Javier Cercas: The Tenant and The Motive

‘Besides,’ she concluded, half-closing her eyes and feigning an expression she meant to appear mischievous or dreamy, ‘just imagine: it always looks good having a guy like that direct your thesis.’

Mario was disconcerted. He didn’t know why he still hadn’t told Ginger that Berkowickz had just rented an apartment in the building where he lived, nor could he understand how Ginger could humiliate him like that, taking it as a given that he, seemingly incompetent, wouldn’t mind giving up the supervision of her thesis, however insignificant or merely nominal a position it might be, in favour of Berkowickz, whose intellectual worth was seemingly beyond doubt. And what surprised him even more — although here the surprise was perhaps only an instinctive form of defence — was not having recognised the title of the article Ginger had mentioned. For the rest, he found it impossible to associate Berkowickz’s name with anything vaguely related to phonological investigation. But what really had Mario stunned was the aplomb with which he was accepting the situation: not a single gesture of objection, nor of impatience, nor of nervousness. It was like when he realised he was dreaming while still dreaming: everything lacked importance except the certainty that nothing could affect him and that at any moment he would wake up and the dream would have vanished into thin air, without leaving the slightest trace.

After a while Mario realised Ginger had been talking away without his paying any attention, absorbed in the task of crafting smoke rings. Feeling rather tired, Mario supposed she’d been talking about Berkowickz, about her thesis, about herself, maybe about him. He tried to change the subject by asking about mutual friends, about Ginger’s parents, whom she’d visited for a few days, about news from the department. Then the conversation lagged again. They paid and left.

On the sidewalk, in front of the restaurant, Mario noticed his ankle was hurting.

‘I’ve got some things to do right now,’ he said. ‘But what do you think about coming over this evening for a drink?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ginger apologised, perhaps insincerely. ‘I promised Brenda we’d go see a movie.’

Brenda was Ginger’s room-mate; to soften the blow of the rebuff, Mario asked after her. Ginger told him she’d just come back from California, where she’d spent two weeks.

‘You could see a movie some other time,’ Mario suggested without much conviction. Then he lied. ‘I have to talk to you about something.’

‘Some other time,’ said Ginger. ‘I can’t today.’

‘OK,’ Mario gave in. ‘See you tomorrow.’

‘Yes,’ Ginger agreed vaguely, and as Mario walked towards his car she added, raising her voice slightly, ‘Take care of that ankle, Mario. Sometimes life gets complicated by the silliest little things.’

Mario thought: Everything repeats itself.

Instead of going home he drove towards the hospital. He parked on an expanse of asphalt surrounded by grass, and was about to enter the building through the main door when he noticed someone waving to him. He changed direction and approached the car window out of which a young woman with bulging eyes had just been waving her hand.

‘Sorry,’ said the young woman when Mario was a few feet away. ‘I thought you were someone else.’

Mario thought: How strange.

He went into the hospital. At the end of a corridor with very white walls, he found a foyer with several rows of chairs, a few rugs and a counter behind which a crimson-faced nurse with fleshy hands was entrenched. Leaning on the counter to take a bit of weight off his ankle, he waited for the nurse to finish dealing with a telephone call. When she hung up the phone, Mario explained the problem. The nurse made him fill in a form and asked him to sit down and wait in one of the rows of chairs facing the counter. Mario sat down in one of the chairs, leafed through old issues of Newsweek, Discovery and Travel and Leisure. A couple of times he was distracted by the nurse leaning over the counter to look at him. He smiled, but the nurse vanished back into her cave. He could hear her speaking on the phone, in a low voice, and once thought he heard the name Berkowickz. It’s incredible, he thought, as if smiling. I’m going to end up obsessed. After a while he stood up and went over to the counter. He asked the nurse if it would be much longer before he was seen. With a certain harshness, perhaps angrily, the nurse answered, ‘No,’ stood up and disappeared through a back door in the cave. As he limped back to his seat, Mario thought that since he’d entered the hospital he hadn’t seen anyone except the crimson-faced nurse, no doctors, no patients, no other nurses. Then, as if someone had read his mind and wanted to reassure him, he heard his name: at the other end of the foyer a nurse was motioning him to follow her.

They went into a room that smelled of cleanliness, iodine and bandages. The nurse told him to remove his shoe and sock from his left foot and lie down on the examining table that occupied the centre of the room. She examined the injured ankle, which had now swollen considerably. Since he thought the nurse was caressing him, Mario sat up, leaning on one elbow: he noticed she was young and pretty. The nurse placed a hand on his chest and brought her face close to his with a smile Mario didn’t know how to interpret.

‘The doctor will be here in a minute,’ she announced, and the beam of oblique light revealed a downy shadow darkening her upper lip.

After a few minutes the doctor came in. He was a pale, small Oriental man who moved with a strange blend of nervousness and precision. He greeted Mario in a friendly way and tried to joke about the benefits of sport. Mario said to himself that at least he’d read the file he’d filled out in the foyer.

‘Hmm,’ the doctor murmured, looking extremely closely at the ankle, seemingly trying to decipher the meaning of the bulge of flesh around it.

Smiling, the nurse watched from a discreet distance. The doctor pressed the foot in several spots. He looked carefully; his eyes narrowed into tiny slots.

‘Does it hurt?’ he asked, pressing one finger against the lower part of his ankle.

‘Quite a bit,’ Mario admitted. He was on the verge of adding, somewhat impatiently, ‘I wouldn’t have come here if it didn’t hurt.’

‘Hmm,’ the doctor murmured again.

‘Is it serious?’ asked Mario.

‘I don’t think so,’ the other man answered, straightening up and looking him in the eye: the two slots turned into green ovals. ‘Nothing’s broken, it’s just a sprain.’

Mario wanted to ask something, but the doctor turned to the nurse, whose quiet smile had not altered, and gave her some instructions he couldn’t quite catch, then left the room.

The nurse began to bandage his foot. Just as she fixed the bandage in place with a piece of surgical tape, the doctor reappeared.

‘Excellent,’ he said.

‘How long will I have to wear this?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the doctor, incredibly. ‘A week. Maybe more. It depends.’

‘Depends on what?’

‘I don’t know,’ the doctor said again. ‘Come back in a week.’

‘I suppose I’ll be able to walk.’

‘Of course,’ said the doctor. ‘The nurse will give you a crutch to help you. But carry on as normal, avoiding excessive efforts, of course: the less you use your ankle, the better.’

Mario called a taxi from the cave by the entrance. The nurse accompanied him to the door. When the taxi stopped on the driveway outside, the woman smiled. She said, ‘Don’t pay any attention to the doctor. Come back whenever you like.’

For no particular reason, Mario thought: Thank goodness.