Robert avoided my gaze.
‘You’re so unhappy, doctor...’
The idea that we were going to talk about me was flattering. This is something that we all want, so we try and keep the conversation going for as long as possible. But at this moment in particular it was quite dangerous.
‘I’m not the least bit unhappy...’
‘It’s pointless trying to hide it’, replied Robert, his tone profound and lyrical.
Dinu was listening, waiting to get his revenge.
‘How can you live without love, without women, without romance?’ Robert went on, his eyes fixed on the top of a linden tree.
‘That’s how life is for me’, I replied, humbly.’
‘You call that living, young fellow?...’
When Robert speaks of life and ‘love,’ he speaks rhythmically, like an actor on stage.
‘How can you not know the pleasures of youth... the pleasure of conquering a woman, having her at your feet, of thrusting aside the overflowing cup of love she offers you?...’
‘What cup?’ I pretended I didn’t understand, foreseeing the danger of listening to Robert wax lyrical for a quarter of an hour.
‘What? You don’t understand me, doctor?’
‘If you spoke a little more clearly...’
‘To be inebriated by the scent of soft, smooth bodies, to walk under the trees, arm in arm with your slave...’
I glanced at Dinu, wondering why he didn’t attack. In the grip of romantic fever, Robert had exposed himself. It was the ideal moment for Dinu’s ‘irony’ to be aroused.
‘Women... no one really understands them... to lie in pure white, virginal beds...’
Dinu couldn’t contain himself.
‘Come off it, Robert! How much longer do we have to put up with your fantasies?’
‘They’re not fantasies, my dear fellow,’ replied Robert, conceitedly. ‘They are the realest of realities.’
‘And when have you ever had a virgin?’
‘I didn’t say that I’ve had a virgin. I said “virginal beds”...’
‘What do you mean by virginal?’ I put in, adding fuel to the fire.
‘Spare me your philology, doctor...’
‘It’s not a question of philology’, I retorted, becoming angry. ‘It’s a question of virgins.’
Robert was upset that we didn’t understand him. Whenever he can’t come up with an answer, he sighs: we just don’t understand him.
‘Did you know that Maria wrote to me?...
Dinu and I were both certain that she hadn’t.
‘What did she say?’
‘She bores me with her declarations of love.’
‘I told her that I didn’t love her anymore. She’s not my type...’
And he lay down on the bench again, his gaze still fastened on the linden tree. He was thinking. By now the music had stopped. Couples came walking past under the trees, and Dinu watched them. Ah, the first days of summer and all their temptations! It filled me with excitement too, but I resisted. I didn’t want to succumb to melancholy and end up telling them about my own more or less imaginary bucolic idylls.
‘I’ve never seen you walking down the street with a woman’, Dinu launched a surprise attack.
‘I don’t wander the streets with my lovers...’
There was a pause. I sensed that Dinu was getting agitated. He was certainly tempted to open his heart to someone. I’ve become extremely observant. I can quickly recognize people who are tormented by this inner compulsion. Many of my friends confide in me. They regard me as a born confessor. But they’ve never realized how little I care about the state of their souls. Because their confessions aren’t sincere. They all try to be the most original in the eyes of others: to make them admire or sympathize with them.
Yet having said that, even I am occasionally tempted to bare my soul. But I hold myself back. I never tell anyone about what I imagine might be happening in the depths of my being. Confessions annoy me. They’re a sign of weakness. I don’t understand how a man could need support from someone else. When times are hard, even the best of friends is an enemy. At moments like that you have to be alone. It’s alone that we either stand or fall.
And I can’t confide in my friends. They have already made up their minds about me: I’m ‘the doctor’. While I – from the little I understand – think otherwise. But if I were to open up to my friends, they’d tell me that everything I say is just a ‘pose.’ For boys, ‘posing’ means anything that distinguishes them from each other.
Bowing to the inevitable, I asked Dinu who his first woman had been.
‘What, I haven’t told you?’ He sat up, absolutely delighted.
He had told me countless times.
‘You told me ages ago, but I don’t remember it that well. Besides, Robert should hear this as well...’
‘Yes, yes, that would be interesting.’
As Robert sat up, I noticed that his eyes were alert.
I had heard about this escapade numerous times, in several different versions. So far, Dinu had had seventeen women. I even knew their names, the colour of their hair, and many other details. But his versions about the first woman interested me particularly – mainly because they were so varied and amusing. In one he told me that his first woman had been a widow with red hair who lived on the same street as him; in another, it was the opposite: she had raven-black hair, was married and very rich. But that wasn’t all. He would recount sub-categories of the same story as well as variations of variations. For instance, his first woman had had black hair, was a widow and lived on the same street as him; or she was a redhead, married and rich; or lived on the same street, etc.
Dinu began in a nonchalant tone. He – a handsome boy in the Third Form, with black eyes, cherry lips, and wearing a well-tailored tunic – was walking home from school one day when, without warning, a flustered maidservant rushed out of an alleyway and grabbed him by the hand. Before he knew what was happening he found himself in a bedroom. In the bedroom there was a bed, and in the bed, a voluptuously clad girl with copper-coloured hair.
‘A girl?’ said Robert, his curiosity aroused.
‘That was only how it seemed,’ replied the other, warily.
I didn’t say a word. But Robert decided to, and leant over to me.
‘Doesn’t it seem to you, Doctor, that Dinu’s escapade is somewhat reminiscent of Caragiale’s The Sin?
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