Javier Cercas - The Tenant and The Motive

The man shut up. In the silence, disturbed only by the faint hum of the cassette recorder, female sobbing could be heard. Álvaro listened attentively. He feared they could hear the buzzing of the cassette and covered it with his body. The woman was crying silently. Through the little window came the signature tune of a night-time radio programme. Someone else was sobbing: it was the man. He was also mumbling words that Álvaro could only make out as an incomprehensible whispering.

He sensed caresses and consoling words from the other side. It was the end of the session.

He unplugged the tape recorder stealthily, carried it into the dining room and rewound the cassette. A rumble in his stomach reminded him that he was ferociously hungry. He went to the kitchen, made some ham and cheese sandwiches and took them into the living room on a tray along with a can of beer. As he wolfed them down avidly, he listened to the tape. He thought the quality of the recording was tolerable and its contents magnificent. With the satisfaction of a duty fulfilled, he got into bed and slept solidly for seven hours.

That night he once again walked across a very green meadow with neighing horses who were so white it frightened him a little. In the distance he made out the gentle slope of the hill and imagined that he was enclosed in an enormous cavern, because the sky looked like steel or stone. He effortlessly walked up the slope where there were no birds, or clouds, or anybody. A sharp wind began to blow and his extremely long hair swept across his mouth and eyes. He noticed that he was naked, but he didn’t feel cold: he felt nothing but the desire to reach the green crest of the hill with no birds, the white door with the golden doorknob. And he willingly accepted that on the damp grass at the top rested a pen and blank piece of paper, a dilapidated typewriter and a tape recorder emitting a metallic hum. And when he opened the door he already knew he wouldn’t be able to get through it, and despite the fact that what he was looking for lay in wait on the other side, something or someone would tempt 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.

The next day he went up to the old man’s place. On the table in the dining room with its faded wallpaper, a board bristling with bellicose figures showed that Montero was waiting for him. For a moment Álvaro lost the certainty with which he’d shaken that decrepit rival hand as he came in. The old man offered him something to drink: Álvaro graciously declined.

They sat down at the table.

He knew it was necessary, in order to achieve his aim, to maintain a difficult balance. On the one hand, his play should reveal enough ability so as not to bore the old man — a premature victory would throw all Álvaro’s expectations overboard — but also to keep him under pressure for the whole match and, if possible, make his own superiority evident, in order to stimulate the old man’s desire to battle him again. On the other hand — and this condition was perhaps as indispensable as the former — he must lose, at least this first confrontation, to flatter the old man’s vanity, to break through his gruff hostility and perhaps lead him to become more communicative and allow for a relationship between the two of them that would be closer and more durable than that granted merely by combat over a chessboard.

The old man’s opening didn’t surprise him. Álvaro responded cautiously; the first moves were predictable. But Montero soon spread his pieces in an attack that seemed hasty to Álvaro and for that very reason disconcerting. He tried to defend himself in an orderly fashion, but his nervousness intensified by the minute while he observed that his opponent proceeded with ferocious certainty. Totally disconcerted, he left a knight in an exposed position and had to sacrifice a pawn to save it. He found himself in an uncomfortable situation and Montero didn’t appear prepared to cede the initiative. The old man commented in a neutral tone of voice that his last move had been unfortunate and could cost him dearly. Spurred by the tinge of scorn or threat he thought he’d recognized in the words, Álvaro tried to pull himself together. A couple of anodyne moves from the old man gave him some breathing space and he was able to stabilize his position. He took a pawn and evened up the match. Then old man Montero made an error: in two moves, the white bishop, surrounded, would be at Álvaro’s mercy. He thought the advantage he’d gain from taking this piece would oblige him, if he didn’t want to win the game, to play very much below the level he’d been playing up till then. This would allow for the possibility of awakening suspicions in the old man, who wouldn’t understand how Álvaro could lose in such favourable conditions, with his level of skill. He manoeuvred his way out of taking the bishop. The match evened out.

Then Álvaro tried to begin a conversation; old man Montero answered in monosyllables or evasions: he’d realized that Álvaro wasn’t going to be easily defeated and was entirely immersed in the match. Evidently, some time would have to pass before the old man would let down his guard, before the relationship between the two of them could progress to anything more than a matter of rivalry. In any case, there was no sense in rushing: if his host, with his unhealthy mistrust, sensed a suspiciously premature attempt at friendship, he might react by fortifying his defences, precluding any viable future relationship.

The old man won the match. He could not conceal his satisfaction. Affectionate and expansive, he discussed the layout of the board at the moment of check for a while, put the pieces back into the positions they’d been in when he conceived his final assault, discussed a few minor details, proposed possible variations. Álvaro declared that he wouldn’t be exaggerating if he described the move as perfection. The old man offered him a glass of wine. Álvaro said to himself that wine loosens the tongue and leads to confidences, but remembered he’d opted for prudence on this first visit and decided, for the time being, to leave old man Montero with his appetite for conversation. Feigning resentment at the defeat — which would obviously feed the old man’s vanity even further — he made an excuse and, once they’d set up another match for the following week, said goodbye.

From that day on he devoted himself entirely to writing the novel. His feverish work was interrupted only by the Casareses’ regular confrontations. The arguments provoked by drunkenness and evenings out were unfailingly followed by caresses and reconciliations. Álvaro had acquired such prowess in his recording skill that he no longer needed to witness — unless a passing setback in the rhythm of his work suggested he draw on this crudely real stimulus — the often wearisome and always repetitive arguments. He had only to turn on the tape recorder at the right moment and go straight back to his study and carry on calmly with his work. On the other hand, the deterioration of their relationship had begun to have repercussions on the external appearance of the Casareses: the slight tendency to corpulence that used to give him a confidently satisfied air had now turned into an oily and servile obesity, her almost Victorian pallor to a whitish and withered skin that revealed her fatigue.

Álvaro did not regret that the journalist hadn’t returned to ask for potatoes or salt. He recognized, however, the danger involved in the state of relations with the concierge. No one could ever exaggerate the power of concierges, he told himself. And openly confronting his own was a risk he should not take: so he tried to make up with her.