The Tenant Read Free Page B

asked his department head for a few days off while he looked for an apartment.
    “That won’t do any good,” he said. “On the contrary, what you should try to do is, take your mind off it completely. It may sound like very bad taste, but what I would advise you to do is to go to a movie.” He paused, and then added hastily, “Perhaps . . . If you will permit me . . . I have nothing to do this afternoon myself. Would you like to have lunch with me? We could go to see a film afterward. If you have nothing else to do . . .”
    She accepted.
    After lunch in a nearby cafeteria, they went into the first movie theater they saw. They were scarcely seated, and the film itself had not yet begun, when he felt her leg pressed tightly against his own. He would have to answer her in some way! He was unable to make up his mind what to do, but he knew he could not just sit there and do nothing. He put his arm around her shoulders. She gave no sign that she had noticed, and after a moment or two he developed a violent cramp in the upper part of his arm. He was still sitting in this uncomfortable position when the lights went on for the intermission before the film. He dared not look at Stella. She pressed her thigh even harder against his.
    As soon as the theater was again in darkness, he lifted his arm from her shoulder and passed it around her waist. The tips of his fingers were touching the beginning swell of her breast, of that breast he had seen earlier, in the hospital, beneath the taut sheath of the green sweater. She made no attempt to rebuff him. His hand moved up beneath the sweater, coming at last to the brassiere, and he managed to slip it between the breast and its envelope of nylon. He could feel the thickness of the nipple beneath his index finger, and began to rotate it slowly back and forth.
    She let out a little gasp, and wriggled abruptly in her seat, freeing the breasts entirely from the restriction of the brassiere. They were soft and warm. He moulded his hand to them convulsively.
    And even as he did so, he thought back to Simone Choule.
    “Perhaps she is dying, right at this very moment.”
    But as it happened, she didn’t die until a little later, just about sunset.

3

The Transition
    T relkovsky telephoned the hospital from a public booth to inquire about the condition of the former tenant. He was told that she was dead.
    He was deeply moved by this brutish ending. It was as if he had just lost someone who was very dear to him. He experienced a sudden, heartfelt regret that he had not known Simone Choule in an earlier, better time. They might have gone to films together, to restaurants, shared moments of happiness that she had never known. When he thought of her, Trelkovsky no longer saw her as she had been in the hospital, but imagined her as a very young girl, weeping over some youthful peccadillo. It was at such moments that he would have liked to be with her, to point out to her that, after all, it was simply a matter of a peccadillo, that she was wrong to weep, that she should be happy. Because, he would have explained, you won’t live very long, you will die some night in a room in a hospital, without ever having lived.
    “I’ll go to the funeral. It’s the least I can do. I’ll probably see Stella there . . .”
    He had, in fact, left Stella without even asking for her address. When they left the theater, they had looked at each other awkwardly, without finding anything to say. The circumstances under which they had met had caused a vague sense of remorse. For his part, Trelkovsky had had only one consuming desire: to flee, at once. They had parted company after a purely perfunctory assurance that they would see each other again.
    At the moment, his feeling of solitude made him regret that he had not taken advantage of this occasion to escape from it. And for all he knew, she felt the same way.
    There was no funeral. The body was to be sent to her home in Tours, to be buried there. A mass would