Norman Manea - Captives

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The bitch with red fur might signal the attack on the banks. The Wangard tire warns that dissidents are now being tracked. Spanish is the watchword for silence at any price. Exchange of letters : a signal that the money will reach its recipient. Middle-aged woman : the action will begin in the building with two floors. Only Aurel : the hiding place. Two engineers seeking a furnished room : an order to find a hiding place for the two subversive valises. The divorce process : the initiation of public protest.

Starting with a mere whimper in the personal columns of a daily paper or a popular magazine with some blonde celebrity on the cover, inoffensive words can trigger strange initiatives, like a coded curse.

I am buying paintings by the painter Aurel Vintilescu, only Aurel . Tel. 13.41.65 (638662).

I tutor shorthand, Stahl method, for foreign languages, including Spanish . Tel. 67.51.51 (64280).

Selling three martin skins: beautiful and absolutely new. Tel. 14. 59.02 (65.37.06 61506).

February 28, 7 P.M., lost near the Church of Saint Nicolae, Strada 11 Iunie, Pekinese dog, white breast and paws. Answers to the name Piky. Large reward. Tel. 65.37.06 (61506).

Carensebeş County court summons Liviu Manea, last domiciled in Baia Mare, Strada Cluj, Nr. 25, present residence unknown, for the divorce process with Marta Manea at 7 A.M. on March 28, 1968. (918460 ME).

I am urgently seeking an eternal resting place in a burial vault, Bellu Cemetery, for a middle-aged woman . Tel. 58.53.47 or 75.70.78 (215).

Lost: rubber tire, Wangard 590x15 and blue folder containing essays in Arabic. Reward. Call me at 47.55.06 (69294).

Two young engineers seeking a room with central heating, possible tutoring. Serious offers. Tel. 62.38.83, after 4 P.M. (64225).

Professor of piano and French, middle-aged, seeks correspondence and eventual meeting with a serious gentleman with similar inclinations. Tel. 13.31.37, late evening.

Cotroceni district: furnished room to let, comfortable, retirees only, intellectual, cultivated. P.O. Box 62990 (62990).

Young engineer with prospects seeks correspondent, young lady (or nearly so) any field for eventual meeting, serious character, Bucharest only. P.O. Box 62936.

Assistant Engineer and physicist, I tutor mathematics and physics: young lady candidates for the university and fulltime or part-time university students. Exchange of letters. Tel. 17.17.77 (64437).

The production personnel for the film Michael the Brave is initiating a preparatory course for stuntmen. Candidates selected at Calea Călăraşi, Nr. 11 (218) write to Aurel only.

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She will have an hour for lunch, and will know the insipid taste of mayonnaise, sauces, and creams, the smell or color or taste of any dish capable of arousing torpid digestive juices: spicy grilled meatballs that cause heartburn; white fish sprinkled with lemon, the spine and little bones aligned to one side of the dish as in a tomb.

— Three meatballs and a roll. Or no, two rolls.

In one hand, the briefcase; in the other, a plate with three meatballs, a green plastic basket, two rolls, a knife, and a fork. The buffet line is long. Her big body rubs itself between other famished people.

— May I?

It seems he smiled at her. He’s too young — he didn’t even see her.

— Give me fish balls, too, a bit of roast, and a beer. Two extra rolls and a pastry with whipped cream.

The briefcase is at her place. The young man has left — replaced by a short man who frequently wipes his sweaty brow. The reddish sauce is acidic; the bread softens. . the little fish balls, cut in half, with the flesh rolled in sauce. The beer comes on time: cold and foamy. Then the tender bit of roast larded with fatty white strips that absorb pepper.

— Can you shift over a bit in that direction, please.

The man has a low, warm voice and the air of a child: dumpy, bald, and blighted with sweat.

Stomach bloated: there’s no more room for the pastry. But at least the frothy whipped cream should be tasted, a corner of the juicy, aromatic crust, and another, and another, and just one more. The briefcase, mustn’t forget the briefcase. Another furtive glance at the sweaty man bent over his plate.

The rain has stopped. It’s warm outside, as it is inside the freighted body that could stretch out in a large bed to sleep, to forget this afternoon of slavery, the spoiled little cannibals, their murderous smiles, the rotten little brats hysterical in the frenzy of the afternoon.

— What the hell are you looking at lady?

Thrown into the bus, crushed, bent over the briefcase crammed with papers, the words reach her from behind: “look at that fatso.” The bus breaks sharply at every corner and springs sharply forward: constantly starting and stopping until it suddenly hurls her onto the sidewalk in agitated exhaustion. The briefcase drops, her hands shove air and strike the damp pebbles. Cries. Whistles. A false step, provoked and awry. Down the street. The toes squeezed into mannish shoes have clenched. The right hand extended forward maintains an equilibrium with the briefcase in the left. Having looked worriedly at the cars, pedestrians, and the crosswalk, having made it across the street, the professor of French and piano, slowing her movements, catches her breath, and looks into the little dairy buffet: eggs, yogurt, cheese, sour cream, milk.

— Would you happen to have a Pepsi?

The waiter should have been shocked by the voice’s tenderness and rushed over with two frosty bottles yanked directly from the ice, yet boredom leads to looking without hearing, so he missed her angelic voice, and absently signaled her to sit.

— Yes, I’ll bring it.

The thin sheets rustle in her briefcase, still imperceptibly impregnated with the odor and breath of their sender. The waiter takes his time, and by now the customer must have opened her briefcase, and would be feeling the thin sheets between her fat fingers, and, as on every day, the delayed gratification was running through her mind — between the words of the letter and the letters of each word, the adjectives and diminutives reviewed in equivocal jubilation: idiotic, willfully idiotic.

The waiter appears through a side door carrying a glass and a narrow bottle with a metal cap. He sets the glass on the table, opens it, and places the bottle near the glass. Now, finally, comes the moment for her to be alone: pulling the briefcase near, passing her hand along the notebooks, using two fingers to draw out the sheets prepared for correspondence, opening the top buttons of her blouse, straightening the edges of the paper, delaying the pleasure for a few more seconds while rubbing her puffy fingers over the little sheet that awaits the rustle of words. The caress of a child, the doltish innocence.

The fire in the Apuseni Mountains and then at the Hotel Dracula — when you hurt me so badly and I forgave you — was never consuming. It burned intermittently somehow, and it used to light my life like a fairy tale, but ephemerally. When I was without it once for four months, once for six, I was on the way to believing that it had gone out. I didn’t feel it was consuming me more and more powerfully. The memories that link me to Dănuţ are spread over five sporadic trimesters. A person can’t live on sporadic memories alone, let alone sporadic ones with question marks.

The beginning of a smile. The fat lady reads the words, seems discontent with their absurdity, so modest and monotonous, and digs a thick red pencil out of her briefcase: thinks and writes a word, and then another, and goes on repeating the well-known game — writing a word, correcting, erasing. Let’s say it was all about burning somehow intermittently at a low, never tempestuous level . There follows a moment of hesitation, finding the right gimmick, and quickly adding: to a certain extent .