On one of the central avenues I ran across a very good friend of mine, one of the most gifted poets of our generation.

“Shall we have coffee together?”

“Of course!”

            So we entered a restaurant. It goes without saying that what with one thing and another, coffee was followed by roast meat during our talk and the steak by iced wine. Towards midnight, my friend suddenly started: 

“Nick, how shall I put it, I’ve got no money on me; oh, yes, lest I should lie, I’ve got five lei but I need them for cigarettes!”

I pretended to be dumbfounded:

“What an awful coincidence! I’m broke too… Oh, no, lest I should lie, I’ve got one leu for the tram…”

“What shall we do under the circumstances?”

            “I’ve got a solution. Do call this number. But be sure to ring for a long time, for my cousin sleeps in the next room. If you tell him this position we are in, he is sure to come to our rescue!”

            My friend clutched the dime for the telephone as if it had been the last life belt. My cousin was already at the seaside, I knew nobody would answer but on the other hand I got enough time to talk it over with the waiter:

“Please draw the check!”

After a pause:

“168 lei and 30 bani.”

            “Here are two hundred for you.” When my friend returns, I’ll give you two bits of paper. D’you get me? You’ll give me my change but I’ll tell you to keep it. Is that clear? Now sign the check, for I had a bad experience with a waiter who under similar circumstances went home and had his fellow make me pay again…”

“Don’t you know me?”

“That’s precisely why! Sign the check. It’s all right now.”

When my friend returned he was black in the face and could hardly speak:

“I kept ringing for half an hour. No answer.”

I pretended to be at a loss, myself, panic-stricken. After a while I started speaking:

“Now pay attention, my dear, for I’ve found a solution. Among other things I’ve done in my life, I’ve also practiced hypnosis. I’m going to hypnotize the waiter. Have you got two bits of paper? We’re saved. Tear them out of your notebook. Write ‘One hundred lei’ on each of them…”

A rather cautious man, my friend shirked it:

“No. You write it, for you’re an adept of hypnotism.”

            “I will. But I beg you too to think that each of these slips of paper is a hundred-lei banknote, And in order to help me emit the fluid, when I address the waiter, please press my knees and my hand under the table. Let’s rehearse it! Yes, that’s perfect!”

            I beckoned the waiter and asked for the check. You wouldn’t believe it, but for the first time in my life, the amount happened to coincide with the former one: 168 1ei and 30 bani. I produced the two slips of paper and calmly held them out to the waiter. In the meantime, my friend’s knees pressed mine as if our ship were sinking. And he desperately pressed my hand. His face was congested and he was thinking hard, closing his eyes. He only relaxed and breathed when he heard the waiter say “Here’s your change, sir: 31 lei and 70 bani…”

            With royal elegance I told him to keep the change and he humbly thanked me.

My friend gaped at me:

            “But what will he do tomorrow when he delivers the money and notices two of the banknotes are in fact blank pieces of paper? I suggest we call again early in the morning to bring him the money… Shouldn’t we?”

“My dear, I hope that hypnosis will also continue with the headwaiter. It will pass on to him, for the shook we impressed on the paper was extremely powerful.”

But my friend was unflinching in his insistence.

“We’ll bring him the money tomorrow. But now, because we’ve gone through such terrible emotions, let’s go to the park restaurant in the park and try to recover by means of a glass or two of vine. Look: I’ve got plenty of leaves in my notebook. What about having our friend Naste join us?”

As you can easily imagine, hypnosis had exhausted me far too much for me to be able to repeat the experience.