A moment of crisis! A moment of crisis! It’s as though I hear S.T.H.’s voice.
*
Vieru is depressed. He believed the project at Uioara was something enduring, and now this unexpected brush with disaster disorients him. So many years of work wiped out in a night, in a moment. If the reports of a fire are confirmed, then what will be left for those who built it? A few plans, a few photographs …
Ghiţă Blidaru is triumphing. But he is not acting proud and I don’t believe he’s pleased. He came to the workshop to see the master and I was surprised by his anxious expression.
‘Have you won?’ Vieru asked him, trying to laugh.
‘Not yet, unfortunately. It takes more than a fire to make a revolution. What’s happening now in Uioara is certainly in the natural order of things. For ten years the wells have spoken, and now it’s the turn of the plum trees. Their voices are older, and so they had to make themselves heard. But let’s not fool ourselves. It’s still not enough. We need to burn down a whole history, not just three oil wells. There are so many things left to destroy that Uioara resolves nothing. We’re only at the beginning.’
*
Eva Nicholson turned up at the offices in spectacular fashion. She came on her own in a two-seater car and in two hours will head back. She’s wearing a sports suit over which she’s thrown a mackintosh. She’s pale, calm and very tired, but completely unemotional.
‘I’ve come to buy cotton wool, iodine lotion and bandages. There’s a need for them there. I couldn’t buy them in Ploieşti, where I would have caused suspicion.’
‘My dear lady, are you siding with the insurgents?’ asked somebody from management.
‘They’re not insurgents; they’re the injured.’
In any case, things at Uioara aren’t so bad after all. Eva Nicholson has reassured us. First of all, nothing has been destroyed, or almost nothing. Things have been stolen here and there, and there’s been a disturbance. The police opened fire. The workers locked themselves into the factory and refinery. If they don’t leave within twenty-four hours, the police will open fire again. Within three days, it’ll all be sorted out.
*
Peace. Old Ralph T. Rice arrived yesterday. The latest bulletin from Uioara announces the evacuation of all the buildings. For now, the ‘instigators’ are being weeded out and made an example of. Work could restart next week at the wells and the refinery. Work has begun already at the power plant with a reduced staff. An Interior Ministry statement mentions four fatalities and several injured. But terrible things are whispered of.
4
Several times I’ve attempted to work, but it all feels irrelevant. You’re on a sinking boat. What’s the point of keeping to your post? Disasters aren’t organized events — you just have to manage.
Never have my room, my books and my maps seemed more intolerable to me. I’ve always believed that the only defeats and victories that matter in life are those you lose or win alone, against yourself. I have always believed it my right to have a locked door between me and the world, and to hold the key myself. Now look at it, kicked open. The doors are off their hinges, the portals unguarded, every cover blown.
The dignity that solitude affords is gone. The vice has been cured, perhaps. We’re going to remember our natural obligations and will live thrown together with our fellows. Some will be crushed, others saved, as we are pell-mell ploughed back into the savage order from which we once fled as individuals. Who knows? Perhaps a field that for decades has yielded only special plants — chrysanthemums or tubers — needs a furious outbreak of weeds, nettles, henbane and wild laurel for it to regain its fertility. The season of bitter plants has come.
For too long I have played on the stage of lucidity, and I have lost. Now I need to accustom my eyes to the falling darkness. I need to contemplate the natural slumber of all things, which the light calls forth, yet also causes to tire. Life must begin in darkness. Its powers of germination lie hidden. Every day has its night, every light has its shadow.
I cannot be asked to accept these shadows gladly. It is enough that I accept them.
*
To surrender to the wind and the rain, to submit to the coming night, to lose yourself in the passing crowd — there is nothing more restful. I will no longer seek the path that leads me to myself. But nor can I expect horizons now hidden to arise out of nothingness. Despair is a sentiment I have long suppressed, knowing how oppressive it is in a Jewish sensibility. I will not go back to the ghosts I have left behind. Is a ‘new dawn’ on the way? It surely is. But until then, the dusk will be slowly gathering over all I have loved and love still.
I will build the house at Snagov. I have to. If necessary, even if Blidaru does not wish me to. I have to build a house of gracious, simple lines, with great windows and an open terrace — a house for sunlight.
I have spoken at length with the professor and, though he is unconvinced, he will consent. I have asked him for full freedom to decide and to work. He has sworn he will not set foot there until I give the word.
Ştefan Pârlea always talks of the great historical conflagration that is drawing ever closer. Very well, then. I will have something to offer up to this conflagration.
PART SIX
1
I was on my way to the workshop, to meet the master. We seldom see each other now I’ve begun work at Snagov. I decided to go to town no more than once a week, on Saturdays. I’d have trouble finishing by September otherwise.
At the corner, towards Boulevard Elisabeta, was a group of boys selling newspapers. ‘Mysteries of Cahul! Death to the Yids!’
I have no idea why I stopped. I usually walk calmly by, because it’s an old, almost familiar cry. This time I stopped in surprise, as if I had for the first time understood what these words actually meant. It’s strange. These people are talking about death, and about mine specifically. And I walk casually by them, thinking of other things, only half-hearing.
I wonder why it is so easy to call for ‘death’ in a Romanian street, without anyone batting an eyelid. I think, though, that death is a pretty serious matter. A dog crushed beneath the wheels of a motor car — that’s already enough for a moment of silence. If somebody set themselves up in the middle of the street to demand, let’s say, ‘Death to badgers’, I think that would suffice to arouse some surprise among those passing by.
Now that I think about it, the problem isn’t that three boys can stand at a street corner and cry “Death to the Yids’, but that the cry goes unobserved and unopposed, like the tinkling of a bell on a tram.
Sometimes, sitting alone at home, I realize I can suddenly hear the ticking of the clock. It has been beside me all along but, either because I wasn’t paying attention or because I’m accustomed to it, I don’t notice it. It has got lost, along with many other familiar little noises, in a kind of silence that swallows the sound of things around you. Out of this stillness, you get suddenly caught off-guard by the clock ticking with unsuspected violence and energy. The ticks strike in short, clipped beats, like the blows of tiny metal fists. It’s not a clock any more, it’s a machine gun. The sound covers everything, fills the room, grates on your nerves. I hide it in the wardrobe — it resounds even from there. I smother it beneath a pillow — the sound continues, distant and vehement. There’s no cure but to resign yourself. You have to wait. After a while, by some miracle, the attack is over, the cogs settle down, the second hand relaxes. You can no longer hear it: the ticking has blended back into the general silence of the house, merged with the general hum of all the other objects.