Norman Manea - The Black Envelope

Boss Gic was grinning at the door, with his legs wide apart. Sir Corkscrew was staring at the ceiling. Lewd Gina kept fastening unfastening her work coat.

The buffoon had suddenly stood up. He was bored, no longer in a mood to recite Henderson’s words!

He was just no longer in the mood — as simple as that. A suddenly aged harlequin, in his black workclothes. A tired, wrinkled mask. And when you think that the earth had not completed so much as one turn on its axis. The sky, a little green Seiko-branded ellipse, showed 1:24:14. Not even a quarter of an hour had passed! One o’clock and twenty-four minutes and fourteen seconds that have gone, flown away, 15, 16, 17, 18, the hypnotist pronounced the finale: “That’s all, dulcissime .” And he bowed mockingly before the audience: “Bye-bye! I can’t find the words.” He had not even taken his hunting bag from the peg. He couldn’t care less about the eighthour working day for which the workers of the world had struggled so hard. He waved his arms about one last time, in thanks for the ovations: “Pa, pa, bye, ciao, amantissime .” They were used to it, of course. He irritated them, entertained, humiliated, provoked, and infuriated them. They put up with him because, without understanding why, they felt he was tolerated by greater ones than they.

So the Knight of Assland has been removed from his teaching post, that he will not pollute our pure young people full of constructive enthusiasm. About to be flung in jail but — no one knows how — saved at the last moment and even brought back to the capital, would you believe it! Recruited, probably. Recruited, certainly, for delicate assignments, like all his ilk; any illiterate old woman in our multilaterally watched society knows all about that. But the monster displays an insolence beyond anyone’s ken! As if his task was none of the rabble’s business, as if it had been assigned to him by a grade higher than that of his colleagues, as if the banal listen-and-report network in which they were all involved did not even concern him.

It really drove them wild, but also intimidated them. Suspicion, combined with mystery, dulled their reactions. They would have liked to kick him far away. His madness was a trap, they were sure, and they never knew how bemused or skeptical they should appear. He spoke of dictators as if it were the most natural thing in the world, then philosophized about mediocrity, delusion, fanaticism, and — quite out of the blue — he kept coming back to — Argentina. The family horoscope, of course. He talked heedlessly of his brother who had run away to Buenos Aires, become rich and senile, but also of the troublesome political similarities with that distant land. Always looking disgusted, spitting out words that came from somewhere right up at the top, where poor mortals are not allowed to tread.

A long time after the World Cup in Argentina, old Gic had bitten hard on the bait. “You say they come from Spanish men and Indian — that is, native — women. But what the hell! They look just like us. I’ve been watching TV closely. They’ve got our faces.”

“Well, they’re our Latin cousins, amantissime ,” Tolea began, without lifting his bald head from the accounts book, as if he had spent the whole day doing nothing but bringing the hotel’s books up-to-date. But the stream of words, long since prepared, had already begun. “The conquistadors procreated with native women. Yes, the greed for time and space was paid for in women’s bellies. The loner who has no respect for anything. The native prostitute, courtesan, perhaps even mistress. In Latin America the brothel remained a durable, classicized institution.”

The eminent professor had not raised his thin beard from the accounts; his superior Gic ’s eyes were bulging, as at the sight of a bear. “The white man introduced depravity and cruelty. Spanish wives lived under the same roof with mestiza mistresses, legitimate children with bastards. The result? Feeling cheated and degraded, the mestizo does not know pity. He considers love an abasement, a weakness. Brothels, old Gic , are the traditional institutions of solitude! Don Estrada out on his pampa … But I’ve told you what the old man wrote about the tango, the dance from the waist down”— oho, he was speaking as in a book, m’sieur.

Old Gic was smiling: he was wasn’t in the mood; he rather liked the game. He even jumped ahead of the buffoon, in order to provoke him. “So, you were saying that Carnival is the celebration of despondency. Desperate glee, you said. The need for glee is their sickness, and glee is the mask of despondency. Isn’t that what you said? Hostile glee, mixed with hatred.” Old Gic did not wait for an answer: he forged ahead, not even giving Tolea time to breathe. “It can be seen in politics and in sport, you said. Farces — with all those dictators and football players and coups d’état. It’s a theatrical nation, old Argentina — Martínez don Estrada. The mask of impotence, as you put it. Jokes, first-class jokes that do the rounds for years and are never forgotten. Joking hides sadness at not having achieved what you wanted. Isn’t that what you said? But what about sport? What’s the connection between sport and politics?”

Mr. Vancea did not heed the question, as if it had gone in one ear and out the other. He did not break off what was supposedly keeping him busy, whether it was pretending to write in the accounts book or arranging the room keys on the board or reading the paper or picking his nose. He went on imperturbably, but the words suddenly began to flow. “A dark, old world, over which something else is constantly being sown. The cross between white and Indian is blurred; it has been drifting like that for hundreds of years. Rude, surly, hard to say — like lumpens. Braggarts! A braggart has an innate sense of theater.”

He was describing a braggart — hard to believe one’s ears! He, Tolea Anatolea Dominicus, was talking of braggarts! As in a doctoral thesis he was describing what a braggart is like, enough to frighten you out of your wits! The listener’s suddenly dilated eyes did not intimidate him, of course. “Yes, an innate sense of theater, carnival, circus, despondency. Politicians and the army live in the same world. And football, of course. A life of perpetual waiting, amantissime . When you spend all your time waiting, improvisation looks like salvation.”

Weeks, months, until the subject was exhausted, until old Gic had had more than he could take and no longer asked any questions, until Firecracker Tolea himself had completely forgotten the serial. But no, when no one was expecting it — flash, bang! Professor Vancea insisted on offering a conclusion. One morning the collective was absorbed in the happy new theme: Bulgarian slippers, for which the whole city had been lining up for hours on end with the next winter in mind. Gina had managed to get five pairs, for her sister and mother and brother-in-law and little nephew. Very good, warm, fur-lined, they would perform miracles in next winter’s freeze. No way, argued Corkscrew, their stink’s enough to knock you out! Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov seemed to be following closely the academic dispute, but no one knew whether he had it in mind when he spoke up, as if continuing an older thought suddenly come back to life.