Housebroken Read online

  Afterward the man was sorry. Not for the dog, who sat chastised and trembling under the sink, but for trying to train him in the first place. What for? It wasn’t his dog. He went into the living room and sat on the sofa. He hadn’t decided which course of action to take, and wondered if there were any possibilities he had overlooked. He had left the dog in the bathroom, where his whining turned into jackal-like howls. I won’t give in to these manipulations, he thought.

  He leaned back and his hand touched something soft. He picked up the woman’s black tank top and examined it. Then out of habit, he sniffed the material. He failed to identify any smell capable of leading him to the right decision, but was suddenly a lot less angry.

  14

  The woman sat in a café, half an hour’s walk from her house. When she walked there it was still early. The air was chilly and she shivered. She had walked fast, nearly running, and had sat down in a place that seemed far enough away. She wondered whether the man was still in the apartment or had already left. She stayed in the café for nearly two hours, drinking two cups of coffee and eating a Danish.

  She wondered whether the man might poke around in her drawers and closets and find things he shouldn’t see. She let the thought scare her, because there was something pleasant about the fear, but she knew she had nothing to hide from him. That was the problem. Her photo albums, for example, would reveal only childhood snapshots, family photos, pictures from trips abroad taken by obliging strangers who had agreed to photograph her: the woman standing outside some museum, resting on a cliff surrounded by seagulls, holding a giant tomato in a market, sitting alone in a café. Her bookshelves contained no books with mysterious inscriptions and her desk was free of any incriminating evidence. All the man would find in her drawers were old bills, all paid on time and filed in separate envelopes.

  There was nothing in her closet to provoke suspicion or jealousy. On the right the man would see dresses and skirts and jackets on coat hangers, on the left T-shirts and jeans, and in the middle stockings, panties, bras, and pajamas. If he climbed on a chair and opened the upper doors he would find coats and sweaters and winter blankets still stored away because the fall had only just begun, and as usual it was only a sequence of heat waves with the promise of relief.

  The waitress asked if everything was all right, if the woman wanted anything. She smiled and said no. The waitress was a woman of about her own age, tall and heavy with reddish hair in a ponytail. From time to time she sat down at a corner table and read the newspaper and took a bite of her sandwich, until she noticed customers arriving or beckoning her. Then she got up, put her sandwich down on its plate, wiped her hands on her apron, and hurried to the table that had disturbed her breakfast, smiling brightly.

  The woman looked at the waitress. There was something serene and noble about her that suited her height and her ponytail. For a moment the woman felt like inviting the waitress to sit down with her. She wanted to know all kinds of things: whether she had guessed her age right, what her name was, whether she liked her work, what kind of sandwich she’d recommend, whether she had a boyfriend.

  The woman was sure this serenity wasn’t something you were born with. The waitress, she thought, wasn’t pretty, she was too tall, ungainly, her face and arms were covered with freckles, she worked hard, running from table to table with her pad and smiling at the customers, but in fact, thought the woman, she was smiling to herself. She had a secret. That was clear. The woman couldn’t think of anything more likely than love.

  The deeper she sank into the waitress’s story, trying to draw strength and encouragement and wisdom from it, the more she added details—elaborating on the waitress’s apartment, her boyfriend, what he looked like, what he did for a living, and whether he was asleep in the waitress’s bed, waiting for her to finish her shift and come home—and the further she receded, with a feeling of relief, from her own story, from her own apartment and from the man she didn’t know was hers or not, whether he was sleeping in her bed and waiting for her, whether he had left long ago and would never come back.

  The waitress saw the woman looking at her and made haste to put her sandwich down again and hurry over. The woman found herself face-to-face with the smile and the serenity. Suddenly she didn’t know whether they were real or whether she had made them up too, and she felt embarrassed at having disturbed the waitress. She ordered another cup of coffee.

  She emptied a packet of sugar into her cup and stirred. Again she raised her eyes, carefully this time, to look at the waitress, who was now standing with her back to her and talking to a customer. Perhaps her serenity was the kind that came after a long struggle, something available to everyone, something acquired. The almost masculine height, the heaviness, the too-pale skin and the strawlike red hair, the smattering of freckles, even the breasts that were too small for the rest of her body—all these, thought the woman, moved harmoniously and naturally, as if they couldn’t be otherwise, as if she needed no one else’s approval.

  The woman thought about the man’s body: average height, maybe shorter than the waitress, average shoulders, the beginnings of a paunch, cropped black hair, average arms, average hands, bitten fingernails, a face that was hard to remember exactly, and brown, slightly doggy eyes.

  In the final analysis, she thought, his looks were average, even mediocre. He was intelligent, but up to now she hadn’t heard him say anything she hadn’t heard before, and even though he was interesting to listen to, she knew she listened out of anxiety.

  Since she had graduated from university five or six years ago, her anxiety had hidden away in all kinds of corners. It had turned into a kind of pet that had to be fed, tamed, played with, and taken out for short, regular walks, tied firmly to a leash. All those years it had never occurred to her that she was raising a monster, that her anxiety wouldn’t be satisfied with anonymity, that one day it would demand a name, something catchy and banal, something like the fear of being alone. The young lawyer and the divorced painter were final attempts to put the anxiety in its place, to defeat it, suppress it, but the anxiety had won.

  It was the anxiety that had led her to ask a friend whether she could introduce her to someone. It was the anxiety that had filled her up with hope when the friend said she would ask another friend, who did know somebody. The anxiety had sat for a whole day by the phone waiting for the friend to call, and less than an hour later the anxiety had dialed the man’s number. It was the anxiety, of course, that had caused her to make the terrible mistake of asking the man whether he wanted to keep in touch when what she had actually been asking him was whether he wanted to keep in touch with the anxiety. And it was the same anxiety—good for it, she thought, for having so much energy—that had dreamed up the plan with the key.

  Suddenly it occurred to the woman that the waitress’s serenity was really despair in disguise. Each of her smiles was actually a cry for help; nobody loved the waitress and the waitress didn’t love herself. She wanted a different life and a different job and a different body, and perhaps she even wished to change places with the woman.

  A little before ten the woman asked for the check. The waitress, who was about to finish her shift, brought it, gave her change, and thanked her with a smile for the generous tip. On the way home the woman decided to go to the market. She set out with the calm tread of a person who has made an important decision: She wanted the man. She didn’t want to be like that waitress. She didn’t want anyone to look at her first with curiosity and then with pity, and to not want to change places with her for anything in the world.

  15

  The man was happy to find himself on his woman friend’s porch. He felt he could breathe freely at last; at last, after two confusing and exhausting days, he could be himself. The friend brought him a chilled beer, noisily opened a bag of potato chips, sat down on an armchair beside him, and folded her legs beneath her. There were two old armchairs on the porch—his and hers.

  He hadn’t bought milk. He had taken the d
og out for a short walk, and the dog, who had already forgotten the incident in the bathroom, frisked and romped all the way, chewed the man’s pants, and even though he wasn’t on the leash never left his side, even when the man stopped at the grocery and stood for a couple of minutes in the entrance without going inside.

  Afterward the man and the dog went home. The man smoked a cigarette, reread the woman’s note, as if new instructions might have been added to it, and wondered whether to take the note with him, as if it might be important evidence in a future court case. In the end he decided not to, because the woman might interpret it as an admission of guilt. He left the note on the table and walked out of the apartment, locking the door behind him and pushing the key deep into his jeans pocket, separate from his own key ring. Now he could feel the key digging into his thigh. He raised himself a little in the armchair, put his hand in his pocket, and fingered the metal. It was an ordinary key for a simple lock.

  The friend asked him how the blind date had gone, and the man said okay.

  “Did you sleep with her?” she asked. The man gulped down the rest of his beer and nodded.

  “You want another one?” asked the friend, and before he had a chance to answer she went inside and came out with a new bottle.

  “So,” said the friend, “go on, tell me. How did it go?”

  “It went,” said the man.

  “What went?” The friend laughed. “What’s happened to you? Suddenly you’re shy?”

  “I guess so,” said the man.

  “So?” said the friend. “Can’t you tell me anything?”

  “What do you want to know?” asked the man and took out the pack of cigarettes he had bought on the way.

  “Anything,” said his friend and dug into the bag of chips. “What does she do? She’s a teacher, right?”

  “She’s a translator,” said the man.

  “I thought she was a teacher,” said the friend, disappointed. “I thought she was some kind of schoolteacher.”

  “No,” said the man. “She’s a professional translator.”

  The friend sensed danger. The man had been on blind dates with more impressive occupations; she herself had fixed him up with lawyers, writers, architects, actresses—so why was he defending this translator of all people? They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then the man said: “We’ve got a dog.”

  “Both of you?” asked the friend.

  “She has. We found him together. But she hasn’t decided whether to keep him yet. She may get rid of him.”

  “Or you.”

  “Or me.”

  “Or you her.”

  “Maybe,” said the man. “Maybe I’ll get rid of her.”

  There was something reassuring about knowing that at any minute, when his old enemies came to attack—restlessness, boredom, the feeling he’d been cheated—he could get rid of the woman. Blind dates always promised something and never kept their promise. He didn’t know how to define it exactly, but he knew whatever that something was, he hadn’t received it. This blind date, for example, was already full of promise, but he promised himself that he wouldn’t let her disappoint him; the minute that began to happen—by now he could always tell when it was happening and it was sure to happen, it was only a matter of days—he would get rid of her. Then he’d be back on this porch with a beer and his friend and a bag of potato chips that made too much noise.

  Suddenly he missed the woman. He wondered whether she had found the puddle in the bathroom, whether she was angry with the dog, whether she was angry with him, whether she had taken out her anger on the dog. He imagined the woman hitting the dog and heard him crying in his head. Then he imagined the woman and the dog sitting at home, waiting for him. He emptied the second bottle of beer and threw his burning cigarette into the yard.

  16

  The woman consoled herself over the fact that the man hadn’t bought milk with the fact that he had taken the key. She mopped up the puddle in the bathroom calmly. She had begun to get used to the new rules. She had no way of knowing whether the man had taken the dog for a walk. The leash and the collar were lying on the table in the living room where he had left them last night. She was sorry she couldn’t ask the dog, that he couldn’t tell her exactly what had happened in the morning. She could have trained the dog to be an excellent spy, she thought, if only he could talk.

  She stood the shopping bags on the kitchen table and arranged the vegetables, fruit, and cheese in the fridge. Then she took down the little jars of spices from the shelf above the stove, emptied them into the garbage, and refilled them with fresh spices she had bought in her favorite shop. The vendor remembered her and asked where she had disappeared to. She had bought enough spices to last for a thousand meals.

  I bought something for you too, she said to the dog, who began to whine in anticipation at the sound of her voice. From one of the bags she took a bone full of sinew and marrow, and put it down on the floor next to his bowl. In spite of everything, she was in a good mood. She decided to open a bottle of beer and call the man. The drink was supposed to make her forget the dangers lurking in this phone call, but the beer wasn’t cold. She put a bottle in the freezer and went to take a shower.

  When she came out of the shower the house was already dark. She went into the kitchen and saw the dog crouching next to the porch door in the darkness, his back to her, gnawing the bone with his eyes closed, and suddenly she was afraid of him. She saw him in a new light. A beast of prey crouched in her kitchen and there was no knowing what it might do. She remembered reading somewhere that you should never give a dog raw meat, because the smell of the blood drove them mad. She tried to imagine the puppy attacking her. The idea seemed ridiculous, but on the other hand what did she know about him? She had taken him into her house from the street, without asking any questions, without knowing anything about his past, where he had been, and with whom. She leaned against the fridge and looked at him. He was so intent on the bone that he didn’t even bother to look back at her. He wasn’t hers any longer, she thought; she had lost him. The bone was a mistake. But she was afraid to try to take it away from him.

  She opened the freezer and touched the bottle but it wasn’t cold yet. She took the piece of paper with the man’s phone number out of her diary, sat down on the living-room sofa, put the telephone on her knees, and dialed. After four rings his answering machine came on. I’m not available and it’s your problem, the man’s voice announced. She hung up.

  She went back into the kitchen, opened the freezer, and touched the bottle again. The dog looked as if he was sleeping. She whistled to him and he turned his head toward her, the huge bone between his little jaws, his eyes half closed as if drunk.

  Back in the living room, she turned on the television and turned down the sound. Again she dialed the man’s number, again she heard the message on the answering machine, and again she hung up before the beep. Then she tried to call her girlfriend. There too she got the answering machine, which said: Either I’m not here to take your call, or I just don’t feel like it. Leave a message. Bye.

  She didn’t leave a message because she didn’t want the friend to return the call later, when the man was there. She hoped he would just turn up and bring a present for the dog, like he did yesterday. She heard the monotonous gnawing sounds from the kitchen—if it wasn’t for the bone the puppy could have kept her company, at least. The weatherman appeared on the television screen with good news. She couldn’t hear his voice but she saw his pointer dancing on the synoptic map. Fall had arrived. The end of predictions and hopes and gut feelings. It’s going to rain tomorrow. The woman saw the forecaster surrounded by painted clouds and lightning, against a picture of a little boy and girl splashing in a puddle of rainwater, their arms linked and a smiling umbrella over their heads.

  Again she dialed the man’s number and again she got the answering machine. Again she dialed her friend’s number, and again she hung up before the beep. Suddenly she remembered that her friend had gone
out on a blind date. She envied her. The date with the man now seemed far away: the moments when she had stood in front of the mirror trying on her black dress, the place where they had arranged to meet, the awful table they had given her, as if the waitress wanted to punish people sitting alone in the café and spoiling everybody else’s fun. And, of course, his lateness. And there were the moments when she was afraid he wasn’t going to show up, which seemed quite pleasant and even nostalgic compared to what she was going through now.

  Suddenly she thought of a horrible scenario: the man was her friend’s blind date. When she asked the friend who she was meeting, she had said she knew nothing about him. The woman knew next to nothing about the man. Again she dialed and again she heard the answering machine. This time she didn’t dial her girlfriend’s number.

  She remembered the key, and this calmed her a little. If he had taken the key, he would have to bring it back. They would have to meet at least one more time. Then she panicked and ran to the entrance hall to check in case he had pushed the key under the door. She went down on her knees and examined the floor tiles, but the key wasn’t there.

  17

  A few minutes before midnight the man returned home. He had a small studio apartment on the ground floor with a kitchenette and a bathroom and a Japanese screen with pictures of snowy mountains dividing his double bed from the rest of the room. He hadn’t been home for over forty-eight hours and the apartment greeted him with an offended air, punishing him with dust and stuffiness and a smell of mold and dirty socks. On the floor, under the windowsill, he saw the clay pot with the miniature tree his friend had given him smashed to pieces. The strong wind that had begun to blow in the evening must have banged the window shut and knocked the tree to the floor. The tree itself was intact, with crumbs of earth clinging to its tangled roots, but the pot was shattered.