come to the front. We only have a few days left before the festival.’
‘Oh, give it a rest,’ came a voice from the back.
‘Who is being so impertinent?’
‘Doesn’t it stick out a mile!’
‘Will you be quiet!’
‘Once a thief...’
‘...always a thief...’
‘...so sayeth the Lord, amen!’
‘I shall throw you out of the class!’
‘Go on then, I dare you!’
‘Stop this instant, you impudent boys!’
‘Tu l’as voulu Dandin!’*
‘I’m calling the Headmaster.’
‘One moron begets another!’
‘I shall give all those in the back row bottom marks for bad behaviour.’
‘Why are you annoyed, Mr Boloveanu?’
‘Why are you so strict with us, Mr Boloveanu?’
‘A schoolmaster should be like a father to us.’
‘...But his voice is divine.’
‘Damn it all!’
Six baritones came forward, leaning on each other and pretending to pick up their scores from the floor. One of them asked if he could be ‘excused’. When he was refused permission, he claimed that he wasn’t able to sing, and said there was ‘real barbarity and abuse of power that went on in this school’. Boloveanu carried on playing the organ, checking the number of baritones out of the corner of his eye.
‘Fossil’ tried to slip out of the room. He wasn’t popular because he had a limp, sneaked on the other boys, was miserly, worked hard, copied his neighbours during tests, was good at chemistry, and – above all – was a Jew. The others called to him from their desks, loud enough for the Director of Music to hear.
‘Where do you think you’re going, Părtinişeanu?’
‘Where are you running off to, Fosilo? Don’t you know that the master doesn’t allow anyone to leave?’
‘Stay in your seat, Fosilo!’
‘Why don’t you do what the master says?’
Blushing bright red, Părtinişeanu crept back to his desk, where someone was waiting. Caleia, who sat behind him and was reading Le Petit Parisien, hit him on the back of the head. The sound of the blow echoed. The baritones, who were still singing, turned to look.
Naturally, ‘Fossil’ went and told the master after the lesson. Caleia got an hour’s detention.
*
Aguletti cried during chemistry today, and invoked the memory of his late father so Toivinovici wouldn’t give him an ‘Unsatisfactory.’ The whole scene made me blush with embarrassment, and clench my fists in exasperation. I was overcome by indescribable feelings of both pity and revulsion for Aguletti, contempt for him and sympathy for the master.
Fănică wished he was as good at faking as Aguletti. Aguletti is a malingerer and a liar. I would gladly lie as well, if I could; but why did he bring his dead father into it?
I think the whole class had the same feeling of excruciating embarrassment.
*
I’d very much like to get to know Dinu, to know him really well, for the purposes of my novel. It’s not enough to simply be aware that he’s handsome, decent, and intelligent. I can sense that there’s something in his soul that eludes the rest of us. Why is it that he is showing less and less interest in chemistry these days? We used to study together at his house, in a makeshift laboratory set up on benches in a small room in the basement. But this year he’s virtually forgotten even the most basic formulae. He’s not ‘passionate’ about it anymore, to use one of my favourite expressions. He doesn’t do any work. He hardly reads any literature, just goes for walks and sleeps a lot. Dinu has never been terribly industrious, or organized. But now he’s completely changed. It might just be a personal crisis. Yet sometimes, when I’m alone, I wonder if this is actually the real Dinu, if his passion for science over the last year and a half was nothing but an illusion? What if he were deceiving himself as well as the rest of us all that time, and is only now beginning to realize who he is?
I’m not yet sure what role he’ll play in the novel.
*
Robert’s eyes hurt from reading too much, and because of the formalin that the classrooms were sprayed with on Sunday. He kept rubbing his eyes, and now they are red and watering. He sat there looking morose, holding a handkerchief to his eyes. I’m sure he sees himself as a character from Ibsen, afflicted by spiritual and physical torments. He wandered around so we would see how much he was suffering, and feel sorry for him. If a master asked him why he was holding a handkerchief to his eyes, he was delighted, and replied in a way that implied that any intelligent person would realize that his eyes hurt because he had been reading too much.
Yesterday he said to me: ‘You can’t imagine how much my eyes hurt. Last night I read until two o’clock.’
I pretended to be amazed that he read so little, and told him that I never go to bed before three – which was a lie.
*
Maths test. As usual it was a very easy question. But since I didn’t know a thing, – because I hadn’t learnt anything during the entire year – I stared at it uncomprehendingly. My lack of knowledge began to make me feel miserable. If I had done even a little reading I could have worked it out. Around me the other boys were hard at it. Only Malureanu and Colonas were looking at their exercise books with the same fixed gaze as me. The three of us were the most useless at maths in the class.
Sitting there unable to do anything began to annoy me. I managed to write out a series of calculations that had nothing to do with the subject. It was a question on trigonometry, but all I knew about trigonometry was how to work out if something is a right-angled triangle. I wrote down everything I knew: if I left the page blank I would have got an ‘Unsatisfactory’.
During the first term, in order to infuriate Vanciu and get my own back on him for smiling at what he always presumed was my ignorance when I was up at the blackboard, I would close my exercise book and start writing on a sheet of paper I took from my bag. I wrote so Vanciu would see me, and so he would get annoyed because he didn’t know what I was writing or why I was writing, and would wonder how I had the courage to do it. Vanciu watched me, and couldn’t believe his eyes. Meanwhile I was delighted to have the chance to analyse myself and take notes about my current spiritual state.
When I’d finished I stuffed the piece of paper into my pocket –
where there was already quite a bundle.
If I get another ‘Unsatisfactory’ at the end of this term, there’s no hope for me.
*
A
