Norman Manea - The Hooligan's Return

Leon is intrigued by the palace; for him it is one of the much anticipated highlights of the trip. “In twenty years’ time,” he says, “when the political context is forgotten, this building will be studied in architecture departments. Such a project would now be impossible anywhere in the world. Only a tyrant can afford to demolish and build on such a large scale.”

I am not in a conciliatory frame of mind and do not share Leon’s enthusiasm, although I am aware of the American fascination with the pre-modern world, which America has left behind and from which it continues to distance itself. In spite of its own difficulties and sufferings, America remains ready to offer its support to this old world, as if hoping that it might in this way pay for its own sins of privilege.

We have lunch nearby, at the historic Manuc Inn. It is Good Friday, a day for semi-fasting, and all the waiter can offer is salad and beer.

Before leaving for the airport to board his plane for Scotland, where he has a date for a recording session with the Royal Scottish Philharmonic, Leon tells me that he has really enjoyed this exotic adventure. He has bought an Oriental rug for his office at Bard College and enjoyed haggling, in English with the merchant, a former diplomat. As for me, I benefited from his company and the American efficiency he generated, which prevented me from staying too long in communication with my ghosts. We had come to Romania with different objectives, but the counterpoint proved to our mutual advantage.

Just two streets over is no. 2 Calea Victoriei, where I used to live. In a few minutes I could be standing at the door of apartment 15, under the sign of another time, paying tribute to the Communist siesta of a decade ago. Would the old rhythms return, would I change back into the one I could no longer be? Only if time annulled all that had happened in the meantime.

Not far from my old apartment is Antim Street, Saul S.’s old place. During the months prior to my trip, he kept saying that he would like to accompany me. He thought he was too frail to make his perpetually postponed return on his own, but if we went together, it might help to alleviate the trauma we had both suffered, in very different ways.

Seven American years had passed since our first meeting. I had been recommended to him as a fellow Romanian, to arouse his sympathy, but this only evoked the opposite effect. This didn’t surprise me, but neither was I deterred. He reminded me of the great Romanian poet Arghezi, not only because of his silences and economy of speech, his mustache and balding head, but also because of the quick verbal snap with which he greeted the unknown as well as the too familiar. He was like a watchful feline, slow in appearance, but easily aroused to anger if necessary. He was what could be called a grumpy old man; he had certainly been a grumpy young man.

Our closeness became evident one day when he phoned to ask me how I was doing, and I gave the conventional answer to what I thought was a conventional question. “No, you can’t be doing well, anything but well. I know this. We are under a curse, it’s the place we come from. We carry it in ourselves, and this cannot heal easily. Maybe never.”

Despite having lived happily for half a century in America, where he had found his life’s work and his fame, Saul had never been able to heal his Romanian wound. “Have you read that book about Romania in the 1940s, Athénée Palace , I think it’s called. The author is a countess, an American countess, if such a thing is possible. We are anti-Semites here, lady, the countess reports one of the local excellencies telling her, but we cannot give up our Jews, not only for economic reasons, but because Romanians do not trust other Romanians. They can only confide their dirty secrets to a Jew.”

He was waiting for my comments, but I offered only a smile.

“But if they are anti-Semites,” Saul persisted, “how come they can trust Jews? If they trust them and they think they are intelligent and good people, why are they anti-Semitic?”

My answer was a continuing smile.

“The charm of the place! You see, this is the magic of our native land!”

He regarded his pre-exilic past as some kind of incurable disease, a viscous mud penetrating all his pores, infecting not only the profiteers but also the victims, who were well trained to adjust to the surrounding hatred and complicities, in a continuing bargaining that had deformed their character. He would speak with embittered, venomous vehemence about that grotesque suburban metabolism that fed on minor domestic pleasures and a persistent brew of hypocrisy. Here and now, I think, standing on this Bucharest street in 1997, I could do with his energetic sarcasm, a mix of compassion and mercilessness.

His unique drawings were a concentrate of his vision of the world, which I shared. Dadaland had become an obsession with him over the last few years, not just as the “Black Country” or “Exileland,” as he called it, but also as “Childhood’s Land of No Return.” The artist was constantly drawn to his remembered landscape, with its magical decor and buffoonery, its ecstatic fragrances. With the frenetic imagination of youth, he would abandon himself even now, past eighty, to the memories of all those past aromas — the smells of the shoe shops and spice shops, the dust and the sweat of the nearby railway station, the pickles and pies and spicy sausages, the scents of the hairdressers.

“Having placed ourselves in the immigrant’s uncomfortable position, we are like children again,” he wrote. Childhood is exile, too, but it is miraculous, filled with visions and magic. His famous maps, which began life in Manhattan, on his desk, never failed to include the magic circle of Palas Street and environs in Bucharest. “I am one of the few who continue to perfect the sketches we used to draw in our childhood,” he confided.

I can hear him on the phone and I can see him, here and now, asking anybody who happens to be around what he used to ask me: “Cacialma , what do you think? It’s a Turkish word, like mahala , like sarma, nargilé, ciulama , no? What about cică and … cicălelă? . They’re all Turkish. Jobs are German, flowers are French, but rastel comes from the Italian rastello . And rău from the Latin. Zid is Slavic, and so is zîmbet. Dijmă seems Slavic, like diac and diacon . What’s this diac , a church copyist or a church singer?” He discovered strange words, their exotic phonetics would suddenly recapture the time and place that had formed and deformed us and had thrown us out into the world. “We cannot be Americans,” this long-time resident of America declared, consolingly, despite being considered a national treasure of the New World. He had every reason to accompany me to Romania and every reason to avoid going back.

Now, after Leon’s departure, we could have wandered around the places where, once, the Palas paradise of his childhood had existed. However, in the end, he decided to go back to Milan, the city of his youth, a “safer” substitute for his more remote past and a place with fewer surprises. As a bon voyage gift, he sent me a copy of a page from a book about Bucharest, with a map where he highlighted his enchanted domain. “Dear Norman,” he wrote, “here is my magic circle: Palas Street, off Antim, and Justipei Street crossing Calea Rahovei. Nothing is still standing of all this? Have a look, if you’ve got some time.”

After Leon’s departure, I have plenty of time. The site of the magic circle was not far from where I am. It had been swept away by the dictator’s bulldozers and is now in New York, living on only in the memory of the old artist residing on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I can hear his melodious voice as he recites the archaic names: “Palas Street, Antim, Rinocerului, Labirint, Gentilă Street. Concordiei, and right next to it, Discordiei! Here we have Trofeelor, Olimpului, Emancipata. Listen to this, Emancipata! Isn’t it wonderful? And Rinocerului, Labirint, Gentila, Gentle Street! And Cuţitul de Argint, Puţul cu aă and Cuţitul de Argint — the Water Well and the Silver Knife!”