The doorbell rang. The mare appeared in the doorway. Álvaro said he was very busy. The concierge neighed, and he couldn’t keep her from getting in as far as the dining room.
‘We haven’t seen each other for so long,’ she said, as if sighing. She screwed up her face in what might have meant to be a saucy smile or an affectionate reproach. ‘You’ve been neglecting me a bit, haven’t you?’
Álvaro concurred with resignation.
The woman asked in a sickly sweet voice, ‘How’s everything going?’
‘Badly,’ Álvaro replied harshly.
The concierge had stopped paying attention to him and looked distractedly around the room. She continued mechanically, ‘And why’s that?’
‘Smells like a stable,’ Álvaro croaked.
He remained standing, restlessly shifting his weight from one leg to the other. As if she hadn’t heard Álvaro’s incongruous answer, the concierge, who seemed to return from an abyss to trivial domestic concerns, went on with an air of surprise, ‘Hey, your apartment is an absolute mess. I think what’s needed here is a woman’s touch.’ She paused and immediately added solicitously, ‘Would you like me to lend you a hand?’
‘Nothing would displease me more, Señora,’ Álvaro answered, like a spring recoiling, in a tone of voice that blended in identical doses false and excessive kindness, mere insult and perhaps even a deer-like fear at any possible double meaning the phrase might contain.
The woman looked at him strangely. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, don’t be like that, man, tell me,’ she entreated with a flourish worthy of Florence Nightingale.
‘I’ve fucking had it up to here with you!’ he shouted.
The concierge regarded him first with surprise, then with a vaguely equine indignation.
‘I don’t think I deserve such treatment,’ she said. ‘I’ve only ever tried to be nice to you and help you as far as possible. If you didn’t want to see me again, you had only to tell me so.’
She started to walk out. Hand on the knob of the half-open door, she turned and said, almost begging, ‘You’re sure you don’t want anything?’
Gathering his patience, Álvaro suppressed an insult and whispered, ‘I’m sure.’
The concierge closed the door noisily. Álvaro stood in the middle of the dining room; his left leg was trembling.
He returned to his desk in an agitated state. He took several deep breaths and quickly recovered from the shock. Then he remembered that, during their second encounter, the concierge had told him about old man Montero’s fondness for chess. Álvaro told himself that was the flank he must attack. He had never been interested in the game and barely knew its rules, but that very morning he went to the nearest bookshop and bought a couple of manuals. For several days he studied them fervently, requiring yet another delay in the writing of the novel. Then he immersed himself in more specialized books. He acquired a certain theoretical command of the game, but he needed practice. He arranged to meet friends he’d given up some time ago. They accepted readily, because chess seemed no more than an excuse to renew a friendship broken off for absolutely no reason.
Álvaro would arrive with a briefcase containing notes, annotated books, blank sheets of paper, pencils and pens. Despite his friends’ best efforts, he barely conversed or drank during the matches. They couldn’t listen to music either, because Álvaro insisted it kept him from concentrating. A few brief words that also served as a greeting preceded without more ado the commencement of the game. As soon as it was over Álvaro would use some pressing engagement as an excuse and leave immediately.
When he had proved to his satisfaction that he could quash almost all the feeble resistance his opponents might muster, he dispensed with them and, to complete the perfection of his game, bought a computer against which he would play long, obsessive matches that kept him up till the small hours. During that time, he slept little and badly, and got up very early to resume feverishly the game abandoned the night before.
VI
The day he considered himself ready to face the old man, he got up, as usual, at eight on the dot. He took a cold shower and went down to the supermarket, but the old man did not appear. He loitered around the fruit counter, looking at the oranges, the pears, the lemons piled in wicker baskets. He asked the fruit seller when the strawberries would be arriving this year. Then he saw the old man. As the answer died on the edge of the shop assistant’s lips, Álvaro rushed off in pursuit of his neighbour, who was now heading for the checkout. On the way out of the establishment, he held the door open and let the old man go first. He walked beside him all the way home. He talked of the weather, of how dirty the steps were, of the number of door-to-door salesmen that had been pestering them in the building; to win his complicity, he made a malicious joke about the concierge. The old man looked at him with eyes of cold crystal and praised the concierge, who helped him with his housework; besides, he always thought their steps were the neatest in the neighbourhood. When they got to the front door, Álvaro changed the subject. He mentioned the computer he’d just bought: he used it principally to play chess.
‘I know it’s not for me to say, but the truth is I’m a better than average player,’ said Álvaro, feigning a cloying petulance.
The old man’s face sketched a hard smile.
‘You don’t say!’ he replied sarcastically.
Álvaro briefly recounted a few of his victories, in the most precise and technical terms he could think of, proposed a few variations he hadn’t used at the time and assured him that his computer had seven levels of difficulty and only after the fifth did it pose any challenges. Less surprised than irritated by his neighbour’s vanity, the old man announced that he too played chess. Álvaro seemed delighted. They arranged to play the following day in old man Montero’s apartment.
As he closed his door, Álvaro felt both satisfied and anxious. Satisfied because he had finally achieved his objective of getting inside the old man’s apartment and would now have at least the possibility of getting friendly with him. Anxious because perhaps he had gone too far, maybe he had seemed too sure of himself, he’d boasted excessively and may have put the whole operation at risk, given that, as was not rash to presume, if the old man played more brilliantly than he did and finished him off with ease, it would all be put down to the mere bluster of a neighbourhood braggart, and not only would he have wasted the enormous amount of time he’d invested in studying the game, but all possibility of forming any kind of relationship with the old man would practically disappear into thin air, which would endanger his chances of ever finishing the novel.
Troubled by the fear of failure, he began to go over openings he knew by heart. That’s when someone knocked at the door. Since he suspected it was the concierge, he didn’t even get up from his armchair. Ten minutes later the bell was still ringing. He opened the door in a rage without first looking through the peephole.
‘Hi!’ said the journalist with the granulated face. ‘Look, sorry to bother you, but I was just making some lunch when suddenly I realised I’d run out of potatoes and, since it’s so late, I’m sure the supermarket’s closed. So I said to myself, “Surely Álvaro can lend me a few. He’s so organized!”’
Álvaro remained sunk in impatient silence. He noticed his stomach hurt. Angst always seized him in the stomach.
‘Álvaro!’ demanded the journalist again. ‘Have you got a couple of potatoes?’
‘No.’
‘Any oil?’
‘Nope.’
‘OK, then give me a bit of salt.’
The journalist pushed into the dining room. Álvaro came back from the kitchen with a little bag filled with salt, offered it to her without handing it over and walked to the door. With a hand on the knob of the half-open door, he looked at the girl, who remained in the centre of the dining room with the air of someone visiting Roman ruins. For a moment she seemed much younger than he’d previously thought: in spite of he
r decisive manners and her false adult air, she was barely an adolescent. Where had he got the idea she was a journalist? In that case, she must still be studying for her degree, because she could hardly be twenty. ‘On veut bien être méchant, mais on ne veut point être ridicule.’ Ridiculing her would be an efficient antidote against the impertinence of her visits.
‘Hey,’ he said in an ironic tone, ‘you’ve really grown lately, haven’t you?’
The girl let out a sigh and smiled with resignation.
‘Whereas for you time stands still.’
Álvaro couldn’t help but blush. She helped him open the door the rest of the way and said goodbye. Álvaro stood with the door half closed, his left hand on the doorknob and in his right the bag of salt. He slammed the door closed and felt absolutely grotesque with the bag of salt in his hand. He hit himself on the head with it, then he threw it into the toilet and flushed. As he sat back down at his desk, he abruptly reflected on the coincidence that he and the concierge, at the most ludicrous point of their two most recent phenomenal performances, had both stood gripping the doorknob in their left hands while holding the door half closed. A cold shiver ran up his spine as he remembered the dream of the green hill with the white door and its golden doorknob; he smiled to himself and decided he should put all those symmetries to use in some future novel.
The bell rang again. This time he sneaked up to the door and, holding his breath, spied outside through the peephole. Irene Casares was standing outside with her shopping trolley. Álvaro glanced in the hall mirror, smoothed his chaotic hair and adjusted the knot of his tie.
He opened the door and they greeted each other warmly. Despite her protests, her insistence that she didn’t want to disturb him and that she still had to get lunch ready, he invited her into the living room. They sat down opposite each other. After an expectant pause, the woman declared that she’d come to thank him for all he’d done for her husband. He’d told her about his conduct and was full of gratitude. She said she didn’t know how they’d ever repay him (Álvaro made a vague magnanimous gesture with his hand, as if indicating that such a concern had never even entered his head) and that he should count on their friendship for absolutely anything. He then noticed the woman’s gentle serenity: her eyes were bright and blue, her voice clear, and her whole body emanated a freshness barely in keeping with her pauper-princess clothes.
Álvaro thanked her for the visit and for her kind words, played down the importance of his role, insisted that anyone in his place would have done the same. He offered her a cigarette, which she politely declined; he lit one. They talked about the dangers of smoking, about anti-tobacco campaigns. He assured her he’d tried several times, with the results she saw before her, to give up the vice. She declared she’d overcome it five years earlier and, with the excessive passion of the convert, listed one after another the unquestionable benefits such a success brought with it. Then she claimed her duties at home prevented her from enjoying his company any longer. When they were standing in the dining room, Álvaro said his job allowed him to keep abreast of developments in the labour market and he would not hesitate to use his influence, slight as it was, to help her husband find a job. She looked him in the eye with disconsolate candour and mumbled that he could not imagine how much that would mean to her family and, as her tremulous hands clutched the handle of the shopping trolley, she admitted their situation was desperate. She opened the door, gripping the doorknob in her left hand, and held it half open while she turned towards Álvaro as if trying to add something. He hurried to reiterate his promises, practically pushed the woman out the door and suggested that one of these days (this elastic expression would allow him to fix the date at the time best suited to his objectives) they must come over for dinner. Señora Casares accepted.
That night, when he got back from the office, Álvaro felt tired. As he was making something for dinner, he said to himself that perhaps he’d been working too hard lately, maybe he needed a holiday. He ate a meagre supper and sat down in front of the television. Around midnight, when he was getting ready for bed, he heard, amid the silence populated by nocturnal breathing, a key scrabbling at a neighbouring lock. Then a bang revealed an interior chain that prevented the door opening from the outside. Álvaro crouched behind his and spied through the peephole. The Casareses were quarrelling, one on either side of the slightly opened door. Despite the conversation being carried on in very low voices, Álvaro hoped the complicit silence of the building would allow him to record at least a few snippets of it. He ran to get the tape recorder, plugged it in near the door, put in a blank tape, pressed record and added all five of his senses to the mechanical memory of the recording.
The woman whispered that she was sick of him coming home so late and that, if he wasn’t able to behave like a decent person, it would be better if he found somewhere else to sleep. In a wine-soaked, imploring voice, her husband begged her to let him in (his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and his words were just a muffled murmur). He admitted he’d been out with his friends, that he’d been drinking; with a surge of vaguely virile indignation, he asked her what she expected him to do all day at home, idle and impotent, whether she wanted to watch him turn into an idiot from sitting through so much television, whether she wanted to see him get even fatter than he already was, eating like a pig all day. After a silence tinged by the husband’s heavy breathing, his wife opened the door.
Álvaro unplugged the tape recorder, ran down the hall with it, plugged it in again in the bathroom, sat down on the lid of the toilet, pressed record. His tiredness had disappeared; all his limbs were tense.
The man had raised his voice, grown bolder. The woman told him not to speak so loudly, the children were sleeping, and besides, the neighbours could hear them. The man shouted that he didn’t give a damn about the fucking neighbours. He asked his wife who she thought she was, she wasn’t going to tell him what to do, it had always been the same, she was always giving him stupid lessons and advice and he was fed up, that’s why he was in a situation like this, if he hadn’t married her, if she hadn’t reeled him in like an idiot, things would be very different now, he could have done what he really wanted, he wouldn’t have had to come to live in this city that sickened him, he wouldn’t have had to take whatever job he could find to earn a shitty wage in order to support a damned family . . .
The man shut up. In the silence, disturbed only by the faint hum of the cassette recorder, female sobbing could be heard. Álvaro listened attentively. He feared they could hear the buzzing of the cassette and covered it with his body. The woman was crying silently. Through the little window came the signature tune of a night-time radio programme. Someone else was sobbing: it was the man. He was also mumbling words that Álvaro could only make out as an incomprehensible whispering.
He sensed caresses and consoling words from the other side. It was the end of the session.
He unplugged the tape recorder stealthily, carried it into the dining room and rewound the cassette. A rumble in his stomach reminded him that he was ferociously hungry. He went to the kitchen, made some ham and cheese sandwiches and took them into the living room on a tray along with a can of beer. As he wolfed them down avidly, he listened to the tape. He thought the quality of the recording was tolerable and its contents magnificent. With the satisfaction of a duty fulfilled, he got into bed and slept solidly for seven hours.
That night he once again walked across a very green meadow with neighing horses who were so white it frightened him a little. In the distance he made out the gentle slope of the hill and imagined that he was enclosed in an enormous cavern, because the sky looked like steel or stone. He effortlessly walked up the slope where there were no birds, or clouds, or anybody. A sharp wind began to blow and his extremely long hair swept across his mouth and eyes. He noticed that he was naked, but he didn’t feel cold: he felt nothing but the desire to reach the green crest of the hill with no birds, the white door with the golden doorknob. And he willing
ly accepted that on the damp grass at the top rested a pen and blank piece of paper, a dilapidated typewriter and a tape recorder emitting a metallic hum. And when he opened the door he already knew he wouldn’t be able to get through it, and despite the fact that what he was looking for lay in wait on the other side, something or someone would tempt him to turn around, to stand at the crest of the green hill, turned back towards the meadow, his left hand on the golden doorknob, the white door half open.
VII
The next day he went up to the old man’s place. On the table in the dining room with its faded wallpaper, a board bristling with bellicose figures showed that Montero was waiting for him. For a moment Álvaro lost the certainty with which he’d shaken that decrepit rival hand as he came in. The old man offered him something to drink: Álvaro graciously declined.
They sat down at the table.
He knew it was necessary, in order to achieve his aim, to maintain a difficult balance. On the one hand, his play should reveal enough ability so as not to bore the old man – a premature victory would throw all Álvaro’s expectations overboard – but also to keep him under pressure for the whole match and, if possible, make his own superiority evident, in order to stimulate the old man’s desire to battle him again. On the other hand – and this condition was perhaps as indispensable as the former – he must lose, at least this first confrontation, to flatter the old man’s vanity, to break through his gruff hostility and perhaps lead him to become more communicative and allow for a relationship between the two of them that would be closer and more durable than that granted merely by combat over a chessboard.
The Tenant and The Motive Page 11
