Norman Manea - The Hooligan's Return

“Of course I do, how could I forget? They’d agreed to the repatriation of orphans from Transnistria. You were an orphan, your mother had died before we were deported. That’s why we took you into our home, and that’s how you came to be in the camp with the rest of us. You were on the orphans’ list, for repatriation. But when they got you on the train, Moishe Kandel hot arranzhirt az zein yingl zol nenien ir ort”

In recent years, especially since she lost her sight, Mother had begun to use Yiddish words more frequently — the ghetto code. Turning to Cella, I translate: “Moshe Kandel had schemed for his son to take her place,” and then I resume my role as the innocent who has forgotten the story.

“How could that be possible? And did you thank Kandel for his dirty deed? He probably posed as a God-fearing man, didn’t he?”

“God thanked him, not me. He emigrated to Israel, and one of his sons died there in a motorcycle accident.”

“There you go again — God, rabbis, miracles. What can rabbis do when God sends you to Transnistria?”

“It was not God who sent me, He brought me back. And rabbis really performed miracles in my life.”

“What about that story of the sieve?”

“Which sieve?”

“The magic sieve. Didn’t you tell us the story about Şulim, your brother, how he seemed so set in his bachelor ways, until the would-be bride used a magic trick or two. Didn’t she go to some woman who spun that sieve around to work magic? Isn’t this how you charmed Marcu, with a sieve?”

She laughs; everybody laughs.

“Marcu had no need for sieves. And I never went to that woman. She died a long time ago, before the war.”

“What about your son, to what do I owe my happy marriage? Maybe the magic sieve spun for me, too.”

“I didn’t recommend your wife to you. You found her yourself.”

Indeed, I had. Fortune had spun the sieve in my favor.

“No, you didn’t recommend her, but you stopped me from marrying somebody else once.”

“Fate always decides.”

The ancient conflicts have become the targets of feeble humor. Only irony retains some of its poison.

“Exactly, you protected me, you made me protect myself.”

“You, protect yourself? You never protected yourself.”

“When I couldn’t protect myself, the sieve did it for me. You used to go to the cemetery, to visit all those rabbis buried there; maybe they’d spin the sieve the way you wanted it to turn, to change fate.”

The joke is limp, and so is the moment, and our reconciliation means only that we are older, all of us, in the same small cage, within that larger cage.

“Fate, what fate? That Christian woman you wanted to marry was no fate.”

“That Christian woman? Hasn’t she got a name? Has she lost that, too? Isn’t that what you were asking for from all the rabbis, dead and alive, for the shiksa to lose her name?”

That was the old bitterness at work, now transmuted into good-humored jokes. Is it resignation or tolerance? Tolerance in the face of imminent death? Yes, in the face of death.

“The rabbis really helped me, you know, and they helped her, too, I’m sure. If you must know, I was praying for her as well. She’s doing fine, in England; she has two children now and she’s doing very well.”

“She may be doing well, but she isn’t aware that you prayed for her.”

“She knows, she knows. And even if she didn’t know …”

“That you prayed for her? Not even God would believe this.”

“Oh, but I did, I prayed that she keep out of harm’s way. I don’t hate her, you must know that.”

“Why would you, now that she is safely out of the way? She took the danger away with her, to England. It’s just too much, praying for her.”

“No, it isn’t. I didn’t wish her any harm, you know that. I never spoke ill of her. She has two children, I’ve heard, Mrs. Waslowitz told me. She’s always so elegant, that’s what Mrs. Waslowitz says. She was always like that, but she was no beauty.”

“How would you know?”

“I don’t, I never met her. But this is what they say.”

“If you are still in touch with Mrs. Waslowitz, why haven’t you arranged to send my former lover a recent photograph so she can see my receding hairline and potbelly, so she can rejoice over what the ravages of time have done to her Romeo? You probably didn’t want her to see how age has disfigured me. That sieve spins for each one of us at one time or another, doesn’t it? Well, the sieve would come in handy now, with Chernobyl; it might rid us of these troubles. Have you heard what the papers say? We shouldn’t stay outdoors, we can be irradiated. We have to protect pregnant women and those who could become pregnant. Boil food, if we can find any to buy. Listen to Radio Free Europe and learn from them what’s happening here in our own country … That sieve could sort everything out, with one simple spin. If it could sort a love affair out, then I suppose a nuclear accident would be mere child’s play.”

She does not respond, she is tired. There are five of us around the table, for lunch — eggplant salad, roast peppers, meatballs, potatoes, pancakes. We have no reason to complain, all shall be well, in this place between good and evil… Lo, the dessert, the golden apple, peeled and carefully cut into thin, spiraling slices; splendid apples, unloaded from the truck straight onto the sidewalk, at the peak of the radioactive fallout.

We lie down for the afternoon nap, the siesta which proves the superiority of placid, Eastern socialism, over the degenerate West. After sleep, we engage in diluted dialogue and two hours of TV madness, with the President Clown stammering away — another day gone, never to return. The Chernobyl accident brings incertitude to a head. Any stunted, sluggish sense of hope is bound to get the occasional slap in the face, the shock of some perverse trick. Headaches, swollen eyelids, palpitations, nausea? This is routine neurosis, not irradiation. This is the toxin that has infiltrated our bodies and minds for decades. The urgency to leap into the void has been felt by many, and for a long time, but the force of apathy is undiminished.

It was the summer of 1959, and I was back in Suceava. I had left there five years earlier to attend university and win, if not the world, like Balzac’s Rastignac, then at least the armor that would protect me from my circumstances and my own vulnerability. But here I was, back in Suceava, back to square one, so to speak. My engineering job offered no protection and, besides, proved wholly unsuitable for me. Nevertheless, when one is twenty-three, the streets, the rooms, the faces hidden behind the mysteries of the moment, the women, the books, the friends — all served to intensify the magnetic field of my being.

Still, the terror of ending up in the trash bin of failure, that creeping fear, expanding and contracting in turn, was with me always, asleep or awake. As for my strategy of escape, my mistrust of political matters extended even into the area of personal relationships. I found that I functioned better, including romantically, when I had a “double solution,” that is, an alternative possibility — in my case, Plan B, the safety hatch of my engineering profession, useful in extreme or unpredictable situations. My youthful energy defied the ambiguities of the job and my family’s modest social status, keeping the hidden fears at bay, invisible as lizards in waiting. Mrs. Albert, stunning as ever, was playing her familiar role again. Her daughter, now married and the mother of an infant son, was also back in town, the scene of our adolescent love. The families around us were unchanged, their offspring away studying, waiting for the chance to emigrate. Behind the drawing board next to my own sat a slender young blond Russian woman who would always let me know— with her inimitable lapses in grammar and her irresistible accent — when her husband was going to be away. There was ample opportunity for romantic diversion, and my professional duties were not overwhelming.