About a certain return

Part 14

I interrogated him like a detective!

– I don't know anything. It wasn't me... Mr Black should tell you.

Mr Black was the speechless type. Peevish. He wouldn't allow me to get into his flat. They have each two rooms for themselves, the ugly aged ones. Anyway, they lived a single room...

...

– You said is impossible to pass?

– Mr Black's duty was the passing. I wasn't brave enough for this.

Mr Crow has talked about the manuscript. Then his eyes caught my attention. He used an eye-liner. It was obvious, how come that I didn't notice it before? He looked as a hideous doll, with a red face using make-up. "Behind the barrier nothing is normal and certain. You can see how the objects change their place, their perspective... Actually, you don't see at all... Do you understand? Your senses don't help you anymore. Not your mind either. In front of you pass the whole History, the Civilization from before and after the Fall..."

– ...And you'll say: I am already a prince of light... Here is everything, Mr Crow showed me a pile of paper sheets. Our aim is to touch the Sunlight. To pass through the maze of Life, to pass the filters, to get beyond the Great Barrier... I didn't. If anyone succeeded... I don't know...

Though I didn't have a special transport for Mr Black, I wanted to speak to him, but I was scared of the old man. He had a dark, sadistic look. He looked stronger that Mr Crow, though he was hunch-backed.

– Mr Black, I shouted, after giving up knocking on the door.

– He's not home.

– But he is. I can see him through the window.

– It's only his body. He's not home.

"Oh, go to hell, you old idiots!" I concluded, and then rushed to the other beneficiaries of the National Library. Again a pair, but this time, of different sexes. Why are they called "opposite sexes"? Isn't it better "complementary sexes"? Mme Momalia and Toma Feroiu. A couple, somehow. They had separate apartments, but I could find them often together. And they went walking together in the street, hand in hand. Like lovers. Only, they were a bit old. Momalia had been a philology professor and had published some books with fairy tales for children; he had been "a scientist" expert in nothing because he understands nothing. He wasn't scatter-brained, but had a strange way of associating ideas. Everything not in connection with him (or her) was objectionable. Mr Feroiu seemed to have an ingenu... an ingenui... an inge... oh, to hell with it! Innocence, it sounds better! Childish, that's it! If Momalia could hear me, her heart would miss a beat. His innocence was obvious only when Momalia was around. I found him alone. Then he was insistent, tiring. He repeated three times his family story full of exculpations and regrets, the scientific achievements, love affairs, unbelievable, but the old man praised himself with sexual experiments, public scandals... I could stop listening to him, but he would take it a personal insult. I was warned, he was a maniac when it comes to complains sent to authorities. Momalia was the remarkable character in this couple. Fat, with big breasts and short legs, with a double chin and very strict, with a deep wrinkle above the left eye, Momalia gave orders about all that was coming in that house: Put this there, take this away from here, give me that, sit here, not there, here, eat all please, you've left something...!

Mr Feroiu, like a baby, started to talk sharply and at low voice and the old woman talked only with parables and maxims.... or something like that. Like a machine that makes sausages. Her favorite posture was with her hand under the chin to hide her crop. Only when she walked, she would take her hand off. I found out she had all the diseases a body can suffer from, but she never forgot to assert that she haven't been touched by the hypothetical brain epidemic that threatens to destroy the civilization, beginning with the past century: Oh, but we shouldn't be talking about... as, I believe, Balbos used to say: "We must keep quiet about what we do not know".