It has been raining for three days or so. It’s a kind of anti-aircraft defense: we feel more sheltered beneath it. Anyway, there haven’t been any more alerts.
No recent news from Poldy. A letter reached us today — but dated the 8th of March.
Finished volume five of the Pléiade Balzac. Begun volume six.
Nothing new at the fronts.
Thursday, 4 May
Last night there was bombing between one and two — the first night raid.
I didn’t go into town at all today, and I don’t know what happened. The bombing seems to have been more or less random, without precise targets. (Strada Izvor, Bulevardul Mărăşeşti, Strada Mecet — why those?) Renée Presianu was killed along with her entire family. The poor girl!
I suddenly feel in greater danger than ever. Organized bombing with reasonably precise targets is something against which you feel you can protect yourself. But no precautions are of any use against blind chance.
Sunday, 7 May
The whole city smells of lilies and smoke. Spring burst out magnificently after a week of rain, but thick clouds of smoke hang above the city from the bombing of last night and this morning. In sixty hours there have been five alerts and two bombing raids. We are having one disaster after another. On Friday, one alert in the morning and another in the evening. The same on Saturday. This evening we are waiting to see what will happen.
Last night, stray bombs also fell on our part of town — Sfîntii Apostoli, Bateriilor — but the real destruction was a long way off, around the station, around Buzeşti, around Bonaparte and $tefan cel Mare. Apparently, whole streets are ablaze there.
Water, electricity, and telephones are out of order in at least half the city. (We still have water and electricity.) The streetcar service has again been suspended. I went into town for a while, but the main streets were deserted.
I would like to know that there is some purpose behind all this, that it is leading somewhere, that the suffering is not completely pointless.
Monday, 8 May
Bombing last night for the third time in twenty-four hours — brief but powerful. For a few hours it seemed that the bomb we heard falling was for us: a long high-pitched whistling, as of a rocket at a fireworks display, heralded the strike. We closed our eyes — and waited.
Today it seemed like Sunday in town: closed shops, empty streets, people waiting around the shelters.
It is one in the morning. Maybe they won’t come tonight. I’d like to sleep. I’m beginning to feel exasperated, to think of leaving Bucharest. The shelter does not inspire any confidence; people died last night in almost every part of town.
Wednesday, 10 May
Thousands of people started leaving town at daybreak today. For two days the rumor had been spreading by word of mouth that, according to Radio London, Bucharest would be destroyed on the ioth of May It was an idiotic idea, which people believed with superstitious terror.
But it has been peaceful — at least so far, as I write these lines after midnight.
Thursday, 11 May
Scarcely had I written the previous lines when the air-raid warning started. We heard no explosions from anywhere, but we were kept in the shelter until the “all clear” sounded at two. I cannot take this sinister game as calmly as I did at first. I have nervous shudders that I scarcely manage to control.
Am I too about to fall into panic? I have no right. I must hold on— at least for Mama, if for no one else.
Vague thoughts about leaving town (everyone is leaving..) have troubled me for the last couple of days.
Today I saw Romulus Dianu4 (how naive I am!) and asked him to put in a word for me at the Ministry of the Interior. His refusal was cold, evasive, and formal. The guy is extremely reserved, with something lizardlike in his sleek gestures.
But this has cured me of such attempts. We’ll stay where we are— and may God watch over us.
Nora and Mircea have left. I rang them a few times today, but there was no answer. I feel more alone than ever — a poor bachelor who clings to his friends and tends to make a habit of them.
This afternoon I walked through town feeling weighed down by loneliness. There is no one with whom I can talk, no cinema that I can enter. (Most of them are shut, and the rest show only the worst old leftovers, as in a provincial town.)
I am still reading Balzac. He can be depressing at times, with his meticulous ferocity and a relentless sense of doom. Cousine Bette and Cousin Pons—gloomy masterpieces in which “the triumph of evil” is implacably organized. I read them in a childlike manner, with compassion and rebellion in my heart. There is also a desperate platitude about the milieu in which they are set; abject little furies (Bette, Mme. Matiffat, La Cibot, Fraisier); no one has the Mephistophelean grandeur of Vautrin.
I still have some writer’s tics. The idea of one day writing a book about Balzac has remained from my previous existence. But what is the point of such a project amid today’s collapse? When, how, and with what shall I be able to rebuild a life for myself?
Sebastopol has fallen — a couple of days ago. The war in the east will move on from the standstill of the last month or more. Apart from the bombing, everything has been frozen at the fronts.
Monday, 15 May
Five days without an air-raid alert, eight days without any bombing. We don’t know how long this will last, but it has given us a respite to do something about our shattered nerves.
If it were not ridiculous to make any political judgment about the bombing, I would say that the pause is likely to continue for the time being— so long as the Anglo-American offensive in Italy (which began three days ago) is at its height. They have to concentrate their aircraft there at least until they break the German lines — and it would be illogical to shift them to other targets.
It would be “illogical.” Yet nothing is logical in this war, at least for us who lack hard information and have to judge on the basis of fragmented signs and appearances.
Did I not explain to Alice Theodorian, on the evening of 3 May, that the British and Americans wouldn’t start bombing Romania again until the Russians launched a new offensive in Bessarabia and Moldavia? My reasoning was perfectly logical. Yet two hours later we were all in the cellars and the first British night bombs were pattering over most of the city.
Tuesday, 23 May
Some rather old but reassuring letters from Poldy (late March/early April).
I had been growing desperate, tormented by the most terrible thoughts.
How he has suffered in his loneliness!
Still quiet. Ploieşti has been bombed (on Wednesday afternoon, I think), but nothing here in Bucharest.
The hysteria of “heightened alert,” of warnings and pre-warnings, has calmed down. The city seems to be growing more lively again.
But how long will the pause last?
The offensive in Italy is continuing. All quiet on the other fronts. In fact the aerial pressure in the west seems to be slackening. The invasion fever has noticeably declined.
Finished Volume VI of the Pléiade Balzac. Begun Volume VII.
Wednesday, 31 May