Norman Manea - The Black Envelope

Venera had become heated — more confessions could be expected. Detective A.D.V.V. had not erred in suddenly appearing on Saturday morning at the site of the investigation, where, look, he had actually been expected. Not only with coffee and sweetmeats but also with significant testimony. Oh yes, finally!

“Do you think Tavi is a criminal? I won’t contradict you. I don’t know and don’t want— I don’t exactly know what he did and what he’s doing now. I know he married my disabled friend and takes exemplary care of her. My friend Tori. Maybe I told you before. Something terrible that happened in the period that interests you left her a deaf-mute, also rather — how shall I put it? — well, rather sensitive, let’s say. As you know, the world can no longer be what it was. And it isn’t.”

Mr. Vancea was looking straight into the eyes of Mrs. Venera, who was looking straight into the detective’s eyes.

“The version of that moment — who can say now? There would have to be more indifference. That’s what your people don’t have— indifference. It’s a real force, I promise you. There’s a real force behind indifference. Tavi understood that, I’m sure. Even then.”

The hostess’s eyes seemed to have lost their sparkle, and her words were becoming faster and faster.

“That moment you are investigating so stubbornly after forty years. Who knows, who—? Let’s take a closer look at the next act in the play. Today we’ve come to defend ourselves from people as you would defend yourself from dogs. Or rather, to defend ourselves from people with the help of dogs,” Tavi’s mother corrected herself, giving him a mean side glance.

“If I see you’re afraid, I bite. If I sense you’re weak, I jump on you. I smash your doors, windows, and house, I set fire to you. I send burning corpses to visit you at night. The exceptions? What are the exceptions? Those buddies of yours? The philanthropic doctor? The housekeeper, laundress, and chauffeur — patients happy at the gods’ benevolence! Psychotherapy, ergo-psychiatry, ergonomics, whatever the hell it’s called. Or Bambino Gafton, hypnotized by grand ideals? A journalist, do you hear, a journalist in this day and age! And he even changed his name to Gafton, his wife’s name. To show what? What exactly? That things have moved on? That we no longer make distinctions, no longer take revenge on old legionaries, is that it? But he knew that was a lie. He knew it, the fool. Or did he? Tell him that chosen fools are more stupid than ordinary fools. They are the fools’ chosen ones, tell him that!”

Poor Venera was about to have an attack, just now when she had testified that she knew about Mauriciu Gafton and Dr. Marga and the wretched detective A.D.V.V., no less.

But she pulled herself together, the dear old thing. The performance was not over yet.

“You see, Mr. Vancea, the frail, sick Tavi. The sly, devious Tavi. .”

The dog did not move: he had withdrawn into a superior sleepiness.

The air itself had frozen solid: there no longer seemed to be time to think of what placid Venera was suddenly pouring forth.

“Yes, yes, the hypocritical Tavi, the monstrous Tavi! He kept wandering around, hid himself in a blind alley.”

She tried to laugh, mockingly, but all she could get out were some short sounds, a nasty bark of a cough.

“Yes, yes, I understand,” the professor tried to stammer, but Venera cut short any interruption with a wave of her hand.

“I know Tavi. I do know him, Professor! My friend — who’s like a half sister, you might say — is a person of great quality, but well, she’s an invalid all the same. These last few years I’ve been the only whole person among them, or beside them — beside him — who always guarded against somehow becoming a victim.”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” the professor tried to repeat, but again without success.

“You should — you’d be able to understand the romantic delirium, the raw, bloated suffering. You were a good-looking boy, happy and transparent, isn’t that so? Everything was perfect, no? Until that bicycle accident.”

The professor groaned with surprise at the blow beneath the belt. But he recovered with lightning speed, suddenly brimming with excessive vitality. He put his feet up American-style on the armchair to his left, but Mrs. Venera did not notice.

“That bicycle turned everything upside down, didn’t it?”

“Yes, yes, I understand.” The professor’s voice could be heard plainly as he merrily dangled his legs above the chair.

The professor-detective was carelessly swinging his legs about. Now he was pale, too. And Tavi had found a comfortable position by the window, looking into the invisible distance. Venera paid him no attention: she seemed alone — alone with her absent partner.

“They’ve gone away, Tavi and Tori. Taube, who’s known as Tori. They’ve gone to her relatives in Bavaria. Or maybe that’s not where he is, the dog. Maybe he went out of the blue to look for the lover of his youth! But I hope they’ve gone where they said — to relatives, I mean. Theirs, not mine. No, by no means to mine. I’ve only got myself, for madmen to hound me, and tie me up and set fire to me and my house, my belongings, my dogs and cats, everything I hold dear. What chaos — you can imagine! Complete chaos! The dolts, the crazies, the deaf-mutes. They took me for someone else. In fact, I’m not entirely alone. As you see, I look after Tavi: they were generous enough to leave Tavi for me to look after. I feel attached to Tavi — what can I do? Since my apartment was wrecked, since the fire and the sleepless nights, I’ve been here for most of the time, with Tavi.”

Tavi did not stir, although his mistress had held out her hand to stroke him. It was an absentminded gesture in the air. For Tavi was already by the window, and all the lady really wanted was to gain a pause, to recover her breath, before the big final scene.

It seemed as if she had decided not to interrupt herself anymore, and not to let herself be interrupted, until she had cleared the whole burden from her chest.

“Mr. Vancea, let me tell you about disaster. About the soul full of mist and dark holes, where snakes hiss around and ravens roam loose. Poison on top of poison, knot over knot, fungus growing out of fungus. No way out, believe me — only fakes. Exits which are really other entrances. A turning on the spot inside, that’s all. Let me tell you about Tavi: he’s all that interests me. Have you really thought about Tavi? About those he lives among, about the cripples we have all become? Tell me, have you thought about that? Has he just hidden among them or actually accepted their code? It would be a good hiding place, wouldn’t it? Suspicion and informing, our daily bread — there are novel codes in this milieu, no? The sickly, crippled underground that keeps swelling and cannot find a way out, or even an air hole. It just goes on fermenting, and very occasionally a tortured stammering comes out. An extreme model? An outer limit of what we have all become, in fact? Nothing that is real is absolute: everything is full of holes, displacements, blotches. We are forced to use our imagination in order to understand, isn’t that right?

“I was passionately interested in mathematics, Professor. A real passion, honestly. Reductio ad absurdum ! The artificial means that will make the insoluble equation more accessible to our tricks and dodges. But still a reduction, we shouldn’t forget it; an artificial means, no more. These model cripples involve a formidable compression — that’s all. If a tiny little incision were allowed, something quite unique would gush out. Pus and flames and the aurora borealis! Genius, crime, madness, blinding hell, impossible to imagine. If only we could somehow reach the miraculous moment of liberation! If only we could reach the truth, you’d see what would spring from each one of us, you’d soon see. Something implacable and unique. Or maybe just a morbid stammer? A sick stammer would frighten us no less, I assure you.