The Tenant
Elie Nagéar is a young cosmopolitan who grew up and lived for a long time across many countries, particularly in Turkey. On his journey to Europe, he meets Sylvie, with whom he has a relationship. The young woman works in a nightclub, and in no time the two squander what little money they possess. Seized by desperation during a train journey from Brussels to Paris, Elie robs and kills a wealthy patron of the nightclub. To hide him, Sylvie sends him to her mother, who runs a boarding house. The life of the landlady, of Antoinette, her other daughter, and of the lodgers revolves around the kitchen, where relationships intertwine and where Elie soon becomes the center of attention with the incredible stories of his life and the countries he has lived in: > like the prelude to an orchestra, one could hear the clatter of forks, plates, and glasses rising and intensifying; whenever a voice was heard, it was Elie’s... He was not lying, yet he felt as if he were. He searched his memory for something more to tell, something comforting and flowing like a Neapolitan song . Thus a surreal atmosphere is created, disrupting the house’s mediocre and monotonous existence. All the inhabitants of the boarding house are so fascinated by the new lodger that, once it becomes known that he is the killer, far from reporting him, they actually help hide him in the hope that he might escape. Even when Elie, by then captured and sentenced, is boarded alongside the other deportees onto the ship that will carry him to forced labor, the landlady will be there on the pier to see him off, filled with nostalgia for a young man who, for a brief time, brought novelty to her mediocre bourgeois life. The milieu is the Belgian petite bourgeoisie. The story unfolds slowly, attentive to the details of life in a boarding house, where the tenants can barely make ends meet and where, paradoxically, all concern is devoted to propriety, to upholding a good name: the landlady’s husband is a conductor for the Belgian railways!! Why, then, does everyone let themselves be captivated by the new lodger’s stories? Why do they not turn him in? Perhaps because, Simenon seems to tell us, we all feel constrained by the flatness of everyday life. Why not read it? It reads very well owing to its concise and effective style. Yet the narrative pace is too slow to make for an enthralling read.