‘Once again, you’re being very crafty,’ he replied. ‘You’re changing the subject completely. Forgive me, but the problem of the Jewish people doesn’t interest me. Their own affair, as you put it so well. What interests me is simply the solution to the Jewish problem in Romania. Not from a metaphysical point of view, which I refuse to enter into, but from a political, social and economic point of view, however that may alarm you. I maintain that the Jewish threat to Romania is real – a reality which must be understood and contained with tact and moderation, and yet firmly.
‘You reply by talking about pogroms in 1300. Well, that’s running from the argument. That anti-Semitism, as a religious phenomenon, is one thing, and my so-called anti-Semitism, which is political and economic, is another. There’s absolutely no connection between the two. They’re on different planes. I’m surprised at you intentionally making such a logical confusion. Let’s return to what is plainly called “the Jewish problem” in Romania. There are a million eight hundred thousand Jews in Romania. What are you going to do with them? That’s all there is to it.’
‘Let’s go back, then, if you want, and I’ll make a small, very small, observation on my logical confusion. If you’ll allow me.
‘The nature of today’s anti-Semitism seems so different to you to that of 600 years ago. Religious then, political now. Do you really think these phenomena are unrelated? How mistaken you are. Think about it and tell me that they’re not two faces of the same thing. Of course, the anti-Semitism in 1933 is economic, and in 1333 it was religious. But this is because the defining element of that society was religion, while in this century it’s economics. If tomorrow’s social structure centres neither on religion nor economics, but instead on – let’s say – bee-keeping, the Jew will be detested from the point of view of keeping bees. Don’t laugh, it’s true. What changes in anti-Semitism, as an eternal phenomenon, is the plane on which it is manifested. Not its origin. The viewpoints, yes, are always different: but the essence of the phenomenon remains the same. And this is, however much you may protest, the requirement that the Jew must suffer.’
‘Forgive me, please forgive me, but I refuse to reply. Essences, first causes, metaphysics – I don’t accept any of this. I’m calling you to order. I’m a thinker: it appears you’re a mystic. We won’t reach agreement if we continue.’
‘We’re less likely to if you don’t reply. Look, I’ll indulge you and deal with your arguments. So you’ll see how confused things have just got. What you call “arguments” are in reality nothing but excuses. You’re not an anti-Semite because you believe in certain Jewish threats, you believe in certain Jewish threats because you’re an anti-Semite.’
‘Observe how this rather resembles the story of the chicken and the egg. Which came first? Anti-Semitism or the Jewish threat? Talmudism, my friend, Talmudism.’
‘Then it’s Talmudism, if you wish. But listen to me in any case. And, so as not to generalize, let’s take a concrete example. A moment ago you said there were one million eight hundred thousand Jews in Romania. Where did you get that figure from?’
‘Where did I get it from? I know it. It’s common knowledge.’
‘“Common knowledge” is rather vague. How was it arrived at? Who arrived at it? Who verified it? Nobody, obviously. According to the Jews themselves, there are calculated to be between eight hundred and nine hundred thousand. At most, a million. According to authorities, in taxation, local government, electoral registers – there are slightly more than a million: a few tens of thousands more. But you bluntly say, simplifying the controversy, a million eight hundred thousand. Why? Is it not perhaps because this extra seven or eight hundred thousand satisfies your anti-Semitic feelings, which precede any figure and any danger?’
‘It’s wrong of you to abuse the argument in this way. I don’t of course have the means to determine how many Jews there are. Let’s say there are only a million. So what? Do you think if there’s a million, they no longer constitute a threat?’
‘You see, dear master, now it’s your turn to be crafty. Because that’s not the issue. It’s not about how many of them there are, but how many of them you think there are. Why do you – so critical in architecture and so rigorous about every fact and affirmation, so severe in your own thinking and conscience when it concerns artistic matters – why do you become suddenly negligent and hasty when you start to speak about Jews, casually accepting a ninety per cent approximation, when in any other domain you’d baulk at an approximation of 0.01? Why does your intellectual probity, which I have so often judged to be too exacting when you foolhardily stake everything you have for the tiniest truth – why does this probity no longer apply here, in our conversation about Jews?’
He said nothing for several moments. He stood up, took several steps across the terrace, stopped before me, perhaps wanted to say something, thought better of it, and then continued pacing the terrace, steadily, lost in thought. Then he spoke, very calmly, without the usual abruptness to his statements.
‘You were right just now. It’s very hard for us to see eye to eye. Every fact and argument can be construed and misconstrued in a thousand ways. It’ll never end.’
‘Well, if you reject metaphysical explanations …’
‘No, be serious. The truth is, we’re not statisticians. If we were, it would be as easy as pie. We’d say: there are so many Romanians and so many Jews. So many good Jews and so many Jews who constitute a threat. And we’d be completely enlightened. But as we can neither count them nor judge them, we have to be satisfied with certain impressions, certain intuitions. I know, for instance, that there are two Jewish bankers in Romania who manipulate our politicians, our government, our apparatus of state. Well, I have the feeling that these two examples represent an entire intolerant and domineering Jewish mentality. You want me to give you figures, when it’s a matter of intuition? Who are we? People who enumerate or people who think?’
‘Neither, in this case. We’re people who feel. You said it yourself: “I have the feeling that …” Well, we’re in agreement here. It’s a matter of a feeling, not of reason. That’s why the discussion seems superfluous to me. Bear in mind that I tried to avoid it. But I was accused of dealing in metaphysics. I’m so convinced that this feeling of yours, this “intuition” if you prefer, is unassailable, that I know in advance that every argument, good or bad, will fail. I could contrast those two Jewish bankers you spoke of with two thousand or two hundred thousand unfortunate miserable Jewish workers struggling against hunger to earn their daily bread. But what of it? Would this shake your faith in your intuitions? God forbid! Do you not see that what you call “intuition” and what I call your “anti-Semitism” select examples that can nourish it and ignore those which can refute it?
‘There has always been something in the Romanian sensibility which has driven it to count the deserters and to disregard the dead and wounded. Out of bad faith? No. I’m convinced that that’s not it. From suspicion and doubt, from being accustomed to dealing with an old feeling of repulsion in others.
‘Believe me, I’m not blaming you for anything. I tell you this with my hand on my heart: There’s an inevitability to this against which there is nothing to be done. As it happens, your arguments are unjust. Even if they were excellent, we would still get nowhere. I believe, with great regret and equanimity, that there’s nothing to be done about any of this. That with all the goodwill in the world, on both our parts, it’s a lost cause from the start. I feel awkward talking this way about myself but, having arrived at this point, it’s best to speak unreservedly. You know, I’m certain that
some day, if necessary, I’ll die on a Romanian front line. Heroism? Certainly not. But I don’t believe I’m a shirker. I’m not the kind to run from a place where something decisive is being played out. I believe that wherever I find myself, in life, in war, in love, I will stay and fulfil my destiny. Our many years of friendship and acquaintance permit me to tell you this simply. Well, do you think this last hour is going to prove anything? Because, one way or another, won’t I always be an outsider, always under suspicion, always kept at arm’s length?
‘No, no, believe me, it’s all useless. And, anyway, my sense of this futility is also my only consolation.’
Again he was silent, for a long time, thinking. I couldn’t tell if he had been able to follow all I had said or had absently continued his own line of thought. Then he addressed me, with a certain weariness.
‘You dispirit me. I don’t know why, but I have the impression that every door you close opens ten more. Certainly, I’d find it difficult to reply to you. We would move still further from the heart of the matter. The heart of the drama, if you like, if that pleases you. You’re far too passionately Jewish and I’m far too self-restrainedly Romanian for us to agree. In argument, of course, as elsewhere in life, permit me to be less sombre than you are and to say that with Jews like you peace will always be possible. Even more than peace: love.’
‘“With Jews like you …” I’ve heard this expression before. “If only all Jews were like you …” It’s a familiar old way of being friendly. And so humiliating. I’m tired of it, believe me.’
‘Tired and intolerant. You don’t let me finish, you don’t let me explain myself. You’ll admit you’re a difficult person to converse with. I firmly believe that your “metaphysical” despair introduces too much complexity into what is a difficult practical problem, but one to which a solution exists. The fact that I believe this is the beginning of the solution. It remains for you to believe it too – all of you – and the job is done.’
‘You have a naive spirit.’
‘Yours is tragic.’
We both lit our cigarettes. We tried to talk, but it didn’t work – and it was late when we separated, a little embarrassed, with a truly warm handshake.
4
Ştefan D. Pârlea’s conference at the Foundation on the values of gold and the values of blood. An enormous crowd, on the balconies, on the stairs, on the steps to the stage. Pârlea had to struggle to the lectern. He was pale and resolute, as though bearing the burden of the masses, though at moments his gestures assumed such violence and directness that he seemed to hold everybody’s breath suspended in expectation with his upraised arm.
I don’t know what he said. I tried several times to shake free from drowning in the sea of people beneath his waves of words, some whispered, some shouted. I looked for a single island amid the shipwreck, to stem for a moment the insistent thundering flow of questions, to retain a thought, a judgement, a direction. It all seemed overwhelming, urgent, unstoppable, like an earthquake. I could no longer recognize the person who was speaking. He was glimpsed from afar, an unsettling apparition from a dream, something out of a legend.
I was brought back to the moment by the cheering and shouting and the thunder of applause. A familiar song arose from the galleries:
The foreigners and the Yids
All suck us dry, always suck us dry.
Obviously.
*
A moment of crisis, a moment of crisis … A world that’s dying, a world being born … History split into two parts … a dead epoch … a living epoch …
Don’t be afraid, dear old gentlemen. You have nothing to lose. Neither what you’ve been believing, nor your head, nor your money, nor your little certainties, nor your little doubts. Everything will remain in place, everything will stay as it was. As it happens, there is a cry that arises again on time to calm the fever of indignation and to take the sting out of great revolutions. There is another death, which can be demanded more easily than your own precious death. There is a race of people ready to pay up on time for you. To pay for the overfed, for the starved, for the white, for the red, for the thin, for the fat. Haven’t you always said they’re a race of bankers? So, let them pay.
*
No, no, no, a thousand times no. I mustn’t reproduce my 1923 notebook all over again. If I don’t immediately choke my taste for martyrdom, I’m lost.
I know: it’s incomparably easier to accumulate disappointments and to live on their embers, to immerse myself in stagnant pools and the warm waters of sadness, and to believe in the pride of that sadness – it’s much easier than remaining on guard, and being comprehending of others and harsh with myself. I will keep watch, even if I am keeping watch over my final hour.
(‘Keeping watch over my final hour’ is still too rhetorical. Almost a slogan. My dear friend, there are enough sloganeers. If you can’t manage to speak, keep quiet.)
*
I asked Pârlea:
‘Aren’t you afraid it’s going to end again with cracked skulls and broken windows? Don’t you ask yourself if it’s going to end up with an anti-Semitic disturbance, and go no further? Don’t you think calling this thing of yours a “revolution” is just using a new word for an ancient wretchedness?’
He frowned, and answered:
‘There’s a drought, and I await the rain. And you stand there and tell me: “A hard rain is what we need. But what if it comes with hail? If it comes with a storm? If it ruins what I’ve sowed?” Well, I’ll tell you: I don’t know how the rain will fall. I just want it to come. That’s all. With hail, storm, lightning, as long as it comes. One or two will survive the deluge. Nobody will survive drought. If the revolution demands a pogrom, then give it a pogrom. It’s not for me, or you, or him. It’s for everybody. Whose time is up and whose isn’t, I don’t care, even if I myself die. I only care about one thing: that there’s a drought and rain is needed. Apart from that, I want nothing, expect nothing, wonder about nothing.’
I could reply. I could tell him that a metaphor is inadequate in the face of a bloodbath. That a Platonic inclination for dying doesn’t balance out the serious decision to kill. That through the ages there has never been a great historical infamy committed for which there couldn’t be found a symbol just as big, to justify it. That, in consequence, we would do well to pay attention to great certainties, to great invocations, to the great ‘droughts’ and ‘rains’. That the temper of our most violent outbursts might benefit from a shade less enthusiasm.
I could reply. But what good would it do? I have a simple, resigned, inexplicable sensation that everything that is happening is in the normal order of things and that I am awaiting a season that will come and pass – because it has come and passed before.
*
‘Your presence is harmful,’ Pârlea tells me. ‘You’re too lucid. We need a generation of men who have had enough of always being intelligent. A small band of men capable of throwing caution to the wind.’
Pârlea isn’t joking. Like any missionary, he can’t stand those who wait and watch. Several times he’s hit me with: ‘Answer, man, black or white? Yes or no?’ The intolerance of the inspired is dreadful. I used to believe it was a Jewish defect, but I was wrong: the defect arises from fervour. S.T. Haim, at one time, criticized me for exactly the same thing as Ştefan Pârlea today: a deliberate lack of enthusiasm. Were I to tell him I have my own demons, he wouldn’t believe me. The only difference between us is that he lets his excite his fever while I keep watch over mine.
I’ll always resist invitations to fervour, and will resist the more te
mpting ones all the more resolutely. Letting yourself be swept along on the current is too attractive to be trusted.
It has been my fortune to have grown up by the Danube, where the humblest boatman working the oar must continually read the waters. I don’t know any inspired boatmen, only those who take care. All your nebulous intuitions are worthless on the Danube. What you need is good judgement.
Were I less wary of over-analysing myself, I’d try to establish to what degree I’m above all a native of the banks of the Danube. That is my country. It has always been hard for me to simply say those two words – ‘my country’. Since childhood I’ve become accustomed to having my good faith doubted. Sensitive to ridicule, I haven’t insisted on making affirmations that nobody would accept.
We, Romanians … It was almost inevitable at school, in history lessons, recounting a war, to employ this first person plural: we, Romanians (‘which Romanians?’ someone on my bench shouted at me once, forbidding me for a good while from sympathizing with the story of Ştefan the Great). I was careful to avoid terms that might be judged affected, though I was at an age when solemn words provide a certain pleasure. Country, fatherland, nation, hero – a whole forbidden vocabulary. As an intellectual exercise, it wasn’t bad, as I was forced from early on to monitor my words and to make them mean exactly what was required. But, no matter how much consolation you get from the feeling of being wronged, the game isn’t all fun. A shadow of terror hangs over all my memories of school and childhood.
Today I regard with asperity any tendency I have towards feeling persecuted and I’m rather unforgiving of my emotional outbursts. But I will not soon forget my first night on guard duty years ago, in the regiment, when they told me that position number 3, in the adjutancy, could not be assigned to me. (‘There’s a special regime for Jews,’ explained the lieutenant, a little embarrassed.) In this way, as far as they were concerned, even if I wasn’t a proven traitor, I was in any case a potential one. A ‘special’ regime annulled in that moment the life I had lived on this soil, the lives of my parents, the lives of my grandparents and great-grandparents, a ‘special’ regime with a serial number erased nearly two centuries of history in a country which, of course, was not ‘my fatherland’, since I might betray it in the course of a night on guard duty.
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