The streets were deserted. The only person he saw during the first five minutes of his run was a young woman crouched down beside an anemone bush in the back garden of the First Church of Christ Scientist, as he was turning right on McCollough. The girl turned: she bared her teeth in a devout smile. Mario felt obliged to return the greeting: he smiled. Later, by then on Pennsylvania, he crossed paths with a grey-haired man in shorts and a black T-shirt, who was jogging in the opposite direction. The man’s expression seemed concentrated on a buzzing emitted from two earphones fed from a cassette player strapped to his waist. After that came a postal truck, an old, bandy-legged black man, who supported his decrepit steps with a wooden walking stick, a young woman with diligent Oriental features, a family having a boisterous breakfast on the front porch, complete with laughter and parental warnings. When, on the way home, he turned back on to West Oregon, the city seemed to have resumed its daily pulse.
That’s when he saw the bed of dahlias where he’d twisted his ankle last Monday. He didn’t think anything.
Panting, sweating and almost happy, he arrived home. He took a shower, made some breakfast (peach juice, scrambled eggs with bacon, toast, coffee with hot milk) and ate hungrily as he listened to the news on the radio. As he left the house he told himself that the physical exercise had done him good, banished his anxiety and perhaps the fear as welclass="underline" he felt spirited.
At a quarter past nine he parked the Buick in front of the foreign languages building. He picked up his leather briefcase from the passenger seat on his right and went into the building. The hall was half empty: just a few young people, sprawling on the carpeted floor, leaning against the walls, studying or dozing while waiting for the next class.
He went up in the elevator alone. When he got to the main office of the department Branstyne and Swinczyc were speaking in low voices. They stopped talking as soon as they noticed Mario’s presence: they turned to him, said hello. After a few innocuous comments on the weather or the tedium of weekends (or maybe about the Conference of the Association of Linguists), to which he barely paid any attention, Mario got to his cubbyhole. He picked up an envelope, he opened it: Scanlan asked to speak to him right away. Resigned, he thought: This is it.
Since he didn’t see Joan, he knocked directly on Scanlan’s door.
‘Come in,’ he said.
Scanlan was sitting behind his desk; he didn’t stand up. With a gesture he indicated that Mario should sit down across from him. Mario sat down. The morning sunshine lit up the office: the white walls, the leather chairs, the desk covered in papers, the poster advertising a retrospective of the work of Botero, Scanlan’s eyes, dark and intelligent behind the thick lenses of his glasses.
Scanlan stroked his beard and blinked.
‘Well, Mario,’ he said softly. ‘I suppose you can give me an explanation.’
Mario looked him in the eye without understanding.
‘Of what?’ he asked.
Scanlan stared back for a moment, blinked again, sighed. Then he opened a drawer in his desk, took out a piece of paper and handed it to Mario. He read it: the students from the first and second sections of phonology informed the head of the department that the professor in charge of the courses had not shown up for any of the lectures since term began.
‘What do you want me to say?’ said Mario, handing the paper back to Scanlan and feeling a slight tingle of satisfaction in his stomach. ‘Ask Berkowickz.’
‘Who?’ asked Scanlan, wrinkling his brow slightly.
‘Berkowickz,’ Mario repeated. ‘He’s in charge of those two sections.’
‘Have you gone crazy, or what?’ bellowed Scanlan, beside himself, standing up and pounding on the desk. ‘Who the hell is Berkowickz, might I ask?’
Confused, not knowing what to answer, almost asking, Mario declared, ‘The new phonology professor.’
Scanlan stared at him incredulously.
‘Look, Mario,’ he said at last, containing the rage that was making his hands tremble, ‘I assure you that I can understand your attempts to shift the responsibility to someone else: it’s petty, but I can understand it. What I can’t get through my head is you taking me for an idiot. You really think I am, or what?’ He paused, took a deep breath, pointed at the door with an admonishing finger and added, ‘And now listen closely: if you don’t get out of my office this instant and go and teach those two classes, or if I receive one single further complaint about you, I swear I’ll tear up your contract right here and now and throw you out on the street. I hope I’ve made myself clear.’
Mario stood up and left the office. Scanlan stood staring at the door, visibly shaken. Then he sat down, stroked his beard gently, looked at the papers he had on his desk, signed a few of them. After a few minutes he raised his eyes and blinked. ‘Berkowickz,’ he murmured, staring off into space, abstracted. ‘Berkowickz.’
XX
Mario walked quickly down the corridor, without saying hello to anybody. He got to the office; with trembling hands he took out a bunch of keys, chose one, tried to open the door but couldn’t. He tried to stay calm; he looked for the key engraved with the number 4024, which corresponded to the number of the office, in vain: the key did not appear. He immediately noticed the door opening from within. Olalde’s hunchbacked silhouette stood out against the insufficient light of the office; he smiled with a grimace that ploughed his forehead with lines and allowed a glimpse of his nicotine-stained teeth.
‘This time you were lucky, young man,’ he said, still sneering. ‘But watch out: next time you might not be.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Mario said hastily, without thinking what he was saying, almost in fear.
‘You know perfectly well what I’m talking about,’ said Olalde. ‘But that’s your problem: you’re old enough to know what suits you. At least you’ll have realized that sometimes life gets complicated by the silliest little things.’
Mario didn’t say anything; he walked back up the corridor. When he passed in front of Berkowickz’s office he stopped, scanned the corridor left and right, examined the bunch of keys, found the one engraved with the number 4043. He opened the door: he recognized the open books squashed on the desk and the shelves, the portable fridge, the cardboard boxes crammed with papers, the dirty ashtrays, the general disorder and closed-up smell; he understood that all his things were there.
He gave three lectures.
When he got home he dialled a telephone number.
‘Mrs Workman?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is Mario Rota,’ said Mario. ‘I’m calling about a delicate situation.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s about the new tenant.’
‘The new tenant,’ Mrs Workman repeated with a tired voice.
‘Mr Berkowickz, I mean.’
‘Mr Who?’
‘Berkowickz,’ repeated Mario. ‘Daniel Berkowickz. The linguistics professor, my colleague, the tenant who moved into Nancy’s old apartment.’
There was a silence.
‘I’m going to be frank with you, Mr Rota. I hope you won’t take it the wrong way,’ Mrs Workman said at last. ‘You know better than anyone that when Nancy spoke to me about your. . eccentricities, shall we call them, I chose to be tolerant. She acted like a good tenant should, and I’m not going to consent to you bothering her, not her or any of the rest of the tenants, as you certainly did me the other day calling me at an unreasonable hour, probably drunk.’
‘Mrs Workman —’