I was hesitant.
‘Don’t be shy. I don’t walk around on stilts, unlike some of my honourable colleagues. You don’t seem to be completely disinterested, and my position doesn’t forbid me from offering a cup of coffee and a cigarette to a young friend.’
What did he talk to me about at the coffee shop? About Mach, Pas-cal, the Italians, Poincaré, Descartes. About Descartes in particular.
‘When you go to Germany, you’ll understand Descartes. Over there, the people walk down the street differently. Do you realise how much you can learn in a city where people walk differently than they do here?’
For every author he had an exclamation, an epithet, a parenthetical aside, praise or invective. Whenever he gave me a friendly look, I was tempted to ask:
‘Do you believe?’
He avoided the subject of religion. But he did make one regretful observation.
‘I know a Christian who has two atheist daughters. Even though he’s ascetic and spiritual, he still hasn’t kicked them out. Whether or not he realises it, he’s either insane or God …’
We parted ways that evening. As he shook my hand, he advised:
‘If you want to understand religion, study logic, medicine and biology, textbooks on biology in particular. Religion wins the case only in absentia.’
On the way home, alone and confused, I fell to thinking.
My professor was a genius, or perhaps a practical joker, but how was I supposed to know which?
When I arrived home, I postponed my search for an answer, sine die. On my table were plenty of other books and blank paper to tempt me. On my table were also many incomplete thoughts, a burning desire in my soul, and black ink, lots of black ink.
When I told Radu about my meeting with the Logic professor, I made a surprising discovery: my friend and drinking companion felt a need for Philosophy.
After bragging about Nonora – who had still not let him get any higher than her thighs – he asked me the kind of questions that I, and all those not content with platitudes, could never answer.
I had never heard him talk about ‘salvation’ before.
‘It’s strange, but I’ve actually been thinking about it for a while. Through prayer, I learned that I’m going to be saved.’
‘How exactly is it that you will be saved?’
‘I’m not exactly sure. Maybe by being immortal? I know that even though I’m physically going to die, my soul isn’t going to die. I’m sure of it; although, I can’t offer you any proof, but I tell you I’m not making it up, it’s not a lie. I know that even as a sinner, I will live forever. I’m not scared of death, but I am scared of death without Jesus.’
I was surprised as I listened to him. This insight into my friend’s soul troubled me. I had never suspected that mysticism, which I had regarded as second-hand and jumbled, could contain such Christian simplicity. Radu was so Christian; and also so sinful.
‘Please don’t let any of our friends find out about this, or Nonora.’
I waged the bitter struggle of one who strives, against all odds, to bring his dreams to fruition. Winter came to a close with my soul having endured the storms of autumn and the promises of spring.
*
Now, as I write, I see all the disquiet: the impatience, the desire to know and master myself spread out before me. I am aware of my actions, my work, my fears, my joys, my sorrows. But I understand nothing, and the uncertainty torments me, and no one can see the glowing embers in my soul, not even the professor with blue twinkling eyes and arched, devilish eyebrows. The professor was the only one who could help me. But he was also the one who told me to be disquieted.
This advice was more sincere and more profound than I could yet realise.
SIX: SPRING
That year spring descended gently, and lit up the city with budding chestnuts. Light invigorated the attic. And now I was compelled to spend less and less time at my wooden table. Spring always got the better of me. It was the only temptation to overwhelm me, break me, lead me down paths harmful to my soul. In spring, clouds were my salvation. Nice thick clouds that darkened the smile of the city with their call. I loved the clouds that filled the soul with solemn sadness and bore on their crests the broad sweep of destiny. I waited for them, my clouds, on perfumed afternoons, when I was tempted to punch the walls of my overly white and narrow room, and to arrange flowers on my bookshelves. I delighted in every interruption of the sun’s rays: Darkness! Darkness! But then the sun would hold sway once more, and I cowered again, enslaved.
My spring was not the same as the one I had known in the lives of my friends and from books. Mine was bitter and wild. I was aroused by the warmth, the wind, the sunlight, the gardens, the women. The orgasm tormented me hour after hour; it mortified my flesh, haemorrhaged in my brain, and grieved my soul. If I saw a fruit tree without blossoms, I was overcome with anger; when I happened upon furrowed soil, I wept; by the side of the river; I howled; caressing a stone, I clenched my teeth; warm mist rising from the earth provoked me to kiss it, taste it, smear dense mounds of it over my bare chest, nestle my shoulders in the black soil and to lie on my back gazing at the sun. I never had the courage to leave the city, all by myself, on a cloudless spring day. Even the specks of spring glimpsed in the front garden exhausted me. In the presence of open fields, I might lose all control of my senses. Who knew what might happen? I experienced the beginning of that spring as if they were a series of nights in the boudoir of an insatiable lover. Not one emotion, scrap of sensibility, or particle of my brain escaped being consumed. My enemy knew all the wiles of perversity. She tormented me with branches of cherry blossom, with the shoulders of an unknown woman passing by, with an achingly clear sky, with the urge to wander. Even the pavement was a temptation: sinuous, clean, with the shadow of eaves cast at regular intervals. Children upset me, because I was surprised that I liked them. I did not want to like children. Birds invaded the ivy. Why did they not come up against crimson waves of deadly storm? At night I fell asleep exhausted, humiliated, like a slave broken on the wheel. I dreamed dreams of sexual tragedy. I awoke, trod the carpet of moonlight, dressed, took to the streets, wandering far and wide. But not even the companionship of unfamiliar bodies in strange rooms, no matter how prolonged, soothed me. Nor was I soothed by my walks through the city at night. Or by tortured reading. The only thing that soothed me was the triumph of darkness over daylight, cold and dreary rain, the monotony of the trees, the streets, the passers-by.
None suspected the defeat that debilitated and humiliated me. And I did not want to admit it. I knew that I was scorned by some, who considered me a dry and dispassionate soul absorbed in books. I took pride in this, but it also worried me. How could I explain to them that spring unsettled me, scourged me, humiliated me?…
I was not humiliated by the appetites, desires, urges, and mad escapades that tormented me amid the spring wind and rising sap. Rather it was because this exhausting dynamism was ordained to me, bestowed on me at the same time as the flowering fields and the returning birds. And because it was not mine, but was an alien body that replaced mine with the coming of the thaw. It was the alien flesh lent to me by spring that was the cruel, unforgettable humiliation. How was it that I was capable of mastering my body, emotions, and mind only in autumn, summer,
