by Norman Manea
Mugur rushed in a sweat from doctors to nurses to orderlies, distributing bribes and smiles, kowtowing to superiors, dedicating his books to Bruno Schulz and to Half-Man-Riding, Half-One-Legged-Hare. His was the blind stubbornness of life, living in order to prolong the life of one’s beloved. The poet survived purely on his drive to keep his other half going. The cost had kept rising, while life itself was being continuously devalued.
What once had been the painful “destiny” of the poet had now become the collective destiny. However, a burden shared did not mean a burdened halved.
I am lame. I am trembling … The trembling man feels he is multiplying; the man that wants to grasp, to clutch, to smash — or to caress — has a long way to go to reach his objective, a zigzagging path. He feels he is alone, but at the same time he feels that around him there is a plaza full of people trying to reach an apple on a branch. The trembling comes from beyond my own volition, which demands that I be much; hence my idea, which I once expressed in my writing, that, before it is this or that in terms of quality, life is “much.”
I often thought of that “much.” Mugur had told me the parable of the fat Jew who eats voraciously and becomes grossly obese. When questioned about it, the Jew says: “When they come to burn me, I want to burn a lot, I want the burning to last.”
So the poet Mugur had grown fat, too, from his neurosis and his anguish. The trembling got worse, and so did the panic and the cold and the gloom and the terror around him. The messages became rarer, constrained, fearful, and ever conscious of eavesdroppers: “We have no particular reason for complaint.” The word “particular” was laden with meaning: the inevitable had not yet happened. “Thank God, we have no particular reason for complaint.” This is how Mugur had codified the whole situation in a letter addressed to Cella and signed in his tremulous hand “Julia.”
Only in 1989, once Julia had died and the Red Circus had collapsed, did I receive the first letter addressed to me personally.
Shall we ever meet again? A few years ago, I was a whole man: I had five or six hearts, as many pairs of hands and feet, of noses and mouths — like any normal man, no? And now my hearts have been either buried or flung far away over the world. I am trying to replace them, those that can be replaced, with the random sheet of paper and a few scribbled words. Do you really believe that we are going to meet again? I would almost feel whole again. I would be, let us say, Half-Man, rather than the hundredth part of man with no hearts and no eyes and no nothing.
We did not meet again. Murgur died in February 1991, soon after his birthday, with a book in one hand and a piece of bread and salami in the other.
Meanwhile, another friend, Paul, had also died, the Flying Elephant, the Communist who had been spared the post-Communist masquerade after the Communist one in which he himself had been a player.
Also dead was Evelyne, Cella’s mother, who had presided, discreetly and elegantly, over the anniversary of July 1986. In one of her last letters, she asked that we no longer send her mail to her address but to that of a neighbor. After the publication of my essay on Mircea Eliade, when the newspapers of the new democracy were accusing me of blasphemy and treason, local patriots had chosen as their target the mailbox of the culprit’s mother-in-law, which they set on fire more than once. Other guests at what proved to be my farewell celebration had, in the meantime, found refuge in France, Germany, and Israel. Those who had stayed were no longer the same, and neither the city nor the nomad I had become had remained unchanged.
The motherland had retreated deeper and deeper into the past, and deeper inside me. I no longer needed geography or history to test its contradictions.
Was the vacuum left behind indeed greater than the body that had occupied it? This had been the prediction of Half-Man before he vanished together with the half-lame chimera he was riding. Absence was indeed just a prolonged spasm in the aging heart. And the child shouting in the street, “Come on, let’s play,” was now far away, beyond all the oceans of this world.
The New Calendar
It was D-Day — Decision Day — January 20, 1988. For almost two years now, I had been lingering in Transit City. Finally, after many delays, the moment had come when there was nothing left to delay. “Decision is a moment of insanity,” Kierkegaard confided. So was indecision. The insanity of indecision had lasted for almost a year, after a lifetime of indecisions.
The pettiness of belonging, nothing more, its ludicrousness, nothing more, were at stake. Our hero was pale, overwhelmed by the farce that had chosen him as its protagonist in a parody of his own making. Had he not shed the tight-fitting skin in which he had previously lived? Had he not forgotten the past — he who forgot faces seen only an hour before?
“You, it’s your turn to appear before the commission,” gestured the lady in the blue tailored suit. He grabbed his briefcase and got up from the bench on which five other people were huddled together.
“First, you’re going to talk to the French representative. When you’re finished, come back and see me again.”
She pointed him toward the door to the left of her desk.
The slender man behind the desk invited him to sit in the facing chair. He sat down, his briefcase on his lap.
“Do you prefer to speak German?” the Frenchman asked in German. “Or would you prefer French?”
“French will be fine,” the applicant answered, in German.
“Good, good,” the examiner continued in French. “Most Romanians speak French, don’t they? My Romanian friends in Paris have no trouble adapting.”
“Yes, French is easy for Romanians,” he replied, in French.
He looked more closely at the man opposite him. These days, the Romanian thought, in Romanian, the examiners are all younger than the applicants.
The official had a long, narrow face, with a prominent, finely chiseled nose, dark, intelligent eyes, a thick mane of hair, and a youthful, likable smile. His tie was loosened, the collar of his blue shirt open, his dark-blue jacket unbuttoned, draped with casual elegance over his bony shoulders. His voice was pleasant.
“I was talking yesterday with a Romanian lady about you. I knew we would be having this meeting today, and I asked her whether she knew you.”
The applicant said nothing. He remained silent, in French, the language that had just delivered this surprise.
The official lit a cigarette and placed both hands, palms downward, on the edge of his desk. He was leaning back slightly in the swivel leather armchair in which he appeared so comfortable.
“You seem to be quite well-known. Yesterday, reading the form you filled in, the titles of all those books you’ve written … I was struck by the coincidence.”
As he said “those books,” he raised the applicant’s form from the desk, held it in the air for a fraction of a second, then put it back on the desk. After a long, untranslatable pause, the Frenchman resumed his melodious Gallic tones.
“I’ve read your novel Captives” he said. It sounded like the call in a fencing match: Touché! Had the foils engaged? No, the silence in the room was unpunctured. “In the mid-seventies, I think,” the Frenchman continued. “I was taking a course in Romanian at the university in Paris. There was much talk in the class about censorship and the coded criticism of the totalitarian system — the captives’ code, I believe it was called.”
The applicant gripped the handle of his briefcase. “Liar!” he would have liked to shout, in all the languages he knew. Now he was certain that he was not talking to a mere civil servant. Was there no difference, then, between the East and West? The same insinuations, the same flattery, the same traps. Was the exile who had refused to cut a deal with the native devil now forced to deal with his international counterparts? Had he become a vulnerable captive, a nameless pariah, an easy target to be manipulated at the first turn in the road?
“It’s quite a surprise for me, too,” the applicant finally muttered, in French. “I wasn’t aware … I didn’t know that my book had made
it to Paris.”
“Yes, I was also surprised. Imagine, seeing your name on the application …” The Frenchman looked at the form again.
“I see your name, the titles of your books … You should settle in France, not Germany.”
You should settle in France. Was that a piece of advice, a promise, the code for the deal that was being suggested? But no, the man’s affability was for real, he was treating the applicant with courtesy and respect. If these were tricks, they were tricks of a different sort than those reserved for the run-of-the-mill populace.
“You must surely know that France is the easiest place for a Romanian. You would make friends very quickly. You could write in French, like so many of your illustrious countrymen …”
Indeed, the examiner knew not only about his novel Captives, he also knew about the famous trio of Ionesco, Cioran, and Eliade, also about Princess Bibesco and Princess de Noailles and Princess Vacaresco, and la grande princesse and la petite princesse. He had even heard of Benjamin Fondane. Yes, he had done his homework.
The conversation continued in much the same vein. At the end, the examiner got up from his side of the desk and stood next to the examinee, offering further proofs of his cordiality — his business card, with both his Berlin and Paris addresses; an invitation to a soirée; assurances of support, “of any kind,” should there be a need, either here, in West Berlin or, even more so, in Paris. As he shook hands with the refugee, Monsieur le grand ami murmured, “It would be nice, meanwhile, to spend an evening together here in the place where destiny has so brought us together.”
He saw the applicant not only to the door but to the antechamber, where the lady in the dark tailored suit reigned. He announced that his friend Mr. So-and-so had completed his interview with the French authorities and could now be referred to the other two Allied powers governing West Berlin. The German secretary remained completely composed in the face of this Latin complicity. She waited impassively for the two Francophones to take their leave.
The Frenchman’s office door closed and the applicant was again left waiting. He looked at his watch, ten minutes to noon. When the secretary finally looked up, she said in her brisk German, “That’s all! You’re finished for today. Come back tomorrow morning at eight. Go to the front gate to have your name checked. Come back here at nine. Room 135.”
It was a cold, sunny day. He took a bus, then a tram. Around two o’clock, he finally got home.
A year had gone by since his arrival in Transit City. On this island of freedom, he had felt at ease from the very start. The colorful billboards, the glittering shop windows, the relaxed air with which people of the city went about their business — all this gradually became routine for the foreigner who, until very recently, had known only cold and darkness, informers and falsifiers. Freedom delighted and terrified him at the same time. He could not go back, but he did not seem ready for a rebirth either. There were still too many doubts. Back there, in that matchbox where he had lived with all the frustrations and illusions, he somehow felt important and unique. Was he about to lose the language that, at every stage in his life, had left its deep imprint? This was suicide, not much different from a return to the murderous motherland, or so it seemed to him.
The night before the morning he was to appear before the Special Commission had been more difficult than the long nights of indecision he had endured for the many months since he had alighted on the island of freedom. No matter the many joys the Afterlife was ready to bestow on him, he was afraid he would always remain a senile toddler, learning sign language in his second childhood and babbling incomprehensible sounds of gratitude.
Through the night’s white fog, he could make out the elegant outlines of Transit City’s buildings and boulevards. He could hear music drifting from afar. The citadel was peopled with artists and spies, all enjoying a pulsating night life. He thought he could make out the Great Wall, which protected the enclave of freedom from the outside world of the captives, while also providing a barrier against the virus of liberty for the prison beyond. And it was evening and it was morning, and on the day after, there were two more steps to be taken. January 21, 1988. On this fateful day, the fifty-year-old would be reborn into the Afterlife, renamed, from this day forward, the World Beyond.
Stretched out on his couch, he looked at the date on the daily calendar, circled in red. He got up and carefully wrote, in bold red letters, above the circled date: MARIANNE. He stood for a moment gazing at what he had done. No, not good enough! He crossed out what he had written; then, with the same red pen, wrote, on the bottom of the page — FRANCE. Then, smiling mischievously, like a child who has just played a prank on an old aunt, he squeezed another word into the space before the word he had already written: ANATOLE. ANATOLE FRANCE! He went back to his couch, where he remained for a long while, his right hand clutching the French official’s business card.
Should he take up the Frenchman’s invitation and spend an evening with him on the town? Would that cure him of the suspiciousness he had carried with him from socialist Jormania? That would take more than a single evening. Moreover, he hadn’t even had a real conversation with the Frenchman who claimed to have read his book. Was that story really true — and what if it was? He had not yet even attempted a conversation on literary topics with his devoted reader. He tore the Frenchman’s card into little pieces, unable to grasp yet the advantages of making deals even in the Free World.
…
The next day, January 21, 1988, the applicant retraced his steps from the previous day, boarding first a tram, then a bus, going from the city center along the Kurfürsterdamm to the suburban location of the sacred Tripartite Commission. He arrived at the gate, promptly at eight, as ordered, and by nine appeared at room 135. He sat down on the familiar bench and waited patiently. At a quarter past eleven, the lady wielding the controls pointed silently toward the door at the right — the American door.
The bald young man behind the desk invited him to sit down on the chair opposite.
“Do you speak English?” the American asked, in his American English.
“A little,” he replied evasively, in Esperanto.
“Okay, we can speak German, then,” the American continued in his American German. “Is that okay?”
The applicant nodded silently. He studied the man sitting before him, an even younger examiner than the one of the day before — a solidly built man squeezed into a brown suit with large lapels, dark, penetrating eyes, small hands, with a heavy ring on one finger, gold cufflinks on white shirt cuffs showing from the sleeves of his jacket.
“Passport, please.” Army voice, army manner.
The applicant dipped into his briefcase and produced a portfolio bulging with papers, from which he extracted a green passport. The examiner examined it closely, page by page.
“This is not your first trip to the West, I see.”
The applicant offered no comment. The representative of the Great Power gave him a long look, then broke the silence that had briefly hung in the room.
“You’ve traveled twice to Western Europe and once to Israel.”
The silence deepened.
“And where did you get the money for these trips?” the American asked, breaking the silence. “There’s no convertible currency in Eastern Europe. Only the authorities can make the transaction, and they’ll do so only if it’s in their interest.”
“I didn’t travel on government money,” the suspect protested. “My relatives in the West sent me the money.”
“Relatives? Generous people, those relatives. Where do they live?”
The applicant hurriedly listed the countries where his nomadic family had settled.
“In the United States as well?” said the American, his face brightening. “Where? What sort of relatives?”
“My wife’s sister, married for over ten years to an American. A mother with two American kids, a ten-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son.”
“And how did you get
to Berlin? I don’t suppose it was your relatives who chose this place, Berlin.”
A prolonged silence followed. The American seemed pleased with himself. “I came here on a grant from the German government, as I noted in my personal file.”
“Yes, you mentioned that,” the civil servant admitted, picking up the file from his desk, holding it up for a moment, then putting it back and pushing it to one side, as though it were irrelevant. “The grant that the vanquished offer to the victors. Can we call it that?”
He appeared in no hurry to be done with the German issue. After all, he seemed to suggest, defeating the enemy had been no easy feat. This is what united them, the young American and the aging East European sitting across from him. An award prompted by guilt … Yes, the thought had crossed the mind of the awardee himself. It was an award offered by the vanquished to the survivors whom they had failed to crush, an award tendered, after its defeat, by the now prosperous Germany to the wretched of Eastern Europe, always destined to poverty, to exile, not at all strangers to defeat themselves. Even within its diminished borders, postwar Germany remained the same country of hardworking, efficient people, with the same flag and the same anthem, even in Bavaria, which the pundits had predicted would end up being ruled by the survivors of the extermination camps. They also postulated that the Jews would demand from the Germans proof of philo-Semitism for three generations before reclaiming their German citizenship, lost in the catastrophe.
Of course, a joke read backward, from right to left, like the Hebrew Bible. For it was the Jews who were in fact asked, as they came out of the camps, to offer proof by blood of belonging to the state that had sought to exterminate them. Only if they could pass this test would they be awarded the enviable status of citizenship in the new postwar Germany, generous with its disbursements to the impoverished and the lost, who no longer hoped for a share in the spoils of victory.