The Hooligan's Return

by Norman Manea

  Night Train

  It is October 1941. Dozens of people lie piled on top of each other on the cold, damp floor of a cattle car. Everywhere, there are bundles of personal belongings, whispers, moans, the smell of urine and sweat. I am armored in my own fear, diminished, constrained, separate from the body of the collective beast which the guards managed to push onto the train and which is now writhing and struggling with its hundreds of arms and legs and hysterical mouths. I am alone, lost, as though I am not tied to the arms and the mouths and the legs of all the others. “Everybody in!” the guards had shouted. “Everybody, all of you,” they had screamed, raising their shining bayonets and guns. There was no escape. “Everybody in line, everybody in, everybody.”

  We were shoved into the car from behind, and we huddled together, ever closer, until the car was sealed. Maria was beating with her fists against the wooden slots of our pen, begging to be allowed to go with us, her cries growing weaker. The guards gave the signal for departure and the train’s wheels began to turn, clanking rhythmically. The train, a mortuary procession, moved into the dark belly of the night.

  My second journey by train was the miraculous Return, in 1945. It was April, just like now. Centuries had passed since my first train trip, and by the time of the second, I was old. I did not know then that, centuries later, there would be another return. Now I am old, really old.

  The wheels are beating out their nocturnal rhythm, and I am sliding along the fault lines of sleep, of darkness. Suddenly I become aware of fire. The train’s cars are ablaze, the iron horse’s mane is on fire. Fire and smoke are everywhere. The ghetto is burning, a pogrom is under way. A pyre has been erected in the center of the town, ready to receive the sacrificial lamb. The martyr, a young man with reddish hair and a scraggly beard, is tied to the pyre. The scene is a kind of crucifixion, but the horizontal bar of the cross is missing. There is but a single stake, to which the martyr is bound, his hands tied behind his back. The sacred straps of the phylacteries encircle his body, which is wrapped in a prayer shawl. His legs are tied to the stake with rope. His feet, his chest, his arms, one shoulder are bare. His skin is yellowed, his face pale. His tired lids are closed, his brimmed ghetto cap askew. The windows of a nearby building are flung open and one can hear screams. People are running desperately to and fro. The vertical stake dominates the scene. Death on the cross has transmuted into a burning at the stake, simple and crude. To one side of the tragic scene, a man stands poised to jump from the window of the burning house. A fiddler rushes about in the crooked street to escape the burning houses, collapsing onto one another. A woman holds an infant in her arms, a pious scholar tries to decipher the day’s curse in the pages of his book. Reaching out to the martyr at his feet is his mother, or wife, or sister, her long veil touching his body. Over all looms the ominous stake.

  I am walking, seemingly forever, toward the young martyr. The pyre is on the point of igniting. I cannot walk faster, I am powerless to save him, I have only a few moments to find a hiding place. I desperately want to tell him that this is no crucifixion, no resurrection, just an ordinary pyre, but the flames are getting closer and closer. I hear the train approaching. I hear the deafening sound of its clanking wheels. I see smoke and flames. The train is a moving torch, hurtling through darkness. It is getting closer, booming and rattling, ablaze, ever closer.

  I wake up in terror and try to free myself from the tangled blanket. I am rolling on top of the wheels, propelled by their sharp, heavy rims. It takes some time before I realize that they have not punctured my skin, that I am not being dragged by the wheels. I am in a train compartment, in Romania, a passenger in an ordinary night train.

  I remain there drenched in sweat for a long while with the lamp switched on, unable to summon the courage to reenter the present. I try to remind myself of fairy-tale journeys of the past, youthful sleigh rides in a wintry Bukovina, train trips to smart Bukovinan summer resorts, that autumn train journey in an empty compartment when my mother divulged the secret of her wounded youth. Of course, somehow, I fall asleep again and then wake up, with a sudden thought: the postcard of the Chagall painting, at which I had often stared, unable to understand who had sent it and why.

  Day Eight: Monday, April 28, 1997

  The train arrives on time, at seven in the morning, at Cluj. I had visited the capital of Transylvania only a very few times. The last time was in the late 1970s, for the anniversary of the excellent literary review Echinox, which brought together leading writers of the younger generation. I had always had good relations with the writers of Cluj. My books were always well received in Transylvania, which had never participated in any of the public campaigns launched in the media against the “traitor” and the “cosmopolitan.”

  I proceed to the University Hotel. I should shave, take a shower, and, especially, get some coffee. But I am exhausted and lie down, fully dressed, on the hard bed, trying to relax my body and mind. I lie there for half an hour, numbed, unable to sleep; then I leave the hotel, stumble into a nearby restaurant, and at last get the resuscitating coffee.

  It is a sunny day, a light breeze is blowing. The tranquillity of the scene and the short walk have cheered me up. The hotel room is modest, the bed inhospitable. Even less pleasant is the bathroom — faulty taps, the continuous murmur of leaking water in the toilet bowl. “This was my life in Romania,” I can hear the voice of one of my Romanian friends, now living in the West, saying. “The heaps of shit are a memory not easily forgotten,” he had once told me. He was the descendant of an illustrious family of Romanian scholars. There are few moments more revealing, he had said, than those moments when, after a subtle conversation with a friend who overwhelms you with quotations in French and German, you go to the cafe’s feces-infested toilet and are dazed by the mounds of refuse, felled by the stench, horrified by the swarming flies.

  Before I leave for the rector’s office at the university, I report the problem with the bathroom’s fixtures to the hotel receptionist. She agrees, with some embarrassment. It seems that she is not unaware of the situation. At the rector’s office, I meet with members of the university staff to explain the concept of a college of liberal arts and sciences. Bard is planning to embark on a fund-raising campaign for the purpose of establishing just such a college in Cluj, and is looking for the university’s cooperation. The people I am talking to assure me that they are eager to join in the project. I have no reason to doubt them, since the advantages are all on the Romanian side.

  I go out to lunch with the rector. It is difficult to find a restaurant open on Easter Monday. Judging from the waiters’ hoverings, the rector seems to be a well-known figure, but they can offer us only a single dish, roast beef and fried potatoes. Conversation is difficult, unlike our talk of the year before, in a New York café, when the visiting rector from Cluj surprised me with his objective and critical analysis of conditions in Romania, particularly of the problems faced by intellectuals. He knew the Untied States quite well, having received a doctorate from an American university. I was relieved to be spared the anti-American clichés normally served up by so many Romanian literati, as well as by their French mentors. I had asked him whether he would agree that, there often did not seem to be much difference between the extreme language of the Romanian nationalists and the narcissistic discourse of so many Romanian scholars. He agreed, comfortable with the challenge. I accepted his invitation to come to Cluj, and so here I am, armed with a major project for the cultural improvement of his university. I cannot foresee how long it would take for the post-Communist bureaucracy to defeat us.

  My friend Liviu Petrescu is now head of the Writers Association in Cluj. Our reunion in 1990 had been a real delight. Liviu was then in New York as director of the Romanian Cultural Center and we used to meet regularly, either at home or at some other place in town. He had given up inviting me to the center after I rejected his suggestion that I be the subject of the inaugural literary evening. I had never stepped into that building, dom
inated as it was by political functionaries who were most certainly in touch with the Romanian post-Communist media, which, like their predecessors, continued to describe me as the enemy of national values. Liviu, in his delicate way, had tried to build bridges between all the parties concerned. I was sorry when he later quit his post, disgusted with the arrogance of the Romanian diplomats who tried to manipulate him. He was sorry, too — I was soon to be told — that he had not followed my advice and endured the unpleasantness for a little while longer, since his activities in New York had led to radical improvement in the center’s program.

  The schedule of events prepared for me by the university did not include anything with Liviu — a sign of the rector’s hostility? — and I have been wondering whether we might get together, at least briefly, the following day, in a break from the official schedule.

  We meet on the street, in front of the Dacia publishing house. He has an air of British elegance, dressed in a perfectly tailored suit, with perfectly matching shirt and tie. Also present is Alexandru Vlad, the bohemian-looking writer, with his long hair and a wild beard, whom I used to see regularly in my Bucharest years and with whom I kept up a correspondence after I moved to America.

  Liviu has arranged an official meeting with the Cluj Writers Association, where I am finally being offered an antidote to the public hostility. Despite the praise in Liviu’s welcoming speech, I begin to feel that I am here under false colors, as a buffoon tourist, being hailed as the great star of Romanian literature. This caricature does not replace its opposite. On the contrary, it only reinforces it. Augustus the Fool is out of touch with local clichés, and the murmurs of praise sound more like the screeches of invective. It is all like an annoying case of scabies: the more you scratch, the more you suffer. There is no way to win, and I feel guilty because I am as uneasy with the bouquets as I was with the brickbats. I feel completely inadequate in this comedy of the impossible return, so my former compatriots seem justified perhaps in no longer accepting me as one of them. For them, this is what the occasion celebrates — a stranger’s visit. I am no longer used to their pomposities, and I am impolite enough to put an abrupt end to this outpouring of praise, thereby unintentionally offending a friend.

  Even the discussion that follows fails to deliver the simple words I have been waiting for. It feels like a meeting of local pensioners, forced to perform in some jolly farce. The only moment of real animation is triggered by a question from an athletic, smartly dressed, Kent-smoking woman: “Do you think that Mircea Eliade’s Legionnaire-inspired writings undermine his literary and scholarly works?” The question is obviously addressed to the “anti-national militant,” as the media continue to depict me. No one seems to care that I am also the author of anti-Communist writings. It would appear that Communism was never a serious concern of the four million or so Party members of socialist Jormania. Do the members of the Cluj audience believe that whatever fame Eliade enjoys in the West could redeem all the pain endured in yesterday’s and today’s Romania? Is this the reason they want to see him enshrined as a saint? These questions remain unspoken, as I give my reply: I have never made any public statements about Eliade’s “literary and scholarly” work. Neither literature nor scholarship can be judged by moral criteria. My “blasphemy” against Eliade did not refer to his fiction or his scholarly achievements. The questioner ignores my answer and carries on with her plea for “conserving Mircea Eliade’s world-renowned works.” Before I leave, I am offered a consolation prize. “This has really been a Party meeting. The only ones here who were never Communist Party members are you and me,” a distinguished academic whispers to me as we go out.

  “I’ll never forgive the rector for having kept me off the official schedule of events,” Liviu tells me as we say our goodbyes. I leave feeling guilty for not having been more gracious about accepting his praise. (After the visit to Cluj, I was never to speak to him again. A disease he didn’t know about at the time would soon carry him off.)

  The charming wife of the rector presides over the evening meal. The food and wine compensate for the absence of intimacy. The road back to the hotel becomes a perilous adventure, in a car driven uncertainly by the spouse of a professor at the university. The blue notebook is patiently waiting. My thoughts wander far off, to the cemetery in Suceava.

  Day Nine: Tuesday, April 29, 1997

  I wake up bleary-eyed and dazed after a sleepless night. Somehow I make my way to the lobby, where I am met by a man with glasses, wearing an elegant overcoat. Politely I extend my hand. The unknown man is smiling, looking as awkward as I. Behind him, I can see Marta Petreu, looking on with a smile. Then I realize that this must be Marta’s husband, Ion Vartic. I haven’t seen him since the tenth anniversary of Echinox, in 1979, when he was one of the literary review’s famous three-member editorial board. Young Ion Vartic has changed, and so have I. Only Marta looks the same, still wearing her air of perpetual student.

  I learn that they have returned from a trip to Budapest just to see me. Marta is carrying a hamper containing sandwiches and coffee. We go outside and have breakfast on the lawn, then return to the lobby. The surprise of finding myself again among old friends does not lessen, even after the coffee has dispelled the daze.

  Today I am to give a lecture at the university, before the faculty of language and literature and their guests, and we proceed to the campus, where we are greeted by the dean and a group of academics. We make pleasant chitchat about America, American education and literature, as well as the projected collaboration between Bard College and the University of Cluj. I recognize many faces in the audience. A TV crew asks for permission to film the proceedings, which I readily grant. I seem to feel less vulnerable in Cluj than elsewhere in the country, although I would rather be having a discussion with the assembled group than giving a lecture on “End-of-the-Century Literature.” Under the circumstances, all I can do is hide my uneasiness.

  Before we take our leave, Liviu gives me a recent translation of a study on Eliade by Claudio Mutti, the Italian Fascist scholar. Eliade again? The Legion? What have I to do with all this? I’ve hardly anything to do with myself these days. I am a refugee, hidden away in a corner of the world, that’s all.

  Next on the schedule is a short meeting at the modern offices of the Soros Foundation. The head of the local branch is a Magyar who, in a display of ethnic courage, was brave enough to challenge his own community. There is a refreshingly professional manner about him that makes me both pensive and melancholy. Romania, I think to myself, has always had such solitary fighters, but, alas, too few.

  After lunch, I go to the Vartics’, where we are to be joined by the rector and his wife. Marta takes me on a brief tour of the book-lined apartment. I am reminded of the wall-length bookshelves of my old room on Sfîntul Ion Nou Street, then my books on Calea Victoriei, then in noman’s-land. Wine and Easter cake are passed around. Ion asks me about the phrase felix culpa, happy guilt, which was the title of my now notorious essay on Eliade. I am among affectionate, faithful friends and I don’t see the question as a threat. Still, I can’t rid myself of the feeling that I am some kind of dubious character, a leper, someone with a shameful disease that everyone knows about. What have I got to do with … But I refrain from going into these old-new questions.

  I decide to put an end to the prolonged silence and pick up the thread of conversation. Oh yes, the phrase felix culpa, that famous fragment from Saint Augustine. O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem—”O happy guilt, which merited such a great Saviour.” The term culpa, not devoid of ambiguity, means sin, error, disease, crime, mistake. However, most encyclopedias of religion render it as guilt. The silence that follows this learned outburst seems longer than the preceding one.

  The rector and his wife arrive, we clink glasses and sit down to a pleasant lunch and some easygoing conversation. Then Marta, taking fidelity to its limits, drives me to the airport, where I will catch a flight back to Bucharest. She is right, this
is no ordinary departure. I came only for a brush with posterity.

  The plane to Bucharest is full, narrow, cramped. The lady in the next seat is quick to engage in conversation. I had noticed her upon boarding — tall, slim, with a simple, casual elegance. She appears worried by the weather conditions, not exactly favorable for flying. She asks where I come from, where I am going, and receives my replies with no visible signs of shock. She is surprised that I speak Romanian so perfectly, without a trace of foreign accent. Even Romanians who left the country more recently, she says, come back with changed intonations. My seatmate, an engineer from Cîmpia Turzii, asks what I do. I am also an engineer, I tell her. I graduated from the Institute of Construction in Bucharest, not Cluj. Yes, I worked in design offices and on building sites and also did research. The old profession conveys an impression of normality. My parents were indeed right about engineering, a respectable profession; one has no need to apologize for it.

  Emboldened by my confessions, the lady engineer asks how well I am doing in America as an engineer, but does not wait for an answer. She rushes on, eager to tell me how she had to change her job in recent years. With her husband, also an engineer, she is now running a small private timber-processing company that produces lumber for coffins, boxes, and smaller items. Nothing much, she adds, but it’s lucrative. She is on her way to Bucharest for the auction of a forest, but things aren’t going well: the Communist legacy is still a burden, corruption is rampant, it would be good to have a king again; yes, her family are royalists, they have always been so. Her father, she tells me, was a top pilot in an elite royal aviation unit, a monarchist who educated his daughter in the same spirit. Of course, he was persecuted by the Communists.