The Tenants

by Bernard Malamud

  “What’s this for?”

  “For our luck,” said Mary. “Okay now?”

  They lay in bed, passing a cigarette back and forth.

  He asked her whether she had ever come with anybody.

  “I huff and puff with Sam to make him feel good but I don’t really think I have.”

  He said she would.

  “I almost did with you.”

  “How long haven’t you ?”

  “I don’t want to think about that.”

  “Do you have any idea why you don’t?”

  “Unless it was because I was raped when I was little, which happened to me on the cellar stairs after he dragged me down there.”

  “Jesus—who ?”

  “This redhead nigger neighbor boy from upstairs. His daddy was white and beat the shit out of his black mother. My mama said it got the boy so frustrated he hated everybody and wanted to hurt them. He finally got sent away.”

  “Tell me, Lesser,” said Mary after a while, “do your girls come all of the time?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “Do they come more than once?”

  “One used to.”

  “The bed is not my most favorite place,” she said.

  “Are you crying, Mary?” Lesser asked.

  “No, sir, I am not.”

  “It sounds as though you were.”

  “That’s not me. Usually it’s Sam out in the hall, kneeling by the keyhole and crying,” Mary said.

  “A Salaam Aleikum,” Jacob 32 said to Lesser when he returned to Mary’s loft. Mary had gone back first. Jacob was a narrow-eyed man in a dark blue suit. His gaze locked with Lesser’s, but he spoke gently, as though he had been asked to.

  “If you think you white you wrong,” said Jacob. “You really black. The whites are black. The blacks are the true white.”

  “I think I know what you mean.”

  “No, you don’t. You see us wrong and you see yourself wrong. If you saw me right you would see me white in the manner which I see you black. You think I am black because your inside eyes are closed to the true vision of the world.”

  Lesser said no more.

  “This is a eye-to-eye confrontation of the force of evil versus a vessel of good,” said Jacob 32, “and it ain’t up to me to reveal to you which is the which.”

  Mary had locked herself in her bathroom and Lesser was left alone with a crowd of silent blacks. He guessed that Sam had told them and nobody cared for the news. Irene was standing at a dark window in the loft, looking out, her face haunted in the glass. Lesser saw himself in it, staring at her.

  We’re both scared but what is she scared of?

  Bill Spear, his mouth slack, heavy eyes glazed, drunk but steady on his feet, summoned Lesser from across the room. Beside him stood Sam Clemence, thick-calved in striped bell-bottoms, aloof but mourning. A cluster of blacks with inexpressive faces was massed around them.

  “Lesser, move your paleface ass on over here.”

  Now I take my lumps, he thought. Maybe for not satisfying Mary. Maybe that’s the name of the game. The stranger who fails is a dead duck. It’s an ancient entrapment and I shouldn’t have played. I’m too young to be the sacrifice in a stomp-in. He was alarmed by the thought of broken fingers and bloody eyes.

  Bill’s flushed eyes were sullen. Of the blacks he was the blackest present.

  “Chum,” he said, tapping his stubby finger against Lesser’s noisy chest, “we have a game we got we call the dozens. Like the brothers play it no ofay has that gift or the wit, and also since whitey ain’t worth but half a black I’m gon play you the half-dozens. Now it’s a game of nothin but naked words. I’m gon do mine on you and you do yours on me, and the one who bleeds, or flips, or cries mama, he’s the loser and we shit on him. Do you dig?”

  “What’s the point of it?”

  “The point is the point.”

  “I thought we were friends, Bill?”

  “You got no friends here,” Sam told Lesser.

  “Suppose I don’t play?”

  “If you gon fuck black you gon face black,” said the light-skinned woman, Jacob’s friend.

  “Off the shmuck,” said the flute player with flowers in his beard.

  Several of the brothers nodded. Lesser felt his testicles tighten.

  “I’ll begin like easy so you can join the fun,” Bill said in his resonant raspy voice. “I ain’t gon work on your mama and sister which is the way we do it, but come right to the tough-shit funk of it, special for you:

  “Lesser, don’t think you so hot,

  You got the look of a shit-pot.”

  Some of the blacks snickered as the bull fiddler bowed a high chord.

  “Now raise me on that.”

  Lesser stood mute.

  “If you don’t we might have to play a different kind of a game.”

  “Poker?” the writer bluffed, truly frightened.

  “Man, have you lost your nuts down the can?”

  The blacks laughed.

  Lesser figured it was a game so long as he played it.

  “Willie, your mouth is a place of excrement.”

  To his surprise he roused a titter of amusement.

  The bull fiddler fiddled a low note.

  Bill blinked in scorn, his tumid eyes momentarily refusing to focus.

  “Lesser,” he said, when he had got a new fix on him, “I see you runnin a bad trip. And I see that you a mammyrammer blowhard fart that has no respect for hisself.”

  “What good is a contest of imprecation? All it does is arouse bad feeling.”

  He roused raucous guffaws.

  “Listen to that soft bullshit,” Sam said huffily.

  “Now you leave this honky to me,” said Bill. “He is my guest.”

  More laughs.

  Irene came over, her cape and hat on, leather purse hanging from her shoulder. Her long hair seemed longer.

  Lesser thought if he hadn’t gone to bed with Mary he might now be outside somewhere with Irene.

  “Willie, can we go home now?” she said, not looking at Lesser. “I’m tired.”

  “Go on home.”

  “Couldn’t you come with me?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “If I could what would you do for kicks?”

  The sisters let out little shrieks of laughter and some of the brothers laughed. The bull fiddler slapped his knee. Irene retreated to the window.

  “Lesser,” said Bill, testily impatient, “I called you a mammyrammer blowhard fart. Don’t that tempt you to return me an answer?”

  “If you have to do this, why don’t you write it? I thought you were a writer.” Lesser’s voice was hoarse, his underpants damp.

  “Don’t tell me what to write, chum,” Bill said, raising his head haughtily. “I don’t need no bleached-out Charlie to tell me what to write.”

  “Amen,” said Jacob 32.

  Lesser’s fear incited anger. “If you have some kind of complaint about me why don’t you say it directly? Why pretend to play this stupid game? If what you want to say is none of your business in the first place, then let Sam say it.”

  “I told you not to let this redneck shiteater come along here,” Sam complained.

  Jacob 32 nodded.

  “What is the answer to the words I have laid down to you?” Bill said, irritated. “How much more of a motherfuckn coward you gon be?”

  “I could call you filthy prick,” Lesser offered.

  He saw Irene, across the room, make a gesture of silence.

  “I withdraw that.”

  “You can’t withdraw nothin,” Bill said, moving his glowing face close to Lesser’s. “That’s the fuckn rules of it. Now isn’t the reason why you want to withdraw it because it really don’t say what you wanted to call me? Wasn’t you plannin to say filthy nigger prick, without havin the courage to get it out? Tell the truth, man.”

  “I’ll tell the truth—I thought of it because I know you want to hear it.”


  “Fine and okay,” said Bill. “But now I’m gon call you a fartn shiteater faggot whore kike apeshit thievin Jew.” He spaced each word slowly and ended with a hard beat.

  The blacks murmured approval. The bongo player tapped out a little tune. Sam wiped a happy tear from under his eyeglasses.

  “I get the message,” said Lesser, “and concede the game. That’s my last word.”

  There was a hush. The room smelled of sweat. He thought he would be struck on the head, but nobody moved. Those who continued to look on were bored. The man in the red fez yawned. The bull fiddler packed away his instrument. People drifted away. Bill seemed satisfied and Jacob 32 enjoyed a cigar.

  Lesser pulled his hat and coat off a hook on the wall and headed for the door. Irene, as he went by, threw him an embittered look.

  Three brothers sprang to the door to block Lesser’s exit but Bill whistled shrilly and waved them aside.

  “Let the white spook exit out.”

  The spook, whiter than ever, humiliated to the soles of his shoes but still in one piece, left the loft as Mary burst out of the bathroom and embraced Irene.

  Down the block Lesser waited across from a broken street light, hoping Irene would walk out after him, but when she came out she was with Willie. They headed the other way. Throughout the night Lesser dreamed of her. He dreamed she had come to his room and they sat without touching because she was married to Willie. When he woke in the dark, thinking of her, from the weight on his heart he knew he was in love.

  Bill, with a low snuffle, came in after work the next afternoon. He sat in Lesser’s ragged armchair, thick hands clasped between stubby knees, gazing at the floor. He looked as though he had shrunk an inch, lost weight. His overalls hung droopy over his newly washed bulky green sweater. He adjusted his wire-trimmed glasses and smoothed the bushy ends of his Mongolian mustache.

  “I sure got nothing done today, not even one lousy sentence left over to keep. Man, I have a hangover bigger than an elephant ass.”

  Lesser, sitting motionless, did not speak.

  Bill said: “I want you to know, Lesser, that was how I saved your skin last night.”

  “Saved whose skin?”

  “Sam wanted the brothers to beat up on you and crack your nuts for putting the meat to his bitch, but I got you in the game so they could see you get your shame that way and not want your real red blood.”

  Lesser said he was, in that case, grateful.

  “You sure as shit don’t look it.”

  “Take my word.”

  “I just wanted you to know how I did it.”

  Lesser afterwards thought it would be better not to know. Not to be concerned with gratitude or ingratitude. To love Willie’s girl in peace and with joy.

  Sheltered in a doorway late one afternoon, Lesser watches it snow. A black head looms out of the snow, stares at him fixedly and disappears like a moon entering a cloud bank. The black head is in Lesser’s. He has been tormenting himself all day about Bill: He has little, why should I make it less? Less if he loves her, more if he doesn’t—I wish I knew.

  He waits in the doorway above a five-step stoop across the street from where Irene lives, in a red-brick apartment house on West Eleventh. He had gone that morning into the vestibule to look at the name on the mail box: IRENE BELL—WILLIE SPEARMINT. Harry sees a letter in Irene’s box, one he has written often but not on paper. He imagines Willie reading it by matchlight.

  The letter speaks of Lesser’s love. Willie reads it and sets it afire with a match. Maybe he would if he were there, if the letter were there. But Willie’s in his room on the fourth floor of Levenspiel’s deserted house, hard at work on his new book. Lesser, since the morning after Mary’s party last week, has not been able to concentrate on his writing. He walks back and forth in his room, but when he sits down at his desk he does nothing desperately and gets up.

  He hadn’t tried to write that morning. He had left the house early. He had walked to Fifth Avenue, caught the bus there, then cut over to Sixth. He had rung her bell. Lesser had missed Irene, gone off to a rehearsal. He had gone back home, tried to write, returned after a day of not writing. He had told himself not to go. Stay the hell away. Wait it out. This wasn’t the time to be in love. Willie was a complicated guy. Lesser felt he wouldn’t want a white man to be in love with Irene.

  But he had left the house again to see her.

  It’s night. It’s snowing. After a while he sees the snow. He watches it fall into the street, cover the sidewalks, window ledges, the cornices of the houses across the street. Lesser has been waiting for hours. He has to tell her he loves her or he may never write again.

  A church bell faintly bongs the quarters, making the wait longer. Lesser adds up each quarter of an hour. He always knows what time it is. It is past six. At last a tallish girl in boots and cape, wearing a green wool hat dusted with snow over her blond but truly black hair, comes around the corner. Lesser watches her in the snowy light of the street lamp. He crosses the street and calls her name.

  Irene looks at him as though she doesn’t know him. Then she looks as though she reluctantly does.

  Lesser says it’s Lesser. Who else can it be?

  She wants to know why he had said shalom that day, meeting her outside the museum.

  “I meant don’t be a stranger.”

  “Be white? Be Jewish?”

  “Be close is better.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s a simple thing,” Lesser says. “I came to tell you I love you. I figured you’d want to know. I’ve wanted to tell you the last couple of days but I’ve also not wanted to. I think you know why.”

  She seems not greatly surprised although her eyes are apprehensive, then moved. It’s hard to tell; she is after all a stranger.

  “I thought you were interested in Mary?”

  “I won’t say I wasn’t. I slept with her for want of you. I felt jealous of you and Bill when I saw you on Lexington Avenue.”

  She gazes into Lesser’s eyes. “Are you in love with me because I’m Willie’s Jewish white girl? I mean does that have something to do with it?”

  “Maybe. I wouldn’t say so.”

  “Do you want to save me from a miserable life with a black man, an ex-criminal?”

  “My love professes no more than love. Do you love him or don’t you?”

  “I’ve already told you. We talk about breaking up but neither of us makes a move. He still pits his black book against his white bitch. I see him weekends but we don’t really enjoy each other. I don’t know what to do. I want him to do it first.”

  “I love you, Irene, I want you.”

  “What kind of want?”

  “A long want.”

  “Say it plainly, I’m not very subtle.”

  “I’d want to marry you after I finish my book.”

  She is moved, her hungry eyes searching his, yet smiles sourly.

  “You’re both alike.”

  “I’ve got to write but I’ve got to more than write.”

  Irene listens, then takes his hand. They kiss with cold lips.

  “These boots leak. My feet are wet. Let’s go upstairs.”

  They enter the building. Irene removes her boots and dries her feet with a black towel as Lesser watches.

  “Take off your coat,” she says.

  In the bedroom stands a double bed, a picture of a black Jesus hanging on the wall above the headboard.

  “Why a black Jesus?” Lesser asks.

  “Willie won’t let me hang any pictures of whites. I won’t hang flower pictures—I like real flowers.”

  “But why Jesus?”

  “Rather than Rap Brown. Is there a black Moses? I believe in God.”

  Through the windows it is snowing heavily.

  They embrace, her hands moving up his back.

  “I’m afraid of what we’re doing though I want to do it.”

  “Willie?”

  “Also myself.”

  �
�I love you, you are lovely.”

  “I don’t feel lovely. I feel off-base, off-key, dissatisfied. I’m also afraid to get involved with another writer.”

  “You said you were more confident about your life now.”

  “That comes and goes.”

  “You’re beautiful, Irene.”

  “I don’t feel it.”

  “Feel it in me.”

  In bed she feels it. They kiss, grope, bite, tear at each other. He licks the floral scent of her flesh. She digs her nails into his shoulders. He is aroused by their passion.

  She comes as though astonished, touched by lightning, whips both legs over his back. He spurts into her.

  Afterwards Irene asks, “Do I smell black to you?”

  “I smell your sex. Do you feel black?”

  “I feel satisfied. I still feel some guilt but I feel satisfied.”

  “I want you to let the blond hair grow out. Let it grow black.”

  “I’ve started already.”

  As they lie together, Lesser on his back, Irene resting on her side, her face pressed to his, he watches the blowing snow tinkling against the windows and thinks of Bill Spear alone in the vast empty house, writing at his kitchen table. The snow swirls in a white haze around his head.

  It’s a free country.

  LISTEN, LESSER, I JUST WROTE DOWN THIS SONG:

  I got this redhot with mustard on it

  I’m gonna eat my meat,

  I got this hamburg with onion on it

  I’m gonna eat my meat,

  I got this spare rib with BarBQ sauce

  I’m gonna eat my meat,

  I got you in bed with nothin on you

  You gonna eat my meat.

  Who’s it about, Willie?

  Bill, Lester, call me Bill.

  Bill—excuse me.

  Just me and my gal Sal. How do you like it now, gentlemen?

  Clouds pile high over the island,

  Thunder crack them nuts,

  Lightnin run out on catfeet,

  The rain pour,

  Wind fly,