The Black Envelope

~ ~ ~

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when Dr. Marga heard about the article in the popular weekly.

The patients had gone out onto the hospital grounds. The doctor was sitting on a bench. He took off his glasses, rubbed his forehead, undid his smock, and tried to relax.

His thin stripe of black beard dripped with perspiration. He wiped it with a handkerchief. He tried to forget his tiredness. He crossed his short arms over a jutting belly and stretched out on his back. His hands were soft, his shoulders, too, but his short legs turned leaden. As he unwound, he gave himself up to a sweet dizziness.

His assistant brought a mug of cold tea and a paper cornet full of tablets. The doctor again passed his palm over his beard and put on his smoky glasses. He swallowed the fistful of tablets and slowly sipped some tea.

“You’re exhausted,” she said. “You’re much too hard on yourself.”

“Too hard — huh! We manage, as they say.”

“You smoke too much. You eat any old how, and you don’t get enough sleep. You must know that the heart. . You have no right. You break all the rules, like a patient who doesn’t have a clue.”

“Ah, but I do know. Suddenly is the best way to go.”

A long silence followed. The wily, hypnotic breeze; a long, invisible peacock’s tail in the pale sky. Yes: the buzzing of mayflies, the insurgent spring with its mad provocations, as if coming from another age, another world.

The assistant was contemplating the sky, not looking at the doctor.

“Let me read you something so you can see how far things can go.”

Her short hands, with fingers laden with rings, took the magazine from under her arm and opened it up. Marga did not seem to be listening. But the woman’s voice became stronger and stronger.

“ ‘Those who tried to do something were abused by the hooligans. The forces of order were alerted. . They arrived on the scene, advised everyone to calm down, and went away.’ Did you hear that, Doctor, they ‘advised.’ As if. .? What more is there to say? Listen to some more: ‘The wrecking of the apartment continued. The militiamen returned, again appealed for calm, and went away.’ Did you hear? They ‘appealed’. . ‘The representatives of order returned a third and last time. The gang left only when they grew bored and tired.’ ”

Marga seemed not to have registered when the voice came to a halt. The woman waited impatiently for some effect. The voice had indeed stopped, but the listener did not react. He seemed to be dozing. No, he wasn’t dozing.

“I think we’ve got a guest,” the doctor was heard to whisper.

Coming up the drive was a petite lady in a brown costume. She had a deliberate way of stamping her feet as she walked. The nurse recognized her at once, of course, but continued to read without paying her any attention. “ ‘Incredible, but that is how things happened. In broad daylight, under the eyes of a whole neighborhood and—’ ”

But the doctor had already stood up. He arranged his glasses on his nose so that the missing eye could not be seen and smiled. The young lady also smiled as they shook hands. The assistant looked up from the page for a moment and went on with a certain irritation.

“ ‘As we write these lines, such-and-such apartment. . in such-and-such street. . looks like after a bombing raid, a fire, or some natural disaster’. .” The plump assistant, Ortansa, turned to the doctor without looking at the visitor. She pursed her thick, heavily painted lips.

“Remember, the victim ran from her home! The newspaper people say she’s sleeping at friends’ and relatives’. The victim is afraid that the attack will be repeated. .” It was not clear whether this information was in the text or was a personal addition.

“So that’s what things have come to! It looks as if we’ll now have the poor woman as a client. It’s the victim who comes to us, not the crazies who wanted to set her on fire. They’ve nothing to worry about, you know. No one locks up the really mad ones, as they should.” By now she was in a fury. She looked at the two nonchalant listeners as if they were implicated in the affair, encompassing them in a more general discontent.

She leaned across the bench and picked up the saucer, teacup, and empty cornet. But then she remained there with them in the lap of her smock. She sat down, spread out, looked at the thin violet clouds, and smiled. Twilight, clouds chasing through the spring sky. But the doctor did not seem to notice, having eyes only for the newcomer. Irina understood, smiled. He took her gently by the shoulders and guided her toward his office.

A long, twisted day, a day that turned her to the point of dizziness. A few times she had felt the need to collect herself in the quiet of a church, but in the end she found herself in Marga’s office. It had still been morning when Irina arrived at the bus stop, under the sway of a refrain whose jarring time induced a kind of idiotic trance. From the point of view of death. . point point point. . point of maximum vision, the perfect clear lucid night, the absent dead, like the living. . the fixed end point, illumination and blindness.

The words returned as a magic spell. A kind of senile impulse, a barely visible point, returning, returning, both extremity and center at the same time. Illumination and blindness, yes, a phosphorescent needle of nothingness, the perfect clear night, the absent dead like the living. Yes, that was it.

Sounds — thick delicate garrulous voices, bubbling. Somewhere, far off, she heard the theater of the world. Trucks, trams, wheels whipping the asphalt with a roar, anarchic voices, a traffic policeman’s whistle, a tin can turning somersaults, an ambulance siren, the muffled hysteria of people lining up for newspapers and potatoes and toilet paper and aspirin.

She opened her eyes: a drowsy convoy of children from a kindergarten was lining up at a crossing near the park.

A daytime creature, that’s what I used to be. Night scared me. A cunning and barbaric swamp. I used to be sunny and earthly, ready to clutch at anything visible, alive. . When oh when did everything change? Now I’m completely given over to the night, my only refuge. The time and geography of night have replaced my days. Now, in the midst of a torrid blindness, it would not even be possible to recognize my face.

The traffic lights had changed from red to green. The children’s column moved off. Little smiles, hands tightly squeezing one another. The stocky woman teacher gave the signal for singing to begin. A long, thin babbling, drip drip, soft, weary, anaesthetized. A sleepy convoy of tottering shadows.

Irina again shut her eyes, violently pressed the lids, reopened them. She crossed the road and walked up the paved slope toward the park. She sat down on the first bench, under a vaulting arch of branches.

She took the newspaper from her pocket and opened it: Via¸ta Noastr, the national newspaper of the Association. She could not take her eyes from the red-lettered banner that she had known for years, or from the slogan above it: Workers of the world, unite! It was printed in every paper and magazine in the country, in every office, school, or hospital, seen countless times without ever being seen. This time she read the clarion call, once and once more — as if she were experiencing for the first time its urgent, vigorous meter that demanded a response. What would happen if. .? She woke up, murmuring in amusement. Unity, urgent unity. What if. .?

“The complex tasks of the Association. Directives and guidelines of the General Secretary concerning the role of the mass organizations and state institutions in implementing the general policy.”

She turned the page: the cheap paper nearly crumbled; the ink was already dirtying her fingers.

“The title of the Association’s best locksmith. Homage to the beloved leader. The celebration of labor. The photographer emeritus of the Association. The training of members in the spirit of socialist ethics and justice.” She moved on to the next page. “Two decades since the Ninth Congress. Professionalism and integration of the disabled into production.” And on and on. “Relations of friendship and cooperation with similar associations in other countries. Football championship at the Association of the Disabled. The spirit of socialist ethics and justice. The struggle for peace and the broadening of external relations. The testing of defective pupils. Demands of the socialist economy. The protection of labor. Photographic exhibition at the Association’s Jubilee. Integration of the disabled into production. Homage to the beloved leader. .”

A kind of drowsiness took hold of her — torpor, lassitude, a lazy, slothful sourness. She would have liked to put her palms on a holy wall to feel its coolness, to ask: “Are we worse than the rest?” and then to keep waiting for the echo of the empty words. Yes, she would have liked to glue her palms together on a hermitage wall and to pose unanswerable questions. But she woke up to the sound of voices close by.

“A hyena, that’s what she was, bombarding the director with hundreds of demands, screaming at meetings that he was betraying the working class. Jesus, what a demagogue! And then, just two days before the annual holiday, he called her in. He was like a wounded bull. You’re worse than Tunsoiu, he shouted at her. . You don’t know Tunsoiu? She was promoted a long time ago to the ministry. An illiterate, a careerist — she used to send people to do her shopping and asked for little gifts, and she took money from anyone. . And that’s what he shouted at her: You’re worse than Tunsoiu! I helped you, saved your family life, promoted you up the ladder, defended you against complaints, sent you abroad, buried that story with the driver. But you turned your office into a filthy hole, a public toilet, where anyone could throw up when they wanted to. The screaming could be heard out in the corridor.”

Irina crouched motionless over her handbag, as if she had not sensed the young ladies sitting down near her. Nor were they aware of her, so taken up were they in discussing the story.

They did not sound unpleasant. The nearer of the two women seemed to have a wave-like, rippling voice. The one on the other side of the bench had a strong, deep timbre, and Irina imagined her in sweater and jeans.

“So the director shouted: ‘Out! Get out, do you hear?’ After that I think he got scared, too. After all, Bretan does represent the Party. That’s what she presents herself as: the Party. You could say it was very courageous to kick her out. But things could turn out badly; we could really be up the creek.”

Irina slowly stood up and walked away. The little sparrows fell quiet. “Are we worse than the rest?” the void was ready to ask her. Yes, she would have answered, and then she would have said no, not knowing which of the two replies was the sadder, and she would have ended up with a Don’t know harsher than either and recalled the impious games of the ant heap: the production of butter, the riveting of boats, the stitching of uniforms, dancing, speeches, hairpins bicycles wigs records ties trains tins bras guns cards, the inventive competition of human futility.

“Ooh-oo, Irina! Long time no see!”

A man tapped her on the shoulder.

Irina was leafing through a guide to medical plants at a street bookstall. Old cures, seeds and herbs.

He was tall, beardless, and pale. Thick lips, large nose, a spreading bald patch, glasses. A cocoa-colored suit, coffee tie, milk-white face.

“But I don’t remember you wearing glasses then,” she mumbled in confusion.

tefan Olaru, top of his year in the engineering faculty, an ambitious man whose hard work and application won him the first place that should have been someone else’s, but that someone else was too careless and disorganized. So tefan, shortened to the diminutive Fnic, had lived first with tiny Laura, for whom lovers still came to blows, then briefly with Nora, and then, surprisingly, had married Salomeea, a lanky maiden who quickly turned out for him a couple of myopic, podgy babies, and whom he then left for a young handball-playing engineer, beautiful, solid, lustful, and after her no one really knew. Fnic the vain — industrious and efficient. Who knows, maybe he had managed to turn his qualities to advantage.

That’s right, they had not met since they were quite a bit younger, and she remembered Tolea and the doctor and Gafton and the lunatic who still visited her dreams.

“Still reading?” the man observed with a bored air. “You haven’t changed at all. Isn’t it supposed to be a sign of unhappiness?”

Irina put down the pamphlet she was holding, let him look at her, looked at him attentively.

“Have you got over unhappiness, then?” she asked in turn.

“Not quite! But I stick to the classics. As for the new lot, I can’t make head or tail of them. Life is simpler — much simpler. It asks and gives. A clear code.”

“Has it given to you? You seem content.”

“There you are, you can use the big words, too! It comes from reading. But what does all that mean — content or discontent? After all, we’re intellectuals, aren’t we? Do you want me to complain that I’ve got an ulcer or that I can’t find any meat or cheese or needles? Or that like everyone I’ve spent the winter in an unheated apartment? No lemons or toilet paper, crowded buses? Is that what you want us to talk about? Well, I’m sorry, I won’t stoop so low. You see, intellectuals still haven’t understood that. .”

Irina smiled. She thought Fnic had forgotten that a moment earlier he had been speaking in the name of that dishonorable category. But Fnic realized at once.

“A contradiction? You think I contradict myself too quickly? Well, there’s no contradiction, you know. The number of educated people has grown enormously here. The peasants and workers have changed, thanks to machines. And what are intellectuals really nowadays? Doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers, political organizers. Don’t laugh: yes, political organizers today also belong to that category. . So all these are intellectuals! And not the characters who jabber away in cafés. It’s an important new class which regulates the activity of society. So what can I say? I do interesting work, things are nice at home, what else — shall I start whining?”

Fnic seemed to move even closer, so as to be more convincing.

“I’ve also done quite a bit of traveling. Five years or so ago they started sending me all over the place. I’ve seen what people are like over there. Sure they’ve got food and cars and contraceptives. But they’re not any happier, you know! Their happiness is in bad shape, believe me! At least we’ve got decency here — and that’s a precious quality! Of course, I’m not saying it’s hunky-dory here; I know why you’re smiling. But we haven’t lost our decency! And what isn’t possible isn’t possible. Life is short. Look, we’ll whirr around for another ten years or so and then phhh! that’s the end of us.”

Irina was fascinated. She looked at him with the clear wide-open eyes of a calf.

“Surliness, hm, yes. Look at those surly ones.” Comrade D Stefan Olaru pointed to a group of people in front of the bookstall, to the street, the world, the universe. “Yes, and you’re pretty surly, too! Why is that? Do you believe in the generations to come? And do you think that what they’re like depends on a clean conscience? Here and now! That’s the only proper code, you know.”

Irina looked at her watch — ah, she’d forgotten, she wasn’t wearing one.

She smiled, blinked rapidly, with new life. She no longer feared Fnic’s questions. “Things are nice at home!” “Intellectuals, political organizers.” “It asks and it gives, here and now, phhh, that’s the end of the generations to come. .”

Fnic baby didn’t care. His code wasn’t new and he wasn’t the only one to invoke it.

But Mr. tefan Olaru suddenly became hurried. He consulted his watch, he had things to do — of course, he was also wearing a watch. For a moment he continued to rock from one foot to the other. “You mean I’ve joined the upstarts?”

She had to, didn’t have to answer — who was to say?

“It’s more interesting, believe me. I don’t like losers, declassed types. It’s much more interesting on this side of the hierarchy! Not just more profitable. More interesting.”

Irina rejoined the flow of the street. Old people with shopping bags, schoolchildren dressed in slickers, policemen in and out of uniform, housewives racing from shop to shop, line to line, urchins concealed in passageways, the hot dusty air of the daily gallop. Bulldozers, cranes, excavators. Everywhere the city was being demolished, everywhere invaded by caterpillar tracks, thudding blows, and the noise of collapse. Thick smoke and black clouds from the tar works, gray waves of dust from the cement trucks. The constant roar, the prefabs and pipes, the designs for collective happiness.

Irina lost herself among the neighborhood blocks, in a cloud of smoke and odors. She was struck by the inscription in front of a brick building. Yes, this was where she had dreamed of finding herself — in front of this door, in front of this inscription. She read and reread the inscription on the gold-plated rectangle. veterinary clinic. She glued her hands to the cold wall and remained with her eyes shut for a long time. Then she opened them again and saw a wide-open door. She went in. Completely deserted. She moved along to the end of the corridor, then came back. She pressed on the handle of the first door to her right and entered a long room. Two rows of large kennels — dogs. She had time to glimpse a doleful setter, cowering, with its chin covered in festering red sores. She turned toward the door and came across the housekeeper. The woman had been watching her all the way from the front door, with her hands on her hips. Fleshily built, wearing a white coat and slippers.

“Have you come to a patient?”

A strange formulation, and it did not seem either ironic or hostile. She was almost an old woman. Large black eyes, white curly hair.

“No. . I. . just to. .” Irina tried to smile as she took a step back.

“Dr. Pompiliu isn’t here; he’s at a congress. He’ll be back on Friday. If you have an appointment for—”

“No. I just wanted to—”

“Well, please come into the office,” the older woman decided. She had already moved on ahead. She seemed to have a limp, or perhaps she just staggered a little as she walked. She went into a third room. The visitor read on the door: DR. VETA APOSTOLESCU, UNIVERSITY TEACHER.

The woman went to the far end of the office, where she bent over and put on a pair of spectacles. So not the housekeeper but. . The academic made a sign for her to enter.

“Have you got a problem?”

What could she invent, what should she ask? About the disabled best friends of disabled man, mute, deaf, deaf-mute?

“How quiet it is here! Are those saintly dogs really mute?”

“No, no. . they’re just drowsy. It’s the drugs. They suffer. And we’ve got thick walls, so you can’t hear any barking. Otherwise—”

The pause grew longer. Fog. Some filament had to be switched on. Anything at all.

“Are there such things as mute dogs?”

The academic straightened her glasses. She looked with suspicion at the uninvited guest who was so keen on talking.

“Why are you interested?”

Irina, confused, took some time to answer, and her very hesitation produced a miracle. The doctor became considerate, ready to help if—

“Tell me, tell me what has happened.”

“Well, I work at — how shall I put it? — I work at the Association. But that’s not really the point. I can’t think how to — A friend of mine. That’s what it’s about — friends. Friends used to speak of such a case. Maybe from birth, or perhaps something had happened—”

“A mute dog, you’re saying?”

“Well, sort of. I think that — or maybe she was wrong, I don’t know. Is it possible?”

The university doctor stared her in the eye. The pause was so long that she seemed to have lost any desire to answer. “There is a type like that. In Australia.”

Irina remained silent. So did the elderly vet. Nothing could be heard from the drugged dogs, but then the building had thick walls.

“The dingo dog,” resumed the academic.

Another long pause, until the veterinary apostle Apostolescu decided to offer a short lecture in popular science. The star Veta looked bored, as if she was reciting a long-familiar text. Veta of all people! Looking down from the moon on a simple-minded little ninny who did not have a clue about the basics. “It’s a mute dog, but it has very good hearing. At first a normal domestic dog, it turned wild and soon multiplied in the huge spaces of Australia. It’s a ferocious beast — a creature of the outback. It doesn’t bark: it doesn’t make a sound as it lies in wait for its prey, in total silence.” Veta was sternly and distrustfully watching her audience, not at all convinced that it was worth the trouble. But she seemed unable to resist the pleasure of giving instruction.

“Such ferocity isn’t found even among wolves. It kills even if it is sated. Two dogs can kill a thousand sheep in one night. A thousand! Without making a racket. It doesn’t bark. It lies in wait, attacks and kills without making a noise. It suffers in silence and dies in silence.”

So there were cases of mute dogs, then — perhaps because of specially hostile circumstances? At certain times and places, things might happen to man’s best friend which— Could the friendly doggie carry a disease or condition which— But Irina did not want to keep adding to the possibilities, especially as Veta was calmly continuing with the lecture.

“Research is being carried out on the dingo in special reservations. If the dog is removed at birth from its habitat and placed under different conditions, it develops normally without any murderous tendencies. I mean, more or less normally. It becomes an extremely submissive dog. Yes, they can be tamed if they are taken from the wild. They display a mute, submissive tameness. Quite shattering!”

Oh yes, I see, mumbled the visitor, yes, of course; Irina went on nodding in accompaniment, yes, yes, the old woman confirmed, yes yes, when she had already begun to slide back along the corridor toward the door, to the repetitive stuttering refrain that matched the rhythm of her steps.

She could hear the old woman’s spectacles dropping, probably onto the glass surface of her desk. It was a glassy gloomy sound, yes, a silver xylophone, and suspicious little whimpers and the harsh sound of spectacles on desk glass. Thinned kettledrums, clink clank, the spectacles, the knife, the silvery night breeze: yes, Irina walked away from the brick cube enveloped by the soft perfumed waves of darkness, but it was still daylight, powerful and aggressive, with thousands of ravenously open mouths and holes.

At some point she reached the city center. A tram rattled into the stop on Rosetti Boulevard. The step was too high and her dress too tight. In irritation she gave a little push on her leather handbag, straining and clinging to the bar, and she was up.

The tram was nearly empty, just a few passengers. In front, a disheveled, scabby-cheeked young man was reading a magazine, all the time making agitated movements with his legs. She put her hand to her throat, closed her eyes as in a dizzy faint, and wiped the sweat from her cold brow. When she opened her eyes again, the young man had vanished. Probably he had got off, although the crumpled magazine was still lying on the seat in front. Without realizing, she picked it up automatically with a rapid, absurd movement of her hand. Her eyes met the sensational headline: the first few sentences lashed out at her and immediately vanished; all she could see were a few traces. As if the tracer fire had left behind only discontinuous signs, which still pulsated like a red lightbulb. “In the morning the female tenant of the apartment. . Climbing the balcony, the windows. . broke into the house, tied the woman up, pulled out the telephone. . Under the balcony they lit a bonfire. . The tenant, her cats, fists, fighting. . The broken windows, the fire. . the bound woman, her burned cats. .” The words became real as soon as she spoke them to herself.

Words — their sharp, vigorous presence. Sunday, March 8, 9:30 a.m., the attack on the apartment in such-and-such street, the fire, the roughing up of the cats and the pensioner. A moment in the life of the magazine, in the life of the world. Was it just a snapshot from the onslaught of spring, unchained force attacking a chained object nearby? A certain meeting on a certain day in a certain tram car, just as the new trance, spring, was bursting with excretions and aromas.

She managed with difficulty to remove her hand from the back of the seat. She got off at the next stop and made her way, shivering, on foot to Dr. Marga’s. An hour of rambling talk, as between friends. That was how people discussed with Marga, perhaps because in the end his profession was also friendship, nothing else. She left feeling tired, relieved, secluded from the world.

A gray film floated over the day’s agony. Before her opened the welcoming seas of the night, which gives us the forgiveness we have been seeking, and gives us back our selves. A fine dust settled on her eyes and lips. Suddenly that shudder, that shaking of her shoulders, as if the crust that had kept growing in the course of the day were now breaking up with a thin, silvery sound.

She really did shake, as if being set free. Her shoulders jerked from the currents of chill night air. She crossed her arms in an effort to gather strength for the prancing void of the night, for its extremity of illumination and blindness.

Finding herself right in the opening of a metro station, she went down the steps. A concrete grotto with a neutral geometric plan. The red signal came on. The train glided smoothly into the station; its doors drew open.

What a day, ooh, what a day!

But she did manage to find her way to the refuge.

Gradually she shook off the weight of the strange day as if extricating herself from a suit of armor. Recovering the right to become alive with a secret dimension of your own. In other words, real— which is to say alive, again alive. Oh, joyful pain of the great and good night, give us back to ourselves.