Norman Manea - The Black Envelope

“What I ask of you is quite simple, Comrade Vasilic . That at the reception, and here in my office, it should be as clean as a chemist’s shop. Cleaning and coffee, that’s all. It’s not much, you know. Less than that, I won’t accept. I’m not asking you about the other things. But I know everything, don’t you worry. And I know what you talk about with our customers. To get the ones from Tulcea to send you some fish, or the ones from Oradea to find you a sheepskin coat for Nelu, because that good-for-nothing boy of yours doesn’t look right if he’s not dressed like Alain Delon … You make use of our contacts, of our name and the hotel’s; I know all about it. And how you wangle some cotton from the drugstore, and why your friend Stelic at the food store sells you the best cheese when no one’s seen any cheese at all for months. And what do you tell people when they ask how things are going here? You tell them everything, much too much. Lies, Comrade Vasilic . Exaggerations and prittle-prattle, Comrade Vasilic . You talk too much and you say what you shouldn’t. But you know, everything gets to me in the end, and you get to me as well, I can tell you. As for the Kents, don’t ever say that word again! I don’t ask you how you clean the rooms, or what arrangements you make about the soap and detergent. Nor who gives you packs of Kent and for what? I don’t ask because I know.”

Oh ho! You’re stirring up too much this time, you scumbag. This crazy weather must have really screwed you up. Your foul mouth has poisoned you, and your fat ass-licking soul has gone completely black. You wouldn’t like to have to swallow it, you dainty little creep … Vasilica Vasilic had withdrawn, disappeared, with raging, mounting hatred pumped up with fury and perfect soundproofing so that nothing could be heard.

Corkscrew Titi had meanwhile forsaken the landscape of the liquefied window. Leaning on the wall, he straightened his metal-frame glasses. The police skunk seemed like a sarcastic Oxford don. He looked rigidly, unsmilingly, at colleague Gina, who kept doing up her work coat without ever managing to do it up. Then he went toward Old Gic , who, looking either at Comrade Titi or at the professor, was uttering: “Come, amantissime, let’s draw up that list.”

No, the professor had no inkling that those magic words had been uttered! Nor that they had been accompanied by a sly wink, the usual twitch of eye and eyebrow that always occurred when it was a question of his astral person. With his legs sprawled on the stool in front of the armchair, absent and self-important, merely deigning to take occasional sips from the excellent Vili coffee, and otherwise sheltering in the thin sheets of Monde or Match or Nouvel Obs, the professor did not register anything around him.

“Cancer, skin cancer, that’s what it says here, comrades. A small pink mark near the eyebrow, like a rash. It must be detected while it’s still in the incipient stage! Otherwise it’s fatal, for five generations.” The familiar voice could be heard from behind the cosmopolitan pages. “For five generations, do you hear? Une fatalité , do you hear, une catastrophe .” Titi M ndi¸t frowned and scratched his eyebrow with an air of boredom. Already seated on the chair next to the boss, he sipped his coffee, took a pen from under the flap on his bag, and prepared to make a list of urgent tasks before the asylum’s telephones began their daily ringing.

“Yes, amantissimie .” The servant Titi M ndi¸t repeated with a mocking smile the words and smile of Boss Gic Teodosiu. There was no longer any way Tolea could ignore the coalition.

Amantissime had a mocking ring, of course. Were they perhaps signaling him that the little scene with Vasilica did not concern poor Vili alone? They knew that Tolea’s reaction would be unpredictable. He might keep quiet and pretend to be busy, as if he had noticed nothing, or he might start the act of wounded vanity. Or quite simply deliver the most peculiar speech, with no apparent connection to his surroundings. “How would those poor wretches have greeted the liberators of the camps at Dachau, Maidanek, or Auschwitz? Like gods! But after that how did they look at them? As at mentally retarded animals. What do they know? Only we know what life is: pain and suffering! Beaten, spat upon, burned. Forced to eat our excrement, to dig our own graves, to abandon our parents for a crust of bread. To betray a friend for a smile from the butchers, to dance in front of the murderers, to drag ourselves along on all fours. What do these happy, normal, frank people know about anything? They’re not serious; they’re too free, too available. Calamity, misery, fear — those are serious, very serious! That is, boring. Freedom appears light-minded, infantile. Something for fools and kids, for clowns, for people who like to loaf around.”

Would he suddenly bang out that aria for the comrades at the hotel? Very appropriate for the audience. For it had learned the strategies of patience, the misery and fear and suspicion, the torpor of depraved boredom. Poisoned, cannibalistic boredom, the boredom of submissiveness and betrayal and torpor, even the boredom of fear, yes, yes. “Have you ever seen a dictator talking to children? Uneasy, imbecilic. As if he’s talking to soldiers or a heavenly tribunal. Serious phrases delivered with hatchet cuts. A lonely and serious man — absolutely serious! Freedom seems a joke to him. A kind of hooliganism, a cunning trick directed against him, the poor prisoner. So frivolity in a dictatorship, frivolity is no longer what it was. It becomes provocation, regeneration. Humor and a necessary insensitivity. The miming of liberty, yes, because mime also — Yes, yes, when there’s nothing left, then mime—”

Petty suspicion, petty backbiting, petty deception. Petty acts of treachery committed by petty, shriveled, crushed souls? Boredom, boredom! The specter haunting and devouring the world! What gloomy people. The boredom, frater, dulcissime, amantissime .

Talking in his sleep, or so it seemed. And he didn’t care. Anatol Dominic Vancea let loose his tirades as if he were debating with former colleagues at the faculty. As if he did not know he was at the Hotel Tranzit reception, where the Gic -Vasilic puppet sequence had just concluded.

And then you ask yourself, for the umpteenth time: Who is holding baby Dominic and making sure he doesn’t fall? Dismissed as a teacher on far from trivial grounds, given shelter here at the Tranzit — at least if he had his head on his shoulders, if he kept his trap shut, if he showed some zeal in his work. Like hell! All he’s concerned about is to show how great he is. To show the dunces how brilliant and liberated you can be in a kennel, because this isn’t the fifties anymore. We’ve been through another thirty years’ war; we’ve got used to our daily morass, our daily bread. He had heard only too well the dialogue between Teodosiu and Comrade Vasilic . He had picked up the irony with which the holy words had been repeated. Amantissime! Amantissime! Mr. Gic Teodosiu, do you hear? Is “Mr.” Gic Teodosiu taking over your formulations?! Frater. Dulcissime. Amantissime. Simple mockery? An allusion to his suspect morals? Oh, not just suspect! Shameful guilt — the immoral professor removed from teaching? He didn’t care. Receptionist Tolea Voinov did not even hear the poisoned warnings.