The Tenant by Roland Topor

don’t come complaining to me later. Give that back to me.”
    She snatched her precious sheet of paper from Trelkovsky’s hand, and without so much as a word of farewell marched to the door, slamming it violently behind her.
    “The bastards!” Trelkovsky raged. “The bastards! What the hell do they want—for everyone else to roll over and play dead! And even that probably wouldn’t be enough! The bastards!”
    He was so angry he was trembling. He went down to dinner in the restaurant where he always ate, trying to put it out of his mind, but when he returned to the apartment his fury was still pulsing through him. He went to sleep gnashing his teeth in helpless rage.
    The next night, it was the woman with the crippled daughter who came to knock at his door, just before ten o’clock. She wasn’t weeping this time. Her eyes were hard and cold, veiling a wicked glitter, but she seemed to relax a little when she saw Trelkovsky.
    “Ah, monsieur!” she cried, “you see! I told you so. She’s gotten up a petition against me! She has won! I’m going to be forced to leave. What a wicked, nasty woman! And they all signed—all of them, except you. I came to thank you. You’re a good man, monsieur.”
    The girl was staring intently at Trelkovsky, just as she had the other night, and so was the woman now, her eyes glittering more fiercely than ever.
    “I don’t like this kind of thing,” he stammered, confused and upset by the way they were watching him. “I don’t want to get mixed up in it.”
    “No, no; it’s not just that.” The woman shook her head, as if she were suddenly very tired. “You’re a good man. I can see it in your eyes.”
    She straightened abruptly and laughed. “But I got even! The concierge is just as bad as she is, but I got even with her, too!”
    She looked around her, assuring herself that no one else could hear, and then went on, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Between the complaint and the petition, they’ve made me so nervous I got the colic. So you know what I did?”
    The girl was still staring at Trelkovsky. He gestured feebly, indicating that he didn’t know.
    “I did it on the staircase!”
    She laughed obscenely, but her eyes were hard with malice. “I did—on every floor, the whole length of the staircase. It’s their fault; they’re the ones who gave me the colic. But I didn’t do anything in front of your apartment. I wouldn’t have wanted to make trouble for you.”
    Trelkovsky was horrified. First by her story, and then by the lightning realization that, far from avoiding trouble for him, the absence of stains in front of his door could only more positively condemn him.
    “How—how long ago?” he gasped.
    She chuckled happily. “Just now. Just a minute or two ago. I’d like to see their faces when they find it tomorrow! And the concierge! She’ll have to clean it all up! It’s just what they deserve, all of them.”
    She clasped her hands together. He could hear her, still chuckling gleefully as she went down the steps. He leaned over the railing to see if she had been telling the truth. She had. A yellowish trail zigzagged down the line of the steps. He put his hands to his forehead.
    “They’re going to think I did it! I’ve got to do something—I have to!”
    But he couldn’t possibly start cleaning it all up now. He might be surprised by one of the other neighbors at any moment. He thought of doing it himself in front of his door, but he realized immediately that he couldn’t, and in any case the difference in color and consistency would give him away. There might just be another solution.
    Struggling to control his feeling of nausea, he found a piece of cardboard in the apartment and used this to gather up a little of the excrement from the steps leading up to the fourth floor. His heart was pounding violently against his ribs, he was bathed in fear and disgust, but he forced himself on. When he had finished, he dumped the contents of the