Norman Manea - The Hooligan's Return

The colonel made some laconic comments; he was an intelligent but dangerous interlocutor. His seeming reserve was a subtle tactic to trap me, but this was no time for caution.

“An Israeli spy?” I said. “In what way?”

I did not really expect an answer; the interview followed its own dynamic.

“He is accused,” I continued, “of accompanying, in his capacity as Secretary of the Jewish community, dignitaries from America and Israel on their visits to Bukovina. These were official visits, sanctioned by the Foreign Ministry and, probably, by all the relevant ministries. The surveillance agencies must have been aware of everything everybody was saying and doing.”

The colonel smiled again, inscrutably, and confirmed my bold statement with a slow nod.

“Yes, yes, of course we knew,” he said, without uttering a word.

I pressed on. “It is alleged that among the visitors was a certain Brill, head of an Israeli secret service. He visited the famous Jewish cemetery in Siret, near the Soviet border. Are we to suppose that he was there to gather information, to spy on the border area with his bare eyes or with the binoculars he didn’t have? He didn’t even take a single step outside the zone where tourists are allowed. As for my father, how could an obscure employee of the small Jewish community in tiny Suceava know the names of suspects on the Romanian secret service lists? And after all, surveillance is quite efficient, the Romanian Securitate is well appreciated around the world.” The colonel was almost laughing now, the captain raised his eyes from the minutes he was typing and joined in. Yes, he was definitely laughing.

I could not be stopped. “And what if Mr., formerly Comrade, Manea suffered, let’s say, a heart attack? His old body bears the scars of Marshal Antonescu’s Transnistria, of postwar Stalinism, and the Stalinless Stalinism of the 1950s. The errors of the past should not be repeated in the 1970s. This is what all the papers say.”

My two listeners seemed more interested in this new narrative twist than in the previous recital, so I stepped up my tempo. “The descendants of the ghetto make no distinction between the policeman of the old nationalist state, with his vile frame-ups, and the socialist militia man of today. For them it is not always clear-cut. Socialist laws proclaim the equality of all citizens, and it is true that after the war there were Jews in important, even ministerial, positions. There are still some left. But this does not heal memories, or panic. The suspects are wary, Comrade Colonel. Maybe they have a right to be.”

I had come to the end of my grand aria. I had demonstrated alertness and courage, so what were my two interlocutors waiting for, standing there smiling, hands on hips? Where was the applause, the bouquets?

My fear and my spirit of revolt had joined in producing a coherent, even brave, discourse, but the drama wasn’t over yet. Still, here I was, alive, with all my thoughts and accelerated emotions still alive.

The colonel, in his turn, performed his role to perfection; it was difficult not to be persuaded by his performance. He had not objected to any of my reproaches; his resigned air seemed that of a man weary of the idiocies he had to deal with daily. By accepting my argument, he almost broke down my emotional defenses. However, I managed to keep my composure until the very end, when he had his final word: “Thank you, this is very important information on the psychology of the ghetto. We do not often receive such helpful information. Our colleagues in Bucharest will ask for your cooperation, I’m sure.” All I could do was to mumble feebly, “No, I’m not suitable, not I.” The colonel was no longer listening. He got up and extended his hand. The interview was over.

As I was leaving, the captain assured me that the misunderstandings concerning Mr. Marcu Manea would be dealt with quickly. Comrade Colonel always kept his word; he is a very special man, as you could see for yourself. Indeed, the occasion had been special, but I was no longer paying any attention to the captain and his words drifted away.

The tension of that meeting had been excruciating. Focused on my objective, blinded by my own drive, I had ignored where I was, to whom I was speaking. Had the whole business gone on for five more minutes, I would probably have collapsed, like a rag doll, into the arms of the colonel and the captain, and then they really could have started squeezing me for information. I was exhausted from the effort and amazed at my own audacity. I made my way down the stairs of the accursed building, eager to make my escape and forget everything.

I could not forget, however, that nobody has a right to play moralist when confronted by such demented dilemmas. Alin knew of the police pressure that had been exerted on pensioner Marcu Manea after Periprava; he knew of Colonel Vasiliu’s persuasive charm, as well as of the two conversations his colleagues in Bucharest had had with me, their future expert on victim psychology. He knew that the meetings had been short and that I had declined the flattering request to cooperate. Now the police were closing in again. They must have possessed more information on their suspect than that provided by the routine reports and weekly conversations with my poet friend.

Alin, good friend that he was, told me what he had written down about me for his interrogator: “An honest man, uninterested in politics. Withdrawn, melancholy, he enjoys books and solitude.” But that description somehow seemed unconvincing, it lacked the gloss of Party clichés. I had become infected with suspicion myself and began to think that my friend was keeping things from me, to protect me from myself, not only from my pursuers. I was becoming increasingly dependent on my double informant.

Tall, with big hands and flaming hair like an Irishman’s, exploding with vitality, with a booming voice and wide gestures like a conductor’s, Alin somehow became small and big-nosed, with his mane of hair suddenly sticking, like an oily helmet, to his diminished skull. His once-resonant voice was now a screech, difficult to understand. Was he omitting details that were likely to make me worry? I kept asking to see him, no matter how briefly. Again and again, I went over details with him, no matter how minor they seemed. Had the police inquired about my medical records? Detention in psychiatric wards, of course, was a practice much favored by the socialist police.

The interrogations appeared to be routine, bureaucratic affairs. The police put off any blackmailing tactics, just as they postponed the resolutions of the thousands of dossiers that had accumulated at headquarters. To forestall accusations that they were either lazy or ineffective, they kept adding to the numbers of their collaborators, not for the minute information that might be gained, but in order to maintain the network of complicities.

As reported to me by my poet friend, the information about me that he was passing along gave no cause for alarm and even provided some amusement. The police learned nothing about me that they didn’t already know. But the anxieties that I discovered buried within me revealed more about me to myself than my police dossier, uncovering old, obscure traumas.

I discovered that I was the real beneficiary of the investigation, not through what I had learned from Alin’s reporting, but through the reaction it triggered in me. I saw myself as being in the privileged center of a farce that yielded fascinating insights. The description alone of the private apartments where officer and informant met each week would have merited the attention of any anthropologist, but I could focus only on my own anxiety, like a drug addict looking for a fix. Suddenly I was plunged into the terror of the 1940s and given a chance to understand, albeit belatedly, the anxieties of that time, with all its recycled incertitudes and neuroses.