Norman Manea - The Hooligan's Return

The high school that had once witnessed my fifteen minutes of fame had become coeducational, and the graduation festivities, to which I had been invited, now included a ball. The class of 1959 seemed very relaxed. After two hours in the company of my former teachers and of the new graduates, I left, with my date of the evening, to join a party of engineers with their wives and girlfriends. The graduate was only eighteen, but there was nothing immature or provincial about her. She was graceful, bold, and had a sense of humor. She was wearing a blue voile gown, with a corsage pinned to her shoulder. At dawn, dazed by too much drink and by the summer night, we climbed the hill of the old fortress of Zamca, near where she lived. She seemed at once innocent and provocatively alluring. She had a certain air about her, a mixture of Mediterranean, Slavic, and Andalusian. The flicker of her eyes was enticing, yet certain. Over the next few weeks, we conducted a steady dialogue, marked by an undiminished sense of surprise. The impatience of hands and lips intensified, the wanderings of fingers grew bolder.

We decided to spend a weekend in the nearby mountains. However, before I could do that, I had to slay the dragon from the past. I found myself on Armenian Street, standing before the house with its tall veranda that could be seen from the street. As in former days, I climbed the wooden stairs and knocked discreetly on the door. Inside, the house was wrapped in darkness; outside, as the script demanded, shone a blood-red moon. The summer night was strewn with stars, the single lamppost cast a dim glow. There I was, poised to squeeze myself through the door of the past. As it happened, the door opened after my first knock. Destiny had arranged it all very well on that July evening. Dr. and Mrs. Albert were away on holiday, their son-in-law away on business. Their daughter, my former sweetheart, welcomed me as the script prescribed. I could hear her whispering the next line of stage dialogue into my burning ear: “Slowly, slowly, to the left, slowly, let’s not wake him up.” I knew what was to follow, but did not know where. The beautiful daughter of the beautiful Mrs. Albert had not, after all, married the man of her choice; but marry she had, as required by the rules of the world into which she had been born. The young couple, now a trio, had not yet found a suitable house, so they lived with her parents.

We were about to commit the unlawful act in the very house where, until not so long before, I had been regarded as a desirable candidate for the daughter’s hand. I did not become the son-in-law of the striking Mrs. Albert, who had once descended from her divine heights into our small and very terrestrial kitchen, with her legendary declaration “I want to meet the parents of this boy.” The boy had not lived up to expectations, yet that unlikely night offered the chance of a conclusion, as well as the opportunity for revenge. Her busy hand was guiding me, delicately and patiently, through time’s tunnel, toward the door at the left to the old sitting room, which I knew so well from former visits, years before, on many a pleasant Saturday night. There, in the family parlor, the sacrilege was about to be performed.

I shut the door, leaving the darkness behind. The gods had already lit the sinners’ lamp, a tiny candle flickering in a corner of the room. In the family parlor, where once stood a sumptuous couch, now stood a double bed, installed there for the young couple. Next to it, the baby’s crib— the crib of innocence next to the bed of sin. The air was rife with piquant connotations, but our impatience allowed no delay. I rushed into the torrid tunnel of the past, instantly recharged with every spasm of her body. Salvo after salvo, moan after moan — exhausted and drenched in sweat, the masters of the night had seen the revenge and redemption each had sought.

In the nearby crib, the baby slept unconcerned. My former lover was the same, yet also changed. She had learned new ways of giving pleasure, and she performed them with tact and passion; her long, silky legs lifted heavenward, our blood pumped furiously, the triumph of unstoppable youth.

At dawn, in a daze, I tore myself from the bed of the unfaithful wife. The baby had slept serenely throughout, oblivious to the voluptuous adultery in the bed beside his crib.

I was awakened by the elixir of the summer morning. Love was not what I felt, but the ravaged residue of possession. Everything had worked perfectly well — the mind, the feelings, the body, the moment’s blindness, the subsequent detachment, the frenetic simultaneity. It was a childish sense of fulfillment, just what I needed, and received, and was taking with me. I was climbing, exhausted, to the top of Armenian Street, now deserted in the early-morning breeze. I proceeded slowly, past the old church, to the left, toward the new section of apartment blocks, and then down and left again, along Vasile Bumbac Street. On the corner, at number 18, the narrow sidewalk brought me to the door behind which, as usual, there was another servant girl sleeping.

What had happened that night was different from the teenager’s clumsy gropings of ten years earlier, different from the failed attempt in the brothel on Frumoasei Street five years earlier, different from the night with the courtesan Rachèle du Gard two years earlier, and different from the more recent fling with the Russian only one month earlier. Finally, the boil of all those entanglements had burst. All that convulsive time spent under the sign of the jeunes filles en fleur , the maidens in their budding groves, all those days and months and years in which I had overwhelmed her with my excessive erotic-literary fumblings, had finally come, vengefully, to a gala night.

The maiden had sacrificed her virginity, not on the altar of love, but on the altar of marriage, which had given her a son. Yet her beauty was undiminished. On the contrary, the blue of her eyes had deepened, her golden hair was sunnier, her breasts fuller, her waistline miraculous, her skin a smooth copper glow. She was more beautiful than ever. Her sensuality had not lost any of its delicate ardor, but had been enriched by the gift of her now educated senses. She did not appear destined for a single husband, or a single lover. But this suspicion did not trouble me, it served only to stimulate my excitement. After that ecstatic night, I should have had the decency to phone her — that was the thing to do— but I was preoccupied not with that happy end but with a new beginning. So I kept my silence. However enthralling our night of passion, I was not tempted by the possibility of future encounters, which, I feared, might become commonplace and routine.

There were two days left before I was due to leave for the mountains with my new girlfriend, the high-school graduate. It was a period in which, as in fairy tales, time expanded. In the place where the magic comb had been tossed, mountains had sprung up. Time regained and the night that had helped me regain it were now far away, beyond that mountain range. Already, they belonged to the past.

Crossing and uncrossing her legs, the girl now sitting cheerfully beside me on the train to Cîmpulung Moldovenesc was the reason for the quick break with the past. We found unanticipated surprises — the cabin on the mountaintop that kept solemn watch over the town, the simple wooden room, the wakefulness of the starry night, the light of dawn pouring down upon the bedsheet scattered with the carnations of virgin blood. This was no parody. It was real, natural, without simulation or memories, without reproaches or plans for the future. It was simple, whole, like the forest surrounding us. I had been made new by the easeful lovemaking of a new night.

Soon, however, the traditional repertory of conventions claimed its supremacy. A fragile silence seemed to have descended over the small rooms where the Montagues and the Capulets lived, unknown to each other. Was it possible that these two lower-middle-class families from the socialist provinces should find themselves caught in a dramatic conflict more suitable to aristocratic Verona? Gossip’s minions had already set the intrigue in motion. The small rooms expanded to accommodate the poisoned breath of the great drama. There were signs of imminent storm in the air, history repeated as farce. The time bomb, carefully wrapped, had revived the ghetto’s eternal fear — the shiksa, the Christian siren, the honey trap of defilement, the taboo temptation.