Javier Cercas: The Tenant and The Motive

‘I assumed,’ Berkowickz went on in the same cordial though distant tone of voice, ‘that Professor Scanlan would have announced my arrival.’

He said he’d decided to take up the university’s offer last month and had only signed the contract two weeks ago. He was sure the misunderstanding would soon be cleared up, although, he added, they shouldn’t be surprised: summer vacations easily lend themselves to these kinds of mix-ups. Finally, he was delighted it had all led in some way to this meeting, as pleasant as it was unexpected.

Berkowickz brought these words to a close with a tidy smile. Mrs Workman joined the new tenant in his optimism with a sort of clucking that for an instant threatened to dismantle her fragile frame of skin and bones. Mario felt uncomfortable: the blood of all his veins was throbbing in his ankle. Soaked in sweat, his T-shirt clung to his chest, and his armpits stung. Brushing against the grass had made his legs itch.

Mario forced a smile.

‘I’m sure it’ll all be cleared up,’ he said. ‘And I’m absolutely delighted we’re going to be neighbours.’

Mrs Workman and Berkowickz remained silent. Mario supposed he’d better add something.

‘Well.’ He smiled again, spread his arms in an apologetic gesture. ‘I’m going to go have a shower now. I’m at your service if there’s anything I can do to help,’ he added, looking at Berkowickz.

‘Thanks,’ said Berkowickz. ‘If Mrs Workman has no objections, I’ll move in this very afternoon. I’ll let you know if I need anything.’

‘OK,’ said Mario. ‘In any case, I suppose we’ll see each other tomorrow in the department. And in the evening there’s a cocktail party at the boss’s house.’

‘Excellent,’ said Berkowickz, smiling. ‘See you tomorrow. And take care of that ankle.’

‘Yes,’ chimed in Mrs Workman. ‘Do look after your ankle, Mr Rota. Sometimes life gets complicated by the silliest little things.’

Mario had a shower when he got home. After carefully examining the injured ankle, he took an anti-inflammatory spray and cream out of the cabinet and applied them to the swollen area. Then he made breakfast (peach juice, scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, coffee with hot milk) and ate hungrily while listening to the news on the radio.

He washed the dishes and went to his study. Sitting at his desk, he wrote out a few cheques for overdue bills (water, gas, electricity) and sealed them in envelopes ready to be mailed. Then he read over various circulars from the university and the department, threw a couple of them in the wastepaper basket and filed the rest away. He made a note in his diary of the telephone calls he should make the following day from the office, he outlined the plans for the courses he’d probably be teaching that semester and postponed a more detailed design until the department had confirmed them. Classes began on Wednesday: he’d spend Tuesday preparing for them.

At eleven-thirty he went into the living room. He put on a record, opened a can of beer, sprawled out in the armchair in front of the television and lit a cigarette, trying to ignore the annoying tingling sensation in his foot.

Then he thought of Berkowickz.

At first he felt flattered that he’d known his article, the only one Mario had published since finishing his doctorate; but the flimsy research, to which Mario was the first to admit, as much as the utterly undistinguished quarterly where it had been published, made him think again. He came up with just two hypotheses to explain Berkowickz’s curious erudition: either he’d recently been working in the same area as Mario had been when he’d written the article, in which case he’d perhaps felt obliged to examine everything published on the subject in recent years, however insufficient or faulty it might be, or else he belonged to that limited caste of academics who, solely for intellectual pleasure or to satisfy their curiosity, read through the regular publications with morose assiduousness and keep up to date on any and all investigations in their field of interest. Mario discarded the second notion out of hand, not only because it didn’t fit with the impression Berkowickz had made on him, but also because in such a case the new tenant would undoubtedly be notorious in the profession, and truth was his name didn’t even ring a bell with Mario. This conclusion comforted him.

There was not the slightest doubt, in any case, that Berkowickz was aware of the unrefined intellectual bouquet of Mario’s work — unless he only knew the title of the article or had merely leafed through it distractedly without gaining an appreciation of the poverty of its contents. This fact, however, did not worry him: though it was certain to put him in a slightly uncomfortable situation vis-à-vis Berkowickz, it was no less certain that his departmental colleagues (among them Scanlan, who was, all things considered, the only one who mattered) would never read the article, as they hadn’t read the ones he’d published before nor would they in all probability read the ones he would publish in the future. There was nothing, therefore, to worry about. Furthermore, it was unlikely, according to his earlier reasoning, that Berkowickz would turn out to be anything more than a novice in the profession; from there it could be hoped that his own work might be either immature and incipient, or as mediocre as Mario’s. If, to either of those two possibilities, he added the knowledge Mario possessed of the explicit and implicit rules that governed the mechanics of the department, the result was that he found himself in an advantageous position in respect to Berkowickz.

He got up from the armchair, turned over the record and sat back down again. He took a long drink of beer, lit another cigarette. Then he tried to foresee the immediate consequences Berkowickz’s arrival might produce. According to his contract, Mario taught two phonology courses per semester; in practice, however, they’d always ended up turning into three, rounding his annual salary up to a satisfactory sum. If, as happened the previous year, the department didn’t manage to attract a sufficient number of students to fill three classes, they’d come to a tacit agreement by which Mario would teach a course in another speciality, either semantics, syntax or morphology. So, three classes were practically guaranteed. Seen from this basic perspective, the presence of Berkowickz could not alter things in any essential way: in all probability, the new professor, recently arrived in the department and therefore with fewer rights, less experience and, surely, with a more skeletal curriculum vitae even than Mario’s, would take one of the phonology courses he regularly taught, completing his workload with one of the leftovers from the other specialities. As for Mario, he’d undoubtedly add to his two courses — leaving aside the possibility, which they’d considered in the first semester of the previous year, of opening a fourth phonology class — a third in semantics, syntax or morphology, or else — which might even be preferable — some administrative work, not only ensuring his income would not suffer from Berkowickz’s arrival, but might well benefit from it.

After this series of petty reflections, the vague anxiety planted by the aggressively optimistic and healthy air the new tenant had brandished on the porch dissolved into a sort of pity not lacking in sympathy. And although he didn’t deny that Berkowickz could eventually become a threat to the preservation of his privacy — for Mario considered the separation of work and private life indispensable, on a par with an adequate salary — nothing led him to believe that it might make him feel uncomfortable or, in the last resort, oblige him to toy with the possibility of moving to a new apartment, especially since the one he occupied now satisfied him from every point of view. Not only was it located in a nice residential area relatively close to campus, but it also had a veranda, back yard and garage, and furthermore, he’d managed, with some effort, to furnish it entirely to his taste during the year he’d been living there.