the rug
Dinner was becoming unbearable. At around seven or eight o’clock every night we would be disturbed by the sound of thumping and banging and shouting from the region above the ceiling – which is to say, from the man who lived in the apartment upstairs. One evening, when we were settled with wine and flowers and music and food, the noise began again. Elizabeth told me, Edward, to please ask him if he could please keep the noise down.
Eric lived alone up there. His wife is dead, we thought, but she died before we moved in, so it is not like we had anything to do with it. He kept to himself. He and I would exchange greetings on passing in the stairwell, but I had never been in his apartment, and he had never been in ours. If his noise became insufferable, Elizabeth would strike the ceiling of our kitchen with the handle of a broom (leaving tiny semicircular marks in the white plaster) and this infrequent antipathy formed our most regular method of communication.
So I knocked on Eric’s door. The spy hole winked once and twice before I heard the slow withdrawal of the bolt and the tumbling of the locks. Eric appeared. He was a very small, very old-looking man, but it was quite hard to estimate how old he really was. From his wrinkles and owlish gaze behind thick glasses you might have judged him to be in his seventies, but he had a quickness about him that suggested a degree of premature aging. That night he did not seem flustered, but his forehead was moist and his thin grey hair stuck to his head with sweat.
We exchanged greetings and pleasantries. Rather than simply ask him if he could possibly keep the noise down, I framed it as a series of vague but pointed questions: was everything all right? was he in any pain? did he need anything moved? was there anything at all, anything whatsoever, that I could help with? Determined to be assertive (for Elizabeth’s sake) I met his blinking, puzzled look with my most emphatic expression.
I was surprised when he accepted my offer of assistance. I thought I was only making a tactful but slightly dishonest suggestion that concealed an earnest wish for him to please shut up. Where I come from it is considered polite to refuse such offers when they are presented, especially between the hours of seven or eight when one or both parties have been or are about to enjoy their dinners. At any rate, he asked if I would come in and help move a table. And I said yes of course I would help to move the table.
The rooms of his flat were laid out in the same manner as ours downstairs – there was a front room, a kitchen, two bedrooms, a bathroom. But his kitchen surfaces were not crowded with bottles and jars and boxes, and his walls were not scuffed, his carpets were not stained, his shelves were not sagging, and there were no crumbs to be seen anywhere. His walls were papered a dark purple, an antique striped print which, when combined with a crown of white plaster, gave the walls a vertiginous effect. The only furniture was a large, long oak dining table, polished to a dark colour, with its six matching armless oak chairs. There was a plate of half-eaten spaghetti on the table, with a fork, spoon, and a bottle of beer on a coaster. The floors were bare boards mostly covered by a fine old rug, large enough to cover the whole space up to about a couple of feet from the walls on each side. The curtains were open and the night poured in.
Eric pointed to the corner of the room. The rug had gathered behind the furthest leg of the table, forming ripples and folds that pulled itself back from the corner of the room. ‘It’s awful,’ he said, ‘Awful. You see I cannot live like this.’ He went to the closest edge of the table and began to lift it, dragging the table away from the affected corner and thus exacerbating the problem. Eric was a small man, and beside the table, which he could barely lift, he looked miniature. I saw the source of the noise immediately. I pictured him hauling the table back and forth from each end, alone, trying to straighten a rug that could not be moved while the table was atop it, or trying to straighten the table while only further complicating the rug.
I told him to lift the table from the far end – over the folds – while I pulled the rug and smoothed it clear. The moment the rug was free he gave a great sigh and dropped the table with a crash that rattled the windows. ‘Oh thank you, thank you,’ he said, thinking we were done. But we were not done. What he had not noticed was that though the table was straight (its edges aligned perfectly parallel with the surrounding walls) the rug, though now quite flat, was not only askew but actually piled up beyond the table, in the other corner of the room. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘oh no.’
Again I lifted the table from one end while he pulled at the rug from below. It bunched under the middle of the table, so I lifted from the other end and he pulled out the bunches. We pushed and pulled and dragged and shoved for some while until my forehead was also moist and we were both quite exasperated by the effort. No matter what we did, the table remained straight but the rug was adrift on the floor. ‘You can see, can’t you,’ he said, ‘the matter is quite insoluble.’
There was a knock at Eric’s door. He went to answer it. It was Elizabeth. Her face was flushed and she had her hands on her hips. ‘Edward,’ she said, ‘is there a problem?’ I said yes there was a problem. It took some time to explain to her the nature of the problem but eventually she agreed to help. I suggested that she and I lift the table from each end while Eric rearranged the rug, but Eric would not accept this. He did not say why, but I think this was because where he comes from it would be unthinkable for a woman (even one younger and stronger than he) to lift a heavy piece of furniture while he was relegated to rearranging the rug.
So Eric and I lifted the table while she shifted the rug. Because we could not stand on the rug while this went on, we stood on the floorboards and allowed it to bunch around our ankles. Then we stepped onto it when we were told. She was quick, diving beneath the table and flitting from corner to corner while she made her small adjustments. ‘Is that better?’ she asked when she was done. Then Eric moved from corner to corner, occasionally peering under a leg of the table or shifting a chair to have a good look at some suspicious wrinkle or slight bubble in the fabric of the rug. ‘Yes, yes it looks good, looks good – ’ he said, ‘ – but what is this?’
He pointed to the part of the rug which lay directly before the front door to his apartment. It had curled upwards at the edge. ‘What is this?‘ he said, ‘It wasn’t like this before.’ He was looking at Elizabeth as he said this. ‘This was you,‘ he said, ‘You, in your shoes. Tripping your step over my rug. You should pick up your feet when you walk. You slouch. You do not pay attention to the edges of things.’ Eric went over and stood on the curled part of the rug, flattening it beneath his socks. Then he stepped off it and it curled upwards as before. He stamped his foot and shook his head. ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Edward, we are going.’
Eric held up his hands as if trying to embrace me. I stepped to one side, and Elizabeth to his other, and we moved around him to reach his front door. ‘You have ruined everything,’ said Eric. He was not, I think, angry.
On the way downstairs Elizabeth expounded in great detail upon every theory she had ever developed about the personality of the old man who lived upstairs, and what he did all day and what had happened to his life, and how it was not healthy for a man to be all day with no company and no family and no contact with the outside, and how that was very sad but it did not in any way justify his really just incredible rudeness and essentially inconsiderate nature towards the other tenants of this building, all of whom had an equal right to a peaceful dinner free from disturbance even if they did happen to be younger and of sounder mind and cleaner conscience than that dreadful man who lived upstairs. I listened and made the necessary affirmative noises and gestures at the appropriate times. And in our own apartment, while she busied herself reheating dinner, I found myself walking in circles around the dining table, studying the alignment of our rug against the walls, and with my toes I gently flattened the softly curling edge of the furthest corner of our rug.
