Javier Cercas - The Tenant and The Motive

He phoned Ginger from his apartment. He suggested they have lunch together. ‘I want to talk to you,’ he said. Ginger came to pick him up half an hour later. They went to Timpone’s.

‘What did you want to talk to me about?’ asked Ginger, her eyes glued to the menu.

‘Nothing special,’ Mario admitted. ‘I just thought we could chat for a while. It’s been quite difficult lately.’

‘Yes,’ Ginger agreed. ‘The truth is I’ve been pretty busy. The start of term is always like that.’

The waiter came over; they both ordered steak and salad. Ginger was wearing a brown leather skirt and a very loose-fitting pink shirt; her shiny hair flowed over her shoulders. Mario thought: She looks lovely. He went on with the interrupted conversation, saying without resentment, ‘Me, on the other hand, I’ve got more free time than ever.’ He paused, then added, ‘Scanlan has taken two of my courses away.’

‘And he’s given them to Berkowickz,’ Ginger continued for him. ‘Branstyne told me, but it didn’t take a genius to predict it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing.’

Since he didn’t want to argue, Mario changed the subject. Ginger was soon talking about the party at Scanlan’s house, about the possibility of finishing her thesis that very year, of the interest Berkowickz had shown in her, the suggestions he’d given her. Then she brought up the possibility of applying to the department for a grant; if she got one she could give up the classes she was teaching and devote all her time to her research. When they finished eating, Mario tried to take her hand; she pulled it away.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Mario, looking her in the eye. ‘Everything’s been going wrong since I got back.’

‘As far as I remember it was never going well.’ Ginger’s voice sounded different now, thinner.

‘In one month you’ve changed.’

‘I’ve changed.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You said it.’

‘Why don’t you leave off the verbal fencing and tell me once and for all what’s the matter?’

‘I’ve changed,’ Ginger said again. ‘I don’t love you any more.’

There was a silence.

‘I don’t love you,’ she repeated with more conviction, as if urging herself on. ‘And I don’t want to go back to things as they were.’

‘Everything will be different now.’

‘It’ll be exactly the same,’ she said. ‘And even if it were different it doesn’t matter. I don’t love you any more. And I don’t want to talk about this again.’

They paid and left.

Wednesday after class (he’d finished before time because he felt tired, weak and maybe a bit uncomfortable or embarrassed by the bandage and the crutch leaning against the blackboard), he went home by bus. When he alighted on West Oregon he noticed a young woman with bulging eyes waving to him from a parked car on the other side of the road. At first he thought it was the redheaded student whose attitude had disconcerted him the previous day, at the end of class; as he crossed the street he realized it wasn’t her.

‘Sorry,’ the young woman apologized when Mario was a few feet from the car. ‘I thought you were someone else.’

Mario thought he’d experienced a similar situation that week, but he couldn’t remember when. He thought: Everything repeats itself.

After lunch he took a nap. He woke up with his mouth feeling furry and a faint buzzing in his temples. In the bathroom a face criss-crossed by pillow lines looked back from the mirror. He washed his face and brushed his teeth, then made coffee. In the dining room, he tried to read, but soon realized it was futile: he couldn’t concentrate. He went to the kitchen, opened a can of beer, turned on the television and stretched out on the couch. He switched from one channel to another with the remote control, without spending much time on any of them. At about six he thought he heard footsteps and voices on the landing. He turned the volume on the television down as low as it could go, got up off the couch, held his breath and pressed his eye against the peephole in the door: he didn’t see anyone, but he heard a hushed noise, of music or conversation, coming from Berkowickz’s apartment. He went back to lying on the couch, turned the television back up, and went back to switching from channel to channel. After a while he got tired of the TV. He went to his study and pushed one of the armchairs over to the window at the front of the building, on West Oregon: pouring through the window came a clear light, not yet rusted by the setting sun.

He tried to read. A while later, lifting his eyes from the book, he saw David and Joan Scanlan parking their car in front of the building. Instinctively he moved the chair back from the window and hid. Scanlan and his wife entered Mario’s building. He thought: They’re going to Berkowickz’s place. He went to the dining room carefully, taking a little weight on the injured foot, so as not to make a noise with the crutch. He looked out through the peephole and saw Scanlan and Joan knocking on the door across the hall. Berkowickz opened straight away and invited them in. Later he saw Swinczyc and his wife arrive, Branstyne and Tina, Deans, Wojcik and several other professors; he also saw a couple of graduate students go in.

It was completely dark when he guessed that all the guests had arrived at Berkowickz’s party. Mario went to the kitchen, opened a bottle of Chablis, stretched out on the couch and turned the TV back on; for a while he sat there smoking and drinking. He thought that at some point it might occur to Branstyne, or to Swinczyc, or to Berkowickz himself, to knock on his door and invite him to join the party. Then he sprang up, turned off the television and the lights in the kitchen, his study and the dining room. He sat back down on the couch, in the dark, glass of wine in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. A faint grey light came in through the windows; each time he took a drag on his cigarette the ember lit up his face momentarily. Some time passed, after which he heard voices on the landing, maybe recognising Tina’s. They knocked on the door. He held his breath, kept still. He heard Branstyne’s voice: ‘He must’ve gone out.’ Someone whose voice he didn’t recognise made some comment. He thought he heard laughter, and then a door slamming. Almost immediately he heard noise on the landing again. He stealthily sneaked over to the door, looked out through the peephole: he saw Phyllis, Swinczyc’s wife, and Tina carrying glasses and bottles; Ginger was carrying a tray behind them. For some reason he wasn’t surprised to see her. I bet she was the first to arrive, he thought.

He realized the party was moving out on to the porch. Hopping on one leg he reached his study, opened the window that gave on to West Oregon — beneath which, covered by a wide overhang, was the porch — and raised the screen. He sat in the armchair and got ready to listen. At first the voices mingled together indiscriminately. Later, listening more closely, he distinguished, or thought he distinguished, Scanlan’s voice, then Berkowickz’s: unanimous laughter blended them all again. A moment later he made out some of what Berkowickz was saying about a conference. He mentioned some well-known names, joked at the expense of a professor with an unpronounceable surname, then a lump of different voices cancelled out Berkowickz’s. Mario went to the dining room, grabbed the bottle of Chablis, a glass, an ashtray and his cigarettes. When he sat back down by the window, an absolute silence reigned on the porch, broken only by the occasional cars that passed by on the road. Then he began to hear Scanlan’s voice clearly: with a sort of friendly conviction he spoke of the efforts he’d been making to raise the level of the department. He said he was confident he could count on everyone’s support, for everyone would benefit from the department becoming a centre of excellence. He affirmed that the only way of achieving this was to raise the level of the teaching staff, selecting rigorously and subjecting degrees of competence, one way or another, to periodic tests that would oblige everyone to remain at a high level. He assured them that, in spite of the fact that contracts currently in effect required professors to deliver a series of publications before the department would renew their contracts or offer a permanent position, they all knew this proceeding had up till then been discharged with an undoubtedly excessive tolerance, which was ultimately as prejudicial to the department as to the individual involved. Finally, he declared that at the next committee meeting he intended to present a concrete project reflecting all those demands. From here on in, he concluded, he hoped to begin a new era.