NORMAN MANEA
277
1'1\ offer you a coffee as a reward. Get if off your chest,
panie!
You'll
have a real coffee,
hundert prozent,
not like the piss that's drunk in our
multilateral\y developed society. If the news is serious - I mean, bad -
you'l\ get a super-coffee, straight from Allah's kettle."
He circled the pigsty, among books, ties, notebooks, shopping bags,
and like a conjurer fished a thermos and cup out of thin air. There was
the coffee. A big, green, ful\ cup on the metal table between the two
chairs.
"Just for me?"
"I've already drunk a tankful; my pistons are racing away. Sip it
slowly - don't rush. Relax while you're getting the calamities ready. I'm
al\ yours today, Citizen Matei. You found me in - my tough luck."
The guest sipped, smiled, put it off.
"To make it easier for both of us, let me do the explaining," the
professor began impatiently. "Let me tel\ you what it's about. Otherwise
you'l\ keep beating around the bush al\ the way to Katmandu . Come
on, out with it: you need this room. I've got to free the burial cham–
ber. Yes?"
The guest nearly choked on his drink.
"No, no, not at all. What I was going to say was that big staff cuts
are in the offing. What's in your file wil\ count. As in the fifties. That's
it: losing your job isn't a joke. And as you see, there's no longer any
way I can help you."
He spewed it al\ out and breathed a sigh of relief. A long silence fol–
lowed - a kind of crumbling, a loss of contact.
Final\y, the professor's voice. Sharp, rejuvenated.
"As a pensioner you take interest in all sorts of monkey business, isn't
that right? I've heard that you write to the authorities every day. Is it to
atone for your sins of the fifties? You were a journalist in those days and
you scribbled any old lie they wanted, plus a lot they maybe didn't ask
you for but which you believed . Now you're trying to make up for the
past. So you write demands, appeals, suggestion. You criticize and notify
and propose. A volunteer, a real\y stubborn journalist! Brave, ready to
help us poor sinners. You were saying that political files are back, like in
the fifties? But that things won't repeat themselves? Then why don't you
write al\ that down? Nowadays courage is not such a big thing, and the
pension arrives every month. You help us sinners, isn't that right? Maybe
you'l\ find me another job. After al\, a century ago you were at the
Polytechnic together with my brother, now an Argentinian citizen living
in that madhouse cal\ed Buenos Aries. One of the most beautiful in the
world, says our friend Marga. And he knows about these things,
