— Maybe you’d allow me to say anything whatsoever, in order to prove that anyone can say anything, but then you’d install some articulate militant, a dime a dozen in these heroic times, on a platform nearby: a militant with the same qualities that I once possessed. He’d point toward this city in a sweeping gesture, which was formerly so miserable, but modernized now: with hot water, cold water, theaters, institutes, industrial complexes, the population doubled, and the water of the river suffocated by lye and sulfur. I mean, in school I acquired a solid understanding of the theory of the typical, of the representative, and I once wanted to kill a poor, typical, not at all heroic victim of our paltry confusion and panting subordination. You know, my defeat is personal, a failure that regards only me. When that militant denounces me, the victory will be everyone’s — a synthesis of the great collective triumphs. Statistically I don’t count: I am an anomaly, and the appearances of anomalies are not always interesting — it depends on who selects the results.
Mehedinţi’s big hands rested oppressively on my shoulders. He looked at me severely.
— We’re going to Ileana. Don’t tell her about our discussion. Look, I have the strength to sustain losses.
Yes, we were going to see Ileana. We were in the park. Monica’s case would have interested Ileana: the unfortunate day when I wanted to kill an innocent piano teacher. I rested my hand on a snow-covered bench where, not long ago, I had met Ileana Mehedinţi. Meanwhile, Comrade Mehedinţi had carried on ahead, bored by my silence and slowness. It was imperative for me to go see her — although I didn’t have the strength for something like that. That woman who had rocked me as a baby was now helpless as a child, weighted with the presentiment of death.
I should have told Comrade Virgil Mehedinţi that, like him, I loved her too. Her voice from long ago still lingers in my ears.
• • •
In the end I managed to chase away the phantom from the head of the stairs. The gaze that had returned from the other world to save me had disappeared. It obsessed me no more. In the early hours of the day, I follow the same routine: I manage to drag myself into the convoys that press onward from all sides; I arrive on the hill of the same eternal morning — the cigarette smoke, voices, steps, telephones, typewriters, and the rustle of skirts and tracing paper seem like the hushed whispers of forest rising from the mists of dawn. I take the round white tablet, drink coffee, and begin to feel. The rheumatic pain drips slowly through my bones, starting at the heel, moving through my knees and spine, and then back down again to my heel. I’m blessed with the misfortune of seeing Mişa, who follows my every move, which is what he was trained to do.
For a long time I’ve had a letter in my briefcase that I’ve put off opening — from before Donca turned into a slut: the letter of a whore, who finally found courage to become one. Even though she’s my sister, it doesn’t horrify me. On the contrary, it might bring us closer together because, after all, I was as bad as a whore — I mean, who isn’t? What the hell. I’m still attracted to young people, I want to understand them, even if it’s hard for me to adopt their frankness, their hunger for the present, the effectiveness of their affective operations. . no, affective isn’t the right word. I was therefore afraid to open her letter, because she wrote it when she didn’t yet realize what she was becoming: she was in a stupid phase when shamelessness kept feeding on illusions. She’s going through another phase now, the equally disgusting phase of reconsideration. She’s picked up her university studies again, grinds away day and night, and doesn’t leave the house. Tomorrow, I’ll see her among the leading students in her class and a model of morality — which will be nothing less than jaw dropping, no?
One day I got a call from the music professor I sometimes met — to listen to new stories and complaints. Her desire to cry was inexhaustible, and I realized that she only wanted to seem sentimental and stupid to make fun of those who wanted to torment her, and this game contained hidden, masochistic pleasures: to be blunt, the joys of humiliation. This idea interested me, actually, and, using her wonderful voice, she read out some sugary letters to a newly besieged beau. I began to suspect that the letters had been treated with special effects, pushed with verisimilitude to a point where pathos swelled to revenge. She was also writing children’s stories. They were a kind of transposition of her failure to mate, played out in the realm of bunny and squirrel, sparrow and bird fancier.
Anyhow, she begged me to stop by her place. She needed to participate in a school assembly, and wanted to make a tape recording — on a certain borrowed machine — of a story of hers that would be broadcast that evening on the “Goodnight, Kids” show through the intervention of one of her former colleagues, a certain Tiberiu Covalschi, who was also a former teacher (with the rank of professor), former principal, and former jailbird. I’d given up trying to tell her that her messes were a complete embarrassment — especially at her age: in the past, she’d begin to cry, declare that she was sick and alone and that her old mother was mad and far away. In the end, I just shrugged my shoulders.
Once, when she had infuriated me, I shouted at her that if she’d chosen the way of “amour,” it should have been her duty to learn something about men and couples, from her countless humiliations, as well as the related strategies for coupling and manipulation. She had a fit of hysteria right away. It horrified and disarmed me. Out of fury, I yelled that she was fat and ugly — but then I saw her as if for the first time: an ordinary woman, neither ugly nor beautiful, completely average. It might have been a good bet to say that she would have done better as a regular housewife with several sniveling kids tugging at her skirts. She had lively eyes, a pleasant face, and a relatively well-made, navy-blue dress with a little white collar. At that moment, I understood that everything I knew about her had kept me from actually seeing her.
My surprise was even greater when, after she had calmed down, she said: “don’t you realize, my vitality can only be tempered by the multiplication of defeats? Tiredness, misery, tears! Happiness would amount to nothing for a person like me. You need much more strength for the role of the unhappy woman.” The surprises didn’t stop there. I spotted her on a busy street several days later. She was creeping past the passersby in a state of total negligence, hair in disarray, great crocodile tears flowing down her fat, childish cheeks — dirty streams of continuous tears.
In any event, I didn’t promise that I’d make the recording, but our discussion. . her entreaty had made revulsion rise in my throat, and just like that, suddenly, I opened Donca’s letter. She had run away to the mountains three months ago, following a certain forestry engineer, Dan Vasilescu. I’d had the misfortune of seeing the conqueror at the dance party my sister had dragged me to.
The letter was full of exclamation marks and ellipses. Amid so much blank space I recognized a few words that might have been the professor’s: “The cigarette butts remain in the ashtray on the table. The other ashtray is still on the bed. Both remind us that we exist: the madness of our merging is not just a dream.” She thought I was the only one who would understand her. She told me how the engineer called her Dona and carried her around the room in his arms, beseeching her: Dona, Dona, Dona. She even signed the letter with this borrowed name.
Workroom noises broke over me in waves. Staggered upstairs to the boss’s office. This former classmate was an amiable guy. Though very young, he’d worked seriously and advanced rapidly. He’d claimed an enviable position for himself. As on other occasions, he seemed to understand what was happening to me. Left the building, wandered the streets, and stopped off at the professor’s.