Norman Manea - The Hooligan's Return

“Trading with death in the labor camp?”

“Yes, everyone did. I gave her 1,000 lei. Dr. Weismann from Dorohoi said it was useless, that it was too late. ‘You’d better buy clothes or food for the children with that money,’ he said. But I had to try everything, anything. My father couldn’t even swallow the drops at that stage.”

“You were a fighter to the bitter end.”

“And how! Marcu lost his spirit right from the first, when they pushed us onto the train, and he was no better when they threw us off the train. We woke up at night to the sound of abuse, bayonets in our ribs. When he saw that his shirt was swarming with lice, he cried out, ‘This is no life.’ He lost hope. He was always a very clean man, so elegant and fussy, he wouldn’t wear the same shirt twice, he even had his socks ironed, imagine that. ‘This is not a life worth living,’ he kept repeating. After the first days in Transnistria, he said this over and over again. ‘It’s no longer worth living, not worth it.’ ‘Yes,’ I kept telling him. ‘It is worth it, it is! If we resist, if we survive, you’ll have your clean shirts again. Let’s go on, just for that.’ And we did. Who could have known whether we’d ever come back?”

She suddenly swings round toward the door; someone has entered.

“Celluţa? Is that you, Celluţa?”

Cella has made her serene and sunny entrance onstage.

“There were many times, Celluţa, when I was more desperate than he was,” she says, addressing her daughter-in-law.

Cella is standing in the doorway, looking at the three of us on the couch. She is being addressed as though she has been there throughout the whole conversation.

“How many times … I would cling to anything, to the German officer’s coat, begging him to save us from the Ukrainians who wanted to murder us, bands of Ukrainians in the service of the Germans. I clung to the arm of the peasant for whom I worked. I would walk eight kilometers, in winter, dressed in sackcloth. I worked the whole week for a few potatoes, a loaf of bread, and some beans. When the Russians liberated us, in 1944, I clung to Yossele, our rabbi, begging him to perform a miracle and save Marcu. Their first action was to send Jewish men to the front to fight against the Germans. They were little more than skeletons …”

“But what could the rabbi do? Did he know you personally?”

“Yossele, the rabbi of Suceava? He’d been deported at the same time as us. Of course he knew me. He knew my parents, too, in Iţcani, before the war; we used to send him money, oil, and sugar regularly. I went to him and started crying: Look, Rabbi, look what we have become. I live in a derelict house with no windowpanes. The children are starving, my husband is being sent away by the Russians. I am alone and desperate. I was so thin, I weighed only 44 kilograms.”

“And did he help you?”

“He did, he did. He sat there, looking at me, with his hand under his chin. And then he said, ‘Go home. Go home, and tomorrow morning, there will be a real miracle.’ Everybody who heard the story said so: God’s miracle. ‘Go home and everything will be all right. Tomorrow morning, you’ll be all right,’ he told me.”

“And were you?”

“Marcu had escaped from the Red Army. A miracle, isn’t it? He ran through the forests, for days and nights, and he managed to find us there, in the middle of Bessarabia, another miracle.”

“Look, here comes the escapee. Elegant, fussy, just like you said, with his white shirt, immaculate as usual,” I announce, turning off the tape recorder.

“Marcu, is Marcu back?” she asks, anxiously.

My father has just walked in, in his jaunty hat, gray summer suit, white shirt, and blue tie. Only the three-legged folding stool seems to be missing. As usual, he is his easygoing self, calm, with measured steps.

“Marcu, you went to the market? Did you get anything?”

“What could he get?” I intervene. “Do you think he can bring you lilacs and roses, as he did in the old days?”

“I bought a newspaper,” Father announces dryly, “and apples. They were unloading some trucks with nice apples.”

He gives me the paper, Romania libera (Free Romania) . The lead story reads: “An announcement of the Party and State Commission for the Control and Monitoring of the Environment. On the sixth of May, reduced radioactivity levels were recorded in most affected areas, including the municipality of Bucharest.”

“Hear, hear, pollution is decreasing,” I say. “Ever since Ruti arrived from the Holy Land, the press announcements have become more optimistic.”

The report goes on: “In some areas, radioactivity levels increased slightly, but they pose no threat to the population.” Pose no threat, yet we are advised to be increasingly cautious about our drinking water, vegetables, and fruit. Children and pregnant women are being told to avoid prolonged exposure in open spaces. Open spaces, indeed! We should consume only milk and dairy products sold within the official commercial network — wooden language, more deadly than radioactivity. So, now that the danger has lessened, caution must be heightened. Can one really believe them? Control and monitoring, that is the only credible news, control and monitoring.

We are waiting for lunch, for the afternoon nap, the moments of solitude. We are all squeezed into that small apartment, as we had been squeezed within the narrow confines of narrow-minded socialism for the last forty years.

“Listen here, a few days ago …” I start, pulling another newspaper from the pile on the table. “A few days ago, the comrades from Control and Monitoring were telling us: ‘During the night of May 1 and 2, a rise of radioactivity well above normal levels was recorded, as a consequence of winds blowing from the northeast — the area of radioactive emission — toward the southwest.’ What exactly does that mean, ‘above normal levels’? Disaster?”

But I cannot get anyone interested in the matter. The whole family is placidly waiting for lunch.

I persist. “Above normal levels? What does ‘normal’ mean? Can we still comprehend the concept of ‘normality’? And look here …” I pull another newspaper from the pile, on the off-chance I might trigger a reaction in my audience.

“The next day, it says, ’A relative decrease in radioactivity was recorded, but it still remains at a high level.’ A relative decrease … but still at a high level. The Russians have announced that radioactive pollution affected only the territory of the U.S.S.R., and Radio Free Europe — broadcasting to the Un-free Europe — announced yesterday that the American Embassy in Bucharest took its own measurements, and that if they haven’t yet sent their staff back to California, it may mean that everything really is okay after all. Who knows? Anyway, let’s get back to Mutter Courage and her tired heart.”

“My heart is not too good. But the real problem is that Mutter cannot see,” the old woman whispers. “If only I could see a little, after all the pain of the operation. This morning in the hospital, at the check-up, I was with the doctor for an hour. He told me I’m going to be able to see. Well, who knows…”

“Can you tell the direction of the light, can you see that?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Anything else? Can you see who’s in the room? Or when someone moves around?”

“Just shadows. When someone comes near, I can see a shadow. Now, as you talk to me, I can just make out your shadow. I wanted to see Ruti, that’s why I pressed her to come. I wanted to see her one more time, but at least I can feel her presence.”

“Do you remember, Auntie …?”

It is the Israeli guest’s turn to take the stage.

“Do you remember when they took me off the train when we were going back to Romania?”