The Black Envelope

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EVERY WEDNESDAY TOLEA SET aside an hour for his telephonic endeavors. Afternoon, evening, morning, lunchtime, however it came: the operation had to be completed, without fail. The dial would turn sixty, ninety, a hundred times, according to whether Tolea was in a hurry or idling and soaked, like a frog after a heart attack, or a chirpy goldfinch hopping and skipping all the time.

His eyes on the face of the watch: one o’clock precisely! Not a second more. No one answered, but Tolea did not give up. The address was the only one possible, taken from the Exemplary Association and then checked in the telephone directory. The name was the only one possible; so, therefore, was the number. What happens if the perfect disabled person, concentrating hard, disciplined, submissive as the new man is supposed to be, nevertheless cannot hear or speak, as the statutes envisage? Well, maybe there’s a wife, sister, maid, son nearby who can answer. No one answered. If the Benefactor, the Great Cardsharper, doesn’t wish it to be so, there’s nothing to be done: you can’t force the wheel of fortune. But you can: yes, you can if you persevere. Even the Invisible One gets bored and gives way in the end; after all, He’s built in our image and likeness, as it is written in the Book of our identity books. And as for the other, the Evil One, the partner with whom he shares the game, His Majesty the Prince of Sin, twin and bastard, well, he also resembles our wretched human shape. So again and again, a thousand times over, shall we force our luck, our bad luck? Yes, Octavian Cua: he will deliver the truth; he’s the right witness for the complex crime. Except he can’t speak and can’t be found. Not even found.

So he dialed the miracle number.

Wednesday lunchtime, evening, night, morning: let’s bewilder the adversary. Still at it in the amnesiac hours, lazily curled up, when the wind is whistling unheard through confused spaces and the clockmakers’ lids are bursting and the cardiac arrests are multiplying.

It was in such a time hole that Mr. Dominic suddenly had Inspiration. If I’ve asked Information a thousand times and been told that the phone is not out of order, or disconnected, abolished, or recoded, it simply means there’s no reply. So no one’s at home. So let’s go there, to the scene itself. If there’s still no one, maybe the door will be opened by no one …

The decision had been made: Wednesday telephone, Friday visit. Ah, the number of things to do suddenly shot up, the week kept shrinking and shrinking. Some still speak out of boredom. The television goggle box, the patriotic radio, the nonexistent bars, the forbidden poker games, forgotten brothels, secondhand books, dead reflexes, played-out chatter — but initiative? Personal initiative? Some initiative is also necessary, dear disabled persons, colleagues of the underworld! Bored? What do you mean, you’re bored?!

Therefore Wednesday on the phone, Friday on the spot: the expedition to Istria, as that street on the edge of purgatory is probably called. From the crossroads down to the supermarket, then right as far as the school of the new man, then somewhere else, to confuse the tail.

Mr. Dominic is standing at the Rond stop and waiting for a tram. The tram does not come: the passenger waits and waits and waits. The tram comes, jam-packed, no room for a fly. Let’s wait for another, wait until the eyes blanch in your head. A tram comes: the passenger manages to hang on to the slippery steps, moves up one at the next stop, the future is close at hand, another step, one more, here’s paradise, you’re already in front of the door, you feel the shoulder and elbow and knee and gasping breath of the man next to you, that’s it, connecting elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder. Gooood, so off at Mihai Bravul, change direction. This time the tram appears after just an hour’s wait and it’s empty — a miracle, utopia finally made real. Mr. Dominic punches his ticket. One ticket, two journeys: saving paper. Savings, savings, we need paper for posters newspapers instructions memos statutes, the codes of the Exemplary Association.

From the stop he catches a bus to the bread factory. Then the traveler walks back a hundred or so meters, as it is written on the note in his hand, and comes to the Scampolo store, which is shut for stock-taking. He chooses the little street on the right, as far as the old gray block of flats, goes up to the second floor, gropes around for the switch. He presses it and a dim bulb lights up; yes, now he can see where he’s treading. It’s only one step to apartment 8.

He presses the bell, hears it ringing on the other side of the door. Long, long, long, short, long. Nothing, no one, not a trace. Again, long long long short long. Silence, emptiness. He waits, waits patiently for no one to appear, at the door, with the smile of Old Nick. No movement. One step back, he again presses the light switch. The filament starts glowing and he can see the stairs to the street. He feels his way carefully down. There’s the street, the Scampolo store, the bus stop, the bus, the tram stop, the tram, again the street, again the stop, again the tram. Adventures, everyday expeditions. Enough to touch reality at the edges for everything to expand, to slide, to dissolve — an imposing void, gray, gray, marshy, with huge purulent gums. With Friday a failure, there remained the following Wednesday. An hour by the telephone, the prescribed time for the wager. He dialed halfheartedly, once, ten times, eighty times.

Even if the Supreme Being remains invisible, indivisible, blind deaf mute, he’s still a man. Otherwise how could he manage?! If you catch him at the right moment, when he’s really fed up with things or full of pity or disgust — then, the miracle! The miracle happens: you get through. Click, sparks, an answer at the other end. Self-willed, with sneers and grimaces, once, three times, sixty times. Nothing. The number kept refusing to answer. On Wednesday it is raining. A tree branch outside the window, a wet stick. Taking bites from an an apple. Holding the apple in our left hand, turning the dial of fortune with our right. Casting out the hook. Maybe we’ll catch reality, maybe we’ll latch on to reality and become real. A swoon— that’s all reality is. We cling on with our final effort, we beatify chance: “but but, maybe maybe.” Nothing lasts, absolutely nothing. The receiver left nearby, on the table. With his right hand he dials the number, the deaf-mute code. In his left he is holding an apple. The thirty-ninth spinning of the dial. It rings: the bell of purgatory rings shrilly, perforating the super-imposed walls of greenish glass, ever new glassy barriers on which huge clusters of rotten matter and phosphorus are growing. No one ever wants to interrupt their sleep, their hibernation. No one wants to recognize his own name or voice; no one wants to stir the thick swamp of apathy that swallows up sound and motion and feeling — and feeling, too, thank God!

Chance had well and truly shut itself up, postponed everything; it was playing at rain, at the apple of sin, what’s been gained? It’s all been a waste of time. His teeth grind on the downy vegetable flesh; his eyes are looking up, up, to the opaque ceiling. It is raining on Friday, too, in bucketfuls. Receptionist Vancea leaves the hotel under an enormous black umbrella. The city is wet, grown smaller. A rusty, murky rumbling, dragged through the streets by the long, cold tram carcases. Life — bodies linked together in one huge, thick, knotted body. At each stop more fragments break off, a different assemblage sticks together. Between the elbow of the man on his right and the kerchief of the woman in front, a telescopic slit opens up in which a popular icon of the Madonna is swaying to the vehicle’s drunken rhythm. The Vancea retina retains the face of white porcelain, the wounded look, the long eyelashes, the fluttering of black butterflies. He would like to move so that he can look at her, to make the image whole, to see her arms and bust and neck, but all he is offered is this iridescent medallion as in a hallucination. Forgetting his stop, he allows himself to be squashed, carried here and there, annihilated in the great communal body from which he awakens at some point when he is flung dizzy into the street. He recovers his senses and looks for the face of the teenage girl. All he sees are crumpled hats, torn bags, clusters of buttons scattered on the pavement. Why am I avoiding prison, why don’t I have the courage to be locked up, why don’t we have the courage, all of us, suddenly to fill the prisons? Overpopulation of the prisons. Overpopulation, yes, mumbled the receptionist as he looked at the tired tireless anthill. Let the moment come, another moment, before the giant black heel of deaf-mute Gulliver suddenly crushes the mass of vibrant nothings.

His steps start up with difficulty, uncoordinated. He gets on a bus, a tram, another tram, another bus. He arrives before a decaying gray block of flats, a dark staircase, a black door. And then back again: the hazy, languorous journey. From time to time a shudder. He wakes up, looks at his watch, at the confirmation it gives. He finds again, Friday, the hour which exists and races along and shatters on the uncaring display screen. Why don’t we overpopulate the prisons one fine day, why are we so wary, overwary, so overwary? mumbles schoolboy Vancea, until he suddenly remembers the sentence he has been searching for: “When you spend all your time waiting, improvisation looks like salvation.” All your time waiting, waiting, improvisation, salvation. Improvisation will save me, save me, postponement, postponement, why don’t we all fill, all at once, salvation, salvation, mumbled teenage Tolea, tottering on the bicycle of bygone adolescence, when he repeated, still in ignorance, “Improvisation, salvation, salvation,” with that modest and secular gratitude which the years have scattered to the four horizons of nothingness.

Still alive, however, still alive beneath the torrid spring sun, in the foul-smelling dust of the city’s outskirts. The fair is still not over: the mad action is continuing and taking him in. Look, he has found some precise and stupid thing to keep him busy, something crazy that belongs to him — fixed hours and days, repeatable, but his alone.

Again Wednesday, lying in wait in the earpiece of the receiver. Again Friday, on the spot, ghost-hunting. He would like to increase the frequency of this futile behavior: more hours, more days, all hours, all days.

But it is Thursday. That’s what is shown on the calendar, on the watch display. This suspect sun is called Thursday. Still a century to go until Friday.

Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov can wait no longer. He needs a provocation, a neurotic subterfuge. Now, best now, in this burned and narrow cone called Thursday. Hurrying and harassed, he jumbles twists loads the dice. He cheats feverishly, blindly, in a trance. The mystique of the ridiculous will permit this new artifice! Only the slightest departure from the beaten track is necessary. Look, the face of the dice has accepted the move. It’s going to be Friday instead of Thursday.

Today is Friday and tomorrow is the same, Friday. We are allowed to progress in futility. Thursday, then. A lunchtime seething with heat and neglect.