The pear

At first Adèle thought the pear was bruised. Then someone behind the bruise switched on a lamp.

She set down her knife. The patch of brown had become a window, with a woman standing behind it in a green cardigan. The woman looked up at Adèle, looked at the knife, and shut the curtain.

Adèle tapped the skin with her fingernail.

“I wasn’t going to,” she said, although she had been.

The curtain moved. The woman asked whether there was somewhere dry she could put a few things. Water had been coming through the ceiling since breakfast. Her landlord had assured her that the building would last until November.

Adèle moved her plate aside. A door opened near the stalk, and the woman began passing out books. Each was the size of a fingernail until Adèle took it; then it occupied both her hands. She stacked them beside the bread. There were cookbooks, an atlas, and six volumes on the care of fruit trees.

“Those can stay,” the woman said of the last six.

A small table followed, then a lamp, then a chair with a rush seat. Adèle had to carry the chair into the hall before she could accept anything else. When she returned, a wardrobe was blocking the little doorway. One of its feet had gone through the floor.

“Pull towards you,” the woman called.

Adèle caught the brass handle between finger and thumb. It grew cold and heavy in her palm. For a moment she could see a whole room behind the wardrobe: a tiled stove, a carpet rolled against the wall, the dark mark where a picture had hung. Then the handle came away. The wardrobe dropped back with a sound of breaking crockery.

The pear was leaking onto the tablecloth.

“Leave it,” Adèle said.

“My coat is in there.”

“I can lend you a coat.”

“I don’t want to borrow a coat.”

Adèle fetched a towel. When she slid it beneath the fruit, the woman stumbled against the doorframe and told her to be careful. They were both angry now. Adèle held the pear steady with one hand and waited while the woman worked at the jammed wardrobe. Through the window she could see a sleeve moving back and forth.

At last the woman came out carrying a pair of shoes. As she stepped onto the table she became an ordinary-sized woman, perhaps sixty, with wet stockings and a cut on her forehead. Adèle helped her down. The green cardigan smelled sweetly of plaster.

“It was a good coat,” the woman said.

There was nowhere to sit except the chair in the hall. Adèle brought it back and put the kettle on. The woman held her shoes in her lap. Neither mentioned the fruit-tree books, which had begun to sag inside the doorway.

While they waited for the water, the telephone rang. Adèle answered it in the hall. Yes, she had eaten, she said; no, nothing much had happened. She could hear a scraping from the kitchen.

When she returned, the woman had pulled her chair up to the table. She was feeding the teaspoon through the little window, trying to catch the sleeve of her coat. Adèle watched her miss it twice. Then she opened the drawer and took out a longer spoon.