NORMAN MANEA
275
The woman slowly arranged the cups and tableware in the sink.
Moving slowly, halfheartedly, she tilted to one side as she limped with
her left leg. But then she came back and sat down. Her pale plump
hands again rested dutifully together on the immaculate tablecloth.
"So they burst into the woman's apartment. And then, what do you
think? They set fire to it. Can you imagine? Because she loved animals,
do you hear? Because she had cats or dogs, or who knows what she had.
It won't reveal the pretext on which they did it, or the means they used.
The woman's name and address are also being withheld. Don't you see?
And So-and- so, who claims to be on the local council, is in league with
the instigators, with the other tenants in the block. You see the
connection, don't you? Do you see how it all fits together?"
His wife stared at him without smiling. She was used to his obsession
for linking the day's events to his research in the library. She knew his
habit of returning again and again to things that happened forty years
ago. This time, though, there was something special in his voice. It
seemed like a crowning moment, a final and decisive test she did not un–
derstand. But she did understand his excitement - a kind of unexpected
victory and, yes, panic. A long-suppressed panic that both confirmed his
expectations and gave him new life, as it were.
An hour later, then, Mr. Matei Gafton was asking the librarian for
more volumes than usual and, for some strange reason, stood with a
blank look for a long time before touching the piles in front of him.
But he did check them carefully. Decree No. 966 of April 7, 1941, in–
troducing harsher penalties for the crime of high treason and espionage.
Plumyene and Lasierra,
Lcs jascisllles jranfaises;
General Ion Antonescu,
The
Basis oj the National-Legionary State,
September-October 1940; Lucretiu
Patrascanu,
Under Three Dictatorships,
Editura politica, Bucharest 1970;
The Graziani Trial,
Rome, 1948-1950; Decree No. 966 of April 7,
1941, prohibiting the marriage of civil servants with foreigners or Jews;
Nazi Conspiracy and
Ag~ression,
Washington, 1946 .. . He knew them
all: they no longer satisfied him. The epidemic spread, the confusion - so
many deceptive little hopes, until the invisible trap snaps shut and it is
too late, with nothing more to be done. Yesterday the disease was still
next door or at the next-door neighbors'; today it is inside you and it is
too late . The roots of evil are in each prisoner, not just in the butchers.
Hunters and victim, fire, a kind of lynching, and the pretexts do not
matter in the slightest: it could have been anyone at all.
It wou ld be too simple an exp lanation, really too simple. That
spring is to blame? Spring, like forty years ago? A delayed encounter of
