Javier Cercas - The Tenant and The Motive

Later he weighed up the possibility of writing an epic poem. Here undoubtedly the intervention of momentary rapture was reduced to the order of the anecdotal. And there was no shortage of texts on which to base his claim. But the use of verse involved an inevitable distancing from the audience. The work would remain confined to the sphere of a secret circle, and he thought it advisable to avoid the temptation of enclosing oneself in a conception of literature as a code only suitable for initiates. A text is the author’s dialogue with the world and, if one of the two interlocutors disappears, the process is irredeemably mutilated: the text loses its effectiveness.

He opted to attempt an epic in prose. But perhaps the novel — he said to himself — was born in exactly this way: as an epic in prose. And this put him on the trail of a new urgency: the necessity to elevate prose to the dignity of poetry. Each sentence must possess the marmoreal immutability of verse, its music, its secret harmony, its fatality. He scorned the superiority of poetry over prose.

He decided to write a novel. The novel was born with modernity; it was the instrument most suited to expressing it. But could one still write novels? His century had seen its foundations undermined by determined spade-work; the most esteemed novelists had set out to ensure that no one would succeed them, had set out to pulverize the genre. Before this death sentence, there were two appeals successive in time and equally apparent: one, in spite of trying to preserve the greatness of the genre, was negative and basically complied with the sentence; the other, which did nothing to challenge the verdict either, was positive, but willingly confined itself to a modest horizon. The first agonized in a super-literary experimentalism, asphyxiating and verbosely self-devouring; the second — intimately convinced, like the other, of the death of the novel — took cover, like a lover who sees his faith betrayed, in lesser genres like the short story or the novella, and with these meagre substitutes renounced all intention of grasping human life and reality in an allencompassing totality. An art encumbered from the outset by the burden of its lowly lack of ambition was an art condemned to die of frivolity.

Despite all the century’s swipes, however, it was essential to keep believing in the novel. Some had already understood this. No instrument could grasp with more precision and wealth of nuance the long-winded complexity of reality. As for its death certificate, he considered it a dangerous Hegelian prejudice; art neither advances nor retreats: art happens. But it was only possible to combat the notion of the genre’s death throes by returning to its moment of splendour, in the meantime taking careful note of the technical and other sorts of contributions the century had afforded, which it would be, at the very least, stupid to waste. It was essential to go back to the nineteenth century; it was essential to go back to Flaubert.

Álvaro conceived a disproportionately ambitious project. Examining several possible plots, he finally chose the one he judged most tolerable. At the end of the day, he thought, the choice of theme is a trivial matter. Any theme is good for literature; what matters is the manner of expressing it. The theme is just an excuse.

He decided to narrate the unprecedented deeds of four insignificant characters. One of them, the protagonist, is an ambitious writer who’s writing an ambitious novel. This novel within the novel tells the story of a young couple, suffocated by economic difficulties that are destroying their life together and undermining their happiness. After many hesitations, the couple resolve to murder an unsociable old man who lives very austerely in the same building. Apart from the writer of this novel, Álvaro’s novel features three other characters: a young couple, who work from morning till night trying to make ends meet and an old man who lives modestly on the top floor of the same building where the couple and the novelist live. While the writer in Álvaro’s novel is writing his own novel, the peaceful coexistence of the neighbouring couple is marred and upset: the mornings of fond frolicking in bed give way to morning feuds, arguments alternate with tears and fleeting reconciliations. One day the writer meets his neighbours in the lift. The couple are carrying a long object wrapped in brown paper. Incongruously, the writer imagines that this object is an axe and makes up his mind, when he gets home, that the couple in his novel will hack the old man to death with an axe. Days later he finishes his novel. The very next morning, the concierge discovers the corpse of the old man who lived modestly in the same building as the novelist and the couple. The old man has been murdered with an axe. According to the police, the motive for the crime was robbery. Shocked, the novelist, who knows full well the identity of the murderers, feels guilty of their crime because, in some confusing way, he senses that it was his novel that induced them to commit it.

Once he’s got the general outline of the work designed, Álvaro writes an initial draft. He aspires to construct a mechanism that works like clockwork: nothing must be left to chance. He makes a file on each of his characters in which he meticulously records the course of their hesitations, nostalgia, thoughts, attitudes, fluctuations, desires and errors. He soon realizes it is essential — although most arduous — to suggest the process of osmosis by which, mysteriously, the writing of the novel that so absorbs the protagonist modifies the lives of his neighbours to such an extent that it is in some way responsible for the crime they commit. Voluntarily or involuntarily, dragged by his creative fanaticism or by his mere thoughtlessness, the author is responsible for not having realized in time, for not having been able or willing to prevent that death.

Álvaro immerses himself in his work. His characters accompany him everywhere: they work with him, walk, sleep, urinate, drink, dream, sit in front of the television and breathe with him. He fills hundreds of pages with observations, notes, episodes, corrections, descriptions of his characters and their surroundings. The files get more and more voluminous. When he thinks he has a sufficient quantity of material, he undertakes to write the first version of the novel.

The day Álvaro was going to start writing the novel he got up, as usual, at eight on the dot. He took a cold shower and, when he was about to leave the house — the door was half-open and he grasped the doorknob in his left hand — he hesitated, as if he’d forgotten something or as if the wing of a bird had brushed his forehead.

He left. The clean, sweet light of early spring filled the street. He went into the supermarket, which at that hour appeared almost deserted. He bought milk, bread, half a dozen eggs and a bit of fruit. As he joined the tiny line by the cash register, his attention fell on the slight, unpleasant-looking old man in front of him. It was Señor Montero. Señor Montero lived in an apartment on the top floor of the building where Álvaro lived, but up till then their relationship had been confined to customary salutations and uncomfortable lift silences. As the old man set his items on the counter so the woman at the till could punch them in, Álvaro considered his stature, the slight curve of his body, his hands scored with thick veins, his evasive brow, wilful jaw and difficult profile. When it was his turn at the checkout, Álvaro urged the woman to hurry, put his purchases in plastic bags, left the supermarket, ran down the sunny street and arrived panting at the door. The old man was waiting for the lift.

‘Good morning,’ said Álvaro with the most encompassing and friendly voice he could muster while trying to hide his rapid breathing.