The key was under the mat, as she’d said. Hadn’t ever seen her place in such a state of filth and disorder. A little pigsty, suffocated by too many things, all mixed together. Found all kinds of books and letters. I even received a visit from a pretender to the resident’s hand whom she’d fished out of the personals. After several hours, I had become part of the chaos of rags and words, destined, it seemed, to remain there forever, to communicate with the dust — the stinking leftovers of the cell. I understood then that I’d kill her. The thought wasn’t completely new. I knew (and in moments of discouragement had often repeated to myself) that I had no right to judge her, that I was, in fact, a kind of “brother” — panting in the sludge of subterranean caves, humbled, silenced, accomplices. We had no right to judge people like ourselves. Our common apathy and sleep wore so many faces, and her falsifying, false agitation was just one side of our complex figure — and who knows how much more wretched it was? So now I felt a need to kill her at any cost — as if I could destroy our collective culpabilities, our compromises and degradation: the dysfunction or dementia of soiled, abased, betrayed good intentions. I would poison, strangle, or shoot her with the sounds trickling from the tape recorder, and I would commit suicide myself, accompanied by Summertime from a black woman’s thick throat.
The doctors took this shock most seriously. I hadn’t killed her. Instead, I’d gone quietly out of her room before she returned. . I climbed down the twisted, narrow stairs and wandered the streets till late. It’s true that I was missing from the office and from home for a while, but that can happen to anyone. It didn’t seem important to me that I would sometimes bring my hand hurriedly to my throat. It was an inoffensive tic, in fact, and they helped me get rid of it quickly. The investigators (the doctors and others) asked me how the movie theater was and if there were really so many apples down by the seashore. Of course Death isn’t waiting. Give Death a kiss from me, I told the Sisters of Charity, she rocked me so many times. . Look, she leans heavily on my shoulder. She shook my hand till my fingers cracked, and then smiled at me. It was for the best, I knew, that I now remained alone. In the course of things, they asked me why I’m always cold. How do I explain the cold, this perpetual chill? Why should it seem that when my workmate laughs he’ll freeze in place, showing his teeth? Why do I feel fear and cold in crowds, when the agitation produces heat? Of course, friction should produce heat — where in hell does all this cold come from? Continuous damp cold — where the devil. . Poor inquisitors and guards, they asked me many things, but kept returning to this: Why does everything look frozen to me — hands, hair, lips, all ready to snap off with cold and all around, cold, sleep, and inescapable frost. In the end, they took a letter out of a drawer. No, it wasn’t from Donca. They showed me the envelope. I recognized it. I knew that letter by heart. They had found it in the coat I’d surrendered when I entered the hospital. It was from the professor, Liliana Zubcu, the Captain’s wife. “Mr. Engineer, I am the mother of the girl you ruined. .” That’s how indiscreetly — no, no, indignantly — the letter began. “Her pure soul cannot endure this violation. After the death of her father, she placed her trust in you, a guardian angel, she believed.” I listened to the doctors’ indig. . no, indiscreet reading, and hadn’t the strength to protest against this invasion of my coat’s lining. “How could you do such a thing? Do you know what it means to rip out a girl’s unborn fetus? Do you know what happened to her body and soul? And the danger? The abortion is now followed by prison, but she told you nothing, nothing. She took the risk completely alone. You didn’t love my daughter enough, and you will never be free of this guilt!” Mrs. Liliana Zubcu was right: I didn’t love that sublime sister enough. I cannot love enough, it’s true. The guilt she’s talking about is reaclass="underline" I carry the burden in myself. I didn’t want to answer any of the doctors’ questions about the letter. It’s not their business to get into my coat’s lining. Eventually they accepted my silence and told me to get some rest.
The hospital authorities maintained that there was a way out. I should change environments, get out of the house, go out for walks, chose another place to work — outside, in the fresh air. I should be patient, very patient. In any case, I should not stay in one place for too long, nor is there any reason. .
This miserable wooden bench is full of snow. Only a few green stripes are visible, as if it were a dead crocodile caged in fallen snow. So there isn’t any point: I mustn’t stay long in the same place.
• • •
They proved to be understanding, and they really worked miracles with their science. The effects appeared quickly. In less than three months I was another person — or rather the person I had been before. I am grateful to my father for saving me from the common room, where I might have seen all sorts of macerated faces, which is how they looked sometimes in the corridor or the courtyard, making speeches and waving their hands, blinking horribly, bringing their hands to their hair, their throats with a full range of coughs, tics, twitches, and salivated gibberish. As a caregiver, Father proved careful and particularly efficient, as he knew how to be: orderly, restrained in suffering, which he mastered like a shameful secret that might have been able to unite us. The cheerful, young, distant nurse would pop into my clean white cell from time to time, or her boss would come with his thick lips and his characteristic way of contracting his cheek and shifting his thick, rectangular glasses in a single movement. He held out his hand to shake every day and spoke in a baritone voice that vibrated with reserved force. Sometimes the higher-ups visited me as welclass="underline" the diagnostic professor, the emergency radiotelegraphist, the expert in analyses and recuperations, and the reeducation and requalification instructors. They listened to me with great attention. They asked me questions to find out where the malfunction was and what I was thinking. I was a bastard. I lied. I cheated. I coveted. . no, appropriated my neighbors’ work and wives. I didn’t help my near and dear. I wasn’t capable of love. I didn’t respond to love. That girl with the big eyes wasn’t like the others. It was no laughing matter. What would I have done with such a woman? We would have been afraid of each other. She thought I’d remain perpetually worthy of her protection, to fondle and diddle this weak body: a scrawny boy, transparent with deeply ringed eyes, passing through the rivers of the night in the shadow of the patrols, with big bad cinematographic eyes. They nodded. They understood, the conversation tired me. I hadn’t the strength, the patience, the appetite. The people around me stared — hideous, ravenous, haunted. They understood right away. They had come across cases of this kind.
They succeeded, of course. So I slept: I slept a lot. It was important for me to sleep, and they succeeded: I kept sleeping. Then they explained to me that I wasn’t guilty. Such monstrous atrocities happen daily — no, they didn’t say monstrous atrocities, they said it differently, movements, not movements, not mistruths, not motives, yes, marvels: marvels of this sort happen all the time. Mysteries, mutations, meshugaas. . yes, yes, minor problems. Which is to say, the girl will eventually find someone else, and I another girl. We’ll mature, so they were saying. We will mature. Such things solve themselves with time. Maybe it was all for the best. She was an overly sentimental girl, no, not sentimental, sensitive. That’s all I needed. I was better off out of it. Yes, but I. . not by much, I explained to them — in fact, I was always indifferent, forgetful, not that I feel. . no, not that I care, the proof was the way I behaved: like a brute, like a blessing, because she was alone, in fact. They nodded their heads and gestured with their hands. They understood what I was saying. They were right: I had no connection to the Captain, nor to Monica’s mother, the old lady, Rebeca Smântănescu locked away in her madhouse, and it’s no good to go see war movies, either, or those horror movies — that’s way too much. The reason was that I had worked a lot; probably I’d worked too much. I explained to them that it wasn’t true: I was working sometimes, but playing hooky often, and that wasn’t important — probably I didn’t like what I was doing. I shrugged my shoulders, but they were right.