Birds of the Sky

/, Literature, Blesok no. 24/Birds of the Sky

Birds of the Sky

* * *

That was the last time I saw Tofana.
Next day I asked maestro Sorin, who had a good relationship with the doctor of the Indian embassy, to intervene for Tofana’s visa. Sorin went, found out, talked. They told him that the named Tofana Melidon had left an application long before but she did not come up later on; she did not come either on the fixed date to fill in a questionnaire of immigration and that they cannot issue visa through correspondence… that they have a feeling that the applicant did not show real intentions to settle down in India.
That, like many other Romanians, Tofana seemed to be petulant and pessimistic, alternating renunciation and impulsivity. She seemed not to know how to follow her interest, blocking in a strange torpour the energy that she couldn’t turn into fury. This was what Sorin had found out from the embassy doctor.
A national conference followed, where the Shoemaker said that emigrants were “traitors” and that we should tighten the crews. The frontiers would be tightly closed.
I wanted to tell Tofana to go quickly to the Indian embassy where the doors were open for her and where she could find sympathy. I looked for her everywhere. The dome was empty. Nobody knew where she had left. One or two tenants from the opposite block of flats still remember her.

***

One November night Tofana rang me up. It was cold and wet. It was past midnight. The call came from a strange world.
She tells me it’s her birthday. She tells me she is with Mehmed. That she was with him to a restaurant and that she is wandering now. And that she will leave him right away, in no time, if I don’t take a taxi and come there!
She also says it’s cold. That she has frozen standing there. That her shoes are full of water. That she moved from the dome to a garage. That she is shivering with cold.
She says: “I stand near a cold and damp wall while talking to you over a cold metallic phone and Mehmed drives me crazy with his questions: ‘Whom are you waking up at this time?’ and I don’t know what time it is, maybe today, maybe tomorrow.”
I wish her many happy returns of the day. I tell her that the Indian ambassador will meet her on Tuesday at 11.00 a.m. I wish her luck.
“Come quickly, she says, please, come, I’ll immediately leave Mehmed. I’m in the Rosetti Circus, it’s cold, I’m near the Plafar shop, please, come. I would like to have a drink but all the pubs are closed. Come, I’ll tell you the position of my visa, I think I’ll leave with God’s help. I’ve got serious promises from Egypt. It’s raining heavily. It’s my birthday; oh, God, what a sad day. Mehmed pulls my arm like an elephant. Come and I will leave him at once. Please come, please.”
I tell her I won’t.
And Mehmet keeps pulling her arm like an elephant. And she cries in the receiver: “I’m cold and I’m 27!”
“I wish you many happy returns of the day, Tofana!”
I wait for her to hang off the receiver.

This was our last conversation. I have remembered her as she was on that night, for a long, long time. Standing near a cold wall, soaked and shivering with cold. Then I remembered her eating an apple. Crossing herself down to her belly. Pushing the man out of the cable railway cabin. Staring nowhere like an abulic person. Huddled up, shivering with cold in her broken, full-of-water shoes. Ready to fly, hands spread like wings. I figured her stepping into pools of water in her worn out shoes. And by her side, a guy called Mehmed, who pulls her arm like an elephant. With whom her Suffite initiation can start: her new convertion or just a feast at Nang Jing restaurant. A Mehmed who may be a new mystical horizon or a new image of her failure.
I crumpled the sheet of paper I had written on: “All those who wish to know God’s will, have to kill theirs, first.”
The fall passed away. Winter is coming. It’s snowing today. I’m waiting for a call from Tofana to tell her that she is still waited for by the Indian embassy. But Tofana gives no sign. No sign, for two months.
A mild winter. My little girl, Dana hugs me; she says: “Papa, winter is my friend, frost is my friend, snow is my friend.”
There followed sleet, congresses, extra-pages newspapers. Always extra-pages. And no sign.

AuthorVasile Andru
2018-08-21T17:23:40+00:00 January 1st, 2002|Categories: Prose, Literature, Blesok no. 24|0 Comments