Norman Manea - The Hooligan's Return

Should his honesty and common sense have prevailed to keep my father out of the clutches of the Communists? By an irony of history, Maria had returned, in a new incarnation, to the family’s life. Face-to-face with the city’s leading Communist, Mr. Manea tried to maintain his old reticence toward politics and politicians, but finally, he had no choice but to succumb to the pressure and become Comrade Manea. Usually a cautious man who observed and respected the norms, he now found himself an exception to the popular, if untrue, view: instead of being those who inflicted Communism on the populace by an act of will, that is, the Jews, he was a Jew being pushed into the Party by a thoroughgoing Christian woman. At ease with stereotypes, Comrade Manea did not, however, fit the stereotype that had been stamped on so many of his coreligionists. Not long after receiving his red card, the new Party member was appointed to an important leadership position in the local socialist trade system.

By this time, Mr. Manea’s son had also become a Red figure of authority, but his boyish enthusiasm was, naturally, more visible than the father’s more subdued responses.

The new world’s principle sounded simple and just: “To each according to his work, from each according to his abilities.” Comrade Stalin assured us that socialism would win everywhere, and at that point the hallowed principle would become: “To each according to his work, to each according to his needs.” In the meantime, the exploiting classes were toppling daily. The industries and banks were nationalized, the collectivization of agriculture began; political parties, Zionist organizations, private schools were all banned.

The Red summer of 1949 was for me a grand affair — the Pioneers’ summer camp, trips, campfires, poetry readings, meetings with former fighters of the Communist illegal underground, visits to Red factories and Red farms. And then one day, in the doorway of our tiny kitchen, stood a splendid blonde, elegantly dressed. In reality, she was probably from either Moscow or Bucharest, but no, she must have descended straight from Hollywood. She was a vision of generous cleavage, curvaceous hips, suntanned skin, blond hair, blue eyes. Her stiletto heels and chic dress were from another world. And her voice, what an incomparable voice! Instead of an ordinary “Good day,” she dramatically announced: “I have come to meet the mother of this boy.” From the doorway, she gazed in amusement at my mother and myself, paralyzed with amazement. We invited her in and learned that she was the wife of Dr. Albert, newly arrived in town. “We’re absolutely in love with your boy,” she said. This was how the gorgeous lady made her entrance into our family’s home movie, as a would-be friend of the parents and as an admirer of the boy she coveted as a potential son-in-law.

The Red summer was followed by the Red autumn, the new Red academic year, and the rally of the Revolution, under a podium erected in the town square. Standing with the Party secretary, the colonel of the town garrison, and the representative of the Union of Democratic Women, the Pioneers’ commander addressed the masses from the rostrum and, on the evening of the same day, spoke in the Dom-Polski hall. A new red scarf, of pure silk, a gift from the Soviet Pioneers, was wound around his neck. Next came the preparations for the great Red anniversary, the birthday of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.

In the grip of pubescent confusion, his hair was disheveled. The boy’s hands and lips were groping and probing the object of his desire, there, in the dim light of the teachers’ room. One moment I was on top of the world, the next I became a child again, knocking on the frosted-up window for my father to come and open the front door for me.

The young revolutionary found himself alienated not only from the paltriness of the family house but also from the narrow-mindedness of his lower-middle-class family — a restricted world, trapped by its own fears and frustrations, a ghetto suffering from the disease of its past, suffocated by suspicion and rumor. He felt comfortable only outside this confinement; he was secure only within the simple, clear logic of his new allegiance, under the bright rainbow in the Red sky: PROLETARIANS OF THE WORLD, UNITE. Those beings called parents, relatives, family? Their little lies that knotted the hours one to the other? Even their names, their bizarre pronunciations were something to be ashamed of, and so were their minor dramas, their fears, their desire to be with only their own, obsessed with their burdens and their illusions, feeling forever persecuted, held together by the injustice done to them two thousand years ago and seven years ago and yesterday afternoon.

“In a few years’ time, this boy will get us all killed,” whispered Sheina, daughter of Avram the bookseller, one night to her husband, Comrade Marcu, also father of the commander. He did not respond to the challenge, he had enough to think about: socialist commerce was more socialist than commerce. Life, however, could not be stopped in its tracks by such bourgeois concerns. The class struggle was becoming ever more acute, Comrade Stalin warned, the enemy’s agents were everywhere, even in the old Habsburg boys’ lycée which I now attended, in the company of rigid, imperialist teachers and reactionary fellow pupils, sons of nouveau riche farmers, lawyers, merchants, priests, rabbis, and politicians of the former regime.

I was at an age when I was filled with, nay intoxicated by, urgent desires. Touching a female schoolmate in the darkness of the movie house was only a substitute for the real sexual initiation, for which there was no available partner, except perhaps the servant girl who slept in the kitchen and whose movements I spied upon at night, breathlessly.

There was another reason for feeling guilty. I had a new classmate, from Giurgiu, in the country’s south, who had applied to join the Union of Working Youth. He was tall, quick-thinking, good with words, and I liked him. His parents’ shady situation — nobody really knew why they were transferred to Bukovina — should have made me authorize a deeper investigation; nevertheless, I accepted his request and he received the red card. Was this the poison of compromise and treason?

Meanwhile, the ubiquitous Party posters, with their bold red letters laying down the Party line on every conceivable issue, remained irresistible — Party Day, the agrarian problem, the international situation, the Korean War, the Tito menace, vigilance. At all times there were deviations, excommunications, reorientations, new directives, coups de théâtre . The people’s best sons and daughters would suddenly turn into deviationists, traitors, and agents of the bourgeoisie or of American imperialism. “The cadres are the Party’s golden treasury,” proclaimed the inscription at Red headquarters, adorned with portraits framed in red. Missionaries drawn from factories, farm fields, institutions and schools were the “professional revolutionaries,” linked by a code of secrecy. At the top, the Political Bureau ruled, then came the Party Central Committee, below them the Central Committees of the Youth Union, the trade unions, the Women’s Union. The whole system branched out downward into regional, borough, and town committees. At the bottom were the organizations in towns, villages, factories, collective farms, militia and Securitate units, and schools. At the very bottom of the heap were the public assemblies, the masses who formed the final link of the operative chain.

It is Thursday, 4 p.m., in the high-school auditorium. The year is 1952, autumn. The table on the platform is covered with a red cloth, four large portraits of the Marxist-Leninist fathers, framed in red, look down from the stage. The Secretary of the Union of Working Youth— for that indeed is the position to which I have risen — comes to the rostrum, followed by a delegate from the regional committee, followed by the high-school director. The director advances obediently to his seat on the front bench, alongside other members of the staff. The comrade Party activist opens his briefcase, takes out the day’s newspaper, and reads the communiqué of the Political Bureau, dealing with deviations among Party members on both the right and the left. He comments solemnly on this resolute text. Next on the agenda is a set of carefully prepared speeches. The Comrade Activist intervenes, interrupts, asks questions, reprimands those who still hesitate to deliver the names of the enemy.