The Black Envelope

~ ~ ~

DOMINIC WAS NOT DR. Marga’s patient. No, he wasn’t. There would have had to be indecent consultations for which neither seemed prepared. Dr. Marga probably still saw in the muddled over-fifty the same shy adolescent of yesteryear, the brother of his former friend Mircea Claudiu.

The problems with which Professor Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov appeared one morning at Marga’s consulting room, trying to explain the reasons for his dismissal and the implications of the trial he had been forced to undergo, had aroused the doctor’s compassion and goodwill. He was ready to help the outcast escape his troubles; that is, move from the provinces to Bucharest and find a job and a room, rather than to investigate and amplify his confessions or to suggest treatment for something that was not clearly an illness. He never alluded to those unpleasant events. But of course he registered everything, the kindhearted psychiatrist, mother of wounded souls, humanist debauchee. The professionals of ruin do not need many words before they recognize a client. They look out the window, admire the landscape, light their pipe with an air of preoccupation, but also catch the nuances that give the game away. Attentive to intonation and the order disorder of the words, peeping to see what you’re doing with your hands and eyebrows, whether you have shaved carelessly or for some reason are wearing a foppish red scarf.

No, Herr Doktor did not mention the scandal of his dismissal from his teaching post, nor that that was in fact why they had surprisingly met again. He did not want to appear tactless, probably; or that people should think he totted up his good deeds.

In the rear of the confessional, however, the professional was watching, registering, connecting. He did not manage to shake off the pressure of the secret consultation, hidden in the most banal dialogue of the doctor’s routine police activity. Nor did he say a word about the accident from teenage years, although in his mind’s eye he certainly often saw again the schoolboy’s bicycle suddenly hitting the shapeless, greenish, shadowy old crock of a woman, the curse of all the hours that followed in the history of the Vancea family. Nor did he sound him out about the episode of Marcu Vancea’s death. He did not ask when how where Dida met her end, or about his former colleague Mircea Claudiu and his icy German wife in heat. No, Dr. Marga, with his heart of gold, Lacrima Christi, respected the discretion required by his Hippocratic oath, dulcissime. A dulcissime frater, Señor Marga! Served by piss artist Bazil dressed in livery, fed by Lady Jeny with her alms, cats, and many layers of playacting, and occasionally entertained — no? — by Tolea the clown, as the therapy recommended: Let’s look after the clothing, belly, and good humor of our good old doctor, his delicate soul and delicate stomach and delicate purse. All he had asked about, delicately, was Sonia. When he found himself in front of the door with an airy gentleman who introduced himself as Vancea and claimed to be the youngest son of Marcu Vancea, philosopher turned wine stockist, and the strange Dida Voinov, Dr. Marga had asked about Sonia. Only then, at the first visit. Whether she was really married to that massive, quarrelsome prophet. Dominic had remained silent, thereby confirming it. So, married to that Matus — as if he actually knew everything. Years of life under canvas, in the desert, where Sonia had given birth to her first daughter and Matus had been injured by a shell splinter. Aha, so they played at being settlers, the doctor had mumbled, avoiding his guest’s searching gaze. Yes, yes, I’ve heard they lived like real pioneers, in a tent, under blazing heat and wind and bullets — and he smiled, delicately. She may well still be beautiful, he mumbled. She shook us all up in those days, he added, just as the fifty-something teenager was preparing to ask about that Octavian. Marga sensed the danger, of course. So he took him by the shoulders and led him into the house and plied him with questions about the high-school scandal, the trial and expulsion, and then never touched again, unless forced to do so, on the theme of the moral and political trial that he was at pains to avoid. But not as a doctor, oh no. As a friend, do you hear, as a friend! It was also as a friend that he now wanted to push Irina down his throat! Not as a doctor — as a telltale friend, do you hear?!

Recently he had been talking to him about nothing other than Irina. What miracle was the humanist expecting, what was the lieber Freund Freud hoping for? To hear what? Why he no longer wants Irina, or why he no longer wants to want her? Or what? Has everyone always felt the same, since long ago, while knowing they are no longer alien— Is the alien within us nevertheless forced to admit that it is alien, to its own body, not just to its aged soul and cloddish mind? Horror of one’s own body? Yes, clever Marga would be capable of such a clever question.

Is it that secret shyness we had as adolescents and find again in the proximity of adolescents, Herr Doktor? A potentiality, Doctor, a trembling? Illicit camaraderie, which creates its own cruelties but does not lose that hazy, intense chord, that musical giddiness of April, when spring drugs inject fire into our weary blood. Still young, ye gods! As if we didn’t know about the filthy hag we were bound to hit, as if we were still capable of keeping the handlebars straight. As if the lie promise illusion — what melodramas call the cavalcade of youth— could face the sun and moon, as if, as if … the monster Orest didn’t exist, or the Tranzit brothel or the masks of dark remembrance. We don’t care, Doctor: here’s a big spit on all your rules and routine! Suffering exults more simply and more complexly than in your treatises on therapy, than in your vaccinated soul, Frater Horatius. Is it the magic of the illicit, in this dwarfish world suffocated by hunters lying in wait for their prey? Simpler and more complex than so much else, really.

The moment had come at last. Dominic had suddenly decided to have a real talk with the friend of his father and brother, who claimed to be his friend as well.

He would appear, hurried and resolute, in front of the room of mystification.

Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov no longer had the patience to wait until evening to visit Counselor Marga’s home. He would go to the hospital, to the popular consulting room, where History daily writes its sarcastic reports. He would finally clear up the parentheses … The accident, the hospitalization of the old woman hit by the schoolboy cyclist, the death of Marcu Vancea, the Association of Exemplary Deaf-Mutes of the Future, the new man Cua, the Ghost of Hobgoblin Photographer Octavian Cua. The morality scandal concerning high-school teacher Vancea Voinov. The police informers who worked at the hotel alongside receptionist Vancea Voinov. Veturia and Marcel, neighbors of wanderer Vancea Voinov. Everything, absolutely everything, until the doctor finally divulges the recipe for survival in the throng that races and sighs and eats its fellows and spies on its fellows and buries its fellows and multiplies, keeps multiplying, and multiplies its ever more cunning reflexes of survival. Yes, he was ready, he had decided. Quick, quick, straight to the consulting room, to the hospital.

“Has something happened? What’s up?”

“Well … nothing.”

“That is?”

The doctor would take off his glasses and pass his hand over his forehead, over his eyes. He would open his right, healthy eye; he would close his left, glass eye. Tired, too tired, he would replace his glasses and again pass his hand over his forehead. He would make a sign to his assistant, the policewoman Ortansa Teodosiu, wife of Boss Gic, for her to leave the room.

“Do you want to be admitted, perhaps? A certificate, a prescription …”

“Cut the certificate crap! What are you talking about? I’ve come just like that. To greet spring in its magnificent headquarters at Bedlam.”

Dominic would put his fine hands on the table, near Dr. Marga’s plump hands with nails trimmed at a manicurist’s salon. Preparations … pah! You come here thinking of confessing! And you lose all interest, if you ever had any, as soon as you cross the threshold. And with what determination he had come! That’s it, all you can do is turn your hands palm up and think long and hard about the intricate lines of fate.

“I’ve come just like that, to look at your eyebrows. To find out the hidden sign, the code. That invisible scar at the end of your eyebrow.”

The doctor would not respond to the provocation; he still would not understand what it was about. A joke, an idiotic joke, some other mad stunt of the madman. But he would be sufficiently nervous to move his plump hands under the table, onto the lap of his smock coat.

“I dreamed of a letter.”

“What letter?”

“The bachelor’s letter. The dear boy’s. The blockhead, you know. Because he must have written it, m’sieur, it must have been him, whatever his name is. Octavian, phantom Octavian. I opened it out of curiosity, under a streetlamp. Sender unknown. But it was the bachelor’s letter, I swear. Addressee: Father. Who afterward — you know.”

The doctor smiling, tired out. He would take a handkerchief from his pocket, forget about the handkerchief, say that he’s exhausted. But he would not want to say any more, he had no way of avoiding the subject, he knew how persistent a madman can be. They would look for a long time into each other’s eyes, searching for a solution. The solution: to accept the chattering, to see the mad prank through to the end.

“Dead or alive, let’s bring the bachelor in. That’s what the gentleman in Buenos Aires wants. That is his wish. Crime, culprits, revenge! That’s the play in full, the whole of it. But I’d go even further and say: I’m afraid. I’m afraid of the truth: I’m as scared of betrayal as of the truth, and vice versa.”

“What truth?”

“The one I smelled long ago and all the time …”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, my dear sir, let’s put our cards on the table.”

“Go to it, my boy. Well?”

“Well?”

“What letter? What bachelor?”

“The chatterlogue. The nihilist. The bachelor. The dear boy. The stutterer, ’Coz he was head over heels in love. And he felt he was losing her. ’Coz that missionary had come and taken her away. And then bang! — the last attempt. A forgery. A mere forger. He copied not only those slogans but their writing as well, their illiterate writing. All those green, worm-eaten slogans around the hooked cross. So courage, yes. An anonymous letter, but we all sign. He had signed, illegibly, and put that head in three parts above it.”

“What head? What three parts?”

“The three-headed emblem. The cross wasn’t enough, so there also had to be the three-headed emblem. That’s what gave him away. But Father didn’t tell anyone. He was afraid: everything had started to get too dark all around him. Beneath an appearance of calm, yes. There seemed to be a lull, a glimmer of hope — and that’s just when you forget to defend yourself. And that’s what Father was scared of — the apparent calm. Under which the old old danger was bubbling up: you know what I mean. Where there’s no morality, not even corruption can succeed in solving problems. A society without principles: it just shouts that it has some while it is chopping off your rocker. The danger could come from anywhere. In madness not even corruption helps any longer. In vain did Father become a wine dealer. That’s what he was counting on, as a philosopher. On weakness and vice and corruption. The stuttering and vengeful man in love. Only he had heard Father talking about Macrobius, Giordano, the three-headed emblem. Because Father was a philosopher, mad about things like that — as you know.”

“Come on, you’re joking.”

“I’m sorry: this is called dreaming, not joking. What am I? A child?”

“Okay, okay! Do you want to say something to me? Go ahead. Do you want to tell me something, after all, Tolea? I get the feeling that— Otherwise we should go. It’s late.”

The doctor would adjust his clothes and glasses.

“I don’t know what you want, Tolea. I’m going home now. I’m off … You’re having a bad day, Tolea. That’s the problem with you: you’re always having bad days. Insistence, insistence, your bad days, your defect, believe me.”

“The dear boy’s capable of tackling any subject, eh? Listen, the dear boy is capable of tackling any subject, isn’t he? On the evening of the quarrel, Father had received the letter and understood the danger. You’ve met my people. But only I know about the threatening letter. Only I and Father, do you understand? Sounds plausible, no? Do you admit it sounds plausible, my dear sir? Come on, admit it. If you love me, if you really care about me, potbellied sir, then admit it. Let’s say there was an emblem above the text or above the signature. On the envelope, too.”

“And so what? What are you getting at? You’re making things up — and not even with any purpose.”

Too late. In vain would the doctor rue his words, or turn from the door to comfort the madman. Mr. Tolea would quite simply no longer feel like talking. And if he didn’t feel like it, that was all there was to it! He was dead beat.

So, failure — yet another one. Just when we were at last on the point of finding Comrade Octavian, the exemplary photographer of the Exemplary Association; when we were finally prepared to test the charity of the charitable doctor, tell him that it’s no good trying to slip life-giving Irina into our bed, to recondition us so that we, too, are in tune with the world. Just when we were able to offer an original hypothesis about the past that has not yet passed. Just then, the battery ran out. Look, the wish to astound the doctor has quite simply vanished! It’s vanished and there’s nothing to be done about it.

Vacant eyes, moist limbs — the battery is flat. That’s the problem with us, Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov, also called Tolea: we have our bad days, that’s all.

Vacant eyes, flat battery: any desire for fun and games and entertaining diversions was swept away. The hour of the wolf had come, the gray hour when aggression is imminent. Night was already advancing on all sides, with its invisible army of lepers. Soon he would feel the epileptic shudder of an encirclement from which there was no escape. The walls would sigh again, demented, shaking under the bolts from a poisoned sky; the roof would dance again, vibrating under the nocturnal bombardment; the windows would clank with the intoxication of terror.

Trauma coming from the ground, an earthquake like the one three years before, on that clear spring night when the crust suddenly began to crack and to throw up the pestilential burden of the morass. Just yesterday — three years ago, like three hundred years ago or three nights ago or never, like now. A cool, cloudless evening— like now. Freshness and peace. Tolea went to the window and looked at the street. An empty, clean street on which a young man was slowly limping behind a long-haired Afghan hound. A solemn, aristocratic, golden dog. The silent street in perfect repose, the perfectly absent dog, the lame young man in a thick black wool cape hanging down almost to his shoes.

He turned back inside the room and looked again at the library. A high wall completely full of book-bearing shelves. The old lawyer, once a friend of philosopher — wine dealer Marcu Vancea, had asked him to pay a visit to inspect his library. Having recently been left a widower, the pensioner wanted to sell off his collection of books. He had thought of Tolea, whom he knew to have been an avid reader as a young man, at the time when he himself had been a lawyer in that wretched trial over the bicycle accident.

An impressive library indeed. Old books in valuable leather bindings, a whole series of French classics, but also famous German and English titles, and, oh yes, a first edition of the Bible in Slavonic. What a miracle that it had not been confiscated in the years of Stalinist hysteria, when he could have landed in big trouble. Tolea advised him to contact Marga. Perhaps a connoisseur of rare objects, but also a possible link to the medical caste where there were still people with money and, who knows? even with soft spots for culture. The lawyer made a gesture of annoyance at the mention of the name. Obviously he knew Marga: they had played poker together for many years. No, he didn’t like the one-eyed doctor’s cautious style of playing. “Only one eye for so many books — just imagine,” muttered the old man, perky with spite. “Not even two young eyes would give you the strength for such wonders.” Tolea did not give up and insisted that Marga was a real possibility, if not to buy it himself, then at least to find someone who would. But the old man suddenly remembered the pills he was supposed to take every evening and hurried toward the kitchen to make some tea. “I’ll make some for you, too. A special tea. It’s a superb Indian tea — really quite special. It works wonders. Sometimes uncomfortable wonders, believe me,” the bibliophile mumbled as he withdrew to the kitchen. While Tolea waited for him to return, he looked at the extra-high walls brimming with exotic golden spines. Then he turned again to the window. The pair was slowly moving into the distance. The noble dog, with its tapering head and its learned locks waving in the breeze of the spring night. And one step behind, its black-mantled companion limped rhythmically along.

The image suddenly shattered. The window shook, thunder hit the walls, everything began to tremble. Tolea jumped sideways in the direction of the door — crash! tray and cups falling to the ground in the kitchen, whoooom! the whole wall with the books tumbling down in a flash, explosion one step away, a miraculous escape, whoooom! one step, one second, the windows clanking and walls tottering, table chair television. The old man was already here, pale, shivering, spasmodically pulling him by the jacket with his bony arms: “Out, out, earthquake.” Already in the shaking front doorway, the walls floor windows people, yes, they had all gone to the doors: shouts, screams, and sobs — with the shell cracking and crumbling, they held on to the door frame, hurled from one side to the other, “like in 1940, an earthquake,” the old man was babbling, and they were lying on the ground and there was no end to it. “Under the door beam, must get under the beam”—the little old man was holding on to the panel of the crackling door; the beams were going crack bang, the floors, the pillars, no end to the swaying, the jabbing. The shell was cracking and tumbling down, this is the long dismal end, hit from one corner to another, frantic dizziness, rocking rocking, no end to it, long long dismal macabre never-ending minutes. Never-ending, never, no, not yet, no, finished, looks like it’s over. “Quick, quick, to the stairs,” murmured the old man. “Wait, let me get my coat, I must just get my coat,” and they grabbed their overcoats and went running running down the stairs strewn with debris and bricks and clothes, to the street, salvation, springing, stirring, stairs, street, yes, in the street, saved, Our Saviour, supreme, saved by Our Saviour supreme, thanks be to Him. Crumpled clothes, deathly pale but alert faces, the street full of victims stamping from cold and excitement, and streets full of rubble and hubble-bubble, columns of bodies and the buzzing of hurried voices, all hurrying here and there without quite knowing where, a kind of mass breakout, as if the disaster had also meant liberation, because it was not possible to return to the shattered cages, now forced at last to rediscover one another, no longer having any shelter, lacking the protection but also the limits of walls, nomadic and free, in the unknown night given back to us. “This is where that little dynamo of a poetess used to live,” said the old man as he pointed to a tall building in ruins. “I was a colleague at the bar with her father. And look at this — it was the perfumery. Now it’s gone, turned into dust.”

They left Sfîntul Ion Nou and went to the university, squashed between waves of people thronging the pavement, beneath flurries of dust raised by the wind from the craters of collapsed buildings. The pensioner stopped in front of the Hotel Ambassador. “There’s no point. I can’t go on. This general hysteria isn’t doing me any good at all.” And the crowd really was on the boil, its gestures and voices irrepressibly accelerating and expanding. The city seemed to be on the eve of a great siege, disturbed still more by the insurrection of its shelterless inhabitants than by the catastrophe that had just struck it. “No, there’s no point; it’s really bad for me. I’d do better to go and look for my sister. At Drumul Taberei, that’s where she lives.” Tolea tried to talk him out of it: it’s late, the buses aren’t running, thieves flood the streets at times like this. But the old man did not give way. He was determined to see what had happened to his sister, because it was quite likely that every one of those socialist-constructed blocks in the new parts of town had come crashing down. “It’s a terrible earthquake, you know. Stronger than the one in ’40. It lasted longer, too. It’s ghastly, really ghastly.” So Tolea went toward Drumul Taberei together with the man who had been his defense lawyer at the trial of his youth.

It was a long way, an hour and a half or so, along unfamiliar streets bustling with a motley and noisy crowd at the peak of overexcitement. The situation did not grow calmer as they moved away from the center. A kind of explosive sleepwalking hypnotized the poor tenants who had been driven from their damaged cells, traumatized by unpredictability and death. Authority had also suddenly disappeared. People were obviously overjoyed that no one was telling them what to do, but they were also stunned, like so many orphans, at not being able to regain their sense of the moment — the only reality, the reborn present at once volatile and voracious, which had to be seized quickly they knew not how, with claws mouth eyes mind, bitten salivated eaten swallowed digested eliminated, get out into the wasteland, that’s all, a moment, an earthquake, we have no right to waste the moment, because soon the sellers and the customs men will be back. “Listen, what are they saying?” murmured the bibliophile, pricking up his ears. “That it hasn’t been broadcast. They still haven’t reported the earthquake on the radio. You see, they already sense the lack of authority. They really should be told what’s happened, and what they have to do.” The old man from yesteryear seemed completely calm and detached, merely adjusting his gold-rimmed spectacles from time to time and giving a pull on his hood, a kind of cone-shaped woolen black stocking. He was breathing with difficulty, it’s true, and his back was bent. But he bore up to the long trek, and despite the shock never lost his good cheer. “Just think: two hours gone by and they still haven’t got the courage to say in public that something has happened beyond their control. Something unavoidable, unpredictable, which challenges their power. The surprises of our Mother Nature! And it does still exist — just think — it’s still capable of springing surprises. The poor officials are suffering from shock. They’re all paralytic, believe you me.” A sign that he was in a special state, however, was that he kept sneezing. Every few minutes he buried his head in the fur lapel of his grand old moth-eaten overcoat. He took from the lapel a large white handkerchief, a kind of napkin, which he then carefully refolded and put back in its place, although it was evident that he would need it again all too soon. “And on top of it all, their boss is out of the country in Africa — just now! I’m telling you, they don’t know how to break the news. They don’t even know how to tell him. Bad news will make him upset — that’s obvious. I don’t envy them, the poor things — they must be scared stiff.” The old man’s voice could be heard faintly beneath the material.

“Now is the hour. The great chance for the conspiracy. The act of treason. Time for the lower ranks to take the wheel. A perfect moment, believe me. But they won’t do it. That’s how they’ve been selected,” the old lawyer continued, rolling his r’s in the interwar manner with all the ease of youth. “From tomorrow there’ll be a new strategy — you’ll see. Visit to such-and-such a hospital, invaluable suggestions, big rallies, chats with people saved from under the rubble, parental care of the nation’s parents. Hold tight: from tomorrow the old jabberer will be at it again.” But they were now in front of the block they had been looking for. And it had not collapsed; in fact, it looked quite solid. They went up the dark staircase, stumbling over pieces of mortar and scrap iron. From time to time Tolea lit a match: voices could be heard from all the apartments, where people were still frightened and had not gone to bed. They eventually reached the top floor, the tenth, where the pianist had just clambered up. A small, elegant apartment. Some six or seven people were praying around a candle, with complete presence of mind, while the radio was broadcasting, in French, news about the Bucharest earthquake. No, the national radio had still made no announcement, but foreign stations were confirming that what they had all experienced a few hours ago really had happened. Seismic monitors had registered many degrees on the Richter scale. He remained in the doorway, declining the invitation of the porcelain figure Paulina, the pianist, to remain with them. “You know what they say: there will now be a number of smaller shocks. It’s best if we stay together.” Yes, he himself felt the shudder: a kind of strange induction of the danger was floating in the air; an obsessive headache had taken hold of the thoughts and the body in which that cosmic trepidation had burrowed so deeply, the traumatic cough of sick Earth shaking the Chinese walls of the illusory little refuges. He looked at the pensioners from the door; it was as if he had seen again his long-departed parents and uncles and aunts. He did not feel much like being alone, it was true; he was even trembling. The shaking of the walls and the ground had entered inside him. But no, he was not tempted to join these old people asking for God’s mercy, nor did he want to stay under any kind of roof. He would sooner be out roaming the city’s nocturnal wilderness. They were concentrating so hard, both on themselves and on the voice of the distant announcer, that they evidently did not notice when he quietly shut the door behind him.

He gripped the banister with his right hand. The thick heel of his shoe faltered on the first step below. An ordinary step, yes, as on the way up. He looked for the matches that he always carried with him; their ancestral fire had proved the only salvation during the energy crisis. The first stick did not light, of course. He tried another two until he succeeded. By the little phosphorus flame he looked at the abyss of the stairwell. Yes, it was normal enough, as on the way up. Without striking any more matches, he groped his way down, step by step. It was quiet: the voices had grown fainter — just a low indistinct sound from time to time. Ninth floor, eighth, seventh, fifth. At the fifth a door opened somewhere. The darkness was total, yet he did feel a door opening. He stopped. “Is there anyone on the stairs?” a woman asked. He hesitated before replying. “Yes, I’m just on my way down.” Pause. Tiny particles of magnetic obscurity carried her voice back, deep and slow. “You don’t have a match, by any chance?” The black, impenetrable texture of darkness, the imperceptible pulsation of darkness — perhaps also of the walls, of his knees. He clenched the cold rail with his fingers, trying to catch the hushed voice again. Deep, young, clear — a burning jet. “Yes, I do,” he replied. Still night, about to resume the quaking. “Yes, I’ve got some matches,” he repeated. Still, frozen lava about to explode. “The apartment on the right. The first by the stairs. To the right.” A deep voice filling the darkness with its perfumes. He took a step back. The match did not light. Another one. He turned, with the tiny flame in front of his eyes, toward the first door on the right. He was beginning to see: the clear white oval of her face, huge watery eyes, and especially her red hair, short wiry red, burning. A thick dressing down like a bathrobe, and a snow-white shoulder. The match went out, but he was already at the door. She touched his hand, her fingers linking together with his. He was pulled inside. “There’s a draft on the stairs. Matches keep going out.” Yes, there was a draft on the stairs. Impossible to keep a flame alight. A clear deep voice, thin strong bony fingers, short wiry red hair, burning. He made to light another match. “No, not here. I’ll get a candle first,” and she pulled him after her, through the narrow hall to the living room, and then unclenched her fingers. She went, probably, into another room to look for candles. “No, I can’t find any. Please light a match.” The match flared up, but then went out at once. He struck another, which did not light. Finally a mini-flame was cutting through a little zone of semi-darkness. They looked at each other — smiling, one might have said. Pale, excited. Yes, she was slim and tall. Her dressing gown fluttered briefly over her black-stockinged legs. He saw again the pale, stretched oval and the huge eyes and boyish haircut. The match went out, burning his fingers. He made to light another, but her cool smooth palm covered his hand. Again their fingers locked together, phalanxes tightly pressed, and then opened again in search of buttons and zipper. His scarf, coat, belt, pullover, shirt flew off. Her lips remained glues to his, not moving, not kissing. Smooth vibrant lips, young slow breathing, erect nipples. Cold smooth breasts and a long, powerful, impatient tongue. His coat, trousers, and pullover fell quickly, then the rest, quickly, quickly.

Her hands felt him feverishly. Her voice was calm, but her body was trembling, in panic, fingers hurriedly sliding over the stranger’s body — chest, hips, lower down. She was tall and young and naked, glued to the stranger’s foreign body. Thrilled, eager to find confirmation, union. A brief shudder passed through her throbbing body when she took and sheltered the frail, stunted babe in the palm of her hand. Only then did she kiss the man’s mouth, heavily, without passion, in a kind of pact of urgency. She held the python in her skilled, protective hands, as in a resuscitation tube. She held it very tight, and she, too, was tense. It existed, they still existed, after everything. “Tudor, Tudor,” the lamentation began. As if her youthful murmur were sucking in all the air from the room. Not a flicker could be heard anymore, not a movement, just the prisoner’s breathing. Her fingers became more and more silky, velvety, in the smooth ritual. “Tudor, Tudor,” the unknown woman repeated tenderly. “Tudor,” she urged on the creeping stalk. The snake, ever hotter, ever more erect in the palm of her fluid, magnetic hand. Enlivened, powerful, under the vestal’s spell. “Tudor, Tudor,” she spoke rhythmically, in a trance, with her palm rolled around the wonder. On her knees now, as if at prayer. “Tudor, Tudor,” she groaned, with her lips glued to the obsidian head. An expanding totem, with the name of the absent one it was to replace. A substitute, of course, that was all it could be in a world of substitutes, perfectly identified with the name and role and memory it had to mime, so that no identification or differentiation would be possible, as the underworld of masks and substitutes required. Tolea was already kneeling as well: their fingers interlocked once more and opened again. The hushed darkness, frozen solid — not a vibration, not a throb, as if they were in a burial vault. Their haste injected its dizzying alcohol, speeding up their breathing and movements. Coldness and burning heat at the same time. The woman lay down on her back, but gripped his arm tightly and guided his fingers through the prickly, heated bushes onto the flower in flames. The sepals opened to receive him.

“What’s her name? What’s her black hole of a name?” murmured the darkness. “What’s your jungle called? Your black mouth. Your gateway. Your man-eating flower. What’s she called? What’s the name of yours?” asked Tudor’s woman from her trance. It hurt him, the waiting and the silence hurt him, the snake in the darkness hurt him, but he knew he wouldn’t gain access until he handed over the coupling name. “Irina,” whispered the wanderer in defeat, barely heard. The walls seemed to shake, or not quite, carefully, dangerously, and the floor as well. A slight warning clank of the windows, or so it seemed. The walls and floorboards and ceiling were slowly vibrating, slowly but tangibly. “Irina,” repeated the priestess as she took him in. “Irina,” sighed the woman. “That’s my name, exactly. Exactly my name,” whispered the sleepwalker, happy and relaxed, as if she had suddenly been liberated. “Irina! My God — that’s exactly my name,” whimpered Irina, in whom Tudor was hysterically pumping the lava of the fiery night. The shell was shaking, trem-trem, trembling, earth tremor; the crater had released smells and microbes, the magma was pulsating, wounded and scattered, and the walls were swaying, swaying, the shaking ever more furious, but Irina stopped him, “No, not now,” and he was again in her witch’s hands and lips, rocking, calmed, reborn in her cool and salty hands, between marine, phosphorized lips. Her long legs trembled on the trembling ceiling, like the walls and windows and floor and the jet of fire in night’s bottomless udder. “Oh, Irina,” the orphan finally expiated, expired. “Irina, Irina,” the saved clown confessed, bowing his tearful mask on her electrified breasts, moving his vanquished head down onto the cosmic abdomen, to catch the echo, the confirmation, still lower down, when his lying lips, in the ultimate act of gratitude, glued themselves to the cannibal flower.

Healed he died, fell asleep, awake, the final sleep. The airplane banked to the left, the seats vibrated, a shiver of alarm passed through the metal belly. The stewardess was there in front to serve him, naked beneath her long voile dress. The silver tray in her long hands was shaking, as was the shell of the airplane. But she bent toward him, holding out her glossy breasts with their pea-lightbulb in the middle. Huge empty eyes in which nothing at all could be read. But her lips were quivering over small, sharp teeth. She whispered something. “Here,” she whispered. “It’s allowed here,” whispered the nymph. “Here in the air we’re allowed to. They can’t forbid it anymore. Here, up in the air,” mur-mur murmured the strip-teaser, mur-mur, the airplane spun more and more tensely, jerkily, but the whispering persisted. “Don’t be on your guard anymore. We’re up here, in the air. It’s possible up here”—and Tolea again felt Irina’s lips on his lips, nibbling ever so finely and murmuring mur-mur, melting away. Somewhere a candle seemed to be burning; the room was floating in its dim flicker of light, somewhere. He looked at the woman, her short red hair on the carpet beside him, her lips glued to his own. Naked, white, long, slim, a narrow, pale face and big green eyes and soft lips, mur-mur, glued to his lips, mur-mur murmuring: forgive me. She stretched out her glossy breasts, the left one, the right, for him to recognize them, to kiss them. Superb delicate fruits, indeed— pale violet, strong, juicy, with a long and bitter sucking bottle.

“Forgive me, Dominic.” She had fastened her mouth to the lobe of his flagging ear. “Yes, I looked in your wallet. To find out your name. Forgive me, Dominic”—and she resumed the ritual of arousing him. Still listless, worn out, the weak Dominic was in no hurry at all to recognize his name; he had no desire to replace the replacement, to play the second act, in which his role would be himself, the absent one; no, no, he did not want to wake up in his own skin — the swaying of the cupping glass would not arouse him, no, the neurosis of the earth and the walls and the somnambulist moon would not oblige him to become himself again, delivered over to nothingness. Yes, he missed Irina. Why not admit it? They would have been a couple, maybe brother and sister, better resisting the pressures of annulment that had still annuled them. Now, at least now in the cataclysmic night, when the ramshackle house of purgatory was shaking wildly and danger seemed so akin to liberation, he ought to have gone out and found her, so that after so many detours they could finally recognize themselves as a couple. “Irina and Dominic, Irina and Dominic.” The priestess cast her spell, with her hot mouth over hot torch. It grew again, very slowly, incubation, vibration, quaking, earthquake. The windows were shaking already, like the drunken walls and the floor. Her mouth, filled with saliva and bacteria and aphrodisiacs, stammered ineffable curses. He woke again in the vulva of the volcano, among voracious, moist, boiling petals, in incestuous Mother Africa. Painfully did Dominic discover the desire of the captive sorella, in the dark jungle, blazing and cannibalistic, tre-mor, tre-mor, whimpered Irina and the torrid swamp. A failed exercise in transference, that was all it had been. A humiliation, a powerless assumption of a name that didn’t work, clearly didn’t work. He woke up ejected and Irina was laughing, brazenly. “Three angels for Sarah, Abraham’s wife,” the brute was guffawing on all fours, bitchlike. “The ancestor, with the three angels. One for each orifice”—and the candle had gone out in the whirlwind of blasphemy, which was also one of fury and wild rebirth, look! fury and repulsion with himself, with his fellow creatures, and with the gods, the full, pagan, barbaric pleasure, yelping its triumph, challenging Cyclops, who was spying on his heart and mind and sex. Until this evening, until a few hours ago, when the earth shook with disgust at the tedium that kept fermenting hatching evacuating on his overly patient back. A rabid greyhound on his rabid bitch, shaking epileptically on her narrow back, setting on her snow-white neck and treacherous hips and red crewcut, yelping together with the immediate, illicit pleasure in revenge for so many postponements and prohibitions. The therapy of mad fury, liberation, yes, unfettered, unrestrained, callous pleasure which cures the horror of your own estranged body and estranged name and estranged soul in a world of estrangement. Dom-dom-min-min-nic, yelped roared Dominic and ri-ri-rina, yelped the rabid redhead, the beat of the wilds, dom rina, domirina, dum dom ri rina, domiri, until lights out. Then lethargic, pacified, stretching beside on top of each other and moving away from each other, emptied, weary, sated.

Only now, in the breakdown spleen of separation, did the longing for Irina truly return. That hysterical night, driving wild heart and mind and blood in the hazard of death and liberation, as befitted the still living dead, ought to have been one of rediscovery. For however brief a respite — if only for the minimum sequence between two final convulsions of the planet, if only for that — the orphans ought to have been able, finally, to take revenge for all the delays, to rediscover each other at last.

Yes, he really missed Irina, the one far away, who could have been if she had ever been — so yelped cur Dominic, lying on his back on the carpet, beside the bitch Irina, who fawningly licked his juices, skin, and hair. “Hair,” the bored puppy barely articulated. “You didn’t use to have red hair. Since when the red hair?” the stranger asked, scarcely breathing. “Irish, baby. I’m Irish,” the stranger promptly replied. “Pure Irish stock, I swear,” the Irishwoman repeated firmly, and she licked him again with her long, red, Irish tongue, until she dozed off from exhaustion, with her muzzle between her rear paws and her lips glued to the defunct Dominic, now a little finger, a shrunken, senile snake.

And so passed a century of peace and oblivion, until the windows shook again and Tolea woke up scared at the vibration of the walls, as in another earthquake.

It was only a truck or a tank or a tractor, perhaps, rattling down the street that was just then waking up. Dawn had come — the petrified cage as indifferent as ever. Nothing was moving: it was as if nothing had happened.

He got up, looked around at the strange room, looked at the window and the unfamiliar street, then dragged his scattered clothes from the carpet and put them on.

The hostess was asleep. Naked, perfect — perfect sleep. Now he saw her in reality. Broad hips, narrow waist, sturdy calves, smooth sole, slim ankle, pale elongated face, lips twisted in an evil smile, short red hair of a setter, white, overlong arms. She did not move, did not hear a thing. He took a first step. The corpse remained the same, immobile, perfect.

Her sleep was too perfect to demonstrate indifference, innocence. Did the courtesan not have something to hide; that is, some reason to be on the alert? Perhaps her haste to search the stranger’s pockets, to discover his identity, address, distinctive details, had after all been only a harmless impertinence or an excess of curiosity and even friendliness, nothing else. A cosmic, total sleep, as if nothing suspicious could be discovered in the Mata Hari boudoir. All around and on the floor, books, clothes, tableware were lying in a heap as the earthquake had flung them.

He leafed through a few books on the carpet, opened drawers, paper files, albums, and cupboards to unearth the weapon of the officer in disguise or her secret identity papers. He kept turning to make sure that the nude was in the same position, anaesthetized in the same indecent, intangible slumber. He looked among brass and nylons and photographs, among towels, cosmetics, and shoes. How could the captain allow herself to sleep while a stranger was rummaging through wigs, slips, panties, and tights. Had the earthquake been so high on the Richter scale that it had confounded police regulations, granting her indefinite leave for this implausible, indefinite sleep?

No, he did not find the props of disguise, or the revolver or uniform or secret orders and reports. But he knew that the futility of the search lay in its own premises: the results did not mean anything. The lack of proofs only showed how abundant they were, and the falsified evidence was more convincing than if it had been real. No, not even her sleep, as greedy and imprudent as the loveplay had been urgent, famished, and reckless, absolved the mannequin of the suspicion of which no one these days had a right to be absolved.

He listened for a moment longer before leaving. Nothing — not a flicker. He wearily left the resuscitation balloon. He stood clinging to the door. Gray-blue dawn. The daylight had scarcely broken through: night was still sarcastically dawdling over the damaged city. Scarcely able to make out the stairs, he lit a match to guide himself down. But then he turned back to read the name on the recessed door. It was engraved on a little bronze plaque: francisca pop. The match went out and he lit another. francisca pop. ballerina was written clearly on the door to the trap. He read it, read it again, memorized it, read it once more. “Irina, how about that! The Red Hole. The Irish mouth! The Irish setter, huh! The Cannibal, or witch! Witch Francisca Pop d’Assisi! Irish — huh! What a con merchant!” The wanderer was still mumbling on the last stair before he went out into the street, into reality.

“Irina, how about that! Irina of Hymenland!” he said, stressing the words, refreshed by the cool of the unreal morning. “A ballerina, huh! Ballerina Mata Hari!” the pedestrian repeated to warm himself up.

After just an hour it would no longer be possible to find the green-painted staircase and that block of flats and the fir-lined drive and the name Francisca Pop — of that he was convinced. They would have scattered without trace in the dark labyrinth of the beehive, which would conscientiously begin again its static daily grind. Scattered himself, too. In a hurry to be scattered without trace as fast as possible. In the night that was being scattered, in the dawn that was freezing and scattering him.

He went forward in the gray hour, the hour when aggression is imminent.

He could already feel the epileptic shudder, the encirclement without escape.

Night, emptiness. Nearby can be heard the cranes working beneath jets of reflector light at the white palace of the future, the headquarters of the exemplary deaf-mute circus where the Exemplary President of the Exemplary Association will sit on the throne! The street is wearily grating under the caterpillar tracks of the night’s transport. The loads are marble walls, conduits, barrels of fuel oil, concrete slabs, gilded door handles, and taps for the boudoir of the generals, the exemplary watchers of the exemplary watched. The sky is being torn to pieces by the fire serpents with their soldering operations.

Clear black sky, few stars, no moon: in vain would you look in the sky for someone to talk to.

A few times he seemed to feel the obsessive shadow of someone watching him. Past midnight. The hour of nightmares, the hour of Toma.

“People are capable of anything, hunter Toma A. Toma. You might quote this banality in the reports you file in the Archives of Suspicion. The prisoners hardly have time to understand the brief trajectory that is allowed them. They can hardly evaluate the deformed specimen called man. Who better than you to know their failings and their helplessness? But Vancea? What can one think of me, the ephemerid Vancea, the ex-teacher Vancea?”

He would smile, happy with the dialogue. His knowing, conceited, artful smile.

Tolea the sleepwalker felt that he was no longer alone in his room.

“You don’t interest me, Mr. Vancea, I told you. I asked you about Ianuli, about our old obsession Ianuli.”

“I don’t know him. I don’t know Ianuli, as I’ve said time and time again. I never had the opportunity: I don’t want to, and there’s no need for it either. No, I don’t know Ianuli. I don’t have any opinion about him. None at all.”

He had pressed his head in his hands, so he wouldn’t hear the sound of himself thinking, so he could remain alone with the darkness. But after a long while he looked up again. Something very strange was shining in the dark, like a gold tooth in an invisible mouth or a bleeding scar on a ghost’s temple. And silence fell, after the avalanche of unuttered words. The windows were gradually dissolving in the bluishness of dawn.

“Do you really not know Ianuli at all — not at all? Or his wife? Or his wife, who has worked with us for so …” And someone made a chivalrous gesture, an act of reverence in the face of the priceless memory.

“Ianuli, Ianuli. I’ve seen him a few times. I’ve caught sight of him, I mean, in the street, at the theater, I don’t remember where else. But I don’t know him in fact. All I know is what everyone knows: the Ianuli legend. A young bookworm fascinated by revolution who leaves his family and goes off to fight in the mountains; he’s wounded, leaves his age-old Greece, and soon after the war comes here, to the gates of the Orient. He’s very ill nowadays, that’s what I’ve heard. I happened to see him a year or so ago in the street. He was pale, all skin and bones, with disheveled hair. A real ghost! No, I don’t know him. But Emilia— Well, Emilia …”

Nonsense. Rambling words that should not have been said or even thought. Maybe our thoughts can be intercepted, maybe the technology has been developed. Does the exemplary institution already have such an invisible instrument at its disposal? We shouldn’t always be asking ourselves who the devil is. You shouldn’t talk nonsense. That’s just what spies are looking for.

Toma was no longer there. Just as he was preparing to shout “No, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want,” there was already someone else in front of him.

“You — you are the devil, you are our salvation. You, adored one, cannibal, rare mountain flower, scumbag …”

Emilia smiled, as if she had not heard the whispering. Emilia smiled and was close by; you had only to stretch out your hand. Close, close, as he had always wished. Finally, just here, with no witnesses. A spark would be enough, and then at last revenge would be had for the sick expectation. At last he was just one step away from the unlikely moment. Should he tell her something else, anything? The thoughts are different, dulcissima, just listen to my crazy pulse, booming like the jungle tom-tom, the wild racing of the blood thudding in honor of the beloved!

Emilia either did not hear or heard something different: she continued to smile indulgently. “You — you are the devil! Your indifference and your happiness, both unquenchable … You overripe nymph, mare in heat. Perfect, like the forbidden fruit. Elemental, insatiable. As simple as light and death. You, venerated scumbag, desired by all.”

The professor had bent under the weight, overwhelmed by the words unsaid. He was sweating, driven mad by the miracle of the moment that would fade and die. “Emotion — that’s all I am. Raging emotion, sorella. Emotion is ruining me. It’s driving me wild, wiping me out, amantissima.”

And he no longer had the courage to look up. Toma, the waged spy, had disappeared, as had Irina, with her perverse adolescent headaches, and Tolea flying through the air without handlebars, and old Marga and the retired Gafton couple, and the Argentinian Mircea Claudiu with his glassy Astrid, and the subterranean Octavian Cua, known as Tavi, photographer of the deaf-mutes — all of them. All.

“Why are you laughing? There is no escape, is there? There’s no point in making the play more complicated, is there? You’re laughing at our fearful caution. Is there nothing other than the arrogance of the pleasure in which you gleam? Only the plenitude of this oblivion in which the avid harlot, Death, roars with satisfaction? The elixir of oblivion, you, your phosphorescent legs, your lips and breasts and cosmic sex, and those big, ingenuous, primordial eyes. You, dulcissima, the planetary whore.”

The thoughts slowed down as the author curled up with fatigue. His pate still seemed to be glowing. The light slowly increased, a sick vibration, but his thoughts grew weaker, diluted, disconnected.

Emilia was seated at an austere desk, elbows resting on the glossy wood, young hair fluttering here and there. Those unforgettable angular cheeks, those eyes, ah yes, those eyes … He looked down, humbled by so many tottering thoughts, ashamed at the unexpected neglect, disarmed. “Are you wisdom? Without character, without restraint? Just the purity of sudden feeling? How much I longed for the meeting, the miracle, at last! The plenitude of sensation, of the joy of the moment, that’s all. Nothing else: the plenitude of oblivion. But he, the dangerous Ianuli, he the failure? But what about Comrade Ianuli?”

She did not hear him: the low moaning sound did not reach her; the gods protected her from such wretched jamming. Sublime, perfect, she was deaf to such whining. Deaf; deaf as a radish!

The sleeper smiled guiltily at the feeble simile. But he was happy that it had not been heard.

Emilia went on smiling. The expression on her face seemed to be changing all the time. Subtle variations of line, imperceptible migrations of color. He had seen her so many times and heard so much about her fabulous appearance, but her voice, no, that he had never heard.

Emilia had stood up in front of the desk. Supporting herself on one elbow, she jumped up and sat with legs crossed on the desk. He recognized her: yes, it was she, wearing jeans, as young girls do, with that usual see-through blouse which seemed not to be there at all.

She looked at him, let herself be looked at. Close by, a step away, within reach. She had it in mind to speak — or so it seemed. That deep voice which people described as coming from the depths, burning the air and words.

“You’re like me, sweetheart. I mean, you were, you should have been. You didn’t have the strength, weren’t courageous enough. You could have — you wanted to, admit it. You had no idea how much strength and how much courage you would need in that tight corner. You desired me, but not enough. Although you did often desire me passionately, like a child. Why why why didn’t you persevere? Champagne, dancers’ thighs, dirty jokes — you really could have been the songwriter for a cabaret! The ladies, including young ones, spoiled and pampered you. You certainly had the good looks. Both fickle and sharp. Talent? Only I have talent. But you found something that gave an appearance of it. Songwriter at the Cabaret Levcenco! Or the Cabaret atomica or the pussy Club. A king, a real giant! Like me, the giantess …”

It did not sound like a joke. Why why why. The giantess had cut through the air with her gigantic legs. And what if what if. Suddenly the sleepwalker sensed the falseness, the dissonance. No, it hadn’t been the giantess’s voice. A kind of dubious post-synch. Why why why why. The movement of those delicate, devilish lips, the luster of shiny teeth perfectly smooth like bullets. The voice: what why if. It wasn’t her voice, it couldn’t be!

You were like me; you could have been. When you still had the choice, you could have been like me, Professor. You would have had the talent. But you couldn’t. In a corner now, deformed. You’re right: you do deserve a little reward, a little inadvertence, I know. I’ll pay you back. You will have the moment, a breath of air, that’s all. A fake, at hand. Our journey is short: you deserve this little piece of guile, a sweet mockery, oho …”

She must have wanted to laugh, but her giant’s laughter did not start up: it couldn’t. And the voice was borrowed. It was his voice, actually his! What a devilish swindle! It’s hard to recognize your own voice, why why why. He did see her gigantic, tender figure coming toward him again. With a short jump she was down from the desk and standing on her feet. Whole, whole, at last … With those long legs and that rough head of hair carefully smoothed at the temples. She joined her slim, delicate hands, as if to ask forgiveness or simply to reassure him in preparation for happiness, so he could receive the young light of her eyes as it kept drawing nearer.

She moved toward him, but somehow the contact was lost. He perceived her floating motion, her smiling face, but her approach was delayed and became blurred. There would have been no point in holding out his hands: he had felt the break, the interruption. The shadows were reborn around him, teeming again in a viscous, rustling expectation.

It was as if a signal had been given. Was it the telephone, the doorbell, or the alarm clock? Neighbors, the postman, or the block manager? So it was back to the beginning again — the voice from the other day.

Only a step separated them, but he had lost the giantess, he knew. There’s no more to be done; the day was dragging him toward her rugged haven. He recovered his senses: there was no longer any escape.

“Our collaborator,” that was how Toma had presented her. He’ll find her again, then. He’ll find them all again: he just has to pay attention, to recognize them in time, so that he can make an approach to them.

He smiled, ready for the new meeting. Oho, the poor apprentices of reality — they deserved his naïve participation, his uncertain share.

About to open his eyes. On the lids is the infinite zephyr, the cool long hands of morning.

The buzz of routine penetrated the window. He was prepared.

The high-school teacher in that wooded town of his adolescence, pampered with springs and melancholy hills, played a star come down for a moment to flummox provincial teenagers. Colored scarves, machine-gun ripostes. Always irritated, bored, spitting out aphorisms, accompanied by a motley retinue of raw, chaotic youth. Step one, just inside the classroom: throwing the register on his desk. He would mount the chair and look out at the lazy good-for-nothings. Lip hanging down in spleen, eyes fixed in loathing. His forefinger would point to a dunce and summon him to answer a surprise question. Tense silence, enraptured, terrified audience waiting for the blow. But the professor does not have the patience: he gets bored and looks out the window. Then he suddenly stands up, writes the title of the next lesson on the blackboard — in huge letters as if for idiots — and is on his way. He does not even take the class roll with him. It stays like that, open on the desk, while the chair still retains the vibrations from the thin, swaying body, wrapped in extravagant clothing, of the clownish m’sieur professor.

But in the afternoon — oho! In the main street, in the cinema lobby, on the shaded paths leading down to the river, anywhere and everywhere is tolea: the focus of the teenage public. Dragging after him, higgledy-piggledy, thickheads and prize winners, bobby-soxers and even young ladies.

He growls, tells stories, ever changing his voice and adjectives: how students in the capital, exhausted with drink, are said to organize escapes from bars without paying; what happened last year, supposedly, at the jazz festival in Newport, Newpork; which is the favorite drug used by actress Merry Very; how somebody wrote a fan-tas-tic story, the last word, which begins one morning when two agents arrest, as it were, citizen ABCK, yes, Mr. K., in metaphysical and jokey Prague, The Trial, yes, yes, the famous, fan-tas-tic tale; and how the plane carrying diplomat Homar Hamar or Olde Eld Elsen was brought down in that moussaka Middle mystical East; and what the Pope said when it was suggested to him that he take a stand against Hitler; and what is being said about and how does it happen that and what is brewing in and what will it be like if where when — yes, that’s it!

Late in the evening, at the house of his bookkeeper friend or the gambling lawyer or the drunken music teacher Schnapps or Madam Madama, listening to records, leafing through picture albums almanacs astrologies. The pedagogic circus number, played in class during daylight hours, diversified and contradicted itself and gathered energy through the acrobatics of afternoons stretching far into the night, until the break of another day.

Very occasionally he went out with some developing little broad. A bald, talkative page maintaining a state of alertness, pleased with the pussy cat’s smile, buoyed by the breeze of long pleated skirts. For a whole season, however, he devoted himself to the major’s statuary wife! He also made friends with the mustachioed artilleryman, and they would go out in a threesome as if to make official the scandalous liaison that the locals were following with envy and indignation.

In that provincial past did Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov called Tolea figure as a kind of symbolic fixture, along with the clock on the town hall and the various picturesque characters from the town’s everyday mythology? Did his removal from teaching raise or lower the bohemian’s stature? Certainly, questions suddenly began to pile up. Playful old Tolea has gone a bit too far this time! His sensational removal from the didactic corps ought to have reminded those who knew him not only of what had, perhaps, been codified in many of his bizarre acts of public impudence, but also of what stood in contradiction to those acts. His attachment to his mother, for example, went so far as to seem implausible. He had cared for her like a martyr, never once complaining or even saying a word about it. Nor was he in the habit of mentioning the bizarre trades he practiced in order to spare his mother the humiliations of a harsh widowhood of poverty and depression.

A good-looking boy, always quick to reply, that was Tolea Voinov from the start! Only good to crunch between the fangs of his ravenous female colleagues at work. First at the library, where he was beset with provocative notes from female readers. Then at a record shop, next to the ones selling buttons and perfume and ladies’ underwear. Then settled for a while in the photo studio of Primadonna, a former soloist, who didn’t give him up and from whose sanctuary he took off with some savings, so people say, straight for academia … And there at the university, what a surprise! His relations with the attacking sex, for five whole years of study, became timid, evasive, apathetic. The sarcasm of his unpleasantries actually expressed a weary indifference. Then also, it seems, began the suspicions and gossip about his odd way of behaving. He avoided any intimacy, any closeness.

An incipient incompatibility, perhaps, of which he himself was not yet aware? Perhaps he did not yet know enough about himself, or that he ought to be careful with what he would discover.

How bountiful the pubescent public must have seemed to the young student and then teacher Vancea! A real compensation, a rebirth! What a tumult of weaknesses and danger and expectation, in that gray area between ages and between sexes! Between sexes, indeed, since all those boys wavering on the threshold between ages still had a certain effeminacy, a turbid potentiality, but at the same time they succeeded in curing you of the dull repugnance to which you had grown used, too early on, from women’s rooms and voices and clothes and bodies. Was it their delicate obtuseness, their voracity appeased in swooning lyrical strategies and then exploding in that alloy of pagan sensuality and domestic piety? Did they all seem to herald the tedium of the property contract, the marriage contract? What prolonged relaxation, on the other hand, in the refuge of adolescence! Still capable of thrilling, taking fright, surrendering …

However frivolous receptionist Vancea’s rambling talk may seem — a kind of trivialization of Teacher Vancea’s rambling — it is enough to follow the proliferation of substitutes all around, in a world of substitutes, to realize that at least Tolea is parodying himself and not other people. Now, after he has been found out and punished and placed under watchful scrutiny, it would no longer be right to speak of frivolity; although even that term, in a world of dull, oppressive seriousness, is gaining a certain new validity. A form of liberty— however deviant — minor, of course, but still undefeated. An irritant at least. At least that! But what if this smart little fragment has simply been manipulated by the Exemplary Association? What if he has fallen into the trap it held out for him? For nothing is left to chance in our chaotic underworld.

A summer evening. tefan Olaru meets a former classmate. An evening that seemed to be summer, in front of a kiosk that appeared to be real, which incredibly had the words fresh pies written on it but was, of course, selling only substitutes. Odd-looking sandwiches: two slices of rubber calling themselves bread, which had been grilled in hell’s fires and had floating between them, like a thin red cat’s tongue, a shiny slippery leaf of substitute. Your old classmate from school tefan Olaru is nowadays replaced by a tall, severe, timeless gentleman. He immediately approaches and, in his relaxed way, overwhelms you with his clear-cut judgments. From time to time he rubs his huge palms together, as if to bring them to life. From time to time he straightens his thin spectacles, on the perfectly cut mask of the new Stefan Olaru.

Yes, he admits it, why not why not, why not admit it, he has resigned himself to being content with success. He works hard, as an engineer, and has become indispensable there. He is frugal in what he spends, does not have any illusions, regrets the few he ever had, only gets up to the usual domestic tricks, has no great problems, as the needs of survival dictate. It is a steamy evening. The city is being burned, at the bottom of hell’s cauldron. The two former classmates speak about other former classmates. So-and-so is rolling in it, can you imagine? So-and-so’s a famous medical man. Yes, that’s the one I mean. So-and-so committed suicide, for no real reason. Then on to former teachers at the old school.

“But what about Tolea? Have you heard anything of him?”

It is not clear who asked the question, but the answer comes from the engineer.

“Ah, it’s a nasty business. Maybe you heard. If it’s really true—”

“If it is—” —in other words, he wasn’t just a loony but also—

“Well, that’s what things are like. Yes, the Law, the State require people to act decently. The Law is conservative: it protects us from a lot of things. Of course, it also allows some ambiguity. Yes, we do have a sense of decency here! People must be kept on a leash. If you let go, then heaven help them! Look what’s happening over on the other side, at our pompous rival, Freedom, Incorporated. Here we’ve got decency — we should never forget that. There’s even enough ambiguity allowed, if you know how to discover it, to win it, to ally yourself with it.

“You see, I met him a year ago. Also like this, by accident in the street. I didn’t expect the loony professor to recognize me. But, well, he knew almost everything about me: he said he respected the clearsighted way in which I’d got on in my career, et cetera, et cetera. We exchanged telephone numbers — you know, symbolically, like people do. And then, would you believe it: he rang me! Not just once. He kept doing it all the time. Incredible! He’s a changed man: sad, weary, lonely, sometimes frightened. Exaggeratedly polite, morbidly so. Mister this and Mister that: I was completely taken aback. I’ve got used to it by now, as if it’s a poor abandoned relative who’s calling me. He just talks and talks: he’s lost all discretion, all pride. He doesn’t shrink from complaining, he of all people. You know how puffed up he used to be. But now it’s all about how poor he is, and old, and he doesn’t have anyone, and he’s a failure, even the most stupid wretches have fixed something up for themselves. You won’t believe it, but sometimes he talks to me about his mother. Without any scruples. To me, a stranger! He curses, cries, jokes, moans and groans, confesses all sorts of things, repents like a little kid. Can you imagine a confessional tone like that in arrogant old Tolea?”

Yes, the confessional question came from the elusive engineer, the arrogant fibber. Traces, fables, concoctions. The confused outline of the masquerade.

Tolea, as a substitute? That is precisely what it turned out to be, at every step. The landmark for a certain place, its inside-out emblem, when truth and fakery switch around and assist each other, both heads and tails, faces and masks with their clownish reverse side, a laughing wound.

Look, the madman’s ghost has appeared just one step away, back after so many years in the little town of his adolescence.

The train was late; the heavy reddish contours of the old granite station could only just be made out in the languor of twilight. Night was rapidly falling, as in the past, over the silent hills. The ghost put his suitcase down in the cinder yard and raised his eyes: yes, he had reached his destination. He recognized the brick façade, the metal pillars, the dirty glass roof.

Now he reached the bus stop. Fur hats, shopping bags, kerchiefs, bundles. Waiting, waiting, multiplying all the time, they huddled together around the closed kiosk where cigarettes and biscuits were sometimes sold.

After nearly an hour of waiting, the old girl finally appeared with glowing headlights. She was snorting, staggering, rattling her screws; the doors flapped about, and the wheels sniffed in their worn-out covers.

The pensioner could hardly pull along such a mass of people. She moved with difficulty down winding, slushy streets and stopped at the level crossing. The Old Lady passed the bridge and began to climb, exhausted, the poplar-lined highway. Here, at the bend just inside town, he always felt he was back home.

In his early student years and at every homecoming after that, the senile, dismembered vehicle, reeling between stately poplars, eventually reached that point in the bend where the gradient suddenly increased, signaling the town, the rediscovery. Always the same place and always different ages and the same age. Immediately after the bend there was for many years a halfway stop. The bus would brake, gasping, in front of a pretty shelter with panels of green glass. He could see two seats and heaps of rags, paper, and wire. A few passengers got off, others got on; it remained as crowded as ever and the old crock could not start again. Suddenly the irritation of a passenger clinging to the steps: “What are you doing, you fool, can’t you see I’m getting on?” The fool was a stocky man, with a round pale face, in a short coat made of rough gray material. Opening his eyes wide in astonishment, he did not answer but moved to one side by the door to make room for the growler. The bodies pressed harder against each other, so that the brawler could climb aboard. “Stay like that, you idiots, don’t move.” The quarrel was about to start, as usual — curses and fists. But no, nothing happened: they were all too tired. But the vicious creature did not give up: he went on with his grumbling. Aggressive, arrogant, he could do with a slap or two in the face. A foot on the steps, an open overcoat, a huge suitcase in each hand, spectacular, thick, genuine-leather suitcases with dozens of colored labels, as if the tourist was coming from Monte Carlo. It was probably that which intimidated everybody into remaining silent, so they did not answer the insults. His smart coat, made of soft camel’s-hair material, the color of camels. Around the dromedary’s neck was fluttering a large Dior scarf, in red green and sandy check. The upstart kept spitting out abuse — at the driver, at fellow passengers, at the dirt, the smelliness and squalor, and on and on without end.

And then the phantom raised the bald head and clean-shaven face of a Roman consul. He didn’t see anyone: he had no time for trifles. Sweating and furious, he had no time for trifles.

Why has he shown up just here? Where do the showy cases and jet-set clothes come from? Jerky rattletrap, rattle rattle trap trap, rattling along narrow muddy winding streets. The populace is asleep, defeated, deaf-mute. Only Her Ladyship is whistling and shouting and turning somersaults. Between his suitcases full of conjuring tricks, hanging from the trapeze bar, whirling his Parisian scarf, setting the air alight with his grumpiness and his juggling. He shakes his hands and head about: the camel’s mantle flutters in the arena; the fakir does not have enough space and air and applause. He towers over the planet — he’s alone as always. Ever alone, alone in the world.