waiting to be released.
The one thing I had feared at the beginning of the game did indeed occur, that is, having to kiss Nonora. With everyone else revelling in the sight and judging me to be too timid.
Nonora was calm; her eyes seared like a branding iron, but then grew clouded and sad.
‘Come on, get on with it – don’t bore me.’
‘Should I start with your forehead?’
‘If you’re perverse.’
‘How many times?’ I said, trying to delay.
‘Why don’t you start, and then I’ll tell you when to stop.’
But with everyone laughing, how could I tell them I could not kiss Nonora like that?
‘One … two … three … five … nine … five … four … The boys counted. Nonora, having tired of it, stopped me. She laughed.
‘You have no idea.’
I was agitated, furious. I had to defend myself, but I didn’t know what to say.
‘In front of an audience, obviously I don’t know how.’
‘There’s no point; don’t flatter yourself.’
The next morning, I woke up distraught. I would like to have written down everything that was going on in my soul. But I had got out of the habit of writing my Diary. And besides, I didn’t understand what was going on. I had allowed myself to be carried away by life, the club, the chairman, Nonora, Bibi. I fell asleep again and dreamed strange dreams, in which men shouted: ‘Boss, boss, Malec is calling for you!’
We saw each other nearly every day. Nonora brought over most of the items for the raffle. Radu came with her and unloaded the packages from a cart, discontentedly smoking cigarette after cigarette. Radu may have still gone to bed at dawn, but he never missed a chance to meet up with Nonora. Whenever we were alone he praised Nonora’s eyes, lips, arms, shoulders, and skin. He told me about touching her knee in the cinema, only to be checked by her fist; about kisses in passageways and backstreets. None of it really affected me. It interested me as something new and different. Nonora, who suspected Radu’s indiscretions, looked at me with defiant eyes. She tried to provoke a reaction by stopping in the middle of one of her anecdotes: ‘He doesn’t understand.’
I knew Nonora didn’t believe what she was saying. But all the same I was humiliated by the pitying looks from the girls and the vulgar superiority of the boys. Even so, I endured the situation with a mix of amusement and forbearing that I could not quite understand. One night, I would be alone with Nonora, make my move, clasp her wildly, kiss her long and hard on the mouth. But I knew that that was as far as I would go. I cannot tell you how many times I heard Radu complain about how she led him on, how she laughed seductively in his face, how she kissed him, how she cuddled him, gritting her teeth, but holding his sweaty hand in her own, before pulling back, with a devilish smile: ‘That’s quite enough! Now go away!’
I could have done the same. But why did I avoid it, determined to be viewed as an anomalous example of purity and innocence, when I had the same mediocre sex life as everybody else, dependent on pure chance?
I did not understand my attraction to Nonora. But from the first time she spoke my name, I was happy. I wasn’t brave enough to ask myself whether I liked her. But I had the feeling that something else altogether attracted me to her and delighted me in her presence. I knew how futile it was to read German after Nonora left. I think of all the pages I failed to absorb, because of the overpoweringly fresh scent of her that still lingered in my nostrils and the scenes recounted by Radu that flashed before my eyes.
I was afraid of her, and I wanted her. Catching myself desiring her, I would feel humiliated, I would scold and deride myself. A few hours would then pass, and again I would find myself wanting her.
The morning of the festival, she came to the train station, nervous about the role she had been assigned in the play. She hadn’t quite memorised her lines yet. With Radu, she drank four cognacs in the station buffet. She refused to let him pay.
‘You’ll cater to my every whim at the ball. Maybe you’ll even make me your queen.’
Radu sat enigmatically, whispering to her between puffs on his cigarette, ‘You’re so delicious.’
‘You’re insufferable!’
‘Your nostrils are quivering.’
‘And you assume it’s because of you?’
‘Naturally.’
‘You’re such a brute.’
‘I know; but you like me.’
Nonora feigned laughter.
‘You look like a convict: ugly, short-sighted, vulgar.’
‘But you still like me.’
‘You’re annoying, and you have a stutter. Go away; you aren’t fun anymore.’
Bibi was sick with longing for Andrei. Gaidaroff carried the makeup kit. The chairman, with lively eyes shining beneath a weary brow, ran back and forth with crates of items for the raffle, a crate of costumes, tickets for members, a folder of documents. The committee tried, without much success, to bring order to our expedition. Our raucous party occupied an entire train carriage. The chairman suggested we sing together, but was rejected by insurgents, who preferred to joke around in front of the windows.
We worked for three hours decorating the hall with pine boughs and paper streamers. The piano was out of tune, with three missing keys. But even so, I tried to play a bit of Grieg.
At dinner, in an empty restaurant warmed and brought to life by our energy, Nonora sat down between Radu and I.
‘Give me some wine! Give me some wine!’
Her acting, in the festival, had been far better than we could have suspected. After the curtain came down, she sought refuge in a nearby room and asked for some cigarettes. I had a packet and was about to offer her one of mine, but Radu proffered his packet first. She kissed him passionately, in front of us all. Radu blushed, but without losing his cool.
‘I would have kissed anyone who gave me a cigarette.’
The chairman, bewildered, had to overlook it; she had performed too well.
The girls pretended to be upset. Although saddened, only Bibi defended her.
‘That’s how she rewards them.’
Gaidaroff muttered to himself: ‘It’s my father’s fault, he never allowed me to smoke.’
Then came the ball: provincial girls with bad makeup, the entrants in the beauty contest, families who drank numerous bottles of soda water, engaged couples in black clothes and shoes that were too tight, second-lieutenants who ironically remarked: ‘Mademoiselle is pensive.’
The chairman entrusted me with overseeing the most difficult task: the cloakroom. I had to keep tabs on four hundred overcoats, capes, hats and pairs of galoshes, stowing them on two tables. It was a great responsibility.
