Journal 1935–1944

by Mihail Sebastian

  6. English writer and journalist.

  7. Jules Basdevant: French diplomat.

  8. Constantin Giurescu: historian, official in the administration of King Carol.

  9. Alphonse Dupront: head of the French Cultural Institute in Bucharest.

  1. Daily newspaper.

  2. When all is said and done.

  3. Commemoration of King Carol's return to power.

  4. A few successive breakthroughs.

  5. Ion Gigurtu: foreign minister and, from July to September 1940, prime minister. A pro-Nazi politician, close to Goering, he enacted racial legislation based on the 1935 Nuremberg laws.

  6. "We are in the last quarter of an hour."

  1941

  Wednesday, 1 January 1941

  I have lost the habit of keeping a journal, and now it is hard for me to recover it. Since the fall of Paris last June, when I decided not to write any longer (I felt disgust and, above all, a terrible sense of futility), I have tried only once, last October, to start keeping entries again, but I did not have sufficient perseverance.

  You must have a certain energy, a certain stubbornness, to maintain a journal—at least at the beginning, until you get used to it and find the right tone. In the end, there is something artificial in the very fact of keeping a private diary; nowhere does the act of writing seem more false. It lacks the excuse of being a means of communication, just as it lacks any immediate necessity. (I remember that in Paris with Poldy, we never spoke French when we were alone, though we would have liked to do so for the sake of practice. It seemed to us unnatural, pretentious. To speak French freely, we needed to be constrained by the presence of someone who knew no other language.) There is some of the same embarrassment in the difficulty of writing “for myself.” For if writing does not help me communicate with someone (whether through a letter, an article, or a book), it begins to seem—at least initially—absurd and lacking in personal depth.

  Nevertheless, I regretted so many times not having the stoutness of heart to continue my journal over the last half-year. I needed to look with my eyes open at everything that was happening during that time. Now I think of my months “under arms” and do not seem to recapture their atmosphere of terror. I tell myself that I was close to death, I remember that several times I wanted to do away with myself—but now all that has been blotted out, become immaterial and almost incomprehensible. There was the night of my call-up, the departure from barracks, the seemingly unreal journey to Oltenita, the arrival one rainy dawn at the Valea lui Soare, the four weeks there, the repetitive scenes with Niculescu and Cápsuneanu, the brief leave of absence in Bucharest in early August (with the violent feeling that “life under arms” and “the other life” were two completely separate things, as if on two different planets). Then came the sudden return to Oltenia, and that terrible night of ii August 1940 in the railway station, like a nightmare in which the shouting voices of Căpşuneanu and Niculescu kept interrupting each other; the two nights and three days in the regimental train, the endless hours in Bucharest station, the long climb to the Prahova Valley and on to Brasov and Sighisoara, the crossing of Transylvania, the detour toward Lugoj; then the day in Lugoj station, the never-ending torture on the platform, the arrival in Boldur, the tragicomic night “changing our effects,” and the rest of that fortnight in Boldur, culminating in the return home with a detachment of Jews. But the march from Boldur to Lugoj! The arrival at the regiment! The morning’s work unloading the timber wagons! All this has now lost a lot of its intensity, at once tragic and grotesque. At the time I thought I would never erase from my mind the loathing, the disgust, the weariness. I ended up in a kind of stupor, which made me receive unprotesting, as in a dream, all the blows that rained down one after another: my exclusion from the Bar, my dismissal from the Foundation,1 my assignment to an agricultural work detachment.2

  Maybe I should have written about all these things; maybe it would have been good to keep them in my memory. One day I shall try to reconstruct them—and it will be hard to come up with anything but faded images and withered words. Even the November earthquake is beginning to grow distant. As long as my studio flat still bore traces of the disaster—cracked walls, bare bricks, fallen plaster—I kept an image of that terrible night. But now, after the repairs and redecoration, it is as if nothing had ever happened.

  It was a tragic, nightmarish year full of terrors, miseries, and unhappiness—and yet I finished it last night without despair. With horror, but without despair. I still hope, I still believe. In June, when Paris fell, everything seemed lost and gone forever. Today it seems that life will be possible in a distant future. Even that is a lot.

  Happy New Year!3 Perhaps it won’t be “happy”: we shouldn’t ask too much. But if our lives are spared, maybe the light will be closer, the shore within closer reach, when we come to the end of this next year.

  Thursday, 2 January

  This morning I met Cioran in the street. He was glowing.

  “They’ve appointed me.”

  He has been appointed cultural attaché in Paris.

  “You see, if they hadn’t appointed me and I’d remained where I was, I would have had to do military service. I actually received my call-up papers today. But I wouldn’t have gone at any price. So like this, everything has been solved. Do you see what I mean?”

  Of course I do, dear Cioran. I don’t want to be nasty with him. (Especially not here—what good would it do?) He is an interesting case. He’s more than a case: he’s an interesting person, remarkably intelligent, unprejudiced, and with a twin dose of cynicism and idleness, combined in an amusing manner.

  I should have liked—and it would have been worthwhile—to record in greater detail the two conversations I had with him in December.

  I have a temperature of 38 [101 F.]. A bad start to the year.

  Sunday, 5 January

  Still ill. The day before yesterday I had 39 degrees [102 F.] plus; yesterday and today, between 37 and 38. Nights of fever, insomnia, nightmares. The night before last I dreamed of an unreal Balcic, yellow and red. “This is like Gauguin,” I remember remarking in the dream. Last night, in the grip of fever, I firmly promised myself to write the play with Gunther (who has been coming very alive again), and I sketched the scenario of another play. I was dizzy and exhausted—and I didn’t manage to get out of bed, as I wanted, to jot down a few things in this connection. Today writing—literature—again seems to me a stupid gesture. A brackish taste, one of futility.

  Terrible news from Bz.

  Wednesday, 8 January

  Still ill. I don’t even know if I can think of myself as on the mend. I no longer have a fever, but I am recovering slowly and with difficulty.

  Eugen Ionescu, who visits me now and then, is anxious to leave the country as soon as possible, to run away. It is the same panic as Cioran’s, the same alarm, the same haste to escape the country as quickly as possible, to find a refuge. Strange that I’ve never thought of running away (since the fall of Paris)—except as a mere nostalgic dream, which does not bind me to do or even plan anything.

  Yesterday evening and this morning I read Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion. I laughed a lot.

  Tuesday, 14 January

  I had a restless evening, without knowing exactly why. I feel obscure threats—as if the door were not shut properly, as if the window shutters were transparent, as if the very walls could be seen through. From anywhere, at any moment, it is possible that some unspecified dangers will rush in—dangers I have always known to be present, but to which I have grown so used that I no longer feel them. Then suddenly everything becomes overwhelming, suffocating. You’d like to shout for help—but from whom? With what voice? With what words?

  Friday, 17 January

  A phrase written by Giraudoux in 1938 and read by me today: “ce pays que rien ne menace et qui vit dans l’obsession de la guerre”!!4

  On Wednesday, an evening of phonograph records at Lena Constante’s.5 Ravel’s Quartet, Fr
anck’s Sonata, a Beethoven piano concerto, some of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, some piano pieces by Mozart.

  Somnolence, apathy, defenseless fear—that’s almost everything. From time to time I make promises to read and write something—but they all soon collapse, without any enthusiasm, spirit, or conviction.

  Tuesday, 21 January

  Revolution? Coup d’état? On Saturday night a German major was murdered on Bulevardul Brătianu. It is not yet known whether it was an assassination or a street incident. If, as some are saying, the man who fired was not some “Greek subject” but the former boxing champion Axiotti, there is more likely to have been some quarrel or argument at the bottom of things. Maybe an affair of the heart.

  Anyway, what happened was not directly connected to the political events of yesterday morning. The morning papers published a decree that disbanded the Romanianization commissars. In the afternoon I heard that General Petrovicescu6 has been replaced at the Interior Ministry. Toward evening a student manifesto came out calling for: 1) the removal of Riosanu,7 blamed for being the man behind the major’s killing and an Anglo-masonic puppet; 2) the reinstatement of General Petrovicescu; and 3) a government made up entirely of Legionaries.

  After ten in the evening, some five to six thousand Legionaries demonstrated on Calea Victoriei, chanting, “Down with Riosanu! We want a Legionary government! Masons out of the government!”

  At midnight the student manifesto was broadcast on the radio. This morning’s papers, which appeared later than usual, published not the manifesto but the decree replacing the minister of the interior, plus (except in Cuvântul) a note from General Antonescu explaining that the change had been necessary to restore order and to avoid an economic slump. As I went home about one o’clock, the traffic on Calea Victoriei was interrupted between Alcalay and the Deposit Bank. It seems that police headquarters had been occupied by Legionaries and was now under army siege. When I returned at about four o’clock, the situation was the same. In the evening, Rosetti told me that the regional prefects had been changed overnight throughout the country. General Antonescu has issued an appeal to the country: “Order will be restored in twenty-four hours!”

  It is nearly midnight. From time to time I hear groups of Legionaries passing beneath my window, singing in chorus on their way to the Ateneu or the Finance Ministry. Yet the city appears very quiet. On the radio, a presidential communiqué tells people not to go outdoors after ten o’clock.

  This evening I finished La Fontaine’s Fables—which I have been reading with delight for some time. The last fable, with its invitation to solitude, is a conclusion to the whole collection.

  Cette leçon sera la fin des ouvrages

  Puisse-t-elle être utiles aux siècles à venir8

  Wednesday, 22 January

  9:30 p.m.

  Alone. The telephone has been cut off since midday. Powerless to know what is happening at home, at Strada Antim. I’d like to be able to say a word to Mama. I’d like to hear her speak. I try to think of the moments of fear they are experiencing there. I regret that I was not sufficiently resolute this morning—when I still had the chance—to run to their place and stay there. With us all together, the waiting might have been easier. I absolutely promise to go there tomorrow, if there is a “tomorrow,” so that, whatever happens, we shall be together.

  The shooting never ends. You can hear rifles, machine guns, and a few artillery blasts. In the morning the noises were a long way off, apparently on the outskirts of the city. Then they drew closer to the center. When I went out at one o’clock, the buses were no longer running. I had a few moments of hesitation: should I go to Strada Antim or not? It did not seem possible to get beyond Bulevardul Elisabeta, and so I came home and decided to stay put. I managed to call home and tell them I wasn’t coming—then all the telephones went dead. The street, on the other hand, remained lively, almost normal. Around four I saw some soldiers taking up positions at Piaça Amzei, and a cordon directly opposite our block on Calea Victoriei. Around five the shooting started. I couldn’t follow exactly what was happening, because all the balconies had to be immediately cleared. I just saw several hundred demonstrators coming from the direction of the Palace. I went into my room, leaving the door to the terrace ajar. The gunfire did not obscure people’s voices. They were shouting, singing, vociferating. Two or three voices (always the same ones) stood out from the tumult: “Don’t shoot—we are your brothers!”

  It all lasted an hour. Then the demonstrators went off singing—I couldn’t see whether they were being driven back toward the Ateneu, or whether they were passing through the cordon and approaching the finance ministry. I went onto the terrace. Down below, next to the pharmacy, there was a lake of blood and a lighted candle on the pavement. I went down for a moment to ask the doorman exactly what had happened. He said that a soldier had been killed, and that the troops—who had all the time been firing into the air—then moved back and let the Legionaries through. The street was filled with people looking dazed, disoriented, and—did it only seem so to me?—rather indifferent. I went back upstairs. It would have been absurd to try going any farther. I switched on to Radio Bucharest: the broadcast was normal until 7:45, when neither the news in German nor the interval signal followed. After a long gap of ten or fifteen minutes, a voice announced that the Legion would be victorious, that in Constanta, Tecuci, and Craiova a large part of the army had sided with the Legionary revolution, and that the Judaized ministers (Mihai Antonescu,9 Cancicov,1 Mares2) would pay, along with the traitors (Dimitriuc3). So the radio is in the hands of the Legionaries. The newspapers that have appeared—even the non-Legionary ones (Evenimentul, Seam)—publish Legionary manifestos. There is not a word anywhere about General Antonescu. Yesterday evening, in a statement read over the radio (when it was still under his control), he said that order would be restored within twenty-four hours.

  And now? Anything is possible tonight. It’s only eleven o’clock—still eight hours until daylight. Will I sleep? Can I try to sleep? I am so alone, and all my thoughts are at home with Mama, Benu, and Tata. The city is pitch dark, the telephones do not answer, the radio is silent.

  Thursday, 23 January

  10 a.m.

  The machine guns and artillery kept at it all night. I slept with sudden awakenings and short, intricate dreams. Whenever I woke up, I found the same sound of gunfire. There was complete silence in my building, as on an ordinary night. At daybreak the roaring was more powerful, more frequent. Then the noise abated. At nine o’clock I switched on the radio; the usual announcer (not yesterday’s unfamiliar one) said that official broadcasts would be made each hour. So the radio station was reoccupied by the army during the night. General Antonescu has issued a new manifesto in which he declares that, given the rebel attacks on the presidency and other institutions, the state apparatus and the army have automatically swung into action. He advises everyone to defend themselves if they are attacked at home. A communiqué from the general staff denies that there have been any defections from the army.

  I go out onto the terrace. It is a hazy morning, as in autumn. The shops are open, but not many people are in the streets. Some groups stand peacefully in conversation. A special edition of some paper or other has been published. On my terrace there are debris and brick dust. A bullet must have hit my wall last night, above and to the right of the door. I can see perfectly the hole it made in the wall.

  Friday, 24 January

  I have been to Strada Antim, where I spent the whole of last night and this morning. Being together, we did indeed feel calmer. We hugged each other, as after a very long separation.

  Yesterday at about 11 a.m. (just after I had written the previous entry), a procession started along Calea Victoriei and on toward the Şosea— long motorized German columns, with rifles and machine guns at the ready. They certainly made an impression. And it was crystal-clear that the German army was on the side of General Antonescu against the insurgent Legion. When I went out I found bo
th this morning’s Cuvântul, with intransigent calls for revolution, and a special edition of the same Cuvântul published a few hours later, containing Sima’s order to cease fighting. Nevertheless, isolated shots—even some bursts of machine-gun fire—could still be heard. I went into a couple of stores to do some shopping. People were still bright and breezy in their “Bucharestian” way, more curious than terrified. Now and then pensive faces, shrugging of the shoulders: “Let’s just have some peace and quiet,” “So long as things calm down.”

  At two in the afternoon, Alice came in a car to take me to Strada Antim. She was with Comanescu (one of her Legionary types), who was haggard, taciturn, docile. Only now, as we drove through the city, could I see tangible evidence of revolution. On Calea Victoriei, below National, there was an air of complete desolation. Tanks, machine guns, and army patrols on a deserted main street with shutters drawn. I heard from Alice that the Vâcâresti and Dudesti districts had been set on fire and looted during the night. The same seems to have happened on Calea Rahovei and in many other parts.

  By nightfall the shooting had completely stopped. Clear, reassuring communiqués were read over the radio. Everyone had twenty-four hours to hand in any firearms, even hunting rifles. Anyone who continued to fire weapons or to pillage would be shot on the spot. The only remaining danger came from robbers in the smaller side streets. Alice—kind, enterprising, and generous, but hotheaded and (as she so often is) childish and a little crazy—came back later to Strada Antim and kept insisting that she would drive us all home. But we remained there, barricading ourselves in as best we could. The telephone, to our great relief, started working again in the evening, and suddenly we felt less alone. But this did not stop us from jumping at the slightest sound during the night.