He pushed the door and went in. First he saw Magda, her rosy knees complete with eyes, mouth, even a nose, and then Valentin. He muttered a good morning, Petrache answered in a metallic voice and looked at the clock. Best to tell him the truth, to spell out what had happened in the nightmarish night, how swords had glistened in flowerpots on the terrace and a winged lion, griffin, or whatever. . The whole night had been a torment; he was completely drained.
He sat down at his desk, Magda said something, hands wrapped around her cheeks, Valentin let out a laugh, Mr. Petrache looked out the window at the roof tiles across the street. The sky was covered with thin silvery clouds.
Late again! He tried to smile, to gain his indulgence or at least soften the rough lines on his face, the deep furrows between his eyebrows. No success. Petrache turned his head back toward the window.
He opened a drawer, looked for something, failed to find it, and gave up; took a pencil and began to roll it between his fingers; coughed gently a few times. I live a long way away, he said, and there’s no bus line and you know how crowded the trolleybus gets. . He fell silent, coughed again. Magda, as usual, said he was right: those trolleybuses are terrible! She always tried to defend him. He glanced over to thank her with a smile, with a flutter of his eyelids. She was lost in her long red fingernails. She had a round face, a snub nose — ordinary but pleasant enough.
Mr. Petrache cleared his throat but said nothing. Or did he just fail to hear him? After all, he saw him move his lips, so he must have spoken, must have told him off for showing up late again, but his ears had been blocked, he hadn’t heard a thing, he’d been floating under water so clear that he could see everyone’s faces and habitual actions: Valentin sharpening a pencil with a serious, almost solemn, expression on his face; Magda inspecting her nails, then flapping her hands, moving her head, chattering on and on. But he hadn’t heard a thing. He pressed in on his ears quickly a few times:. . don’t let it happen again, Magda looked at him triumphantly, it meant he had been forgiven, he half stood up to thank her, and the next day he was late again.
He was bored at home, had nothing to do, so he went to a movie theater to kill some time. It was a stupid film, or at least that’s what it seemed like at first: some guy fell in love with the landlord’s daughter — in a house with many rooms, mostly rented out to office workers or individuals with no clear occupation. The guy was given one where all kinds of old stuff lay around in heaps; its only window, thick with dust and three-quarters covered by boxes of jagged cans and bottles, looked into the bathroom. From there he watched how she undressed — a girl of seventeen or eighteen — how she washed, and how she let herself be stroked, kissed, and more by this kid she brought with her to the bathroom, a younger cousin no more than thirteen years old. An insolent little brat! The girl’s father collected postage stamps and was probably shacked up with a shop girl who lived right at the top of the building, in the attic. There was an oppressive atmosphere throughout the house; it was filled with corridors, hallways, and assorted nooks and crannies, which looked positively sinister when no one was around; the doors had been white once, but the paint had peeled away and left them looking dirty; their handles were shaped like the heads of animals. Relationships between the tenants were very strange: they hated and spied on one another, suffered from all kinds of obsessions that made them seem even more bizarre, and the whole movie had something obscure and mysterious about it; it was an almost silent film, apart from a few words scattered here and there, a pretty boring film in the end, but it built up tension and left you hanging in the air without any result — what do you mean, no result? — absolutely nothing happened. At one point there was a reel change, and as I didn’t have patience to wait for the rest I left the hall, scowled at the usherette despite her stupid smile, and went out to wander the streets. You’re lying, Magda said, cheerfully sipping her coffee. What did you say the film was called?
He said no more and returned to his desk. No, he wasn’t angry, but what was the point of getting him to talk if she didn’t believe what he said? Yes, a cinema on the outskirts of town, somewhere near the old railway station, I’m not sure exactly. I went there because I didn’t have anything to do in the evening; I was bored stiff. But no, you can’t do things like that! It was like when those cattle were being driven to the slaughterhouse and, all of a sudden, they descended on the tramcar. Haven’t you ever seen cattle being driven to the slaughter? Yes, I did once when I was a kid. So why didn’t she believe that they stampeded into the tramcar and overturned it, or that some policemen took out their guns and started shooting at the animals? The chaos was indescribable: the poor creatures lost their heads and ran all over the upturned tram; men were screaming, a few women fainted, someone yelled that lions and tigers had escaped from a menagerie and were loose in another street. Which wasn’t true.
Well, let’s say I believe you. . What do you mean, let’s say? Do you believe me or not? Don’t do me any favors, now; I’ve only got myself to blame if I’m fool enough to tell you these stories. Valentin split his sides laughing, but then he laughs at anything. All I have to do is raise a finger and you crack up: see how stupid you are. Yes, that I am — and he laughed and laughed, clutching his belly. Magda got going too: it was catching.
I don’t know if that film really exists, but when I was little I also used to look through the keyhole into my aunt’s bedroom. She was as big as a whale, her husband too, both of them acting really, well, weird. Yes, I swear! More peals of laughter followed.
I’d have liked Mr. Petrache to walk in at that point — my own fit of laughter had passed — to walk in and see what state they were in. Magda was in stitches, leaning against the back of her chair, skirt high above her thick bare thighs. Valentin was banging the table with a pencil, his eyes filled with tears. I went over to the connecting door, to look into the next room through a specially bored hole. Don’t worry, Magda said, the boss is out at a meeting. It was true: there was no sign of him in his office. A pity!
Tell us about another movie, Magda pleaded, swaying her hips closer to my desk. A film with knights and castles, with life-and-death battles on green fields. . With that knight who turns into a wolf and eats his mother, Valentin added, delighted with his clever interpolation. I didn’t feel like it. There was no point, and to tell the truth I wasn’t keen on all the chatter: I had work to do. Best to bury my head in some papers or to think and try remembering which street the house was in — I mean, after I left the cinema. . Which film did you say you saw? I don’t answer. I left, the usherette watched me with a stupid grin on her face, then seemed surprised when I scowled. What did she want? I left and went blindly down a sloping side street with broken paving stones, then into another, thinking of nothing at all, I think that’s how it should be, walking without a thought in your head, not looking for anything, no goal in mind, or forgetting that you had one. So, on a little street off to the left (but going where?), then on another one, not knowing how far I’ve gone, though it couldn’t be too far from the cinema. I haven’t gone such a long way, but I’m not sure: you can easily go wrong in cases like this.