Free The Tenant by Roland Topor

center.
    “You didn’t see anything?”
    “No, I caught up with someone in the hall, but he said he wasn’t one of them so I let him go.”
    “They’re afraid to come down, the bastards! But they’ll have to go home sometime, and then . . . !”
    There was a sudden clattering sound, as the windows on the fourth floor were thrown violently open.
    “All right, you asked for it! Just stay right where you are, and we’ll see who’s giving the orders around here!”
    In spite of the distance, Trelkovsky could hear the sound of footsteps pounding heavily down the stairs. In the courtyard below, the two masculine voices were jubilant.
    “They took their time about it, but they’re coming! We’ll show them, the bastards—teach them to tear the place apart in the middle of the night . . . !”
    The encounter must have taken place beneath the shattered glass roof, somewhere near the trash cans, because Trelkovsky heard several of them overturn noisily, punctuating the stream of cursing and shouts of rage. Then someone began to run, trying to reach the relative safety of the staircase. A silhouette detached itself from the general melee and hurled itself savagely at the fleeing man. The two figures rolled across the ground, punching and kicking at each other with spectacular agility, but never letting go. One of them finally secured his position on top, seized his opponent’s head by the ears, and began pounding it methodically against the concrete walk.
    The sirens of a police car abruptly drowned out the piercing cries of the women who were now clustered at the windows, and uniformed policemen invaded the courtyard. Within a split second there was no longer anyone in sight. Then the sirens wailed off into the night, and calm returned.
    That night, Trelkovsky dreamed that he got out of his bed, pulled it away from the wall, and discovered a door in the area concealed behind the headboard. Astonished by this unexpected find, he opened the door and found himself in a long corridor. An underground passage, really, sloping downward into the ground, growing steadily larger as he moved along it, and ending finally in an enormous, empty room with neither doors nor windows. Its walls were totally bare. He walked back through the underground passage, and when he came to the door behind the bed he saw that there was a shiny new lock on the side of it facing into the passage. When he slid the bolt back and forth it functioned smoothly and silently. He was suddenly possessed by a creeping sense of terror, wondering what sort of creature could have put this lock in place, where he had come from, where he had gone, and why, tonight, he had left the bolt open.
    Someone was knocking on the door. Trelkovsky awoke with a start.
    “Who’s there?” he called.
    “It’s me,” a woman’s voice answered.
    He put on an old bathrobe and went to open.
    A woman he had never seen before was standing on the threshold, clutching the hand of a girl of about twenty. From the expression in the girl’s eyes, Trelkovsky recognized at once that she was a mute.
    “What can I do for you?” he asked.
    The woman must have been about sixty, perhaps a trifle older. Her eyes were very black, and she was staring directly into Trelkovsky’s face. She made a little gesture with the sheet of paper she held in her free hand.
    “Was it you, monsieur, who registered a complaint about me?”
    “A complaint?”
    “Yes—for causing a disturbance at night.”
    Trelkovsky was dumfounded. “I’ve never made any kind of complaint!” he said angrily.
    The woman promptly burst into tears. She seemed to collapse against the slight figure of the girl, who was observing Trelkovsky intently.
    “Someone made a complaint about me,” the woman said. “I got this paper this morning. But it isn’t me—she’s the one who makes all the noise. All night long.”
    “Who do you mean—she?” Trelkovsky asked, more bewildered than ever.
    “That old woman. She’s a