The Tenant and The Motive

I

Álvaro took his work seriously. Every day he got up punctually at eight. He cleared his head with a cold shower and went down to the supermarket to buy bread and the newspaper. When he returned he made coffee and toast with butter and marmalade and ate breakfast in the kitchen, leafing through the paper and listening to the radio. By nine he was sitting in his study ready to begin the day’s work.

He’d made his life subordinate to literature: all friendships, interests, ambitions, possibilities for professional or economic advancement, days or evenings out had been displaced in its interest. He disdained anything he didn’t consider an impetus to his work. And, since the majority of well-paid jobs he could have had with his law degree demanded almost exclusive dedication, Álvaro preferred a modest position as consultant in a modest legal agency. This job allowed him to have the whole morning at his disposal to devote to his labours and freed him from any responsibility that might distract him from writing; it also gave him indispensable economic peace of mind.

He considered literature an exclusive lover. She must either be served with dedication and devotion or she would abandon him to his fate. Tertium non datur. As with all arts, literature is a matter of time and toil, he’d say to himself. Remembering a severe French moralist’s celebrated maxim on love, Álvaro thought it was with inspiration as it was with ghosts: everyone talked about it, but no one had seen it. And so he accepted that all creation consisted of one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. The reverse would mean leaving it in the hands of the amateur, the weekend writer; the reverse would mean improvisation, chaos and the most despicable lack of rigour.

He felt that literature had been left to amateurs. Conclusive proof: only the least eminent of his contemporaries devoted themselves to it. Frivolity, the absence of any authentic ambition, traditionally conformist commerce, indiscriminate use of obsolete formulas, myopia and even disdain for anything that diverged from the tracks of narrow provincialism ran rampant. Phenomena alien to actual creation added confusion to this panorama: the lack of stimulating and civilized social surroundings, of an environment suitable for work and fertile in truly artistic expression; even the petty social climbing, the advantage taken of cultural promotion as an access ramp to certain political positions. . Álvaro felt partly responsible for such a state of affairs. For that reason he must conceive an ambitious work of universal reach that would spur his colleagues on to continue the labour embarked upon by him.

He knew that a writer recognizes himself as such by his reading. Every writer must be, first and foremost, a great reader. He swiftly and efficiently covered the volumes published in the four languages he knew, making use of translations only for access to fundamental works of classical or marginal literatures. However, he distrusted the superstition that all translations were inferior to the original text, because the original was merely the score from which the interpreter executed the work. This — he later observed — did not impoverish the text, but endowed it with an almost infinite number of interpretations or forms, all potentially valid. He believed there was no literature, no matter how lateral or trifling, that did not contain all the elements of Literature, all its magic, all its abysses, all its games. He suspected that reading was an act of informative indolence: the truly literary thing was re-reading. Three or four books contained, as Flaubert believed, all the wisdom to which man had access, but the titles of these books also varied for each man.

Strictly speaking, literature is oblivion encouraged by vanity. This verification did not humble, but ennobled it. It was essential — Álvaro reflected during his long years of meditation and study prior to the conception of the Work — to find in the literature of our predecessors a seam that expresses us fully, a cypher of our very selves, our most intimate desires, our most abject reality. It was essential to retake that tradition and insert oneself into it, even if it had to be rescued from oblivion, marginalization or the studious hands of dusty scholars. It was essential to create a solid genealogy. It was essential to have fathers.

He considered various options. For a time, he thought that verse was by definition superior to prose. The lyric poem, however, struck him as too scattered in its execution, too instinctive and gusty. As much as he was repelled by the idea, he sensed that phenomena verging on magic, and therefore removed from the sweet control of a tenacious apprenticeship, and given to arising in spirits more festive than his own, clouded the act of creation. If what the classics romantically called inspiration was involved in any genre, it was the lyric poem. So, since he knew himself incapable of bringing one off, he decided to consider it obsolete: the lyric poem is an anachronism, he decreed.

Later he weighed up the possibility of writing an epic poem. Here undoubtedly the intervention of momentary rapture was reduced to the order of the anecdotal. And there was no shortage of texts on which to base his claim. But the use of verse involved an inevitable distancing from the audience. The work would remain confined to the sphere of a secret circle, and he thought it advisable to avoid the temptation of enclosing oneself in a conception of literature as a code only suitable for initiates. A text is the author’s dialogue with the world and, if one of the two interlocutors disappears, the process is irredeemably mutilated: the text loses its effectiveness.

He opted to attempt an epic in prose. But perhaps the novel — he said to himself — was born in exactly this way: as an epic in prose. And this put him on the trail of a new urgency: the necessity to elevate prose to the dignity of poetry. Each sentence must possess the marmoreal immutability of verse, its music, its secret harmony, its fatality. He scorned the superiority of poetry over prose.

He decided to write a novel. The novel was born with modernity; it was the instrument most suited to expressing it. But could one still write novels? His century had seen its foundations undermined by determined spade-work; the most esteemed novelists had set out to ensure that no one would succeed them, had set out to pulverize the genre. Before this death sentence, there were two appeals successive in time and equally apparent: one, in spite of trying to preserve the greatness of the genre, was negative and basically complied with the sentence; the other, which did nothing to challenge the verdict either, was positive, but willingly confined itself to a modest horizon. The first agonized in a super-literary experimentalism, asphyxiating and verbosely self-devouring; the second — intimately convinced, like the other, of the death of the novel — took cover, like a lover who sees his faith betrayed, in lesser genres like the short story or the novella, and with these meagre substitutes renounced all intention of grasping human life and reality in an allencompassing totality. An art encumbered from the outset by the burden of its lowly lack of ambition was an art condemned to die of frivolity.

Despite all the century’s swipes, however, it was essential to keep believing in the novel. Some had already understood this. No instrument could grasp with more precision and wealth of nuance the long-winded complexity of reality. As for its death certificate, he considered it a dangerous Hegelian prejudice; art neither advances nor retreats: art happens. But it was only possible to combat the notion of the genre’s death throes by returning to its moment of splendour, in the meantime taking careful note of the technical and other sorts of contributions the century had afforded, which it would be, at the very least, stupid to waste. It was essential to go back to the nineteenth century; it was essential to go back to Flaubert.

II

Álvaro conceived a disproportionately ambitious project. Examining several possible plots, he finally chose the one he judged most tolerable. At the end of the day, he thought, the choice of theme is a trivial matter. Any theme is good for literature; what matters is the manner of expressing it. The theme is just an excuse.

He decided to narrate the unprecedented deeds of four insignificant characters. One of them, the protagonist, is an ambitious writer who’s writing an ambitious novel. This novel within the novel tells the story of a young couple, suffocated by economic difficulties that are destroying their life together and undermining their happiness. After many hesitations, the couple resolve to murder an unsociable old man who lives very austerely in the same building. Apart from the writer of this novel, Álvaro’s novel features three other characters: a young couple, who work from morning till night trying to make ends meet and an old man who lives modestly on the top floor of the same building where the couple and the novelist live. While the writer in Álvaro’s novel is writing his own novel, the peaceful coexistence of the neighbouring couple is marred and upset: the mornings of fond frolicking in bed give way to morning feuds, arguments alternate with tears and fleeting reconciliations. One day the writer meets his neighbours in the lift. The couple are carrying a long object wrapped in brown paper. Incongruously, the writer imagines that this object is an axe and makes up his mind, when he gets home, that the couple in his novel will hack the old man to death with an axe. Days later he finishes his novel. The very next morning, the concierge discovers the corpse of the old man who lived modestly in the same building as the novelist and the couple. The old man has been murdered with an axe. According to the police, the motive for the crime was robbery. Shocked, the novelist, who knows full well the identity of the murderers, feels guilty of their crime because, in some confusing way, he senses that it was his novel that induced them to commit it.

Once he’s got the general outline of the work designed, Álvaro writes an initial draft. He aspires to construct a mechanism that works like clockwork: nothing must be left to chance. He makes a file on each of his characters in which he meticulously records the course of their hesitations, nostalgia, thoughts, attitudes, fluctuations, desires and errors. He soon realizes it is essential — although most arduous — to suggest the process of osmosis by which, mysteriously, the writing of the novel that so absorbs the protagonist modifies the lives of his neighbours to such an extent that it is in some way responsible for the crime they commit. Voluntarily or involuntarily, dragged by his creative fanaticism or by his mere thoughtlessness, the author is responsible for not having realized in time, for not having been able or willing to prevent that death.

Álvaro immerses himself in his work. His characters accompany him everywhere: they work with him, walk, sleep, urinate, drink, dream, sit in front of the television and breathe with him. He fills hundreds of pages with observations, notes, episodes, corrections, descriptions of his characters and their surroundings. The files get more and more voluminous. When he thinks he has a sufficient quantity of material, he undertakes to write the first version of the novel.

III

The day Álvaro was going to start writing the novel he got up, as usual, at eight on the dot. He took a cold shower and, when he was about to leave the house — the door was half-open and he grasped the doorknob in his left hand — he hesitated, as if he’d forgotten something or as if the wing of a bird had brushed his forehead.

He left. The clean, sweet light of early spring filled the street. He went into the supermarket, which at that hour appeared almost deserted. He bought milk, bread, half a dozen eggs and a bit of fruit. As he joined the tiny line by the cash register, his attention fell on the slight, unpleasant-looking old man in front of him. It was Señor Montero. Señor Montero lived in an apartment on the top floor of the building where Álvaro lived, but up till then their relationship had been confined to customary salutations and uncomfortable lift silences. As the old man set his items on the counter so the woman at the till could punch them in, Álvaro considered his stature, the slight curve of his body, his hands scored with thick veins, his evasive brow, wilful jaw and difficult profile. When it was his turn at the checkout, Álvaro urged the woman to hurry, put his purchases in plastic bags, left the supermarket, ran down the sunny street and arrived panting at the door. The old man was waiting for the lift.

‘Good morning,’ said Álvaro with the most encompassing and friendly voice he could muster while trying to hide his rapid breathing.

The old man responded with a grunt. There was silence.

The lift arrived. They stepped in. Álvaro commented, as if thinking aloud, ‘What a beautiful morning! You can really tell spring’s arrived, can’t you?’ and gave the old man a wink of perfectly superfluous complicity, which was received with the barest hint of a smile, a tiny wrinkling of his forehead and a slight clearing of the darkness from his brow. But he immediately enclosed himself back into surly silence.

When he got home, Álvaro was convinced that the old man from the top-floor apartment was the ideal model for the old man in his novel. His edgy silence, his slightly humiliating decrepitude, his physical appearance: it all tallied with the attributes his character required. He thought: This will simplify things. Obviously reflecting a real model in his work would make it much easier to endow the fictional character with a believable, effective incarnation. He could simply use the features and attitudes of the chosen individual as props, thus avoiding the risks of an imaginary somersault into the void, which could promise only dubious results. He would have to become thoroughly informed, about Señor Montero’s past and present life, all his activities, sources of income, relatives and friends. No detail was unimportant. Everything could contribute to enriching and constructing his character — sufficiently altered or distorted — in the fiction. And if it was true that the reader should do without many of these details — which, therefore, there was no reason to include in the novel — it was no less true that Álvaro was interested in all of them, given that in his judgement they constituted the basis for the precarious and subtle balance between coherence and incoherence on which a character’s believability is founded and that supports the incorruptible impression of reality produced by real individuals. From these considerations naturally followed the expediency of finding a couple who, for the same reasons, might serve as a model for the innocently criminal couple in his novel. Here it would be necessary to obtain the greatest possible quality of information on their life. Proximity to this couple would enormously simplify his work, because then he could not only observe them in more detail and more continuously, but also, with a bit of luck, he might be able to manage to listen in on conversations and even hypothetical marital disputes. He might then be able to reflect these in the novel with a high degree of verisimilitude, in greater detail and with more ease and vigour. The conversations of his immediate neighbours (those in the apartment above his own and those who lived next door on the same floor) filtered through the thin walls of his apartment, but only reached his ears dimly or during moments when silence reigned in the building or when the shouts of his neighbours rose above the general murmuring. All this put in doubt the very possibility of carrying out any espionage.

There was yet another inconvenience: Álvaro hardly knew any of his neighbours in the building. And of the three apartments that he might have had a chance to spy on — being adjacent to his — at least two could be discarded out of hand. In one of them lived a young journalist with a face covered in boils who, with nocturnal assiduity and undeclared intentions, interrupted him regularly to ask for untimely cups of sugar or flour. Another apartment had remained empty since a widowed mother and her unmarried grown-up daughter, in love with her dog, had moved out about five months earlier, without paying their rent. Therefore, only one apartment could possibly house a married couple that might meet the demands of his novel.

Then he remembered the little ventilation window, in the bathroom of his apartment, which opened on to the building’s narrow courtyard. Many times, when answering the call of nature, he had overheard his neighbours’ conversations, which came in clearly through the open window. So, in taking advantage of this new resource, not only would the task of spying be simplified and the listening difficulties reduced, but the pool of available candidates would increase, given that he’d have the chance to hear the conversations of all the tenants on his floor. Apart from the apartment left vacant by the two women, the other four were all occupied. And it was not impossible that in one of them might live a couple who, to a greater or lesser degree, might bend to the demands of his fictional couple. He just needed to seek information and, once he had chosen the hypothetical model, devote all his attention to them.

Where could he gather information on old man Montero and the other tenants on his floor? There could only be one answer: the concierge was perhaps the only person in the whole building who knew all the comings and goings in the lives of all the tenants. But it wouldn’t be easy to get information out of her without arousing suspicion. He needed to win her confidence no matter what it cost him, even if it meant overcoming his instinctive repugnance towards that tall, thin, bony, gossipy woman with her servile, saccharine manners and a disconcerting hint of horsiness in her face.

There were all sorts of rumours about her around the neighbourhood. Some mysteriously affirmed that her dubious past was something she would never be able to live down, others, that this past was neither past nor dubious, for everyone knew how assiduously she visited the caretaker of the building next door, as well as the local butcher. All agreed that the real victim of her picturesque tendencies was her husband. He was not as tall as her, a weak, greasy, sweaty man, whom the concierge treated with condescension and unlimited disdain, in spite of the fact that, according to many, he’d been her authentic redeemer. The best informed (or perhaps the most malicious) attested that, although the concierge’s husband’s usual attire — a worn-out pair of trousers and a bricklayer’s shirt — and his permanent air of exhaustion or boredom might indicate the contrary, he was incapable of fulfilling his conjugal duties, which increased his wife’s malaise to extremes of violence. Even though he ignored these rumours as he ignored everything to do with his neighbours, Álvaro could not keep from thinking of one fact that might provide a short cut to intimacy with the concierge: it was obvious she found him attractive. This was the only interpretation of the way she’d looked at him and brushed up against him on more than one occasion, to Álvaro’s embarrassment, surprise and shame, when they happened to meet in the lift or on the stairs. On more than a few mornings she’d invited him in for coffee, while her husband — whose bovine faith in his wife’s fidelity was a guarantee of stability for the tenants — was at work. Far from feeling flattered, these obvious insinuations had increased the repulsion she inspired in him. Now, however, he must take advantage of them.

So, the following day, once he’d made sure her husband had left for work, he rang the bell of the concierge’s flat. At that very moment he realized he hadn’t even prepared an excuse to justify his visit. He was about to run away up the stairs, but then the mare opened the door. She smiled showing a mouthful of orderly teeth and offered him a hand, which, despite its thinness, felt strangely viscous. It was cold and somewhat damp. Álvaro thought he had a toad in his hand.

She invited him in. They sat on the sofa in the dining room. The concierge seemed nervous and excited. She removed a vase and a figurine from the table beside the sofa and offered her visitor a cup of coffee. While the woman was in the kitchen, Álvaro told himself that what he was doing was sheer madness: he would drink the coffee and go home.

The concierge returned with two cups of coffee. She sat down a little closer to Álvaro. She spoke non-stop, answering her own questions. At one point, she nonchalantly rested her hand on Álvaro’s left thigh; he pretended not to notice and gulped down the rest of his coffee. He stood up abruptly and jabbered some excuse; then he thanked the concierge for the coffee.

‘Thanks again for everything,’ he said, already at the door.

And then, thinking he was lying, he added, ‘I’ll come back another time.’

When he got home he felt relieved, but his relief soon turned to anxiety. The vast repugnance the woman caused him was not sufficient reason, he told himself, to endanger a project so arduously and protractedly elaborated. The value of the information he could obtain from the concierge far outweighed the price he’d need to pay with the sacrifice of his stupid scruples. Furthermore — he concluded, to instill himself with valour — the differences that, on all fronts, distinguished one woman from the next were merely adjectival.

The next morning he returned to the concierge’s flat. This time there was no need for formalities. Resigned, Álvaro carried out his mission with phoney enthusiasm in an enormous, rickety old bed, with a wooden headboard from which hung a crucifix, which, in the midst of adulterous euphoria and from the effect of the corresponding jolts, fell off its hook and landed on Álvaro’s head. He refrained from making any comment whatsoever and tried not to think at all.

Now the room was in semi-darkness: only a few lines of yellowish light striped the floor, the bed, the walls. The smoke from their cigarettes thickened as it floated through the rays of light. Álvaro talked about the various tenants in the building; he said that the one who most intrigued him was Señor Montero. The concierge explained (her voice momentarily acquired a slight pleasantness to Álvaro’s ear) that the old man had lost his wife a few years back and had then moved into the flat he now occupied. She didn’t know for certain, but suspected he was close to eighty years old. He’d fought in the civil war and, once it was over, stayed in the army, although he never rose from the ranks. The new military regulations caught up with him and he’d had to take early retirement. That’s why he hated politicians unwaveringly. As far as she knew he never had visitors; she didn’t know if he had any relatives, although every once in a while he received letters with South American postmarks and feminine handwriting. His only acknowledged passion was chess. He unashamedly declared himself to be an excellent player. He had been one of the founders of a chess club, which was quite far away from where he now lived, and that had forced him to space out his matches because at his age he was no longer up to great excitement. This had contributed to embittering his character even further. It was not impossible that she was the only person he had any dealings with, as she went up to his flat daily to clean, prepare a little food for him and take care of other domestic matters. But she’d never become too friendly with him — something which didn’t interest her — nothing beyond the trust that could be implied from her knowledge of those superficial details. She admitted to treating him with a certain deference, but she recognized that he was harsh and mistrustful with the rest of the tenants.

‘Imagine,’ continued the concierge, whose brisk transition from the formal to the familiar form of address instigated a verbal intimacy between them that, for some reason, bothered Álvaro even more than the physical one. ‘He pays me each week from money he keeps in a wall safe hidden behind a picture. He says he doesn’t trust banks. At first I didn’t know where he got the money from, but since he’s so proud of the safe, he ended up showing me.’

Álvaro asked if she thought he kept a lot of money in it.

‘I doubt his pension stretches very far.’

Against the perfect whiteness of the sheets, the concierge’s skin looked almost translucent. Her gaze was fixed on the ceiling and she spoke with a tranquillity Álvaro had never seen in her, the tree of veins at her temple barely showing. She turned towards him, resting her cheek on the pillow (her eyes were a sickly blue), and kissed him. Making a supreme effort, like a long-distance runner who feels his legs weaken within sight of the finishing line and, pulling himself together, with one last disproportionate exertion, Álvaro complied.

The woman sank her satisfied face into the pillow. Álvaro lit a cigarette. He was exhausted, but soon began to talk of the other occupants of his floor. He said he was curious about them: it was almost a crime that after two years of living in the same building he barely knew them by sight. The woman turned over, lit a cigarette, stated the names of his neighbours and talked about the two women who’d had to leave the building a while ago for not paying their rent. She told anecdotes she thought were funny but which were actually just grotesque. Álvaro thought: ‘On veut bien être méchant, mais on ne veut point être ridicule’. He felt satisfied at having recalled a quote so appropriate to the moment. These trivial satisfactions filled him with pleasure, because he thought that all of life could be reduced to an indeterminate number of quotes. All of life is a cento, he thought. And then he immediately wondered: but who would undertake the critical edition?

A smile of beatific idiocy illuminated her face as the concierge chattered on. She spoke of the Casares family, who lived in flat C on the second floor. A young couple from the north who seemed moderately happy, with a moderate, friendly manner, and moderately healthy finances. They had two children. Álvaro sensed that they were the kind of people whose normality kept them immunue to gossip and exasperated concierges. He assured her he remembered them and urged the woman to go on talking about them. The concierge explained that the husband — he wouldn’t be more than thirty-five — worked at the Seat plant, on the afternoon shift, so he started around four and finished at midnight. The woman took care of the house and children. The concierge reproached them (she spoke of all the tenants as if she were a decisive part of their lives) for educating their children above their means and social status. Perhaps living in the upper part of the city made them feel obliged to make undoubtedly excessive extravagances. Álvaro thought the concierge’s voice sounded like it was infected with the kind of rancour happy people inspire in resentful, mediocre people.

Álvaro stood up abruptly, got dressed without a word. The concierge covered her naked body with a robe; she asked him if he’d be coming back tomorrow. While adjusting the knot of his tie in front of the mirror, Álvaro said no. He peered out through the peephole to make sure the entrance hall was empty. The concierge asked him if he’d be back another day. Álvaro answered: ‘Who knows?’ He left.

He waited for the lift. When it arrived and he was about to step in, he noticed Señora Casares, weighed down with packages as well as her shopping trolley, struggling with her key in the lock of the main door. He rushed to her aid. He opened the door and picked several of her bags up off the ground.

‘Thank you so much, Álvaro, I’m so grateful,’ said Señora Casares, almost laughing at the situation she found herself in.

Instead of it making him uncomfortable, Álvaro was flattered by her informal way of using his first name, although he couldn’t help but be surprised by it, given that it was the first time they’d ever spoken. By the time they got to the lift, it had gone back up. Señora Casares joked about being a housewife; Álvaro joked about being a housekeeper. They laughed.

Irene Casares is slight, of medium height and with a neat, meticulous appearance. Her manners seem studied, but not false, perhaps because her naturalness comes from a sort of delicate discipline. The features of her face seem strangely toned down, as if softened by the sweetness that emanates from her gestures, her lips, her words. Her eyes are clear, her beauty humble. But there is within her an elegance and dignity that her somewhat vulgar appearance doesn’t quite disguise.

Álvaro acted kind. He asked questions and received replies. On the landing they stood a while chatting. Álvaro bemoaned the impersonal relations among the residents of the building, launched into a fervent defence of neighbourhood life, which he admitted to having always avoided; to win the woman’s sympathy, he joked maliciously about the concierge. Señora Casares claimed she had to go and make lunch and they said goodbye.

Álvaro took a shower, made some lunch and ate. After three, he waited by the peephole for Señor Casares to leave for work. Shortly, Enrique Casares left his apartment. Álvaro left his apartment. They met in front of the lift. They said hello. Álvaro began the conversation: he said that very morning he’d been chatting with his wife; he bemoaned the impersonal relations between residents of the building and launched into a fervent defence of neighbourhood life, which he admitted to having always avoided; to win the man’s complicity, he joked maliciously about the concierge. Señor Casares smiled soberly. Álvaro noticed he was a bit fatter than he seemed at first glance and that it gave him an affable air. He asked him how he got to work. ‘By bus,’ Casares answered. Álvaro offered him a lift in his car; Casares turned him down. Álvaro insisted; Casares eventually accepted.

During the drive conversation flowed easily between them. Álvaro explained that he worked as a consultant in a legal agency and that his job only took up his afternoons. With a profusion of gestures that betrayed an exuberant though perhaps rather fragile vitality, Casares described his work at the factory and, not without pride, revealed certain knowledge of motors to which he had access, thanks to the relative responsibility of the position he held. When they got to the Seat plant, Casares thanked him for taking the trouble of driving him there. Then he walked away, towards the huge metal premises, through the full car-park.

That night, Álvaro dreamed he was walking across a green meadow with white horses. He was going to meet someone or something, and felt as if he were floating over the fresh grass. He was going up a gentle slope with no trees or shrubs or birds. At the top a white door with a golden doorknob appeared. He opened the door and, despite knowing that what he was looking for lay in wait on the other side, something or someone tempted 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.

IV

Over the following days his work began to bear its first fruits. The novel was advancing steadily, though it diverged in parts from the outline arranged in the drafts and the previous plan. But Álvaro let it flow freely within that precarious and difficult balance between the instantaneous pull that certain situations and characters imposed and the necessary rigour of the general design that structures a work. As for the rest, if the presence of real models for his characters facilitated his task and provided a point of support where his imagination could rest or derive fresh impetus, at the same time it introduced new variables that would necessarily change the course of the tale. The two stylistic pillars upon which the work was being raised were nevertheless intact, and that was the essential thing for Álvaro. On the one hand, the descriptive passion, which offers the possibility of constructing a fictive duplicate of reality, by appropriating it; moreover, he considered that, while the enjoyment of sentiment is merely a plebeian emotion, the genuinely artistic enjoyment comes from the impersonal pleasure of description. On the other hand, it was necessary to narrate events in the same neutral tone that dominated the descriptive passages, like someone recounting incidents he hasn’t entirely understood himself or as if the relationship between the narrator and his characters was of a similar order to that which the narrator maintained with his toiletries. Álvaro frequently congratulated himself on his immovable conviction of the validity of these principles.

He also checked the efficiency of his listening post in the bathroom. Although on several occasions his neighbours’ conversations got all mixed up together, they came through clearly through the little ventilation window that gave on to the courtyard, and it wasn’t difficult to distinguish those of the Casares, not only because in the mornings the other apartments remained plunged in silence, barely disturbed by the sounds of saucepans colliding or glasses clinking, but because — as he soon realized — the Casares’ little ventilation window was located right next to his own, so their voices always came through clearly.

Álvaro would sit down on the lid of the toilet, hold his breath and listen. Mixed in with the rest of the general morning buzz of the building, he’d hear them get up, wake the children, wash and fix themselves up in the bathroom, get breakfast ready and eat it. The man took the children to school and returned a little while later. Then the two of them would put the house in order, do the domestic chores, joke around, go shopping, get lunch ready. In the silence of the nights, he’d hear her pleased laughter, conversations whispered in the quiet darkness of the room; later, agitated breathing, moaning, the bed’s rhythmic creaking and soon silence. One morning he listened to their giggles as they showered together; another time Señor Casares pounced, in the middle of the housework, on Señora Casares, who, in spite of protesting feebly at first, gave in almost immediately without offering the slightest resistance.

Álvaro listened attentively. He was annoyed that all these conversations were of absolutely no use to him. He’d purchased several blank tapes in order to record, plugging the machine into the bathroom socket, everything that came through the neighbours’ ventilation window. But why should he record all this useless material? He would hardly be able to use any of it in the novel. And it was a shame. Álvaro surprised himself — at first slightly perplexed — at regretting the lack of disagreement between the couple next door. All couples go through difficult periods every once in a while and he didn’t think it much to ask that they too should abide by this norm. Now that the book was going well, now that the knots of the plot were beginning to get nicely tied up, was when he most needed a real fulcrum that would spur him on to take the story line firmly in hand to the denouement. The tension of one or two arguments, provoked by some trivial domestic or conjugal event, would be enough to simplify his task extraordinarily, to help him continue with it fearlessly. That’s why he was exasperated to the point of paroxysm by the laughter and whispers he heard through the neighbouring ventilation window. From the look of things, the Casares were not willing to make the slightest concession.

One day he went back to spying on the hallway, waiting for Enrique Casares to leave for work. Once again they met by the lift. They chatted, and Álvaro offered him a lift to the factory. The sticky heat of four in the afternoon didn’t keep them from carrying on a conversation in between the abstract protests of honking horns and the dun-coloured clouds of smoke escaping from exhaust pipes. They talked of politics. Casares criticised the government with a bitterness Álvaro thought out of character within his affable corpulence. He confessed to having voted for them in the previous elections, but now regretted it. Álvaro thought his neighbour’s vitality had turned into an almost agitated resentment. Casares said it was incredible that a left-wing government could play such rotten tricks on workers, the very people who’d voted them into office. Álvaro agreed, paying close attention to his words. There was a moment of silence. The car stopped in the factory car-park. Casares didn’t get out immediately and Álvaro realized he wanted to add something. Wringing his hands nervously, Casares asked him if he would mind, seeing as he was a legal adviser as well as a neighbour, if he consulted him about a personal problem that was worrying him. Álvaro said he’d love to be able to help. They agreed to meet the following day. Relieved and grateful, Enrique Casares said goodbye and Álvaro watched him walk away across the car-park under the burning afternoon sun.

At twelve noon the next day, Casares turned up at Álvaro’s apartment. They sat down on the sofa in the dining room. Álvaro asked him if he’d like something to drink; Casares politely declined. To assuage the tension his neighbour had written all over his face, Álvaro spoke of the happy proximity of the summer holidays. Casares practically interrupted him, no longer hiding his embarrassment.

‘It’d be best if we got straight to the point. I’m going to be frank with you.’ Álvaro said to himself that, although he still addressed the couple with the formal usted, they had both now definitively adopted the friendlier tú. The fact did not make him feel uncomfortable. ‘If I’ve resorted to this it’s only because I find myself in a bind and because I think I can trust you. The truth is I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t inspire confidence.’

Casares looked him frankly in the eye. Álvaro cleared his throat, prepared to offer all of his attention.

Enrique Casares explained that his company had begun a process of downsizing. This restructuring of the workforce affected him directly: they were now processing his redundancy. As he would have read in the papers, the workers had gone on strike, the union had broken off talks with the company and the ministry. For the majority of workers affected by these measures, the situation was hopeless. His own case, however, was different. Casares outlined the details that made his situation special. He said he wondered whether it might be possible to appeal against his dismissal with some chance of success and that, to avoid getting lost in a jungle of unfamiliar laws and decrees, he was going to need the help of a lawyer.

He added, ‘Of course, I’ll pay whatever it costs.’

Álvaro remained silent in his armchair, without the slightest gesture of assent or refusal. His visitor seemed relieved of a terrible burden. He said that he’d now gladly accept the beer Álvaro had offered earlier. Álvaro went to the kitchen, opened two beers, which they drank together. More relaxed, Casares said he couldn’t exaggerate the importance of the matter, since his salary from the factory was his family’s only source of sustenance. He begged him not to mention the matter to anyone: he’d been keeping it secret so as not to worry his wife unnecessarily. Álvaro promised he’d investigate the case thoroughly and assured him he’d communicate any concrete result as soon as he had one. They said goodbye.

V

For some time, the writing of the novel was put on hold. Álvaro spared no effort in studying Enrique Casares’ case. He obtained all the relevant information, examined it carefully, studied it, revised it several times, checked the case against other analogous ones. He arrived at the conclusion that, in effect, it would be possible to appeal against the redundancy, with a virtual guarantee of success. In the worst case, the severance pay the company should be obliged to provide if the dismissal was carried out was almost double the paltry sum his neighbour had been offered.

Once the situation was clarified, he reflected cautiously. He considered two options:

a) If he appealed the dismissal it was very likely Casares would manage to keep his job or, at least, that the damage would be far less — on the hypothesis that the company might choose to resort to a paragraph of the law which stated that they had no obligation to readmit a dismissed employee to his post. In this case — Álvaro continued — I will have won Casares’ gratitude, but I will also have lost time and money, since I have no intention of sinking so low as to charge him a fee.

b) If he allowed events to take their natural course, without intervening in them, he would still gain his neighbour’s friendship and appreciation, given that he would understand and respect all the disinterested attention Álvaro had devoted to his problem. Besides, Álvaro wouldn’t charge him a cent for all the time generously spent on it. On the other hand, it was certain that the loss of his job — their only source of sustenance — would have repercussions on the couple’s relationship, which might deteriorate in such a way as to make possible that he, Álvaro, might be able to expect to hear, from his surveillance post by the ventilation window, the vicissitudes of that process of deterioration, which he’d undoubtedly be able to use in his novel. This would facilitate his work enormously as he would enjoy the possibility, so long nurtured, of obtaining from the couple the material he needed to proceed with and conclude his work.

He arranged to see Casares. He explained the steps he’d taken, his investigations at the ministry and the union, illustrated the situation with analogous examples, clarified various juridical details, added data the factory had supplied. Finally, he invented interviews and lied coldly.

He concluded, ‘I don’t think there’s the slightest chance they’ll accept the appeal.’

The expression on Enrique Casares’ face had passed from expectation to despair. He loosened his tie, knotted his hands together, rested his elbows on his knees; his breathing sounded laboured. After a silence during which Casares’ eyes stung, Álvaro offered him all his support and, although theirs was only a recent acquaintance, all his friendship at such a difficult time. He told him he must, now more than ever, keep calm, that a man’s measure is revealed on occasions like this, that no good would come from losing hope. He also assured him that everything in life had a solution.

Casares looked out the dining-room window. A pigeon landed on the sill. Álvaro noticed that his neighbour was stunned. Casares stood up and walked to the door, apologizing for all the trouble he’d caused and thanking him for all that he’d taken. Álvaro modestly brushed aside his words and said don’t mention it, that’s what friends are for. By the door, he rested a friendly hand on his shoulder and reiterated his support. Casares left with his head hanging.

Álvaro immediately took a chair, a little table and a microphone into the bathroom. He set up the microphone on the table, where there was also a notebook and pen. He sat in the chair. Whenever he began a listening session, the building swarmed with indistinct noises: his ear had to adjust to that murmuring to be able to distinguish between them. Now he clearly heard the voices of the couple next door. He was explaining the situation to her: he said he now had no solution, they’d just have to accept it. At one point, the roar of a cistern interrupted the dialogue. Álvaro stopped the tape and swore. When silence was restored he turned the tape recorder back on and heard the woman reassuring the man, comforting him affectionately. She said, ‘Everything in life has a solution.’ He mumbled that Álvaro had tried to comfort him with the very same words. The woman asked what Álvaro had to do with all this. He confessed that he’d consulted their neighbour because he knew he was a lawyer, and begged him for help. The woman didn’t reproach him; she said that Álvaro inspired her confidence. The man praised his generosity, the sincere interest that he’d shown in his case, all the trouble he’d taken. Besides, he hadn’t charged him a single cent for all the work. From the next flat came a blast of music: the spotty-faced journalist was listening to Bruce Springsteen at full volume.

Álvaro didn’t get annoyed. For the moment he was satisfied. He thought he’d be able to take full advantage of the dialogue he’d just recorded for his novel. With a few details modified, others improved, the conversation could sound extraordinarily energetic and lifelike, with its eloquent silences, pauses and hesitations. Spurred by his initial success, he considered the possibility of installing a permanent recording device in the bathroom to pick up the conversations from the neighbouring apartment, especially since, starting from next week, they would also talk to each other during the hours when he was absent.

The next day he resumed work on the novel. He stitched up the plot concerning the married couple without difficulty: events were now practically writing themselves. As for the part concerning the old man, however, there weren’t too many reasons for optimism. Unlike what was happening with the young couple, here Álvaro felt he hadn’t a leg to stand on or any reference from which to continue with the story. Without them, his imagination wallowed in a hesitant swamp of imprecision: the character as much as his actions lacked the solidity of real life. It was urgent, therefore, to establish contact with the old man as soon as possible. This would smooth out the difficulties that part of the novel was posing. But the problem lay in how to strike up a friendship with him. Because although it was true that their paths crossed in the supermarket almost daily, it was no less true that they barely exchanged a laconic greeting: the old man’s surliness wouldn’t permit a whiff of affability.

The doorbell rang. The mare appeared in the doorway. Álvaro said he was very busy. The concierge neighed, and he couldn’t keep her from getting in as far as the dining room.

‘We haven’t seen each other for so long,’ she said, as if sighing. She screwed up her face in what might have meant to be a saucy smile or an affectionate reproach. ‘You’ve been neglecting me a bit, haven’t you?’

Álvaro concurred with resignation.

The woman asked in a sickly sweet voice, ‘How’s everything going?’

‘Badly,’ Álvaro replied harshly.

The concierge had stopped paying attention to him and looked distractedly around the room. She continued mechanically, ‘And why’s that?’

‘Smells like a stable,’ Álvaro croaked.

He remained standing, restlessly shifting his weight from one leg to the other. As if she hadn’t heard Álvaro’s incongruous answer, the concierge, who seemed to return from an abyss to trivial domestic concerns, went on with an air of surprise, ‘Hey, your apartment is an absolute mess. I think what’s needed here is a woman’s touch.’ She paused and immediately added solicitously, ‘Would you like me to lend you a hand?’

‘Nothing would displease me more, Señora,’ Álvaro answered, like a spring recoiling, in a tone of voice that blended in identical doses false and excessive kindness, mere insult and perhaps even a deer-like fear at any possible double meaning the phrase might contain.

The woman looked at him strangely. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, don’t be like that, man, tell me,’ she entreated with a flourish worthy of Florence Nightingale.

‘I’ve fucking had it up to here with you!’ he shouted.

The concierge regarded him first with surprise, then with a vaguely equine indignation.

‘I don’t think I deserve such treatment,’ she said. ‘I’ve only ever tried to be nice to you and help you as far as possible. If you didn’t want to see me again, you had only to tell me so.’

She started to walk out. Hand on the knob of the half-open door, she turned and said, almost begging, ‘You’re sure you don’t want anything?’

Gathering his patience, Álvaro suppressed an insult and whispered, ‘I’m sure.’

The concierge closed the door noisily. Álvaro stood in the middle of the dining room; his left leg was trembling.

He returned to his desk in an agitated state. He took several deep breaths and quickly recovered from the shock. Then he remembered that, during their second encounter, the concierge had told him about old man Montero’s fondness for chess. Álvaro told himself that was the flank he must attack. He had never been interested in the game and barely knew its rules, but that very morning he went to the nearest bookshop and bought a couple of manuals. For several days he studied them fervently, requiring yet another delay in the writing of the novel. Then he immersed himself in more specialized books. He acquired a certain theoretical command of the game, but he needed practice. He arranged to meet friends he’d given up some time ago. They accepted readily, because chess seemed no more than an excuse to renew a friendship broken off for absolutely no reason.

Álvaro would arrive with a briefcase containing notes, annotated books, blank sheets of paper, pencils and pens. Despite his friends’ best efforts, he barely conversed or drank during the matches. They couldn’t listen to music either, because Álvaro insisted it kept him from concentrating. A few brief words that also served as a greeting preceded without more ado the commencement of the game. As soon as it was over Álvaro would use some pressing engagement as an excuse and leave immediately.

When he had proved to his satisfaction that he could quash almost all the feeble resistance his opponents might muster, he dispensed with them and, to complete the perfection of his game, bought a computer against which he would play long, obsessive matches that kept him up till the small hours. During that time, he slept little and badly, and got up very early to resume feverishly the game abandoned the night before.

VI

The day he considered himself ready to face the old man, he got up, as usual, at eight on the dot. He took a cold shower and went down to the supermarket, but the old man did not appear. He loitered around the fruit counter, looking at the oranges, the pears, the lemons piled in wicker baskets. He asked the fruit seller when the strawberries would be arriving this year. Then he saw the old man. As the answer died on the edge of the shop assistant’s lips, Álvaro rushed off in pursuit of his neighbour, who was now heading for the checkout. On the way out of the establishment, he held the door open and let the old man go first. He walked beside him all the way home. He talked of the weather, of how dirty the steps were, of the number of door-to-door salesmen that had been pestering them in the building; to win his complicity, he made a malicious joke about the concierge. The old man looked at him with eyes of cold crystal and praised the concierge, who helped him with his housework; besides, he always thought their steps were the neatest in the neighbourhood. When they got to the front door, Álvaro changed the subject. He mentioned the computer he’d just bought: he used it principally to play chess.

‘I know it’s not for me to say, but the truth is I’m a better than average player,’ said Álvaro, feigning a cloying petulance.

The old man’s face sketched a hard smile.

‘You don’t say!’ he replied sarcastically.

Álvaro briefly recounted a few of his victories, in the most precise and technical terms he could think of, proposed a few variations he hadn’t used at the time and assured him that his computer had seven levels of difficulty and only after the fifth did it pose any challenges. Less surprised than irritated by his neighbour’s vanity, the old man announced that he too played chess. Álvaro seemed delighted. They arranged to play the following day in old man Montero’s apartment.

As he closed his door, Álvaro felt both satisfied and anxious. Satisfied because he had finally achieved his objective of getting inside the old man’s apartment and would now have at least the possibility of getting friendly with him. Anxious because perhaps he had gone too far, maybe he had seemed too sure of himself, he’d boasted excessively and may have put the whole operation at risk, given that, as was not rash to presume, if the old man played more brilliantly than he did and finished him off with ease, it would all be put down to the mere bluster of a neighbourhood braggart, and not only would he have wasted the enormous amount of time he’d invested in studying the game, but all possibility of forming any kind of relationship with the old man would practically disappear into thin air, which would endanger his chances of ever finishing the novel.

Troubled by the fear of failure, he began to go over openings he knew by heart. That’s when someone knocked at the door. Since he suspected it was the concierge, he didn’t even get up from his armchair. Ten minutes later the bell was still ringing. He opened the door in a rage without first looking through the peephole.

‘Hi!’ said the journalist with the granulated face. ‘Look, sorry to bother you, but I was just making some lunch when suddenly I realised I’d run out of potatoes and, since it’s so late, I’m sure the supermarket’s closed. So I said to myself, “Surely Álvaro can lend me a few. He’s so organized!”’

Álvaro remained sunk in impatient silence. He noticed his stomach hurt. Angst always seized him in the stomach.

‘Álvaro!’ demanded the journalist again. ‘Have you got a couple of potatoes?’

‘No.’

‘Any oil?’

‘Nope.’

‘OK, then give me a bit of salt.’

The journalist pushed into the dining room. Álvaro came back from the kitchen with a little bag filled with salt, offered it to her without handing it over and walked to the door. With a hand on the knob of the half-open door, he looked at the girl, who remained in the centre of the dining room with the air of someone visiting Roman ruins. For a moment she seemed much younger than he’d previously thought: in spite of her decisive manners and her false adult air, she was barely an adolescent. Where had he got the idea she was a journalist? In that case, she must still be studying for her degree, because she could hardly be twenty. ‘On veut bien être méchant, mais on ne veut point être ridicule.’ Ridiculing her would be an efficient antidote against the impertinence of her visits.

‘Hey,’ he said in an ironic tone, ‘you’ve really grown lately, haven’t you?’

The girl let out a sigh and smiled with resignation.

‘Whereas for you time stands still.’

Álvaro couldn’t help but blush. She helped him open the door the rest of the way and said goodbye. Álvaro stood with the door half closed, his left hand on the doorknob and in his right the bag of salt. He slammed the door closed and felt absolutely grotesque with the bag of salt in his hand. He hit himself on the head with it, then he threw it into the toilet and flushed. As he sat back down at his desk, he abruptly reflected on the coincidence that he and the concierge, at the most ludicrous point of their two most recent phenomenal performances, had both stood gripping the doorknob in their left hands while holding the door half closed. A cold shiver ran up his spine as he remembered the dream of the green hill with the white door and its golden doorknob; he smiled to himself and decided he should put all those symmetries to use in some future novel.

The bell rang again. This time he sneaked up to the door and, holding his breath, spied outside through the peephole. Irene Casares was standing outside with her shopping trolley. Álvaro glanced in the hall mirror, smoothed his chaotic hair and adjusted the knot of his tie.

He opened the door and they greeted each other warmly. Despite her protests, her insistence that she didn’t want to disturb him and that she still had to get lunch ready, he invited her into the living room. They sat down opposite each other. After an expectant pause, the woman declared that she’d come to thank him for all he’d done for her husband. He’d told her about his conduct and was full of gratitude. She said she didn’t know how they’d ever repay him (Álvaro made a vague magnanimous gesture with his hand, as if indicating that such a concern had never even entered his head) and that he should count on their friendship for absolutely anything. He then noticed the woman’s gentle serenity: her eyes were bright and blue, her voice clear, and her whole body emanated a freshness barely in keeping with her pauper-princess clothes.

Álvaro thanked her for the visit and for her kind words, played down the importance of his role, insisted that anyone in his place would have done the same. He offered her a cigarette, which she politely declined; he lit one. They talked about the dangers of smoking, about anti-tobacco campaigns. He assured her he’d tried several times, with the results she saw before her, to give up the vice. She declared she’d overcome it five years earlier and, with the excessive passion of the convert, listed one after another the unquestionable benefits such a success brought with it. Then she claimed her duties at home prevented her from enjoying his company any longer. When they were standing in the dining room, Álvaro said his job allowed him to keep abreast of developments in the labour market and he would not hesitate to use his influence, slight as it was, to help her husband find a job. She looked him in the eye with disconsolate candour and mumbled that he could not imagine how much that would mean to her family and, as her tremulous hands clutched the handle of the shopping trolley, she admitted their situation was desperate. She opened the door, gripping the doorknob in her left hand, and held it half open while she turned towards Álvaro as if trying to add something. He hurried to reiterate his promises, practically pushed the woman out the door and suggested that one of these days (this elastic expression would allow him to fix the date at the time best suited to his objectives) they must come over for dinner. Señora Casares accepted.

That night, when he got back from the office, Álvaro felt tired. As he was making something for dinner, he said to himself that perhaps he’d been working too hard lately, maybe he needed a holiday. He ate a meagre supper and sat down in front of the television. Around midnight, when he was getting ready for bed, he heard, amid the silence populated by nocturnal breathing, a key scrabbling at a neighbouring lock. Then a bang revealed an interior chain that prevented the door opening from the outside. Álvaro crouched behind his and spied through the peephole. The Casareses were quarrelling, one on either side of the slightly opened door. Despite the conversation being carried on in very low voices, Álvaro hoped the complicit silence of the building would allow him to record at least a few snippets of it. He ran to get the tape recorder, plugged it in near the door, put in a blank tape, pressed record and added all five of his senses to the mechanical memory of the recording.

The woman whispered that she was sick of him coming home so late and that, if he wasn’t able to behave like a decent person, it would be better if he found somewhere else to sleep. In a wine-soaked, imploring voice, her husband begged her to let him in (his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and his words were just a muffled murmur). He admitted he’d been out with his friends, that he’d been drinking; with a surge of vaguely virile indignation, he asked her what she expected him to do all day at home, idle and impotent, whether she wanted to watch him turn into an idiot from sitting through so much television, whether she wanted to see him get even fatter than he already was, eating like a pig all day. After a silence tinged by the husband’s heavy breathing, his wife opened the door.

Álvaro unplugged the tape recorder, ran down the hall with it, plugged it in again in the bathroom, sat down on the lid of the toilet, pressed record. His tiredness had disappeared; all his limbs were tense.

The man had raised his voice, grown bolder. The woman told him not to speak so loudly, the children were sleeping, and besides, the neighbours could hear them. The man shouted that he didn’t give a damn about the fucking neighbours. He asked his wife who she thought she was, she wasn’t going to tell him what to do, it had always been the same, she was always giving him stupid lessons and advice and he was fed up, that’s why he was in a situation like this, if he hadn’t married her, if she hadn’t reeled him in like an idiot, things would be very different now, he could have done what he really wanted, he wouldn’t have had to come to live in this city that sickened him, he wouldn’t have had to take whatever job he could find to earn a shitty wage in order to support a damned family. .

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.

VII

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.

VIII

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.

He went down to visit her again. He explained that there are moments in a man’s life when he is not himself, when he flies off the handle and is unable to control himself. In those ill-fated instances, nothing he does or says should be taken as representative, but rather as a sort of malevolent manifestation of a momentary wretched temper. For this reason he begged her to excuse him if, at any time, his conduct towards her had not been as gentlemanly as she had every right to expect from him.

The concierge accepted his apology with delight. Álvaro hurried to add that he found himself at a particularly delicate point in his career just then, something which not only might explain his possible bursts of bad temper, but also demanded his total and exclusive commitment to his work, making it absolutely impossible for him to cultivate and enjoy her company for some time. Nothing was more disagreeable to him, but he was obliged to postpone their friendship until circumstances became more favourable. This, of course, should not prevent their relationship, despite developing on a strictly superficial level, being ruled by an exemplary cordiality. Bewitched by Álvaro’s florid self-exonerating rhetoric like a snake by the sound of the charmer’s flute, the concierge willingly agreed to everything.

The chess games continued in old man Montero’s apartment. Álvaro was pleased to note they always remained under his control: he decided the exchanges of men, foresaw the attacks, dictated the mood of play and doled out a calculated alternation of victories and defeats that kept up the rivalry and invited intimacy between the two adversaries. Gradually the pre- or post-match conversations grew longer until they began to take up more time than the game itself. He was initially surprised to observe that the old man consumed startling quantities of alcohol for a man of his age, which gave him a disordered and obsessive loquacity. Álvaro awaited his moment.

Old man Montero spoke mostly about politics. He had always voted for the far right and thought democracy was an illness only weak nations suffered from, because it implied that the ruling elite had declined their responsibility and left it to the amorphous masses, and a country without an elite was a country that was lost. Furthermore, it was based on a fantasy, universal suffrage: a concierge’s vote could not be worth as much as a lawyer’s vote. Álvaro nodded and the old man was soon bitterly criticising the government. His darts, however, were mainly directed at the right-wing parties. He felt they’d backed down from their principles, had reneged on their origins. Álvaro was occasionally moved by the emotional rancour of his reproaches.

He also talked about his military past. He’d fought in the battle of Brunete and at the Ebro, and he recounted moving tales of memorable deaths, bombardments and heroism. One day he told how he’d seen General Valera in the distance; another, he described a provisional ensign dying in his arms, bleeding to death as they took him to a first aid post far from the front line. Once in a while tears would fall.

Álvaro understood the old man’s mistrust wasn’t directed at concrete individuals, but was a general animosity against the world, a sort of festering reaction of generosity betrayed.

His only daughter lived in Argentina; sometimes she wrote to him. For his part, he was keeping his life’s savings to leave to his grandchildren. One day, in the midst of alcohol-induced exaltation, and after a mention of his heirs, he assured Álvaro with pride that he had much more money than his modest life might lead one to suspect. With similar pride, he declared his distrust of banks, mean inventions of usurious Jews. Then he stood up (there was an intoxicated sparkle in his viscous eyes) and revealed a safe built into the wall, hidden behind an imitation of a neutral landscape painting.

Álvaro shuddered.

After a few seconds Álvaro reacted and said that for some time he’d been kicking around the idea of withdrawing his money from the bank and putting it in a safe, but he hadn’t made up his mind to do so because he wasn’t entirely convinced they were secure and he’d been very lazy about going to a shop and finding out. With as much enthusiasm as if he were trying to sell it, the old man extolled the virtues of the strongbox and took his time over an explanation of the workings of its simple mechanism. He claimed it was much safer than a bank and said he only closed his when he left the house.

That very day, Álvaro invited the Casareses to dinner.

At nine on the dot they arrived at his door. They had dressed up for the occasion. She wore an old-fashioned violet-coloured dress, but her hairstyle was elegant and the shadow of make-up darkening her lips, eyelids and cheeks paradoxically enhanced the pallor of her face. He was stuffed into a tight suit, and his enormous belly only allowed one button of the jacket to be done up, leaving exposed the flowered front of an Asturian baptism shirt.

Álvaro was about to laugh to himself at the Casareses’ pathetic appearance, but he quickly realised that this dinner represented an important social occasion for them and he felt a sort of compassion towards the couple. This filled him with great self-confidence, and so, while they had the aperitif he’d prepared and listened to the records he’d recently acquired, he found topics of conversation that alleviated the relative initial awkwardness and relaxed the stiffness that gripped them. They talked about almost everything before sitting down at the table and Álvaro couldn’t help but notice that the woman nervously smoked one cigarette after another, but he refrained from making any comment.

During the meal, the man talked and laughed with a booming cheerfulness that seemed excessive to Álvaro and, in spite of her haggard appearance, the woman was visibly pleased at her husband’s contagious vitality. Álvaro, nevertheless, conscious of the respect he inspired, did not release the reins of the dialogue, and although he tended to be inhibited when faced with a personality more vigorous or excessive than his own, he succeeded in bringing the conversation on to his terrain. He talked of daily life in the neighbourhood, of the strange relationships that grew up between neighbours, invented some dubiously diverting discord among the concierges. Then he concentrated on his relationship with old man Montero: their long chess matches, the conversations that preceded and followed them, the taciturn initial mistrust only gradually mellowed by time and with difficulty. He also took his time enumerating the many details that made the man eccentric. Over coffee and cognac, he enquired discreetly about his neighbour’s employment situation. The couple turned gloomy. The husband said it was all still the same and he still didn’t know how to thank him for all the trouble he’d taken. Álvaro said he considered himself paid by the satisfaction he received from fulfilling an obligation as friend and neighbour. He said, for his part, he’d made enquiries within his limited sphere, but without results. In his view, the situation didn’t look set to improve, at least not in the short term. In any case, he would continue with his enquiries and, as soon as he heard of any job, tell him immediately.

They carried on chatting for a while, arranged to get together again on the following Tuesday and said goodnight.

IX

He threw himself into feverish activity that week. Now he also wrote at night: when he got home from the office he took a shower, ate a light supper and shut himself back up in his study. As the novel approached its end, the rhythm of his writing slowed down, but at the same time his certainty grew that the chosen path was the right one. In order not to waste the two mornings a week he went upstairs to the old man’s place, the previous evenings would find him in bed very early, so he could get up at five the next morning and have almost five working hours at his disposal before confronting the chessboard. The Casareses’ arguments were getting worse and it wasn’t difficult for him to detect, the next time they came to dinner at his place, that the hostility between them had increased. That day they didn’t arrive dressed as if for a religious celebration. This presupposed a greater level of trust, which not only allowed him to conduct and express himself more naturally, but also permitted the resentment the two of them had been harbouring lately to eventually rise to the surface. Álvaro again dominated the conversation and it hardly took any effort to centre it, now almost without pretence that it was merely a chance turn in the wanderings of the dialogue, on old man Montero. He again mentioned his eccentricities, explained in great detail the location of the wall safe, described its simple mechanism and assured them it contained a great fortune. Later, he spoke about the old man’s poor health and absolute isolation; he made a special point of emphasizing the almost mathematical exactitude of his comings and goings each day, the unwavering nature of his daily routine; lastly, he said that he only closed the safe when he was about to leave the house.

In vain he awaited a reaction from the couple. They would change the subject as soon as a silence opened in Álvaro’s monotonous obsessive talk. At first he thought it was just a matter of time but, as they dined together repeatedly and he gradually constrained the conversation to this single theme, the Casareses’ indifference turned into irritation and impatience. One day they jokingly begged him to talk of something else for once and Álvaro, smiling and annoyed, asked for their forgiveness: ‘It’s just that it strikes me as a fascinating subject,’ he said, sounding fascinated. Another time they alluded to the theme as his ‘persecution mania’ and he, feeling they were trying to ridicule him, replied harshly, as if repelling unexpected aggression. On another occasion, the couple took the liberty of inviting the journalist with the eruptive face to introduce an element of variation to their gettogethers, but Álvaro practically ignored her, and that day insisted on talking about the old man more than ever. As they left, the Casareses stood chatting with the journalist for a few minutes on the landing. They confessed they were worried about Álvaro. For a while now he hasn’t seemed well; so much solitude couldn’t be good for anybody.

‘Solitude borders on madness,’ said the man, as if repeating a sentence prepared in advance for that moment.

There was silence. The girl’s eyes — two blue, attentive apples — opened wide.

‘Something will end up happening to him,’ the woman added, with that fatalism that passes for wisdom among the humble.

Álvaro was worried, not only because the couple didn’t react as he’d expected, but also what really exasperated him was that their relationship had improved markedly: the fights had stopped, the dinners at his place seemed to reconcile them even further and their physical appearance had regained its lost vigour. But there was something worse: he was unable to find a fitting finale for his novel, and when he thought he had hit upon one, the difficulties of execution eventually discouraged him. He needed to find a solution.

But it was the solution that found him. He’d been trying to write all morning without any results. He went out for a walk in the autumn light and dry leaves. On his way back, he met the Casareses in the entrance hall, waiting for the lift. They were carrying several bags and, wrapped in brown paper, a long object that widened at its bottom end. Álvaro thought incongruously that it was an axe. A shiver ran down his spine. The Casareses greeted him with a cheerfulness that Álvaro judged incomprehensible or perhaps only artificial; they told him they were coming back from the city centre where they’d been doing some shopping; they commented on the nice weather and said goodbye on the landing.

After a brief tussle, he managed to unlock the door. Once inside he collapsed in an armchair in the living room and, with trembling hands, lit a cigarette. He had not the slightest doubt about what the Casares planned to use the axe for, but nor did he doubt — he thought with a start of euphoria — the ending he’d give to his novel. And then he wondered — perhaps due to that insidious intellectual habit that led one to consider every objective a deception once it’d been achieved — if finishing it was really worth the old man’s death and almost certainly the eventual imprisonment of the couple, because amateurs would commit errors that the police could not fail to notice. He felt a terrible pressure in his chest and throat. He thought he’d call the Casareses and persuade them to abandon their project; he’d convince them it was madness, that the idea hadn’t even come from them: only he, Álvaro, was responsible for these atrocious machinations. He’d convince them they were going to destroy their lives and those of their children because, even if the police didn’t find them out, how would they be able to live with themselves with the weight of this crime on their consciences, how could they look their children in the eye without shame? But perhaps it was already too late. They had made their decision. And he, had he not made his as well? Had he not decided to sacrifice everything to his Work? And if he had sacrificed himself, why should he not sacrifice others? Why be more generous to old man Montero and the Casareses than he was to himself?

Then there was a knock at the door. It was almost midday and he wasn’t expecting anybody. Who could be looking for him at this time of day? With a shiver of fear, with resignation, almost with relief, he thought he understood. He’d been mistaken: the Casares weren’t going to kill the old man, they were going to kill him. In a flash of lucidity, he thought that maybe his neighbours had found out that he could have appealed the dismissal letter and secured Enrique Casares’ job for him, but for some reason unknown to them — although no less despicable for that — had refused to do so, ruining their lives and then amateurishly inciting them to murder old man Montero. But if they killed him, they’d not only get revenge on the one responsible for their disgrace, they could also keep his money — money that perhaps legitimately belonged to them — because now he sensed, through the uncertain fog of his derangement, that it was not impossible, during their latest obsessive encounters, that he would have told them that he himself had recently decided to keep all his savings in a wall safe similar to the old man’s.

He looked out through the peephole. His neighbour was indeed waiting on the landing, but his hands were empty. Álvaro opened the door. Enrique Casares stammered, said they were fixing a window and needed a screwdriver; he asked if he’d mind lending them his for a while; that evening, at the latest, they’d bring it back. Álvaro asked him to wait in the living room and a moment later returned with the screwdriver. He didn’t notice that Enrique Casares’ hand was shaking as he took it from him.

His wife returned it that night. They chatted for a few moments in the dining room. When she was about to leave — the apartment door was half open and the woman grasped the doorknob in her left hand — she turned and said, like someone saying farewell, in a tone that struck Álvaro as perhaps too solemn, ‘Thank you for everything.’

He’d never wondered why there were no smells or sounds, and perhaps that’s why he was even more surprised at their presence, although it was not impossible that they’d been there the other times as well; but the strangest thing was the vague certainty that now no one would keep him from reaching his aim. He was walking across a very green meadow with the smell of grass and fruit trees and manure, although he couldn’t see any trees or manure, just the green, green ground and the neighing horses (white and blue and black) against the stony or steely sky. He was climbing the gentle slope of the hill as a dry wind covered his naked skin in goose bumps, and he turned almost nostalgically towards the valley he was gradually leaving behind like a green wake filled with petrified neighing. And at the top of the green, green hill grey birds fluttered, coming and going and emitting little metallic cries that were also frozen needles. And he arrived at the crest panting, knowing that now nothing and no one would keep him from glimpsing what lay in wait on the other side of the door, and he clutched the golden doorknob in his left hand, opened the white door and looked through.

X

The next day he wasn’t surprised when the old man didn’t turn up at the supermarket. They were supposed to play chess that morning, but Álvaro didn’t leave his apartment. He smoked cigarettes and drank cold coffee until, towards noon, someone knocked at his door. It was the concierge: the blood had fled her face. It wasn’t very difficult to deduce from her whimpering and exaggerated gestures that she’d found the old man’s corpse when she’d gone up to do her daily cleaning. He sat her down in an armchair, tried to calm her, and called the police.

Soon an inspector arrived accompanied by three officers. They took them up to old man Montero’s apartment. Álvaro preferred not to look at the corpse. The concierge would not stop talking and whimpering. An older man with a very thin moustache, who arrived not long after the police, took photographs from various angles of the room and of the inert body; then they covered it with a sheet. The neighbours milled around outside the door; some went in as far as the entrance hall. Álvaro was stunned. The concierge had calmed down a little but she kept talking; she thought the old man had been stabbed to death. Álvaro searched for Casares among the group of onlookers, but found only the frightened eyes of the journalist, who was looking at him in a strange way. One individual pushed his way through as far as the entrance, where he was stopped by the officer posted there. The individual — a young man with prescription glasses and a grey raincoat — stated that he was a journalist and demanded to be allowed to enter, but the officer argued that he had strict orders not to let anyone through. Other colleagues of the journalist arrived later and, after he told them what was going on, settled down to wait for the inspector to emerge, sitting on the steps or leaning against the banister on the landing, smoking and chatting in loud voices. The group of neighbours still hadn’t made up their mind to disperse and behaved as if they were at a wake.

After a quarter of an hour, the inspector came out of the apartment; the journalists pounced on him. He said they’d soon be allowed to go in and take photographs, described the type of injuries to the victim and declared that they’d been inflicted with a screwdriver. Judging by the state of the old man’s body, the crime could have been perpetrated any time between yesterday afternoon and last night. The motive? He didn’t want to hazard a guess but a wall safe hidden behind a picture had been opened and emptied of anything it might have contained. This circumstance left little room for doubt: yes, it was possible that the motive had been robbery. Might the fact that the corpse was found in the dining room not indicate that the murderer was known to his victim, given that he’d let him into his house? The inspector repeated that it was not advisable to discount any hypothesis in advance; in his judgement, however, all were premature. For the moment he had nothing more to add.

Álvaro went home. Leaning against the big dining-room window, he stared down at the empty square. He lit a cigarette and rubbed his eyes with his right hand. He had a bit of a headache but he’d calmed down. He foresaw with ease the course the police investigation would take. As the journalist had suggested, it was obvious that only a neighbour or someone the victim knew could have got in as far as the dining room. All the tenants knew old Montero’s taciturn character, but they all knew as well — the concierge, the Casareses, the journalist, perhaps the rest of the tenants — that only he had managed to befriend the old man, that only he spent long mornings playing chess and talking in his apartment. The concierge would realize with horror that he’d been plying her for information by resorting to a ruse she dare not confess; the Casareses would reveal his unhealthy fixation, the perseverance of his obsessive chatter about the old man, their own suspicions about Álvaro’s mental balance; and the journalist (now he understood the strange way she’d looked at him among the crowd of onlookers!) would undoubtedly confirm the couple’s statement. And then there was the screwdriver. No one would believe that Casares had borrowed it in order to implicate him; the idea was too far-fetched. All the evidence would point to him; he would pay for a crime he had not committed. It was ridiculous, yes, grotesque. With benevolent irony he recalled: ‘On veut bien être méchant, mais on ne veut point être ridicule.’ But no: if there was one thing he was sure of, it was that he would not be the one to denounce the Casareses. Perhaps for that very reason, because they knew he wouldn’t give them away, they’d asked to borrow his screwdriver (‘Thank you for everything’): they’d discovered his scheme, the machinations with which he’d managed to ruin their lives, and now they were going to pay him back with interest (and that was also why they hadn’t asked recently about the supposed enquiries he was making about finding Enrique Casares a job). He then understood that should he pay for this murder it would be a secret justice: in reality, the couple were only superficially responsible for it, merely the executioner’s hand. He was the one who was truly guilty of the death of old man Montero. Irene and Enrique Casares had been two puppets in his hands; Irene and Enrique Casares had been his characters.

But that no longer mattered. Sooner or later the police would end up accusing him of the crime; that was just a question of time. What was urgent now was to finish the novel before they interrogated and arrested him. How much time did he have left?

He looked back down at the little square. A child was playing on the swings under the clear midday light. As he turned, Álvaro thought he recognized the Casareses’ younger son. He thought he was staring at him.

The next day he re-read everything he’d written up till then. He deemed that first draft to be riddled with errors in the choice of tone, point of view, the vision offered of the characters; indeed, the plot itself was faulty. But he said to himself that, if he was able to recognize his errors, perhaps not all of his work had been in vain: identifying them was already, in a way, to have rectified them. He revised the accumulated material and found it was vast and could be of great use. For that reason, despite the fact that it would be necessary to rewrite the novel from the beginning, not only could he use a large proportion of his notes and observations, but even whole pages from the original version. Certain fragments (for example the theoretical introduction) now sounded so pedantic that he’d barely need to retouch them, because a new context would endow them with a farcical air; the insufferable presumptuous tone that emanated from other passages should also be preserved, as a retrospective comic attraction. Finally, he understood that out of the material he’d written for the novel he would be able to construct its parody and refutation.

Then he began to write:

Álvaro took his work seriously. Every day he got up punctually at eight. He cleared his head with a cold shower and went down to the supermarket to buy bread and the newspaper. When he returned he made coffee and toast with butter and marmalade and ate breakfast in the kitchen, leafing through the paper and listening to the radio. By nine he was sitting in his study ready to begin the day’s work.