Norman Manea - The Black Envelope

The Office for Thought Security. Five, six polished men. The one at the head of the table had just passed his little white freckled hand through his thin fair hair. He had opened the file, closed the file. Like the others, he had two files before him. The red file and the green file. He opened now one and now the other. He looked at his colleagues, who repeated the movement. They opened the red file, with the bulky manuscript. They leafed through it attentively, as the High Commissar also had done, and lifted their eyes as the Boss had lifted his. Then they opened the green file, the one containing the defendant’s background, full of thin sheets of paper covered with codes and invisible ink and the Toma correspondence. They said nothing as they read, looked at each other, raised their diseased eyebrows, looked at each other. The scar briefly glowed with a phosphorescent light. The blond girl had breezily waltzed in, already in her sixth month. Blushing, she had put a small glass of water on the table, beside the young man who was perspiring as he read the indictment. He had smiled. “Yes, okay … now it’s something else.” The man wearing glasses had reached the end of the first page. He moistened his thin bluish lips in the holy water. When he hit the ashtray with his Irish pipe, the heads rose from the stained sheets of paper. A moment’s deliberation was observed. The first on the left mumbled something, and the others became extremely attentive. “I’ve had enough; I’ve had enough of this lot,” the fat bald-headed man repeated, yielding the argument. Opposite him, the first on the right cheered up and smiled. “Yes, let him go away — as far as possible. We’ll give him his chance in the bosom of Abraham and purify the colony.” Now they were chanting in turn, leaning fondly, excitedly, over their neighbor’s file: “Clear him away from us all, the dirty je-je-jackal”—in a low chorus. The head of the table tapped his nails on the table glass. “Yes, let Old Trouble go away with his diseases and his sick ideas. The law requires us to give him a chance. So, a vote of censure with a warning. A warning to quit the premises.” The young prosecutor at the head of the table straightened his glasses and started to read the indictment again.

Nothing more could be made out. Voice abolished. The batrachian masks prattled out words without sound, winking with their eyes. All that could be seen was the shiny pallor of the masks, the phosphorescent scar above the eyebrow. At the door Tolea, the accused, was pale and sweating. He did not know how to plant himself better in the cockpit, so as not to make a noise and be discovered. For some time he had been on the monitor in the frame of the door. No one had seen him yet: he was coldly perspiring, his heart struggling guiltily, his feet becoming wet, his arms hanging limply down. No, the anxious, frightened face of the alien who had to be got rid of did not disturb the judges. They were working with dispatch, and the murmur of their united voices, the low tone of the gay refrain, could be heard once more. “Je … je … jackal. Jacko Jacko has got to go.” The papers rustled, twisting and turning; the refrain rippled with excitement.

The alien was rooted to the spot in the doorway, together with his chair. Completely drained. In vain did they all stare at him now. They looked at him scornfully, persistently, with a feeling of boredom: tirelessly. No, no, tired! Suddenly, as if commanded to do so, they wiped their foreheads, their phosphorescent eyebrows, their stifling masks. They had become too hot! The spring sun had tired them, look! They had covered their sockets, eyebrows, the scar: nothing could be seen anymore; the dazzling star dominated the room.

So the wreck woke up perspiring in the vernal excitement of a new spring morning. He spent a long time rubbing his forehead, temples, and eyelids, and awkwardly relieved the pressure of the tongs of the chair in which the night had nailed his arms.

There was no longer any point in the action. Just another vanity, another black mark in his file, which would never reach the eyes of anyone except the high custodial authorities. No action materializes in this fictitious world of signs and substitutes. So Tolea decided: don’t delay for a moment longer! Because: wanton, vain, puerile, culpable, fictitious. Because because because … Therefore: not one delay!

It would get going immediately, there and then. Against the grain! In the morning — against the grain, pampered, in revenge.

The action: that very morning.

HE HAD BEEN AWAKEfor a long time, but he still felt listless, stupefied. He opened closed his eyes, stretched out his hand to the alarm clock that had not sounded. His hand trembled on the rim of the clock, then fell back by the crumpled sheet on the floor at the edge of the bed. He had been sleeping naked, uncovered. He remembered that during the night he had probably gone onto the terrace to get some fresh air. It had been a restless night, burdened with strange dreams that had been chased away along with the darkness. He felt tired and clumsy. Only after an hour or so did he recognize the untidy table, the open window, his pair of slippers. Eventually he went into the bathroom, then lay exhausted in the armchair, then swung among the chairs. His mind started up with difficulty, stopped, procrastinated, started up again.

On the table was the long envelope with stamps and postage marks. He saw and recognized it, and seemed to begin speeding up. He was in a hurry, yes, in a great hurry. Suddenly he was speeding along crazily, and then he ground to a halt. On holiday, yes, he was on holiday: but where can you go in the season of uncertainty which is now just a pink haze? After an hour it became sultry and in another three it was whistling with gusts of ice. At Anton’s, at Toni’s, yes, at Dr. Marga’s — among our crazy fellow creatures there was always something to set your blood moving faster. Yes, at Marga’s, at Mr. Bazil’s, at Old Maid Moussaka’s, I’d find some of everything there. But I’ve just been there, I think; I was there three days or so ago. I spoke to Lord Marga about the letter and my little sister-in-law from Argentina and the foreign currency account in the name of receptionist Vancea. Yes, I’m sure I was at the Hysteria Cabaret and I danced the Tango Macabre with the famous Bazil Beelzebub and the Radiant Angelica, yes yes, and it was evening and night and morning, actually.

Costume already laid out on the chair: red socks, white pullover, white velvet trousers.

Lying naked on the sofa, the star still hesitated. The windows rattled as a bus went by. Look, the real world still exists: it has started up again, a bus is passing right in front of the window, the windows are vibrating, Mr. Dominic is receiving the signal and is in a hurry to get inside the day’s routine sounds. At twelve minutes before ten o’clock, the tenant Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov, known as Tolea, left the building. He retraced his steps twice, as if to mislead someone tailing him. He checked the taps, cupboards, window, and gas valves — or perhaps only pretended to close them again. Scatterbrained and fastidious, perfect in the role.

He looked left right and crossed. tobacconist, dairy, tailor. “They’re all here, close by. As at the beginning of the world. If only we could look with detachment, historically.” He turned after the corner, passed the tram stop, kept moving away, and went into a small side street.

Dwarfish silence winding through humble, sloping, Oriental courtyards. Very occasionally, a long green strip of branches winks over the walls. Little rounded gardens alongside piles of garbage; thorny red rosebushes next to heaps of rags, boxes, bags — picturesque, patriarchal, canceling boundaries. To the left the drive opened onto the refuge of a villa manqué. Gates, pillars, balconies, the conceited haste of the parvenu, the nostalgia of a style, the speed of the heterogeneous that must prepare to compromise with the barbarians, the corruption of forms, the assault of rottenness …