We did the right thing, she said one evening as she lay in his arms. Don’t you think?
What do you mean?
With the Party. We don’t need those idiots, do we?
Mm, he said, nuzzling at her neck.
We have each other, don’t we? And we have our integrity.
Yes, he said, stupidly. They can’t take that away from us.
They lay like that on the terrace, lapping up each other’s words, reassuring each other that they were something special. There’s still some justice in the world, said Maria. Of course you’ll get that job. And even if you don’t, who cares? You’ll get another chance. The world isn’t going to turn its back on talent.
The problem, however, was that it did.
When they returned from Constanța, not only had Ciprian been passed over for the assistantships, but they had gone to none other than his best friends. Florin had swiped the job with Professor Foias, bragging that he hadn’t even gone for an interview. The professor had simply handed him a contract. Paul, on the other hand, had been interviewed. Twice, in fact. But nobody had told Ciprian. When he heard the news, they were sitting in the break room playing chess. Ciprian didn’t know what to do with himself. He continued with his move, sliding a pawn forward. Said, Congratulations, that’s great. It completely knocked the wind out of him. He hated Florin for going on about Hilbert cubes and peer reviews, hated Paul for stealing the job—for having a job at all. Ciprian could understand how Florin was making a career at the Institute: He was, after all, the best algebraist in his year. But Paul, a research assistant? How the hell had that happened? Paul, who spent more time at the bar than in the reading room. Paul, who knew more girls down at the nursing school than researchers at the Institute. A layabout, a good-for-nothing, a pierde-vară without parallel. How’s the new job, then—much of a challenge? asked Ciprian sarcastically. Maestro, it’s fantastic, answered Paul. The craziest Abelian categories, chimed in Florin. It was enough to throw Ciprian for a loop: He lost the game, put his books under his arm, and fled the Institute. Back home, he poured himself a pálinka and worked off his anger by thrashing the bust of Maria’s grandmother with a newspaper.
Fucking bitch, he screamed. Who’s washing whose hands now?
He swung the newspaper so hard that the bust fell over, chipping the living-room floor, which they’d spent half the summer varnishing. Ciprian collapsed into an armchair.
Jesus Christ, he said. I’m such a loser.
That night in bed he complained to Maria. I knew it, he said. I knew I should have joined.
She sighed. Never mind, sweetheart. You can try again next year.
He spent a week in coffee shops with cigarettes and pálinka, in rainy pedestrian overpasses, in the bus station’s crimson foyer. And when Maria woke up at night to the sound of the radio in the living room, she could see him in the light of the streetlamp, his hand on his neck and a bottle on the coffee table’s tiled surface. The whole thing came to a head one evening when the researchers and their assistants were invited to an anniversary dinner at the Institute to celebrate the founding of the Academy. Maria and Ciprian were kindly obliged to stay home. They were eating their soup and listening to the radio news broadcast when Ciprian suddenly let the soup spoon fall from his hand.
You realize what we could have eaten tonight, if you hadn’t burned my registration forms? You do realize, right?
You know what? said Maria. Give it a rest. It’s so petty.
Petty?
Honestly, yes. Maybe Florin and Paul were just better than you. Have you thought about that?
But apparently Ciprian had not, because with a single flick of his wrist he flung the bowl against the wall, so that the porcelain smashed and the carpet smelled of chicken stock for years afterward. Now you better be careful, he said with a quivering forefinger and everything.
Soon things flared up yet again, when they were at the parade with all its flag-waving and choral-singing. They stood in the cold and watched the Pioneers dance around in formation, cheering the Blue Motorway eighteen times. They heard speeches and saw balloons take flight. Maria was able to keep the mask from slipping, but as soon as they were back at the apartment she began to vent her rage.
What on earth are they thinking? she fumed as Ciprian collapsed on the sofa, sighing, to the sound of his wife’s rant.
And the neighbors’ children, she said. Why they send them along to this Ceaușescu rubbish is beyond me. Sheep like that, they’ve got mush for brains. Selling their children to the lowest bidder. It’s madness, I’m telling you. If it were my kids they could forget it. They could just forget all about it. There’s no way.
She flung the window open. Can you hear me down there? You’re getting nothing out of me!
Oh, shut up, mumbled Ciprian.
But Maria kept going. And what about my uncle? Is he supposed to watch his own grandchildren running around in Pioneers uniforms? Is it any wonder his nerves are shot? They paid him a visit only last Sunday—the same people who stole his factory. What do you say to that? Ransacking his home, as if they hadn’t already taken everything. They know quite well there’s nothing more to confiscate. They’ve known that for many, many years. I mean, they’re exactly the same people who fired him from his own company. His own company! And do you think they could figure out how to run it, the idiots? They’re thick as two short planks. They couldn’t tell their asses from their elbows without written instructions!
For God’s sake, just get over it! said Ciprian.
What?
If your uncle hadn’t been so goddamn pigheaded he could have kept his stupid job.
My uncle?
Yes, your uncle. Ciprian got up, taking a pálinka bottle out of the sideboard. If he hadn’t been so fucking stubborn and refused to join the Party, they would have found a solution. They would have made a deal.
A deal, said Maria, and did she laugh contemptuously? I think she did. A deal, did you say? With those bunglers?
Yes, said Ciprian, shutting the sideboard door. A deal, a compromise. Ever heard of that? It’s what people do when they weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
By and by, however, things calmed down. Everyday routine took hold, as it generally does, with its endless series of bus journeys and runny noses, dirty laundry and chess-club gossip. By the time winter laid its flabby hand over Bucharest, one might even have thought that the row was dead and buried, and that things were going splendidly, thank you very much. You might have thought so if you were Maria’s mother, or the neighbor coming to visit with a basket of chestnuts. But trouble lurked beneath the surface like the cockroaches they couldn’t get rid of, which kept poking their antennas out of the plugholes well into November.
Ciprian still saw Paul and Florin now and then, discussing the latest mathematical journals or Bobby Fischer’s dominance at the world championships. But it wasn’t the same as before. Ciprian would politely decline when they invited him for a beer or a cigarette in the break room. Instead he would go home and take out books, problem sets, and notepads, sending Maria to dinner parties by herself while he remained at his desk. Am I married to a monk now, or what? she sighed. And at night, when the formulae began to swim together on the paper in front of him, he plodded out to the little hill behind the bus stop, at the point where the apartment blocks gave way to fields. When he held his head at a certain angle, the view was uncluttered by cars or electricity pylons, and all trace of the city was wiped away.
It was shortly after the new year that the story took a new turn. When the dean of the Institute told him the news, Ciprian got up out of his chair so quickly he banged his knee against the desk. He shook the dean’s hand—thank you, thank you, thank you so very much!—and hobbled out of the office, forgetting both his briefcase and jacket in his haste. Here it was at last: his chance, his harvest of righteousness, justice being done. Okay, so perhaps it wasn’t exactly what he’d imagined, but it was a research position nonetheless. Pau
sing on the landing, he gazed at the portraits of the professors and pictured his future: the untangling of topological problems, the proofs and the theorems, promotions and a corner office, the lectern at mathematical conferences.
When Maria returned from the reading room he’d bought wine and turbot, and an elaborate bouquet of lilies was waiting on the kitchen table.
Oh my goodness, what are we celebrating? she asked.
My new job as a research assistant, he said.
There was a moment’s disbelief, and then she squealed and threw her arms around him. That evening they smoked and drank like kings, and as they lay in bed later, high on wine and sex, Maria said: It doesn’t get better than this, does it?
Nope, he said, and nearly believed it. He blew smoke at her nipple, the right one—the bumpy, raisin-like one he secretly preferred.
What did you say the professor was called, again?
Elena, he said. After all, it was her first name, although nobody ever used it.
Elena. I don’t know her, said Maria, running her fingers through his chest hair. Maybe you could invite her for dinner? Might be nice. Then we can meet each other.
Ciprian wriggled free of her arm and sat up in bed. We’ll have to see about that, he said, stubbing out his cigarette.
Fine, she said. It was only a suggestion.
One week later Ciprian put on his best suit and stood outside the third-floor office, his hands shaking as he waited. She hadn’t arrived yet, but out of the window he saw a white cabriolet enter the parking lot, a rumored gift from the Shah. She swung long legs onto the asphalt, all red jeans and a spotted silk shirt, while a dark-colored Dacia with tinted windows pulled up. Suddenly she was standing in front of him, smiling: Elena Zoia Ceaușescu, the Great Winter Shoemaker’s youngest offspring, and only daughter.
You must be Ciprian? she said, stretching out her hand. I’ve heard very good things about you.
Thank you, Miss Ceaușescu, he said, and had to stop himself from bowing. It’s a great honor.
Please, call me Zoia, she said with a smile. We’re not at a gala.
Sure enough, the dictator’s jet-setting daughter was a mathematician. While Papa Nicolae was busy handling the crisis in Czechoslovakia, Zoia had sneakily done a PhD in mathematics, and having received top marks the whole way through, the obvious next step was to continue down the path of academia. Before the age of twenty-eight, Zoia Ceaușescu—greatly to her father’s chagrin—had written her first dissertation and taken up residence in one of the Institute’s corner offices.
It can’t have been an easy situation for the venerable leaders of the Institute. On the one hand the president would prefer Zoia’s career to be curbed, so that the girl could find something sensibly proletarian to do. But on the other hand she was Ceaușescu’s daughter, and who was going to risk getting their fingers burned by giving her the sack? So Zoia kept getting promoted, and her research kept getting funded.
Had she earned it? Was Zoia a good mathematician? Nobody really knows. Ciprian hardly knew, even though he was her assistant. Like everybody else at the Institute, he was afraid to read her articles and dissertations, terrified that her work would be awful and that he would accidentally snigger or wrinkle his nose, or in some other way betray his rancor over her success. Several of the mathematicians who still remember Zoia say that she was a real siren, an A-list minx who seduced scores of men in a haze of champagne and cigarettes and lived the high life on a never-ending tour of Europe. But others say she was a girl with her heart in the right place, a white lamb in a flock of black sheep, and that mathematics was her way of hiding from her family’s monstrosity.
I don’t know who to believe, but I do know that Ciprian was Zoia’s assistant, and that he sat in the room outside her office writing drafts, sending letters, and studying vector space. Farmer’s son and president’s daughter—think what they would have said back home in the village! Would the local paper in Târgu Jiu write a profile of him? Would he be invited to the yearly banquet at the hunting club? Thus ran Ciprian’s thoughts as he sat bent over Banach spaces, as he strutted down the corridors with correspondence under his arm, and as he swung around on the landing, heading up, up, up to the research offices.
And what about Maria—did she know that her husband was pulling the wool over her eyes? Did she realize that Ciprian was working for a Ceaușescu? She must have. I mean, obviously the Institute was trying to be discreet about Zoia, but Maria wasn’t stupid. She had eyes in her head, and ears as well. But for one reason or another she chose to ignore it. Maybe she was so afraid of the Ceaușescus that she didn’t dare form their name with her lips. Or maybe she was so hurt by Ciprian’s duplicity that she fell silent, muted by broken promises. Who knows? Maybe she chose to turn a blind eye, like one of those wives who knows that her husband is running around after the secretary, but keeps her mouth shut for the sake of her children and a quiet life, or so that she doesn’t have to put up with having the pig between her own legs.
In any case, Ciprian’s career as a lady-in-waiting was short-lived. His tenure as a researcher came to an abrupt end one April morning when he found the Institute’s door locked and a note clipped to the gate. How does a dictator put his unruly daughter back in her place? This is how:
In accordance with the Presidential Decree and with immediate effect, the National Council for Science and Education has closed the Institute for Mathematics at the Romanian Academy.
The Great Winter Shoemaker, never known for his elegant solutions and sick to death of arguing with his daughter, had simply shut down the Institute. So there! That’d teach her.
Ciprian read the note that spring morning as the rain dripped down the paper. It must be a mistake, he thought, sitting down on the steps to wait. Out of the boulevards streamed pupils, assistants, and professors, one by one coming up the stairs and reading the note, one by one drifting down again and gathering silently by the bus stop. His whole life in Bucharest passed by him that day: the ancient janitor, the senior librarian, Professor Foias, the lunch lady and her daughter. They nodded to him but he barely noticed, sitting there on the stone steps, his glasses fogged up and his jacket soaked through, a dim look in his eye. He sat with his hands resting lifelessly on his thighs, thinking of Paul and Florin, who had come by that same morning. Taciturn, they had stood over him with their cardboard boxes and said that they’d been transferred to Babeș-Bolyai in Cluj. Ciprian had brightened, saying, Hey, that doesn’t sound too bad. He had missed the point, letting it pass unregistered. So which department are we transferring to? he had asked. The Institute for Numerical Analysis, Florin had answered. Only, we don’t know about you guys, added Paul. It was at that moment that the small hope still miraculously clinging on somewhere beneath Ciprian’s headache relinquished its hold and vaporized into the drizzle. But what about Zoia? he had asked, dismally. Isn’t she also going to Cluj? Florin had stared at his cardboard box, while Paul scuffed his shoe along the step.
Sorry, maestro. I don’t think she is.
It would be misleading to say that he took it well. It would be a lie, in fact. He took it neither with a stiff upper lip nor with his dignity intact. Instead he bought a bottle of pálinka and emptied it in big gulps as he staggered through Cișmigiu Gardens, kicking at the pigeons. At last he collapsed in the mud underneath a chestnut tree, eventually being woken by Paul, who had been looking for him for hours.
Fuck off, mumbled Ciprian.
Come on, you can’t lie here. Let’s get you home.
Fuck off, he shouted. Just fuck off!
When he finally came home, late the following evening, Maria was sitting in the office and talking to her mother on the telephone. Ciprian stomped right past her and yanked the telephone plug out of the wall, tearing books down from the shelves and knocking over the bookcases. What an uproar! Notepads were ripped to pieces. The writing table was flipped upside down. Nothing could stop him, until the neighbor showed up and put him in a leg lock.
&nb
sp; Fuck off, he screamed until he was hoarse. Why don’t you all just fuck off!
Maria ran home and hid at her parents’ house, only returning a week later. She had thought that things would proceed as usual: a few days of cigarettes and pálinka, and then back to work. But this time things were different. Ciprian had locked the door to the office, and had no intention of opening it again. Maria knew things were bad when Ciprian didn’t even want to touch topology. She had never seen him like that before: chain-smoking on the sofa, staring at the rhombuses in the carpet. Even in his darkest hour he had never given up mathematics, but now he shouted and slammed the living-room door at the slightest mention of a number.
Paul visited before he left for Cluj.
It’ll be alright, he said. You’ll think of something.
What? answered Ciprian. The Institute was my life.
That’s not true, said Paul. You’ll cope, there are lots of institutes in the world. It’ll sort itself out. He continued trotting out platitudes while Maria made dinner: roast turbot and Ciprian’s favorite white wine. Shouldn’t we go away? she asked, when Paul had gone home. Shall we go to Constanța for a few days? Just a few days. You and me and nobody else.
But Ciprian prodded at the fish, then put down the fork and stared out at the buildings. I’m finished with Constanța, he said. I’m finished with all of it.
The next day he shambled across to the bar and slumped over a glass, downing first one pálinka then another. He turned the glass upside down and bodily collapsed—head, hands, pelvis—and at the bottom, two black shoes. And when, after three months, he awoke to the scent of a new season, he took his coat off the peg and went into the town, joining the queue behind the job center’s ashen blinds.
The Invention of Ana Page 14