the latest ‘Below standard’ that I would have to show my mother in the morning. We both came to the conclusion that my only hope was The Novel of the Short-Sighted Adolescent, and that I ought to start work on it immediately.
Now, however, after having written all these pages in my notebook, I don’t have the courage to begin the first chapter. It’s getting late, tomorrow I have some difficult homework to do; and besides, I left my copy of Bouvard et Pécuchet on the desk, half-read.
1 Fourth Form: In the inter-war period, secondary education in Romania lasted for 8 years. It was, and still is, largely a lycée system, similar to that in France. The nearest UK equivalent to the year groups would be the more traditional terminology that is still used in many Independent Schools. Thus ‘Fourth Form’is the year during which pupils reach the age of 14 (ie: Year 9 in the current British State system). This is followed by the Remove, the Fifth Form, the Lower Sixth and finally the Upper Sixth.
Robert's Glory
Robert once told me that he was very much like D’Annunzio. He has read L’enfant de Volupté and Le Feu, but always refers to Il Piacere as Il Fuoco. He comes to see me in my attic, and speaks in melancholy tones of our foolishness and his glory. As I listen, I think of the character that I will base on him. Every now and then I smile: I picture a more complete Robert, altered, transfigured.
Then he becomes suspicious: ‘What is it, Doctor?’
I have to quickly come up with a clever response. For some time Robert has suspected that I’m concealing my real opinion of him. He both admires and despises me at the same time. He’s always complaining about his weaknesses, which prevent him from attaining real glory.
‘If glory were mine, women and money would come to me effortlessly...’
Whenever he talks about women, his face suddenly lights up. In my petulance, which is my usual way of dealing with him, I’ve caught him out more than once by accusing him of only knowing about women from books and films. He’s probably still a virgin. He’s an adolescent with no eyebrows, the lips of a peasant girl, a shiny chin, soft cheeks and a broad forehead. I tell everyone that Robert is a beautiful boy.
But I still haven’t written anything in the notebooks devoted to my novel. No one is forcing me to produce a detailed portrait of my friend. Even so, I now want to concentrate on Robert, because he’ll be an important character in the book, and I need to think about the conflict he’ll create.
A conflict between whom? That’s what’s preventing me from starting the first chapter. I don’t have a plot. All I know is that I’m the hero. Of course, the novel will revolve around a crisis at the end of my adolescence. I’ll portray and analyse myself in relation to my friends and classmates. But I still have to come up with a plot. And since there can’t be a plot until there’s a heroine, I’ll have to include my cousin. But I’ve tried that, and couldn’t manage a single page. I thought I should write in the way other novels are written: florid, exaggerated, with painstaking detail. Yet I soon realized that I was straying from what I was capable of saying, and repeating scenes I had read elsewhere. So once again I put off starting the chapter.
But what will be the subject of my novel? My great love for the heroine, who’s on holiday in the country? No. I’ve never been in love; none of my friends have ever been in love in the way that people fall in love in novels. I’m not sure anyone would be interested in reading about an emotion that the author has never experienced. Besides, I don’t think that love is the most interesting thing that can happen to an adolescent. All I know about is our adolescence. But do I have to write about that, and that alone? I’ve experienced far more interesting crises. As have some of my friends. I’ll have to find a crisis that links all the heroes and heroines of the novel. If I could find such a crisis, I’d be delighted. It would make my job so much easier.
Because then I could simply introduce the characters one by one; none of them older than seventeen. Without any effort, the central crisis would become crystal clear. And the novel would continue and end as it needed to. When...
But all this is just rambling. I haven’t thought of anything natural, or based on real life, that could transform my novel into one with a genuine plot. My friends say that I should write a novel based on the life of schoolboys... A little-known world, undervalued and misunderstood in literature. But I can’t describe it accurately. Without wanting to I always change things, exaggerate. Yet the most important thing is that the novel must be published, so I can move up a year at school. It should be a reflection of my soul, without being psychoanalytical; because I don’t want it distorted by analysis. And I’m certainly not going to write it in the form of a Diary; if I did, I would constantly forget that I was writing for unknown readers. I would concern myself too much with minutiae, and it simply wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t have the one thing that I’m seeking.
Once I’d finished the last sentence, I stopped. Is this really the only thing that I’m looking for? I don’t know, I don’t know. There are so many things I could write about, but I don’t have it in me to put them down on paper. Whatever the case, I’ll tell the truth about myself and other people in my Diary, but not in a novel to be read by strangers, who have no need to know about all my shortcomings...
I don’t always think like this. But I enjoy contradicting myself. That’s why I don’t like to go back over old memories.
But I’ve lost the thread again. The fact is that The Novel of the Short-Sighted Adolescent will be a series of vignettes, impressions, portraits, conclusions about school life and the adolescent soul. This might seem dull and analytical; particularly the word ‘conclusions’. Yet what is certain is that there will be no conclusions in the novel – because up till now I’ve never found a use for them. And who will narrate this series of scenes? Should I give up on my hero’s romance?
Robert is the starting point, of that I’m certain. What if, in the novel, I make him fall in love with a girl who Dinu also loves... but that’s silly. I’ve never seen either of them in love. Their little dalliances tell me nothing, because they’re never changed by them. But once again I’ve wandered off into a critical debate. My novel will be written without discussions and explanations of any kind.
These sketches for chapter one have come to nothing. I’ll try and do some more preparatory work for the novel, and organize my material – about myself and other people – in this Diary. Although if my imagination runs riot and starts changing reality, I’ll make sure I encourage it, give it some help, and not curb it like I‘ve done in the past. I’ll decide whether or not to add extra pages, and provide clarification: ‘This passage is untrue; things happened differently.’ Come what may, preparations for the novel, draft plans for certain chapters – which will be narrated in the third person – will have to be done systematically. Robert, who I’ve strayed away from here, is a good pretext.
During Passion Week2, I set out with my friend Jean Victor Robert on my first romantic escapade. My friends think I’m shy with girls. The fact is, I suffer because I’m short-sighted and ugly. I’d suffer even more if I were rejected. Because I want to conquer every heart. That’s why I’m withdrawn and self-conscious. I dream of the day when, as a result of my work, all eyes will be on me. Until that time, no one will understand how much I suffer.
But all this has nothing to do with romantic escapades. I must make sure not to let such things find their way into my novel.
Bundled along by Robert and Perri, and joined by Dinu, we met up with four girls in Carol Park that afternoon. Everyone knows that Carol Park is where pupils from the lycée go to meet. That was why I was against
