The Black Envelope

~ ~ ~

COMRADE OREST,

Source Mushroom is not available for the time being. She’s in bed with a bad flu. I don’t think it’s a lie this time. I rang her in a rough tone of voice; I know that scares her. She wants us to meet as soon as possible, to know for sure that everything’s in order. So we’ll leave Mrs. Mushroom for a week to recover.

Yesterday I visited Uncle Mihai at the Association’s nursing home. It’s better for him there. It may also be better for me, as you say, that I don’t have to see him every day. He’s the most important person in the world to me, I know. My real father, I know. I never knew the other one; we’re the only relatives each of us has got. Do you remember the failure of his first brain operation, nine years ago? That famous lisping surgeon cut through to the nerve and that’s where the calamity started. Euphoria! Euphoria, with punning tendencies — that’s what those stupid doctors called the illness, and that was what it was. Constant merriment, total amnesia. A special circuit: the scalpel has only to touch it and we start being in paradise, like the man of the future … He traipsed the streets all day, spoke to everyone, went in everywhere: cinemas, shops, fire stations, public baths, hairdressers, everywhere. Known to everyone — a star, quite simply! With no precautions or emotions or feelings, because he always forgot in a moment where he had been, what he had said. Jokes, funny stories, but also rude remarks that might have cost him dear. Always relaxed, of course; no one would have guessed he was ill. Or only someone who’d known him a long time, who was used to his physical strength, good sense, and seriousness of old.

He needed the special immunity that only special authorities can grant, as you said. I only grasped that after the second operation, which, instead of putting right what the first had got wrong, also added difficulties of speech and hearing. Now the euphoria is suffocating him, as you know. Yesterday I watched him for nearly two hours among the Association’s pensioners and patients. I tried to convince him that his name is Toma, not Tomescu, as he introduces himself here. Again and again I repeated his name, Mihai Toma; his brother’s, Aurel Toma; and my own, Toma A. Toma. Useless. When the nurses finally agreed to call him Tomescu, he changed his mind. He kept stuttering, Tom, Tom — like that, American-style. Tom, always Tom, until I achieved a compromise: Tom Tomescu. I’ve done you justice again. The Association’s home, modest though it is, provides an assurance of order, strict subordination, modesty, and apathy— yes, I know all that. But the danger of an explosion in someone like him cannot be totally discounted — I know that, too. Only a son can understand, an adopted son like me. I am in control, as you must realize. Persevering, perspicacious, I know — that is, intelligent in the things I do.

My report on the Narcissus case: another time. I’m still reeling from the Association’s asylum; I can’t get back into the routine of things so quickly.