Elke had a system for the new people in the building. She gave them three days. Three days to find the dumpster on their own, to figure out which buzzer was broken, to learn that the hot water took a full minute in the mornings. On the fourth day she knocked.
She always brought something small. A bag of clementines, or the good coffee from the Turkish place on Hendrik Consciencestraat that nobody found on their own because the sign was in Turkish. This was important: the thing she brought had to be useful, not generous. A bottle of wine would suggest an occasion. Fruit suggested a neighbor.
The woman in 4B had arrived on a Thursday. By Saturday Elke had watched her carry six boxes up the stairs without asking anyone for help, which wasn’t unusual — most people didn’t ask — but the way she carried them was specific. She gripped each box at the exact center of balance, adjusted once at the bottom of the stairs, and didn’t readjust. She’d done this before. Elke heard her through the wall at night unpacking methodically: drawer open, items placed (not dropped), drawer closed, next drawer. No music. No phone call. By Sunday the unpacking sounds had stopped.
On Monday — the fourth day — Elke knocked.
“I’m Elke, 4A. I brought clementines.”
The woman’s name was Vera. She was maybe thirty, thin-wristed, with short hair she clearly cut herself. The apartment behind her was already orderly. The boxes were broken down flat and leaned against the wall by the door. Vera took the clementines and said thank you and didn’t invite her in, which was fine. Some people didn’t. Elke had learned not to take this personally, though she noticed it.
“The hot water,” Elke said. “It takes a minute in the mornings. Both our units share the same pipe, so if I’ve already run mine, yours comes faster.”
Vera nodded. “Thanks.”
“I usually shower around six-thirty,” Elke said. “So if you’re later than that, you should be fine.”
Something passed across Vera’s face. Elke recognized it — the small recalculation people did when they realized a neighbor was going to be specific. Some people softened at this. They were relieved, even. Structure meant someone was paying attention, and attention meant safety, and safety was what you needed when you were new.
“Good to know,” Vera said, and closed the door. Not hard. Just closed.
Elke went back to her apartment and peeled a clementine — she always kept one for herself — and ate it standing at the kitchen counter. Through the wall she heard Vera’s kettle. Good. She was settling.
—
Within a week Elke had mapped Vera’s pattern. She worked from home — Elke heard the office chair roll across the floor at eight-fifteen each morning, and the typing was consistent until noon. She ate lunch late or not at all. She went out in the evenings, usually around seven, and came back between nine and ten. She didn’t have visitors.
Elke didn’t think of this as surveillance. She noticed things. She noticed that Mr. Claes on the second floor coughed more in the mornings now, and she’d mentioned it to him gently and he’d gone to the doctor and it was nothing but he’d been grateful. She noticed when the couple in 3A stopped talking to each other in the hallway, and she’d asked after them separately, and eventually things got better — not because of her, exactly, but because someone had noticed. That was the thing: people needed to be noticed. Not watched. Noticed. There was a difference, and Elke understood it.
When the hallway light on the fourth floor went out, Elke reported it to the landlord the same day. When the recycling bins got moved to the wrong spot, she moved them back and left a polite note. When Vera’s package sat in the lobby for two days — a large box from IKEA — Elke carried it up to the fourth floor and left it by her door with a note: This was downstairs. Didn’t want it to walk off! — Elke, 4A.
Vera thanked her the next time they passed on the stairs. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“It’s no trouble. People take things.”
“Has that happened here?”
“Not yet,” Elke said. “But it happens.”
—
The building had seven units and Elke knew something about everyone. She knew that Mr. Claes’s daughter lived in Ghent and didn’t call often enough, and that the couple in 3A were trying to have a baby, and that the student in 2B played guitar badly but was embarrassed about it and only practiced when he thought no one was home. She kept these things in a kind of mental ledger — not written down, never written down, that would be strange — but organized, the way her mother had kept the street’s business organized in her head, knowing who needed what and when.
Her mother had been the building’s unofficial manager for thirty years. She’d had keys to five apartments for emergencies and watering plants. When her mother died, nobody had asked Elke to take over. She’d just started. It was obvious, the way clearing a table is obvious when the meal is done.
The difference between Elke and her mother, which Elke sometimes thought about and always concluded was an improvement, was that her mother had been direct. Her mother knocked on doors and said you look tired, what’s wrong and your husband is drinking again, I can tell from the bottles. People had tolerated this because her mother was old and because she was usually right, but Elke had watched faces tighten and seen the cost. She had refined the approach. She helped without confronting. She noticed without naming. This was better, she believed, because it let people keep their privacy while still being held.
Held. That was the word she used in her own mind. She held the building.
—
In November, Vera started coming home later. Ten, then eleven. One night Elke heard her key at midnight. The footsteps on the stairs were slower — not drunk, but tired, the deliberate kind of tired that meant she’d been concentrating for a long time. The next morning Elke heard the office chair at eight-fifteen as usual, and the typing, and nothing else.
Two weeks of this. Elke considered saying something. Not about the lateness — that was Vera’s business — but about whether she was all right. She rehearsed it: I just wanted to check, you’ve seemed busy lately. No. Seemed busy implied she was tracking Vera’s schedule, which she was, but saying so would make Vera feel observed rather than held. Better: I’m making soup this weekend, do you want some? Soup was good. Soup was food, which was care, which was action without language.
On Saturday she made the soup — her mother’s recipe, leek and potato, enough for two — and ladled half into a container and knocked on Vera’s door.
Vera opened it. She looked tired. The apartment behind her was still orderly but there was a coffee mug on the floor by the couch, which was new. One mug on the floor. Elke noted this.
“I made too much soup,” Elke said. “Do you want some?”
Vera looked at the container. Then at Elke. “You didn’t make too much.”
“I always make too much. Ask anyone.”
“You made it to bring to me.”
Elke felt something shift, the way a drawer shifts when it’s overfull and you push it closed and it catches. She smiled. “I thought you might like it. You’ve been busy.”
“How would you know I’ve been busy?”
“I hear you coming home late. The walls.”
Vera took the soup. She said thank you. Her voice was flat — not rude, not angry, flat, the way a surface is flat when there’s nothing underneath it that the person wants you to reach.
“Vera, I’m just being neighborly.”
“I know,” Vera said. “Thank you for the soup.”
She closed the door. Elke stood in the hallway for a moment. Through the wall she heard Vera set the container down — on the counter, from the sound. Good. She’d eat it or she wouldn’t. Either way, she’d know someone had noticed.
—
In December, Vera put a lock on the inside of her mailbox. This was unusual — the mailboxes had a shared key, and nobody had ever secured theirs separately. Elke noticed the lock on a Tuesday. By Wednesday she had decided it was sensible. Packages weren’t the only things that could walk off. She told Vera so when she saw her: “Smart, the lock. I should do that too.”
Vera said nothing.
In January, Vera told the landlord she’d be moving at the end of February.
Elke heard about it from Mr. Claes, who’d heard from the landlord. She felt something she identified as disappointment — she’d hoped Vera would settle — and beneath the disappointment, a thin current of something she didn’t look at, the way you don’t look at a stain on the ceiling because looking would mean you’d have to do something about it.
She knocked on Vera’s door that evening. Vera opened it halfway.
“I heard you’re moving,” Elke said. “I’m sorry to see you go.”
“Thank you.”
“Was it the building? If something was wrong, you could have —”
“Nothing was wrong,” Vera said. “I just need more space.”
The apartment was a generous one-bedroom. More space than most people needed. Elke understood this was a way of not saying the real thing, and she understood that she was not entitled to the real thing, and she accepted this with the grace of someone who has been helpful and has nothing to reproach herself for.
“Well,” she said. “If you need help with the move, I’m right here.”
Vera smiled for the first time since Elke had known her. It was a small smile, not warm, but not unkind. Elke felt the warmth of it — so Vera did appreciate her, underneath the privacy. Some people showed it late.
“Thanks, Elke,” she said. “I’ll manage.”
Elke went back to her apartment and peeled a clementine and ate it standing at the counter. Through the wall, she could hear Vera beginning to pack. Drawer open. Items placed. Drawer closed.
She would miss her. She was already thinking about the next person who would move into 4B. She would give them three days.