Javier Cercas - The Tenant and The Motive

Álvaro acted kind. He asked questions and received replies. On the landing they stood a while chatting. Álvaro bemoaned the impersonal relations among the residents of the building, launched into a fervent defence of neighbourhood life, which he admitted to having always avoided; to win the woman’s sympathy, he joked maliciously about the concierge. Señora Casares claimed she had to go and make lunch and they said goodbye.

Álvaro took a shower, made some lunch and ate. After three, he waited by the peephole for Señor Casares to leave for work. Shortly, Enrique Casares left his apartment. Álvaro left his apartment. They met in front of the lift. They said hello. Álvaro began the conversation: he said that very morning he’d been chatting with his wife; he bemoaned the impersonal relations between residents of the building and launched into a fervent defence of neighbourhood life, which he admitted to having always avoided; to win the man’s complicity, he joked maliciously about the concierge. Señor Casares smiled soberly. Álvaro noticed he was a bit fatter than he seemed at first glance and that it gave him an affable air. He asked him how he got to work. ‘By bus,’ Casares answered. Álvaro offered him a lift in his car; Casares turned him down. Álvaro insisted; Casares eventually accepted.

During the drive conversation flowed easily between them. Álvaro explained that he worked as a consultant in a legal agency and that his job only took up his afternoons. With a profusion of gestures that betrayed an exuberant though perhaps rather fragile vitality, Casares described his work at the factory and, not without pride, revealed certain knowledge of motors to which he had access, thanks to the relative responsibility of the position he held. When they got to the Seat plant, Casares thanked him for taking the trouble of driving him there. Then he walked away, towards the huge metal premises, through the full car-park.

That night, Álvaro dreamed he was walking across a green meadow with white horses. He was going to meet someone or something, and felt as if he were floating over the fresh grass. He was going up a gentle slope with no trees or shrubs or birds. At the top a white door with a golden doorknob appeared. He opened the door and, despite knowing that what he was looking for lay in wait on the other side, something or someone tempted him to turn around, to stand at the crest of the green hill, turned back towards the meadow, his left hand on the golden doorknob, the white door half open.

Over the following days his work began to bear its first fruits. The novel was advancing steadily, though it diverged in parts from the outline arranged in the drafts and the previous plan. But Álvaro let it flow freely within that precarious and difficult balance between the instantaneous pull that certain situations and characters imposed and the necessary rigour of the general design that structures a work. As for the rest, if the presence of real models for his characters facilitated his task and provided a point of support where his imagination could rest or derive fresh impetus, at the same time it introduced new variables that would necessarily change the course of the tale. The two stylistic pillars upon which the work was being raised were nevertheless intact, and that was the essential thing for Álvaro. On the one hand, the descriptive passion, which offers the possibility of constructing a fictive duplicate of reality, by appropriating it; moreover, he considered that, while the enjoyment of sentiment is merely a plebeian emotion, the genuinely artistic enjoyment comes from the impersonal pleasure of description. On the other hand, it was necessary to narrate events in the same neutral tone that dominated the descriptive passages, like someone recounting incidents he hasn’t entirely understood himself or as if the relationship between the narrator and his characters was of a similar order to that which the narrator maintained with his toiletries. Álvaro frequently congratulated himself on his immovable conviction of the validity of these principles.

He also checked the efficiency of his listening post in the bathroom. Although on several occasions his neighbours’ conversations got all mixed up together, they came through clearly through the little ventilation window that gave on to the courtyard, and it wasn’t difficult to distinguish those of the Casares, not only because in the mornings the other apartments remained plunged in silence, barely disturbed by the sounds of saucepans colliding or glasses clinking, but because — as he soon realized — the Casares’ little ventilation window was located right next to his own, so their voices always came through clearly.

Álvaro would sit down on the lid of the toilet, hold his breath and listen. Mixed in with the rest of the general morning buzz of the building, he’d hear them get up, wake the children, wash and fix themselves up in the bathroom, get breakfast ready and eat it. The man took the children to school and returned a little while later. Then the two of them would put the house in order, do the domestic chores, joke around, go shopping, get lunch ready. In the silence of the nights, he’d hear her pleased laughter, conversations whispered in the quiet darkness of the room; later, agitated breathing, moaning, the bed’s rhythmic creaking and soon silence. One morning he listened to their giggles as they showered together; another time Señor Casares pounced, in the middle of the housework, on Señora Casares, who, in spite of protesting feebly at first, gave in almost immediately without offering the slightest resistance.

Álvaro listened attentively. He was annoyed that all these conversations were of absolutely no use to him. He’d purchased several blank tapes in order to record, plugging the machine into the bathroom socket, everything that came through the neighbours’ ventilation window. But why should he record all this useless material? He would hardly be able to use any of it in the novel. And it was a shame. Álvaro surprised himself — at first slightly perplexed — at regretting the lack of disagreement between the couple next door. All couples go through difficult periods every once in a while and he didn’t think it much to ask that they too should abide by this norm. Now that the book was going well, now that the knots of the plot were beginning to get nicely tied up, was when he most needed a real fulcrum that would spur him on to take the story line firmly in hand to the denouement. The tension of one or two arguments, provoked by some trivial domestic or conjugal event, would be enough to simplify his task extraordinarily, to help him continue with it fearlessly. That’s why he was exasperated to the point of paroxysm by the laughter and whispers he heard through the neighbouring ventilation window. From the look of things, the Casares were not willing to make the slightest concession.

One day he went back to spying on the hallway, waiting for Enrique Casares to leave for work. Once again they met by the lift. They chatted, and Álvaro offered him a lift to the factory. The sticky heat of four in the afternoon didn’t keep them from carrying on a conversation in between the abstract protests of honking horns and the dun-coloured clouds of smoke escaping from exhaust pipes. They talked of politics. Casares criticised the government with a bitterness Álvaro thought out of character within his affable corpulence. He confessed to having voted for them in the previous elections, but now regretted it. Álvaro thought his neighbour’s vitality had turned into an almost agitated resentment. Casares said it was incredible that a left-wing government could play such rotten tricks on workers, the very people who’d voted them into office. Álvaro agreed, paying close attention to his words. There was a moment of silence. The car stopped in the factory car-park. Casares didn’t get out immediately and Álvaro realized he wanted to add something. Wringing his hands nervously, Casares asked him if he would mind, seeing as he was a legal adviser as well as a neighbour, if he consulted him about a personal problem that was worrying him. Álvaro said he’d love to be able to help. They agreed to meet the following day. Relieved and grateful, Enrique Casares said goodbye and Álvaro watched him walk away across the car-park under the burning afternoon sun.