The Tenant (11 page)

“I wonder what someone who could read my mind would think, if he were walking beside me now.”

This was a question he often asked himself. Occasionally, he would even play at making up problems for the unknown mind reader to solve. He would say all kinds of things to him; sometimes telling him the truth about himself, and at other times just being crude and insulting. Then, as if he were talking on the telephone, he would pause suddenly in his narrative and listen for a reply. Quite obviously he never got one.

“He would probably think that I’m homosexual.”

But he wasn’t homosexual, he didn’t have a sufficiently religious mind for that. Every homosexual is a sort of would-be Christ. And Christ, Trelkovsky thought, was a homosexual whose eyes were larger than his belly’s appetite. People like that simply wanted to bleed for humanity; it was nauseating.

“I suppose I think that way because I am a man, after all. God knows what I might think if I had been born a woman . . .”

He burst out laughing. But then the picture of Simone Choule on her hospital bed flashed before his eyes, and the laughter froze on his lips.

10
The Fever

H
e was ill. For several days, he had not felt well. Cold chills raced across his back and up the length of his spine, his jaw trembled uncontrollably, his forehead burned one moment and was covered with an icy sweat the next. At first, he had refused to believe that anything was wrong, he had gone on as if nothing had happened. In the office, he was forced to hold his head in his hands, trying to shut out the constant buzzing in his ears. If he had to climb a flight of steps, no matter how short, he was in pitiful condition when he reached the top. He could not go on like this any longer; he was ill, he was desperately ill.

Some kind of impurity had managed to work its way into the mechanism of his body, threatening to destroy it completely. But what was it? A mote that formed an obstacle to the proper functioning of two linked wheels? A gear that had somehow become unmeshed? A microbe?

The neighborhood doctor gave him no information as to the causes of the breakdown. He confined himself to prescribing a weak dosage of antibiotics, as a precautionary measure, and some little yellow pills that he was to take twice a day. He also recommended that he eat a great deal of yoghurt. That had sounded like a joke, but the doctor shook his head vigorously.

“No, no,” he said, “I assure you, I mean it. A lot of yoghurt. It will restore the condition of your intestines. Come to see me again in a week.”

Trelkovsky stopped by the pharmacy on his way back to the apartment. He came out with his pockets full of little cardboard boxes which, in some manner, already gave him a feeling of reassurance.

As soon as he was safely at home he opened the boxes, took out the sheets of instructions and recommendations, and read them carefully. The medicines prescribed for him certainly seemed to possess some extraordinary qualities. But the next night he was no better. His cautious optimism was replaced with dull despair. He realized now that the medicines were in no way miraculous, and the notices in the boxes were nothing but advertisements. He had known it from the beginning, actually, but he had felt compelled to go on playing the game until he could prove that it was crooked.

He was in bed. He was very warm, but he felt that he was not warm enough. The upper sheet was pulled up around his nose, and he could feel a damp area where the saliva from his mouth had wet it. He didn’t have strength enough to blink his eyes. Either he lay there, holding them wide open, staring at nothing, or he drew a fleshy iron curtain across them, when the longing for oblivion became too strong. And even then, if he turned his head toward the window, the comfortable obscurity was tinged with a purple light.

He curled up in a ball beneath the covers. He was more acutely conscious of himself than he had ever been before. All of his dimensions were thoroughly familiar to him. He had spent so many hours observing and redesigning his own body that now he felt like someone who had just come across an unfortunate friend. He tried to constrict himself into the smallest possible space, so that the invading forces of weakness could find no room for a beachhead. His knees were drawn up almost into his stomach, the calves of his legs were tight against his thighs, and his elbows pressed hard against his ribs.

Above everything, it seemed imperative that he find a manner of placing his head on the pillow so that he could not hear the beating of his heart. He turned and twisted over and over again before finally discovering one position that left him blessedly deaf. He could not bear to listen to that horrible sound, constantly reminding him of the fragility of his existence. It had often occurred to him that perhaps every man was accorded at birth a specific number of heartbeats, thus predetermining the duration of his life. When he realized now that, in spite of all his efforts, he could still hear the hesitant beating of his heart against his chest he took refuge beneath the covers. He pulled his head in under the sheet, and stared wildly at the outlines of his body cowering in the gloom. Seen in this light, it took on a powerful, even massive, appearance. The sharp and penetrating animal odor it exuded fascinated him. He felt strangely calmer. He forced himself to break wind, so that the odor of his body would become even stronger, more unbearable. He remained beneath the covers as long as he possibly could, until he was on the verge of stifling, but when he finally emerged into the fresh air again he was strengthened. He felt more certain of the eventual outcome of his illness, a new peace of mind succeeded his earlier anguish.

That night, his condition grew worse. When he woke up, the sheets were soaked with sweat. His teeth were chattering. He was so thoroughly anesthetized by the fever that he was not even afraid. He wrapped himself in a blanket and went to boil some water on a little electric plate that had belonged to the former tenant. When the water boiled he made himself a semblance of a hot drink, by pouring it through a strainer filled with tea leaves he had used before. He swallowed this, and took two aspirin tablets, and felt a little better.

He went back to bed, but as soon as he had turned out the light and was lying there in the darkness he was overcome by a feeling that the room around him was shrinking, growing smaller and smaller, until at last the walls formed a tight-fitting capsule around his body. He was suffocating. He reached out frantically for the light switch, and immediately the room returned to its normal dimensions. He inhaled deeply, trying to catch his breath.

“It’s idiotic,” he murmured.

He turned out the light again. The room sprang back at him like a taut elastic band when it is suddenly released. It surrounded him like a sarcophagus, weighing down his chest, circling his head, crushing in against the back of his neck.

In an instant he was suffocating, but fortunately his fingers located the switch at the last possible moment. His liberation was as sudden as it had been the first time.

He decided to sleep with the light on.

But it wasn’t as easy as he had thought. The room did not change in its dimensions now—no, it was its consistency that was transformed.

More precisely, the consistency of the empty space between the furnishings.

It was as if this space had been flooded with water which then turned into ice. The space between the objects in the room had abruptly become as hard and solid as an iceberg. And he, Trelkovsky, was one of those objects. He was imprisoned again. Not in a stone within the apartment this time, but in a void of space. He tried to move his limbs to shatter the illusion, but without success.

He remained a prisoner for more than an hour. It was impossible to sleep.

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the phenomenon passed. The spell was broken. To make sure of it, he closed one eye. Yes, he could move again.

But the movement had unleashed a new sequence of events.

He had closed his left eye—very well—but in spite of the fact that his field of vision had been cut in half he had still seen everything! The objects in the room had simply moved over to the right. He closed his right eye, still not believing what had happened. The objects immediately moved over to the left. It wasn’t possible! He selected two spots on the wallpaper as points of reference and blinked his eyes rapidly. But if he did not move his head he forgot the reference point he had chosen, and if he remembered the first one he couldn’t find the second. He kept at it stubbornly, but in vain. And as a result of the effort of closing first his left eye and then his right he had an atrocious headache. His skull felt as though it had been put through a mangle. He closed his eyes, but the picture of the room was still there. He could see as well as if his eyelids were made of glass.

The night, and its nightmare visions, drew to an end at last. Sleep came to his rescue, and did not leave him until late in the afternoon.

He heard the workmen in the courtyard, repairing the glass roof. He wanted to get up, but he was too weak. He thought he might be hungry.

Solitude revealed itself to him in all its horror.

No one to look after him, to pamper him, to pass a cool hand across his forehead and check on the course of his fever. He was alone, absolutely alone, just as though he were about to die. And if that should happen, how many days would it be before they found his body? A week? A month, perhaps? Who would be the first to enter his sepulcher?

The neighbors, no doubt, or the landlord. No one cared about him now, but it would be another matter when the rent came due. Even in death he would not be allowed to dispose freely of an apartment that did not belong to him. He tried to stem this depressing train of thought.

“I’m exaggerating; I’m not really so alone as all that. I’m feeling sorry for myself, but I know that if I just think about it . . . Let’s see . . .”

He sought and sought, but no, he was alone, more alone than he had ever been. It was then that he realized the change that had taken place in his life. Why? What had happened?

The feeling of having an answer on the tip of his tongue upset him strangely. Why? There must be an answer. He had always been surrounded with friends, with relatives, with acquaintances of all sorts; he had guarded them jealously, precisely because he had known that there might be days when he would have need of them; and now he found himself alone, on a deserted island in the middle of a desert!

What a blind fool he had been! His mind refused even to recognize himself.

The hammering of the workmen in the courtyard drew him back from this gulf of self-pity. Since no one thought or cared about Trelkovsky, Trelkovsky must take care of himself.

And first, he must eat.

He dressed himself, not knowing quite what it was he was wearing. The descent of the staircase was terribly difficult. He wasn’t conscious of the problem at first, but then the wooden steps transformed themselves into shelves of stone, rough-surfaced and unevenly joined. He stumbled against unexpected obstacles, bruised his body against sharp projections. And then countless little stairways began branching out from the main staircase beneath his feet. Tortuous little stairways, jungle stairways with bushy steps, stairways that turned inside out, so that it was impossible to tell whether you were on the exterior going down or the interior going up. In this labyrinth, he could find no way to guide himself, and he often lost his way. After having gone down one staircase that had suddenly reversed itself, he arrived at a ceiling. There was neither a door nor any sort of opening that would permit him to continue. Nothing but a smooth white ceiling, forcing him to lower his head. He resigned himself to turning around and starting over. But the staircase behaved as though it were balanced on an axis, like a seesaw, and when he arrived at a certain point that side went down and the other went up. It forced him to climb when he wanted to go down, and to go down when he knew he must climb.

Trelkovsky was terribly tired. For how many centuries had he been wandering these infernal corridors? He didn’t know. He did know, vaguely, that it was his duty to go on.

Quite frequently, heads were thrust through the walls, observing him curiously. There was no expression on the faces, but he could hear laughter and the sound of sneers. The heads never stayed in place very long. They disappeared almost at once, but a little farther on other heads of the same kind would come out to look at Trelkovsky. He wanted to run along the walls with a gigantic razor blade in his hand, cutting off everything that projected beyond the stone. But unfortunately he had no such blade.

He was unaware of the fact that he had arrived at the ground floor. He went on with his interminable turning, going down, then climbing up. But at last he noticed the gaping hole in the unfinished roof of glass. The light made him shudder.

He could no longer remember why he had come out. His hunger was gone. He wanted only to be back in his bed. His illness must be more serious than he had thought. He managed to get back to the apartment without any great difficulty, but he had no strength left to take off his clothes. He pulled the sheets around him without taking off his shoes. But even like this his teeth were chattering.

When he awoke, it was night. He was no better, but the utter mindlessness of the fever had left him, giving way to an extraordinary sensation of lucidity. He got up quite easily. Still mistrusting his own reactions, he tried to walk a few steps, and found that he had no dizziness. It was more as though his feet were not touching the ground. This improvement at least permitted him to take off his clothes. He went over to the window to hang his trousers over the back of a chair, and automatically he glanced out at the oval window across the way. And in that room he saw a woman he recognized at once. Simone Choule.

She was sitting, in the position he had seen so often before, but then, as if she had guessed that he was watching her, she turned slowly in his direction. One hand went up to her face and she began undoing the bandage that covered it. She allowed only the lower half to be revealed, just up to the base of the nose. A hideous smile stretched the corners of her mouth.