Norman Manea - The Hooligan's Return

Nevertheless, one cannot renounce the honor of being despised and mocked, nor should we discard the honor of being an exile. After all, what other possessions do we have, apart from exile? Dispossession should not be deplored, it is preparation for the final dispossession.

When all is gone, there is still Hotel Noah’s Ark and the art of pragmatism.

…

More time has now passed. You have learned the joys and the maladies of liberty. You have accepted the honor of exile. This is what you were telling your friends, in that pleasant place in the country not far from New York. You had finally accepted your destiny, you told them, but you continued to speak about ambiguity — the ambiguities of the labor camp, of the Communist penal colony, and of exile. You are suspicious of certitudes, even when you are the one uttering them. Still, you find yourself professing a certitude: “Exile begins as soon as we leave the womb.” The straightforwardness of the statement didn’t seem frightening. “One’s mother should be one’s real homeland. Only death finally frees us from this final belonging,” you continued to recite, as though from a manual. Of course, you were just trying to give yourself courage, on the eve of your return to the scenes of your former life, but the humorless tone was not a good omen.

“The return to the homeland is but a return to the mother’s grave,” you concluded. It seemed you had really come to believe those words as a first step toward the impossible and inevitable return.

One does not make statements about graves without a certain apprehension. Your friends continued to listen sympathetically, attentively. You were, you told yourself, in the living present, not in the ever-present past.

It was a beautiful afternoon in the country. There was a hospitable silence — no thoughts, no questions, only the splendor of the day, the here and now.

In the summer of 1988, a few months after my arrival in the New World, I received an unexpected phone call from Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College in upstate New York. He made some flattering comments about a book of mine, published in Germany, and wanted to know if I would be interested in teaching at the school. We finally met in the spring of 1989, when I was invited up to Bard. He turned out to be a tall, elegant man, wearing a bow tie and thick glasses, with something of the alchemist about him. He was also a well-known symphony conductor. I had expected to be offered the appointment forthwith, but instead, I was delivered to an interview panel. “Democracy,” the president explained.

Eight more years had now passed. I had published books, been awarded prizes, and had become writer in residence and a professor at Bard College. Even in the motherland, my position had changed. My New Republic article on Mircea Eliade and the Iron Guard had promoted me to public enemy number one, international division. My return to Romania in the spring of 1997 might seem an exercise in bridge building.

At 3:45 in the afternoon I am at Kennedy Airport, in the Lufthansa terminal, waiting for Leon. He has concerts in Bucharest and I am accompanying him. It is Sunday, April 20, the birthday of Adolf Hitler, as it happens. We are traveling first class, which entitles us to free pre-flight drinks in the lounge. We go over our schedule, and I tell Leon that the big issue in Bucharest at the moment is Romania’s entry into NATO.

“You might be asked to give your opinion on a TV talk show,” I say to him.

“Me? I’m not from the Pentagon or the State Department.”

I explain that acceptance into NATO was regarded in Romania not only as a matter of national pride but as essential to the country’s viability. A week before our departure, I had received, like other Romanians in America, a bulky envelope, from one of the Romanian President’s staff, containing several enclosures urging immediate action in favor of Romania’s entry into NATO. “Today, not tomorrow, and not the day after tomorrow, write to the White House. Please send a copy of your letter to the Presidential Palace in Bucharest, so that we know who our real friends are,” one such document read. Indeed, I had heard that the Romanian authorities had made plans to compile a list — in Bucharest such lists are no joke — of all Romanian Americans who had done their patriotic duty in this regard.

“Is this to our advantage or not?” Leon asked. “What about the fact that you are accompanying me? Or is it I accompanying you?”

In fact, NATO was not the only hot topic in Bucharest. Mihail Sebastian’s Journal 1935–1944 had just appeared and had become the subject of controversy. Leon might be asked to comment and should therefore be briefed. Perhaps a few sound bites would do it, just like on American television: “Jewish Romanian writer, died 1945. His Journal describes life under Fascism, a Romanian counterpart to Victor Klemperer’s just published I Will Bear Witness , which documents the life of a Jew in wartime Nazi Dresden. Bares the pro-Nazi sympathies and anti-Semitism of some Romanian intellectuals.” The name Klemperer might stimulate Leon to tell anecdotes about the other Klemperer, the conductor Otto, a cousin of Victor’s, and about his American career.

At last we are on our way, reclining in our comfortable seats. The flight attendant is blond, tall, and slim. We learn she was born in New Jersey, but that she and her family have returned to live in Germany. Leon again tells me that he would never have decided to accept the Romanian invitation unless I was willing to go, too. Again he tells me that my return to Romania will serve finally to separate me from my old life. I have heard it all before, and though I hope that this might indeed prove to be the case, I prefer not to think about it, or what we represent as a pair.

“What do you mean?” Leon asks.

“Well, the classical pair, Augustus the Fool and the White Clown.”

Leon seems uninterested in the subject.

“The White Clown is the boss, the master, the authority, the American, if you will, and,” I hasten to add, “the college president, the conductor.”

Leon smiles.

“Augustus the Fool is the pariah, the loser, the one who always gets kicked in the ass, to the audience’s delight. Augustus the Fool is the exile.”

“What do you mean, kicked in the ass? You, a respectable writer, a writer in residence, honored with prizes and with an endowed chair? Does this boss ever kick the poor artist in the ass?”

“Well,” I say, “we are a pair of travelers going to Eastern Europe, to the old stamping grounds of Augustus the Fool, who will serve as a guide to the foreign maestro, reciprocating the affection with which the American welcomed him into the circus of the New World.”

Leon, now looking serious, says, “In the American circus, as you put it, the exile represents the victim. In the East European circus, the clown returning from America is a victor, a star.”

He is now laughing, careful not to disturb the score of the Schumann oratorio resting on his knees. Augustus has now lost his zest for speechifying, and he makes a dismissive gesture. The pair doze off, wake up, take some refreshment, engage in casual remarks.

…

The old tourist guide of socialist Jormania, from the 1980s, slips to the floor:

The Socialist Republic of Romania lies between 43° 37’ 07” and 48° 15’ 06” north and 20° 15’ 44” and 29° 41’ 24” east. With its 237,500 square kilometers (91,738 square miles) the country ranks twelfth in size among the European nations. East and north, it borders upon the Soviet Union, that is, the Maculist Empire, west upon the brotherly Socialist Republic of Hungary, southwest upon the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. Around the central plateau of the Carpathian Mountains …