I went on clambering into damp trams: I was setting out for the faculty, the factory, the cemetery; individuals and spies, patrols and pickets and pedestrians climbed on and off, like contortionists wrapped around me, crushing me, hurling me to the roadway before my destination; I would forget when and where I had started my journey through the damp streets of the Big City to meet the awaited chimera. The years flew by quickly: the Saturday would come when I would make the acquaintance of the illustrious artillery Captain, and with two movie tickets, he would begin teaching me how to watch a war movie, honoring me with his inquisitive attention, finding me worthy, with my mask of an aged child, admiring my great, livid, dark circles mirrored in the well’s overturned bucket, giving me master classes in equitation, on tall horses, scattered along the curves of the shore, their damp muzzles searching the sea of apples by the seashore. The girl who appeared in our dreams would have to be found by Saturday, when I would become the confidant of the Captain who used to spend his nearly sleepless nights on the edges of forests and the banks of rivers, slunk away like some feral creature, and haunted by the nightmare of the skeletons he sacrificed among the convoys of deportees and detainees, so that I should learn to not slam doors, or shells or mines, to rotate doors slowly, without startling anyone, without making a noise, so that the smoke of the crematoria might ascend slowly and rest in peace.
I was looking at the long loden coats that hid the breasts and thighs of the girls in my class, searching for their white knees lost under immense skirts, their ankles squeezed into rough boots, their hair covered with rough kerchiefs. I wanted to be able to compare their bodies, foreheads, and gazes, to be able to recognize the pale girl, frail under the rain, with long black hair waiting to be pushed aside like a theater curtain. I would have to hurry from Monday to Tuesday, Wednesday to Thursday, until the two halves of Friday, as long as there was still time for the torment of chastity; for soon the curtain will be pulled and the sweet and filthy whores will pounce; I would have to writhe now, in hot, humid dreams, to take advantage of insomnia, to sink my hands and nostrils in the darkest folds of the damp sheets, to prolong the last endless days, to allow 27,000,000 trials, now, only now, when the nostrils of the young wolf were flared at every beast in the street, but without having the courage to approach. In the short dreams of the last, endless night before the festive day, I would have to draw a line, a fire, a finale, to begin another week and year and five-year life; the weeks will be five years long again and the years filled with an unaccountable number of weeks. Every five years, those years of mine, the five-year plans of delusion.
• • •
We rarely wrote. A message from them, however it might have seemed, was an appeal — an alarm. As it was, I hadn’t been the eminent son crowned with laurels for a long time. I was now hanging onto my university exams by the tail. After graduation I would encounter my folks again in their established roles. I had left home one fall, then raced through vacations far away: at the factory, in the army, in student camps. But now the air was damp as it was back then. Maybe I’d find the strength to wear the old masks again.
The train had swallowed me quickly. The compartment rocked in the dark. The heavy body of the man on my right was rocking too, as were the long legs of the man in front of me. I had braced my shoulder against the door and was listening to their breaths mix together and the nighttime noises of their lips and snores. The volume of air had diminished; it was stuffy. Through the window, the landscape raced forward, and the bare, blackened trees, like abandoned old people, were now running backward toward the irrevocable nights of their youth. The train was chasing the night; it was easy to imagine that we would run into some other wild beast or be swallowed by the great holes of darkness that we couldn’t quite reach. The travelers went on sleeping like babies in the train’s metal belly. There would be no witness to the disaster. Two neighbors to the right whispered to each other. I drowsed, and it seemed I could hear them beside me. The darkness was total. I couldn’t see them.
— He exited at the station in the morning. It was autumn, cold, like now. The carriage climbed the hill. You could hear the thud of horseshoes. They had entered the city: not a soul around. He had received a letter. It meant something had happened, so the wanderer thought.
— He had no way of knowing, but the quiet in the city seemed unusual to him. When he arrived at the main street, he raised his eyes to the windows of the houses, the two-story houses of the small town.
They were talking in whispers, huddled close together. It was dark in the compartment, and they continued telling the same story, taking turns.
— They were waiting for him behind the windows. He sensed it, even though he couldn’t see their faces.
— The letter didn’t say anything clearly, but suddenly he felt cornered by something evil. The residents had withdrawn from the windows, frightened of what would happen to him, or to themselves.
— He was trying to remember why he had come: in which of the letter’s sentences had he found such a peculiar phrase that he had climbed into a train that very night?
— He had no way of knowing: it was a prudent letter. Thrusting his hand in his pocked to get it out and reread it, he felt the invisible eyes from the windows again and lost courage to look for the letter. He had a sudden premonition, a way of knowing to whom the misfortune had happened.
— He had no way of knowing. . because he, the passenger, was absent, apathetic.
Later, the heavy hands of a conductor shook me awake. The train was stopping. It was empty. I had arrived at the end of my trip. I belted my trench coat. The railway carriage steps were damp. I came out behind the station where buses or carriages usually waited. There weren’t any vehicles, or any other travelers. Dawn was coming up damply. The church towers could be seen at the foot of the hill. A sea of white mist rose, the breath of the dawning day.
The sound of horses approached, galloping. In the cab, I lay back against the gnawed leather cushions: it was an old carriage, driven by a small coachman with red hair. Wheels grating, the horses strained up to the lip of the hill. The city seemed deserted. The carriage had taken a route through the back of a park. I climbed down in front of the Post Office. The house was several yards away. Mother ran toward me with her large coat hanging open. She was still panting when she wrapped her arms around me.
Confused, she looked through her pockets for the keys. When she sat down next to me, she was trembling. She took my hands and asked me how my trip went. She had heavy eyes with dark circles around them. As she came closer, she seemed to be guarding herself against me.
— How’s Father?
— Well. Everyone’s well. We have problems with Donca. Imagine — her. . she’s such a lively girl. Her hair is falling out. Don’t ask her about it. We’ve been to doctors. They prescribed all kinds of treatments. We had to shave her head. Pretend not to notice! You know how she was, always out in vacant lots with boys. Now she doesn’t leave the house anymore. She needs to wear a wig for a few months. She locks herself up in the house, reads till dawn, keeps away from us. It will solve itself in the end, so don’t trouble yourself. But tell me, how are you doing?
Her eyes were heavy: she was grabbing and letting go of my hands. So, Donca had a shaved head like our sisters used to have; the doctors would no longer be able to help her forget, to start over again from the beginning. Her blond hair, so new, so young. . Mama couldn’t settle down near me: her eyes were heavy. We would need to hurry with our hugs, our despair.
— How’s Father?
— Well, dear, well. Don’t worry. Well. But you, how did it go, you, but you, which. . and she was suddenly in tears. I felt her shoulders against my own.