‘Sorry, I had work to do. If you’ll have me, I’ll come this evening.’
‘Can’t this evening. We’re going to the Nicholsons’. Phill has promised a game of bridge. Come along yourself.’
She was dressed in white. Marin Dronţu is right: white doesn’t suit her. She’s incredibly blonde – the white-blonde of corn straw. Light colours make her inexpressive. In the sun her eyes, which are green, turn violet, her cheeks lose the contour which usually shadows them towards the corners of her lips and the line of her neck no longer reveals that fine familiar curve.
I watched her for a long time as she went away, jumping carelessly from one stone to another, between rubble and plaster.
I’ve often wondered what kind of a life Marjorie Dunton leads. She doesn’t love her husband, and he doesn’t love her. This at least is clear between them. They have common interests which make their partnership pleasant: music, skiing, swimming. They also have their individual preferences. He likes bridge and she likes novels.
Enough for a marriage between two such intelligent people. Still, I find it hard to believe you can get by on so little. At least Phill has the refinery laboratory, where he can continue his work and perform experiments. But what has Marjorie got?
Young Dogany suffers in vain. I don’t think Marjorie will ever love him. I don’t think she’ll ever love anyone. I say that with a certain sadness, but a certain pleasure too, as I wonder if I wouldn’t suffer knowing her to be in someone else’s arms. I can’t explain it, because I’ve never expected anything beyond the fact that we get on well together.
Three years ago, when the Duntons came here, Marjorie intimidated me. I was afraid of what might happen. I had so much work to do, and God knows I didn’t need romantic complications. Things resolved themselves naturally. Marjorie is excellent company.
Back then we were reading Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. I remember speaking animatedly about the book, about its passion, about the hallucinatory poetry of its heroes. She knew the book, but didn’t like it.
‘I don’t like overwrought books,’ she said. ‘If you’re interested in the Brontë sisters, I recommend Charlotte. She’s simpler, “homelier”, calmer.’
She lent me Shirley, Charlotte Brontë’s novel, which I loved straight away, on first reading. It was relaxing, clear, with a certain juvenile naivety, through which I tried to see Marjorie Dunton. I congratulated her on her discrimination, which later I saw reconfirmed many times in literature and music.
I asked her once if she’d ever thought of writing. She laughed. ‘What a notion!’ Still, when I get a letter from her in Bucharest in winter, I’m amazed at the liveliness with which she imbues little happenings, the images she evokes, how she can lightly, negligently, drop a confession between the lines.
*
I’d been working all day and, tired as I was, hadn’t expected I’d stay so late at the Nicholsons’. These people have managed to create here, in Prahova, in Uioara, real society life.
It’s probably their national character. At first their insistence on keeping up society manners here in the back of beyond struck me as somehow comic. Marjorie dresses fancifully only in the morning. She is a passionate adherent of evening dress. The men always come to dinner in black coats. I tried to rebel in favour of short-sleeved shirts with open collars, but had to accept defeat.
Once, concerning this matter, Eva Nicholson said something silly and over-excited to me:
‘You’re wrong to laugh at this. It’s not frivolous. It’s something more serious, it’s a matter of dignity; no, it’s a matter of salvation. If, because we’re on our own, because nobody sees us, we conceded a little of what you consider society manners, and a little more tomorrow, we’d wake up one morning living in the most terrible promiscuity. It would be unbearable. Without black tie and evening gown, nobody would have any real privacy. Privacy is such a fragile thing and it’s worth making sacrifices for.’
Though I don’t entirely follow Mrs Nicholson’s reasoning, I have to admit that their strict dress code evenings are relaxed and welcoming. I have a sense of freedom, well-being, of simple elegance.
Marjorie played Déodat de Séverac on the piano, the Debussy-ist she recently discovered. It’s amusing to watch young Pierre Dogany listening as he leans against the corner of the piano, visibly sad and happy. His strange head has both Semitic and Mongolian features. He really is handsome, this boy, and deeply appealing in his unrequited love for Marjorie. Marjorie looks at him directly, loyally, as if to say: ‘It’s nothing, Pierre, it’ll pass, you’ll see.’ At the end of September he has to return to Budapest to sit exams, and the prospect is already weighing on him.
We left late, together, and walked to the Duntons’. Then he walked a bit with me, towards the cabin. He recited some verses by Endre Ady but wouldn’t translate them for me. His voice trembled and I could feel how furious that made him.
Entering my room, I probably woke Dronţu who, from beyond, struggling out of sleep, couldn’t keep from shouting out to me once again:
‘See how you waste your nights? That Marjorie’s going to wear you out. And not one of you is up to the job. You call yourselves men …’
*
What a surprise, meeting S.T. Haim in the casino in Sinaia. A pipe on the construction site had burst, right in my work area, and I suddenly found myself with a few free hours. I didn’t feel like conversation or reading, and, as Hacker was leaving with the Ford for Predeal, where he has a sick daughter, I asked him to drop me off in Sinaia.
Same old S.T.H. Blond, kinky-haired, short, with extraordinarily intelligent eyes, alive to everything, the flash of a smile or the beat of a pulse; his agitated hands twitching with the impatience to express too much. ‘He has too many gestures and only two hands,’ Winkler used to say.
He had completely disappeared for the past few years. I can’t have caught sight of him more than a couple of times, from afar, in the street. He went abroad, travelled extensively, had a few love affairs, made some good business decisions. Now he’s working with some very profitable foreign engineering firms. His doctoral thesis in mathematics caused a bit of a stir in the university, but that was three or four years ago and I don’t think he cares much for maths these days.
‘I’m like those Jewish girls who play Beethoven and Schubert with feeling, then one day get married, stop playing the piano, forget about music, get fat and have children.’
I felt he was telling me this in anticipation of my question, but I don’t actually believe anything he says. In fact, he’s unjust with himself. Money, no matter how rich he may be, has had no effect on his air of being a free man, ready to lose everything and start from scratch. He has that rather childlike and distracted air that people with an interior life retain in wealth; a sign that wealth, even if they aren’t indifferent to it, is certainly not indispensable to their identity. Off-handedness is the humour of elegance, and I don’t know a true intellectual whose elegance does not involve this kind of humour. S.T.H. certainly has it. His silk shirts, his flannel suits from London, his fine bulky shoes, the delicately patterned tie – not only is he not intimidated by any of this, but he treats it all with bonhomie, as if they’re amusing trifles.
We strolled through the gaming rooms and through the park, very happy to be seeing one another again. S.T.H. knows about the work going on at Uioara and seems well informed.
‘Very interesting, everything Vieru’s attempted there. You’re working for us. You’re making this entire region proletarian. In fact, you’re doing something even more serious: you’re d
issolving the antagonism between the peasants and the proletariat. Another superstition that’s disappearing. No sir, you can’t have rural reaction in the middle of fighting for the revolution. I don’t recognize the peasantry. I recognize workers and property owners. What work they do and what they own makes no difference. In the factory or in the field, the problem of class remains the same.’
I didn’t attempt a reply, but smiled at finding him, despite the years, just as attached to his Marxist rhetoric. I commented, lightly, that things weren’t that simple, that if he were in Uioara he’d see that the process was deeper and more complex, that I didn’t believe the antagonism between workers and peasants was a superstition and that in any case, we were a long way from having dissolved it, so he had nothing to congratulate us for. I would like to have talked to him about ‘the plum-tree issue’, which I had so often been forced to reflect on since settling in Uioara, but that certainly would have infuriated him and I wasn’t in the mood for an argument. I was very much enjoying strolling with him and I didn’t want to spoil my enjoyment. We moved on to other subjects – books, women – and I was happy to see how sensitive and open the fellow was when you get him off Marxism and dialectics. I asked him to visit me some day at the oilfield, and he said he wasn’t sure he could, as he wasn’t alone in Sinaia. This probably meant a woman, but I didn’t ask for details. Judging from his reluctance to speak, it was probably an affair of the heart. But he clearly felt the need to explain himself, as he burst out, with a certain weariness in his voice:
‘Books, love affairs, money, they’re all substitutes. I’d be bored without them. I’m waiting for something else entirely … But the right moment is yet to come. We’re in a stupid year, a year of prosperity. I’m waiting for the crisis. That’s when everything will fall, be overturned. There’s too much money around now, too much excess, too much optimism. We’ll see what happens in 1930, in 1931. Things will come to a head one way or another. Until then, I’m going to rest. I’m neither sentimental nor a martyr. I’m not going to get sent to Jilava Prison for poetry. The moment that counts is the moment of spasm. Six years ago, when we met, was one of those, but it passed and I missed it. It’ll be back some day, and I won’t miss it again.’
Evening fell. The sun bathed the big windows of the casino with a violent glow. It was clear we were both thinking of the same thing, the meaning of that red blaze, as we suddenly looked up at one another.
‘I think you’re wrong. And if you’re not wrong, that’s even worse.’
The park was full of beautiful women, full of white dresses. We parted as friends.
General ideas are S.T.H.’s vocation. I lost the habit for them long ago. When was the last time I had a discussion involving arguments, issues and principles?
One might say I’m becoming coarsened. But life is so simple now, so clear.
I remembered my blue notebook from 1923. Where could it be? At home, perhaps, in some drawer or box. I’m going to look for it someday, though I think it’ll be embarrassing to re-read it. Lord, what folly must be written there … But perhaps not entirely my fault. S.T.H. is right: it was a moment of crisis. I was expecting signs in the street – and there was nothing in the street but confusion, the fog of stupidity, intoxication. So I took refuge in intellectual problems, which cast no light, but gave me consolation. It was a simple game and also gave me a certain illusion of personal superiority. I reduced everything to the drama of being a Jew, which is perhaps a constant reality, but not such an overwhelming one that it should cancel or even supersede strictly personal dramas and comedies. I was, I believe, two steps away from fanaticism. Interrupting my diary was a good thing to have done. Writing only fed my fever. From the day I tossed that notebook aside and let the days pass of their own accord, without commenting, without escapism, things settled down bit by bit and became simpler, calmer.
*
On Thursday, old Ralph returned from abroad and went straight to the oilfield from the train station. It was clear he had an intuition. He made a terrible scene, sowing panic for a kilometre around.
I later heard that at the wells and in the offices everyone was trembling with apprehension. ‘The boss is furious’ went the news, in a chain of whispers. I was lucky that Marin Dronţu was there too, so I was able to keep quiet without my silence appearing insolent. The old fellow wouldn’t stop. What? Whose villa? His own villa? He, the master’s? He, who’s spending a fortune? His own personal villa, just the way he wants it? Just as he ordered it? How could we? On what basis? How dare he? This messing about has to stop! Enough of this nonsense! Enough! Really enough! He’ll take measures! He’ll demolish the lot! Rebuild the lot!
I let him talk, knowing he’d tire – and that’s what happened. For two days he didn’t come around here. I saw him at the wells and he mumbled a reply to my greeting. Next week, when the master comes, there’ll be a burst of indignation, and then it’ll pass.
*
This evening, a reception in honour of old Ralph T. Rice. A gala reception in Uioara, in Prahova! So many dinner jackets and long silk dresses – almost unreal in this place of oil and plum trees. Of all the master has built there, I like the club most. There’s something both solemn and cordial about it. It’s British and local in equal measure. The ballroom and the billiard room are linear and sober; the verandas and reading rooms have the air of small interior gardens. Almost every evening, before dinner, I meet there with Phillip Dunton to play a game of chess.
I’m not going to Rice’s reception. I’m still en froid after Thursday’s scene, and then I don’t have the required dinner jacket. I’m happy to stay at the cabin and listen to records borrowed from Marjorie. I’d have liked to convince Dronţu not to go either, but there was no way.
‘What? Me, afraid of an American, three Germans and five Englishwomen? You tell me I’ve no dinner jacket? Don’t you worry, sir, I know all about being elegant.’
He powdered and perfumed himself and very carefully constructed a triumphant look: a bright blue suit, a coffee-coloured pullover, a stiff collar, a polka-dot bow-tie and white spats. For a moment I wondered if Marin was not a comedian, engaged in gratuitous outrages against convention. Seen this way, his entry in the club would be a master-stroke.
Dear fellow! He left happy, twirling his gnarled walking stick, and I envied him his iron constitution, his absolute imperviousness.
*
I worked flat out all day. The master is coming the day after tomorrow and I want everything to be in order. Marin Dronţu arrived very late at the oilfield, tired after a sleepless night and, on arriving, told me there was something he wanted to talk to me about.
‘At lunch, Marin! I’ve no time now.’
But I stayed and ate lunch at the site, quickly, as I’d convinced everybody to take a break of only half an hour, and Marin was unable to talk to me. I knew it had to be very serious, judging by his worried air. Whatever job he had at hand, I found him always at my side, fretting over some secret he wished to unburden himself of.
‘Marin, go to bed! You must be sick.’
He stayed until late in the evening, when the third shift sounded, down at the oil wells. As I too was very tired, we went straight to the cabin, to eat what we could find.
‘Well,’ he finally said with a deep sigh, ‘I’ll tell you one thing, I’ll do anything, but I don’t touch my friends’ women. Anything but that.’
I didn’t understand a thing and waited for him to go on.
‘Look, this is what happened: last night I’d had a couple of drinks and I went out on to the veranda to cool down. I found
your Marjorie out there. Her husband was playing cards. “Let’s take a walk,” I said. “Certainly,” says she. So off we went. When we passed by her house, she said, “Come in, I’m thirsty, I want to drink a glass of water.” I went in and, in the dark, I tried to kiss her, and she didn’t object. In the end we went to bed and she told me not to ruffle her dress. Then we went back to the club, and her husband was still playing cards.’
Marin Dronţu has gone quiet and is looking at me, awaiting a response, a sign. For a few moments I say nothing either, not knowing what to do. There are so many things to be done …
My first thought is to stand up, run down to the Duntons’ villa and ask Marjorie. Ridiculous. When it comes to women, Marin Dronţu never lies.
But I should inquire further, get him to tell me everything, right down to the details. I should stand up and pace about the cabin, I should rush over to young Dogany, I should tell Dronţu what a pig he is.
I raised my head.
‘Bravo, Marin. And is that all you’ve been fretting about for an entire day? You slept with her, so good for you.’
‘You mean, you’re not angry?’
‘Why should I be? What’s it to me? Is she family? My wife? Lover? It’s between the two of you. Come on, let’s eat now.’
I drank a bottle of wine and Marin sang a few sentimental songs.
‘What the hell, they’re all the same, the lot of them. Women.’
That’s my consolation.
*
The work goes on. The master’s visit has put things in order. But his interview with Rice went worse than I expected.
I’d counted on a five-minute argument. It lasted an hour. The master left the director’s office, slamming the door, and went straight to the oilfield, where he remained with us until evening, running from one corner to the other, scrutinizing everything. I could feel his bad humour, and everybody worked in silence, with their heads down. It was like a tacit act of solidarity with him. I think he understood that.
For Two Thousand Years Page 11