JUST IMAGINE · THE ENDE FILE
A cave. A child. Superimposed human skulls. A department that officially never existed described my tattoo in 1989, item by item. Happy Halloween.
Just imagine that you have a tattoo across your entire back. A cave. Stalactites. A column of death masks running down your spine. You chose every one of them. They were born of your obsessions. They are, you would swear under oath and before a notary, yours.
Now imagine that someone leaves you a bag with two brass clasps. Inside, a black file. And somewhere in the middle of that file, a department of the Securitate describes your tattoo. Element by element. In 1989.
I didn’t have to imagine it. It is, as they say, documented.
The banality of exceptional objects
I summon my courage, release the two brass clasps and look inside. It takes me less than a second to understand what “with your life” means.
I snap the bag shut and put it back on the table as though I’ve just discovered it contains anthrax spores. I get up, go to the door and double-lock it. I close the windows, draw the curtains and switch on the light. Then I return to the table and look at the bag again.
Inside, a black file. The Bentley Continental Supersports of files. Inside a gold border, resembling a blind-embossed seal, are the words Surveillance File. No. 110. The lettering is elegant, almost calligraphic, the white ink so thick it looks like correction fluid. The fastening: a black silk ribbon wound several times around a gold button.
I feel like an amnesiac about to read his own memoirs, written before some idiotic accident erased his identity.
Being a responsible adult, I considered my options. I could burn it, page by page, and the story ends here. I could slip it into my father’s coffin and give fate a chance to indulge its favorite pastime: irony. I could ask Olga to hide it in that kitchen cabinet, the one apparently designed around drawers nobody has ever managed to find.
I unwound the ribbon. In my defense, there was a bottle of Grey Goose on the table, and it was not on the side of caution.
Everything goes by the manual
The beginning of the file is classic for the communist era: three men played at dissidence at the worst moment in the history of dissidence. A denunciation (because there is always an informer), and suddenly the Securitate men appear, the microphones, the informer’s notes and the friends ready to sell you out because your socks are ideologically inside out.
Everything goes by the manual. Until the nonexistent Section VII enters the scene.
DIRECTORATE VII—SERVICE I
DEPARTMENT OF NEUROPSYCHIC PROGRAMMING
PHASE III—EXPERIMENT “ENDE”
CLASSIFIED—NOT FOR INCLUSION IN THE INFORMATIVE PURSUIT FILEThe experimental material was divided into four symbolic components: An adult human figure; A child approximately ten years of age; A cave; Superimposed human skulls.
A cave of karstic formation, illuminated in its central area, with the peripheral spaces remaining in deep shadow; stalactites and stalagmites resembling human skulls, arranged in successive planes extending into the background.
Note the bureaucratic tenderness of “a child approximately ten years of age”. Somebody measured. Somebody typed it in triplicate. Somebody, presumably, went home afterwards and had soup.
The four visual components were presented successively to the subject during sessions involving pharmacologically altered states of consciousness.
The selection and combined use of these substances formed part of the Department’s experimental protocol and were not disclosed to the subject.
According to reports submitted by the field operatives, on 20 February 1989 the subject completed an original artistic work entitled The Grotto of Masks.
Comparative photographic reproductions of the two works are appended to the present report.
The skin off my back
From that moment on, I discover, page after page, that my tattoo is a painting entitled The Grotto of Masks. And that this painting is the fabrication of some brainless communists who practice a blend of psychological voodoo and party ignorance.
I am obliged to fight back: the child, the lady beside her, the skulls and the stalagmites are mine. They were born of my obsessions and they represent me. The death masks are my death masks.
And my reasoning works until “ENDE” comes into the discussion. An unusual word, which I too wrote in capitals, on the forehead of the death mask on my chest.
I try to smile.
“Simple coincidence!”
I try again. I take the two photographs out of the file and go and stand in front of the mirror.
Baroane was right: a file like this is not read, it is snorted. It is consumed as if the ink were laced with speed. As if the punctuation marks were microdots and the pages were stamps you put under your tongue once you have finished reading them.
But what pulverized my mind for good was something else: although my name did not appear even once in this file, I was the conclusion of the story.
Homework
Is there anything on you that you are absolutely certain you chose yourself? A tattoo, a scar, an opinion, a spouse. Tell me in the comments. I will not forward them to any department. I no longer trust departments.
Previously, in Just Imagine: Never tell a dean the truth at a wedding. The file is in chapter fifteen of The Apophatic Man.
— A.J.
Andrei Jebeleanu is the editor-in-chief at the center of The Apophatic Man, a novel by Marius Tianu, inspired in part by real events. Volume I is out on 10 November. Pre-order it on Amazon →
