The Black Envelope

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DARKENED WINDOWS. THE RAIN had been falling all night. The sluggish hour. Sleepiness, bad temper. The languid floundering continued to spread. A rage leavened through postponement.

‘What did I ask you, Comrade Vasilic?”

The phlegmatic Boss Gic, dark and mysterious as on his off days. A harmless-enough pig, brought up among poultry; you can’t even be sure he’s not a tomcat or an ugly bitch; until one giddy day when it occurs to him to appear as a wild boar, so that his skin snaps at the seams and the fire catches hold of that coarse, putrid snout full of poisons and manure.

“What did we establish once and for all, Comrade Vasilic?”

If he called her by the male diminutive Vasilic, instead of the female name Vasilica, it was bad news!

The poor woman had stopped in the middle of the room with a tray in her hand. There had been no advance warning. She had come in nice and easy with the tray and laid out a little cup and saucer for each of them. First for Mr. Teodosiu. Mr. Gic Teodosiu, the Boss. And next to it, on the same little table, a coffee for Comrade Titi, as she did every day. Then for Miss Gina at reception. Then for the professor, on the stool in front of the armchair. He had not so much as raised his bald head from those French German or whatever weeklies, not even moved those long, sprawling legs. So she had arranged everything nicely, as always. The professor had not looked up from that color magazine, but he had slowly put his hand in his trouser pocket, taken out a banknote, stretched slightly, and slipped the ten lei baksheesh into the pocket of her blue work coat. Everything in its place. What could have got into the fat man? Mr. Teodosiu of all people! In fact, he knew her: they had been neighbors, and how her niece Stelu¸ta had helped him when Ortansa, Mr. Gic’s wife, was in hot water over those medicines that had been taken in kilograms from the hospital and sold under the counter! A search, lists of persons and medicines involved: if it hadn’t been for Stelu¸ta, if she hadn’t spoken to the right people at the right time, Madam Ortansa and Mr. Gic wouldn’t have had any servants to put cups of coffee in front of them. What hadn’t she done for Mr. Teodosiu or for Comrade Titi! How much walking and standing in line and keeping secrets! Because that’s how Vasilica is: she wouldn’t breathe a word if you cut her into little pieces. You can’t know how things stand: those people fix everything between themselves so they always come out on top. Better be blind and deaf— that’ll keep you out of trouble. But then look what gets into him all of a sudden! As if he hadn’t seen every morning how the professor slips her a note. You don’t find anywhere such hot, thick, creamy coffee as Vasilica’s. And anyway, that’s what the professor’s like. It was no use Mr. Teodosiu announcing in a loud voice, for everyone to hear, I’m paying for the coffee and there’s an end of it, that’s what Comrade Teodosiu kept repeating, but it wasn’t any use. Because the professor’s like that: whatever you say to him, he does what he feels like doing. That’s his style, generous. He gives himself airs handing out tips, like the silk-stocking gentry, even though he’s not exactly well off. How could he be? It’s true that he gives her a note every day, three lei, five lei, ten lei — yes, sometimes even ten lei, as if he didn’t know what he was giving. And it’s true that every week she puts aside an envelope with coffee beans, for Mr. Tolea to take home. They come out of her ration, and Mr. Vancea pays her for them separately on Friday. Coffee is like gold these days, and Vasilica has a right to save something herself, because she doesn’t drink coffee anymore. One or two a day — she deserves at least that much, so she can put it aside. For three years now the doctor hasn’t let her drink coffee, the old stick-in-the-mud; in the early hours she can hardly crawl about, as if drunk, so it’s just as well she can still sniff some of the rich people’s coffee. Otherwise she wouldn’t be able to move an inch.

“What time did you get here today?”

The old scarecrow hasn’t given up. He’s keeping her standing there, in the middle of the room with the tray in her hand, while he gives her a dressing-down. And the others? Not a word: the puppets don’t hear or see a thing, don’t utter a sound. That spineless flunky Titi, that real nasty piece of work, little old four eyes, as Gina says, who sees everything to do with everyone and reports it to those who keep him in his job. And the little pussy cat, snort snort, of course she purrs and rubs her whiskers; she wouldn’t say a word; all that loafer wants is to be stroked on and under her fur, to find a nice hidden corner for herself where it’s warm and some tomcat will take pity on her. As for the professor, he’s a real loony: he can suddenly have a funny turn, throw a saucepan and frighten the life out of you. He must have connections way up top to play such dirty tricks on you when you’re least expecting it. When he goes into one of his tantrums, he can do just about anything.

“It was still night when I left home. I left at four, you know, before there was even any daylight.”

“I didn’t ask when you left. I asked when you got to work.”

Start telling Mr. Teodosiu that you, Vasilica, the rag he uses to wipe the floor, got here on time. You arrived at the time laid down by law. You, Vasilica, a rag, talking about the time fixed by law! Say it to that fleecer who’ll have your guts for garters and who’s just waiting for you to say it so he can scream and shout some more.

“Well, since they started work on the metro the trams haven’t been running. I come all around the houses by bus. I have to change three times: I get sick of it, as I told you before.”

“And you stop off for milk. There are two bottles in your bag right now. I told you to get the milk here at the corner.”

“I had a row with Nu¸tica, the woman in charge, and now she won’t keep any for me. By the time I arrive, there’s not a drop of milk left. She said she asked you for some cigarettes, some of those Kents, for a doctor of hers. She’s ill and hard-up, as you know. She goes to those gynecologists all the time. Well, she’s angry with me because you didn’t give them to her.” I’ve got you there, you dirty little dog. You know what women’s disease I’m talking about, because you got your paws on poor Nu¸tica, too, didn’t you? Yes, I haven’t said anything before. Quiet as a mouse I’ve been, so that scorpion wife of yours, Ortansa, doesn’t find out.

“I’m not interested in your relations with Nu¸ti. I don’t ask much of you, Comrade Vasilic. Just a couple of perfectly simple things.”

Comrade, d’you hear! As soon as you mention his piece of ass, you’re comrade all of a sudden, just like at the courts.

Employee Vasilica Vasilic, known to everyone as Vili, pulled her kerchief straight. She lowered her right hand — the one with the tray — down the length of her washed-out, oversized work coat; and with her left hand she straightened her kerchief. She raised her head. A small face with curly hair. Her big, long hands dangled beside her small, bent body. Piercing eyes, a broad strong mouth with small, misshapen, bleached teeth. She was staring Boss Teodosiu straight in the eyes.

“What I ask of you is quite simple, Comrade Vasilic. That at the reception, and here in my office, it should be as clean as a chemist’s shop. Cleaning and coffee, that’s all. It’s not much, you know. Less than that, I won’t accept. I’m not asking you about the other things. But I know everything, don’t you worry. And I know what you talk about with our customers. To get the ones from Tulcea to send you some fish, or the ones from Oradea to find you a sheepskin coat for Nelu, because that good-for-nothing boy of yours doesn’t look right if he’s not dressed like Alain Delon … You make use of our contacts, of our name and the hotel’s; I know all about it. And how you wangle some cotton from the drugstore, and why your friend Stelic at the food store sells you the best cheese when no one’s seen any cheese at all for months. And what do you tell people when they ask how things are going here? You tell them everything, much too much. Lies, Comrade Vasilic. Exaggerations and prittle-prattle, Comrade Vasilic. You talk too much and you say what you shouldn’t. But you know, everything gets to me in the end, and you get to me as well, I can tell you. As for the Kents, don’t ever say that word again! I don’t ask you how you clean the rooms, or what arrangements you make about the soap and detergent. Nor who gives you packs of Kent and for what? I don’t ask because I know.”

Oh ho! You’re stirring up too much this time, you scumbag. This crazy weather must have really screwed you up. Your foul mouth has poisoned you, and your fat ass-licking soul has gone completely black. You wouldn’t like to have to swallow it, you dainty little creep … Vasilica Vasilic had withdrawn, disappeared, with raging, mounting hatred pumped up with fury and perfect soundproofing so that nothing could be heard.

Corkscrew Titi had meanwhile forsaken the landscape of the liquefied window. Leaning on the wall, he straightened his metal-frame glasses. The police skunk seemed like a sarcastic Oxford don. He looked rigidly, unsmilingly, at colleague Gina, who kept doing up her work coat without ever managing to do it up. Then he went toward Old Gic, who, looking either at Comrade Titi or at the professor, was uttering: “Come, amantissime, let’s draw up that list.”

No, the professor had no inkling that those magic words had been uttered! Nor that they had been accompanied by a sly wink, the usual twitch of eye and eyebrow that always occurred when it was a question of his astral person. With his legs sprawled on the stool in front of the armchair, absent and self-important, merely deigning to take occasional sips from the excellent Vili coffee, and otherwise sheltering in the thin sheets of Monde or Match or Nouvel Obs, the professor did not register anything around him.

“Cancer, skin cancer, that’s what it says here, comrades. A small pink mark near the eyebrow, like a rash. It must be detected while it’s still in the incipient stage! Otherwise it’s fatal, for five generations.” The familiar voice could be heard from behind the cosmopolitan pages. “For five generations, do you hear? Une fatalité, do you hear, une catastrophe.” Titi Mndi¸t frowned and scratched his eyebrow with an air of boredom. Already seated on the chair next to the boss, he sipped his coffee, took a pen from under the flap on his bag, and prepared to make a list of urgent tasks before the asylum’s telephones began their daily ringing.

“Yes, amantissimie.” The servant Titi Mndi¸t repeated with a mocking smile the words and smile of Boss Gic Teodosiu. There was no longer any way Tolea could ignore the coalition.

Amantissime had a mocking ring, of course. Were they perhaps signaling him that the little scene with Vasilica did not concern poor Vili alone? They knew that Tolea’s reaction would be unpredictable. He might keep quiet and pretend to be busy, as if he had noticed nothing, or he might start the act of wounded vanity. Or quite simply deliver the most peculiar speech, with no apparent connection to his surroundings. “How would those poor wretches have greeted the liberators of the camps at Dachau, Maidanek, or Auschwitz? Like gods! But after that how did they look at them? As at mentally retarded animals. What do they know? Only we know what life is: pain and suffering! Beaten, spat upon, burned. Forced to eat our excrement, to dig our own graves, to abandon our parents for a crust of bread. To betray a friend for a smile from the butchers, to dance in front of the murderers, to drag ourselves along on all fours. What do these happy, normal, frank people know about anything? They’re not serious; they’re too free, too available. Calamity, misery, fear — those are serious, very serious! That is, boring. Freedom appears light-minded, infantile. Something for fools and kids, for clowns, for people who like to loaf around.”

Would he suddenly bang out that aria for the comrades at the hotel? Very appropriate for the audience. For it had learned the strategies of patience, the misery and fear and suspicion, the torpor of depraved boredom. Poisoned, cannibalistic boredom, the boredom of submissiveness and betrayal and torpor, even the boredom of fear, yes, yes. “Have you ever seen a dictator talking to children? Uneasy, imbecilic. As if he’s talking to soldiers or a heavenly tribunal. Serious phrases delivered with hatchet cuts. A lonely and serious man — absolutely serious! Freedom seems a joke to him. A kind of hooliganism, a cunning trick directed against him, the poor prisoner. So frivolity in a dictatorship, frivolity is no longer what it was. It becomes provocation, regeneration. Humor and a necessary insensitivity. The miming of liberty, yes, because mime also — Yes, yes, when there’s nothing left, then mime—”

Petty suspicion, petty backbiting, petty deception. Petty acts of treachery committed by petty, shriveled, crushed souls? Boredom, boredom! The specter haunting and devouring the world! What gloomy people. The boredom, frater, dulcissime, amantissime.

Talking in his sleep, or so it seemed. And he didn’t care. Anatol Dominic Vancea let loose his tirades as if he were debating with former colleagues at the faculty. As if he did not know he was at the Hotel Tranzit reception, where the Gic-Vasilic puppet sequence had just concluded.

And then you ask yourself, for the umpteenth time: Who is holding baby Dominic and making sure he doesn’t fall? Dismissed as a teacher on far from trivial grounds, given shelter here at the Tranzit — at least if he had his head on his shoulders, if he kept his trap shut, if he showed some zeal in his work. Like hell! All he’s concerned about is to show how great he is. To show the dunces how brilliant and liberated you can be in a kennel, because this isn’t the fifties anymore. We’ve been through another thirty years’ war; we’ve got used to our daily morass, our daily bread. He had heard only too well the dialogue between Teodosiu and Comrade Vasilic. He had picked up the irony with which the holy words had been repeated. Amantissime! Amantissime! Mr. Gic Teodosiu, do you hear? Is “Mr.” Gic Teodosiu taking over your formulations?! Frater. Dulcissime. Amantissime. Simple mockery? An allusion to his suspect morals? Oh, not just suspect! Shameful guilt — the immoral professor removed from teaching? He didn’t care. Receptionist Tolea Voinov did not even hear the poisoned warnings.

The crank was raving away. It was again the year 1000. The Apocalypse. Saeculum obscurum. Now about Tacitus, now about Hitler, now about the early Christians, now about the extraordinary Otto III, “Greek by birth, Roman by empire.” And what a mentor that visionary emperor had! “The fantastic Gerbert! He dreamed of world empire and absolute renunciation of the world.”

They listened, didn’t listen: what did it matter anymore? The invisible bug was working, of course. It transmitted clear as a bell: “The divine Gerbert anticipated the sublime. The crowd is controlled not only by force, and not just by intelligence. The depths of human nature yearn for something else as well.”

“Come, let’s draw up the list, amantissim,” Uncle Gic Teodosiu had said, and it was Wednesday and rain was falling. Comrades Mndi¸t and Teodosiu were actually bent like good managers over the list of priorities. The Year of Disgrace nineteen hundred and eighty and — days crammed with the stumblings of the century and of the honorable clientele: you must set the plan of battle in good time. Otherwise you’ll lose precisely where the victory cannot tolerate being postponed. Their eyes were sparkling. There was arrogance, not just hunger to succeed, in the eyes of the skilled finaglers.

“Give Vldu¸t a ring, amantissime. His daughter — the one with the furs — was trying to get hold of you yesterday.” And it was April, eleven o’clock, optimal biorhythm, a superb Friday morning, already Friday, in the mad chase of the calendar and of words spoken. So Uncle Gic Teodosiu picked up without delay the call passed on by Comrade Titi. He immediately rang Liliana, daughter of Comrade Vldu¸t, at the special depot. Comrade Vldu¸t, head of the special service, was the brother-in-law of Smaranda, director of the shop for special persons, with whom Ortansa Teodosiu, matron at the special hospital, was on very close terms. The code was certainly working well. They fixed up exactly when and how she should come, what she should bring, how much where what. They had the force of words pared down to essentials. Nouns and verbs, clear precise orders, hitting the nail on the head time after time.

A confused moment of senile siesta, when Comrade Corkscrew Titi felt like undoing his collar and belt, throwing out a line himself, taciturn though he was, and catching the buffoon so that he breathes all his fibs out through the nose.

“What are you saying, amantissime? That that Hitler of yours was a genius? That the spark of madness, as you put it, made everyone lose their head? You were telling us about the invasion of Poland …”

A crude provocation! Fawning, of course. So that the professor will issue a refined curse and suddenly switch on the transistor lying on Gina’s table, full volume, superdecibels, Rock Rock again. Or go and … excuse me, naturally announcing his important toilet operation … and afterward return relieved and fondly, as it were, tell languid Gina of the diagnosis linked to the smarting pain that troubled him just now as he was dealing with his urgent need, the lesser of the two. “Doctors, do you hear, just hand me over to the cretins. You stuff a hundred lei in their mouth and a carton of Kents between their breasts and ask them to do the bullshit tests on you. They’re a bad lot. Businessmen, every last one, germ-carrying flies. A friend of mine is a doctor. He plays the fool, the saint; deals in big words, ergotherapy, I don’t know exactly what his conjuring trick is called. He doesn’t take money, not even presents, but Sluggish Jeny does the cleaning and cooking, and Old Syphil Bazil, with his child’s heart of gold, plays the lackey of the British crown. The gentleman lets the patients wait on him, because it does them good. Tests, do you hear! Analysis and synthesis: his brain in curlers and his stethoscope on the client’s pouch. Their analyses: Dialectical materialism. Clean materialism, dirty dialectics, as Father Marx used to say.”

But no — wait. Outside, the sun is shining: we’re only in April, maybe the thirteenth, or maybe the twenty-third, the day that reminds him of a girl and a school and a bicycle. So, no irritation, none at all. The multilingual receptionist is in a mood to answer questions politely, however impolite they may be.

“If it makes you happy, Corkscrew, I can repeat. The century is iron because of its baneful severity, lead because of the prevalence of evil, and dark because of the lack of wise men. So, the year 1000. The Apocalypse. So, Hitler. The twilight of the world. The end? For the crowd. It is not in man’s power to give a date to the end of the world. The Church itself will recognize that, if it maintains the mystery of the divinity. And politics, well, let’s recapitulate.”

When he called him Corkscrew — which he did all the time— Comrade Mndi¸t became red with anger. Was he, Comrade Titi, who wouldn’t put a drop of alcohol on his old ulcer, supposed to put up with that sort of thing?

“I can repeat, dulcissime. For you, Corkscrew, I’ll repeat anytime, anyplace.”

The professor looked up from the screen, adjusted his dark-red silk scarf beneath the raised collar of his black shirt, lunged gracefully beside carnation-pink Gina, caressed her briefly on her cheek and little double chin, and exited behind the screen on which the English word reception was written in gold letters. Not to take a bow in front of the audience, as one might have expected, but to sit on the armchair by the window.

He perched both legs American-style on the little round table, then lifted his palms upward as preachers do — yes, that’s what they are — in my black suit of an apolitical wage earner, my Roman consul’s head, bald and steadfast, exiled among a bunch of ruffians. Okay, at your service: our supervisor, our customer, our master.

“As you know, distinguished colleagues, in 1934 a non-aggression treaty was signed between Germany and Poland for a period of ten years. Thirty-five million citizens cannot be denied access to the sea; let our two countries live together, said the dictator. In January ’39 the Führer brazenly announced that German-Polish friendship was a factor helping to relax political life in Europe. On August 28 of the same year he was already screaming to the British ambassador: I’ll wipe out Poland. Do you really want us to recapitulate, dulcissime semi-scholar, does it really interest you?”

Mr. Vancea did not turn around in the direction of Corkscrew, to whom the words were addressed, but spoke just like that, in general. He needed a medium, as it were. So now and then he looked into the sparkling green black eyes of Gina the witch.

“Goo-ood, so you find tyrants interesting — that is, mentally retarded children, irrational and inspired, with their paradoxical logic of loners? Goo-ood. The British ambassador had just a few seconds to reply. He asked: Are you prepared to hold talks with the Poles, to discuss a population transfer? How did the visionary answer? With a question, of course. Would Great Britain be prepared immediately, as an assurance of its good intentions, to donate a few colonies to Germany?”

Boss Gic was grinning at the door, with his legs wide apart. Sir Corkscrew was staring at the ceiling. Lewd Gina kept fastening unfastening her work coat.

The buffoon had suddenly stood up. He was bored, no longer in a mood to recite Henderson’s words!

He was just no longer in the mood — as simple as that. A suddenly aged harlequin, in his black workclothes. A tired, wrinkled mask. And when you think that the earth had not completed so much as one turn on its axis. The sky, a little green Seiko-branded ellipse, showed 1:24:14. Not even a quarter of an hour had passed! One o’clock and twenty-four minutes and fourteen seconds that have gone, flown away, 15, 16, 17, 18, the hypnotist pronounced the finale: “That’s all, dulcissime.” And he bowed mockingly before the audience: “Bye-bye! I can’t find the words.” He had not even taken his hunting bag from the peg. He couldn’t care less about the eighthour working day for which the workers of the world had struggled so hard. He waved his arms about one last time, in thanks for the ovations: “Pa, pa, bye, ciao, amantissime.” They were used to it, of course. He irritated them, entertained, humiliated, provoked, and infuriated them. They put up with him because, without understanding why, they felt he was tolerated by greater ones than they.

So the Knight of Assland has been removed from his teaching post, that he will not pollute our pure young people full of constructive enthusiasm. About to be flung in jail but — no one knows how — saved at the last moment and even brought back to the capital, would you believe it! Recruited, probably. Recruited, certainly, for delicate assignments, like all his ilk; any illiterate old woman in our multilaterally watched society knows all about that. But the monster displays an insolence beyond anyone’s ken! As if his task was none of the rabble’s business, as if it had been assigned to him by a grade higher than that of his colleagues, as if the banal listen-and-report network in which they were all involved did not even concern him.

It really drove them wild, but also intimidated them. Suspicion, combined with mystery, dulled their reactions. They would have liked to kick him far away. His madness was a trap, they were sure, and they never knew how bemused or skeptical they should appear. He spoke of dictators as if it were the most natural thing in the world, then philosophized about mediocrity, delusion, fanaticism, and — quite out of the blue — he kept coming back to — Argentina. The family horoscope, of course. He talked heedlessly of his brother who had run away to Buenos Aires, become rich and senile, but also of the troublesome political similarities with that distant land. Always looking disgusted, spitting out words that came from somewhere right up at the top, where poor mortals are not allowed to tread.

A long time after the World Cup in Argentina, old Gic had bitten hard on the bait. “You say they come from Spanish men and Indian — that is, native — women. But what the hell! They look just like us. I’ve been watching TV closely. They’ve got our faces.”

“Well, they’re our Latin cousins, amantissime,” Tolea began, without lifting his bald head from the accounts book, as if he had spent the whole day doing nothing but bringing the hotel’s books up-to-date. But the stream of words, long since prepared, had already begun. “The conquistadors procreated with native women. Yes, the greed for time and space was paid for in women’s bellies. The loner who has no respect for anything. The native prostitute, courtesan, perhaps even mistress. In Latin America the brothel remained a durable, classicized institution.”

The eminent professor had not raised his thin beard from the accounts; his superior Gic’s eyes were bulging, as at the sight of a bear. “The white man introduced depravity and cruelty. Spanish wives lived under the same roof with mestiza mistresses, legitimate children with bastards. The result? Feeling cheated and degraded, the mestizo does not know pity. He considers love an abasement, a weakness. Brothels, old Gic, are the traditional institutions of solitude! Don Estrada out on his pampa … But I’ve told you what the old man wrote about the tango, the dance from the waist down”— oho, he was speaking as in a book, m’sieur.

Old Gic was smiling: he was wasn’t in the mood; he rather liked the game. He even jumped ahead of the buffoon, in order to provoke him. “So, you were saying that Carnival is the celebration of despondency. Desperate glee, you said. The need for glee is their sickness, and glee is the mask of despondency. Isn’t that what you said? Hostile glee, mixed with hatred.” Old Gic did not wait for an answer: he forged ahead, not even giving Tolea time to breathe. “It can be seen in politics and in sport, you said. Farces — with all those dictators and football players and coups d’état. It’s a theatrical nation, old Argentina — Martínez don Estrada. The mask of impotence, as you put it. Jokes, first-class jokes that do the rounds for years and are never forgotten. Joking hides sadness at not having achieved what you wanted. Isn’t that what you said? But what about sport? What’s the connection between sport and politics?”

Mr. Vancea did not heed the question, as if it had gone in one ear and out the other. He did not break off what was supposedly keeping him busy, whether it was pretending to write in the accounts book or arranging the room keys on the board or reading the paper or picking his nose. He went on imperturbably, but the words suddenly began to flow. “A dark, old world, over which something else is constantly being sown. The cross between white and Indian is blurred; it has been drifting like that for hundreds of years. Rude, surly, hard to say — like lumpens. Braggarts! A braggart has an innate sense of theater.”

He was describing a braggart — hard to believe one’s ears! He, Tolea Anatolea Dominicus, was talking of braggarts! As in a doctoral thesis he was describing what a braggart is like, enough to frighten you out of your wits! The listener’s suddenly dilated eyes did not intimidate him, of course. “Yes, an innate sense of theater, carnival, circus, despondency. Politicians and the army live in the same world. And football, of course. A life of perpetual waiting, amantissime. When you spend all your time waiting, improvisation looks like salvation.”

Weeks, months, until the subject was exhausted, until old Gic had had more than he could take and no longer asked any questions, until Firecracker Tolea himself had completely forgotten the serial. But no, when no one was expecting it — flash, bang! Professor Vancea insisted on offering a conclusion. One morning the collective was absorbed in the happy new theme: Bulgarian slippers, for which the whole city had been lining up for hours on end with the next winter in mind. Gina had managed to get five pairs, for her sister and mother and brother-in-law and little nephew. Very good, warm, fur-lined, they would perform miracles in next winter’s freeze. No way, argued Corkscrew, their stink’s enough to knock you out! Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov seemed to be following closely the academic dispute, but no one knew whether he had it in mind when he spoke up, as if continuing an older thought suddenly come back to life.

“Improvisation operates as salvation, as I said. More than a diversion — as salvation. Hmm, slippers, yes. Improvisation — like the Argentinians. Uniforms, stripes, circus. As I was saying, they’re impulsive and shrewd; they catch on quickly. Weak and garrulous. Foolish pride, solemnity, demagogy, but also artful manliness. Your football, Gic, old man, your improvisation is just right to discharge the load.”

Old Gic did not react; the others kept silent, surprised at what they had just heard.

“By the way, have you seen that wrinkle of the eyes? That winking. I mean the scar. A little mark, by the eyebrow. Did you recognize your mark, old Gic? Have you ever touched that almost invisible mark with your finger?”

But Gic, left speechless, did not have time to pull himself together; the words scampered off in another direction. The speaker was becoming extremely worked up. “Where is Vasilica? I’ve been trying to get hold of her for three days. I mean, not her exactly, but my bag of coffee. Maybe the baksheesh no longer interests her. Doesn’t she line her bottom anymore with twenty-five-lei notes? Has she decided to show it bare in front of the Holy Virgin? While I’m stuck without any coffee. Is the lazy layabout suddenly afraid of being reported? Mmm, stealing also has its risks and its code of practice. It calls for respect and a certain seriousness. Can you still believe in people’s word, in honor among thieves. The world’s heading for the brink, that must be it. God, where can that parasite have got to?”

The professor really would not let his audience go. When he saw their attention flagging, he’d come up with another round of abuse to liven them up. Humiliating her like that, poor Vasilica. Not even Comrade Gic Teodosiu had let loose so shamelessly. They all knew and all pretended they didn’t notice the little business like so many others. After all, Vasilica was a human being, too, and had to wangle her way in life. Ill at ease, she would take the provocatively large baksheesh that the scatterbrain tossed to her in sight of everybody. Vasilica took her coffee ration, a few teaspoons a day, from the communal bag, even though she was not among those who drank coffee. In this way she collected the weekly bagful for Tolea, who paid her for it separately. But to say it openly, just like that?! To throw the slops around, so that at least you see their mugs shaken by the poseur’s nerve. Just take him by the nose and spin him on his heels until he can’t take any more. He’s got someone protecting him up there — otherwise he couldn’t possibly … So many bad marks in his file and so much impudence, always shooting his mouth off. And the bullet never hits him: he can gulp down some poison and then go straight off to dance the Charleston. Best keep out of his way; spit over your shoulder to keep the devil away.

If only poor Vasilica hadn’t passed by reception at that very moment! The audience froze with expectation. You’ve found what you were looking for! Here she is, carried on the Old Serpent’s invisible black wire; here she is, opening the door.

“Dear madam, you forgot to give me my bag on Wednesday. I’m right out of fuel! Energy crisis! So, about turn, bring it here! Make up your little bag.” Little baggie, little baggie, who are you leaving me to? the odd fish begins to hum. And suddenly you see how different he is: he’s forgotten everything, he’s gallant and polite, as if he’s really lost his marbles.

He jumps fresh from the springboard and lands in front of the fortune-teller. The beauty is hiding the cowrie between her breasts, warming it up as the gypsy wanderers taught her to.

“So, sweetheart, you live at Bulibaa Square, is that right?”

The odalisque is not angry at the playful allusion to the legendary gypsy captain. The honor of the ancient tribe has taught her never to be angry; queens cannot be offended. She lifts her black locks from the accounts and offers her colleague at the Tranzit reception a faint, archaic smile. Red lips, enamel keyboard, perfect, snow-white. Her slender hand slides down the crease in the middle of her work coat. Long delicate fingers, small fragile bones, deep eyes, night without end. Slim bird, torrid crease. No, she had no reason to feel ashamed. The tribe could be proud of how she raised her shiny copper neck, of how the nocturnal leaves fluttered.

“Will you pay me a visit, then, dulcissime?”

“There’s a special school around there. You know it, don’t you?”

“Maybe. I don’t pay much attention to schools.”

“Between the blocks of flats. It runs down from the crossroads to a kind of square. An unpaved road, still a building site, they told me. A big supermarket, a soda-bottling center. Then on the right, as far as the electricity transformer. From there a tree-lined drive, with the school at the end.”

“Well, I see you know it. A big supermarket that’s shut all the time. Then the soda-bottling center. You’ll see it straightaway. The line always stretches to the corner of the street. Then you cross over and take the first on the left, down to the end of the blocks. The cranes can still be seen. Piles of bricks, concrete casing. You pass through the mud until you come to the next-to-last block, with four floors. You can’t miss it. The balconies are full of flowers. They’ve even painted flowers on the façade, because it’s pockmarked where the plaster’s fallen off. My wanderers have always loved flowers. That’s where I live, on the second floor. No need to ask. There’s a whole lot of them in front of the block. They’ll ask you who you’re looking for. They’ll escort you to the door with a show of pomp. Or, if it’s one of their good days, they’ll shout up from the entrance: ‘Heh, Gino! Ginooo, come to the window! Your prince has come.’ You won’t lose your way, don’t worry.”

Mr. Vancea, the great jester, did not understand the joke. He wanted to have a serious conversation; he needed some advice.

“You know, out there by the school. In one of those older blocks. It’s a friend. Or no, not a friend. An acquaintance, an old acquaintance of my brother’s.” The professor leaned for days on end toward gaudy Gina’s ear of jade. She came from an old community, with long experience of adaptation. You could get some useful advice from her, no? And indeed, his colleague did not seem surprised at the improbable change in the buffoon; she wasn’t surprised at anything. She immediately accepted the new role in which he placed her, as confidante giving advice in a murky way-out story. They suddenly began to seem like a couple in a shady sect, whispering and murmuring to each other all day long, quite delightful … dulcissima, long blue eel-like fingers streaming around the button on her closed open work coat, and the frater pedagogue constantly pulling new pieces of magic paper from his pocket, which he has brought to be deciphered.

“Retarded development of the psyche. Reduced and superficial criteria of judgment. The language of mime and gesture sets up walls. The defects of the language accentuate inflexibility and negative manifestations — envy, jealousy, rigid behavior. However, when grouped together in an organization with strict and simple rules, the disabled may display excellent qualities of subordination.”

Slippery Gina was sitting open-mouthed, thoughtlessly repeating the words she heard. As if she were preparing a play or an expedition into a jungle inhabited by Martians. “The instruction must respect some elementary rules of communication. They should be addressed in such a way that, without any reduction or decrease in the speed of delivery, they can hear at a distance of.5–1.5 meters, and the speaker’s position should be well lit. The speaker’s mouth should be lower than the hearer’s eyes; he should never have a cigarette in his mouth or be chewing a sweet. The speaker is not permitted to wear sunglasses or to turn his head while engaged in dialogue. He should use simple, repetitive sentences, should not display impatience, but should be persevering and remain in good humor. The greatest difficulty is presented by the verb.” Gina returned several times to some rather obscure passages, and then they would go over the stage directions together. They did not see that the ears of the surrounding collective had grown larger in trying to grasp the code of their bizarre intimacy, nor did they notice how Corkscrew excitedly raised and lowered his eyebrows, or how Uncle Gic’s eyes kept bulging as if he had seen a ghost. “Tactile memory. The hallucinatory gratification of certain needs through dream. Dream, being both the road to the unconscious and the expression of the unconscious, may be used as a force of induction — to consolidate the group and direct it toward greater efficiency; that is, toward respect for secrecy, belief in the goal, execution of orders, and solidarity in action.”

Was this instruction in parapsychology? Frater Vancea and dulcissima Chick were apparently preparing for cosmic or subterranean encounters invisible to the uninitiated, by learning the rules of cooperation in some organization of the future. Mr. Vancea did not seem too wary of the dangers, although there were dangers all around. He had no time for those who gathered together cowering, so that their thoughts could not somehow be read before events were ready to be set in motion, nor for those whose membership could be read on their face or their wallet. Provocations, nonchalance, and insolent behavior proved to have a protective dimension, as it were, after you had achieved the status of a scatterbrain capable of the wildest eccentricities, of which the wildest of all was precisely the peculiar status of a tolerated person. Tolerated by shadowy forces — that was what he had gradually made those around believe him to be.

So that one more bit of tomfoolery hardly counted any longer. They knew that Frater Dominic could not stand being bored; he hated nothing more. Therefore, Gina did not dare express surprise that her colleague had suddenly decided to look for a former neighbor or colleague or a friend of his brother in Argentina; nor that he told her in excessive detail about Gafton or Marga, when the whole dark story that had seized his passionate interest was not exactly of the kind that you confide to a colleague at work.

To a colleague, to some colleagues.

Tolea had chattered away in front of both Gic and Corkscrew about his correspondence with the family in Argentina and all the rest. In the end, it might be asked whether the risky display of things best kept from public view was not part of the same capricious strategy of disclosing precisely the most troublesome facts in order to place a question mark over them. To reveal and emphasize them in an offhand manner came to look suspicious, incredible, unreal. Was that perhaps what the incautious Tolea, the scatterbrained Tolea, was basing himself on? To insist on recovering through “the language of mime and gesture,” from a mute photograph, an old and complicated happening about which both Gafton and Marga could have recounted something much more coherent, probably? To appear convinced of Dulcissima’s capabilities as she listens to you? A kind of mystical kid sister, prepared to use the metempsychosis of her nomadic ancestors to help you in unraveling the sorcery of the disabled? As if, anyway, you wouldn’t find your way alone to the door with the fugitive’s wonders — a fugitive hidden in the gypsy part of town, to the right of the supermarket, after the soda-bottling center, in the vague topography of fiction, as in the cowrie hidden between a colleague’s breasts at the Tranzit observation post. So you can’t tell anymore what is invented truth and what is plausible falsehood in the real world just a step away?! Shadows, magnetic accident, nervous deviation, jumbled codes, borealis illusion. He had disappeared, quite simply! The fakir had suddenly vanished, with questions and answers and everything. After so many tender introductory sessions on the subject of disabilities, the suspect had vanished. Sick, do you hear! Professor Vancea sick?! As if the Prince of Darkness were to catch a cold — the poor thing! — and snuggle into bed wrapped in burning leaves of leprous hemp, so that he, the orphan boy, can also warm himself up. Drinking from a pail of prescribed beladonna tea and bone filings, and tossing a blood-red aspirin into each mouthful.

When no one was expecting it, he disappeared! Sick, medical leave, fancy that. But he reappeared after a few days: purified, pale, rose-colored. Dressed in white, would you believe it! On workdays he never wore anything but black, like a gravedigger or a night-soil collector. But he made his next entrance all in white! Penitent, festive, so everyone could see that although he was paler, as befitted his role, there was actually nothing at all wrong with him. Snow-white, purity itself, with his same old smile: slanting, sinuous.

His partner held out her delicate hands to the master. Her face glowed with the frail, wild beauty of a loose adolescent. She kept closing opening her work coat, smiling conspiratorally, showing white piano keys, white fangs. Her lips moistened, soft and pink. She looked coyly at the master juggler, but with a predator’s gleam. Lewd, maternal gentleness.

The skunk didn’t even see her! With a single movement he flung his bag onto the peg. He did not notice anyone, remember anything; he couldn’t care less.

But when he passed behind the desk on which reception was written in large golden letters, Monsieur Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov accidentally touched his colleague’s electric elbow.

So Gina could be patient no longer.

“Well, what was it like? Come on, tell me. Have you been there? Did you go?”

The professor opened his eyes wide, not understanding whom and what she was talking about. Not about himself, obviously. The poor man did not understand the confused state of the office worker who was his colleague.

“Piss off!”

The whistling of the words coiled the greenish air and seemed to extend into a long white hand. From the silken sleeve a shiny white bag dropped onto the red desk.

Long fingers of polished ebony took from the paper bag a long, parallelepipedic, pink sweet. Then another — coffee-colored, cylindrical, shiny. Sweets, sugar candy!

A brief snigger could be heard. Gina began furiously to crunch the poisons.