The Tenant and The Motive

by Javier Cercas

  The old man’s opening didn’t surprise him. Álvaro responded cautiously; the first moves were predictable. But Montero soon spread his pieces in an attack that seemed hasty to Álvaro and for that very reason disconcerting. He tried to defend himself in an orderly fashion, but his nervousness intensified by the minute while he observed that his opponent proceeded with ferocious certainty. Totally disconcerted, he left a knight in an exposed position and had to sacrifice a pawn to save it. He found himself in an uncomfortable situation and Montero didn’t appear prepared to cede the initiative. The old man commented in a neutral tone of voice that his last move had been unfortunate and could cost him dearly. Spurred by the tinge of scorn or threat he thought he’d recognized in the words, Álvaro tried to pull himself together. A couple of anodyne moves from the old man gave him some breathing space and he was able to stabilize his position. He took a pawn and evened up the match. Then old man Montero made an error: in two moves, the white bishop, surrounded, would be at Álvaro’s mercy. He thought the advantage he’d gain from taking this piece would oblige him, if he didn’t want to win the game, to play very much below the level he’d been playing up till then. This would allow for the possibility of awakening suspicions in the old man, who wouldn’t understand how Álvaro could lose in such favourable conditions, with his level of skill. He manoeuvred his way out of taking the bishop. The match evened out.

  Then Álvaro tried to begin a conversation; old man Montero answered in monosyllables or evasions: he’d realized that Álvaro wasn’t going to be easily defeated and was entirely immersed in the match. Evidently, some time would have to pass before the old man would let down his guard, before the relationship between the two of them could progress to anything more than a matter of rivalry. In any case, there was no sense in rushing: if his host, with his unhealthy mistrust, sensed a suspiciously premature attempt at friendship, he might react by fortifying his defences, precluding any viable future relationship.

  The old man won the match. He could not conceal his satisfaction. Affectionate and expansive, he discussed the layout of the board at the moment of check for a while, put the pieces back into the positions they’d been in when he conceived his final assault, discussed a few minor details, proposed possible variations. Álvaro declared that he wouldn’t be exaggerating if he described the move as perfection. The old man offered him a glass of wine. Álvaro said to himself that wine loosens the tongue and leads to confidences, but remembered he’d opted for prudence on this first visit and decided, for the time being, to leave old man Montero with his appetite for conversation. Feigning resentment at the defeat – which would obviously feed the old man’s vanity even further – he made an excuse and, once they’d set up another match for the following week, said goodbye.

  VIII

  From that day on he devoted himself entirely to writing the novel. His feverish work was interrupted only by the Casareses’ regular confrontations. The arguments provoked by drunkenness and evenings out were unfailingly followed by caresses and reconciliations. Álvaro had acquired such prowess in his recording skill that he no longer needed to witness – unless a passing setback in the rhythm of his work suggested he draw on this crudely real stimulus – the often wearisome and always repetitive arguments. He had only to turn on the tape recorder at the right moment and go straight back to his study and carry on calmly with his work. On the other hand, the deterioration of their relationship had begun to have repercussions on the external appearance of the Casareses: the slight tendency to corpulence that used to give him a confidently satisfied air had now turned into an oily and servile obesity, her almost Victorian pallor to a whitish and withered skin that revealed her fatigue.

  Álvaro did not regret that the journalist hadn’t returned to ask for potatoes or salt. He recognized, however, the danger involved in the state of relations with the concierge. No one could ever exaggerate the power of concierges, he told himself. And openly confronting his own was a risk he should not take: so he tried to make up with her.

  He went down to visit her again. He explained that there are moments in a man’s life when he is not himself, when he flies off the handle and is unable to control himself. In those ill-fated instances, nothing he does or says should be taken as representative, but rather as a sort of malevolent manifestation of a momentary wretched temper. For this reason he begged her to excuse him if, at any time, his conduct towards her had not been as gentlemanly as she had every right to expect from him.

  The concierge accepted his apology with delight. Álvaro hurried to add that he found himself at a particularly delicate point in his career just then, something which not only might explain his possible bursts of bad temper, but also demanded his total and exclusive commitment to his work, making it absolutely impossible for him to cultivate and enjoy her company for some time. Nothing was more disagreeable to him, but he was obliged to postpone their friendship until circumstances became more favourable. This, of course, should not prevent their relationship, despite developing on a strictly superficial level, being ruled by an exemplary cordiality. Bewitched by Álvaro’s florid self-exonerating rhetoric like a snake by the sound of the charmer’s flute, the concierge willingly agreed to everything.

  The chess games continued in old man Montero’s apartment. Álvaro was pleased to note they always remained under his control: he decided the exchanges of men, foresaw the attacks, dictated the mood of play and doled out a calculated alternation of victories and defeats that kept up the rivalry and invited intimacy between the two adversaries. Gradually the pre- or post-match conversations grew longer until they began to take up more time than the game itself. He was initially surprised to observe that the old man consumed startling quantities of alcohol for a man of his age, which gave him a disordered and obsessive loquacity. Álvaro awaited his moment.

  Old man Montero spoke mostly about politics. He had always voted for the far right and thought democracy was an illness only weak nations suffered from, because it implied that the ruling elite had declined their responsibility and left it to the amorphous masses, and a country without an elite was a country that was lost. Furthermore, it was based on a fantasy, universal suffrage: a concierge’s vote could not be worth as much as a lawyer’s vote. Álvaro nodded and the old man was soon bitterly criticising the government. His darts, however, were mainly directed at the right-wing parties. He felt they’d backed down from their principles, had reneged on their origins. Álvaro was occasionally moved by the emotional rancour of his reproaches.

  He also talked about his military past. He’d fought in the battle of Brunete and at the Ebro, and he recounted moving tales of memorable deaths, bombardments and heroism. One day he told how he’d seen General Valera in the distance; another, he described a provisional ensign dying in his arms, bleeding to death as they took him to a first aid post far from the front line. Once in a while tears would fall.

  Álvaro understood the old man’s mistrust wasn’t directed at concrete individuals, but was a general animosity against the world, a sort of festering reaction of generosity betrayed.

  His only daughter lived in Argentina; sometimes she wrote to him. For his part, he was keeping his life’s savings to leave to his grandchildren. One day, in the midst of alcohol-induced exaltation, and after a mention of his heirs, he assured Álvaro with pride that he had much more money than his modest life might lead one to suspect. With similar pride, he declared his distrust of banks, mean inventions of usurious Jews. Then he stood up (there was an intoxicated sparkle in his viscous eyes) and revealed a safe built into the wall, hidden behind an imitation of a neutral landscape painting.

  Álvaro shuddered.

  After a few seconds Álvaro reacted and said that for some time he’d been kicking around the idea of withdrawing his money from the bank and putting it in a safe, but he hadn’t made up his mind to do so because he wasn’t entirely convinced they were secure and he’d been very lazy about going to a shop and finding out. With as much en
thusiasm as if he were trying to sell it, the old man extolled the virtues of the strongbox and took his time over an explanation of the workings of its simple mechanism. He claimed it was much safer than a bank and said he only closed his when he left the house.

  That very day, Álvaro invited the Casareses to dinner.

  At nine on the dot they arrived at his door. They had dressed up for the occasion. She wore an old-fashioned violet-coloured dress, but her hairstyle was elegant and the shadow of make-up darkening her lips, eyelids and cheeks paradoxically enhanced the pallor of her face. He was stuffed into a tight suit, and his enormous belly only allowed one button of the jacket to be done up, leaving exposed the flowered front of an Asturian baptism shirt.

  Álvaro was about to laugh to himself at the Casareses’ pathetic appearance, but he quickly realised that this dinner represented an important social occasion for them and he felt a sort of compassion towards the couple. This filled him with great self-confidence, and so, while they had the aperitif he’d prepared and listened to the records he’d recently acquired, he found topics of conversation that alleviated the relative initial awkwardness and relaxed the stiffness that gripped them. They talked about almost everything before sitting down at the table and Álvaro couldn’t help but notice that the woman nervously smoked one cigarette after another, but he refrained from making any comment.

  During the meal, the man talked and laughed with a booming cheerfulness that seemed excessive to Álvaro and, in spite of her haggard appearance, the woman was visibly pleased at her husband’s contagious vitality. Álvaro, nevertheless, conscious of the respect he inspired, did not release the reins of the dialogue, and although he tended to be inhibited when faced with a personality more vigorous or excessive than his own, he succeeded in bringing the conversation on to his terrain. He talked of daily life in the neighbourhood, of the strange relationships that grew up between neighbours, invented some dubiously diverting discord among the concierges. Then he concentrated on his relationship with old man Montero: their long chess matches, the conversations that preceded and followed them, the taciturn initial mistrust only gradually mellowed by time and with difficulty. He also took his time enumerating the many details that made the man eccentric. Over coffee and cognac, he enquired discreetly about his neighbour’s employment situation. The couple turned gloomy. The husband said it was all still the same and he still didn’t know how to thank him for all the trouble he’d taken. Álvaro said he considered himself paid by the satisfaction he received from fulfilling an obligation as friend and neighbour. He said, for his part, he’d made enquiries within his limited sphere, but without results. In his view, the situation didn’t look set to improve, at least not in the short term. In any case, he would continue with his enquiries and, as soon as he heard of any job, tell him immediately.

  They carried on chatting for a while, arranged to get together again on the following Tuesday and said goodnight.

  IX

  He threw himself into feverish activity that week. Now he also wrote at night: when he got home from the office he took a shower, ate a light supper and shut himself back up in his study. As the novel approached its end, the rhythm of his writing slowed down, but at the same time his certainty grew that the chosen path was the right one. In order not to waste the two mornings a week he went upstairs to the old man’s place, the previous evenings would find him in bed very early, so he could get up at five the next morning and have almost five working hours at his disposal before confronting the chessboard. The Casareses’ arguments were getting worse and it wasn’t difficult for him to detect, the next time they came to dinner at his place, that the hostility between them had increased. That day they didn’t arrive dressed as if for a religious celebration. This presupposed a greater level of trust, which not only allowed him to conduct and express himself more naturally, but also permitted the resentment the two of them had been harbouring lately to eventually rise to the surface. Álvaro again dominated the conversation and it hardly took any effort to centre it, now almost without pretence that it was merely a chance turn in the wanderings of the dialogue, on old man Montero. He again mentioned his eccentricities, explained in great detail the location of the wall safe, described its simple mechanism and assured them it contained a great fortune. Later, he spoke about the old man’s poor health and absolute isolation; he made a special point of emphasizing the almost mathematical exactitude of his comings and goings each day, the unwavering nature of his daily routine; lastly, he said that he only closed the safe when he was about to leave the house.

  In vain he awaited a reaction from the couple. They would change the subject as soon as a silence opened in Álvaro’s monotonous obsessive talk. At first he thought it was just a matter of time but, as they dined together repeatedly and he gradually constrained the conversation to this single theme, the Casareses’ indifference turned into irritation and impatience. One day they jokingly begged him to talk of something else for once and Álvaro, smiling and annoyed, asked for their forgiveness: ‘It’s just that it strikes me as a fascinating subject,’ he said, sounding fascinated. Another time they alluded to the theme as his ‘persecution mania’ and he, feeling they were trying to ridicule him, replied harshly, as if repelling unexpected aggression. On another occasion, the couple took the liberty of inviting the journalist with the eruptive face to introduce an element of variation to their gettogethers, but Álvaro practically ignored her, and that day insisted on talking about the old man more than ever. As they left, the Casareses stood chatting with the journalist for a few minutes on the landing. They confessed they were worried about Álvaro. For a while now he hasn’t seemed well; so much solitude couldn’t be good for anybody.

  ‘Solitude borders on madness,’ said the man, as if repeating a sentence prepared in advance for that moment.

  There was silence. The girl’s eyes – two blue, attentive apples – opened wide.

  ‘Something will end up happening to him,’ the woman added, with that fatalism that passes for wisdom among the humble.

  Álvaro was worried, not only because the couple didn’t react as he’d expected, but also what really exasperated him was that their relationship had improved markedly: the fights had stopped, the dinners at his place seemed to reconcile them even further and their physical appearance had regained its lost vigour. But there was something worse: he was unable to find a fitting finale for his novel, and when he thought he had hit upon one, the difficulties of execution eventually discouraged him. He needed to find a solution.

  But it was the solution that found him. He’d been trying to write all morning without any results. He went out for a walk in the autumn light and dry leaves. On his way back, he met the Casareses in the entrance hall, waiting for the lift. They were carrying several bags and, wrapped in brown paper, a long object that widened at its bottom end. Álvaro thought incongruously that it was an axe. A shiver ran down his spine. The Casareses greeted him with a cheerfulness that Álvaro judged incomprehensible or perhaps only artificial; they told him they were coming back from the city centre where they’d been doing some shopping; they commented on the nice weather and said goodbye on the landing.

  After a brief tussle, he managed to unlock the door. Once inside he collapsed in an armchair in the living room and, with trembling hands, lit a cigarette. He had not the slightest doubt about what the Casares planned to use the axe for, but nor did he doubt – he thought with a start of euphoria – the ending he’d give to his novel. And then he wondered – perhaps due to that insidious intellectual habit that led one to consider every objective a deception once it’d been achieved – if finishing it was really worth the old man’s death and almost certainly the eventual imprisonment of the couple, because amateurs would commit errors that the police could not fail to notice. He felt a terrible pressure in his chest and throat. He thought he’d call the Casareses and persuade them to abandon their project; he’d convince them it was madness, that the idea hadn’t even come
from them: only he, Álvaro, was responsible for these atrocious machinations. He’d convince them they were going to destroy their lives and those of their children because, even if the police didn’t find them out, how would they be able to live with themselves with the weight of this crime on their consciences, how could they look their children in the eye without shame? But perhaps it was already too late. They had made their decision. And he, had he not made his as well? Had he not decided to sacrifice everything to his Work? And if he had sacrificed himself, why should he not sacrifice others? Why be more generous to old man Montero and the Casareses than he was to himself?

  Then there was a knock at the door. It was almost midday and he wasn’t expecting anybody. Who could be looking for him at this time of day? With a shiver of fear, with resignation, almost with relief, he thought he understood. He’d been mistaken: the Casares weren’t going to kill the old man, they were going to kill him. In a flash of lucidity, he thought that maybe his neighbours had found out that he could have appealed the dismissal letter and secured Enrique Casares’ job for him, but for some reason unknown to them – although no less despicable for that – had refused to do so, ruining their lives and then amateurishly inciting them to murder old man Montero. But if they killed him, they’d not only get revenge on the one responsible for their disgrace, they could also keep his money – money that perhaps legitimately belonged to them – because now he sensed, through the uncertain fog of his derangement, that it was not impossible, during their latest obsessive encounters, that he would have told them that he himself had recently decided to keep all his savings in a wall safe similar to the old man’s.

  He looked out through the peephole. His neighbour was indeed waiting on the landing, but his hands were empty. Álvaro opened the door. Enrique Casares stammered, said they were fixing a window and needed a screwdriver; he asked if he’d mind lending them his for a while; that evening, at the latest, they’d bring it back. Álvaro asked him to wait in the living room and a moment later returned with the screwdriver. He didn’t notice that Enrique Casares’ hand was shaking as he took it from him.