The Black Envelope

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THE LIGHT IN THE room turned violent, artificial, hostile. He switched it off. He moved away from the window; the room seemed to have been pacified. The soft half-darkness had tempered the gloom within and the light outside, in a kind of acceptable complicity.

At some point — when exactly? — the hazy shadow had sneaked through the door.

“It’s me, Toma; we know each other. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

The familiar voice: well trained, polite. The spy’s voice; the voice of the night.

“Are you reading? What is it? Ah, that paper. The business with the old woman, the cats, the fire. Does it interest you? Does it really? We were supposed to see each other — perhaps you remember. I have taken the liberty of, well, just a few minutes. I wouldn’t want to intrude on your time — I promise.”

The professore did not know whether it was in his own voice that he answered.

“It’s Ianuli again, is it? It’s him you want to ask me about? Well, I don’t know him. Yes, I know he’s friendly with Irina. Yes, yes, Irina Radovici. No, not in the sense that … No, just a friend, I know. I’ve heard of him, so have lots of people. But I don’t know him personally. All I can say are the banal things everyone knows. Everyone knows the Ianuli legend.”

Mr. Vancea fidgeted around looking for his cigarettes, but he could not find them. The room was floating in a gray mist; he could not even find suitable words to speak.

“A withdrawn type, not the same as he used to be. That’s what people say.”

“Very withdrawn, I’ve heard. And ill, very ill — so they say. He’s grown old and sick, and he’s got a family, all kinds of worries …”

“Yes, the family. Do you know the missus?”

“No, not in the slightest” came the hurried reply.

“Absolutely not at all?”

“I’ve just seen her a few times in the street. We’ve never spoken to each other.”

“Sure, sure. They’ve got a boy as well, haven’t they? I mean a young man, a student already.”

“He’s not Ianuli’s. He’s her son from a previous marriage. Not exactly a marriage, but it’s not important — anyway, from a relationship.”

“We know: it’s not important. So in your view this hero is washed up? Is that what you think?”

“I don’t think anything: I don’t know him. And anyway, you know him better than I do. He’s your typical hero. A revolutionary! You must know him better. He embodies — no? — symbolizes …”

“So now we’re getting there. You’ve put your finger on a very sore spot, I can tell you. Does someone like that remain fascinating? Do you think so, eh? But there’s a danger as well, you know. It’s not your street-corner discontents but these big-time ones who pose a threat, I can tell you. They’re past treatment! Heroes of the struggle, sure— good for spectacular upheavals. But what then? They need to understand reality, the world of the concrete — which is always relative. Prophets driven by ideals become, become — you know what I mean. It no longer counts whose side they were on or would like to be on, I can tell you. Where is the devil? In those obstinate monks whose eyes are fixed on an obsession? Or in their opposite: the adaptable crowd, the apathetic jokers?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’m not a theologian or a psychologist or an ideologue. I’m a cripple, the most crippled of all, my dear patrolman. Just let me sleep — sleep and be quiet.”

“Is Comrade Ianuli also substituting for someone? Is it myth, illusion, utopia? Or mystery, conspiracy? Or what the hell is the Ianuli legend substituting for? How can it still be peddled today, in a world where everyone is numb? Does it fetch a good price? Is there still a demand for it?”

“I don’t understand. I don’t understand what you want.”

“The believers, the rigid, maladjusted ones — are they the real danger, or the crowd of gawkers?”

“A danger for whom?”

“You keep avoiding a reply. You understand me only too well, I know. You understand only too well what we’re interested in, why we want to know your opinion. Could Ianuli ever become the same as before? I mean, could he move to the other side of the barricades? All those firebrands, schizoids are the same, in fact, I can tell you. All frustrated! That’s the criterion that could be used to pick them out. Frustrated, schizoid. Thirsting for power! They’re given pretty names from lullabies. But let’s look at it from a different angle. What about yourself? Is there an idealist inside you? A rebel, a true believer? Would you enlist for the struggle, shall we say?”

“I haven’t got enough qualities, or enough — defects. I’m contemplative and sedentary and set in my ways and, and — Well, I simply wouldn’t covet the honor which—”

“But are you the opposite? Untouched by anything? The slippery one who whistles and hops about?”

“Absolutely not. I’m not sufficiently—”

“Well, you were saying that in everyone there’s a bit of everything. That people are different, often opposite, and that’s how it should be — but everyone has other individuals inside him, potentially. That would mean, I suppose, that in a certain situation he might become, if only for a short period, he might become—”

“Huh, I haven’t said that yet. I never said anything like it — so don’t go around saying I did. Who taught you that stuff, eh?”

He was on the point of shouting, but his voice had cut out some time before. The questions had also stopped: the silence had grown longer and longer, turning into weariness. He waited for the torture to begin again, but the pause continued: the silence became lassitude, drowsiness. He should have switched on the light, but he didn’t have the strength.

Dawn found him exhausted. The directions for a meeting — is that what I’m looking for? How will they, will I, meet death? Who will be the one singled out? How does the road lie ahead toward the future, that is, toward death? We don’t have any immortals or any posterity. An age without immortals and without posterity? How do the past, our parents, the premise meet up again? That is, the future; that is, death. He kept muttering without a break, as if he had become senile. And he was pale, old, wasted by insomnia.

A puffed-up fool, that’s all there is to him. A substitute in a world of substitutes. But a crackpot who lashes out and hits the glasses by mistake can also, presumably, knock the alarm circuits. That’s what our Tolea is good for. Stupid pranks may give rise to unintentional difficulties, defections, revelations; the clown may revive things sleeping in the depths. We push him into the teeming shadows, till he starts thrashing around and screaming, like the loony blighter he is. Bubbles eddies sparks. Perhaps movement will be triggered by mistake. The shock to set the engine going, that is what he has been imploring for so long.

On the morning when the plot finally began, he looked younger than the age supposedly required by the action. The ex-teacher Tolea Voinov, self-selected as the bait, the trigger, the muddlehead, still looked youthful. Young Anatol, dressed to match the young and alert season.

The challenge, professore, the challenge! Proof that there’s still a chance for the powerless, even when everything appears crushed. I’ll prove it, I swear I will! I’ll put up a tiny obstacle, a teeny-weeny poisoned obstacle. Maybe I’ll hit the center of the Monster. Maybe I’ll blind the Jabberer, the Cyclops. Maybe I’ll poison Goliath with my little flower. He had raised his empty glass as if to offer a toast. His cigarette was burning his fingers. But he had still collapsed again— stupefied, exhausted. The shadows of the room and his thoughts and the hours had once more become entangled; dusk had again arrived. He would have liked to stretch out on the sofa for a few moments, but no, it’s no good on the sofa, he’d find Toma the spy there, uninvited. Better like this, on my feet, at the night-darkened window. Or on the chair, perhaps there. You can grip it firmly, tighten your belt, push hard against the back of the chair so that you can no longer be dragged up. Yes, it’s good like that: he had closed opened his eyes. It grew darker and darker: he shut his eyes and the setting suddenly lit up in the solemn and sumptuous courtroom. The Council for Model Culture and Disabled Education. The Committee for Neurotic Refugees.

The Office for Thought Security. Five, six polished men. The one at the head of the table had just passed his little white freckled hand through his thin fair hair. He had opened the file, closed the file. Like the others, he had two files before him. The red file and the green file. He opened now one and now the other. He looked at his colleagues, who repeated the movement. They opened the red file, with the bulky manuscript. They leafed through it attentively, as the High Commissar also had done, and lifted their eyes as the Boss had lifted his. Then they opened the green file, the one containing the defendant’s background, full of thin sheets of paper covered with codes and invisible ink and the Toma correspondence. They said nothing as they read, looked at each other, raised their diseased eyebrows, looked at each other. The scar briefly glowed with a phosphorescent light. The blond girl had breezily waltzed in, already in her sixth month. Blushing, she had put a small glass of water on the table, beside the young man who was perspiring as he read the indictment. He had smiled. “Yes, okay … now it’s something else.” The man wearing glasses had reached the end of the first page. He moistened his thin bluish lips in the holy water. When he hit the ashtray with his Irish pipe, the heads rose from the stained sheets of paper. A moment’s deliberation was observed. The first on the left mumbled something, and the others became extremely attentive. “I’ve had enough; I’ve had enough of this lot,” the fat bald-headed man repeated, yielding the argument. Opposite him, the first on the right cheered up and smiled. “Yes, let him go away — as far as possible. We’ll give him his chance in the bosom of Abraham and purify the colony.” Now they were chanting in turn, leaning fondly, excitedly, over their neighbor’s file: “Clear him away from us all, the dirty je-je-jackal”—in a low chorus. The head of the table tapped his nails on the table glass. “Yes, let Old Trouble go away with his diseases and his sick ideas. The law requires us to give him a chance. So, a vote of censure with a warning. A warning to quit the premises.” The young prosecutor at the head of the table straightened his glasses and started to read the indictment again.

Nothing more could be made out. Voice abolished. The batrachian masks prattled out words without sound, winking with their eyes. All that could be seen was the shiny pallor of the masks, the phosphorescent scar above the eyebrow. At the door Tolea, the accused, was pale and sweating. He did not know how to plant himself better in the cockpit, so as not to make a noise and be discovered. For some time he had been on the monitor in the frame of the door. No one had seen him yet: he was coldly perspiring, his heart struggling guiltily, his feet becoming wet, his arms hanging limply down. No, the anxious, frightened face of the alien who had to be got rid of did not disturb the judges. They were working with dispatch, and the murmur of their united voices, the low tone of the gay refrain, could be heard once more. “Je … je … jackal. Jacko Jacko has got to go.” The papers rustled, twisting and turning; the refrain rippled with excitement.

The alien was rooted to the spot in the doorway, together with his chair. Completely drained. In vain did they all stare at him now. They looked at him scornfully, persistently, with a feeling of boredom: tirelessly. No, no, tired! Suddenly, as if commanded to do so, they wiped their foreheads, their phosphorescent eyebrows, their stifling masks. They had become too hot! The spring sun had tired them, look! They had covered their sockets, eyebrows, the scar: nothing could be seen anymore; the dazzling star dominated the room.

So the wreck woke up perspiring in the vernal excitement of a new spring morning. He spent a long time rubbing his forehead, temples, and eyelids, and awkwardly relieved the pressure of the tongs of the chair in which the night had nailed his arms.

There was no longer any point in the action. Just another vanity, another black mark in his file, which would never reach the eyes of anyone except the high custodial authorities. No action materializes in this fictitious world of signs and substitutes. So Tolea decided: don’t delay for a moment longer! Because: wanton, vain, puerile, culpable, fictitious. Because because because … Therefore: not one delay!

It would get going immediately, there and then. Against the grain! In the morning — against the grain, pampered, in revenge.

The action: that very morning.