But what will be the subject of my novel? My great love for the heroine, who’s on holiday in the country? No. I’ve never been in love; none of my friends have ever been in love in the way that people fall in love in novels. I’m not sure anyone would be interested in reading about an emotion that the author has never experienced. Besides, I don’t think that love is the most interesting thing that can happen to an adolescent. All I know about is our adolescence. But do I have to write about that, and that alone? I’ve experienced far more interesting crises. As have some of my friends. I’ll have to find a crisis that links all the heroes and heroines of the novel. If I could find such a crisis, I’d be delighted. It would make my job so much easier.
Because then I could simply introduce the characters one by one; none of them older than seventeen. Without any effort, the central crisis would become crystal clear. And the novel would continue and end as it needed to. When...
But all this is just rambling. I haven’t thought of anything natural, or based on real life, that could transform my novel into one with a genuine plot. My friends say that I should write a novel based on the life of schoolboys... A little-known world, undervalued and misunderstood in literature. But I can’t describe it accurately. Without wanting to I always change things, exaggerate. Yet the most important thing is that the novel must be published, so I can move up a year at school. It should be a reflection of my soul, without being psychoanalytical; because I don’t want it distorted by analysis. And I’m certainly not going to write it in the form of a Diary; if I did, I would constantly forget that I was writing for unknown readers. I would concern myself too much with minutiae, and it simply wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t have the one thing that I’m seeking.
Once I’d finished the last sentence, I stopped. Is this really the only thing that I’m looking for? I don’t know, I don’t know. There are so many things I could write about, but I don’t have it in me to put them down on paper. Whatever the case, I’ll tell the truth about myself and other people in my Diary, but not in a novel to be read by strangers, who have no need to know about all my shortcomings...
I don’t always think like this. But I enjoy contradicting myself. That’s why I don’t like to go back over old memories.
But I’ve lost the thread again. The fact is that The Novel of the Short-Sighted Adolescent will be a series of vignettes, impressions, portraits, conclusions about school life and the adolescent soul. This might seem dull and analytical; particularly the word ‘conclusions’. Yet what is certain is that there will be no conclusions in the novel – because up till now I’ve never found a use for them. And who will narrate this series of scenes? Should I give up on my hero’s romance?
Robert is the starting point, of that I’m certain. What if, in the novel, I make him fall in love with a girl who Dinu also loves... but that’s silly. I’ve never seen either of them in love. Their little dalliances tell me nothing, because they’re never changed by them. But once again I’ve wandered off into a critical debate. My novel will be written without discussions and explanations of any kind.
These sketches for chapter one have come to nothing. I’ll try and do some more preparatory work for the novel, and organize my material – about myself and other people – in this Diary. Although if my imagination runs riot and starts changing reality, I’ll make sure I encourage it, give it some help, and not curb it like I‘ve done in the past. I’ll decide whether or not to add extra pages, and provide clarification: ‘This passage is untrue; things happened differently.’ Come what may, preparations for the novel, draft plans for certain chapters – which will be narrated in the third person – will have to be done systematically. Robert, who I’ve strayed away from here, is a good pretext.
During Passion Week2, I set out with my friend Jean Victor Robert on my first romantic escapade. My friends think I’m shy with girls. The fact is, I suffer because I’m short-sighted and ugly. I’d suffer even more if I were rejected. Because I want to conquer every heart. That’s why I’m withdrawn and self-conscious. I dream of the day when, as a result of my work, all eyes will be on me. Until that time, no one will understand how much I suffer.
But all this has nothing to do with romantic escapades. I must make sure not to let such things find their way into my novel.
Bundled along by Robert and Perri, and joined by Dinu, we met up with four girls in Carol Park that afternoon. Everyone knows that Carol Park is where pupils from the lycée go to meet. That was why I was against the idea from the start. I get embarrassed when strangers look at me. There were too many people there, especially couples. But we – us in our school caps and the girls in uniform – were just as suspect as the rest. Nonetheless, that’s where we decided to meet.
Robert knew the girls already. He insisted that it was them who had made the first move, and so he had resigned himself to speaking to them. Perri whispered in our ears that they had actually ‘picked them up’ on the boulevard one evening. Robert had been embarrassed, and talked about French literature. And the girls were enchanted.
Smiling and blushing, we met the girls on a secluded path near the Roman Arena. They introduced themselves, giving their names rather hesitantly. Despite their efforts to appear innocent and make us think that this was their first such rendezvous, they gave the impression of being dressmakers’ apprentices. They were wearing simple clothes, and had powdered cheeks, carefully arranged hair and a smattering of lipstick. I heard some wonderful opening gambits, along with silly ironies and encouraging laughter and affectations. But the girls seemed flattered with our company. We strolled along together, two girls and two boys. I was only listening to Robert, who was trying to start a conversation about love and women. The blatancy of Perri’s flirting was impressive. Dinu didn’t say very much to them, and stared into their eyes, smoking, waiting for his charm to take effect. With a coarse lock of red hair hanging over my forehead, I kept quiet.
It would be pointless to repeat the conversation. After half an hour the ice was broken. We wandered off in pairs, me with the sister of the girl that Robert liked: a brunette wearing a white hat, and with white cheeks and dark eyes. Every time I looked at her I was seized with the unsettling thought that I had already seen her in every group of girls who I had met at every lycée and school event. She was the shortest of the group, and possibly the best behaved. I wanted to prove to myself that I didn’t lack courage. I told myself: ‘If I haven’t put my arm round her by the time I count to ten, then I’m a coward’. The girl kept on blushing more and more furiously. I was pale, gloomy. Talking, talking, talking. All the erotic anecdotes and double-entendres that I could think of were pouring from my lips. The girl, who didn’t always catch the hidden meanings, was totally lost. I strode along beside her, gripping her arm, thrilled by her trembling body, by the scent of her hair, her lips.
I said to myself: ‘You’ve got to kiss her!’ I counted to ten. I wasn’t brave enough. I scowled, blushed, I was confused and humiliated. The girl dared to say something. And then I forced myself to do it. She shuddered beneath my cold lips that were pressed against her cheek, her hair, her shoulder in its faded cloth.
But I had wanted it too much, and moved too fast. It was still daylight. The other couples could be seen and heard walking about. I made my companion sit next to me beside a spindly fir tree. After almost having to be dragged there, she sat down. She didn’t utter a word. She pushed me away with her eyes and hands. I was thinking about who-knows-what act of madness. The girl was terrified. When I kissed her on the lips she leapt up off the seat as if fired from a bow, quickly straightened her dress and rushed away, saying through her tears that she was going to find her sister. All of a sudden my foolish desire to prove that I was an uncouth, uneducated lout evaporated. I went over to her and reproached her for allowing me to kiss her. I don’t know what made me lie. I lied to her when I said that I had simply wanted to find out if she was ‘virtuous’, or if she was like he
r sister. I began to accuse her sister of all manner of things that made her blush, but it made me feel better. I spoke harshly, hatefully, cruelly about her sister – who I had only just met – insisting that I knew a great many compromising things about her. The girl was on the verge of tears. But I persisted. I told her that she needed to become ‘a virtuous girl’ again. I took pleasure in torturing her in this foolish way.
We all met up again at the far end of the Arena. The girls kissed and embraced my friends. Jean Victor was delighted. Dinu had perhaps already promised himself that he must do this again. All eyes were on us. I was deathly pale, while she was red-faced from crying. But who knows, maybe the others were jealous of us...
I was furious with myself. I couldn’t understand why I had said things that were so out of character, or why I had tormented her in such a ludicrous way, in the name of an overblown moral code that was repugnant as well as alien to my nature. I was completely baffled. It was like something from a nightmare.
On the way back, when I told Robert about my escapade he didn’t know what to believe. But after giving it some thought, he said that it was ‘interesting’, although not very. According to him I should have been much rougher with her, and gone even further. It’s odd how he failed to see that I was upset about what had happened.
Ever since that day, I never go with him to meet girls. He started a rumour that I was scared. Perhaps it wasn’t far from the truth.
Up till now I’ve said rather too little about this friend, who is supposed to be an important character in my novel. It’s possible that I don’t really know him. Robert reads whatever I tell him to, and talks constantly about the books he’s read. But – perhaps because of some hidden jealousy – his shallow rhetoric exasperates me. Robert exasperates me, because he’s sentimental, dull-witted and conceited. But since this notebook also acts as my Diary, shouldn’t I perhaps ask myself: am I not just as conceited? I shouldn’t be afraid of the answer. I realize that I consider myself superior to everyone. But I keep this hidden within me, and the novel won’t reveal it. Robert told me that his quest for glory is the only thing he lives for. I pretended not to understand. And then he began to tell me about D’Annunzio. I envy this Italian, the author of beautiful books, and whose memoires are full of beautiful women. But I’m in no hurry. Before I start craving such extraordinary things, I realize that I will have to work hard and suffer. That’s why I despise my friend: because he expects to achieve glory without working for it. Robert is no genius, of that I’m certain. He’s simply a beautiful boy, just like a girl, who loves going to the theatre and has plans to write three-act plays. One of his main characters will be based on me. He imagines me in my attic, in a coarse Russian shirt like the one I wear in the summer, with glasses and a disconsolate smile. I’ll be a sort of ‘raisonneur’. I’d love to know what Robert thinks of me; not just what he says to my face, but what he actually thinks. I know he’s very dismissive of me because he’s always saying that I know nothing of life, that I live among books. But he’s the one who wastes his time reading novels, and says that he ‘has a life’. He’s complex, because he has known more girls than I have, and because on Sundays he goes for a stroll along the boulevards. And I’m simple, because I regard these childish occupations as obstacles on the hard and bitter road that I have to travel.
When we get together with our many friends, Robert tells us about his dreams of glory. Sceptically, I ask him if he is doing any actual work to achieve this. He tells us that he reads Balzac, Ibsen, and Victor Eftimiu. We tease him unmercifully, because we both like and dislike Robert.
This is the difference between him and me: one dreams of happiness and waits for it, while the other torments himself to achieve it, without giving it too much thought. And that’s another foolish phrase I’ve just written, but I mustn’t cross it out: later on it will remind me how easy it is to draw clear distinctions at the age of seventeen.
In my novel, Robert will have to act and speak in order to make himself known to the reader. He lacks depth and is self-satisfied. I couldn’t resist the temptation to tell him about the major part he would play in the book about our adolescence. He listened with feverish anticipation. I said I was going to exaggerate his faults, make him look ridiculous, that I would gather together all the naïve and foolish nonsense with which he had regaled me and our friends over the past year, and put them in the novel. We sat up until well after midnight. Robert complained that I wasn’t really his friend, that I would expose myself as a liar if I only wrote bad things about him in the novel.
‘And what will you call me?’
‘Jean Victor Robert.’
He protested, crying out that I would compromise his career and his glory. That if I had uncovered so many secrets and ugly things about him, our friendship demanded that they should remain between us.
‘But I’m writing a novel about morals, a psychological novel,’ I lied. ‘It has to include real events and real characters.’
‘Then why don’t you include me in the good parts?’
‘Because the author needs a character who looks ridiculous.’
‘And why does that have to be me?’
‘Because in the novel, Robert is an example of what it is to be ridiculous.’
We parted on bad terms. After thinking it over, however, Robert managed to convince himself that I would never really write a novel where he was portrayed as ridiculous. Ever since then, whenever he talks to me he tries to appear a different person, superior to others and changed by what he has read. He paces up and down my attic with a downcast expression on his face, in exactly the way that I once told him that an anxious, troubled adolescent should walk. He talks to me about Brand, a novel he borrowed from me, and tried as hard as he could to be like a Nordic hero.
It would be interesting to make a note of all the masks that Robert has worn for my benefit over the past few weeks, in order to make me change my opinion of him, and prevent me from portraying him as ridiculous.
I pretend to be convinced by these changes. The other boys were amazed; they thought it was just a practical joke. But Robert was so pleased with these new ‘characters’ that he had adopted that he actually began to believe them. This will require further thought. Because of an allusion I made, Robert has started to believe that he is another person. I’m afraid that things might go too far. But when he’s all alone in Târgoviste during the holidays, I think he’ll go back to being to his former self. He’ll forget about Brand and Andrea Sperelli, and again become a dull-witted, beautiful adolescent who yearns for glory.
But here I am, ending these pages of my Diary with something of a cliffhanger. When it comes to writing the novel, I’ll have to plan my chapter endings properly.
* * *
2 Passion Week: In the Orthodox Church, the week leading up to Easter. In the West it is usually referred to as Holy Week.
A Class Diary
I have always liked to keep a proper, regular Diary. I started this notebook on the day I decided to begin The Novel of the Short-Sighted Adolescent. But I’ve got into the habit of writing in it rather too often. Impressions, brief notes jotted down hastily in class continue to fill this private Diary. And now this notebook is almost finished. In it I plan to transcribe some of my more detailed observations, especially those that will serve as material for the novel.
I like to re-read my notes whenever I have time, because they are alive and precious to me. Of course, I’ll change and exaggerate them in the novel – because if I don’t, no one will ever read them.
*
One day at the end of May. In history class, Noisil asked Caleia a question that we had been given for homework. As usual, Caleia didn’t know a thing. He stuttered and stammered while trying to hear what Tolihroniade was whispering from behind. (Tolihroniade always whispers the answers so Caleia will do the same for him). The question was about Marco Polo’s voyage of
discovery.
‘What route did he take?’
Caleia thought for a moment. To buy time, he repeated the question: ‘What route did he take?’
‘Yes.’
‘They went around the Cape of Good Hope.’
‘At that time it was called something else.’
‘So you want me to tell you what it was called in those days?’
‘Yes.’
Silence. Tolihroniade’s whispers got louder and louder. Finally Caleia heard him.
‘It was known as the Cape of Storms.’
‘And then where did they go?’
‘To Brazil.’
Sniggers.
Caleia looked at his neighbours with hatred and contempt.
‘And where did they end up?’
‘In Brazil.’
‘And what did they discover there?’
‘Indian territory.’
‘Anything else?’
‘What else did you expect them to find?’
*
Pake is going to have to repeat a year. In the Second Form he came top and won a prize, while in the Fourth Form he got a commendation in maths. And now he’s going to have to repeat a year. But he’s still just as imperturbable, eats as much as always and mumbles to himself the same as before. When asked what happened, he replies: ‘I couldn’t give a fig!’ But if anyone dares to tease him, he swings round with a laugh and punches them.
‘It’s just my way of having a joke’, he says. ‘Chacun à sa manière.’*3 He might not have had to repeat a year if Vanciu hadn’t caught him in a bar during break, with some sandwiches and a litre of țuica4 on the table in front of him. He was summoned to the common room. He said the sandwiches were his, but that the țuica belonged to a man who had left without finishing it. He even tried to give a description of the man. Vanciu let him have his say, and when he had finished he reminded him that he had actually paid for the țuica. He was suspended for a week and his mark for behaviour was lowered from ‘Satisfactory’ to ‘Unsatisfactory’, a fact that only seemed to worry his parents and the rest of us. Pake still smokes during break and slips a small bottle of cognac out of his schoolbag, taking the odd swig while swearing and good-humouredly punching his friends.