How strange, he said to himself. I’ve never gone to the wrong office. Immediately he reasoned logically: the key to his office could only open the door to his office. He looked at the number on the key and the number on the door. They were the same: 4043. He was about to put the key back into the lock when the door was opened from inside: the silhouette of Berkowickz filled the frame.
‘What a coincidence,’ Berkowickz exclaimed with a smile. ‘We seem to be condemned to meet in the most unexpected ways.’ Then, pointing at the white bandage around Mario’s foot and the crutch tucked under his right arm, he asked, ‘But hey, what’s happened with your ankle?’
‘There must be some mistake,’ Mario stuttered clumsily, immediately noticing the incoherence of his observation.
‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ Berkowickz went on, as if he hadn’t heard what Mario had just said. ‘Though with things like that, you can never tell.’
Mario thought: Now he’s going to say that sometimes the silliest little things can complicate our lives. He repeated, ‘There must be some mistake.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Berkowickz, perhaps understanding. He turned around and left the office door open. ‘Of course, there’s been some mistake. This is a complete pigsty. I understand that before I arrived it was occupied by one of those Spaniards who shower once a week and leave a trail of filth wherever they go. There’s a bit of everything here,’ he said, sweeping his arms around the office, ‘beer cans, empty yogurt tubs, ashtrays full of cigarette butts, even a little fridge with a piece of mouldy cheese in it, and papers in a mess all over the place. I’m going to have to find someone to help me clean all this up. I can’t do it on my own.’
‘I’m going to speak to the secretary,’ said Mario.
‘Thanks so much, Mario,’ said Berkowickz. ‘But I don’t think it’s worth your trouble. I don’t think the secretary will be able to come and help me: she looked very busy.’
When he got to the main office of the department, Branstyne and Swinczyc were speaking in low tones. They stopped talking as soon as they noticed Mario’s presence; they turned towards him and said hello. Mario thought they’d been talking about him.
Branstyne was younger than Mario, short with a fragile complexion, receding hairline, indistinct features. He had very intense blue eyes, which revealed a vigorous intelligence: he was without doubt, despite his youth, the most brilliant member of the department. To all that, Branstyne added an unfailing congeniality and an Italian wife, Tina, young and lovely, who made absolutely divine fettuccini al pesto. Tina had managed to turn the friendliness they felt towards one another into a closer bond. As for Swinczyc, Mario barely had anything more to do with him than the routines of work imposed, but at the same time had little enthusiasm for his sidelong glances, at once servile and haughty, his nervous little laughs and the annoying jokes he frequently enjoyed. He knew, however, that Branstyne had a link with Swinczyc, though he was unaware how strong it was, and this caused him to treat the latter with a certain deference, which could at times be mistaken for affection.
Branstyne and Swinczyc asked about Mario’s ankle. He tried to play down the importance of the mishap, joking about the benefits of exercise. While he was talking, strangely, he felt an excessive awareness of the smiles of the two professors, as if someone was focusing a spotlight on their faces. He thought: I’ve experienced this before.
Branstyne said, ‘See you this evening at the boss’s house.’
‘Of course,’ said Mario. ‘See you there.’
VIII
‘What is professor Berkowickz doing in my office?’ Mario asked brusquely.
Without knocking, he’d barged into the office of the secretary, who never closed her door.
‘You don’t know how glad I am to see you, Professor Rota,’ exclaimed Joyce, smiling behind her desk and standing up from the chair on which she’d spread her flesh. She immediately asked, remorsefully, ‘But what’s happened to your ankle?’
‘It’s nothing,’ answered Mario.
‘What do you mean nothing? Is anything broken? Is it a sprain? Oh, my goodness! You have to be so careful! Just this summer, as a matter of fact,’ Joyce went on, her eyes bright, ‘a friend of my Winnie’s . . . incidentally, I suppose you’ve heard that Winnie got into the University of Iowa. I’m so proud of her, imagine: already in university, and she’s really just a little girl . . . Anyway, as I was saying, this summer a friend of Winnie’s . . .’
Joyce was the secretary to the head of the department. A mature woman, with hair so blonde it looked bleached, eyes without brows, she was at least six foot two and easily weighed over 250 pounds: all this combined to give her a notorious cetacean air. The childish clothing she tended to wear (flowery dresses with flounces, silk ribbons in her hair and around her waist, flared or pleated skirts, kilts) and her innocent ponytails, as well as her habit of swaying down the corridors of the department like a subway car, humming charming popular children’s songs, contrasted starkly with her age and the boundless dimensions of her body. She was a widow and had but one passion: her daughter Winnie, the ups and downs of whose life each and every member of the department could expect to be punctually and personally informed of. At the end of the previous year, however, she made an exception: the day that Winnie received her acceptance from the University of Iowa, Joyce stood in front of the elevator door, on the fourth floor, shouting the news in a tone sounding vaguely like a radio announcer. Later, when the university police – alerted by someone who’d told them a fundamentalist preacher was causing trouble in the building – came to arrest her, Scanlan had to intervene to clear up the misunderstanding.
‘Excuse me for interrupting, Joyce,’ Mario cut expeditiously into the secretary’s discourse. Then, with the impression that he was about to formulate a question that would remain unanswered, he added, ‘I’m in a bit of a hurry. Could you be so kind as to explain what Professor Berkowickz is doing in my office?’
Joyce seemed disappointed: her eyes dulled. She sounded almost irritated. ‘Oh that,’ she said, turning away to sit down behind her desk. ‘Professor Scanlan wants to talk to you. He’ll probably explain it. I just follow orders,’ she concluded while smiling in a way Mario thought either stupid or worrying.
He knocked on Scanlan’s office door.
‘Come in,’ he heard.
He opened the door. Scanlan stood up and came over to shake his hand. He asked about the state of his ankle and how the accident had happened. Then he asked him to sit down in one of the leather chairs facing his desk and said, ‘Just let me finish signing these papers and then we’ll talk.’
Scanlan had been running the department with a firm hand for several years, combining demonstrable administrative capability with academic prestige cleverly carved out over the years not so much with intellectual tools as with political ones. He was getting on in years, a tall man, exaggeratedly slim, with complex, polite, almost cloying gestures. His hair, white and plastered down at the base of his skull and at his temples, lengthened, greying into a pointed goatee beard. Like fish swimming in a fishbowl, his eyes worried the lenses of his glasses. He dressed immaculately with a calculated touch of extravagance.
‘Joyce told me you wanted to speak to me,’ Mario said when Scanlan set aside the papers he’d been signing.
‘Well, there’s no rush,’ said Scanlan, smiling with all his teeth. ‘Really, it’s not so important. We can talk about it some other time more calmly.’
‘Whatever it is,’ said Mario, ‘I’d rather do it now.’
Scanlan lowered his eyes, shifted in his chair, changed position, pensively straightened the papers he’d just signed and stroked his beard. When he raised his gaze, the fish flashed anxiously behind the lenses of his glasses.
‘You’re right, it’s better to do it now,’ he agreed. His tone of voice had changed. ‘It can’t wait till later. Allow me to get straight to the point.’
‘I’d appreciate it,’ said Mario.
IX
‘As I believe you know,’ Scanlan began in a neutral voice, ‘the department is going through a difficult time economically. Actually it’s not just the department: the whole university is over a barrel. The state teaching subsidy has been reduced by five per cent compared to last year and, this past month, we have been obliged to bear a series of expenditures and anticipate others that have put us in the firing line. I’ll spare you the details: the circumstances don’t differ fundamentally from those I described at the last meeting we held in June; if they have changed, it’s for the worse. I don’t know if the elections are going to improve the outlook; what I do know is that at this moment it’s disheartening. I’m left with no option but to battle with it and, believe me, it’s no easy task: the main thing is to protect the general interests of the department, even if this adversely affects one individual. Well.’ He paused, ran his right hand over his hair, stroked his beard, went on in the same tone of voice. ‘On the other hand, as you must undoubtedly know as well, we have managed to attract a professor as prestigious as Daniel Berkowickz. I must admit it wasn’t easy. Between you and me, up to the last minute I didn’t believe we’d be able to achieve it: the conditions he demanded were virtually prohibitive. Nor will I hide from you that I’ve spared no effort to secure what I had set out to achieve. As you’ll understand, it’s barely possible to exaggerate the significance that the presence of someone at the forefront of linguistic investigation and with such an enviable CV might have for the department. But, as well as improving the department’s prestige, I am convinced that Berkowickz will be an invaluable stimulus for us all, even those who publish an article every five years in a third-rate journal.’
Since he’d seen the allusion coming, Mario was able to take it without batting an eye. He just pushed his glasses up his nose with one finger, and, as he noticed his right arm beginning to get faint pins and needles, he eased it off the brace of the crutch. When he heard Scanlan’s voice again he wondered if he might have stopped listening as he changed position.
‘At last we have him here.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘What do we have here?’ asked Mario, glancing over his shoulder.
‘Professor Berkowickz, of course,’ Scanlan explained kindly, without apparently registering Mario’s momentary lapse. He went on, ‘To do so we had to make him an offer that I wouldn’t hesitate to describe as attractive. Once again I’ll spare you the superfluous details and summarize; among other things we’ve guaranteed him a minimum of three courses per semester. You’ll understand that this affects you directly: your situation is going to have to change, but I’m convinced you’ll be able to accept the sacrifice for the good of the department.’
‘No, I won’t,’ Mario heard himself say. ‘Cut it short.’
Scanlan looked annoyed. He explained, ‘At the moment, we’re only able to offer you one course per semester. This means your salary will be reduced to a third of what you were earning. You’ll also have to keep in mind that taxes have gone up: we’ll all be feeling that. On the other hand, we mustn’t rule out the possibility that, student numbers permitting, we could at some point (not, of course, this semester) open a new course; naturally, that class would be yours. Moreover you could always apply for one of the research grants the university offers, or even one of the administrative posts from the rector’s office, although I fear they’re all taken for the time being. And it goes without saying that you can count on the department’s support and, if need be, on my own.
Mario didn’t listen to the last sentence of Scanlan’s speech. He blinked. He tried to put his ideas in order. Affecting a false self-assurance, he began, ‘Look, Scanlan, in my contract it states that the department –’
‘Mario,’ Scanlan gently checked him, ‘don’t make things any more difficult. I expect you realize you’re in no position to demand anything: if we’ve been able to offer you three courses up till now it’s because we had them. Things have changed now. As for your contract, don’t force me to tell you it’s not worth the paper it’s written on: it was hard enough keeping you here with all the pressure I’ve been getting. Rest assured you can be thankful not to have found your contract rescinded when you returned from your vacation.’
Mario blinked again. He mumbled something Scanlan didn’t hear, or pretended not to hear.
‘I suppose I don’t need to tell you either that any legal action would be counterproductive,’ added Scanlan. ‘You’d find yourself out of a job before you knew what hit you.’
‘Sons of bitches,’ Mario murmured in Italian.
‘What did you say?’ asked Scanlan.
Mario erased the comment with a gesture. Scanlan sighed.
‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘it’s a matter of tightening your belt for a while. I’m sure that by spring at the latest, if not after the elections, things will change.’
Mario stood up to leave. Perplexed, he noted that he didn’t feel resentful: a strange calm overcame him, as if nothing he’d just heard could really affect him, or as if instead of it happening to him he’d been told about it. That’s why he wasn’t surprised by Scanlan’s almost affectionate tone of voice.
‘I hope you’ll be coming to the house this afternoon,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Joan would like to see you. It’s at five.’
‘Of course,’ said Mario unthinkingly. ‘I’ll be there.’
As he left the office he reflected: I’ve gone crazy. Scanlan just practically fired me and I’m going to go to his party. And instead of protesting I say nothing. I’ve gone crazy.
X
‘Professor Rota,’ warbled Joyce at his back. ‘Let me show you your new office.’
Mario walked down the hall beside the secretary, whose voluminous body oscillated dangerously over the high heels of a pair of summer shoes, with tiny buckles. Joyce talked about a possible boyfriend for Winnie. They crossed paths with two graduate students who looked at Mario’s bandaged ankle and the crutch that supported his vacillating steps. They said hello; he returned their greetings. As they passed the office that until recently had been Mario’s, Joyce pointed, like someone finding a piece of information that confirmed a new hypothesis, at the pile of objects mounting up in the hallway: a portable fridge, books, cardboard boxes brimming with papers, dirty ashtrays. Mario said to himself that Berkowickz had found someone to help him with the clean-up. He also noticed that the office door was slightly open and caught a snippet of conversation, which he didn’t understand.
His new office was at the end of the hall, among the grad students’ offices. The door had a metal plaque with a number – 4024 – and two names: Olalde, Hyun. Humming through her teeth, Joyce wrestled with the lock; finally she opened the door.
‘Good morning, Professor Olalde,’ the secretary sang out. ‘I’ve brought you a new office-mate.’
Mario thought Joyce was making fun of him, but didn’t say anything. At the far end of the office Olalde looked up suspiciously from the heap of papers he had in front of him, arched his eyebrows, emitted a grunt and lowered his gaze again.
Olalde was Spanish, overweight, almost completely bald and rather ungainly. He leaned to the right when he walked, with one shoulder higher than the other, and never smiled, but when he opened his mouth he revealed a double row of uneven, ochre-coloured, quite deteriorated teeth. He was a bachelor, and some attributed this fact to his notorious lack of attention to personal hygiene. But the most striking feature of his physical appearance was the black patch held in place by a band that crossed from one side of his virtually bare skull to the other, covering his right eye and making him look like an ex-combatant, an appearance his broken-down frame did nothing to contradict. He taught Spanish literature and, despite his being one of the longest-standing members of the department, Mario knew that his opinion barely counted at decision-making time. Mario also knew he was a sort of scrap the department had decided to keep on for some reason that escaped him.
‘Professor
Olalde, as friendly and communicative as ever,’ said Joyce, addressing Mario with a voice tinged with animosity. ‘But don’t worry, Hyun is a charming young man. And you’ll see that, even though it doesn’t have air-conditioning, the office is very good. It’s just a matter of tidying it up a little. Oh, and before winter sets in we’ll get the heating fixed.’
The new office was no smaller than the old one, although Mario was going to have to share it with two colleagues. There were three desks covered in books and papers, with several drawers on each side, three revolving chairs, two metal cupboards, a filing cabinet with a coffee maker on top of it and some shelves built into the walls, where books piled up in perfect disorder. A picture window looking out on to a red-brick wall let in insufficient light. There were damp stains on the ceiling.
Joyce said, ‘I’m going to go get Sue to help us bring your things from the other office, Professor Rota. I’ll be right back.’
As soon as the secretary had left, Olalde raised his gaze from his papers and looked at Mario with his one eye. Then, as Mario took a seat, he stood up, as far as his stoop would allow, and lumbered towards him.
‘Don’t worry, young man,’ he said in a laboured and complicit English, as if he were confiding a secret. ‘That’s the way things work around here. What are you going to do?’
Since he thought Olalde wanted to console him, Mario replied drily, ‘I’m not worried.’ Then he thought and didn’t say: But I should be. He asked, ‘What makes you think I am?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Olalde repeated, ignoring Mario’s question. He went on without sarcasm, ‘Deep down this is paradise. You only have to look around: everything’s clean, everyone’s friendly, everything works – except this office, you understand. I suppose at first it was an accident, but later, when I saw that nothing worked here (pay no attention to whatever they might say, we’ll spend the winter without heating and no one will fix the broken pipes that soak the walls), once I realized that, it was me who requested staying here.’
The Tenant and The Motive Page 3
