Nor~MAN
MANEA
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appear to have heard. Was he meditating, or calculating, or reminiscing?
He flicked away the alarming news, like some annoying seasonal insect.
"There now, do you hear? Pretexts. Where are dogs and cats going
to have to live now? In the forest, in the wilderness? What do you say?
Isn't it well written? Listen: only in forests, on mountaintops and ocean
reefs. What are those reefs supposed to be? Yes, it's a strong article. I
wonder how it was published."
It may have been at that moment of just-listen-to-this-ness that the
strange idea flashed into Tolea's mind. The idea of playing a trick -
something the public would not expect, something that would liven him
up himself. For he was bored: Professor Voinov was bored to death.
In a world where everything seems programmed, even chaos, chance,
or surprise, you've got to defy logic and bewilder people. You've got
to make the fools believe that you control secret links to which they
have no access.
Thought after thought kept passing through the skull of receptionist
Anatol Dominic Vancea Voinov, known as Tolea; his brain circuits were
working nonstop, in
perpetuum mobile,
and without a doubt it would
have been possible to pick up signals from them. Especially as spring - oh
yes, it was a real illness, spring, a real onslaught. At last something real
and powerful, for which the numbed mice no longer showed any re–
flexes.
"The instigators - tenants from the block! I ask you!"
The receptionist seemed to have awoken.
Suddenly the world "instigators." Perhaps he had remembered his
father ...
And well, the heir will demonstrate that when
all
the games appear
lost, a new one has to be invented, however bizarre it might seem, how–
ever futile it might be. So we are going to do things the other way
round,
mon pere,
completely the other way! We're not going to commit
suicide,
mon pere;
no, no, we won't follow your scenario. We'll just
study it, act it, face up to it, that's all. Otherwise, without a mission im–
possible, we won't hold out against the spring or the boredom. Not
even against the tedium of multilateral sycophancy.
Tolea jumped up from the armchair, alone at the center of the
world, on the great stage with nobody else on it.
Personne, niemand,
nikovo.
"What's the date today, honey?"
Hard to say whether he was speaking to himself or to his colleague
Gina.
Anyway, he knew what he had to do. He'd ask for a short holiday.
