The Tenant

by H. Hudson

A

fter it happened, the neighbors all said they'd always known there was something queer about Mr. Markham: the way he came downstairs, hugging the walls as though making way for somebody else: his little inverted smile that kept his teeth covered up and his pleasure to himself: the way he played organ music on the Vic all the time, turning the whole damned place into a church seven days a week, so that Mr. Dundee, drinking beer in his kitchen below, felt he was committing sacrilege in his stocking feet. And Mr. Kimmel, who lived alone, remembered, sud­denly, that he had seen Mr. Markham on a bench in the middle of the Green one Wednesday at two in the afternoon. He was staring steadily at the ground between his shoes as though trying to decide where to leave his print.

      But at the time, Mr. Markham was merely a pale, thin man in a gray suit and a narrow tie who lived in the attic with his wife, a good-looking man though his face seemed, somehow, more like a slightly smudged copy than the real thing. And there was something faintly foreign about him in his careful nod and his formal walk and the huge distances that surrounded him, not to be bridged by his gentle "Good morning" nor the length of his outstretched arm. They never learned where he was from. They only knew that he did not seem to belong here. He had the terrible courtesy of the permanent guest.

Notes and exercises:

1.   The following words are spelt with a double “m”:

commit	commodity	immense	hammer	ammunition
comma	common	immigrate	summer	commemorate
command	commune	imminent	summit	commentary
comment	community	summary	immodest	commiseration
swimmer	immaterial	immortal	summon	commission
commerce	immature	immune	rummage	commotion
commissar	immediate	glimmer	accommodate	communism
committee	grammar	stammer	communicate	commence

2.   The following words are spelt with a double “d”:

paddock	addition	address	addendum	reddish	midday
middle	sudden	add	adder	madden	addict
odd	oddity	fiddle	riddle	saddle	paddle
adduce	ladder	sadden	addle	cannon-fodder	addict

3.   The letter “u” is silent in the following words”

guardian	guerrilla	guarantee	catalogue	dialogue	languor
fatigue	guest	guard	disguise	monologue	tongue
guess	guide	guilt	guilty	guinea	guarantor
guitar	vague	plague	vogue	rogue	brogues

4.   Word study:

sacrilege    disrespectful treatment of what should be sacred: It would be sacrilege to steal a crucifix from a church altar.

Vic             a trademark for a phonograph

5.   Translate the following expressions and use them in sentences of your own:

To drink (alcoholic beverages): to go off on a drink, to go on the spree, to paint the town red, to be/go on a bender (US), to go on the booze, to go boozing, to go on the razzle, to go on a bat (US), to moisten one’s clay, to wet one’s whistle, to crook one’s elbow;

To overdo the alcoholic stimulation: to be in one’s cups, to have had a drop too much, to be half seas over, to be as drunk as a lord/fiddler/piper/skunk, to be blind drunk, to be blind to the world, to be as tight as a drum, to be three sheets in the wind, to be stewed to the gills (US), to be plastered, to be sozzled, to be besotted