousand, and fifteen thousand a month.”

“That’s what the concierge told me. But I wanted to know if that is your final price, because I can’t pay more than four hundred thousand.”

The landlord frowned. For the space of a minute or two, he said nothing, and his eyes followed the movements of the old woman as she cleared off the table. He seemed to be passing in review everything he had just eaten. Occasionally he nodded his head, as if in approval. He returned at last to the subject under discussion.

“The concierge told you about the water?”

“Yes.”

“It’s damnably hard to find an apartment these days. There’s a student who gave me half that much for just one room on the sixth floor. And he doesn’t have water.”

Trelkovsky coughed, to clear out his throat; he realized that he was frowning too.

“Please understand me,” he said. “I’m not trying to belittle your apartment, but after all, there is no kitchen. And the toilets are also a problem . . . Just suppose that I should get sick—which I don’t very often do, I can assure you of that—and had to relieve myself in the middle of the night . . . Well, it wouldn’t be very convenient. And on the other hand, even though I only gave you four hundred thousand I would give it to you in cash.”

The landlord held up a hand to interrupt him. “It isn’t a question of the money. I won’t make any bones of that, Monsieur . . .”

“Trelkovsky.”

“Monsieur Trelkovsky. I’m in no difficulties there. I don’t need your money in order to go on eating. No; I am renting because I have a vacant apartment and I know how scarce they are.”

“Of course.”

“However, there is the principle of the thing. I am not a miser, but neither am I a philanthropist. Five hundred thousand is the price. I know other landlords who would ask seven hundred thousand, and be within their rights. As for myself, I am asking five hundred thousand and I have no reason to accept less.”

Trelkovsky had followed this discourse with little approving nods of the head and a smile of understanding on his lips. “Of course, Monsieur Zy,” he said. “I understand your point of view perfectly; it’s entirely reasonable. But . . . May I offer you a cigarette?” The landlord declined and Trelkovsky went on, “We are not savages, after all. We can argue these points, but we can always try to understand each other. You want five hundred. Good. But if someone were to give you five hundred spread over a period of three months, that three months could turn into three years. Do you think that would be preferable to four hundred in a lump sum?”

“No, I don’t. I know better than you that nothing is preferable to the entire sum in cash. But I prefer five hundred thousand cash to four hundred thousand cash.”

Trelkovsky lit his cigarette. “Naturally. And I have no intention of saying that you are wrong. But just think for a minute—the former tenant is not yet dead. Perhaps she will come back. And then, perhaps, if she is ill, or can’t climb the stairs, she might want to exchange the apartment for something else. And you know that you don’t have the legal right to oppose such an exchange. In that case, it isn’t four hundred thousand you would have, it would be nothing. But with me—I will give you the four hundred thousand, there will be no complications, and everything will be worked out on a friendly basis. No problems for you, and none for me. Can you think of a better solution than that?”

“You’re talking about a highly unlikely eventuality.”

“Perhaps, but it is possible. But with the four hundred thousand cash, no problems, no complications . . .”

“Very well—let’s forget about that angle of it for a moment, Monsieur . . . Trelkovsky. I’ve already told you that it isn’t the most important consideration for me. Are you married? Excuse me for asking, but it’s because of the children. This is a very quiet house; my wife and I are old . . .”

“Not so old as all that, Monsieur Zy!” Trelkovsky interrupted.