The Tenant and The Motive

By Javier Cercas

The Tenant and The Motive are two darkly humorous novellas from the award-winning author of Soldiers of Salamis. The Tenant is the mischievous story of Mario Rota, a linguistics professor whose life starts to unravel after he twists his ankle while out jogging one day. A rival professor appears, takes over his classes and bewitches his girlfriend. Where will Rota's nightmare end - and where did it begin? The Motive is a satire about a writer, Álvaro, who becomes obsessed with finding the ideal inspiration for his novel. First he begins spying on his neighbours, then he starts leading them on, creating a reversal of the maxim that art follows life - with some dire consequences. Written with a supremely light touch, these witty novellas are enjoyable masterpieces that linger long in the memory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: May 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781408834732

Javier Cercas

Javier Cercas is a lecturer in Spanish Literature at the University of Gerona. Soldiers of Salamis has been published in fifteen languages.

Book preview

Contents

The Tenant

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

The Motive

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

A Note on the Author and Translator

By the Same Author

The Tenant

‘Have you never been in love?’

‘Yes. With you.’

‘And how do you love me?’

‘With this.’

‘That’s your liver.’

‘Sorry, that’s not what I meant. I love you with my heart.’

SILVERIO LANZA

I

Mario Rota went out for a run at eight o’clock on Sunday morning. He immediately noticed the street was suffused in a halo of mist: the houses opposite, the cars parked by the sidewalk and the globes of light from the street lamps seemed to shimmer with an unstable and hazy existence. He did a few arm and leg stretches on the tiny rectangle of lawn in front of the house and thought: Fall’s here already. Instinctively, while jumping up and down and pulling his knees up to his chest, he reconsidered. He told himself September had barely begun, and vague threats flitted through his mind of ecological catastrophes. The initial symptoms, according to a well-known Italian weekly he’d been reading on the plane, on the way back from his summer vacation, would be a gradual disruption to each season’s normal weather conditions. After this worrying reflection he smiled somewhat incongruously. He went back inside and came out again a moment later, this time with his glasses on. The mist having dissolved, Mario began to run along the path of greyish flagstones between the road and the meticulous gardens, enclosed by flowerbeds and wooden fences lined up in front of the houses.

Although the difficult relationship he maintained with reality withheld any benefits that might have resulted, Mario was a fanatic for order: when he went out for a run each morning he followed an identical itinerary. Last year he ran up West Oregon, crossing Coler, McCollough and Birch, turned left on Race and kept going till Lincoln Square, an early twentieth-century plaza dominated by the mass of new stone and strange capitals of the First United Methodist Church. There he took Springfield, now on the way back, past automotive repair shops, banks, supermarkets and pizzerias, and when he got to Busey, turned left again and carried on until arriving back at West Oregon. This year, however, he’d decided to modify his route. Since he’d resumed his morning jogging routine, having returned from his vacation two days earlier, he ran in the opposite direction: now he turned left on McCollough, where the First Church of Christ Scientist stood at the corner of West Oregon, and headed towards the west of the city, crossing Nevada, Washington and Orchard. Then he ran along Pennsylvania to the end, where it was cut off by Lafayette Avenue; beyond that he ran across a grass field and up a gentle slope topped with a bare spot. Mario stopped for a moment at the crest, inhaled and exhaled deliberately, trying to keep his breathing regular, briefly admired the scenery and then took the same route back: colonial two-storey wooden houses painted white, red or olive-green, with ironwork screen-doors and garden fences covered with creepers; brick bungalows with sloping roofs; big mansions converted into student residences; squirrels swarming walnut, plane and chestnut trees, their profuse branches occasionally obstructing the paths of greyish flagstones running between the road and the meticulous gardens.

II

It was eight o’clock on Sunday morning. The streets were deserted. The only person he saw during the first five minutes of his run was a young woman crouched down beside an anemone bush in the back garden of the First Church of Christ Scientist, as he was turning right on to McCollough. The girl turned: she bared her teeth in a devout smile. Mario felt obliged to return the greeting: he smiled. Later, by then on Pennsylvania, he crossed paths with a grey-haired man in shorts and a black T-shirt, who was jogging in the opposite direction. The man’s expression seemed concentrated on a buzzing emitted from two earphones fed from a cassette player strapped to his waist. After that came a postal truck, an old, bandy-legged black man, who supported his decrepit steps with a wooden walking stick, a young woman with diligent Oriental features, a family having a boisterous breakfast on the front porch, complete with laughter and parental warnings. When, on the way home, he turned back on to West Oregon, the city seemed to have resumed its daily pulse.

That’s when he twisted his ankle.

Since he was feeling agile and keeping his breathing even, he picked up the pace for the last part of his run. When he got to West Oregon he tried to take a little short cut by jumping over a bed of dahlias. He landed badly: his left instep took the weight of his whole body. At first he felt a piercing pain and thought he’d broken his foot. With some difficulty, sitting on the lawn, he took off his running shoe and sock, checked that his ankle wasn’t swollen. The pain soon eased and Mario told himself that with any luck the mishap wouldn’t matter at all. He put his sock and shoe back on, stood up and began to walk carefully. A sharp pain tore through his ankle.

He arrived home with an obvious limp. On the porch, accompanied by a man, was Mrs Workman.

‘Mr Rota, what happened?’ said the woman with alarm, pointing at Mario’s ankle. ‘You’re limping.’

Mrs Workman was a tiny old woman, a widow with white curly hair, scrawny hands and lively green eyes. She was also Mario’s landlady.

‘Nothing serious,’ said Mario, grabbing on to the railing to pull himself up the porch steps. Neither Mrs Workman nor the man came to help him. ‘I just twisted my ankle in the most idiotic way.’

‘I hope it’s not serious,’ said Mrs Workman.

‘It won’t be,’ said Mario, as he reached the top of the steps.

Mrs Workman changed her tone.

‘I’m so pleased to have bumped into you, Mr Rota,’ she said, stretching out a hand: Mario felt as if he was shaking a bundle of dry skin and bones. ‘Let me introduce Mr Berkowickz. Barring unforeseen circumstances he’ll be the new tenant of the apartment across from yours, where Nancy used to live.’

‘Nancy’s moved?’ asked Mario.

‘She was offered a job in Springfield,’ said Mrs Workman. ‘A good job. I’m happy for her, she’s a nice girl; I loved her like a daughter. I suppose you’ll also be pleased that Nancy’s moved to Springfield,’ she added ambiguously.

‘Of course,’ Mario agreed hurriedly.

‘As for her apartment,’ Mrs Workman went on, looking at the new tenant with eyes that sought confirmation of her words, ‘I got the impression Mr Berkowickz was pleased with it.’

‘Absolutely,’ Berkowickz said. ‘It’s exactly what I need.’

He paused, then looked at Mario. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I’m sure I’ve found the perfect neighbour.’

Berkowickz cited the title of the only specialist article Mario had published in the last three years, in Italica. Smiling and turning to Mrs Workman, he declared that he and Mario were colleagues, researching matters of a similar nature, and that they’d undoubtedly be working in the same university department. Mrs Workman could not hide the satisfaction this happy coincidence gave her: a surprised smile lit up her face. Only then did Mario take a good look at Berkowickz. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with suntanned skin and a frank expression in his eyes; his incipient baldness didn’t contradict the youthful air his face exuded. He was dressed with elegance but without affectation. Otherwise, his appearance was less that of a university professor than of an elite athlete. But perhaps his most striking feature was his solid self-confidence revealed by each and every one of his gestures, as if he’d planned them in advance, or as if they were ruled by necessity.

‘I assumed,’ Berkowickz went on in the same cordial though distant tone of voice, ‘that Professor Scanlan would have announced my arrival.’

He said he’d decided to take up the university’s offer last month and had only signed the contract two weeks ago. He was sure the misunderstanding would soon be cleared up, although, he added, they shouldn’t be surprised: summer vacations easily lend themselves to these kinds of mix-ups. Finally, he was delighted it had all led in some way to this meeting, as pleasant as it was unexpected.

Berkowickz brought these words to a close with a tidy smile. Mrs Workman joined the new tenant in his optimism with a sort of clucking that for an instant threatened to dismantle her fragile frame of skin and bones. Mario felt uncomfortable: the blood of all his veins was throbbing in his ankle. Soaked in sweat, his T-shirt clung to his chest, and his armpits stung. Brushing against the grass had made his legs itch.

Mario forced a smile.

‘I’m sure it’ll all be cleared up,’ he said. ‘And I’m absolutely delighted we’re going to be neighbours.’

Mrs Workman and Berkowickz remained silent. Mario supposed he’d better add something.

‘Well.’ He smiled again, spread his arms in an apologetic gesture. ‘I’m going to go have a shower now. I’m at your service if there’s anything I can do to help,’ he added, looking at Berkowickz.

‘Thanks,’ said Berkowickz. ‘If Mrs Workman has no objections, I’ll move in this very afternoon. I’ll let you know if I need anything.’

‘OK,’ said Mario. ‘In any case, I suppose we’ll see each other tomorrow in the department. And in the evening there’s a cocktail party at the boss’s house.’

‘Excellent,’ said Berkowickz, smiling. ‘See you tomorrow. And take care of that ankle.’

‘Yes,’ chimed in Mrs Workman. ‘Do look after your ankle, Mr Rota. Sometimes life gets complicated by the silliest little things.’

III

Mario had a shower when he got home. After carefully examining the injured ankle, he took an anti-inflammatory spray and cream out of the cabinet and applied them to the swollen area. Then he made breakfast (peach juice, scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, coffee with hot milk) and ate hungrily while listening to the news on the radio.

He washed the dishes and went to his study. Sitting at his desk, he wrote out a few cheques for overdue bills (water, gas, electricity) and sealed them in envelopes ready to be mailed. Then he read over various circulars from the university and the department, threw a couple of them in the wastepaper basket and filed the rest away. He made a note in his diary of the telephone calls he should make the following day from the office, he outlined the plans for the courses he’d probably be teaching that semester and postponed a more detailed design until the department had confirmed them. Classes began on Wednesday: he’d spend Tuesday preparing for them.

At eleven-thirty he went into the living room. He put on a record, opened a can of beer, sprawled out in the armchair in front of the television and lit a cigarette, trying to ignore the annoying tingling sensation in his foot.

Then he thought of Berkowickz.

At first he felt flattered that he’d known his article, the only one Mario had published since finishing his doctorate; but the flimsy research, to which Mario was the first to admit, as much as the utterly undistinguished quarterly where it had been published, made him think again. He came up with just two hypotheses to explain Berkowickz’s curious erudition: either he’d recently been working in the same area as Mario had been when he’d written the article, in which case he’d perhaps felt obliged to examine everything published on the subject in recent years, however insufficient or faulty it might be, or else he belonged to that limited caste of academics who, solely for intellectual pleasure or to satisfy their curiosity,

Reviews for The Tenant and The Motive

[cameling_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dark humor pervades these 2 novellas. In The Tenant, Mario Rota,a linguistics professor twists and sprains his ankle while he is out for a run and from that moment, his life spirals out of control. He returns home to find a new tenant moving into the apartment across the hall, who turns out to be a reknown linguistics professor (just not known to him). He goes to work the next day and finds this new professor not only working at the same University, but has apparently taken 2 of his courses, been given his office and has stolen his girlfriend. As he struggles to make sense of his new reality, he is warned that he is in imminent danger of losing his job altogether if he does not publish within the next few months.In The Motive, a part-time lawyer and aspiring writer decides to use his neighbors as inspiration. He allows himself to be seduced by the building concierge to get information on an elderly hermit and a young couple living in the apartment building. He eavesdrops on conversations by the young couple, befriends them and the elderly gentlemen, using them as characters in his new book. But before long he's not only writing about them, he's manipulating his characters in real life so they act out the plot for his book, with grim results.Both are humorously disturbing. This author has an interesting voice.

[kidzdoc_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Tenant and The Motive are two light yet darkly humorous novellas by one of Spain's leading contemporary authors, who is best known for his novel Soldiers of Salamis, the winner of the 2004 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. In the first novella, a university professor of linguistics experiences a Kafkaesque turn of events after an ankle sprain, as a renowned (but unknown to him) fellow linguistics professor moves in next door to him, takes over his office and classes, and steals his girlfriend while he remains powerless to change his fate. In The Motive, a part-time lawyer and budding writer envisions a novel in which a young couple in financial straits murders an elderly man for his hidden money, but he has trouble putting voices to the characters. The writer befriends a couple and an old man who live in the same building as he, and, in a reversal of the concept of "life becomes art", he injects himself and alters their three lives, using taped conversations to write his story. These novellas were a joy to read, and I'll be looking for more of Cercas' works in the near future.