Norman Manea - The Black Envelope

His steps start up with difficulty, uncoordinated. He gets on a bus, a tram, another tram, another bus. He arrives before a decaying gray block of flats, a dark staircase, a black door. And then back again: the hazy, languorous journey. From time to time a shudder. He wakes up, looks at his watch, at the confirmation it gives. He finds again, Friday, the hour which exists and races along and shatters on the uncaring display screen. Why don’t we overpopulate the prisons one fine day, why are we so wary, overwary, so overwary? mumbles schoolboy Vancea, until he suddenly remembers the sentence he has been searching for: “When you spend all your time waiting, improvisation looks like salvation.” All your time waiting, waiting, improvisation, salvation. Improvisation will save me, save me, postponement, postponement, why don’t we all fill, all at once, salvation, salvation, mumbled teenage Tolea, tottering on the bicycle of bygone adolescence, when he repeated, still in ignorance, “Improvisation, salvation, salvation,” with that modest and secular gratitude which the years have scattered to the four horizons of nothingness.

Still alive, however, still alive beneath the torrid spring sun, in the foul-smelling dust of the city’s outskirts. The fair is still not over: the mad action is continuing and taking him in. Look, he has found some precise and stupid thing to keep him busy, something crazy that belongs to him — fixed hours and days, repeatable, but his alone.

Again Wednesday, lying in wait in the earpiece of the receiver. Again Friday, on the spot, ghost-hunting. He would like to increase the frequency of this futile behavior: more hours, more days, all hours, all days.

But it is Thursday. That’s what is shown on the calendar, on the watch display. This suspect sun is called Thursday. Still a century to go until Friday.

Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov can wait no longer. He needs a provocation, a neurotic subterfuge. Now, best now, in this burned and narrow cone called Thursday. Hurrying and harassed, he jumbles twists loads the dice. He cheats feverishly, blindly, in a trance. The mystique of the ridiculous will permit this new artifice! Only the slightest departure from the beaten track is necessary. Look, the face of the dice has accepted the move. It’s going to be Friday instead of Thursday.

Today is Friday and tomorrow is the same, Friday. We are allowed to progress in futility. Thursday, then. A lunchtime seething with heat and neglect.

COMRADE OREST, You are right: Madam Mushroom knows more than she lets on. Each time Virgin Veturia plays the same innocent act. But after she opens the door a little to the family toilet, she soon livens up. Dirt acts as a stimulant, I know that. She’s not doing anyone any harm, and she may even be doing herself some good, as I keep telling her. Gossip, the national art of conversation, is a popular exercise in intelligence and style. It keeps the mind alert, I know. What are the pieces of information that so much fuss is being made about? A gossipy letter, that’s all. Little folkloric studies about workplace and family relations, about the economic troubles and sexual preferences and tensions among individuals and groups. Suppressed ferment, I know. Petty envies, fears, pleasures — sordid stuff. But our good-natured, gossipy nation doesn’t concern itself with plots! The proof: no one has been arrested. Nowadays you’re not arrested for listening to foreign radio stations, as everyone does, or for drinking coffee bought from speculators, or for making jokes about the vigilant ear of the nation, or for secretly bonking the woman next door. Besides, the real history of our epoch is not to be found in the whining of some schizo Narcissus or his conceited admirers. Time-resistant paper should be reserved for the time-resistant archives. It’s there that the popular odyssey of our times will be rediscovered. The plebs have healthy instincts, common sense, modesty, I know. But to return to Madam Mushroom’s gossiping. Her Arab students don’t talk about politics, she insists. They’re more interested in love, which is easily available if they’ve got hard currency, or even cigarettes, cosmetics, or foreign drinks. Some of them even seem to pass their exams like that. She says she’s never once received or distributed porn videos from the foreign students she’s in contact with. In fact, she’s never even heard of such videos existing. That’s hard to believe, given that the whole of Bucharest knows of the network originating at the foreign students’ hostels. But what about those senile studies of her husband’s? Madam Mushroom made a weary gesture with her plump hand. That is, it’s of no importance. Childish manias, quite harmless. She gradually came to life and served me cigarettes, whiskey, chocolate. She’s pretty well lost her head, I know. And do you know what the little old lady mumbled at the end? “Don’t tell anyone what we’ve been talking about, young man.” Her parting words! Can you imagine! Our fellow creatures still have a sense of humor, I know. Humor, and not a clue about anything else.

P.S. I asked her to meet me again, after two days. On neutral ground this time. In one of those nominal apartments, where the family’s not at home in the morning and doesn’t have an idea about anything. Everything’s so peaceful, so ordinary — enough to scare you stiff. There had been too little time since the previous meeting and she wasn’t used to the place. If she still doesn’t want to tell us anything about Allah’s circumcised sons, at least I can try to find something out about our own circumcised minority. What is the synagogue saying about the burning of the apartment, the attack on the tenant, and the madwoman’s dogs and cats? Panic, pogrom — is that what the curly sidelocks are shouting? Madam Sourpuss is ready to faint, no less. I insisted. What SOS messages are the traveling salesmen sending abroad? Are they shouting that they’re in danger and must be saved? The poor old lady doesn’t know a thing; she never sees anyone. That was too much. I lost my cool. But what about Moshe, I mean Comrade Gafton, her hubby? And their tenant, the bisexual language professor, old Chatterbox baptized Vancea? What is he, in fact? She got completely confused, even lost her voice. I pushed harder on the pedal. Don’t tell me that even Marga … Dr. Marga is also some kind of Margulis or Maimonides? I can’t believe that even he should … And how many more of them are there, eh? Why are their names Romanianized, madam, why? Why don’t they pull their little prick out so we can see what’s what, I asked her as she threw a fainting fit. Come now, Comrade Toma, what are you saying, Comrade Toma? Well, as you know, in our country sexual matters are so … so … We’re not talking about sexual matters, madam, don’t play the fool. We know all about the itching in the pants and under the skirts of the fatherland, but that’s not the point. Why do they conceal themselves? — that’s what I’m asking. And surely you must know, being on the spot like that. Well, Comrade Toma … Marcel says that assimilation … They weren’t accepted like that either … but now, now … Marcel says — do you know what Marcel says? Well, what does that half-wit Marcel say? I asked mentally. Marcel says that nowadays we’ve all become Jews, we’re all oppre— Oppressed, the little pygmy meant to say, but she put her hand over her sinful mouth. Well, not quite all of us are Jews, as your comrade husband thinks, I replied at once. And even if we were, we’re not yids. Or gypsies, or those wild Hungarian cowboys. At that, the old pie went whoosh. Whoosh — all the air went out of her. She’d seen the devil — in an ace of fainting good and proper. She didn’t say another word, just looked at her twisted shoes wet from the rain. She was no longer breathing, I know. To get scared — that’s all they can expect if they forget their place! One of these little fires can have quite an effect. After all, the masses have healthy instincts, common sense, I know that.