See what is happening to our hearts and souls now we have come to the end of the academic year: we are overwhelmed with melancholy. We’re exhausted, sick of school, weary of the heat, and yet we’re sad because it’s the end of the year. We give the impression of being grateful, we laugh and talk, but deep down inside we feel the stirrings of nostalgia. This is perfectly understandable. Perhaps we’re thinking about the joys of summer, but it makes us sad when we remember that we’ll be alone. The prospect of separation dispels the pleasure.
Are we really so attached to each other after six years of being in the same class? Or is there maybe another reason? Perhaps we’re downhearted because, after Easter, our holidays never quite live up to what we expected. We imagine that the first few days of the holidays will be a kind of paradise. But they never are. It’s simply that, little by little during the last week or so of term we grow accustomed to the joys of freedom, and when the final bell rings we search in vain for this vast, never-ending pleasure. Or at least I’ve never found it myself. It’s true that many of us might appear cheerful and boisterous, but as far as I’m concerned that doesn’t mean anything. I’ve put on the same act many a time...
*
Today, Fănică got a ‘Good’ in Chemistry. He went back to his desk exhausted, looking shattered; when he apologized for not having brought his exercise book, his voice trembled. After Toivinovici had left, he went up and kissed the blackboard then gave the rest of us a hundred lei for croissants and chocolate. Which was the height of madness, given Fănică’s usual miserliness. With the ‘Good’ that he got in the oral test, he was guaranteed to be average in the class.
Fănică is terrified of chemistry. I’m sure he revises each question at least ten or fifteen times, and then forgets it all the moment he’s called up to the board. He’s a bag of nerves, as if he’s standing in front of the School Inspector. He goes bright red, he stutters, his fingers crush the chalk against the board rubber. He hates Toivinovici and shakes with fright every time the door opens during a chemistry lesson. Surprise written tests bring him out in a sweat, he wriggles around at his desk, gets caught immediately whenever he tries to ask his neighbour even the most trifling question, becomes flustered, spills ink, and writes out the same question at least three times. Several days before a written exam he loses his appetite. The night before he revises until after midnight and wakes up in a cold sweat. He arrives at school weak, confused and exhausted. When Toivinovici walks into the room, Fănică is rooted to the spot and can’t take his eyes off him. He only snaps out of it when the register is being taken. And then he gets nervous, impatient, and starts fidgeting, tormenting himself until Toivinovici reads out the questions or gives out the subject of the exam.
If the bell rings before he’s finished his work, Fănică goes bezerk. He tries frantically to write down any conclusion that he can think of. During the whole test he writes ‘reference material’ generally related to the subject in order to fill as many pages as possible, and convince Tovinovici that he has done some work. His conclusions are usually the best part, because they aren’t ‘reference material.’
Fănică always keeps a packet of headache pills in his shirt pocket. The other boys are fond of him because he’s intelligent and timid. He laughs and jokes in every class except chemistry and maths. And he’s adept at knowing the best way to apologize to the masters. Yet no one is quite sure why he’s known as ‘Rooster.’
3 Words and phrases marked with an asterisk appear in French in the original text.
4 țuica: a form of plum brandy very popular in Romania, and similar to slivovitz.
Among Don Juans
This evening Robert and Dinu came over to my house, and decided we should go for a walk in the Cişmigiu Gardens. Robert was wearing white trousers and shoes with bows; Dinu’s jacket was unbuttoned: he had an antelope-skin belt and a silver cigarette case. Neither were wearing a cap or hat. Jean Victor Robert – who considers himself a genius – rested his forehead in his right hand whenever he needed to sit down. Dinu – who girls say is ‘good-looking and ironic’ – endeavours to be seen as a cynic, a paradoxical Don Juan.
I buttoned my tunic and we went out into the street. Robert sighed, Dinu offered me a cigarette. Robert sighs because he’s a genius. He told me one night that geniuses are unhappy.
‘Why?’
From the heights of his greater knowledge, Robert gave me a kindly pat on the shoulder.
‘You simply wouldn’t understand...’
To Robert, I’m just ‘the doctor.’ I have all the symptoms: I’m ugly, already deformed by short-sightedness and have erudite preoccupations. But Robert the genius was quick to console me: ‘We all have our burden in life, doctor...’
Dinu is mistrustful and judgemental. He’s suspicious of Robert because he’s as handsome as he is, and – although he tells anyone who’ll listen that he’s not afraid of Robert – this rivalry unsettles him. It became even more conspicuous at a wedding, when Robert’s partner, a blonde girl from Târgovişte who had just passed her baccalaureate, gave Dinu a rose from her corsage at the end of the evening. He still keeps it in a casket, along with letters and small coloured bottles. Whenever anyone mentions this, Robert smiles broadly.
It’s so childish...
Out on the boulevard, I watched all the girls and women who were walking past. We each did our best to be the boldest.
‘Beautiful body,’ said Dinu, with the tone of an established expert.
‘I don’t like her legs, retorted Robert, disdainfully.
In the twilight Dinu blushed; predictably he ignored my attempt at arbitration.
‘Have you seen Sylvia lately?’ countered Robert. The lovely Sylvia was a former ‘sweetheart’ of Dinu’s, who he saw at the same family gatherings twice a year: on the Feast of Saint Dumitru and the third day of Easter. For several months, Sylvia has been under Robert’s spell.
Dinu pretended to find their romance amusing.
‘She’s become quite ghastly recently.’
‘You think so? Robert asked, disingenuously.
‘But then, Sylvia’s always been such a common girl...’
Seeing there was going to be a blazing row, I put an end to this dissection of Sylvia by asking a stupid question. After which I decided we should have a rest.
‘Why don’t we pick up some girls?’
I found the suggestion distasteful, and Robert sat down, happy that I hadn’t agreed.
Dinu smoked dreamily. Robert was building up to give a great sigh. I just waited. I knew what was going to happen. We were seventeen years old, it was a summer night with military music playing in the background, so I knew the pair of them would soon become melancholy. Their rivalry would disappear. And then would come the vapid, whispered, tearful confessions between defenceless, all-too susceptible friends.
Dinu is more reserved when it comes to opening his heart. Robert, by contrast, is effusive and obsessive. His eyes close. He becomes distant, his imagination begins to wander. He sees himself as a tortured, demoniacal soul. Dinu is more modest; he says that
