The Tenant (7 page)

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 did 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.

He took off one of his shoes and hurled it across the room. The angry gesture relieved him.

Someone rapped on the wall.

“All right!” he shouted. “I know I’m making too much noise! But you should have rapped while this was going on, not now!”

He made an effort to control himself. “It’s not their fault, after all. And besides, perhaps they did rap while it was going on.”

What should he do? Make a complaint? Yes, that was it; he would go and make a complaint at the police station. He looked at his watch: it was seven o’clock. Would the police station be open now? The best thing to do was to go and see. He put on his shoe again and started down the staircase. He met Monsieur Zy on the ground floor landing.

“You’ve disturbed everyone again, Monsieur Trelkovsky,” the landlord said angrily. “This can’t go on any longer. All of the neighbors are complaining.”

“I beg your pardon, Monsieur Zy,” Trelkovsky said, “but are you talking about last night?”

His self-assurance took Monsieur Zy by surprise. He could not understand why his anger seemed to have no effect on his tenant, and consequently he was annoyed.

“Of course I’m talking about last night,” he said. “You made a fiendish racket again. I thought I had managed to make you realize that you wouldn’t stay in my house much longer if you went on acting that way. But I see that I’m going to be forced to take other measures . . .”

“I have been robbed, Monsieur Zy,” Trelkovsky interrupted. “I just came in a few minutes ago, and I found the door to my apartment open. I was on my way to the police station now, to register a complaint.”

The landlord’s expression changed completely. His air of stern remonstrance vanished, to be replaced by a look that was positively threatening.

“What do you mean?” he shouted. “My house is a respectable place. If you’re trying to get out of this by inventing some kind of story . . .”

“But it’s true!” Trelkovsky was shouting too. “Don’t you understand what I’m saying? My apartment was broken into. I’ve been robbed!”

Monsieur Zy did not answer immediately, and then he said calmly, “I understand you perfectly. And I’m very sorry. But why are you going to the police station?”

It was Trelkovsky who was taken by surprise this time. “Why—to tell them what happened,” he stammered. “To tell them what was stolen, so they’ll know which things are mine if they catch the thieves.”

Monsieur Zy’s expression had undergone still another transformation. He was benevolent, almost paternal, now.

“Now look, Monsieur Trelkovsky,” he said, “this is an honest house. My tenants are honest people . . .”

“It’s not a question of that . . .” Trelkovsky began.

“Let me finish. You know how people are. If they see policemen here, God knows what they’ll think and say. You know how careful I am about selecting my tenants. In your own case—I let you have the apartment because I was convinced you were an honest man. If I hadn’t been, you could have offered me ten million-francs and I would have laughed in your face. If you go to the police now, they’ll send men here and ask all kinds of questions—useless questions, of course, but they can have a disastrous effect on the opinion of the other tenants. And I’m not saying that just for my own sake, but for yours too.”

“For mine! But what have I done?” Trelkovsky could not contain his astonishment.

“I know it may seem crazy to you,” the landlord said soothingly, “but people who get involved with the police are always regarded with suspicion. I know that, in this case, you are perfectly within your rights, but other people won’t know that. They’ll suspect you of God knows what, and me, too, for that matter. No; believe me, I know what I’m saying. I know the superintendent of police, and I’ll talk to him about this. He’ll know what should be done. In that way, no one can reproach you for not having done your duty as a citizen and we’ll avoid all the neighborhood gossip.”

Trelkovsky was too stunned to object.

“Oh, and by the way,” Monsieur Zy added, “the former tenant always wore slippers after ten o’clock. It was much more comfortable for her—and much more pleasant for the people below her!”

Part Two
THE
NEIGHBORS

7
The Battle

T
here was a battle going on, right in the heart of the building. Trelkovsky was hidden behind his curtains, watching the spectacle in the courtyard and laughing delightedly. As soon as the first sounds of argument reached his ears he had hurriedly extinguished all the lights, so that he could not be wrongly accused of anything when it was all over.

It had started in the building across the way, where the fourth floor was celebrating an anniversary of some kind. The rooms were so brightly lit that they constituted a challenge in themselves. The windows were tightly closed, because of the cold, but even so the sound of laughter and singing could be clearly heard. Trelkovsky had foreseen from the very first that the festivities would take a tragic turn. And in his own mind he had been fervently grateful to the troublemakers. “They’re just as bad as any of the others,” he thought. “I’ve already heard them complaining about the noise from the fifth floor, but that’s not important. It’ll be a case of the wolves devouring each other!”