The Black Envelope

~ ~ ~

NO ONE ANSWERED. HE had checked the address, the name, the telephone number: everything was correct, but no one answered. It’s working but not answering. So let’s go there, to the scene itself, to the house. If there’s still no one, then just maybe that no one will answer the door.

The week becomes dynamic: Wednesday on duty by the phone, Friday on the spot. Something will happen in the end, even if it is nothing that happens.

He waits at the Rond stop for tram number 23. The tram doesn’t come. The passenger waits, the tram comes, completely full; he waits for the next one, also full. The passenger clutches the bar at the doorway into the tram: he feels the shoulders, the sweat, the weariness of his fellow creatures, the real connection. At Mihai Bravul he takes another tram, number 5. Empty car. Mr. Dominic punches his ticket, folding it as the regulations require. A return ticket. But when he gets off, he carelessly throws it away. He crosses the street and catches the bus to the bread factory.

He gets off the bus, walks back about a hundred meters, arrives in front of the Scampolo store. The store is closed, for stock-taking. He turns into the little street to the right, as far as the old gray block of flats. He goes up to the second floor, gropes for the light switch, presses it. Somewhere a filament lights up. It’s only one more step to apartment 8.

He presses the button and the bell rings. The sound rushes into the apartment behind the door. Nothing. Once more. He waits: no movement. He rings again. One step back. He presses the light switch, the filament comes on, a dim light, hardly enough to see the stairs, the metal rail covered with green plastic dirty from so many hands and worn away by the years. He feels his way cautiously, walks down the stairs, finds again the little street, the Scampolo store, the bus stop, the bus, the tram stop, the tram, the return from the adventure.

With Friday a failure, there remains the following Wednesday. One hour bent over the dial that forms the roulette wheel of life, which he keeps turning, once, nine times, sixty times. Nothing. The number denies him dialogue.

Reality is a faint, a showing off, crumbs, a dandelion, a faint, that’s all. He dials with his right hand, holds an apple in his left. No one answers.

On Friday it is raining, in bucketfuls. Bus, tram, another tram, another bus. The gray pockmarked block. The dark door, the bell, and then back to the reality called Friday, which still exists, still houses him. Wednesday at the receiver’s silent mouth, Friday at the rebus scene. Again Wednesday, again Friday, swinging backward and forward in sleep. He no longer has patience; he demands to take the offensive. There’s still a century to go until Friday. Impossible to wait any longer: the faint called reality must be conquered, come what may. Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov shakes the dice differently; he cheats. The slightest departure from the beaten track and, look, Friday appears instead of Thursday. Thursday rebaptized Friday. Today is Friday and tomorrow’s the same, Friday, doubling the ace, doubling his bad luck, doubling the uncertainty.

Waiting for the bus had driven him wild. Ever waiting, ever studying his fellow citizens’ footwear. He looked up: Gostat. State Stores. Vegetables, chickens, eggs — they ought to be in the Gostat hall, where there’s nothing but jars of pickles. But marvels do also appear, with their tails streaming behind. Look, here’s one. Some more time passed, some more thoughts passed through the observer’s pate as he studied some more pairs of nearby shoes. He looked up at the people across the street, fallen in line before the store. gostat. gostat. Eyes gazing into space, somewhere across the street. He kept staring at the substitute-leather shoes, at the line across the street, at the substitutes jostling each other for — for what? They ended up driving him crazy. Again he looked at the line of people, the door of the gostat store, then the wheelchair. He had seen the cripple’s wheelchair, and his mind went spinning with the wheels as he moved it off. Aimlessly, with a clear aim, he no longer saw anything, he saw everything: he crossed the street. No one was there, only Robot Windwhistle, blind, deaf, perfect, a screw loose, faultless mechanism, great speed, perfect working order, the fiery meteor was coming. Just a step away from the line he turned sharply and headed for the back. No one paid him any attention. The wheelchair had already started. Excuse me, would you mind, could you let me through. People made room. The gentleman was turning the wheels with great care: wheee whooo. . something somehow. . Hardly had the cripple’s whimpering become audible when the vehicle was already inside the hall, steered with great dignity by the elegant gentleman in white. Shiny red scarf around his neck, bald head, cosmopolitan self-assurance. The spectators shyly moved aside to make room for the distinguished samaritan and his sick relative. The pair had arrived in front of the counter. Four packages, ordered the intruder. The assistant did not even look at him. The bags had already flown off to the scales—“109 lei” was heard. Four chickens, 109 lei, was the judgment pronounced. The gentleman held out 110 lei, refused the change with a gesture of disgust, gripped the bar of the wheelchair again, and turned it around and around. Wheee, whooo, whined the cripple. They were back at the door. The packages with the headless chickens lay on the sick man’s knees. A shudder passed down the customers’ side. The voice of the crowd converged in the croak of one pensioner, who was hopping with fury: You shameless rogue, taking advantage of this poor wretch! You good-for-nothing, spitting in the face of the hundreds of people waiting their turn! You little drip! You dirty little swine!

Too late. The wheelchair had left the hall and crossed the pavement, with the glorious packages on the cripple’s lap.

Huge eyes, about to start crying. With two fingers the conjurer lifts two packages. He makes a present of two to his friend and then walks off, holding aloft in two fingers the cone-shaped bags in which the headless chickens are swinging. What the hell do I do with the booty now? All I wanted was the adventure, the challenge, the victory. Now I’ll have to carry the corpses to the photographer. What else can I do? Maybe the disabled photographer will remember the crime, maybe the ghost will grant me an audience.

He heard the murmur of the crowd behind him, ever fainter. He would have liked to go back and repeat the act of impertinence, to humiliate them even more, to arouse them, to tear them from the torpor of hours spent nicely waiting for their wretched portion of survival, the trophy of deaf-mute submission. I am absent, gentlemen, I would have shouted at them. Among you and yet far away, reinventing the nightmare of long ago in order to forget the one of today. To escape from boredom, gentlemen, to escape the hysteria of spring which humiliates and lashes us and makes us hysterical. I accept the provocation, I accept myself, that’s all. That’s all I am: I am this day I’ve called Friday. I’m bored, gentlemen, that’s all there is to it. The bags were waltzing, the hunter’s kill was waltzing. Burned air, two rustling plastic bags, two model corpses from the freezer of the everyday butcher. We’re together, look, all three of us, in the day’s great bag, facing the tram lines, ready to throw ourselves down and stop the fair. One moment, one raw, morbid fraction, one enormous, sublime chance to take control again, to bring the parody to a close. We cross the road at the traffic lights: the light blinds us, we cross carefully under the punishment of the pitiless sun, the raging sun of our boredom. Here is the flower shop. Here is the Scampolo store, closed for stock-taking. In front of the window, an old woman is straining to read the objects, the publicity. She hangs wearily, like a chicken in a gray, creased bag. She’s withered and bent, carefully wrapped in the standard bag.

We collect the bags, slowly swing the corpse in the pink fermented air of the poisoned day. The danger is lying in wait. The unseen claw is nearby, ready to get you in its clutches, but it has already veered off toward the others. The black wings have passed, we are still alive, more than this is not permitted us, nor do we wish for anything more. We just move ahead unconsciously as if standing still. Here is a cube, a house, a concrete step, a light switch, a filament, a bell; it’s Friday, like tomorrow, like a hundred years ago, another century, as if we never existed.

The door shyly opens a little. And behold, it opens wide.

In the frame, a woman. Watery eyes, hair gathered up at the back, dumpy body tilting to the left, small fleshy hands.

“Mrs. — Mrs. — ” stammered the stranger.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I, er. . The Cua family lives here, doesn’t it? You are Mrs. Cua, am I right?”

“No, you’re not. Mrs. Cua isn’t at home. I’m a friend of Tori. Of Mrs. Cua, I mean. I am—”

She uttered her name, but the air immediately scattered it beyond Tolea’s grasp.

“Aha. Well, actually I’d like to see Octavian. Tavi Cua.”

He managed to get a quarter of a step inside. The woman took fright, but she did not have the strength to stop him. Yes, the stranger was already well inside when he met the dark fixed eyes of a dog crouching by the hallstand.

“I’m an old friend of Mr. Octavian Cua; of Tavi. I’d very much like to see him. I’ve been looking everywhere. .”

The woman had a gentle but cautious look in her eyes. She was dressed in a kind of blue work coat, like that of a laboratory assistant or housemaid or doctor: it could have been anyone’s.

Tolea sat down on a little stool he had already brought into the hall from the kitchen.

“You know, madam, just now they were giving out oranges. I didn’t need any, in fact. But I saw the long line, with hundreds of wretched-looking men and women, and I thought, Let’s get some, too.”

He was looking at the two bags with headless chickens that he had put down by the stool.

“Since this is where I’ve landed, I may as well get some, too. Oranges, as it happens. .” —and he pointed to the bags with chickens lying by his cream-colored, porous shoes. The woman remained silent. Dilated eyes, gripping the door handle.

“So I joined the line. It must have been some twenty years ago. I had joined the line: it was in Lisbon or Salonica, I don’t remember anymore. I was — um, how old? — twenty, thirty, I don’t remember. So Siena or Salonica or Seville, I don’t remember. I didn’t need any, but I joined the line for oranges, just like that. In front of me a lovely young woman was lost in her fiancé’s eyes. We were moving forward very slowly. At a certain moment a woman in front of us detached herself from the line. Elegant, with hair neatly done, a fine Oriental profile. Well then, when I was skiing a week ago in Switzerland, I also joined a line to go down the run. I’m not all that keen on fruit, but you know how it is: I follow the lead of others. I’m easily influenced: as soon as I see a line I join in as well. So, as I was saying, a fine elegant lady who’s made up her mind to protest. Won’t you come with me? she asked the young fiancé, who didn’t say a word in reply. The woman was right: something had to be done or we probably wouldn’t get anything. The boxes were nearly empty. The young fiancé smiled mockingly. Why did she pick me as the most representing, he whispered nervously to his fiancée. The girl looked up into his big eyes in total admiration. Most representative, she gently corrected him. Total admiration. But she still corrected him, the sweet thing. So there we were, inching forward, just. The line behind us had kept growing, and now the rumpus was beginning.”

The woman fearfully leaned on the kitchen door. Holding the handle. Speechless, completely melted away.

“As I said, madam, we were just inching forward. I was a child, that’s what I’m like. Maybe I was fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five, but no more, certainly no more than thirty-five. A fat saleswoman appeared and took a box of oranges for the staff of the shop. A commotion started up. Then a saleswoman appeared from across the street, from the electrical shop over there, and also took a bagful just as a customer was asking for fifteen kilograms to be weighed out for him. Do you hear? Fifteen kilos! That triggered the explosion: the shop manageress appeared and there was one hell of a row. So the inching forward resumed. People were yelling, Don’t give anyone more than two kilos in future, so there’ll be enough to go around. The saleswomen, all very nice and obliging, calmly got on with their job. Everyone got what they asked for up to six kilos. That was the manageress’s decision. There was also a drunk there. Good job it’s warm, muttered the drunk. Because you know what it’s been like the last few years, madam. We only have to hear the word winter and we shudder with fright. It’s as if we were living in caves, madam: hard winter months with no heating, no hot water. A nightmare, as you know. The drunk was right: a good job we were inside there, you know, at the Corfu café. We were inside and it was warm, we didn’t feel the winter, the drunk was right. So forward, inch by inch. Lovely, jolly girls weighing at the scales.”

The woman was still holding the door handle. Tolea had settled down comfortably on the stool. The black dingo dog had stretched out his neck a long way, so that his head touched the tip of Tolea’s yellow shoe.

“Tavi. Easy, boy!”

Tavi withdrew his black snout from the yellow snout, but he remained alert and on guard. Auntie Venera had a pleasant, very pleasant voice. I hadn’t even noticed, or else I’d forgotten. Yes, quite simply Tolea had forgotten, had started speaking, he didn’t notice. Venera did indeed have a pleasant timbre to her voice. Not fragrant, no, you wouldn’t say that. He had baptized her Venera. From the first moment, before hearing the name he could not make out. So it was Venera that came to him, in a sudden flight of fancy.

“May I continue, then, madam. You see, I have the memory of a hippopotamus. So with that holiday trip of mine to Cordoba, or whatever it’s called. I always change the place I go to for a rest; I crave novelty, always look for new things to happen. I haven’t got the patience to stay put somewhere, as the Association, the A-sso-si-ayshun, requires of us. Yes, it doesn’t even let us move house from one place to another, or even to travel around in other parts.”

“Tavi. Quiet, boy.”

Tavi withdrew his long red tongue from the yellow top of the shoe. But he remained alert, vigilant. Eyes like red-hot coals. Venera was holding the door handle: she seemed calm and had a pleasant voice.

“So I finally got to the scales. The sweet girl with chestnut hair asked me how much. Four kilograms, I said. She started putting them in my bag. What do I need four kilos for? No idea. But that’s what I’m like, easily influenced. Goo-ood. People were muttering behind me; the rumpus had flared up again. As I was saying, madam, the girl had already weighed out my bagful. Goo-ood. But then I got involved, I said something myself. I put my own oar in. Everyone is right. That’s what I said: Everyone is right. Those girls aren’t to blame if they give out two kilos or six or nine. It doesn’t matter, because it will still come to an end. And it’s not their fault: it’s someone else’s, and I know whose. The only one who’s not right is the big guy himself, the Great Associate. Everyone else is in the clear. Everyone is right. The only one who isn’t is you know who. What did I get involved for? And I didn’t even need the oranges. I ask you: what would I have needed them for?”

Tolea again pointed to the two bags with headless chickens. He unknotted the dark-red scarf around his neck. A tired toreador.

Madam Venera, holding the door handle in fear, had become downhearted, bewildered, drained of energy.

“Just look at me, chattering away like this. In fact, dear lady, I came to see my friend Cua. Tavi Cua, I mean. There’s something I need to discuss with him.”

The dog started, didn’t start. Impossible to say. But the little old woman released her grip on the door handle and wiped her sweaty palms on the hem of her blue work coat.

“I told you, Mr. and Mrs. Cua are not at home. I just call around here three times a week, to keep an eye on the house. They left Tavi for me to look after. There’s been some trouble with my own apartment and I don’t like to stay home. Since spring and all this madness, I’ve been staying here. I’m hiding here until they come back. During the day at least.”

Her voice was calm, warm, fragrant, and Venera ran her plump hand over the shiny neck of watchdog Tavi.

She was now looking in a more relaxed way at the talkative and polite guest: she had no reason to be afraid of him, no, the fear had passed. He seemed a courteous and likable person, even if rather odd with those topsy-turvy and excessively long stories of his.

Likable, however, and Venera eventually opened wide the dining-room door as a token of goodwill.

Being a well-mannered boy, Tolea accepted the invitation, went in, and sat down.

He came back on Tuesday, came back on Thursday. The calendar was turned upside down: Wednesday and Friday disappeared, and Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday came to power. He stayed as long as he could, until Venera had to return home, to the apartment in which recent memories appeared to terrorize her.

He accompanied her to the taxi, where they parted with some difficulty. Venera came, went, and came again by taxi to the Cua family home, three times a week. It would have been hard with Tavi on trams and trolleybuses.

The dog Tavi remained fierce and silent. He showed neither aversion nor cordiality in relation to the new visitor.

About the other Tavi they discussed at length.

“You know, my dear lady, the story goes back a long way. I was a schoolboy then. Mr. Cua was a friend of my brother’s. Also of my sister’s, in fact. As far as I remember, Mr. Cua was then — how shall I put it? — without any defects. Normal, I mean.”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” said the velvety voice of Mrs. Venera.

She had just put the tray and coffees on the round dining-room table. Professor Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov had made an intelligent calculation, from the very first moment. These days you can hardly trust anyone. Even old friends are not likely to be the same as they used to be. If they’ve survived, it means that something’s wrong somewhere, so you can never know who when whether and how much: general distrust. Normality depends on adaptation, therefore also on adaptation to the abnormal. So the inverted criteria actually rule out any clarification. The Hotel Tranzit receptionist had therefore proceeded in the perfect manner. If you can never trust anyone, anyway, then it’s best if all the doors are open at the beginning, as among people who have known one another since the world began. On this hospitable table with its steaming coffee, there is also room for our impenetrable soul, for our codified, burlesque life story.

“Lots of terrible things happened then. Our family went through difficult trials. Then my brother left for Argentina. My sister, too, left around the end of the war, and also for distant lands, since she had fallen in love with a missionary full of great promises. I stayed with Mother, which wasn’t easy. I heard no more of Mr. Tavi for a long time. But I know he had a shock as well in that period. I heard then that—”

“Yes, yes, I understand” came the encouraging words from Venera, who was arranging some little cakes on the table.

“Now my sister-in-law, the German, has written to me. She also sent me some money. They used to send other things as well, from time to time. Especially at holiday time: clothes, delicacies to eat, various trifles. She says my brother has gone potty. I mean senile. Or not quite: she doesn’t put it like that. Immobile. Maybe concussion. God knows. His mind is drifting into nostalgia. That’s what she says.”

Mrs. Venera had shuddered, as if with irritation. But she eventually sat down opposite the narrator, to listen to what he was saying.

“Yes, yes, I understand. Help yourself.”

Mr. Vancea was sitting relaxed in the armchair. He loosened the scarf at his neck and undid another button on the collar of his black shirt. He had come straight from work and was feeling rather hot.

He sipped at the sweet strong coffee. Another sip. He had lifted the tiny cup from the tiny golden plate. Another long sip, and that was it, no more coffee.

“Shall I pour you another drop, Mr. — ?”

“Vancea. Anatol Vancea.”

Venera stood up, took the coffeepot from its place on the sideboard, and poured into the little cup.

“Anatol Vancea Voinov. My mother’s maiden name was Voinov, and she didn’t give it up, precisely because it had become suspect. They were a stubborn couple, clinging to their dignity — or so they thought.”

Venera also sipped her coffee. Tolea looked at her with friendly curiosity: it was difficult to refrain from asking whether she was not by any chance the sister of lame Veturia.

“You probably know Mr. Gafton.”

Venera did not answer, but took another leisurely sip. “The Gafton family. I’m a lodger with them — sort of. I mean, it’s not their apartment, but they took me in. They had a free room and offered it to me when I had to move to Bucharest. I haven’t told you yet, madam, but I was a schoolteacher until a few years ago. I taught foreign languages, especially Russian. I already knew some from my mother, and after the war it was easier for me to study Russian. But after that dirty trick — Excuse me, I haven’t had a chance to tell you about it. They pinned some stupid little things on me, out there in the provinces. Actually some well-staged exaggerations, in connection with my delicate relations — extremely delicate, I can tell you— with some teenage boys. Among whom I include myself, of course. They can sense it, the little devils; yes, our treacherous and wonderful little brothers can sense it. They can sense it, my splendid little good-for-nothings, yes, yes, they and I can sense it. So I couldn’t return to teaching. I was suspended. I also left town, of course: the provinces can’t tolerate rebels, you understand. The Gaftons, Mr. Matei and Mrs. Veturia, were very understanding, very welcoming.”

The hostess did not blink. She slowly sipped her coffee while looking at her guest.

“Now I work at a hotel in the center. At the Hotel Tranzit reception.”

There was a short long silence. The large bunch of red carnations brought by the professor shot up from the shell vase on the sideboard.

“So, at the Hotel Tranzit—”

The same long short silence went meandering on.

“Ah, please don’t get the idea — I know what’s said about people who work in hotels, in tourism. No, I haven’t given way there, believe me. I don’t like informers, you know. I’ve got other vices, but not that one.”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” murmured Venera.

“As I said, it was force of circumstance that brought me back to Bucharest. I got this pathetic job thanks to Gafton and the doctor, my friend the doctor. Solid people trained in the old style; maybe Tavi has spoken to you about them.”

Venera remained silent. Her small palm was stroking Tavi’s shiny back, stretched out beside her mauve slippers of tufted velvet. The dog did not stir when he heard the name that he shared with his absent master. He followed the chatterer’s confessions with perfect skepticism.

“Yes, he’s a beautiful dog. I don’t know if you know Veta — Veta Apostolescu, the scientific worker at the dogs’ clinic.”

The woman did not speak. She smiled, taken aback by the filial way in which the restless professor was looking at her, with a gentle incitement.

“Everyone, including the Association, speaks in the highest terms of Mrs. Apostolescu. She also looks after their dogs: she’s a member of the Association. An associate of the Association, as my friend Iopo, Daddy, put it. Maybe you know him. Haven’t you ever had any trouble with Tavi? Nowadays dogs also pose a lot of problems. When there’s no food or housing or medicine for humans, man’s best friend also suffers. And the laws — well, as you know, my dear lady, when the laws are made tougher for humans, dogs don’t do too well out of it either. You’ve probably heard the latest rumors that dogs are going to be cleared out of blocks of flats. So that working people can rest in peace and quiet, without being disturbed. And then there’s the pollution, the stress, the general decline of morals. That all affects our canine friends as well. And human wickedness, of course. And the general distrust and the cowardice and treachery and terror — all of it. But Tavi is pretty sturdy, no?”

“Yes, yes,” repeated Venera like an automaton.

“At our hotel, the Tranzit, we have a colleague, Vasilica, who’s a delightful woman. Generous, altruistic, religious. Well, we rather spoil Vili. She’s terribly fond of any old cur. I mean, any creature at all. Cats, rabbits, frogs, chickens, canaries, mice, anything.”

Colleague Vancea smiled at the memory of colleague Vili, and was about to ask the hostess whether she was not by any chance the sister of Vasilica Vasilic. But it would have been out of place, an indiscretion, and he gave up the idea of satisfying his curiosity.

“So, at the Hotel Tranzit. A receptionist — what’s there to be done? If it hadn’t been for Dr. Marga I wouldn’t even have found this job.

Nowadays the only people who can help you are the ones who work with the public and have contacts. Doctors, drivers, hairdressers, sellers of vegetables, meat, shoes, or petrol, and middlemen of every kind. Dr. Marga’s a real gentleman! Gafton, Marga, Tavi — they’re people from a different age, when my brother was also with them. Tavi has probably told you—”

The dog did not start, the hostess even less.

Then Tuesday of the following week. Tolea arrived dripping with perspiration, crumpled up, in really bad shape. He was late: the traffic had been brought to a standstill for several hours because the presidential convoy was due to take the Great Associate, the Jabberer, to or from the airport. He had only just managed to come in a roundabout way by taxi.

“Yes, yes, I understand,” maternal Venera calmed him.

As the initial interest waned, Tolea’s visits became ever more frequent and protracted. By now he was coming not only on Tuesday and Thursday but also on Saturday, and would have come every day if Venera had lived in the Cuas’ house.

Virtuous Venera seemed overwhelmed and discomfited by the recollection of the past, and so the professor changed the subject. He began to supply details of everything that had happened on the days when they had not seen each other. He gave a lively account of the merry and guilty pranks at the Hotel Tranzit, explained how neighbor Gafton divided up the maintenance and lighting costs of the apartment, described Chick Gina and her dangerous temperament, reported the latest jokes about the Jabberer and his sovereign wife, and launched into shrewd remarks on the exponential rate at which rumors, jokes, and gossip spread through a country. Unofficial information, he said, can penetrate at an astounding exponential speed; it’s like with an earthquake, where the difference between 2 and 3 degrees on the Richter scale is less than that between 7.2 and 7.3 degrees. A fatal nuclear reaction, shock waves, and so on, explained the professor.

“Yes, yes, I understand,” the hostess agreed in a tone of resignation, now adjusting the tablecloth, now moving the vase with the customary flowers brought by the amiable professor. Tolea was already describing the mechanism of raising taxes through various fines — for traffic offenses, the leaving of rubbish outside the house, or the disturbance of public order — and then he moved straight on to the impossibility of an ecological movement in a country such as ours, to the virtues of space weapons, the manipulation of terrorism, manipulation in general, terrorism, and terror in general.

“Yes, yes,” repeated the chorus with the same vibrant, fragrant, celestial cello voice. The atmosphere was fermenting, rather, or languishing. Maybe the hostess would have preferred tacit forms of communication, without all those words that complicated a chaste, domestic familiarity. Tiredness, boredom — you wonder at so much verbal fireworks. But Tolea further intensified the display: surely he will elicit the surprise interjection, a fresh impulse.

“Yes, yes, I understand,” the placid woman agreed without conviction. The slob! the aggressor-receptionist thought hysterically, exasperated by the pleasant cello voice that was nothing other than the rhythmic expiration of the slob before him.

“Yes, yes, I understand,” Venera uttered again.

They drank tea served with modest sandwiches, occasionally a little glass of plum brandy, or leisurely sips of surrogate coffee made from barley or bran, who knows. Or they would switch on television to watch the Jabberer thundering away about the happiness of the model people and threatening the enemies of the model people. Then Tolea resumed the monologue of adventures, parables, proverbs — even a hippopotamus would have burst from it all. He felt that he would soon give it up; he had already decided to give it up.

And yet he continued with the glib peroration, no longer expecting agreement except from the gloomy Tavi. It was the dog he addressed, in fact, with ever greater irritability and impatience.

He spoke looking only into the eyes of the slave protector coiled up at Venera’s feet. Tavi listened calmly, without reaction, to the constant flow of novelties, skeptically following the cement mixer as it turned out little nothings.

Perhaps it was just the silent skepticism of this witness which knocked the excited intruder off balance. He still continued to hold forth, tirelessly gesticulating and pumping out the words, but the visible boredom on the face of the lucid canine censor made him feel depressed, made him feel that he would definitely give it up soon.

Tomorrow will be the end of it! No, tomorrow is Friday, our rest day. The day after tomorrow, Saturday, the holy day — liberation. That’s it: all over on Saturday!

Saturday morning was floating in a fine mist, a gauze cloth in front of the sun. The infantilized city pampering itself, taking its time.

The professor appeared at nine o’clock, an unusual time for him. It meant he had woken up early. He was completely in white— which meant he had the day off. Perfectly shaven, as always. In his arms a huge bunch of red flowers, like a funeral wreath.

The hostess thanked him with a brief tilt of her looped hair. She took the wreath from her morning interlocutor and rested it against the hallstand, waiting for Mr. Vancea to take the bag off his shoulder as usual and hang it on the peg in front of the mirror.

The professor stood still for a moment, looking at Tavi’s stern eyes in the mirror. He smiled, gave a sketchy greeting to the hound, took the bag from his shoulder, but then changed his mind. He did not hang it up; he took it with him into the dining room.

“A wonderful day, my dear lady. What clearness, what softness, what hesitation! I couldn’t get enough of lingering in the streets, going from stop to stop. Spring drives us wild; it drives us prisoners mad.”

The tray and coffees were already there on the table. A surprise indeed. Normally Mrs. Venera started preparing things only when they were well into their conversation. Tavi was already at the feet of her chair. Venera looked splendid: the day was young, quite perfect.

“Amantissime frater, I’d have said to him. That’s what I’d have said to the young man who was looking at me too assiduously.”

It was obvious. Tolea had prepared a completely new tactic, a novel provocation, before withdrawing from the field of battle.

“Yesterday evening I was walking alone in Carol Park. Suddenly a splendid young man! He looked like an artist. I felt him watching me for some time, as if he had followed me.”

The lady made a vague gesture of boredom. But the professor, though put out, refused to register it.

“Of course I didn’t shield myself. He had magnificent, blazing eyes. Amantissime frater—I was getting ready to call out the well-known hypnotic words, as if they were a curse. To provoke him, to scare him, to see what he’d do.”

The lady impatiently repeated the gesture of disgust. The professor did not have time to dodge it: he was dumbfounded.

“Mr. Vancea, it seems you had a beautiful sister. You don’t write to each other often, I know; you have gone your different ways. The family was opposed to the marriage, I know. And she still went off with that fanatic, I know. She has two daughters who have had other daughters. She’s a grandmother. I know all that, but it’s not the point.”

The professor had still not managed to regain his composure. Stiff, his mouth open, he was gripping between his feet the bag that had fallen beside the chair.

Venera was pale.

“Yes, the cats returned, in flames. Last night my burned cats came back to see me. The windows were burning, and my hair and—”

Venera was pale: she had wiped her brow with her hand; her hand was trembling. But she recovered, and the words and the expression on her face returned.

“Maybe you’ve been told or you remember — Sonia, the black cat who set the holy desert on fire. Tavi was in love with Sonia, your sister.”

Tavi started, majestically raising his head. But the maternal hand had already dropped in time onto his powerful, shining muzzle.

“He suffered because of her. She shook him up. She bit him— let’s not mince our words. He never got over it. He was an extremely sensitive young man, remember that, a quite special young man! Tavi wasn’t always what he later made every effort to appear, indeed to become—”

Tavi again lifted his dark eyes. But the guardian hand promptly calmed him.

“I admit, he also made some unfortunate gestures. He didn’t do them simply out of spite, though, not in a mad rage, you know. It’s simply that one move had taken away every chance he had. That Matus was certainly intelligent and lively, but such qualities weren’t enough for the fairy-tale princess, that’s what stupid Tavi thought.”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” the professor finally mumbled in a thick voice.

Mrs. Venera had pushed the tray toward the professor. Tolea automatically picked up the little cup and, with his head still reeling, bent over and sipped it. Venera in turn, having pulled back the tray, raised the little cobalt cup, sipped from it, and put it back on its saucer. Still pale, still voluble, as if spitting out the words nineteen to the dozen.

“I’m sorry you haven’t been able to meet the little tomcat. There are still signs — a kind of emotion, something uncertain.”

The professor tensely waited for her to continue, but Tavi let out a huge smothered bark that seemed on the point of shaking the house. What force the black dingo had gathered in captivity! The lady pulled her hand away from his strong, cold neck. She held it in the air for a moment, then brought its edge down on him in a brief slap. Tavi groaned as he looked in her eyes. He repeated the dull, sinister roar. The edge of her hand struck him again, quickly, three times. Calmer now, he stretched out on the floor, with his head on the guest’s bag.

“Your people still don’t seem to have given up on love. Even after all that suffering, even though others think you’re very clever. It’s not a sign of great intelligence, I have to say. Do you still want to be loved? Even though you’ve seen how much hatred you arouse? Did ancestors sing in praise of your life? Did they keep telling you that nothing is more important than life, that a creature’s life is the highest value? How could you not become hysterical if life, so short and full of misery, is all we have? At least if they’d promised you something else, a life hereafter — nirvana, or what the devil!”

Venera had become heated — more confessions could be expected. Detective A.D.V.V. had not erred in suddenly appearing on Saturday morning at the site of the investigation, where, look, he had actually been expected. Not only with coffee and sweetmeats but also with significant testimony. Oh yes, finally!

“Do you think Tavi is a criminal? I won’t contradict you. I don’t know and don’t want— I don’t exactly know what he did and what he’s doing now. I know he married my disabled friend and takes exemplary care of her. My friend Tori. Maybe I told you before. Something terrible that happened in the period that interests you left her a deaf-mute, also rather — how shall I put it? — well, rather sensitive, let’s say. As you know, the world can no longer be what it was. And it isn’t.”

Mr. Vancea was looking straight into the eyes of Mrs. Venera, who was looking straight into the detective’s eyes.

“The version of that moment — who can say now? There would have to be more indifference. That’s what your people don’t have— indifference. It’s a real force, I promise you. There’s a real force behind indifference. Tavi understood that, I’m sure. Even then.”

The hostess’s eyes seemed to have lost their sparkle, and her words were becoming faster and faster.

“That moment you are investigating so stubbornly after forty years. Who knows, who—? Let’s take a closer look at the next act in the play. Today we’ve come to defend ourselves from people as you would defend yourself from dogs. Or rather, to defend ourselves from people with the help of dogs,” Tavi’s mother corrected herself, giving him a mean side glance.

“If I see you’re afraid, I bite. If I sense you’re weak, I jump on you. I smash your doors, windows, and house, I set fire to you. I send burning corpses to visit you at night. The exceptions? What are the exceptions? Those buddies of yours? The philanthropic doctor? The housekeeper, laundress, and chauffeur — patients happy at the gods’ benevolence! Psychotherapy, ergo-psychiatry, ergonomics, whatever the hell it’s called. Or Bambino Gafton, hypnotized by grand ideals? A journalist, do you hear, a journalist in this day and age! And he even changed his name to Gafton, his wife’s name. To show what? What exactly? That things have moved on? That we no longer make distinctions, no longer take revenge on old legionaries, is that it? But he knew that was a lie. He knew it, the fool. Or did he? Tell him that chosen fools are more stupid than ordinary fools. They are the fools’ chosen ones, tell him that!”

Poor Venera was about to have an attack, just now when she had testified that she knew about Mauriciu Gafton and Dr. Marga and the wretched detective A.D.V.V., no less.

But she pulled herself together, the dear old thing. The performance was not over yet.

“You see, Mr. Vancea, the frail, sick Tavi. The sly, devious Tavi. .”

The dog did not move: he had withdrawn into a superior sleepiness.

The air itself had frozen solid: there no longer seemed to be time to think of what placid Venera was suddenly pouring forth.

“Yes, yes, the hypocritical Tavi, the monstrous Tavi! He kept wandering around, hid himself in a blind alley.”

She tried to laugh, mockingly, but all she could get out were some short sounds, a nasty bark of a cough.

“Yes, yes, I understand,” the professor tried to stammer, but Venera cut short any interruption with a wave of her hand.

“I know Tavi. I do know him, Professor! My friend — who’s like a half sister, you might say — is a person of great quality, but well, she’s an invalid all the same. These last few years I’ve been the only whole person among them, or beside them — beside him — who always guarded against somehow becoming a victim.”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” the professor tried to repeat, but again without success.

“You should — you’d be able to understand the romantic delirium, the raw, bloated suffering. You were a good-looking boy, happy and transparent, isn’t that so? Everything was perfect, no? Until that bicycle accident.”

The professor groaned with surprise at the blow beneath the belt. But he recovered with lightning speed, suddenly brimming with excessive vitality. He put his feet up American-style on the armchair to his left, but Mrs. Venera did not notice.

“That bicycle turned everything upside down, didn’t it?”

“Yes, yes, I understand.” The professor’s voice could be heard plainly as he merrily dangled his legs above the chair.

The professor-detective was carelessly swinging his legs about. Now he was pale, too. And Tavi had found a comfortable position by the window, looking into the invisible distance. Venera paid him no attention: she seemed alone — alone with her absent partner.

“They’ve gone away, Tavi and Tori. Taube, who’s known as Tori. They’ve gone to her relatives in Bavaria. Or maybe that’s not where he is, the dog. Maybe he went out of the blue to look for the lover of his youth! But I hope they’ve gone where they said — to relatives, I mean. Theirs, not mine. No, by no means to mine. I’ve only got myself, for madmen to hound me, and tie me up and set fire to me and my house, my belongings, my dogs and cats, everything I hold dear. What chaos — you can imagine! Complete chaos! The dolts, the crazies, the deaf-mutes. They took me for someone else. In fact, I’m not entirely alone. As you see, I look after Tavi: they were generous enough to leave Tavi for me to look after. I feel attached to Tavi — what can I do? Since my apartment was wrecked, since the fire and the sleepless nights, I’ve been here for most of the time, with Tavi.”

Tavi did not stir, although his mistress had held out her hand to stroke him. It was an absentminded gesture in the air. For Tavi was already by the window, and all the lady really wanted was to gain a pause, to recover her breath, before the big final scene.

It seemed as if she had decided not to interrupt herself anymore, and not to let herself be interrupted, until she had cleared the whole burden from her chest.

“Mr. Vancea, let me tell you about disaster. About the soul full of mist and dark holes, where snakes hiss around and ravens roam loose. Poison on top of poison, knot over knot, fungus growing out of fungus. No way out, believe me — only fakes. Exits which are really other entrances. A turning on the spot inside, that’s all. Let me tell you about Tavi: he’s all that interests me. Have you really thought about Tavi? About those he lives among, about the cripples we have all become? Tell me, have you thought about that? Has he just hidden among them or actually accepted their code? It would be a good hiding place, wouldn’t it? Suspicion and informing, our daily bread — there are novel codes in this milieu, no? The sickly, crippled underground that keeps swelling and cannot find a way out, or even an air hole. It just goes on fermenting, and very occasionally a tortured stammering comes out. An extreme model? An outer limit of what we have all become, in fact? Nothing that is real is absolute: everything is full of holes, displacements, blotches. We are forced to use our imagination in order to understand, isn’t that right?

“I was passionately interested in mathematics, Professor. A real passion, honestly. Reductio ad absurdum! The artificial means that will make the insoluble equation more accessible to our tricks and dodges. But still a reduction, we shouldn’t forget it; an artificial means, no more. These model cripples involve a formidable compression — that’s all. If a tiny little incision were allowed, something quite unique would gush out. Pus and flames and the aurora borealis! Genius, crime, madness, blinding hell, impossible to imagine. If only we could somehow reach the miraculous moment of liberation! If only we could reach the truth, you’d see what would spring from each one of us, you’d soon see. Something implacable and unique. Or maybe just a morbid stammer? A sick stammer would frighten us no less, I assure you.

“The genius has found the solution! He’s found the subterfuge, the dearie, the vile old dog! Huge potential that could even re-create the world! Just think — think of him and us all. And of the poor amputees, who represent us so well. What reaches us from them are just rare signs of urgency. They can drive us out of our mind, Professor. Even our minds can wake up to life — even our minds wearied by so much sleep, so much coding and deviousness and restriction. This envenomed restriction, this idle, ongoing compression, treacherous and going on and on.”

The long lecture could have been made much longer, suggested the mathematician’s calm and inexpressive face. But she had raised both hands in a gesture of helplessness. Pleading tiredness, she announced that she was calling it off, as if what remained unsaid was actually much more important, but there was no point, she was giving up in resignation. Pause. Silence.

The watch on the professor’s wrist was evenly rippling along. Vancea made a quick movement of his leg and looked at the electronic display. 1:00:2, 1:00:3, 1:00:5.

“Ah, let me give you something to eat. How the time has flown. I made some lunch. Let me go and heat it up.”

Behold, the domestic servant was reborn. After a moment we shall rub our eyes; it’ll be as if we have never heard the fine-spun dissertation. It was only a vision: we are in front of the same silent housewife as always. We can only gaze endlessly upon the pale, drooping vegetable who dozes before us.

A long long pause. The professor had several times repeated the gesture of refusal: he had no wish to eat. But the woman did not see it, and in fact she was not intending to get up and bring lunch as she had announced.

When her voice returned, it was no more than a whisper — a whisper shyly resumed, again and again. The professor did not understand what she was saying, nor did he stir at all. Mrs. Venera made a final effort and raised her voice. “Let me show you his work. I’ve decided to show it to you.”

Supporting herself on the sideboard where the tray and coffee cups had remained, she took a few reeling steps. She seemed to stagger dizzily, limping, shaking with emotion, or whatever it was. For a few moments she circled aimlessly around the armchair.

“Come, let me show you his work. Come on.”

The voice had recovered its vibrancy, its heat. Tottering to her left, she advanced cautiously toward the door at the back of the dining room. They passed through a short, bare vestibule, where the guide opened another door.

“This is where they sleep.”

A white room, with a double bed. A thick woolen blanket, also white. A white bedside table on both left and right. By the window a little round white table. A white stool. On the wall a round mirror in a white frame.

They were already in front of the other door.

“This is Tavi’s darkroom. We won’t go in. It’s a simple room. Cameras, films, canisters.”

She was holding the handle of the door, which had a glass square covered in black cloth. She moved away and stopped at the end of the vestibule. She opened the door on the right.

“This is Tavi’s study.”

A desk, a chair, a worn sofa. Shelves filled to the ceiling with thick files in every color.

“People say he’s got rich. Not a bit of it. This is all he’s got: a reasonable apartment. A place of refuge, that’s all. His fortune is here, in this room. This is where he’s collected his work. And it’s some work, as you’ll see. He took a copy of it with him. God knows how, but he managed to take a copy with him. He must have found someone’s wallet to line for that. To show a copy to his relatives. How about that! His wife’s relatives! Victims given shelter in the land of the butcher, what do you say?! Do you like your relatives, eh? Well, he’s gone to his wife’s relatives, that’s what the dumbo said. Just so long as his mind doesn’t wander too much. . in search of his lover, to impress her with the tragedy of his life and with the gloom of his work! Stupid, crazy — that he isn’t. Did he perhaps take a copy for the scandal merchants? For the Freedom Circus? So it would make him famous, make him a hero? Our dumbo a dissident, a martyr? Paid handsomely — until the furor passed? To be bled white of confessions and be taught some of their tricks and dodges and striptease and idiotic arrogance? I just hope the cranky old dunce hasn’t gone completely senile. Did Old Nick warn him that the day of reckoning is close at hand, that he’s got to get a move on! The hypocrite, the scorpion, the poor innocent! My dotty turtledove, the jackal. The dirty dog didn’t want to tell the truth: who knows where he’s gone off to with Goddess Silentium? Who knows where the turtledoves have got to? To the Sleeping Forest, the Black Forest, the Silver Forest of Money, the poor things.”

The professor started, with his eyes bulging. Disgust and bitterness continued to ooze from the fragrant voice of gentle Mrs. Venera. The professor had remained on the threshold of the sanctuary. Detective Vancea kept his hand on the strap of his plastic bag: he did not have the courage to violate the sanctuary.

“Come in, Mr. Vancea, come in. It’s worth whiling away a few hours with a stranger’s work. The werewolf — a man with a soul, you’ll discover for yourself. You’ll see what truth’s precision and surprises mean. The very depths of futility, that’s what you’ll see. And without any words. An epic, Mr. Vancea! Homer — you’ll see! Homer without words, without the help of words. Come in, come in. It’s worth it, believe me.”

“Yes, yes, I understand. .”

Mr. Vancea looked at the shelves, at the desk. He sat on the edge of the sofa.

Mrs. Venera watched him sternly, waited a few moments, and then left the room. The professor was alone with the treasure. At five o’clock Mrs. Venera brought him tea and sandwiches.

“Maybe you’d like the lunch I made. You must be starving.”

“Yes, no, I understand,” he whimpered confusedly.

At seven o’clock the hostess timidly knocked on the door again and suggested a snack.

“No, absolutely not. But maybe you want to leave, to go home. I’ve more or less finished. We can leave if you like.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it: I can also sleep here. I see these files interest you.”

She looked at him with an ironic, condescending smile, then at the untouched sandwich tray and the cup of tea. She went out again.

At eleven o’clock in the evening Professor Vancea came out of the room, with his bag over his shoulder.

“We’ll get a taxi, my dear lady. It’s late. I’ll see you home.”

Mrs. Venera was reading a French book. An old, thick cover, with a title in slanting letters that was hard to make out. A teacher of French — or mathematics — who knows. It was a long time before she raised her eyes from the book.

She stared hard into his eyes. Then she looked suspiciously at the bag on the professor’s shoulder.

“We could get a taxi. I’ll see you home and then go home myself. It’s late.”

“You can leave, Professor, don’t worry. I’ll stay and sleep here.”

Vancea bowed as he went out. As he was putting his foot on the first step of the staircase, he heard a roaring sound behind the door, then another. After a few moments of silence, again a crescendo. Smothered barks, like a deep-seated cough. The growling of sullen Tavi did not cease, but it remained at the same reduced level. A hoarse, choking, smoldering fury.

Should he go back or shouldn’t he? Who knows what’s happening between the bizarre couple.

He gave up the idea of any further initiative and quickly went down into the street. On Sunday he stayed shut up indoors. He unplugged the telephone and did not answer when Mr. Gafton timidly knocked on the door, probably concerned that he had not heard his neighbor moving about.

Tolea lay in bed, thinking. More furious than delighted at the memory of the photo file with which Mrs. Venera had honored him.