The Black Envelope

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CHEST OUT! HEAD UP, seeming not to notice the other heads around. The star of the street, towering over it with no thought for the audience. Red scarf, under the open collar of a white shirt. Among signs and shop windows, the day-colored comet: the master pedestrian, available cheat. The roles all payable to bearer, already prepared. The tittle-tattle, the backbiting, the jokes, the pedantic quotations, the banter. Soft, gentle trampling underfoot, ever so carefully. Thick-soled shoes, plush, the kind in which you sink pleasantly and yet also have a firm grip. The duck’s foot settles elastically over its full width, lazily, unhurriedly curves and raises itself, shuffle-shuffle, one step after another.

Misshapen, tottering like a duck. Free; hurrah, how free I am! What do I care, na na na! Never ever too busy, mon cher. Free, m’sieur, because we don’t let ourselves be eaten up. Huh, we’ve a real raw deal ahead of us, there’s no escape: but it doesn’t bother us. Na na na, boredom pirouettes tantrums, no? Call me, ciao, stuff them, ciao, see you soon, anytime, sure sure anytime notime, of course.

But the eye is watching. Watery, without color. Suddenly green gray blue. The lashes blink fast fast. One frame, then another, at great speed. He sees them, oho! he sees them very well. He lies eagerly in wait: he suddenly records films develops stores their faces. They are in the air, in the sky, among the shadows of the street which sleepily rolls along, a starry chimera in which you move crazily forward, without moving. As if everything were true, close, here — so that you can touch smell see crumple pieces, the pieces, and so break absolutely everything, grinding your teeth, hopping about for joy, and set it alight: ash, dust, air, circus. As if it were true, oho! if everyone everything really existed, if if if. Including the conjuror, the tinsel, the mask, the mime. The cynic, the arrogant jester, the impassive swallower of swords and disasters, with his big shaven head of a Roman consul. If they only existed, if if if, if he and they existed now, when he sees them, sees them again, dreams of them, without wanting to, as usual as always, anytime notime, boredom pirouettes tantrums, no? Yes, he sees them, all of them.

Here is the first: the electrician fallen from the pole. Small lips, red eyes, hatched yellow forehead. Sailor’s vest. Thick, huge, bluish fingers. The hunter of leeches. That’s what he called them, leeches. An old cure, the circulation of the blood. He collected them from the street, from parks, cinemas, museums, swimming pools, anywhere. He drugged them with civilities and the gear of his old Taunus car. Then suddenly, as at an unexpected traffic light, he braked. Eye-to-eye contact. Without warning, brief and direct: Okay, let me give it to you, I’ll make you happy. Let’s go to my place — I’ll fill you up, make you happy, you’ll chase after me like a crazy woman; that’s what you’re all like, crazy. They did not resist— out of three one fell. Afterward the real madness: letters, phone calls, threats, whining: you’re not allowed to prolong the madness, boss, so ended the patient’s story, you’re not allowed to, damn it, sweeties are wild beasts, leeches are wild beasts, that’s what our dollies are, wild beasts.

Here is the next: the monk converted. Long white beard, pale sunken cheeks. Long thin diaphanous hands, and that kind knowing old-fashioned smile. “In the name of Joseph, Vissarionovich, and Holy Stalin, amen.” In vain do they explain things to him and give him pills: he cannot accept that the greatest strategist of all time, the best friend of children, the mastermind of science and the magic arts, the most beloved earthling, no longer exists — has simply snuffed it, like all earthlings. When he was arrested, thirty years ago, the father of the peoples sat night and day in his brightly lit pulpit at the Kremlin, deciding night and day the fate of each mortal. They arrested the poor monk for his unswerving faith in the hereafter; they tortured him until he suddenly began to pray nonstop — to Saint Joseph of the Kremlin. Today no one can convince him that Saint Vissarion Vissarionovich really has disappeared, that his Name is even prohibited, dangerous to pronounce, although his huge shadow guards and constantly activates our cave of deaf-mutes. Today he still mumbles his prayers and crosses himself in the name of the most beloved father and the most beloved son and his immortal holy spirit. He nods distrustfully at every piece of information or advice, at every injection he is given. Yet sometimes he appears overwhelmed by the insistence of his well-wishers. He smiles archly and mutters into his immaculate beard: “What does the name matter, what does it matter?” But then he immediately falls to his knees, frightened and guilty, begging forgiveness, amen, and calling on the Great Departed to give him protection, amen.

Here she is: elegant, Frenchified, painted as in the times of the whoring King Carol. The former beauty, frail and exotic, of fun-loving Bucharest, petit Paris of yore; the former aristocratic lady of great wealth, unable to hold up under interrogation, sobbingly denounced her former spouse, the former leading international lawyer, and put her signature beneath the aberrations of which he had been accused. And today she continues to write ever crazier denunciations, even though the poor man died in prison a long time ago.

Here she is: huge sleep-filled eyes, heavy black plaits, nun’s habit. Flower girl, dancer, spinner, what could that splendid gypsy girl be? No way an engineer! Top of her year at the electronics faculty, the pride of her neighborhood, joyful, beautiful, saintly, married to a fellow engineer who was then posted for two years to Syria. Waiting with pent-up tears, desperate to see him again: wailing, cooing, screaming. The fat, garrulous husband does not hold up under interrogation: he jokingly admits his indiscretions: two years alone, what was he supposed to do? He wasn’t a eunuch but a man, yes, like other men. Shock, hospital, injections, divorce, hospital: no prospect of recovery, decreed tiny Marga. She got involved for a month or two with one man or another, but it never lasted; she was just a crumpled rag, the poor thing, said the great doctor of madmen.

And here is another: a short fleshy peasant of uncertain age. After they took away his land and forced him to join a collective farm, he refused to work on any other strip than the one that used to be his. He toured all the prisons of the fifties, but all he could do was repeat the same name: Ioana, Ioana, the name of his best-loved cow.

Look at this one: a nagging woman. Small, wooden, cloudy head. Fear, stuttering. A dull, sluggish way of speaking. It used to be the ideal marriage, Doctor; the difficulties just brought us closer together — the war, his foot wound, the Fascist terror, everything, the hunger, illnesses, postwar hatred, all strengthened the ties between us. And then came the arrest, when they took away our boys. Suddenly he caved in, the mountain of a man crashed down to earth— just like that, you don’t even have time to recover your senses. And I’m certainly not all there anymore: I can’t think properly, Doctor, I can’t keep still.

And now: the gentle, witty giant with no memories, no feelings, who gaily, intangibly crosses the streets, parks, public conveniences, strewing funny stories, questions, roars of laughter and indifference, as is indicated by the board around his neck bearing the diagnosis in large red letters: EUPHORIA WITH PUNNING TENDENCIES.

Finally, the ghost of the last patient: the shy, delicate teenager lost in books, a perfect copy of Tolea a millennium before. He cannot pull himself together after the bicycle accident and the disappearance of philosopher-wineseller Marcu Vancea and the trial over that road accident with the old wreck of a woman, and the trial to expel the teacher he had become, and the trial of the times of life passing too quickly, which suddenly jumbles together trials, punishments, and boredom.

There they are: the assorted extras of the great farce. Men, women, children, soldiers, priests, vagabonds, peasants, prostitutes, ministers, gravediggers, engineers, poets, every category of mask and substitute, the great silent army of the vanquished, the patients, the last relics of normality unmasked by fate’s thunderbolt and incapable of remaining indifferent, refusing health and indifference and normality.

How to recognize them? They come and pass hurriedly by him, always hurriedly, looking at the ground and wearing the mask of tired children.

A provocative spring afternoon. The streets are full of the childish smiles of the patients he has met there, in the waiting rooms of truth. Bearers of the peculiar incubation or madness, handsome lunatics of the great disasters, the salt of the earth, the last knights of normality, as Dr. Marga says. Intricate codes, nightmares, headaches, visions, tears, fainting fits — of normality; all of them, maintains the lunatic who acts the healer of lunatics.

How shall I recognize them, stop them, go home with them so that at least for that evening I am theirs, with them — so that I can gather them together, one and one more, and we can send word to everyone: this night, our night! Our night: all crammed in a vast groan that soon becomes a roar — hysteria, laughter, our laughter, our infinite planetary roar that not even the sky can encompass. Our humble, proud, incurable solidarity: normal people! That’s all, the nobility of the last sick people capable of recording the world’s disorder, the tearing and the gnashing of teeth, unknown to those who break their back maintaining the rhythm of the play that is continually in search of its end. And friend Marga wastes his time with us wretches, schizophrenic orphans on a schizophrenic planet. If he thought about it, he, Tolea, the schizophrenic orphan, was almost the same age as Mr. Marcu Vancea, whom the Great Scriptwriter in the sky drove to his death one spring night forty years ago. All of a sudden he went rambling through streets and through fields beyond them, killed or killing himself — who knows anymore? — in the hypnosis of that black spring night.

Suicide or perhaps murder, who can say? and what would be the point anyway except for his Argentinian brother, who did not run far enough, since he could be reached there, too, in the nostalgia of senility, reminiscing about their father floating in the sewers of a town devastated by terror. And so the memories reached his paralytic Argentinian brother — memories of those far-off days when he went to buy himself some white wedding gloves, while his father’s corpse floated down as a gift to the cesspool collectors at the sewer’s mouth, among all the city’s waste matter.

If, on this young spring night, he were to gather together all the patient-brothers — hundreds, a thousand, several thousand — each with a torch in his hand on the slope that protects the collectors’ trough up to the exit into the cold black river, so that for a moment he could look at each one, hundreds, a thousand, looking for a moment at each one, just for a moment. In the end he would recognize that one from long ago — yes, he would remember one like that. Time, in its cyclical movement, reproduces such markings to near-perfection; the map of human suffering must surely repeat such features.

He would recognize Marcu Vancea as he was forty years ago. He would read the warning on his mask of a frightened, hunted, aged child. He would be able to take a good look at him, as he didn’t have time to do then, and even forewarn him — what for? No, I wouldn’t warn him, I’d just examine the hasty way of doing the preliminaries, the rough sketch for a real study in simulation up to or rather beyond the fatal threshold, so that Señor Claudiu could see how conscientious was the slave paid with those wretched dollars of his, which had passed across two oceans and twenty seas and two hundred hands before reaching the noncounting account, because that’s how Anatol is, always unlucky and loony and penniless, like his crazy country, in which there is not a penny and never any good luck.

Off the boulevard to the right, then again to the right. A quiet cross street. Trees, unheard buzzing, shadowy silence. The heavy iron gate, solemn steps. A princely building, bolts, lancet arches, stone wood steel, austere windows, pillars, and chandeliers, surely we know the decor. He pressed the doorbell on which the name Dr. Marga was written. Would Auntie Jeny already be standing hidden behind the door, a patient now the doctor’s nurse? Would she be waiting as usual on the other side?

“I’ve brought you a flower, Granny. A yellow carnation — I couldn’t find any roses. Because, you know, there are no longer any flowers in this country, except for heroes.”

“Oh, poor me! You’re the only one who keeps this black soul of mine going”—and she would wipe the palms of her hands on her blue shorts, again and again, and then suddenly bend from the waist to kiss her benefactor’s hand.

“What are you doing? I’ve told you before I’m not the Pope. Come on now, stop groveling like that: let’s sing that doina which you say tears you apart and puts you together again”—and the young gentleman Anatol would look hard at old Jeny so as not to forget her black, unsocketed eyes, her pale, puffy cheeks, her stumpy hands shaking all the time as if from the cold. Let’s go, Madame Hyperthyroid, stop laughing like a fool and let’s sing that doina that will set your soul aright. Don’t put your hand to your mouth when you laugh, Madame Parkinson; stop blushing when you laugh — it’s not your teeth that are the problem. You may have teeth missing, but that’s not what you’re covering up. It’s because of what the exploiting classes got you used to — they haven’t disappeared, you know, far from it.” The young gentleman Anatol would sit on the carpet, as Auntie Jeny closed her eyes in the armchair. Oh, darling Johnny, the song began.

A wafer-thin voice, a frail child, a barely noticeable trace, beneath bushy black eyebrows.

Oh, darling Johnny,

would that I could sow your name

Her rough hand stroking the orphan’s bald patch. Slowly her voice rises, slowly and thinly the song’s tear falls: Oh, darling Johnny, would that I could sow your name in every garden … in every garden … so its sweet smell … reaches every pretty belle. It went on and on until, as usual, bedlam broke loose. Tolea leaped to his feet screaming Rock Rock Rock Again: twisting dizziness shouting, until he whirled the patient into the kitchen—Right, let me see the moussaka! “Right, let me see the moussaka! That’s not pepper: it’s those green sleeping tablets. And those other ones are for dreams, and the others for the dead. Don’t you worry, I know it all right.” Rock Rock Rock Again, so that the plates and forks and saucepan and jars, and the table full of remedies spices syrups all quiver and shake for the greatest suffering of all, as great as the garden of the Mad Lord, because this is my fate, sweetheart, that I can find peace here only thanks to the doctor’s kindness, bless his soul.

Nothing to be heard: not a sound. As if no one is in, not even the patient acting as governess. So Mr. Anatol Vancea Voinov rings again, for a long time.

The door half opens, very slowly, with maximum caution. It’s not Jeny — that’s not her style. No, of course it isn’t Jeny. It’s her male equivalent, the sluggish patient. A pale shy pensioner. Dusty uniform, soft-mannered valet, shortsighted eyes of a domestic frog.

“Ah, it’s you. Yes, please come in. The doctor hasn’t arrived yet. But Dr. Marga will be here soon. You can wait.”

He flicked the switch and light blazed everywhere from the large chandeliers.

Ah, it’s evening already! As if it wasn’t spring but late autumn, when it gets dark early and the night is hungry to swallow you up.

Mr. Dominic sank into the leather armchair. He turned his shining head toward the full bookshelves, the table and tall chairs, the office, the armchairs — enough room for everything and some left over to walk about, as in a reception room where the guests have not come.

The valet reappeared, pushing a small trolley on which a bottle and glass were vibrating — clink clonk.

“Ah, but, I don’t drink, you know.”

Valet Vasile did not allow himself to react in any way. Or perhaps he smiled, idiotically. Do you hear, he smiled! But in fact he didn’t even smile, how could he have? After all, nothing was visible. Just a breath of air on his shiny yellow face — a barely perceptible trace of artful distrust and mockery. As if he had smiled only mentally, a broad, satisfied smile of which nothing appeared on the surface. Really nothing: not a word came from Vasile, known as Bazil — no such stupidities from him. Maybe Tolea had got the idea that he was guilty of something, who knows? What’s this smile — we’re not at the circus, are we? Dr. Marga usually says, Don’t let me catch you monkeying around or finding fault with anything, it doesn’t suit your station, Vasile, you are Somebody, the High Authority of the other world, like you don’t see these days in our parts; you must respect your station, don’t compromise yourself with anything human — you’re a statue perfectly trained to honor its mission, that’s all, and it’s more than enough. Valet Vasile did indeed return perfectly deaf and mute, with scarcely visible movements. A pile of glossy foreign magazines had appeared on the trolley beside the glass and the bottle of Courvoisier: Playboy, L’Express, Paris-Match. Look, the magnificent Romy Schneider has lost the son she adored; fancy that, she also had a son; access to popular tragedy, would you believe it; bravo, Vasile, you know your job, I take my hat off to you, come here and let me shake your paw.

But Vasile had disappeared. That was what his position demanded — perfect discretion. The slyboots! He doesn’t want to answer, the schizoid doesn’t want to answer: that’s how Dr. Goody-Goody, heart of gold, trained him to be. Would you believe it: the country is dying of hunger and fear and cold and darkness, but the lights are glowing at Goody-Goody’s as at the Palace. We’ve got everything here: we even read foreign magazines, and we’re waited on by patients dressed up as valets. After all, that’s the patients’ role — to bring what they don’t have, Courvoisier and Playboy and our daily cheese; to get hold of everything so that Goody-Goody’s in good spirits, so that he gives them tablets and certificates and pensions, because I know you’ve got an invalidity pension, Mr. Bazil, don’t deny it; it know everything, I know you’ve got a screw or two loose, but otherwise you’re fine, in every other department you’re perfectly okay. Here’s to you, come and let me shake your paw.

Had Mr. Dominic somehow stood up to offer his hand? Time had passed: who could say whether he had stood up or hadn’t.

“But it certainly takes a long time to answer the bell in this palace!”

The bell had been ringing for who knows how long, whistling whistling or whatever, very long and thin.

Dr. Marga pressed the guest’s shoulder with the soft palm of his hand. Dr. Marga was looking reproachful. Why on earth has he got that sly look in his eyes? Ah, the bottle. What’s a man supposed to do? There’s no one you can breathe a word to in this desert, only the poor Frenchman Monsieur Courvoisier took pity on the low spirits of the child Tolea.

“Have you been here long?”

Who was asking whom? It seemed that the doctor had asked the question, but it was by no means certain. Tolea also seemed to have muttered something, surprised that Marga was already wearing his red silk smock and holding a thick pipe in his mouth, as if he had been at home there all the time beside the leather armchair, looking indulgently at the stranger. It was a poor imitation, a poor performance. In vain did Goody-Goody try to imitate his patients; he actually did it like a beginner, without any luster at all. It was an affront to the lunatics, it really was, an insult they hadn’t deserved.

“Have you been here long, Tolea? I thought I asked you something.”

No, he hadn’t been there long, but how can you answer such an idiotic question, when Dr. Loonyson measures time by the liquid in the bottle, as if friend Courvoisier were an hour glass!

So Mr. Dominic had forgotten to answer the question. He was up to something of his own, trying to make the doctor say first what he had to say and then get his own bit in.

“What the hell, Tolea, that’s not what we agreed to. It’s not wine, you know. I keep telling the dimwit to give people only wine. But I don’t know why, whenever you come he gets the bottles mixed up.”

So Vasile’s supposed to have done it on his own! The scene’s the same every time, as you know only too well. You’ve taught him perfectly how to pour that criminal dishwater down my throat. It must have been Metaxa, yes, because Messrs. Hennessy and Courvoisier are much more sophisticated and well mannered, not like that neoclassical hussy. Yes, now I’m sure it was that whore Metaxa. And you even pretend to be astonished, paternally, certifiably, you pretend to be astonished as usual, as if I didn’t know your little game.

So Mr. Dominic had answered only after a long delay, and then not as he usually did. No, this time something must have happened for Mr. Tolea to answer like a little lamb, would you believe it.

“Well, now you too are … I’ve got all kinds of things to raise. As if you didn’t know!”

Whereupon Dr. Marga immediately drew up a stool alongside Mr. Tolea’s armchair. He leaned toward him, like a mother, a real mother — that’s always what the doctor did. Exactly like that, always.

“So what’s up, Tolea? What’s happened?”

Of course! “So what’s up, Tolea? What’s happened?” That was how he sweet-talked him each time. Now Merlin the Magician was coming to the boil, as always. “So what’s up?! What’s happened?! You’re like a driveling old woman, that’s what you are. You bore me stiff, you know, you’re driving me mad with boredom!” Those were the words with which he usually exploded, exactly the same words he always used to answer Marga’s opening question. But the reply was slow in coming; the explosion was delayed this time.

“Well, what’s up … what is there … drop it. But where’s Bazil got to? Who the hell brought that Metaxa whore here?”

So that’s how it is! Mr. Tolea is totally plastered. Something real bad has shaken you up this time; it’s a good job the doctor gave you some liquor, that Dr. Marga gave you the strength, that he’s got everything properly prepared as usual — the bottle and the glass and the magazines and the sweet talk; he knows everything, does the good doctor.

Anatol Dominic, known as Tolea, looked sulkily at the bottle. Um! The metal top was lying sensibly enough beside the bottle. Mr. Dominic frowned at it, jumped forward a little from the armchair, and cautiously took hold of the bottle. He poured some into the palm of his left hand and replaced the bottle on the table with his right. Then he poured some from his left hand into his right, and wiped his bald patch with both. Yes, he poured the drink onto his bald patch and rubbed it in with his palms, left and right.

“Goo-ood, it’s all gone now …” as he screwed the top on the bottle.

He looked again at the bottle, dreamily. A thimbleful was all that remained at the bottom.

“What can I do? You know I don’t drink: I wouldn’t touch the stuff even if you cut me into little pieces. Only when I come here to Uncle, to the resuscitation room. Very rarely, you must admit. Once in a hundred years, at the end of the century. Now in the year 1000, at the end of the century and of the world. The end of the world— that is, the beginning; an iron world because of its severity, a leaden world because of its wickedness. A dark world lacking in authors, dulcissime frater, that’s what it is.”

He searched one of the pockets of his velvet trousers, took out a ball of thin, shiny paper, and held it out to Marga. But Marga did not notice, or did not want to notice, as he went on cleaning his glasses. Tolea solemnly placed the piece of paper on the table, next to the glass.

“What’s that smell here? What the hell is it? Maybe that old woman had made moussaka again.”

“There isn’t any smell. You’re imagining it.”

“What do you mean! It’s enough to knock you out. The hag must have put some tomato juice in it as well. I told her last time she should never do it again, never put tomato juice in moussaka!”

“You’re raving. There isn’t any moussaka. And Jeny isn’t around: she had to be admitted to the hospital. When spring comes there’s no avoiding it. She always gets like that in spring. I had her admitted yesterday.”

“Aha, so that’s it. You’ve had her locked up. Goo-ood. But why hasn’t Bazil shown his face?”

“Bazil’s having a bath. His head ached and he was beginning to stutter. It’s not a good sign. You know what his crises are like; they come back sometimes. The bath will help pick him up.”

“He’s actually in the bath? In Goody-Goody’s bathtub? No, I must be hearing things. Tell me the truth: is he really having a bath in the great doctor’s tub? Are you an apostolic missionary, an ambassador of the Red Cross, or the Green Crescent, or the United Organization called the Losers’ Charity? Or are you a rabbi, Dr. Marga, a rabbi’s son? Didn’t you say once that you psychiatrists are like rabbis? Or maybe you’re a Buddhist, Uncle Marga? Are you Tao; yes, you must be Tao, or Zen or yoga — what are you? I bet you’re a mason — is that it? Yes, James Mason, the killer disguised as the Holy Woman among lepers.”

“You don’t know Vasile. He’s the cleanest man on earth. He cleans the bath centimeter by centimeter — and then he has a go with alcohol as well.”

“Of course, and with sulphamide, too. Come on, old man, tell me: they’ve finally taken away your right to practice, haven’t they? They finally caught on, they must have — the swindle stank to high heaven! Philanthropic, sure, like all swindlers, I know. But they’ve taken away your thingamajig, admit it, and that contraption for listening to hiccups and those dissertations on hocus-pocus hypnosis and hara-kiri; they’ve liberated you from them, haven’t they? Look, I’ve been here for an hour. The phone hasn’t rung once. And I’ve been here an hour, more than an hour. The phone’s dead, sir, dead. There’s no longer a line outside the confessional, Uncle; the patients have gone; your conjuring trick has been taken away. Come on, be brave for once and admit it.”

“But it does ring. Listen, it’s ringing now: they haven’t found me out yet.”

The telephone really was ringing, and it was not hard to predict the conversation.

“Yes, old pal, I’ve seen the results of the tests: don’t worry, it’s going to be all right.” Or: “Of course, madam, those are side effects of the treatment; everything’s quite normal, you’ll see.” Or: “Why are you crying, Comrade Engineer? You’re perfectly sane. Come and talk it over: things can be done — of course, they always can.” And so on: candies, sleeping pills, fumigation, just be patient.

“Of course, madam. No, it’s no bother. Yes, I spoke to him again yesterday and asked him. Come for a check-up after a month — after a month. It’s an irritation, that’s all, just some allergic reaction. Take th tablets, of course. Yes, you can ring in the evening — any time in the evening.”

Bearded Marga swung his red smock and turned to face tipsy Tolea. But the telephone rang again.

“Speaking. Don’t be silly: I was expecting you to ring. Alternately — as I wrote on the prescription; alternately. You have my assurance, Comrade Colonel, my signature. Absolutely certain. We’ll have good news, very good.”

Before returning to his seat on the stool, the plump doctor again wiped his glasses with the skirt of his smock. His large clear eyes could now be seen: the blue real one and the blue artificial one— you couldn’t tell them apart. Then they could no longer be seen again, as he put the smoky glasses back on.

“You’ll stay for dinner, Tolea. We’ll have another chat.”

“If you remember who was invited then.”

“There you go again. Nearly forty years have passed since then, Tolea! Even if I was completely normal, I’d still have the right to forget. But I’m not completely normal. This job has got to me, too, you know.”

“Quit the whining: it bores me stiff. Just one at least — just one witness, that’s all. I’m not doing any harm: it’s just a hobby — infantile behavior, as you put it. But I do want to see them again. Particularly one of them, you know which one. Just to see him. Otherwise I’ll get bored and die. I can’t take the lyrical boredom of spring. I’m telling you, I’ll die otherwise.”

Mr. Anatol Dominic, also called Tolea, leaned toward the table and picked up the ball of paper. Then he stepped forward, as if he wanted to hand the message to the doctor — to hand him the letter. The doctor did not notice the movement: it must have been in the line of his glass eye. Dominic opened up the paper, as if to read what was on it. A letter, no less, he said, trying to summarize its contents.

The doctor exhaled as he registered the news.

“Goo-ood. What can I say? In the midst of a world crisis, you’re the only one whose shares are rising. Maybe Señor Claudiu has been pining for his kid brother. Money expresses affections, as you know. He must have been thinking of you. He’s a delicate, sensitive soul — the money proves that, I can tell you as a professional.”

“I still don’t believe it, and in fact I won’t until I see the money. I know my dear old brother,” muttered Tolea. He took from his other pocket a creased envelope that had been stamped many times. He put it on the table next to the bottle, but in doing so he knocked the ball of paper down beside the stool. Mr. Dominic looked absentmindedly in the direction of the tall, narrow, castle-like windows, the book-lined walls, the huge lampstand in the center of the hall, the glass squares of the roof, the checkerboard squares of the floor.

Mr. Marga was standing silently at the window. Tolea did not see him, or saw him no longer. Nor did he see Bazil. The voiceless doctor was puffing and blowing; Mr. Dominic did not see him. Bazil had revived, a statue in front of the door — Mr. Tolea did not see him. Deathly silence, no one saying a word. There must have been some sad news in the letter, some memory or sorrow, who knows?

They are no longer looking at each other, as if they are not there. There is no way Tolea can have noticed when his host makes a brief sign. The valet disappears: he has never been there: when could he have been there, since he is no longer visible? Tolea is far gone, as if he has suddenly lost his wits. Eyes staring, mouth wide open, he looks as if he might be unconscious. But he shudders when Marga slowly lifts him up, holding him under the arms. He looks at the doctor attentively, vacantly. Marga grips him behind his shoulders and gently pushes him toward the end of the hall. There are two steps at the end of the hall — a kind of podium, like a stage beneath the spotlight in the ceiling. There, at the end, dinner is being served. They are together, on the two tall chairs on either side of the long table, at the far end of the hall.

The chandelier in the middle has vanished, into the darkness. The homely corner is lit only by the white lamp globe, like a spotlight beamed onto the white tablecloth. Silver cutlery, napkins, large glasses, small glasses, with their thinned-down crystal sound, small large deep plates — it seems as though Tolea, too, is eating.

From time to time the plates are changed and new courses served. Vasile picks up the napkin that has fallen by the chair. Tolea straightens his back; Vasile lays the napkin over his knees. Five, ten minutes, an eternity, the year 1000. Tolea does seem, however, to have bolted something down. Again Vasile bends and picks up the napkin: he shakes it and opens it out. Mr. Dominic sits up straight and the napkin reappears on his knees. Somewhere there is a ripple of music. The napkin falls and is replaced. The soup bowl disappears and a steak appears — or maybe it wasn’t steak, or maybe the steak wasn’t up to much. Another dish appears, the white napkin reappears.

Tolea is not speaking: he doesn’t drink and he holds his tongue. He seems not to hear the doctor’s habitual stories, not to be there at all. Even when he finally resumes the conversation, he seems to be absent.

“So, it was moussaka after all. That old dog Bazil! He put tomato juice in it, but it isn’t bad. The numbskull can even do that, then.”

“Vasile cooks superbly. But Jeny doesn’t let him. You should see how he irons clothes. Quite extraordinary — like an Englishwoman at the queen’s court. And when he cooks, it comes out perfect. But with him it doesn’t have the same therapeutic effect as it does with Jeny. Although it does do him good, I’m sure. I told you, housework keeps them occupied: it calms them down.”

“Not to mention the tips, of course.”

Mr. Dominic raised his glass of red wine. He brought it to his lips, but then changed his mind. “I’m on holiday. I don’t know if you know. I’ve got a short holiday which could become long.”

“You told me on the phone. You’ve been away, too, no?”

“I soon came back. You can’t find anywhere proper anymore. Dirt, pathetic food that’s unavailable and expensive. Lines wherever you go. No light in the streets and no heating indoors. And patrols everywhere — armed patrols, like when, you know … So I came back to enjoy myself at home. At least it’s cheaper — searching for that photographer who’s not a real photographer. Maybe you could give me his address; I can’t find him. You mentioned him to me once, but probably you regretted that you’d shot your mouth off. You regretted it and you haven’t wanted to talk about it since. You knew I wouldn’t be able to find him.”

“It’s come over you again, has it? Back to all that nonsense after two or three years? You’re bored, I know. That’s what’s wrong with you: boredom. But what do you want, for God’s sake? To see those fossils again? Nothingness — that’s what they are now. Ashes, earth, holes in the ground. And those who survived have got one foot there, in paradise. Look at me.”

Old Marga laughed, they both laughed. Tolea motioned behind him, in the direction of the trolley. “Read the letter. You’ll see it’s not just a question of boredom and distraction, although they shouldn’t be ignored by any means. Look at this last letter. I knew he’d get around to it, because sooner or later the memories would overwhelm him: he’d want them to be warmed up, fresh, with salt, with poison, with all the spices of the death that the paralytic is courting these days. So he pays me in convertible currency, Doctor! That’s how I’m on holiday. Paid. The alms he sent me a year ago were actually an advance. I could sense he had something up his sleeve.”

The doctor stood up, put his napkin beside the plate, gave the patient a smile, blew out some smoke, paced a few steps up and down with his hands behind his back. Then he walked up to the little table, where he could see the ball of paper and the envelope on the floor — looking, not looking.

“Don’t exaggerate: he’s been sending you money for years, since he found out about the trial. Or anyway, since he found out you’ve got problems. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to manage. Not a lot, of course, but it adds up over all those years. And you never answered him, did you, Tolea? You never thanked him, never wrote a line. So … unless it’s another one of your tricks, you can give him a promise. It might even do you good. You’ll have something to take your mind off everyday worries.”

“What music, Doctor! What cassettes!”

“Well, after all, it’s your sister-in-law’s letter; you can’t tell who thought it up. And then if it doesn’t suit you, you can just not answer, as you’ve always done. Even if the sum is incomparably bigger this time, there isn’t necessarily a connection between money and what the sick person is asking for. It could be more like a suggestion, you know; he may not actually be putting any demands on you.”

“Who gave you this wonderful tape, sir? It’s really something else!”

“Coco, my colleague in surgery, brought it back from a trip to Cuba.”

“Cuba? What are you talking about? That is a fantastic tape. Music from the year 3000, old man, the fourth millennium. Death on a cassette tape.”

“Sure, Coco knows what’s what. And the Cubans have got some fine music, too. Death is everywhere, you know, like music.”

“Look, it’s stopped. Play the other side, will you?”

“I’d say you should accept the challenge — whether or not it’s true that Mircea Claudiu suggested it to you. Accept it — but don’t count on me. Maybe they’re also exiles over there, sick at heart, you know how it is. But anyway, you’ve got nothing to lose in the end. If it amuses you, go ahead; any distraction is a good idea. There’s no way I can help you, though. Let’s be clear about that. Try Gafton: he knows a lot of stories, and he’s just waiting for someone to listen. He’s also worked on the newspapers and has some connections— which you don’t exactly.”

“Yes, I do!” growled Mr. Tolea, who was arranging the new tapes and staring at the red eye on the panel of the cassette player. Then time became confused: the doctor had evaporated at some point, the music was on its last legs, there were fewer and fewer lights, the clock had struck, again and again, with no one to hear … You see, Mr. Bazil, we’ve got business to attend to. Tonight … Mr. Tolea whispers in Vasile’s ear, in two or nine hours or so, when they wake up next to each other on the carpet, looking closely at each other and nodding like two old men, now one now the other, as if continuing a conversation from times of old.

Friend Vasile keeps quiet and looks. Submissive, patient with everyone.

“We patients have arranged to meet there at the outfall — near that miserable little village. Some twenty kilometers away, where the sewer empties into the river. They’re all coming tonight, you’ll see …

“I’m not sick anymore, Mr. Tolea. That’s what the doctor says: I’m not sick anymore. You’re healthier than lots of people, he says. You’re healthier than me, Vasile, that’s what he says. Dr. Marga says so.”

“That’s right. You can believe it, too.”

“Yes, my kidneys and my eyes and my heart. Especially my heart, because poor Dr. Marga’s heart is not too …”

“You feed him too much in the evening: he’ll croak from it one of these days.”

“Only when you come, sir. But it’ll end badly. You don’t know how to drink, Mr. Tolea: these are strong drinks. Even though I’m healthy myself, I wouldn’t have the courage to …”

“How’s that, Vasile? After all, you’re healthy — not like the doctor.”

“Yes, I am. And d’you know what the doctor said? He said: If only the comrade were as healthy as you are — you know who he meant! Comrade Jabber-Jabber, Dr. Marga calls him.”

“No, I don’t know. And God help you if I did. How does Goody-Goody speak? How does he dare talk like that about … we know who … how does he dare? And you, Vasile, how can you dare to be compared with we know who? Haven’t you any pride left at all, any respect for this poor little country of ours?”

“Yes, that’s what the doctor said. If that one was as healthy as me, we’d be much much much … what shall I say? … um, much happier. But stop shouting like that: it’s not allowed. You know it’s not allowed and it won’t do you any good at all, really.”

“There’s nothing the least bit wrong with me, m’sieur. All I want is to go to that rendezvous of yours. To listen to you all there. To hear what it was like. Because it’s being repeated now, you must know that. You’re a brainy guy, Vasile; you can see that it’s all happening again, can’t you? But let me tell you the truth. You’re the only one I’ll tell it to. And the truth is, I don’t care. I do not care! Not a moment’s thought, that’s me: I haven’t a clue about anything. Everything leaves me cold; it all passes me by. That’s my secret, Bazil, I’m as thick-skinned as they come. Do you hear? Thick-skinned and flighty. That’s my secret.”

And Mr. Tolea seemed disgusted with what he was saying— which meant he was wide awake. He had a sneer when he spoke. He spat out the words, as if they were mere scraps quite unlike what had remained hidden inside.

“Call me Lucky Luke. That’s how you can pamper me, Vasile; I’ll allow you to tonight. In my class they used to shout out, Bolero. They’d make fun of me — bring me down with a crash, you could say. They’d keep blowing up the balloon as far as it went. And when I was about to get into the basket, pshhhh … the gas escaped. Just as I was getting into the balloon, pshhhh … They’d all heap scorn on me — with both their eyes and their mouth, as is the habit in this land of ours.”

He blew his own trumpet, Mr. Tolea did; that’s how he was made. His clothes, his chatter, whims, and stories all served to demonstrate what a great and important guy he was. But he had suddenly realized that if he spat out his words like that — in disgust, with his lower lip turned up — it meant that—

He had suddenly fallen silent. Suddenly silent, and as yellow as a lemon. That’s what he’s like. Once it comes over him, he loses all interest. He has no appetite for anything, as simple as that — there’s nothing to be done about it.

Bonehead Vasile has stopped in the doorway leading from the cloakroom. Stopped there like a dummy. Tolea had sensed it. Without moving and without looking, he had felt that Vasile was no longer nearby on the carpet, that he had sneaked away and was standing over there, a statue, like a dummy.

He wanted to turn and look at him standing with his back to the door: he wanted to swing around and look at him. He didn’t care: Mr. Vancea didn’t care about anything or anyone, and yet he felt like swinging around to look at bonehead Vasile standing stone-still in the frame of the door. To look, bored, at Vasile the dunce. He couldn’t, he couldn’t turn around: he was stricken with paralysis. From fear, the fear of being turned into stone perhaps. The only light still glowing was the tiny one on the cassette player. Tolea could have turned around: there was no danger; he had no reason to be afraid of Vasile. But he was rooted to the spot, unable to budge, even when he heard steps approaching. He did not move — and what solemn steps he suddenly had, that sly, servile schizophrenic. The punishing step of a prosecutor. Like a punitive and unyielding fa-ther — his old dead father — that was how the madman approached.

Vasile had halted behind Tolea, glued to the curved spine of Professor Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov.

Not even the doors were creaking anymore. The world had stopped breathing. The end: the year 1000. The duffer Anatol Vancea was cowering, as if he had lost all his sap. It lasted a long time, a short time — hard to say. Vasile sneaked away, giving himself airs in front of Mr. Tolea. The professor was pale in the face, with bulging eyes that saw nothing whatsoever. Mr. Tolea did not even have the strength to look, to whine, to lift his hands in front of his eyes and drive away the apparition. He did nothing; he just looked at great Bazil. Deathly pale, but conscious. He wasn’t drunk: he had the same mocking expression on his face that he always wore. But he was white as a sheet. Poor Tolea looked with babyish eyes, without blinking and without seeing.

Vasile was dressed in the doctor’s brown raglan from England. Yellow silk scarf around his neck, bowler hat on his head. Very long, fluffy gloves. The full dress that Marga wore when he made a show of himself. The hairy raglan had a breast pocket under the left lapel, containing nothing more and nothing less than the starched white handkerchief of Goody-Goody, the madmen’s doctor.

The spitting image of the doctor! Great Bazil was the spitting image of the short, fat, and delicate doctor. And he was smiling, Old Nick! To say nothing of the fact that the dunce’s smile was enough to freeze your blood. With all those big, perfect, yellow teeth. Mr. Bazil left the hall disdainful and smiling, like some real big shot!

Tolea had covered his eyes and lowered his head onto his chest in exhaustion.

… Not a soul in the streets. It took a very long time to get out into the fields. An infinite, immeasurable instant. At the little wooden bridge on the edge of the village Vasile stopped to straighten his hat — incredible! to straighten his hat. The moon was sleek and golden, Mr. Vasile Moussaka blanched and sharpened, as if he was performing a role too harsh for his lofty magical powers. One last step, to the edge of the concrete slope at the sewer’s mouth. Lines or columns of torches awaited him, greeted him. Thin, longish torches — perhaps only candles, in fact, but looking like torches.

Vasile was smiling. When he took the torch candle from the first person’s hands, he smiled. He took it and blew on it. The childlike face of the elderly patient abruptly disappeared, along with the flame. Mr. Vasile smilingly went up to the next one. The pious neurasthenic with disheveled hair. He blew his candle out, too. Then the fat woman with green hair and the devil’s look in her eyes. Then the next and the next. When he was about to blow on the candle of the trembling, shaking, powerless boy, they all suddenly went out as if a signal had been given.

As if a signal had been given, everyone in the endless row — in the columns drawn up way into the distance — suddenly extinguished their candles. They all disappeared. Mr. Vasile remained alone, torch in hand. He smiled with satisfaction. Torch beside the tail of the raglan coat. Perfect silence, perfect night. That annoying creak of rusty doors could be heard again. The material began to burn, from the raglan’s tail up. Then the gloves. Then the yellow silk scarf. Vasile still had a smile on his lips when the howling music and the tom-tom started up.

Numbskull Tolea was paralyzed; there was no one to stop the music. Smoke, magnetic apparitions, the smell of burning and ashes. Only Tolea saw them. Alone, as alone as a dead man, and he did not even have the strength to blink.