Even though he has to repeat a year, Pake hasn’t given up his trips to the Fagaraş Mountains, or camping in the Sibiu forest. If we can’t find anyone to come with us to Fagaraş, then the two of us will go on our own, like we did when we first became friends.
*
Music class. Perhaps the last music class of the year. The Director of Music came in carrying a bundle of scores, his new romantic ballad, called ‘The Crane’, hoping to sell them to us. He spoke in a quiet, mournful voice.
‘I have little choice, gentlemen. I had to pay the printers 1500 lei and just want to recover my costs. There’s no question of me making a profit... only six lei each.’
He smiled. We each gave him six lei, and laughed at the composer. Then we asked him to play it. The Director sat at the organ and played mournfully, swaying back and forth on the stool. It was an unexceptional melody, one that I had heard before, although I’m not sure where. After he had played it several times, the organ stopped squeaking and he got up from his stool. There was wild applause and laughter. The Director of Music smiled. Then he asked the baritones to come up and practice the choral piece for the end-of-year festival. But he added, in the same quiet voice: ‘Gentlemen, if you don’t keep the noise down I’ll call the Headmaster!’ But nobody believed him. Only three baritones stood up.
‘Where are the baritones? Didn’t you hear me, gentlemen? Will the baritones please come to the front. We only have a few days left before the festival.’
‘Oh, give it a rest,’ came a voice from the back.
‘Who is being so impertinent?’
‘Doesn’t it stick out a mile!’
‘Will you be quiet!’
‘Once a thief...’
‘...always a thief...’
‘...so sayeth the Lord, amen!’
‘I shall throw you out of the class!’
‘Go on then, I dare you!’
‘Stop this instant, you impudent boys!’
‘Tu l’as voulu Dandin!’*
‘I’m calling the Headmaster.’
‘One moron begets another!’
‘I shall give all those in the back row bottom marks for bad behaviour.’
‘Why are you annoyed, Mr Boloveanu?’
‘Why are you so strict with us, Mr Boloveanu?’
‘A schoolmaster should be like a father to us.’
‘...But his voice is divine.’
‘Damn it all!’
Six baritones came forward, leaning on each other and pretending to pick up their scores from the floor. One of them asked if he could be ‘excused’. When he was refused permission, he claimed that he wasn’t able to sing, and said there was ‘real barbarity and abuse of power that went on in this school’. Boloveanu carried on playing the organ, checking the number of baritones out of the corner of his eye.
‘Fossil’ tried to slip out of the room. He wasn’t popular because he had a limp, sneaked on the other boys, was miserly, worked hard, copied his neighbours during tests, was good at chemistry, and – above all – was a Jew. The others called to him from their desks, loud enough for the Director of Music to hear.
‘Where do you think you’re going, Părtinişeanu?’
‘Where are you running off to, Fosilo? Don’t you know that the master doesn’t allow anyone to leave?’
‘Stay in your seat, Fosilo!’
‘Why don’t you do what the master says?’
Blushing bright red, Părtinişeanu crept back to his desk, where someone was waiting. Caleia, who sat behind him and was reading Le Petit Parisien, hit him on the back of the head. The sound of the blow echoed. The baritones, who were still singing, turned to look.
Naturally, ‘Fossil’ went and told the master after the lesson. Caleia got an hour’s detention.
*
Aguletti cried during chemistry today, and invoked the memory of his late father so Toivinovici wouldn’t give him an ‘Unsatisfactory.’ The whole scene made me blush with embarrassment, and clench my fists in exasperation. I was overcome by indescribable feelings of both pity and revulsion for Aguletti, contempt for him and sympathy for the master.
Fănică wished he was as good at faking as Aguletti. Aguletti is a malingerer and a liar. I would gladly lie as well, if I could; but why did he bring his dead father into it?
I think the whole class had the same feeling of excruciating embarrassment.
*
I’d very much like to get to know Dinu, to know him really well, for the purposes of my novel. It’s not enough to simply be aware that he’s handsome, decent, and intelligent. I can sense that there’s something in his soul that eludes the rest of us. Why is it that he is showing less and less interest in chemistry these days? We used to study together at his house, in a makeshift laboratory set up on benches in a small room in the basement. But this year he’s virtually forgotten even the most basic formulae. He’s not ‘passionate’ about it anymore, to use one of my favourite expressions. He doesn’t do any work. He hardly reads any literature, just goes for walks and sleeps a lot. Dinu has never been terribly industrious, or organized. But now he’s completely changed. It might just be a personal crisis. Yet sometimes, when I’m alone, I wonder if this is actually the real Dinu, if his passion for science over the last year and a half was nothing but an illusion? What if he were deceiving himself as well as the rest of us all that time, and is only now beginning to realize who he is?
I’m not yet sure what role he’ll play in the novel.
*
Robert’s eyes hurt from reading too much, and because of the formalin that the classrooms were sprayed with on Sunday. He kept rubbing his eyes, and now they are red and watering. He sat there looking morose, holding a handkerchief to his eyes. I’m sure he sees himself as a character from Ibsen, afflicted by spiritual and physical torments. He wandered around so we would see how much he was suffering, and feel sorry for him. If a master asked him why he was holding a handkerchief to his eyes, he was delighted, and replied in a way that implied that any intelligent person would realize that his eyes hurt because he had been reading too much.
Yesterday he said to me: ‘You can’t imagine how much my eyes hurt. Last night I read until two o’clock.’
I pretended to be amazed that he read so little, and told him that I never go to bed before three – which was a lie.
*
Maths test. As usual it was a very easy question. But since I didn’t know a thing, – because I hadn’t learnt anything during the entire year – I stared at it uncomprehendingly. My lack of knowledge began to make me feel miserable. If I had done even a little reading I could have worked it out. Around me the other boys were hard at it. Only Malureanu and Colonas were looking at their exercise books with the same fixed gaze as me. The three of us were the most useless at maths in the class.
Sitting there unable to do anything began to annoy me. I managed to write out a series of calculations that had nothing to do with the subject. It was a question on trigonometry, but all I knew about trigonometry was how to work out if something is a right-angled triangle. I wrote down everything I knew: if I left the page blank I would have got an ‘Unsatisfactory’.
During the first term, in order to infuriate Vanciu and get my own back on him for smiling at what he always presumed was my ignorance when I was up at the blackboard, I would close my exercise book and start writing on a sheet of paper I took from my bag. I wrote so Vanciu would see me, and so he would get annoyed because he didn’t know what I was writing or why I was writing, and would wonder how I had the courage to do it. Vanciu watched me, and couldn’t believe his eyes. Meanwhile I was delighted to have the chance to analyse myself and take notes about my current spiritual state.
When I’d finished I stuffed the piece of paper into my pocket –
where there was already quite a bundle.
If I get another ‘Unsatisfactory’ at the end of this term, there’s no hope for me.
*
A note from 2nd June, when I saw that the boys at the desks in front of me looked sad, weren’t talking, and were lost in thought.
See what is happening to our hearts and souls now we have come to the end of the academic year: we are overwhelmed with melancholy. We’re exhausted, sick of school, weary of the heat, and yet we’re sad because it’s the end of the year. We give the impression of being grateful, we laugh and talk, but deep down inside we feel the stirrings of nostalgia. This is perfectly understandable. Perhaps we’re thinking about the joys of summer, but it makes us sad when we remember that we’ll be alone. The prospect of separation dispels the pleasure.
Are we really so attached to each other after six years of being in the same class? Or is there maybe another reason? Perhaps we’re downhearted because, after Easter, our holidays never quite live up to what we expected. We imagine that the first few days of the holidays will be a kind of paradise. But they never are. It’s simply that, little by little during the last week or so of term we grow accustomed to the joys of freedom, and when the final bell rings we search in vain for this vast, never-ending pleasure. Or at least I’ve never found it myself. It’s true that many of us might appear cheerful and boisterous, but as far as I’m concerned that doesn’t mean anything. I’ve put on the same act many a time...
*
Today, Fănică got a ‘Good’ in Chemistry. He went back to his desk exhausted, looking shattered; when he apologized for not having brought his exercise book, his voice trembled. After Toivinovici had left, he went up and kissed the blackboard then gave the rest of us a hundred lei for croissants and chocolate. Which was the height of madness, given Fănică’s usual miserliness. With the ‘Good’ that he got in the oral test, he was guaranteed to be average in the class.
Fănică is terrified of chemistry. I’m sure he revises each question at least ten or fifteen times, and then forgets it all the moment he’s called up to the board. He’s a bag of nerves, as if he’s standing in front of the School Inspector. He goes bright red, he stutters, his fingers crush the chalk against the board rubber. He hates Toivinovici and shakes with fright every time the door opens during a chemistry lesson. Surprise written tests bring him out in a sweat, he wriggles around at his desk, gets caught immediately whenever he tries to ask his neighbour even the most trifling question, becomes flustered, spills ink, and writes out the same question at least three times. Several days before a written exam he loses his appetite. The night before he revises until after midnight and wakes up in a cold sweat. He arrives at school weak, confused and exhausted. When Toivinovici walks into the room, Fănică is rooted to the spot and can’t take his eyes off him. He only snaps out of it when the register is being taken. And then he gets nervous, impatient, and starts fidgeting, tormenting himself until Toivinovici reads out the questions or gives out the subject of the exam.
If the bell rings before he’s finished his work, Fănică goes bezerk. He tries frantically to write down any conclusion that he can think of. During the whole test he writes ‘reference material’ generally related to the subject in order to fill as many pages as possible, and convince Tovinovici that he has done some work. His conclusions are usually the best part, because they aren’t ‘reference material.’
Fănică always keeps a packet of headache pills in his shirt pocket. The other boys are fond of him because he’s intelligent and timid. He laughs and jokes in every class except chemistry and maths. And he’s adept at knowing the best way to apologize to the masters. Yet no one is quite sure why he’s known as ‘Rooster.’
* * *
3 Words and phrases marked with an asterisk appear in French in the original text.
4 țuica: a form of plum brandy very popular in Romania, and similar to slivovitz.
Among Don Juans
This evening Robert and Dinu came over to my house, and decided we should go for a walk in the Cişmigiu Gardens. Robert was wearing white trousers and shoes with bows; Dinu’s jacket was unbuttoned: he had an antelope-skin belt and a silver cigarette case. Neither were wearing a cap or hat. Jean Victor Robert – who considers himself a genius – rested his forehead in his right hand whenever he needed to sit down. Dinu – who girls say is ‘good-looking and ironic’ – endeavours to be seen as a cynic, a paradoxical Don Juan.
I buttoned my tunic and we went out into the street. Robert sighed, Dinu offered me a cigarette. Robert sighs because he’s a genius. He told me one night that geniuses are unhappy.
‘Why?’
From the heights of his greater knowledge, Robert gave me a kindly pat on the shoulder.
‘You simply wouldn’t understand...’
To Robert, I’m just ‘the doctor.’ I have all the symptoms: I’m ugly, already deformed by short-sightedness and have erudite preoccupations. But Robert the genius was quick to console me: ‘We all have our burden in life, doctor...’
Dinu is mistrustful and judgemental. He’s suspicious of Robert because he’s as handsome as he is, and – although he tells anyone who’ll listen that he’s not afraid of Robert – this rivalry unsettles him. It became even more conspicuous at a wedding, when Robert’s partner, a blonde girl from Târgovişte who had just passed her baccalaureate, gave Dinu a rose from her corsage at the end of the evening. He still keeps it in a casket, along with letters and small coloured bottles. Whenever anyone mentions this, Robert smiles broadly.
It’s so childish...
Out on the boulevard, I watched all the girls and women who were walking past. We each did our best to be the boldest.
‘Beautiful body,’ said Dinu, with the tone of an established expert.
‘I don’t like her legs, retorted Robert, disdainfully.
In the twilight Dinu blushed; predictably he ignored my attempt at arbitration.
‘Have you seen Sylvia lately?’ countered Robert. The lovely Sylvia was a former ‘sweetheart’ of Dinu’s, who he saw at the same family gatherings twice a year: on the Feast of Saint Dumitru and the third day of Easter. For several months, Sylvia has been under Robert’s spell.
Dinu pretended to find their romance amusing.
‘She’s become quite ghastly recently.’
‘You think so? Robert asked, disingenuously.
‘But then, Sylvia’s always been such a common girl...’
Seeing there was going to be a blazing row, I put an end to this dissection of Sylvia by asking a stupid question. After which I decided we should have a rest.
‘Why don’t we pick up some girls?’
I found the suggestion distasteful, and Robert sat down, happy that I hadn’t agreed.
Dinu smoked dreamily. Robert was building up to give a great sigh. I just waited. I knew what was going to happen. We were seventeen years old, it was a summer night with military music playing in the background, so I knew the pair of them would soon become melancholy. Their rivalry would disappear. And then would come the vapid, whispered, tearful confessions between defenceless, all-too susceptible friends.
Dinu is more reserved when it comes to opening his heart. Robert, by contrast, is effusive and obsessive. His eyes close. He becomes distant, his imagination begins to wander. He sees himself as a tortured, demoniacal soul. Dinu is more modest; he says that he’s like Anatole France: a sceptic and an epicurean.
But that particular night I was determined to put a stop to any conversation that looked like turning into a confessional. Robert avoided my gaze.
‘You’re so unhappy, doctor...’
The idea that we were going to talk about me was flattering. This is something that we all want, so we try and keep the conversation going for as long as possible. But at this moment in particular it was quite dangerous.
‘I’m not the least bit unhappy...’
‘It
’s pointless trying to hide it’, replied Robert, his tone profound and lyrical.
Dinu was listening, waiting to get his revenge.
‘How can you live without love, without women, without romance?’ Robert went on, his eyes fixed on the top of a linden tree.
‘That’s how life is for me’, I replied, humbly.’
‘You call that living, young fellow?...’
When Robert speaks of life and ‘love,’ he speaks rhythmically, like an actor on stage.
‘How can you not know the pleasures of youth... the pleasure of conquering a woman, having her at your feet, of thrusting aside the overflowing cup of love she offers you?...’
‘What cup?’ I pretended I didn’t understand, foreseeing the danger of listening to Robert wax lyrical for a quarter of an hour.
‘What? You don’t understand me, doctor?’
‘If you spoke a little more clearly...’
‘To be inebriated by the scent of soft, smooth bodies, to walk under the trees, arm in arm with your slave...’
I glanced at Dinu, wondering why he didn’t attack. In the grip of romantic fever, Robert had exposed himself. It was the ideal moment for Dinu’s ‘irony’ to be aroused.
‘Women... no one really understands them... to lie in pure white, virginal beds...’
Dinu couldn’t contain himself.
‘Come off it, Robert! How much longer do we have to put up with your fantasies?’
‘They’re not fantasies, my dear fellow,’ replied Robert, conceitedly. ‘They are the realest of realities.’
‘And when have you ever had a virgin?’
‘I didn’t say that I’ve had a virgin. I said “virginal beds”...’