The Tenants

by Bernard Malamud

  Entering his flat, Harry stowed away his groceries and returned to listen in the hall. He walked stealthily past one shut door and one missing. He dipped his head into the dark open room. Nothing he could truly hear. Scouting the other side of the hall, he paused longer before each door to the end of the floor, tightly attentive to whence the continuous clicking. Again crossing the hall he located it finally next door to his, in Holzheimer’s flat, astonished to have wandered far to find it close.

  He was wishing Holzheimer were here to keep him company in this unpeopled place. Of course the old man was gone; and besides he couldn’t type. The door was ajar. Lesser, head bent, listened. Plak plak plakity plak. Had Levenspiel set up a spy office here, CIA sub-headquarters for tuning in on Harry Lesser engaged in writing a subversive novel? Every letter he typed on paper, neatly bugged, flashed on a screen in the Attorney General’s office, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.? To end the suspense he gave the open door an adventurous thrust and it squeakily swung in. He was set to run but nobody emerged; he had to enter.

  In Holzheimer’s former kitchen, facing the wintry windows, sat a black man at a wooden kitchen table, typing, his back to Lesser. Though the room was perceptibly cold—the radiators and steam pipes removed, pipe openings sealed to prevent flooding, he wore overalls cross-strapped over a green hand-knit sweater rubbed through at the white-shirted elbows. The black seemed at first a large man, but it turned out that his typewriter was large, and he, though broad-shouldered, heavy-armed, and strongly built, was of medium height. His head was bent over an old L. C. Smith, vintage of pre-World War I, resembling a miniature fortress.

  The man, head bowed in concentration, oblivious of Lesser, typed energetically with two thick fingers. Harry, though impatient to be at his work, waited, experiencing at least two emotions: embarrassment for intruding; anger at the black intruder. What does he think he’s doing in this house? Why has he come?—where from?—and how will I get rid of him? Who’s got the time? He thought of phoning Levenspiel, but maybe he had booked the act. Having waited this long for acknowledgment of his presence—it was not in him to interrupt a man writing—also for a few basic facts of information, he waited longer. The black must have known someone was standing there because the open door created a draft and once Lesser sneezed; but he did not turn to look at him or whoever. He typed in serious concentration, each word slowly thought out, then hacked onto paper with piston-like jabs of his stubby, big-knuckled fingers. The room shook with his noise. This endured for five full minutes as Lesser fumed. When the typist turned his head, a goateed man, darkly black-skinned, there seemed in his large liquid eyes poised in suspension as he stared at the writer a detachment so pure it menaced; at the same time a suggestion of fright Lesser felt reflected Lesser’s. His head was large, lips moderately thick, sensuous, nose wings extended. His eyes, in concentration, swelled; but he was youthful and not bad-looking, as though he considered himself not a bad-looking man and that helped. Despite the chill he seemed to be sweating.

  “Man,” he complained, “can’t you see me writing on my book?”

  Harry apologetically admitted he had. “I’m a writer myself.”

  That brought forth neither lightning nor thunder, nor small degree of admiration. The black stared at Lesser as though he hadn’t heard, and the writer thought he might even be a little deaf until the man reacted: breathed in relief—knew now he wasn’t dealing with the landlord? Had been bluffing? A smile seemed possible but did not come to pass.

  On the table at the black writer’s left lay a pile of well-worn, somewhat soiled, manuscript from which it seemed to Harry an unpleasant odor rose. He noticed then the man had his orange work shoes off and was sitting there writing in white wool tennis socks. Even now he wiggled his toes. Hard to say whether the sulphurous smell came from the manuscript or the feet on the floor. Maybe it’s me, Lesser thought, smell of fear? Anyway, something malodorous.

  Then to make his point, the point of it all—the reason he had waited to speak to the black and give notice —Lesser said, “I live here alone in this building, alone on the floor. I’m trying to finish a book.”

  The stranger responded to the news, rolling his eyes in thought.

  “Baby, it’s a hard and lonely life.” His voice was low, resonant, raspy. As though relating a decision decisively arrived at, he then remarked, “I’ll be working around here daily as of now on and according to the way circumstances go.”

  “You mean Levenspiel’s letting you?” Lesser felt on the verge of frantic. He saw in the man’s presence on the floor a serious threat, perhaps latest variation of the landlord’s tactics of harassment.

  “Which cat is that?”

  “The owner of these premises, hard-luck guy. Haven’t you met him—I mean wasn’t it his suggestion that you work here?”

  The black casually denied it. “I got no interest in any Jew landlord. Just come on this place while hunting around and entered quickly. I found this table in the cellar and the chair in a room down under here, but the light is better up high so I moved them up. I been looking for a private place to do my writing.”

  “What sort of writing if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Now that’s a personal question and what I am writing is my own business.”

  “Of course. All I meant, out of curiosity, was are you writing fiction or something else?”

  “It might be fiction but ain’t nonetheless real.”

  “Nobody said it wasn’t.”

  The black said his chick was an Off-Broadway actress. “Mornings when she ain’t out working, which is whenever she ain’t rehearsing, the apartment’s too tight for the both of us. She hangs around mixing up in my thoughts and I can’t get my ass to my work. I’m not saying I don’t appreciate her company, especially when my meat’s frying, but not when I have something I got to write.”

  Lesser nodded; he knew the story.

  He told the stranger Levenspiel had been trying to force him out so he could wreck the building.

  “But I’m rent-controlled so he’s stuck with me for a while. Harry Lesser’s my name.”

  “Willie Spearmint.”

  No handshake though Harry was willing, in fact had stuck out his white paw. There it remained—ex—tended. He was, in embarrassment, tempted to play for comedy: Charlie Chaplin, with his moth-eaten mustache, examining his sensitive mitt to see if it was a hand and not a fish held forth in greeting before he told it to come back home; but in the end Lesser withdrew it, no criticism of anyone intended or implied. Who said anybody had to shake somebody else’s hand? That wasn’t in the Fourteenth Amendment. He was tempted then to explain that he had, as a boy, for years lived at the edge of a teeming black neighborhood in South Chicago, had had a friend there; but in the end skipped it. Who cares?

  Lesser felt ashamed he had bothered Willie Spearmint. If a man typed—a civilized act—let him type where he would. Mind your business.

  “Sorry I interrupted you. Better be getting back to my own work now—on my third novel.”

  No response from Willie other than the absentminded descent of a nod.

  “It was a surprise to find somebody else up here typing away. I had got used to being the only man on the island.”

  Though tempted not to—he bit his tongue for time was of the essence, he was late getting to work—Lesser heard himself say, “Well, pardon again, I hate interruptions myself. Still, knock on my door if you have to, should you need something—eraser, pencil, whatever. I’m in the flat on your left and generally free in the late afternoon after the day’s work, the later the better.”

  Willie Spearmint, obviously a dedicated man, stretched both green-sleeved arms aloft, wiggling his stubby fingers with ease and contentment so that Lesser envied him, then bent over the large black machine and, focusing on the words, went on plakity plak as before. If Lesser was still present he didn’t seem to know it.

  Harry reflected in his study how much he had liked, all things con
sidered, being alone on the top floor. I think of myself as a lonely guy, which is to say I am the right man for the work I do, which is to say, in these circumstances. I may hate going up six dark flights wondering who am I going to meet next, man or beast—but otherwise I’ve enjoyed this big empty house. Lots of room for the imagination to run around in. Fine place to work when Levenspiel is somewhere collecting his rents, or otherwise keeping busy. The truth of it is I could do without Willie Spearmint.

  Shortly after noon—after a nearby siren yelped for a few seconds to remind one, if he had forgotten, of the perilous state of the world—Willie kicked on Lesser’s door with the heel of his shoe, holding in both arms, in fact weighed down by it, his massive typewriter. Lesser, for a surprised second, couldn’t imagine why he had come, was startled by the sight of him. Willie wore a blue-and-purple sack-like woolen African tunic over his overalls. His hair wasn’t Afro-styled, as Lesser had thought, but combed straight as though against the grain, with a part on the left side, and raised in back like a floor plank that had sprung up. The stringy goatee flowering under his chin lengthened his face and seemed to emphasize the protrusive quality of his eyes, more white than brown. Standing, he was about five ten, taller than Lesser had imagined.

  “Could I park this gadget here till the morning? I would hate to have it stolen out of my office. I been hiding it in the closet but that ain’t hiding, if you dig.”

  Lesser, after hesitation, dug. “Are you through for the day?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Nothing, I only thought—”

  “I go on from eight to twelve or thereabouts,” said the black, “full four hours’ work and then goof off—visit friends and such. Writing down words is like hitting paper with a one-ton hammer. How long do you stay on it?”

  Lesser told him about six hours a day, sometimes more.

  Willie uneasily said nothing.

  Harry asked about his manuscript. “Wouldn’t you like to leave that too? Needless to say I’d respect its privacy.”

  “No siree, man. That stays with papa. I have my briefcase for that.”

  A bulky zippered briefcase was squeezed under his left arm.

  Lesser understood how he felt. The safety of your manuscript was a constant worry. He kept a copy of his in a metal box in a nearby bank.

  “About what time will you be coming for the machine?”

  “Make it like eight or around that if it’s no skin off you. If I miss a day don’t fret on it.”

  This man’s making me a daily chore. But on consideration Lesser said, “I’m up then except on Sundays.”

  “Sundays I ball my sweet bitch.”

  “Well, I envy you that.”

  “No need to, man, there’s meat all around.”

  “The women I meet generally want to get married.”

  “Stay away from that type,” advised Willie.

  He lugged his typewriter into Lesser’s flat and after surveying the living room laid it with a grunt under a small round table near the window, with a potted geranium in a saucer on it.

  “It’ll be handy here.”

  The writer offered no objection.

  “Man, oh man.” Willie gazed around in envious pleasure at the shelves crammed with books, books on their backs, magazines, some small objects of art. He inspected Lesser’s hi-fi, then slowly shuffled through a stack of records, reading aloud titles and artists, mocking some of the names he couldn’t pronounce. A Bessie Smith surprised him.

  “What’s this girl to you?”

  “She’s real, she talks to me.”

  “Talking ain’t telling.”

  Lesser wouldn’t argue.

  “Are you an expert of black experience?” Willie slyly asked.

  “I am an expert of writing.”

  “I hate all that shit when whites tell you about black.”

  Willie roamed into Lesser’s study. He sat at his desk, fingered his typewriter, tested the daybed mattress, opened the closet, peered in, shut the door. He stood at the wall examining some small prints the writer had collected.

  Lesser explained about his movie money. “I made forty thousand dollars on a film sale about eight years ago and took it all in deferred payments. Less my agent’s commission and living on roughly four thousand a year, I’ve done fine until now.”

  “Man, if I had that amount of bread I’d be king of Shit Mountain. What are you going to do after it’s gone?”

  “It’s almost gone. But I expect to finish my book by summer, or maybe before if my luck holds out. The advance on it should carry me into the next book another two or three years. That’ll be a shorter one than this.”

  “Takes you that long, I mean like three years?”

  “Longer, I’m a slow writer.”

  “Raise up your speed.”

  Willie took a last look around. “This is a roomy pad. Why don’t we party here some night real soon? Not this week but maybe next. I’m full up this.”

  Lesser was willing. Though he didn’t say so, he hoped Willie would bring along a lady friend or two. He had never slept with a black girl.

  Willie Spearmint usually knocked on Harry Lesser’s door at a quarter to eight. The end-of-year weather was bad and now, as he wrote, the black kept his orange shoes on and wore a thick blood-red woolen hat against the cold. He pulled it down over his ears and kept his tunic on. Harry offered to have an old heater fixed he would then lend to him, but Willie. said that once he got going with the writing it warmed him to his toes.

  Not so Lesser. Some days he typed with a scarf around his neck and his overcoat spread on his knees. His feet froze even with the heater going.

  If it had been sleeting or heavily snowing, Willie’s goatee, when he appeared at the door in the early morning, was laced with ice or snow. He beat his wet hat against Lesser’s door to knock off the slush. Sometimes he looked unsettled, sullen to a degree the weather couldn’t account for. And except for picking up his machine and returning it at noon, he had little to say to Harry and requested not even a glass of water during the day although the faucets had been removed and sealed off in Holzheimer’s kitchen. Fortunately the toilet in Mr. Agnello’s flat diagonally across the hall flushed once in a while so he relieved himself there when he had to.

  One drizzly morning, Harry, stuck for a transition between scenes, was standing at the window trying to draw up an idea out of the street, the city, the human race, when he saw Levenspiel drive up in front of the pockmarked gray house across the street and park his Oldsmobile at the curb. The landlord gazed up at the window just as the writer was drawing down the shade. Lesser went at once to Willie’s place and knocked on the door. No response, so he turned the knob and, calling out his own name, entered.

  Willie was sucking the point of a yellow pencil stub over a difficult spot in his manuscript. He gazed at Lesser in anger at the interruption.

  Lesser said the landlord was on his way up.

  The black glared at him in haughty coldness.

  “Fuck his ass.”

  “Fine,” Lesser said uncomfortably, “but I thought I’d let you know.” He apologized for barging in. “I wasn’t sure you’d heard my knock.”

  Willie’s expression as he contemplated the page he was working on slowly altered. He seemed uncertain, concerned if not worried.

  “How will that dude know I’m here if I sit still and don’t move the air? He don’t go around peeking in every apartment, does he?”

  Lesser didn’t think so. “Usually he comes up to nudgy me while I’m writing, but he might just walk into your place when you weren’t expecting it. That’s his type. My advice is you ought to duck down to the floor below and wait till he’s gone. Take your manuscript with you and I’ll hide the typewriter. I’ll let you know the minute he leaves.”

  They quickly carried out the operation, Willie going down to the fifth floor with his briefcase, hastily stuffed, and Lesser hid the L. C. Smith in his bathtub. Not that Levenspiel would get his intrusi
ve foot in the door, but one never knew. Every six months, just to be a nuisance, he insisted on his prerogative to inspect the flat.

  The landlord several minutes later pressed Lesser’s bell, then knocked sternly on the door. The writer pictured him coming up the stairs, breathing noisily, holding the banister all the way. Levenspiel rolled a little as he walked. Better he saved himself the long trek; he looked like a heart attack type.

  “Open up a minute, why the hell don’t you?” Levenspiel called, “so I can talk to you man to man.”

  “I’m hard at work,” Lesser answered from the living room, scanning a newspaper as he waited for the landlord to go. “Nothing new to report. The writing moves, there’s progress.”

  A moment of listening silence. When he spoke, Levenspiel’s rumble was throaty, low, closer to the self, as though he had gone for a walk in the park, thought things over, and was trying for better effect.

  “You remember,” he said, “I told you about my daughter, Lesser?”

  Lesser remembered. “The knocked-up girl?”

  “That’s right. So she took her pennies out of the savings account that she started at age six and bought herself an abortion according to the new law. God knows what kind of a doctor she got, I’ve heard stories. Anyway, she didn’t consult me for advice. The upshot was they penetrated the uterus with a curette and a hemorrhage started. My wife is frantic about blood poisoning. I’m on my way to the hospital to see my baby in intensive care.”

  “I’m sorry, Levenspiel.”

  “I just thought I’d tell you. You can’t tell everybody such things, but I thought maybe to a writer.”

  “Accept my sympathy.”