Exactly the same thing happens with that age-old call for death, which is always present somewhere on Romanian streets, but audible only at certain moments. Year after year it resounds in the ear of the common man, who is indifferent, in a hurry, with other things on his mind. Year after year it rumbles and echoes in street and byway, and nobody hears it. And one day, out of nowhere, behold how it suddenly pierces the wall of deafness around it, and issues from every crack and from under every stone.
Out of nowhere? Well, not really. What is required is a period of exhaustion, of stress, of tense expectancy, a period of disillusionment. And then the unheeded voices are audible again.
*
In Snagov, on the site, on scaffolding, among workmen, amid stones and cement and girders, there are no problems. The problems begin once I return to the city.
Something has happened in recent months. Some invisible mechanism which allows people to keep going has broken down. I see only exhausted people, I meet only those who have given up. The revolution was on its way, but did not arrive. The episode at the two Uioaras was a brief outburst, a lick of flame.
They had been saying: ‘This is the end of everything — here’s where it all begins.’ But here we are, nothing has ended, nothing has begun.
St George’s day is long past. The hangings Pârlea envisaged for the holy day have not materialized. All the appointed days have come and gone, all the deadlines have expired.
Something must be done for those at the end of their tether, fresh prospects are needed for those frustrated expectations.
A few boys on a street corner cry out ‘Death to the Yids’. It’ll do, for now.
*
It is extremely difficult to follow the progressive hardening of enmity from one day to the next. Suddenly you find yourself surrounded on all sides, and have no idea how or when it happened. Scattered minor occurrences, gestures of no great account, the making of casual little threats. An argument in a tram today, a newspaper article tomorrow, a broken window after that. These things seem random, unconnected, frivolous. Then, one fine morning, you feel unable to breathe.
What is even harder to comprehend is that nobody involved in any of this, absolutely nobody, bears any blame.
*
A terrible moment at the workshop. A quarrel with Dronţu.
We had been squabbling. Not for the first time, he not being the kind to mince his words and me not being slow off the mark either. It’s usually over quickly; he swears, I swear back — and then we shake and make up.
I don’t know how it started this time. I think it was over a bottle of ink I’d hidden away somewhere that Marin needed urgently. We scuffled, in jest of course, spoke rather roughly, then somehow found ourselves face to face and genuinely furious. There was a look in Marin’s eyes I’d never seen before. For a moment, a single moment, I thought he was joking and about to burst out laughing. I was going to extend my hand but, fortunately, I hadn’t a moment in which to make the slightest gesture, because he blew up:
‘Don’t act the Jew. I’m from Oltenia. Don’t speak that Jew-talk with me.’
I went pale. There was nothing I could do; everything between the two of us — memories, friendship, our professional relationship — turned to nothing. I had a powerful sense that the man standing before me had become a total stranger. He had become so distant, so foreign and inaccessible, that responding to him would have seemed as mad to me as conversing with a block of stone.
I should be sad. I’m surprised that I’m not. It’s as though I’ve been hit in the shoulder by a bullet, and now I’m waiting for the pain. But it doesn’t come.
I have a strange feeling that the name Marin Dronţu belongs to a stranger. It’s like a name from a book. I never imagined that I could forget a person, so deeply, so suddenly, so entirely.
I slept well, dreamlessly. I worked all day.
*
Marjorie came to Snagov. I was on the scaffolding and when I saw her in the distance, in white, it gave me a jolt, as though I were seeing her from years before, in Uioara; the likeness of Marjorie Dunton. I invited her to my room, a hundred paces from the building work, by the lake. Only now have I realized how much this room resembles our cabin from the old days.
Marjorie came on her own initiative.
‘What happened yesterday was awful. Marin told me all about it. It’s ridiculous. Two serious people like you … You must understand. A moment of irritation, of distraction. One doesn’t break off an old friendship over something like that. You understand, don’t you? Tell me you do!’
‘Dear Marjorie, I understand. I understood from the first moment.’
‘So the two of you will make up?’
I shrugged.
‘Obviously! You said it yourself, for God’s sake: we aren’t kids.’
*
Evening boating on the lake, with Marjorie and Marin. We were awkward with each other for a time. We shook hands and skipped the explanations. It’s easier that way.
There was a fine view of Blidaru’s house from out on the water, with only the straight lines of the walls discernible in the dark. The scaffolding, carts loaded with lime and the heaps of stone were immersed in shadow. It soothes me just to look at this house. I only wish I could postpone the day I will complete it.
We’d been silent too long, and Marjorie sensed this. She asked Marin to row back towards the shore.
‘I’m tired, fellows. Come on, carry me. Do you remember? When we were in Uioara?’
Do we remember … I lifted her to ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’, and Marjorie, recalling a moment from that September day long past, took her hat from her head and, waving it like a flag, began to sing as she did then:
It’s a long way to Tipperary
It’s a long way to go.
I was well aware that this was nothing but an effort to invoke among us the shadows of the past, but it didn’t prevent a familiar emotion from taking hold of me.
As I accompanied them to the bus, Dronţu said to me, with a certain languor, a certain heart-weariness, which made up for a lot:
‘You know, life is rotten. We manage to do a heap of rotten things and don’t even wonder at it. It really is rotten. Nobody’s to blame.’
Indeed, nobody is to blame. This is the point we find ourselves at, sooner or later. I know this so well, from the past, from the profound sense that there is nothing that can be done about it. I know that things can’t happen in any other way …
2
Sami Winkler has departed. In a workman’s shirt, bareheaded, a little knapsack on his back, looking out of the window of a third-class compartment like someone going to the mountains for a couple of days.
I asked him, jokingly:
‘Aren’t you travelling light for a man who’s making history?’
‘No. It’s all I need. I’m leaving the rest behind.’
‘Isn’t that tough?’
‘Pretty tough. So it’s better to make a clean break. To say goodbye to the lot rather than to one thing at a time.’
He was on his own. He’d forbidden his relatives from coming and his travelling companions had gone ahead to Constanţa, to await him on the ship. Next Thursday they’ll be in Haifa.
‘And then?’
He replied by spreading his arms, probably meaning that the answer was too great for a single word: ‘everything’, ‘life’, ‘victory’, ‘peace’ … He was very calm, unexcited, unhurried.
Two boys selling a right-wing newspaper happened along. ‘Take one, gentlemen, it’s against the Yids.’ Their timing made us smile. Sometimes symbolism is too obvious.