“Don’t worry about it, Mama,” said the old boy. “Was the coffee all right?”
“Your coffee is always too strong for me.”
“Well, that’s my day gone already,” the old boy thought to himself after his mother had left.
“I ought to change that rubber seal on the coffee percolator,” he continued his train of thought.
“But where the hell are the seals?” he then puzzled (not finding them in their usual place) (that is, the place he imagined to be the usual place for the seals).
Thus it was that the old boy came to be standing in front of the filing cabinet and holding in his hands a flat, square-shaped piece of wood.
This chunk of wood, about 3 × 3 in. in size, rough on one side and on the other covered with a layer from multiple daubings of white paint (which had yellowed over time), had come to light from one of the old boy’s two cardboard boxes in which he kept a miscellany of objects (both necessary and unnecessary), among which, or so he imagined, he might chance upon the rubber seals needed for the coffee percolator.
Instead of them, however, he came across the remaining original piece of one of the two ungainly, disparately-sized wardrobes which had once stood there, long defying the steadfast antipathy of the old boy’s wife (and noteworthy for the wax seal that was visible on it) (though the inscription on the wax seal had been rendered almost illegible by the yellowish-white layer of paint from repeated decoration).
“So much for their saying care would be taken to spare the wax seal,” he fumed (mentally).
For which reason, at this point in our story — as the old boy was standing in front of the filing cabinet and holding in his hands a piece of wood (noteworthy for the wax seal which was visible on it) — out of the group of letters arranged in a circle only the fragments SE, ST, and, in front of that, a dot-shaped nubble, as well as — further on, with a bit of imagination — TY could be made out from the original inscription (SEALED BY STATE SECURITY AUTHORITY), the purpose of which inscription, as its sense suggests, was to keep the doors of the hallway wardrobe under seal (not, however, ruling out the possibility that the plywood sheet which formed the back of the hallway wardrobe might be prised open) (which, incidentally, is what happened) (because, whatever the subsequent, by then patently obvious evidence, what else would have explained the fact that when, one summery evening, the old boy’s wife) (at a time when she was not yet the old boy’s wife) (and the old boy was not yet old) (indeed, they had not yet met each other) (anyway, on that summery evening the old boy’s wife-to-be had tried fruitlessly to open the door to her own apartment with her own key and thus, since she saw a light on inside, was reduced to ringing the doorbell) (what else would have explained the fact that the unknown, short, stocky, somewhat piggish-looking woman who opened the door to the ringing was wearing a dressing gown, shortened and altered to fit her own figure, which belonged to her, the old boy’s wife-to-be — a fact which did not escape the old boy’s wife-to-be even in the brief minute while she introduced herself to the unknown woman, who then, after an indignant exclamation) (“What’s this?! You’re still alive?!”) (immediately slammed the door in her face) (in consequence of which, there being nothing else she could do, the old boy’s wife) (who at that time was not yet the old boy’s wife) (and as far as meeting him goes first met him only somewhat later) (faced with the unappealing prospect of spending a summer’s night on the street) (and an even more uncertain tomorrow) (before long returned to the place whence she had set off for her apartment) (that is to say, the State Security Authority) (where she was obliged to ask the officer who had released her earlier, accompanied by the official paper, to provide her with accommodation for the night — if nowhere else, then in her old cell, where the old plank-bed and blanket were certainly still waiting) (a request that it turned out to be impossible to fulfil now that she had been released, accompanied by the official paper) (so that the officer had only been able to offer the leather couch in the corner of his room, while he himself went off duty for the whole night, accompanied by the official papers, and in the morning) (worn out, dehydrated, gaunt, and nicotine-stained from his whole night off-duty) (like one of the countless cigarette butts which had overflowed his ashtray in the course of off-duty nights) (set off with her to the housing office of the competent local authority in order to discover how they could have allocated an apartment that the State Security Authority had sealed off) (a matter that in itself was to be treated as a state secret) (consequently there were grounds for suspecting that behind not just the procedural irregularity, but also the very leaking of the address there no doubt lay a criminal act of bribery) (though in the end no light was ever thrown on that) (and only after a year of litigation was the apartment itself restored to the rightful ownership of the old boy’s wife) (whom we may now refer to as the old boy’s wife without reservation) (even if the old boy was not at all old at the time) (and his wife was not yet his wife) (but by then they at least knew each other) (indeed, they were sharing a household) (insofar as their joint household could be called a household, that is).
This, then, was the reason why even today, at this late point in our story, the old boy was fuming that — contrary to all the advance warnings he had given — care had not been taken to spare the wax seal (which the piece of wood in his hands preserved).
“After all, a memento is a memento,” he continued to fume.
“And this piece of wood is the only thing that’s left of it all,” he carried on fuming.
“It was rather embarrassing,” his face suddenly brightened (as if touched by some memory) (a memory which was evidently bound to the humorous) (yet rather embarrassing) (though the two are by no means mutually exclusive) (indeed their simultaneous presence is the spice of all genuinely funny episodes) (assuming one is capable of valuing the funny side of a rather embarrassing episode) (as when it turns out, for instance, that one actually has no objective proof of any kind for an event that one has held to be so decisive in one’s life, and thus it exists purely in one’s unverifiable memories) (so in short, the brightening of the old boy’s face was evidently bound up with this episode which was simultaneously humorous and rather embarrassing).
For in point of fact, years later — and now years (many years) before the present moment — the idea had struck the old boy that his wife should in any event (and here the word should be understood in the strict sense, which is to say an event that may be pure supposition, but it does no harm to be prepared for it) (if it holds logical water to be prepared for something we haven’t the faintest idea about), so in any event should apply to get her name cleared (as is only right and proper) (if we do not wish that the mere fact of our having been punished is to be held against us as a crime that we have committed).
They were visited by a detective.
He introduced himself.
He sat down (not in one of the armchairs placed to the north and west of the tile stove) (since those armchairs did not yet exist at that time) (but presumably in the rush-bottomed chair, the rush strands of which were severed at the wooden frame, which, along with two backless seats with similarly severed rush bottoms and a stripped-wood colonial table, two sofas) (one of them padded out with books at its centre, where the spring had gone) (and two blankets, as carpeting on the floor, constituted the apartment’s furnishings at that time).
He asked to see the release paper.
This was when the abovementioned simultaneously humorous and rather embarrassing episode ensued, which was characterized by the helpless glances of the old boy (who was not yet old at that time) and his wife, a hasty pulling out of drawers, an agitated rummaging under bed linen until it was discovered that the sole authentic proof of release (and above all the committal to detention which had preceded it) — namely, the release paper — had, every sign indicated, been mislaid in one subtenancy or another (or perhaps along one of the routes from one subtenancy to another).