The Black Envelope

~ ~ ~

THIS TIME DOMINIC WAS determined to put little Marga in his place: I don’t need your Irina! Stop playing the pimp: I’ve lost the patience for cuddling, unless you’re prepared to accept other motives as well! The whole thing makes me puke, Doctor. I’ve had all I can take of your charitable tricks.

In the rear of the confessional was always Marga the professional, with his exercises in casuistry and therapy and ergo-psychotherapy: subterfuges, exotic spices! Nonsense, Father Marga. I’m the adolescent of long ago, immature and incurable, the hesitancy and the excess, trembling and secrecy. The intensity, Doctor, the intensity! Hypnosis, vertigo, on the bicycle saddle, on the back of the fairy-tale charger.

Whistling sorrows and face-pulling and bombshells, that’s our answer! He will fling the truth in the face of the little Hippocrates, with all his stinking little secrets. Without any shame he’ll do it, good and proper. Let Goody-Goody cover his ears and eyes; let him be struck dumb; let him learn a lesson for once.

The moment had come. Dominic was finally determined to bare himself before the friend of the family, who thought he was his friend as well. Determined, in front of the consulting-room door. Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov was in front of the cabinet of mystification, determined to speak. He had come straight to the hospital, straight to the consulting room. To clear everything up at last: the removal from teaching, how he had escaped and what had followed, his youth, the schoolboy cyclist, the major’s wife, the Model Association and the heroic photographer Tavi, the Hotel Tranzit informers, Argentina, absolutely everything. He had hurried there so as not to have time to change his mind. He was determined and prepared: he was in front of the door.

He had absentmindedly passed by those who were anxiously sitting on a bench in the waiting room. Quick: avoid any questions, avoid the danger of being lynched for jumping the queue. He also passed assistant Ortansa, who kept shouting: Where’s your card, sir, who do you want to see, wait your turn, the doctor’s busy, very busy, shouted little Mrs. Teodosiu, there are no urgent consultations, everyone waits his turn, no exceptions, that’s how it is in a hospital, as in death, no exceptions; he also passed the madwoman, on and on. He had already pushed the door handle: he did not look left right or behind, he went in, yes, he went in.

In the consulting room was a sturdy gentleman in a white smock. The shorn head of an adult recruit.

“What do you want?”

“I’m looking for Dr. Marga.”

The barracks-room head is wedged in a cup of coffee. His lips noisily slurp once, twice, nine times. He finally looks up again.

“Who did you say you was looking for?”

The visitor, unsure whether to reply in the same bumbling way, mentally counts the buttons on the starched white smock.

“Who was me looking for? For Gerbert. Saint Gerbert. I’m looking for Saint Gerbert of Aurillac. Pope Sylvester. Or Otto. Emperor Otto III.”

The boxer raised his eyebrows, surprised but not all that surprised. He was used to anything. So he smiled, no more and no less.

“In a moment. He’s just coming.”

He pointed to a second cup of coffee, still full, at the other end of the table. The cup was steaming: that is, Saint Gerbert Marga was steaming and would soon appear from the magic cup, that was what the cranky doctor meant to say, fed up with the eccentricities of his patients. The coffee awaited the absent one, so Papa Goody-Goody would soon be back among us. The boxer had even vaguely gestured toward the chair by the door. Perhaps he was, perhaps he wasn’t inviting the patient to take a seat. Dominic remained standing by the door for the eternity of a quarter of an hour. He lost the desire to chatter, to quarrel, to do anything. He was about to leave when Marga appeared. Plump and jolly, excitedly fluttering the tails of his smock. A pale face, however, made shadowy by a thin beard that continued his sideboards in a kind of black jaw bandage. He had blown into the room without noticing anybody. He sat down, took the cup, sipped from it, put it back in its place.

“Someone has been waiting for you, as you can see,” muttered the tenor from behind the newspaper he was reading.

“You look like a romantic poet,” Tolea attacked. “Like the Decembrists on the eve of arrest, or B˘alcescu in Palermo. Like Pushkin before the duel.”

Marga turned his glasses and his sound eye toward the door.

“Oh, what a surprise! To find you here. You’ve caught me at rather a— Sit down, Tolea. Commissions and committees, what can I do? We’ll be through soon: there’s not much left.”

He stood up and brought the chair from the door next to his own.

“Let me introduce you. Florin, this is an old friend, Professor Vancea. My colleague, Dr. Florin Dinu.”

Dr. Florin Dinu nodded and the professor sat down.

“Yes, that’s right, make yourself comfortable. You’ll be able to see us going about our business. Then I’ll be free for a chat. It won’t last long. We’re nearly finished, aren’t we, Florin?”

Florin agreed with a bow of the head. Their dumpy assistant appeared, with the voice and mouth of an angel.

“Did you enjoy the coffee, Doctor? Sweet and strong, as you like it. There’s none around anywhere, you know. Not even on the black market; not even if you pay a month’s wages for a kilo. What a blessing these patients are, these poor wretches, because they dig it up from under the ground, just so they can offer some to the doctor.”

“Yes, yes, thank you, Ortansa. Be a dear and bring us another chair. Let me introduce a friend of mine, Professor Vancea. My assistant, Ortansa Teodosiu.”

The dear went out, returned with a chair from the lobby, and put it by the door where the previous one had been.

“Show in Dumitrache Grigore.”

Ortansa left and a short, stocky man came in. Big sweaty face, grayish curly hair. He sat on the chair obediently, with his hands on his knees.

“So, you’ve appealed against the disability grading we put you under. Instead of category three you are asking to be one — or even zero.”

Marga looked sideways at Dr. Florin, who handed him a thick file.

“Mmm, yes, here are the results of the tests: EKG, X-rays. So, apart from the little bats in the belfry, you’ve got an ulcer, pain in your kidneys, and spleen. Yes, I see. I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do. Really.”

The sick man looked humbly at the court, at the spy without a smock. He had made a snap decision. The stranger was the most important person there. Some inspector, or some kind of supervisor — one of those with power.

He stood up and moved toward Tolea. Then he undid the buttons on his fly and waist, until he was left in large underpants with a thick wide bandage as a belt. He untied the bandage and tried to gain Tolea’s attention.

“They operated on me two months ago. But it’s started running again. Or opening, or tearing open, or however you’d describe it.”

“Yes, well — I can’t do anything for you,” Marga interrupted. “We put you in category two, but the inspectors came and said your diagnosis only fits into category three. That’s it. There’s nothing we can do.”

“I’m an engine driver, a driver’s companion. Moving around for ten, sometimes fourteen hours a day. I can’t go on. But at our yard they won’t agree to anything shorter,” the patient went on explaining to Inspector Tolea.

“Well then, let’s put here: Must not perform lengthy physical effort or travel out in the field. Is that okay?” Marga brightened up.

“They wouldn’t take me back at my old job after I got ill. Then you reclassed me from two or three, and I had to get back in somewhere. I asked my brother-in-law to find me something. But it’s hard with the illness, very hard. I’ve still got two years to go before I retire.”

“Only the Institute for Manpower Recovery could authorize us to put you back in category two. Go and see them. Give it a try. Look, I’ll give you a letter of recommendation. You’ll find them there until three o’clock.”

Marga wrote something on a sheet of paper. The patient did up his trousers and took the letter.

“Next. B˘adulescu Coman.”

A wan, shrunken old man. White hair parted down the middle, as in photos from the beginning of the century.

“How old are you?”

“Fifty-three.”

He looked eighty: it was only just possible to make out his whispered words. He had perched on the edge of the chair and was looking at the floor.

“Mmm, yes. Tuberculosis, hepatitis,” murmured Marga. “Bad EKG, signs of deterioration. How much do you weigh and how tall are you?”

“Forty-four kilos. One meter sixty-six,” he whispered sluggishly.

“What work did you do?”

“Hairdresser.”

“Okay. Wait outside.”

The old man left the room holding on to the wall. Marga was hopping with irritation in his chair.

“What are we going to do with this poor wretch? He’s completely washed out. Can hardly stand on his feet.”

“Well, a hairdresser — it’s not quite so bad. He might—” put in Marga’s colleague, as he lit a long, gold-colored cigarette.

“What might he do, Florin? Didn’t you see? He smells of death. We’ll put him in category two and send him for a neurological examination. Do you agree?”

“I agree” came the smoke from Dr. Florin.

“Show in Costache Viorica,” little Marga read out from his files.

Silence. Marga raised his head: his glasses turned to left and right.

“Ah, I forgot. Ortansa isn’t here.”

Dominic made as if to get up and play the usher, but Marga beat him to it. Before he could reach the door, however, it noisily banged against the wall. The room was invaded by a disheveled, elegant, garishly painted giant of a woman. She was waving about in a threatening manner her big black shiny handbag.

“What do you intend doing about my case? Another eight years of waiting? Eight years of chasing from one office to the next? Do you think I’m going to put up with another eight years? Is that really what you think, you bunch of eunuchs? More of the abuse you subject me to — more of your lies, disrespect, and ill breeding, you whoremongers? How much longer, you pimps, tell me how much longer.”

The thick, powerful voice had still not peaked.

“What’s your name?” ventured Marga dryly, leaning across the table to pull Florin’s golden pack toward him. He took out a cigarette and lit it with a long mauve lighter that he had whipped from a pocket in his smock. Florin remained bent over the tailor’s index card.

“Lawyer Olga Orleanu Buz˘au! I want a clear answer. None of your cock-and-bull stories. I’m not one of those you sweep up off the streets. I won’t lick your paws, and not your cock either, I’m telling you. A clear answer. What am I supposed to do? That’s all I want: to be given the right information. Where to go, who to ask.”

“We don’t have your file here. You’ll have to inquire at the office, madam,” the chivalrous Dr. Florin Dinu chimed in melodiously.

“What office? What are you talking about? For eight years you’ve been chasing me from one office to another. So he can have time for whores. Yes, he’s been up to all kinds of debauchery, and you haven’t done a thing. I picked him up off the streets and gave him the name of my ancestors, a name as old as our beloved fatherland. A name no one can touch! And lawyer Demostene Orleanu Buz˘au is off cruising around all the sewers. His head goes fuzzy as soon as he sees a hole — that’s Screwy Spunky Buz˘au, I’m telling you. And you haven’t done a thing. I’ll report you to the Secretary General of the Party, you bunch of saboteurs. How right the Comrade was to ban abortion and divorce and venereal diseases. All you think about is fucking, you gang of cripples; you couldn’t give a shit about our good hardworking people. You’ve ruined my personality, that’s what you’ve done. You male-chauvinist degenerates! You’ve soiled me and degraded me, for eight long years. I’ll tell the Secretary General of the Party, you’ll see! So you’ll have to account for your anti-socialist morality and justice. I’ll tell our Party and state authorities. So they’ll declare a general disaster, you bunch of microbes! You won’t get away with it, I’m telling you. I’ll go to the highest court in the land.”

“Get out! Out!” screamed little Marga, leaping up together with his chair.

Somehow or other angel Ortansa had appeared, and she gently but firmly pushed the madwoman toward the door.

A moment of silence. Calm Florin muttered into his cigarette end: Well now. .

“You want to have a dialogue with that one, do you, Florin? To get involved in all that?” said Goody-Goody as he mopped the perspiration from his forehead and his steamy glasses. “She’s a wellknown paranoiac. Every two or three weeks she goes for a stroll around town and drops in on us to play that number. Do you want to start telling her about files and offices?”

Nurse Ortansa Teodosiu went out. The next candidate was already standing in the door: Costache Viorica. Big eyes, elongated face, young and pale, hair going white at the temples.

“You are appealing against category three. But the diagnosis doesn’t allow for anything else. What work do you do?”

“Technical drawing.”

“It’s not the hardest of jobs.”

“I get tired quickly. I can’t concentrate.”

“The tests don’t show any change since you were admitted last.”

“I think they show—”

Her face narrowed, her eyes were burning.

“What you think or don’t think is beside the point. We’ll keep you in category three and send you to the institute for an expert’s report.”

Again he wrote a recommendation on a sheet of paper from his prescription pad. The woman went out, furiously slamming the door.

“Shall we have a break? Maybe you’d like a coffee, Tolea? No? Well then, let’s see Vivi, Vivi Ionel.”

A neatly dressed boy. Fearfully and listlessly swinging his hands about. A broad happy smile: perfect set of teeth. Behind him a supple, dark-haired woman with wrinkles on her face. Her soft, rarefied voice: “It’s not possible anymore without someone to look after him. He’s twenty-eight and needs to be watched all the time. I can’t leave him alone for five minutes.”

“Yes, it’s probably something for the neurology department. We’ll give him another appointment for Friday at neurology. Dr. Antoniu should also be there. Make a note of that, Florin. Dr. Antoniu, the neurologist, should be informed for Friday.”

“Been, been Dr. Antoniu!” simpered the innocent. “Ha ha, I been Antoniu. Dr. Antoniu, he say forward. Forward, forward, pioneers, say Antoniu.” The child merrily skipped. Standing behind the beanstalk, the woman made signs so that they wouldn’t take any notice.

“What work have you done, my boy?”

“Ha ha, waiter, Doctor.”

“Bravo, Ionel, well done. So come on Friday. Vivi Ionel is coming back on Friday for a consultation. Show in Vl˘adescu Drago.”

The door opens, shuts. Vl˘adescu Drago comes in: Gulliver’s niece. Enormous risen face, round and damp. Big red mouth, bulging eyes. Rope-like hair tied in a loop. Her skirt up over her belly, baring the solid pillars of her swollen white legs. Sandals, a huge sole. Her foot a body to itself, independent.

“You are?”

“I’m here for my husband, Vl˘adescu Drago.”

Dr. Marga looked for and found Vl˘adescu Drago’s file, plunged into reading it, lifted his glasses from the papers, examined the massive shape in front of him, read some more, smiled, and finally delivered his conclusions.

“Pretty much opposites. You’re poles apart, I understand. You and your husband, I mean—”

Mrs. Vl˘adescu blushed and silently dropped her eyes. She was holding a roll in her right fist.

“You didn’t have patience. You went to the kiosk on the corner and bought yourself a roll.”

“Er, I know I shouldn’t. With these troubles — they take away your appetite. It was just for something to nibble. It’s true: we can’t sit still.”

“What was your husband’s job?”

“A locksmith.”

“And how old is he?”

“Forty-six.”

“And what do you do?”

“I’m a seamstress.”

“Okay, you can leave. The decision will be mailed to you at home. He should stay calm, take the tablets, and stop starving himself. Make sure you feed him, even forcibly. You’ll be sent the decision. He should stay calm. He’ll be informed within a week.”

“Thank you, Doctor. I wish you good health. May God look after you, Doctor!”

Suddenly she was leaning over the table. Madam Gulliver completely blocked the view of Goody-Goody: all that could be heard was some murmuring and frightened whispers. “Be serious, madam, let go of me. Take your envelope. Don’t try any of those stunts. Take your money, madam, or you’ll get into big trouble. You’ll really be in for it, I’m telling you.”

The woman of the snows took fright and vanished into thin air, envelope and all.

Florin laughed, Marga laughed, Dominic waited. Florin tidied the papers, Marga signed, Florin Dinu signed, Ortansa Teodosiu collected the cups and ashtrays. Kiss kiss, Florin, kiss kiss, Ortansa, Florin the gentleman bows, Ortansa the lady spins on her toes. Right, now we’re alone: between us only the couch, which has become a chair, the tool of psychiatry.

“Did you like the carnival?”

“No comment.”

“What made you come here, to the hospital? It must be something urgent. Has something happened? What’s up?”

“Ah, no — nothing.”

The doctor removed his glasses, passed his hand over his right eye, the sound one, then over his stitched-in eye, and then across his forehead. He picked the smoky glasses up again. He seemed weary.

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

“Like hell! Certificate, prescription, moonshine.”

A long pause followed. Dominic put his delicate hands on the table, beside Dr. Marga’s plump little hands with their nails trimmed at a manicurist’s salon. Listen to this: You come here with the idea of confessing! You lose interest if you ever had any. Listen to him: certificate, prescription, admission. And how determined he had been when he came. Just like a child. He held his palms up, to examine his intricate lines of fate. He looked at his palms, his fortune, for a long time.

“I’ve dreamed of the letter,” the patient said at some point.

“What letter?”

“The letter.”

“Which one? Claudiu’s letter?”

Dr. Marga adjusted his glasses on his nose and fidgeted about in his chair.

“What letter?”

“What do you mean? Weren’t we talking about a letter?”

“One enchanted evening, long ago, as you know. A threatening letter. To my old man, to Papa.”

The doctor gestured his distaste. So there was to be no consultation. Yes, that was what apeman Tolea wanted: entertainment and nonsense. So be it.

“Papa. So he threatens the old man but makes a beeline for the girl. The bachelor, nameless, intoxicated with love, had eyes only for my sister. The sender, the bachelor copies anyone’s handwriting, so long as he’s not caught. To undermine Papa’s morals, do you understand? So, the fate of beautiful Sonia. He copies the handwriting of illiterates, of criminals with the Easter torch, the pogrom torch. You know: those with shouts and a belt and a cross and a revolver and green shirts like the grass of hell. He copies nothing else, you can bet. Forgery. To get his foot in the door. Or perhaps—”

“I don’t understand.”

“One evening, around nine-thirty, the maid enters the room and hands over a little letter. Who was the little letter from?”

“Who from?” squeaked Marga.

“You’ll soon see. To Papa. To my father. We’ll do this and that to you. The Easter torch, the Lord’s revenge on those who crucified him. So that he’ll hand over the business, the daughter — everything. Give everything up. Otherwise, bash! He imitated that bunch perfectly: maybe he was even one of them. You bet it was them. You know who I mean, in columns and belts. A forgery. To get a foot in the door, the rhinoceros. Or perhaps, you understand, bash! You should see the imitation, see the threat. Oh yes, you bet, nothing else! Anonymous, as if everyone had signed. The mourning envelope, with that emblem, you know. The addressee: Father. Who afterward — you know.”

The doctor smiled: he was exhausted. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, gave up any thought of it, wanted to repeat that he was tired, but gave that up, too. So teenage Tolea moved back in for the attack.

“Let’s bring in the former bachelor, dead or alive. That’s what the gentleman in Buenos Aires wants. Crime, forgery, nightmares, revenge — he wants all of that. The full cast, with an honorarium guaranteed. He wants the truth. I want the truth and I’m afraid of the truth, and I don’t know if I really want it.”

“What truth?”

“What I sniffed out a long time ago.”

“Well? What letter, what bachelor?”

“We all remember the suspect. The chatterlogue. The nihilist. The bachelor. The loverboy. Twisted, stuttering, like anyone in love. Because he was head over heels. And he felt he was losing that accursed beauty of the accursed people. That other one had come to take her away. And then bang! — the last attempt. He copied all those slogans from their filthy green newspapers. Was it courage? An anonymous letter, yes, but we all sign, so it’s anonymous. He put that head in three parts instead of a signature.”

“What head? What three parts?”

“The three-headed emblem! That’s what gave him away, in fact. But Father didn’t tell anyone. Maybe he wasn’t even sure. Everything looked too much alike, and he was too afraid after a certain point. He, the philosopher, based himself on corruption. That’s why he got involved in wine, to have money that would be of help in hard times. Because the barbarians were coming: he knew the hysterias of history and of this part of the world. And where there’s no morality, not even corruption can always solve things. A society without principles! That’s what Papa was afraid of: that in madness not even corruption would help any longer. Take our young man— that bachelor. Who would have expected it? Only he had heard Father talking about Macrobius, Giordano, the three-headed emblem. But you know Father.”

“Come on, let’s go. End of joke.”

“Joke, you say. What am I? A child? This is called dreaming, not joking.”

“Enough, enough! Let’s go and eat: it’s late. Jeny has cooked a wonderful meal.”

The doctor stood up: he no longer heard the clown. Jeny had cooked something wonderful. No further delay was allowed.

“You’d do better to explain that business with the three-headed emblem. I don’t understand.”

“Is that all you don’t understand, old man? Well, think of those paintings of yours. Holbein, Vermeer, Titian.”

“On my wall? Are you mad? Titian?”

“That would have crowned it. They’d have arrested you and taken them away, in the name of the exemplary people thirsty for exemplary art. But the national masters — Pallady, Iser, Petracu— they’re not exactly nothing. And a Brauner and a Pascin, if I’m not mistaken.”

“What about the emblem? What’s the connection?”

“The Egyptians, the Renaissance, Europe. The three-headed emblem. Triple superimposition: the emblem of prudence. That, I think, is what you talked to my father about when you were young. And he listened, the imprudent fool.”

“Me? You think I gave lessons to the old philosopher Marcus? I was just a kid. I wouldn’t have talked to him about something I didn’t even know.”

“No. Nor would there have been any point. Father was no great lover of art. It was a kind of desert for him. And he wasn’t mad keen on deserts.”

“So you see— What’s all this larking around? You don’t know what to cook up next to keep yourself amused, to fend off the boredom.”

“You’re right, Doctor. In fact, I came for another reason.”

“Aha. So you did come for a reason.”

“Yes. I couldn’t say straight out or it would have irritated you. I came to ask you a question and to offer you a consultation.”

“People ask me for a consultation, they don’t offer one. But what’s the question?”

“Why don’t we all go to prison? That is the question. Why don’t we have the courage? Explain to me, Goody-Goody, Mr. Psychoanalyst, why we don’t all of us suddenly decide to go to prison?”

“Huh! And where are we now?”

“Ah, so we’re already in prison, eh? Is that what you’re saying? Well, in that case the question has even more point. If we’re in prison anyway, what would be the difference?”

“There would be a difference. Jeny wouldn’t be able to cook those delicious things of hers. That’s just one example. I wouldn’t have those pleasures, nor would I be able to look after her, and you wouldn’t be able to play the detective. We don’t all have the same interests simultaneously. Nor the same pleasures. Collective suicides are very rare indeed, my boy.”

“Whom do you psychiatrists consult? Your stupid colleagues? Listen, I’ll offer you my fantasy. Or twaddle. Whatever you want to call it. Without charge.”

“Okay, I’ve made a note of that. At the first dead-end I’ll ask for you. For the moment I’m functioning satisfactorily.”

“There are enormous advantages. When the imagination is probing the forbidden zone, the protective perimeter, the point of fissure—”

“Okay. Explain it to me over dinner.”

“Crazy fantasy. And mine might tend toward such a performance; it may succeed where your medical torpor doesn’t even make the effort!”

“I agree,” sighed Dr. Marga. “But you actually came for something quite different from these speeches. Even an official psychiatrist like me can understand that much.”

“Maybe. But I don’t feel like it any longer. C’est fini! Not only a medical bureaucrat but even a thoughtless friend can grasp that. If he’s not too hungry or greedy.”

“Or too conscientious. Jeny is my patient. When the doctor’s late for dinner, she panics and has a nasty attack. But for you, my dear boy, a special favor — one last quarter of an hour,” and he looked at his watch.

“Goo-ood. Now, sir, what kind of country is ours?”

“Developing.”

“What do you understand by that?”

“You bore me, Tolea. Surely you read the papers. Output per capita, productivity, national income, God knows.”

“Yes, all that. And? Well, let’s look at it in a different way. What about before the war, or during the war? Were we also developing then?”

“On the eve.”

“Goo-ood. It’s economics, then, just that filthy economics. Did you know that in the forty years since the war our Latin auntie, France, has made an economic leap forward as great as that in the whole period from Louis XIV to the Second World War?”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I’ll bring you the proof. Goo-ood. But what has France given the world in these forty years? Nothing. A few trifles. Substitutes. And what France gave in the period from Louis XIV to the Second World War we all know.”

“It would have given now, too, don’t you worry. But things were different in those days. Elites, great minds, extraordinary personalities.”

“And now? Why don’t we have extraordinary elites now? But that’s not the point.”

“Bravo! Just as well we’re getting to the point. Seven minutes have passed.”

Dr. Marga got up from his chair, took off his smock, and put it on the peg. He removed his jacket from the hanger and slipped into it. Then he came back and sat down facing the professor. In the position of a listener in a hurry. Tolea was not in a hurry.

“Do you remember the bachelor?”

“There you go again.”

“Yes, the loverboy, the fool. Who wasn’t at all dumb and wasn’t going to be. But he was silent. I called him a fool. Who knows everything. He read, wrote, drew. You’re not going to tell me he wasn’t gifted. He was, the bastard. Even afterward he was never a simpleton. In the early postwar years he was a dogs’ photographer. Maybe you didn’t know. You see, you’re finding a lot out from me today. You should have accepted the consultation: you’d have had some instructive surprises. Not any old photographer wants to take pictures of dogs. Did you know that? You need patience and skill. Like with children, in fact. Haven’t you noticed how couples without children give birth to little curs? They adopt them, I mean. So the stutterer did that, too; the dog earned good money. Seven yellow folders with superb pictures of dogs. All breeds, all political convictions, all social classes, all erotic possibilities. Why are dogs photographed? Is that what you want to know? Well, as a souvenir — the sweet things. And to establish their breed. So many arguable cases, oho! There’s terrible racism among dogs, Doctor. You should see their style of apartheid. But let’s get back to the point. In his introverted youth, the dear boy was capable of holding forth about anything, agreed? He was capable, say, of talking about the iconography of the three-headed monster. About Poussin, Titian, the others, all the others; he was — tell me, eh?”

“I don’t know. Leave me alone. I’m going anyway. You’re having a bad day, Tolea. It’s bad taste, Tolea. Bad taste, believe me.”

“I believe you, don’t worry. Good taste is what all those ladies have who strut around with their noses in the air. But the dear old boy really was capable of tackling any subject — that’s what I mean. That evening Father received a letter. You know which evening I’m referring to. You knew my people well. Who did Marcu Vancea like most?”

“Your mother.”

“Okay, but we’re not talking about that side of things.”

“You probably.”

“Well, I think it was Sonia. And Mircea Claudiu didn’t get a look in. An ice block, a calculating machine: he belonged to a different species. I’m the only one who knows about the threatening letter. Does that prove that Daddy loved me most? Maybe, if you say so. Is it really likely that I was the only one who knew about the letter? Yes, it is, you must confess. Let’s say it had an emblem above the text. I was a greenhorn, I admit; I had no way of knowing what it meant. A three-headed image, let’s say. Would that have been impossible? No. A man’s head in those three tenses of the verb? Well, then—”

“What is all this? You’re making things up and it’s not funny. Listen, Tolea, Jeny and the stroganoff are waiting for me.”

“You don’t understand a thing! You’ll only understand if you’re forced to. Then you’ll ask me for a consultation, Burschy. I’ll give you one, Burschy, I will.”

Marga went pale. No one knew about that nickname from his teenage years. He hadn’t heard it himself for years. He turned gaping from the door, but Tolea appeared not to notice.

“What do you understand by prudence, Goody-Goody? Is it nothing other than the triple superimposition, which is a mark of submission? Past, present, and future urging you to be cautious? That is, to be wise? Is this wisdom? Praesens prudenter agit? The allegory of prudence? Memory — that is, the past and intelligence, understanding of the present — leading to this long rigmarole? But what of the project? The presentiment, the future, futura, as the ancients used to say? I’m speaking to a doctor, listen to me! Listen to me, Doctor. You can’t escape these truths!”

They were on the long drive that led up to the hospital gates. The hour of repose: the doctors had left, the patients were resting, the drive was deserted. The buffoon was waving his hands, nodding his bald head, and stamping his hooves to make his words seem more convincing. The fat little doctor was cleaning his glasses, finding it difficult to keep up with the rascal’s nervous steps.

“The lion in the middle: the fierce, dominating present. On the right the cringing dog: the hypocritical smirk of the future, which wants to be liked by everyone, benevolente, benedictinus. On the left the wolf: the past devoured, devouring. The three-headed monster, I tell you, as the Egyptians of the desert and the Nile proposed it! It was the Renaissance, the European Renaissance, yes, our European Renaissance which introduced the snake. Snake, spiral, time. Corpus serpentinum—the three-headed monster acquired a snake’s body. It’s no longer the horror made to scare, no, no. The monster recovers the dimension of reality, at the feet of man. At the feet of man, Goody-Goody! Because the true divinity is yourself, Goody-Goody, vulnerable homo, brought to the center of the sequence, in the image of Apollo. That’s how our Renaissance saw it. Ours, Hippocrates! The European Mediterranean put you, Apollo, at the center of the sequence. You’re Apollo, that’s what you are, Goody-Goody! At your feet the monster recovers its true dimension.”

Dominic did not calm down even in the taxi. The doctor sat in front, beside the swarthy young driver. Tolea was in the back, roaring away.

“Apollo or Christ: it doesn’t matter. We’ve always found ourselves between beauty and creed, knowledge and belief. Athens and Jerusalem, well— Only then was a move made away from that tangled and naïve and exaggerated representation. So don’t forget: those great painters of yours, obsessed with simplifying this image, were Europeans. Titian, Holbein — or the other, Pussy, as he was called, Poussin. Europeans, I tell you. Yes, the barbarians didn’t use the human emblem. They aimed to be children of the monster. Fascinated with the anthropomorphic, coded, hooked, inaccessible image. The superman. Do you remember? The new man of the new times, the songs, the model, the Model Association, the uniforms, the howls, the promises. The rhythm, Herr Doktor, the rhythm. The two-headed three-headed beast, comrades, pam pam, with pomp and triumph, what a fine kettle of fish, tra-la-la.”

The driver’s eyes goggled and his ears dilated. These days you never know whom you’ve got in your taxi; you have to be very careful, all eyes and ears. The cab braked slowly, elegantly, in front of the villa. After such a speech, Mitic˘a will show the gentlemen what the Bucharest drivers’ art really means.

The doctor took out his wallet, but Tolea slapped him protectively on the back.

“Drop it, old boy. I’m paying.”

“Be serious, Professor! You might say it was a consultation. An art lecture — or maybe it was philosophy. I think our friend at the wheel also enjoyed himself.”

“Leave Mr. Bender out of this. I said I’m paying and I will. Otherwise it’s not over: we’ll keep going.”

“What? Aren’t you staying to eat? I would like that very much. Madam Jeny would be delighted. You’re her soft spot.”

“Thanks, but I’m already tied up. I can’t even have a proper argument at your dinner table. The food’s too good: it makes you feel weak and heavy — and bloated, to be quite honest.”

Tolea snatched the money from the driver’s fingers and gave it back to the doctor, who was just getting out of the car with all his baggage: raincoat, shopping bag, briefcase, umbrella.

The professor looked at his watch. “I’m sorry, I really can’t. I’ve got to be back at home. A lady is waiting for me. You’ll give way to that argument, from what I know of you.”

“I will, and I won’t even question it. But it’s a pity. Okay, another time. Shall we say Friday? Call in the evening, or pick me up from the hospital. I see you know the address.”

Tolea bent toward the driver. “To the Hotel Tranzit! You know where? On the Splai—”

The taxi turned around, took the first left back onto the boulevard, did a complete circle of Pache Park, and headed back.

“Ah, so you’re not from Bucharest. You’re staying at the hotel. Just passing through, are you?”

“Well, sure. Just passing through. The great passage. That’s what we’re all doing, my friend. But you’re right, I am from the provinces — of course. Do people in Bucharest really have time to debate such important matters? They don’t seem to: they’re always in a hurry, always showing off! It’s all froth. They haven’t even got time to open a book. Yes, I’m a pure-blooded provincial, like my friends Ilf and Petrov, the doughnut sellers.”

The driver seemed never to have heard the names before, but nothing surprised him after the previous speech. His Bucharest pride would not let him pass it by, however.

“Come on, sir, don’t be that hard on us. I’ve met people here who—”

“Just a glossy surface, I can tell you! All they learn is chit-chat, Mitic˘a. Pinching words from here and there and giving them some spit and polish. But the provinces! That’s where you’ll find real greatness, in the smoldering boredom of provincial life. That’s where the truth is, you know, Mr. Bender. Have you recently been in the main town of any county up in the mountains?”

The driver’s hands tensed on the steering wheel: he managed to overtake the huge dump truck in front and shouted out a curse for the fun of it.

“Or why not try Mizil, for example. Just spend a hundred minutes in Mizil and you’ll understand what mythology is. Homer? A nobody — nothing in him at all. Niente. So, how much? What do I give you, Mr. Bender, eh?”

Tolea leaned a long way toward the meter. The driver, taken aback by the unusual tip, no longer tried to explain anything, happy now with the provincial’s babbling. The dry sound of the slamming door could be heard. Tolea jumped down crazily, youthfully, with his bag on his shoulder, and walked toward the Hotel Tranzit entrance.