Mihail Sebastian - For Two Thousand Years

Perhaps I’m bad to think this way, but I will never be sufficiently tough with myself, will never strike myself hard enough.

*

I would criticize anti-Semitism above all, were it to permit me to judge it, for its lack of imagination: ‘freemasonry, usury, ritual killing’.

Is that all? How paltry!

The most basic Jewish conscience, the most commonplace Jewish intelligence, will find within itself much graver sins, an immeasurably deeper darkness, incomparably more shattering catastrophes.

All they have to use against us are stones, and sometimes guns. In our eternal struggle with ourselves, we have a subtle, slow-working but irremediable vitriol in our own hearts.

I can well understand why a renegade Jew is more ferocious than any other kind of renegade. The harder he tries to shake his shadow, the tighter it sticks. Even in disowning his race, the very fact of his apostasy is a Judaic act, as we all, inwardly, renounce ourselves a thousand times, yet always go back home, with the wilfulness of one who desires to be God himself.

*

I’m certainly not a believer and the matter doesn’t concern me, doesn’t really trouble me.

I don’t attempt to be rigorous in this regard and acknowledge quite frankly the inconsistencies. I can know, or say, that God does not exist, and recall with pleasure the physics and chemistry textbooks from school that gave him no place in the Universe. That doesn’t prevent me from praying when I receive bad news or wish to avert it. It’s a familiar God, to whom I offer up sacrifices from time to time, under a cult of rules established by me and — I believe — corroborated by him. I suggest typhus for myself, instead of a flu He was thinking of sending to somebody dear to me. I indicate certain ways in which I would prefer him to smite me or show me mercy. Anyway, I cede to him much more than I retain, as what I give him comes from myself, but what I retain belongs to the others, the very few others, that I love.

And I doubt our conversation troubles him, as He doesn’t quite see it as a transaction and is aware of the good intentions with which I approach him.

All the same … Sometimes I feel there is something more, beyond that: the God with whom I have seen old men in synagogues struggling, the God for whom I beat my breast, long ago, as a child, that God whose singularity I proclaimed every morning, reciting my prayers.

‘God is one, and there is only one God.’

Does not ‘God is one’ mean that God is alone? Alone like us, perhaps, who receive our loneliness from him and for him bear it.

This clarifies so many things and obscures so many more …

A long conversation with Ghiţă Blidaru. In the end I told him ‘everything’, that same everything I feared and which he had intuited at a glance. All I’ve been thinking about lately, everything written in the notebook, all I haven’t written …

I spoke impulsively, quickly, and a great deal, in fits and starts, jumping from one subject to another, doubling back. I expressed myself badly, in my nervous disorder. But he has a way of listening that seems to simplify your own thoughts, however poorly you express them. His mere presence creates order around him.

‘You should do something that connects you to the soil. I still don’t really know what. Not law anyway, or philosophy, or economics. Something to give you back your feel for matter, if you’ve ever had one, or that’ll start to teach you, if you never have. A craft based on certitudes.’

I shrugged, despairing of such a vague solution. And, anyway, had I really been seeking a solution?

But he continued:

‘Can you draw?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you draw well?’

‘I’m pretty bad at what they call “artistic drawing” at school. Quite good at technical drawing.’

‘How are you at maths?’

‘I don’t love it. I was good at it at school, though unenthusiastic.’

I had no idea what he was getting at and replied more in puzzlement than from curiosity. What happened next was astonishing.

‘Why don’t you become an architect?’

I said nothing. Is he joking? Performing some kind of experiment? Attempting to demonstrate to me how vain my ‘problems’ are? Setting me up somehow?

Perplexed, I keep quiet — and he doesn’t press it, and immediately changes the subject, leaving open the possibility that we will return to it.

‘Anyway, think it over seriously. It’s worth it.’

*

I’m very well aware that the professor’s proposal is full of risks. I’ve never been overly concerned about my ‘career’ as I’m convinced that I will always be poor and accept that with good grace — and yet, though what he proposes I do is not exactly an adventure, it certainly is imprudent … Are the psychological motives impelling me to take such a leap really strong enough for me to carry it through?

I’m confused and can hardly believe that he has created these difficulties for me out of the blue.

*

‘Changing tack.’ Old emotional bonds that I can’t break. In the end, what he’s asking me to do is quite easy. I had settled on the idea of becoming a lawyer. Why? I don’t know. From habit, from being tired of choosing, from lack of interest in a profession — any profession.

With a little effort, I could get used to seeing myself as an architect. A simple matter of mental training.

I wouldn’t have done anything great in a courtroom, and I won’t do anything great on a construction site. But it might not be impossible for me to find there what I certainly would have missed out on: the feeling of serving earth, stone and iron.

It should give me a feeling of fulfilment, of calm. Perhaps the tranquillity I’ve been looking for.

*

No, I can’t do it. I have exams coming up, classes, papers — too much for me to throw it all aside and start anew yet again.

I went to tell Ghiţă my decision, but didn’t find him home, which I was glad of, I have to admit, because, however determined I was to reject his proposal, I was sorry to eliminate all other options with a categorical response. Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermée.

I didn’t find him home, and so I allowed myself to keep the door half-open.

*

I’ll do it anyway. I lacked the courage to utter a straight ‘No’, and I put forward all kinds of objections. He disposed of them, one by one.

Isn’t it too late now, in the middle of December, two months after registration?

No, it’s not. He’d take care of it personally. He has good friends in Architecture and can manage it.

Won’t it be too hard for me to catch up with the syllabus? Aren’t the classes too far advanced? Aren’t the exams too near?

No, it won’t be hard. But if it is hard, all the better.

The matter settled, there was nothing left for me to say. I belong to architecture. He shook my hand heartily.

‘You know, I’m pleased we did this. You’ll learn to tread solid ground. Very important in life. You’ll see.’

Yesterday’s encounter in the train seems the more miraculous the more I think about it. That short, lively man with darting eyes who twitched oddly when he spoke, as though in the midst of an unsettled dream — that man loaded with parcels in the corner of the third-class compartment — was Ahasverus himself.

As soon as he came through the door, preceded by two suitcases and followed by some three more, and innumerable packages large and small, badly wrapped in tattered newspaper, I felt a sudden rage towards him.

‘Just what I need!’ I’d just been congratulating myself on finding such a good seat, on such a day, in the Christmas holiday rush, in a train overrun by students and soldiers heading for the provinces, and behold our Jewish friend, dragging an entire household behind him, opening the door wide to let in the cold air, pushing my suitcase aside, stepping on my toes, flinging his overcoat over mine and then pressing his way on to the bench between myself and my neighbour, begging pardon with his eyes, though no less tenacious for that in his determination to secure a seat, as guaranteed by his ticket, which he held ostentatiously between his fingers.