find the right words, but when he did find them, he delivered them resoundingly. He reminded us of the old gentleman’s donation. But the association did not yet exist. It would have to be established as soon as possible. The choir and the festival would bring in funds. We would sing carols for government ministers, for the dean of the university, at the royal palace. The association would have to be officially registered. That way, we would be able to receive donations. At the same time, we had to foster ‘the student life’.
My guests were inspired. They promised help, work, with enthusiasm.
‘And discipline’, added the chairman.
A young man with black hair was appointed choirmaster. Flattered, he asked to hear everyone’s voice. The girls protested.
‘We’ve been singing since lycée.’
The boys teased, ‘Then it’s been a long while, hasn’t it.’
A pale, quiet girl capitulated.
‘Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti!’
A tall, swarthy, thick-lipped student, who stood leaning against the door, opined: ‘She’s a tenor.’
Laughter. The girl turned red, and shrank back apologetically. The chairman interjected, ‘Gentlemen, you promised.’
A young woman, with dark, sunken eyes, moist lips, and trembling nostrils spoke up. She had wavy, neck-length black hair and her arms were bared to the shoulder.
‘Chairman, sir, they should go first!’
The boys protested, suddenly nervous.
‘Ladies first.’
‘The boldest first’, replied a blond girl.
Amid this hubbub, I took a look around my attic: Cigarette smoke, the smell of women’s clothing, shadows. The bookshelves paid silent witness.
Above the headboard of my bed, the dried willow garland around an icon shed its dry leaves. I felt so happy and such a stranger!
The chairman’s ruling solved the dilemma: ‘The girls will sing scales, and the gentlemen will go downstairs and wait in the courtyard for a few minutes. Make sure not to break any windows!’
I could hear them plotting.
‘But we’ll catch cold.’
The girls agreed to go first, but only if the boys promised to behave themselves. The young lady with the dark eyes gave a perfect, defiant rendition of the scale.
‘Your name and faculty?’
‘Nonora – Law, and the Conservatory.’
The boys ‘Aha!’
Two days later, rehearsals began. The young women one afternoon, and the young men the next. This arrangement was not to the liking of the men. They arrived late, smoked, and ignored the chairman. It was decided to hold joint practice sessions. The men arrived half an hour early. Some politely asked me to forgive the intrusion. They began to discuss the student strike. Some were for it, others were carried along with the tide, and others still were against it.
‘And what do you think?’
I did not want to think anything. I listened. When the first young lady arrived, the discussion grew impassioned.
‘Sexual selection’, I said to myself.
The women complained to the chairman about the men ‘talking politics’. The chairman banned any further talk of politics, as it was conducive to disorder. If the men in the room wished to discuss such matters elsewhere, they were perfectly free to do so.
We rehearsed Gaudeamus igitur – a certain feeling descended into the attic, amid the cigarette smoke and the books, a feeling of Heidelberg coming to life. It was hot between the white walls, we were happy that it was snowing outside, that it was snowing heavily. Our voices resounded through the windows and enlivened the street. The women had befriended each other. They huddled around the tiled stove, and leafed through German books in fascination. I divined how, evening after evening, they were becoming more drawn to the attic. In the beginning, they had voiced concern about entering so small a room, without rugs, and with so many bookshelves and burning cigarettes. But it was so novel, so unusual. They then found themselves starting to look forward to our rehearsals. It was ‘pleasant’. Perhaps they were dreaming, perhaps it reminded them of novels, or perhaps they were hoping.
Nonora was becoming more and more forward. But she was still undecided. She smiled at all the men and received never-ending compliments from admirers who cast furtive looks at her knees, breasts, shoulders. She annoyed the women because every night she positively demanded a gentleman walk her home. Even the chairman was charmed by her. In discussions he now began to ask her to take the floor: ‘And what does Miss Nonora think?’
One afternoon, I saw her standing at the top of the stairs after being kissed by a dull but handsome student.
‘You’ve got a cheek! You’ve wiped off all my lipstick.’
‘Is that all?’
She and Bibi had become friends. They came to rehearsals together.
‘Who will help me take off my wellingtons?’
Maybe she was speaking to me as well. Five tenors bent down to assist her.
‘Wait a second, wait a second! Just my boots.’
She liked Radu. She met him one evening at my place, maybe what she liked in him was his ungainliness, his cheerful shortsightedness, his cynicism, which was that of a man who submits to fate. Radu was the only friend who had not abandoned me in the autumn. I met the others only seldom, and when I did, we talked about insignificant things. They were furious that I had hired out the attic to a club of strangers.
‘Before long you’ll turn into an anti-Semite, too.’
We preserved the same closeness when we talked, but I was looking for new friends. Radu might as well have been a new friend. After we had gone our separate ways, in him I had discovered very many qualities that nights spent drinking in taverns had not managed to destroy.
And Radu came to my attic every night, once he found out that Nonora came too. He alone walked her home now. Nonora liked him best of all the students, because he was intelligent, cynical and ‘witty’. The others were handsome and vulgar. Nonetheless, she continued to let herself be embraced by any who dared. She kissed with open lips, her head thrown back. And she would complain afterwards about ‘the savages wiping off all my lipstick’.
Bibi introduced me to Andrei, who was tall, dark, broad-shouldered, and had a look of hard-working ambition about him. He wanted to become a chief engineer. Intelligent and voluble, he pretended to be curious about science, but found it difficult to conceal his ambition. After all, he did want to become a chief engineer. It seemed as if Bibi loved him. She asked me two days later what I thought of him. I praised him, of course. Bibi had given herself away.
‘Did you see his eyebrows?’
At the very first meeting I met a multitude of students. They couldn’t believe all the chairman’s
