Javier Cercas: The Tenant and The Motive

The apartment consisted of a study, living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. As well as the typewriter and computer, there was a dark oak table in the study, with drawers on both sides, which served as his desk, a filing cabinet, several bookshelves; there was also a wicker armchair, an easy chair and a few other places to sit. The bedroom furnishings were sparse: two closets built into the back wall with full-length mirrors on the doors, a chest of drawers made of a pale wood against the right-hand wall across from the bed, which was covered with a deep red eiderdown. An extension of one wall divided the living room in two. On the left-hand side was a pale wooden table surrounded by metal chairs; two vaguely cubist pictures hung on the walls, along with a poster for an exhibition of the work of Toulouse-Lautrec in a gallery in Turin. On the right-hand side of the living room there was a television, a record-player, a cream-coloured sofa, two armchairs of a similar colour but different design, a transparent, low double-decker table (through the top level periodicals, books and magazines piled on the lower level were visible); hanging from a hook on the wall was a reproduction of a medium-sized Hockney painting. Separating this part of the room from the dining area was a glass cabinet crammed with valuable and not so valuable objects: a marble elephant, an Algerian pipe, an hourglass, three antique pistols, a frigate imprisoned in a Chianti bottle, several clay figures and other trifles that Mario had collected over the years with neither acquisitive nor sentimental zeal. Except for those of the kitchen and bathroom, the walls of the house were covered with grainy wood panelling; the baseboard and door and window frames were painted white.

He could not have found the apartment more satisfactory, which was why Mario considered it foolishness even to raise the possibility of leaving it, for no other reason than the fact that a colleague had suddenly turned into a neighbour. Furthermore, he thought optimistically, it’s hard to imagine I’ll be worse off for the change. There was no doubt that Nancy had been at the very least an annoying neighbour. She was an untidily stout woman, careless about her appearance, with dry, straw-coloured hair, quite ugly but at the same time endowed with an obvious and aggressive sexuality. The feminist ideas and prejudices against Latin men that Nancy brought up in any conversation, no matter how casual or brief (on the stairway, taking out the garbage, while washing the car), had not facilitated pacific cohabitation in the building. Otherwise, the strange affection Mrs Workman professed for her translated into a blind trust that had always made Mario feel uncomfortable, for it put him in an awkward position not only each time Nancy accused him of getting drunk on his own, but also when she denounced him to Mrs Workman for spying on her whenever a man entered her apartment, especially at night. On another occasion, Mrs Workman and the rest of the tenants in the building — a married couple of Belgian origin, and a young woman who worked in the admissions office at the university — had to intercede to keep Nancy from filing an official complaint with the police for his alleged sexual aggression: she insisted she’d caught him masturbating behind the curtain in his living room while she was sunbathing on a lounge chair in the back yard.

‘Ginger? It’s Mario.’

‘How are you?’ asked Ginger. Not waiting for a reply, she asked another question. ‘When did you get back?’

‘A couple of days ago,’ answered Mario. ‘I haven’t called because I’ve been getting things organized. You know.’

‘Yeah.’

Mario thought: The telephone dulls people. Ginger’s voice sounded neutral, colourless. Mario said, ‘If you like, we could have lunch together.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘At Timpone’s,’ Mario insisted. ‘We’ll celebrate our reunion.’

‘I don’t know,’ Ginger said again.

Mario insisted again.

There was a silence. The murmur of another conversation crossed the line. Mario heard, ‘OK.’

‘I’ll meet you at Timpone’s in an hour then.’

He hung up. He looked at his watch: it was noon.

At five to one he arrived at the restaurant. Ginger was sitting at one of the tables at the back, in front of the big windows that gave the room so much light. She was wearing a light-blue dress; her hair was bunched in an imperfect bun at the nape of her neck. As he pulled out a chair to sit down, Mario thought: She looks lovely.

‘What happened?’ asked Ginger. ‘You’re limping.’

‘Well,’ said Mario, smiling as if in apology, ‘this morning I twisted my ankle. Jogging.’

‘I hope it’s nothing serious.’

‘It’s not.’

Ginger ordered a cold steak with rice, Mario, a salad and curried chicken. They drank burgundy.

‘You don’t seem too happy that I’m back.’

‘I don’t know if I am,’ admitted Ginger. Then she asked, ‘How did it go?’

‘I got bored,’ said Mario with his gaze buried in the chicken. ‘By the second week I didn’t know what to do with myself.’

They ate in silence. The waiter came over twice to see if they needed anything and make sure they liked the food; they both nodded without enthusiasm.

Though he already knew the answer, Mario enquired, ‘How have things been going around here?’

‘Same as ever,’ said Ginger. ‘All very quiet; too quiet really: there was hardly anyone left to talk to.’

‘You must’ve got a lot of work done,’ Mario ventured.

Ginger had stayed at the university all summer to keep working on her thesis. To Mario’s question she replied with a shrug of her shoulders and a gesture of fatigue. She said, ‘I suppose, quite a bit, and in lots of different directions, but I’m still not sure which is the right one.’

Mario thought Ginger’s expression now was opaque and inexpressive, like her voice had been a little while ago on the phone. They talked about the details Mario had suggested she examine during his absence. Ginger answered Mario’s questions in monosyllables. At one point the girl’s features seemed to brighten up.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, as if leaving something behind. ‘Tomorrow I’ll talk to Berkowickz.’

‘To whom?’

‘Berkowickz,’ Ginger repeated, looking Mario in the eye. ‘They finally managed to hire him. Apparently he made all sorts of demands; you know how those people are. Anyway, Scanlan managed it; he was very determined and he did it. Branstyne told me he’s very pleased.’

The waiter took the plates away and asked if they wanted dessert. Ginger ordered apple pie; Mario declined the offer and lit a cigarette.

‘But I thought you already knew about Berkowickz,’ said Ginger.

‘I didn’t know,’ said Mario, puffing out a smoke ring.

‘I’m sure it had already been mentioned before you went on holiday.’

‘I didn’t know,’ Mario repeated.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ginger said. ‘The thing is, we all stand to benefit. Especially me.’

Ginger said that Berkowickz’s latest article, ‘The Syntax of the Word-Initial Consonant in Italian’, published in the April issue of Language, left the investigation open at precisely the point where she had begun. She said she was sure Berkowickz must have continued working in that very direction and, even if that was not the case, he would undoubtedly be interested in the study she was attempting to carry out and would certainly hasten to offer her his support. She declared again that the following day she would speak to Berkowickz. If things went as she expected (she’d been told Berkowickz was a kind, hard-working and enthusiastic man), perhaps he might offer to supervise her thesis. She was sure Mario wouldn’t mind letting him take over.