The Black Envelope

~ ~ ~

IN THE KIOSK WINDOW, the lovely curled head of a spring morning. Small black eyes. Crimson lips, pink-enamel cheeks.

“The newspapers! They’re just coming. The papers will be ready in a second.”

The men huddling around the window came to life.

The girl moved back inside the kiosk to arrange the stacks of papers. The pavement was no longer large enough. There were pedestrians darting everywhere, casting impatient glances to left and right — wave upon wave of bustling ants. The line for the paper grew longer.

“I haven’t got any more Flacras,” announced the soprano. “And this one is the last România Liber. You can whistle for Filatelia and Pescarul—they’re real vintage wine. No, I haven’t got Rebus. Maybe tomorrow.”

The tall, pale man moved beside the lamppost with a bundle of fresh papers under his arm. He opened them up and began skimming through.

“What could have got into them?” grumbled a little old woman leaning on the rubbish bin. “Newspapers — lining up for the paper, would you believe it. Stupid brats. As if they’d find anything out by reading them. I tell you, sir, they’re the same. All the same! Money down the drain, I say.”

But the tall man with white hair, beard, and mustache, all perfectly trimmed, did not hear her. Nor did he hear the tapping of heels on the asphalt or see the rainbow skirts fluttering in the breeze or the brief glitter of golden stockings. The gentleman neither heard nor saw anything, absorbed as he was in leafing through the papers.

“That’s what people are like. They forget quickly,” the elderly voice continued. “We’ve got this lovely country, this heavenly climate. But you can’t do anything with just nature, you bunch of good-for-nothings! It’s man who does everything, with those brains of his. That’s why we’ve got into this mess. Look at them, they’ve even forgotten the winter. They’ve forgotten the horror of it. They don’t even care — they’re off goggling at women. People forget quickly, sir, I’m telling you.”

The man did not hear. Disappointed, the old woman stepped sideways toward a wrinkled man who kept shaking his empty shopping bag.

“Too true, too true!” muttered the aged hunchback. “My wife died on me this winter. It was because they didn’t give us any heating. They kept us in the cold all winter — not even any hot water. She had heart trouble, so the cold finished her off. Yes sir, how people forget! They don’t give a damn,” the old man erupted in the direction of the elegant gentleman leaning against the post and absorbed in his reading. “Look at them! Minds like sieves. You can do what you like to them and they’ll forget it. Just give them a little pleasure — a fine day, a pretzel — yes, they forget as soon as you give them a pretzel and a bit of sun. That’s what people are like.”

The smart-looking man did not seem to feel that the stranger’s fury was aimed at him. Probably he did not even hear. He gathered together the bundle of papers and tore himself away from the lamppost.

The compass of his legs opened wide. Beanstalk strides, but slowly, because he was rather short of energy.

A happy street, it was true. Picturesque Bucharest, feminine and sprightly — just like the petit Paris of old. If only there were not this poverty and gasping all around, and this clumsy, artificial happiness. Happy spring. Happy, forgetful people. Happy papers, too. Optimistic, pedagogic, ever holding forth about the future, the radiant future, whoever might be around to see it.

The kitchen table. Bread, milk. The white starched tablecloth. He had to get up at the break of day to find some bread and milk. Two steaming cups. Coffee substitute with milk — a substitute because real coffee was so hard to come by. Anyway, old age is itself a substitute. And our entire country a nation of senior citizens. Slices of hard black bread thinly smeared with plum jam. But the spoon, knife, and plates sparkle like new. Everything is clean and fresh. Windows open to let in the elixir, the venom, the illusion. Spring, spring.

Mrs. Gafton thumbed through her newspapers. She put her glasses on, took a sip from her cup, glanced at the title pages, then gave up. Anyway, she never has time to read except in the evening, after all the chores are done. She pushed the pile toward her husband at the end of the table.

“At least our climate’s still wonderful. What if we only had winter? Or only summer? Harmony is so important! And we’ve certainly got it here. How lucky we are!”

Her husband looked hard and long at her.

“Yes, in fact someone was saying that just a while ago, in the newspaper line. Spring is a gift of nature! Not youth any longer, but still a rebirth, eh? A real provocation.”

His wife took off her glasses, put them on the heap of papers, and looked down into her cup. After a few moments of silence, she began to whisper. Yes, whisper.

“Do you still know when Franz Joseph died?”

“Eh? What’s got into you now?”

“I don’t know, just a bit of nonsense. I’m mixing things up. Well, you used to say he was a tolerant emperor.”

The husband smiled. He was familiar with these morning antics.

Signs of tenderness and support for his studies. She did not ask him anything about his work; she knew it would only annoy him before he set off for the library. Anyway, he always talked about it again in the evening.

But in the morning she usually found various coded expressions to indicate that his work obsessed her, too.

“In fact, I was thinking: when did Caesar, Nero? I mean, when did they. .? And what about Franco, or Salazar? Mussolini I know — it was in the spring, wasn’t it? And it was the same with the Führer: he set fire to himself in the spring. But that other guy with a mustache, the Georgian, he croaked in March. I couldn’t possibly forget it. Is it the siege of spring? Or like a whirlwind. Something unstoppable.”

The husband tugged at the pile of papers, laying his gold-rimmed glasses beside the cup. The woman primped her hair, gray and tight at the back of her head.

“Yes, a siege, as you say. The onslaught of change. Something uncertain, unstoppable. Let me read you a little story from today’s paper. Just let anyone say nothing ever happens here.”

He smoothed the corner of the tablecloth. The woman stood up, breadbasket in hand. He looked at her. The day’s moment of peace. Breakfast gave him strength. It was a calm reference point at the start of a new day, before all the running and jostling around, the lines, library cards, letters to the authorities, more lines.

“Listen: ‘The facts, as we will briefly relate them here, seem to have been taken from a film about the Ku Klux Klan or some gang of witch-hunters. The hunting of witches in the neighborhood.’ Listen, don’t you want to listen?”

The woman arranged the cups and tableware in the sink. Moving slowly, halfheartedly, she tilted to one side as she limped with her left leg. But then she came back and sat down. Her pale plump hands again rested dutifully together on the immaculate tablecloth.

“So they burst into the woman’s apartment. And then, what do you think? They set fire to it. Can you imagine? Because she loved animals, do you hear? Because she had cats or dogs, or who knows what she had. Just look at the pretext on which they did it, and the means they used. The woman’s name and address. . Don’t you see? And So-and-so, who claims to be on the local council, is in league with the instigators, with the other tenants in the block. You see the connection, don’t you? Do you see how it all fits together?”

His wife stared at him without smiling. She was used to his obsession for linking the day’s events to his research in the library. She knew his habit of returning again and again to things that happened forty years ago. This time, though, there was something special in his voice. It seemed like a crowning moment, a final and decisive test that she did not understand. But she did understand his excitement — a kind of unexpected victory and, yes, panic. A long-suppressed panic that both confirmed his expectations and gave him new life, as it were.

An hour later, then, Mr. Matei Gafton was asking the librarian for more volumes than usual and, for some strange reason, stood with a blank look for a long time before touching the piles in front of him. But he did check them, carefully. Decree No. 966 of April 7, 1941, introducing harsher penalties for the crime of high treason and espionage. Plumyene and Lasierra, Les fascismes français; General Ion Antonescu, The Basis of the National-Legionary State, September — October 1940; Lucre¸tiu Ptrcanu, Under Three Dictatorships, reissued, Bucharest 1970; The Graziani Trial, Rome, 1948–1950; Decree No. 966 of April 7, 1941, prohibiting the marriage of civil servants with foreigners or Jews; Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Washington, 1946. . He knew them all: they no longer satisfied him. The epidemic spread, the confusion — so many deceptive little hopes, until the invisible trap snaps shut and it is too late, with nothing more to be done. Yesterday the disease was still next door or at the next door’s neighbor; today it is inside you and it is too late. The roots of evil are in each prisoner not just in the butchers. Hunters and victim, fire, a kind of lynching, and the pretexts do not matter in the slightest: it could have been anyone at all.

It would be too simple an explanation, really too simple. That spring is to blame? Spring, like forty years ago? A delayed encounter of which you are no longer capable, exhausted from adapting to so many snares, at every moment. The pretext — who would believe it— was cats!

“Are you leaving already?” The blonde behind the library counter was evidently intrigued.

He shrugged his shoulders, feeling guilty.

He sauntered along the boulevard. Spring. Words. Spring made up of words. Trotyl. Dust. Red. Cherry. Delicate buds as in an advertisement. A dog and a cat. Blows, fire, hooligans, crowbars, destruction of the apartment, the blaze. Earth, air, water, and fire. Oxygenization, aphrodisiacs, aggression, the venom of loneliness. Spring, roll of words.

He sat down on a bench in the small dusty park. Words: the mind is forever producing words; you hear them flowing all the time inside you. Destruction. Fire. Crowbars, blows. Spite. Red. Crematorium. Mayflies. The look and the body of mayflies. Magnetic encounters, the grating silk, morbid idylls, night breeze. The fancies of tiredness wrapped him in words, as in a protective film. Absent moments — he knew the danger of such senile flights.

Maybe he should go to Tolea’s, to show him the magazine. Tolea’s reactions are childish and unpredictable: they mimic vitality well and even radiate a kind of therapeutic irritation. He might start shouting or cursing, or set the magazine alight, or quite simply throw him out as an intruder. Well, it’s hard to say who the intruder is. After all, Tolea, not he, is the tenant. So yes, it would be good to visit Tolea, especially since I don’t do it very often; the tenant would have no reason to complain. Not very often — but then the last time was just yesterday.

He had knocked timidly. No answer. But Tolea was home. He felt that Tolea was in but did not want to open the door. He knocked again, once, twice, then cautiously opened the door. Mr. Tolea Voinov barely turned his head. He seemed to recognize the intruder but did not honor him with any gesture. The man remained at the door, unsure whether to enter. The waiting lasted only a moment. The host cut through the air with his legs and bounded straight up to the guest.

“So, old fellow! Just as well you’ve come.”

Bowing down to the ground. Then a step sideways to make room for the eminent guest, who decided on the only possible course: he smiled. He looked at the professor and beamed. Yes, the tenant was the same. White ribbed trousers, white sweater, white tennis shoes. Shaven, bald, fresh. Yes, there was no mistaking him. He sat down on one of the two chairs in the tiny room.

“I’ve got bad news.”

“Thank God!” The professor crossed himself. “Let it all out, then. I’ll offer you a coffee as a reward. Get it off your chest, panie! You’ll have a real coffee, hundert prozent, not like the piss that’s drunk in our multilaterally developed society. If the news is serious — I mean, bad — you’ll get a super-coffee, straight from Allah’s kettle.”

He circled around the pigsty, among books, ties, notebooks, shopping bags, and like a conjurer fished a thermos and cup out of thin air. There was the coffee. A big, green, full cup on the metal table between the two chairs.

“Just for me?”

“I’ve already drunk a tankful; my pistons are racing away. Sip it slowly — don’t rush. Relax while you’re getting the calamities ready. I’m all yours today, Citizen Matei. You found me in — my tough luck.”

The guest sipped, smiled, put it off.

“To make it easier for both of us, let me do the explaining,” the professor began impatiently. “Let me tell you what it’s about. Otherwise you’ll keep beating around the bush all the way to Katmandu. Come on, out with it: you need this room. I’ve got to free the burial chamber. Yes?”

The guest nearly choked on his drink.

“No, no, not at all. What I was going to say was that big staff cuts are in the offing. What’s in your file will count. As in the fifties. That’s it: losing your job isn’t a joke. And as you see, there’s no longer any way I can help you.”

He spewed it all out and breathed a sigh of relief. A long silence followed — a kind of crumbling, a loss of contact.

Finally, the professor’s voice. Sharp, rejuvenated.

“As a pensioner you take an interest in all sorts of monkey business, isn’t that right? I’ve heard that you write to the authorities every day. Is it to atone for your sins of the fifties? You were a journalist in those days and you scribbled any old lie they wanted, plus a lot they maybe didn’t even ask you for but which you believed. Now you’re trying to make up for the past. So you write demands, appeals, suggestions. You criticize and notify and propose. A volunteer, a really stubborn journalist! Brave, ready to help us poor sinners. You were saying that political files are back, like in the fifties? But that things won’t repeat themselves? Then why don’t you write all that down? Nowadays courage is not such a big thing, and the pension arrives every month. You help us sinners, isn’t that right? Maybe you’ll find me another job. After all, a century ago you were at the Polytechnic together with my brother, now an Argentinian citizen living in that madhouse called Buenos Aires. One of the most beautiful in the world, says our friend Marga. And he knows about these things, working in a madhouse himself.”

The guest was bent over, the cup still in his hand. But Tolea was not looking at him.

“What do you want me to do? To ask your Argentinian colleague for help? To ask my charming brother? For charity? The boss has gone kaput, you know. What’s to be done? Swimming pool, car, farm, house, bank accounts, holidays — it’s all very tiring. Shall I write to him about childhood years, the fireplace, the parental home? Tears will flow and he’ll be off to see a psychiatrist.”

“Come on, don’t exaggerate. It seems he’s already written to you.”

“Of course, of course, I’ve had nothing but delights. Correspondence! Abroad! Capitalist countries! Military-fascist dictatorships! Relatives who were drawn from the country by the mirage of money and an easy life, and who send us their convertible charity at Easter and Christmas. I’m just a substitute, Comrade Gafton! A relic of the past dressed up as a scapegoat. That’s the word they used in the political seminars, wasn’t it? But who knows? You might offer me some compensation that leads to a job. A paid hobby. Not paid like your new occupation, which is really unpaid heart-searching. What do you say? Will you take me on?”

“I don’t understand. I don’t understand a thing.”

“So you don’t understand. Well, if someone doesn’t understand, it has to be explained to them, right? Do you remember the ‘great tragedy’?”

Gafton remained silent. He shifted his weight from the left to the right side of his body.

“The family tragedy! Death, sir, that’s the only type of tragedy there is. Death. The Great Scriptwriter hired us for that, didn’t he? So, death. . You do remember the funeral? I mean, what happened with Father — then?”

“Yes, of course I do,” the guest quickly broke in.

“Goo-ood, so you remember. What was it: suicide, murder, accident? Or don’t you remember anymore? Maybe you don’t. You had a different name — everything had a different name.”

“How’s that? What do you mean?”

“How’s that, how’s that! Look, surely you’re not going to tell me your name was Gafton in those days. Or am I wrong? Well anyway, let’s skip the details. So now you’re a journalist working from home.”

“From where did you—” The journalist blushed, paled, reddened, all of a sudden.

“No harm done, panie, nothing to be ashamed of. Some will-o’the-wisps can be nice and innocent; they’re not all mean and vile. Your recent one, like the first, is humanitarian enough. It’s just more congenial, because it’s useless and unpaid. So now you write as a correspondent of the masses. Goo-ood. Letters instead of articles, right? Right. Like those Latin American policemen who decide to form their own gangs to have a crack at the villains — but as private individuals using police expertise. Good. Only you also have other passions. I was going to say manias — excuse me. So you investigate! You examine the past to forget the present, or to understand it better. Of course, it’s not my business. But it is also, or could also become, mine. I mean, why don’t we concern ourselves with the same period, for different purposes? Only I’d be paid for it. What do you say?”

“No. I don’t understand what you’re after.”

“What I’m after? To get excited about something, that’s what. To find a conjuring act. A game, a hobby, as they say in the capitalist paradise. Not to be bored any longer! Even death is not a greater tragedy than boredom. The Old Scriptwriter likes us to amuse him, doesn’t he? After all, that’s why he created us.

“So, could I take part in your great work? I’m drawing up my family tree and also looking into the mysterious chapter in its story. What do you say? Others don’t know what I’m like, but when I think of the hearth back home, of my childhood years, I’m ready to start writing the memoirs of my decimated family! Will you pay for my help, then? How about it?”

It became quiet again. As the silence continued to grow, the professor felt he had probably gone rather too far.

“Let me make you another coffee, sir. I haven’t anything else to offer. You don’t drink or smoke, I know, and I can’t offer you one of my ladies, as they’ve got the day off today. But a genuine coffee — in our times that’s a real provocation, believe me. Almost an attack on social harmony. Just think: a kilo of coffee on the black market costs a whole month’s wages.”

The other man did not reply. The window was darkening as evening fell. His movements grew slower, his voice less distinct.

“No.” The voice could be heard at last. “It’s late and I don’t sleep well anyway. Let’s talk about your job, rather.”

“Pah, what is there to talk about? I understand that you can’t help me. You’re not the official journalist you once used to be, so you can’t work shoulder to shoulder again with mad Marga, the loonies’ doctor, to save me and take me away to the famous capital to work in the sought-after post of receptionist at the Hotel Cunty. I’m sorry, I know you’re not so keen on slang. Let’s say Hotel Pussy — that’s the popular expression.”

“Yes. It won’t be easy to find you a job. But that’s not the most difficult problem.”

“Well, if there’s a more difficult one, we’re really in for it! In fact, I’m just starting to correspond with Argentina.”

“It’s the business with that hotel. But you know what things are like there. The staff, the various connections and obligations.”

“Ah! So you know the network, I see. You must have worked in that branch as well! After all, you’ve practiced all the trades, including that of professional revolutionary, haven’t you? Isn’t that so? Tell me, isn’t that so?”

“Stop playing the fool. No one will believe you were a receptionist who knew of nothing but work and wages, day shift and night shift, for a fortnight at a stretch. A receptionist at that hotel is not the best of recommendations. Or only if you want to be taken on as a flunky. You know what I mean.”

“Sure I do. It means we can’t go on discussing in the dark, comrade. They mustn’t think there’s a conspiracy, Comrade Gafton — that we’re taking advantage of the dark.”

Suddenly the light came on, another one of Tolea’s tricks. A candle-thin bulb, held by a metal clasp attached to the table leg. A weak light, just enough to outline the Roman-consul face of the receptionist. Perfectly shaven, almost too pale.

“Now that you mention it, m’sieur, you’re going to end up in really hot water with those freelance journalists’ letters. A petitioner for the good of humanity! I didn’t understand that business with your name, either. Why should you be doing good under a changed name? After all, my ancestors or yours changed their name for quite different reasons, didn’t they, eh? Aliens that we are, isn’t that so?”

No answer could be heard, not even a whimper.

“Was it all for effect that you took your wife’s name? Precisely after the war? Because she’d had one of those brothers, a Heil Heil man, but she herself was innocent? And in the fifties you risked your spotless record as an apostle just to defend the principle of objectivity! Is that how you justified it to yourself? Like that, Herr Gafton?”

Nothing from Herr Gafton, not a word. Or rather yes, there did come a whisper. “I thought you might try some translating for a while. You can still find a connection at one of those cooperatives that do technical translations. Or even at a publisher’s. It would help out until something else comes along.”

“A translator, goo-ood! Traduttore traditore, or however it goes. We all translate, it’s become the law of survival, hasn’t it? Good. We’re all replacements and translators, no?

“But what about the translator’s file? His curriculum vitae, his police record? His mother, father, brothers, and sisters, political affiliations — kept particularly for special cases! Argentina’s a special case, isn’t it? The Argentine circus: generals who are continually visiting this country because we’re sister Latins and sister menageries, isn’t that so? And then, gospodin, what do you know about the post of receptionist at the temple of fornicators? There’s no way you can know, panie. For the time being we are killed by messengers, by intermediaries, not by the Chief Star and his Saints. Petty auxiliaries, substitutes — even me. A substitute, sir, you know what I mean only too well. It’s a world of substitutes, this circus of ours. Any tenant on the flattened planet knows it already. Anyone knows it, my dear sir. Even you do, I’m sure.”

The professor remained in the weak candlelight, while Herr Matei received in darkness, and in silence, the words streaming from the tenant Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov, called Tolea.

After a pause for breath, Herr Matei finally replied.

“As a matter of fact, I came here to suggest — why hide it? If you need some — to be blunt, if you need some money. I’m not a man of wealth, you know. Still, I came to offer you — I would be able — I’m prepared to—”

“As a loan, eh?”

“Well, of course. Otherwise. .”

“Goo-ood. Perfect! As a loan, I accept. Look, Panie Matei, I accept. I agree about the loan. Any time, any way, any amount. I was afraid that when you left I might find an envelope stuffed with crisp new notes. You’re still sitting in the dark there. You could easily slip me your delicate gift without being seen. I don’t like philanthropists, you know. I’m glad you don’t belong to that dubious category. You’re even a little stingy, Mr. Gafton, sir. I hope you don’t mind that I was watching. I confess an unshakable respect for this imposing sign of seriousness. Meanness is a serious matter: it deserves every honor! Only simpletons think it’s a defect. It makes me all the more moved by your offer, you realize.”

The professor was speaking very fast, his eyes turned away from the other man and almost glued to the black window. The sentences seemed to ricochet from the glass in which the darkness of night was reflected. He half felt that his guest had stood up and was right beside the window, that Gafton-the-beanstalk was already on his left, bent over an invisible shadow. He felt, or maybe he didn’t — and anyway, he didn’t care — that the blockhead had already turned around, slowly, that his smooth pate was like a bright sphere beneath a thin aura of rush light. Yes, he had moved the clasp and lightbulb to a shelf so that its holy light fell on the bald head, and now he was looking astonished at the beanstalk, as if he had only just discovered his presence.

“Have I annoyed you in some way, sir? Is it my shameless good humor? It’s just harmless playacting, really. You should ignore it. Don’t worry, I’m not such a bore as to pester you with my melodramatics. As for the loan, make it some other day. When the time comes. When we start our walks down memory lane.”

Then he fell silent. Probably he was gathering strength for the last bombshell. And his voice became grave, calm, low, without any sharpness.

“You know, sir, I don’t care about anything. I really don’t care about anything. Do you remember my father? He thought he’d escape. Philosopher! Sorbonne! Magna cum laude! Pah! and he built up a stock of wine — to escape. He thought he’d escape: wine is an ever necessary fuel. Including in days of wrath — especially then. Just look at how everyone jostles in lines to get some of that stinking sawdust-and-garbage wine. The receptionist at the Hotel Vancea doesn’t care whether he escapes or not! I don’t care about anything, remember. But that one did. Philosopher, Sorbonne! When he realized what awaited him in the paradise he’d gone back to, he went into hiding. Relations, money, wine stocks — we’ll shake all that off. That’s what the philosopher thought. He didn’t escape, as you know; he didn’t escape. And as for me, I don’t care even if I do escape somehow. I really don’t, you know. My indifference is harder than diamond! It is a diamond indifference, sir, harder than the heart of His Majesty the Chief Scriptwriter, hidden everywhere, never to be found. Everywhere and nowhere, a fine old trick.”

He had suddenly opened the window. The darkness rushed in— swift, perfumed, cunning. A sudden lashing. The professor tottered, raised himself up, and took his guest by the shoulders.

With an air of boredom he had gently pushed him toward the door, into the night. And that had been only yesterday.

“You’re back?” the library blonde murmured in astonishment.

Pensioner Matei Gafton gave a smile of complicity. He was a regular customer, as they say. But although he spent much of his time at the library, he hesitated to give any explanation. “Yes, I’ve given up the idea of going home. I’d only disturb my wife, who’ll be giving private lessons there until this evening. And my friend and neighbor was out looking for the Great Scriptwriter.” The reader smiled at his own joke, happy to be back with the joys of reading.

“I had a bit of a rest in a park. It’s an aggressive spring, I’d say,” added the distinguished reader, timidly and conspiratorially, as he went toward his usual place at the back, beside the window.

Soon, therefore, columns of books and old newspapers were rising high on Mr. Matei Gafton’s desk.

The Activity of the Ministry of Internal Affairs under the Regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu, published by the Dacia-Traian National Society of Book Publishing and Graphic Arts, 1943; the Decree of October 1940 on the Reorganization of Romanian Sport; the Decree of October 1942 on Propaganda, Danger, and the Existence and Interests of the State, 1940, 1942, 1943; Romanianization commissioners, penalties for high treason, death for deportees who surreptitiously return to Romania. Yes, it was all there. The decree prohibiting marriage with foreigners or Jews; the Graziani Trial; the introduction of harsher penalties for high treason and espionage, to which he had settled down; the Appeal of 65 Romanian intellectuals to Ion Antonescu in April 1944 for the withdrawal of Romania from the war. And then, of course, there were the papers and, oh yes, the books. The librarian already knew the menu.

But the studious pensioner did not feel like doing any more research that afternoon. Spring was sabotaging his reading and study. The room was deserted — just a few elderly maniacs. He might be considered one himself, with all those index cards and quotations for a work that no one had asked for, expected, or wanted. His head ached. No, he could not do any work today. Let spring take the blame: the restlessness, the migraine. . a delayed encounter not suitable for captives who have long been broken in. That bewildering upheaval — a mirage in which you could not have any confidence.

Without meaning to, Mr. Gafton put his hand on his forehead to wipe away the perspiration. A whirlwind, yes, an invisible fire in the sky. . He bent over the open notebook, his mind made up to start writing. “Ethics and justice must be the principles of both the legislation and the life of a new society. Public servants, right from the bottom to the top, should be the first to respect them. Just one example: the package received through the mail a short time ago from a former colleague. Well, I checked the contents against the Argentinian invoice note and some of the items on the list had disappeared.” Yes, he recognized the words with a certain disgust. He tore up the sheet and threw it into the wastepaper basket. Here is another full page, the draft of another letter. “As you see, I don’t practice anonymity. I take responsibility for my little demands and suggestions. They may be little, but they are important. What depends on us must be corrected, improved. At least what depends on us. I have already informed you of the wretched quality of the elevators bearing the sign elevator. Well, the day before yesterday. .”

He was sick and tired of it, he had to admit. And yet he could not give up these beautifully handwritten messages by which he told the world of his existence, perseverance, and failure.

He looked into the distance, no place, before again bending bitterly over the words. “At the pound, dear comrades, they do something that not only animal lovers consider impermissible. By law a period of three days is allowed for owners to claim missing animals. The only way of knowing whether an animal is in captivity is to visit that institution. But entry is prohibited, and in vain do people stand at the gate waiting to pay the fee to recover their missing creature. Comrades, this defiant trampling on the basic right to. .”