Javier Cercas - The Tenant and The Motive

The next day he resumed work on the novel. He stitched up the plot concerning the married couple without difficulty: events were now practically writing themselves. As for the part concerning the old man, however, there weren’t too many reasons for optimism. Unlike what was happening with the young couple, here Álvaro felt he hadn’t a leg to stand on or any reference from which to continue with the story. Without them, his imagination wallowed in a hesitant swamp of imprecision: the character as much as his actions lacked the solidity of real life. It was urgent, therefore, to establish contact with the old man as soon as possible. This would smooth out the difficulties that part of the novel was posing. But the problem lay in how to strike up a friendship with him. Because although it was true that their paths crossed in the supermarket almost daily, it was no less true that they barely exchanged a laconic greeting: the old man’s surliness wouldn’t permit a whiff of affability.

The doorbell rang. The mare appeared in the doorway. Álvaro said he was very busy. The concierge neighed, and he couldn’t keep her from getting in as far as the dining room.

‘We haven’t seen each other for so long,’ she said, as if sighing. She screwed up her face in what might have meant to be a saucy smile or an affectionate reproach. ‘You’ve been neglecting me a bit, haven’t you?’

Álvaro concurred with resignation.

The woman asked in a sickly sweet voice, ‘How’s everything going?’

‘Badly,’ Álvaro replied harshly.

The concierge had stopped paying attention to him and looked distractedly around the room. She continued mechanically, ‘And why’s that?’

‘Smells like a stable,’ Álvaro croaked.

He remained standing, restlessly shifting his weight from one leg to the other. As if she hadn’t heard Álvaro’s incongruous answer, the concierge, who seemed to return from an abyss to trivial domestic concerns, went on with an air of surprise, ‘Hey, your apartment is an absolute mess. I think what’s needed here is a woman’s touch.’ She paused and immediately added solicitously, ‘Would you like me to lend you a hand?’

‘Nothing would displease me more, Señora,’ Álvaro answered, like a spring recoiling, in a tone of voice that blended in identical doses false and excessive kindness, mere insult and perhaps even a deer-like fear at any possible double meaning the phrase might contain.

The woman looked at him strangely. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, don’t be like that, man, tell me,’ she entreated with a flourish worthy of Florence Nightingale.

‘I’ve fucking had it up to here with you!’ he shouted.

The concierge regarded him first with surprise, then with a vaguely equine indignation.

‘I don’t think I deserve such treatment,’ she said. ‘I’ve only ever tried to be nice to you and help you as far as possible. If you didn’t want to see me again, you had only to tell me so.’

She started to walk out. Hand on the knob of the half-open door, she turned and said, almost begging, ‘You’re sure you don’t want anything?’

Gathering his patience, Álvaro suppressed an insult and whispered, ‘I’m sure.’

The concierge closed the door noisily. Álvaro stood in the middle of the dining room; his left leg was trembling.

He returned to his desk in an agitated state. He took several deep breaths and quickly recovered from the shock. Then he remembered that, during their second encounter, the concierge had told him about old man Montero’s fondness for chess. Álvaro told himself that was the flank he must attack. He had never been interested in the game and barely knew its rules, but that very morning he went to the nearest bookshop and bought a couple of manuals. For several days he studied them fervently, requiring yet another delay in the writing of the novel. Then he immersed himself in more specialized books. He acquired a certain theoretical command of the game, but he needed practice. He arranged to meet friends he’d given up some time ago. They accepted readily, because chess seemed no more than an excuse to renew a friendship broken off for absolutely no reason.

Álvaro would arrive with a briefcase containing notes, annotated books, blank sheets of paper, pencils and pens. Despite his friends’ best efforts, he barely conversed or drank during the matches. They couldn’t listen to music either, because Álvaro insisted it kept him from concentrating. A few brief words that also served as a greeting preceded without more ado the commencement of the game. As soon as it was over Álvaro would use some pressing engagement as an excuse and leave immediately.

When he had proved to his satisfaction that he could quash almost all the feeble resistance his opponents might muster, he dispensed with them and, to complete the perfection of his game, bought a computer against which he would play long, obsessive matches that kept him up till the small hours. During that time, he slept little and badly, and got up very early to resume feverishly the game abandoned the night before.

The day he considered himself ready to face the old man, he got up, as usual, at eight on the dot. He took a cold shower and went down to the supermarket, but the old man did not appear. He loitered around the fruit counter, looking at the oranges, the pears, the lemons piled in wicker baskets. He asked the fruit seller when the strawberries would be arriving this year. Then he saw the old man. As the answer died on the edge of the shop assistant’s lips, Álvaro rushed off in pursuit of his neighbour, who was now heading for the checkout. On the way out of the establishment, he held the door open and let the old man go first. He walked beside him all the way home. He talked of the weather, of how dirty the steps were, of the number of door-to-door salesmen that had been pestering them in the building; to win his complicity, he made a malicious joke about the concierge. The old man looked at him with eyes of cold crystal and praised the concierge, who helped him with his housework; besides, he always thought their steps were the neatest in the neighbourhood. When they got to the front door, Álvaro changed the subject. He mentioned the computer he’d just bought: he used it principally to play chess.

‘I know it’s not for me to say, but the truth is I’m a better than average player,’ said Álvaro, feigning a cloying petulance.

The old man’s face sketched a hard smile.

‘You don’t say!’ he replied sarcastically.

Álvaro briefly recounted a few of his victories, in the most precise and technical terms he could think of, proposed a few variations he hadn’t used at the time and assured him that his computer had seven levels of difficulty and only after the fifth did it pose any challenges. Less surprised than irritated by his neighbour’s vanity, the old man announced that he too played chess. Álvaro seemed delighted. They arranged to play the following day in old man Montero’s apartment.

As he closed his door, Álvaro felt both satisfied and anxious. Satisfied because he had finally achieved his objective of getting inside the old man’s apartment and would now have at least the possibility of getting friendly with him. Anxious because perhaps he had gone too far, maybe he had seemed too sure of himself, he’d boasted excessively and may have put the whole operation at risk, given that, as was not rash to presume, if the old man played more brilliantly than he did and finished him off with ease, it would all be put down to the mere bluster of a neighbourhood braggart, and not only would he have wasted the enormous amount of time he’d invested in studying the game, but all possibility of forming any kind of relationship with the old man would practically disappear into thin air, which would endanger his chances of ever finishing the novel.