We had lowered our eyes, however. I was contemplating Caba’s grief-stricken face among the crowd of heads bowed under the weight of the megaphones, when I glimpsed her watching the crowd from a balcony, looking at me explicitly, so it seemed: our neighbor, the former minister’s wife, tiny and thin Colette Triteanu with her fine, doubtful smile, looking at me — of course she was looking at me — which was, for her, a more interesting spectacle than the one offered by the crowd. She knew, of course, that I was a fugitive who hid himself when the enemy was received among us, for I was becoming a masked enemy myself, a deserter, a weakling. The lady had every reason to look at me in a maternal way: we were from the same placenta, we read the same books and smiled in the same tight-lipped, doubtful way. We were seeing, recognizing each other from a distance over the heads of all those orphans — allies in the secret funereal game. My classmate had known, too, for a long time, that he could count on me, that we would soon be side by side, bearing the same deceptive sign of struggle or armband. Like the other impotents, my parents allowed themselves to mourn loudly; they were no longer guarding themselves against me, they were no longer afraid of the son who would do anything the slogans of the day demanded. They could count on my discretion, the tolerance of a weakling — hunkered down inside himself out of fear, sloth, and sleep. They all knew me: Colette Triteanu, the lady who loaned me peculiar books, and Sebastian Caba, the insect who was stretching out his sly antennae toward other accomplices. And — abandoned by the Great Disappeared, the dead Father of the Struggle, the Illuminated One, the Intangible, the Red Star of the Kremlin, and Grandmaster of the Revolution — this crowd ignored me now, frozen as it was in an air-tight pain. I wasn’t worthy of it. I shouldn’t set foot there. There was No Admittance for me.
They knew in advance that they could leave me to play at the game of Memory or Virtue, for I would slip rapidly away, forgetting myself, them, time, and earth, somersaulting into a dark, dank tunnel where my outstretched hands would grope for any brother or sister, staggering on the bridge of a flimsy vessel, lulled to sleep by the suave voice of a lady traveler telling digressive stories about Tiberiu Covalschi, terrible kids in black limousines, an old woman driven mad by accursed memories, and the phantoms of children with shaved heads waving a wig of charred hair; and I would find myself again on the bridge of a ship, like a cell among lazy, liquid objects with a hand coiled around my throat, becoming hysterical in the orchestra of pursuing horns.
Brass instruments blared in the city square. Determined voices crackled through the loudspeakers, their foreign language sonorous and harsh. Shoulders heaved in memory of our parent, father of us all. Fists clenched in pockets, I saw the men and women beside me staring straight ahead as if frozen to the spot. Nails thrust deep into my flesh, I was a turned-to-stone hypocrite, like them. My chest rose. I could barely breathe. I was stuck with them, but they would never believe me again, ever.
• • •
Time lulled to a halt, lazed by the sun. Noisy, tanned, mad with the joy of vacation, the class galloped to the river. Donca rolled in the dust of neighboring courtyards. Bands of little troublemakers followed at her heels, clinging to her thick, blond braids. She kept secretly bringing other objects into the house. Patron of a scrapyard, she would bargain for boxes and mini-boxes: square, round, flat, tall, metallic, wooden, cardboard, colored, rusted, perforated boxes. Every three days the former minister’s lady would raise her sallow hand to my lips and offer me a demitasse of sweet, Turkish coffee. She’d smile timidly and slyly, while I’d sip the candied poison. We had ratified a tacit pact: as I’d finish the coffee, she’d simper and offer me a square, flat book. I’d take it in my hand. She’d raise her warm, velvety paw once more for my goodbye, and the base of my nostrils would touch her fuzzy, aged hand. Like a perfidious page, I’d bow, almost down to the dirty parquet. Then, accustomed to the game, I’d turn my back on my Amphitryon. Like some kind of little unwashed soldier, I’d slam the door with a blow that worked for me every time, and the ramshackle building would quiver.
I used to gather the paperback, clothbound, and hardcover books. The stacks would grow taller than my head. Then I’d fling them back into the old woman’s arms. She’d give me others. My lips would barely touch her fine skin, and I’d slam the door. I needed to conserve myself, hermetically sealed on my shelf. Lacking air, the books rotted inside me. With all its games and noises, summer wasn’t getting close to the shelf where I’d perched. Everything stood stock still around me. There was no movement and therefore no time. From an infinitely distant beach where the waves crashed, a confused rumor would arrive now and then, the flutter of an immense bird, like a sailboat. I was cleaving the night, huddled in the compartment of a train where a toothless fortuneteller read my palm: I would return to the city to save my father from misfortune, but in vain. It would be too late. I didn’t believe in this kind of reading without the alphabet, though. I was corrupted by vague hopes when, in fact, it was too late, much too late.
But all this happened some other time, many years after finishing the high school. Meanwhile, I had climbed down onto the bridge of a boat full of passengers and their luggage. Leaning against the rail, watching the greenish water slip back into the wake of our boat, I was alone, but near me, from behind, came the pitching notes of a piano. There was a cold wind blowing, and men and women dressed in heavy clothing. Those trifling, dreamy creatures had been abducted, like me, from their daily convoys by this giant metallic whale now dizzying in the waves, in the somnolent rocking of piano, pendulum, and old sounds.
— That’s Handel’s Chaconne in G Major.
Voice of water and wind. The fairy had stooped by my shoulder. Her murmur flowed into me. Was she the tall, pale-skinned girl I used to dream of on summer nights when the neighbor’s books swallowed me? Her eyes big and black, her hair rough, long, and black. Impatient, she would hold out her arms to receive me after so much delay, to make amends for the delay and allow me to gaze upon the body expressly made to amaze me — a miracle, not to be disturbed by the slightest movement. I stood stiff as a board. The piano went on enunciating its fantasy. The waves played on. To one side, painfully alive, that voice of a pitiless suavity was real, alive, and undeniable.
— You know, I’m a music professor.
So there she was, disguised as a piano teacher on the damp bridge among those tired, noisy travelers. I could reach out and touch her. But no, I mustn’t. She would soon put her lips to my ear and utter my name. I remained still for a while, with my back to her, as though I hadn’t heard her call, and waited to feel the closeness of her breath and her velvety fingers. Paralyzed by emotion and something like stage fright, I waited too long, and when I finally became desperate, I turned quickly around, but it was too late. She’d already disappeared. Near me, there was a fat, ageless woman, a passenger in transit. She’d witnessed the entire scene and was looking at me. But these things happened at another time, long after finishing high school, when I hadn’t yet become a hermetically sealed can sitting on its shelf.