Norman Manea - The Hooligan's Return

Finally, the Flying Elephant emerged, limping along and supporting himself against the walls. To get from the door to the table, not too great a distance, he would grab the rope fastened to the wall for the purpose of aiding his movements. Having reached his destination, he would collapse, exhausted, into his chair.

“Hey, liberal, any news from Atlantis?”

The litterateur and retired Communist seemed, however, more interested in the latest local gossip than in any news from the North Atlantic inferno. So we chatted about books, adulterous affairs, literary conspiracies. After about a quarter of an hour, the salyon was honored, according to the customary protocol, by the old Russian mother-in-law bringing the cake and a glass of water. I thanked her, as usual, for the alimentary torture I was about to endure, but Matushka did not withdraw immediately.

“Paul, Paul, here is Kafika,” I heard her mutter. “Brought Kafika,” she repeated in her inimitable accent, with the stress on the first syllable.

“Kafka?” I asked, once alone with the maestro, and after allowing the Slavic sonorities to disperse. The old lady had left a great, thick ledger on the table, now keeping conspicuous watch. It had thick, old, black covers, with a stained school-notebook label on the front.

“Ah, the register, with all the addresses and telephone numbers. Yes, Kafka, that’s the name I’ve given it. See here it is, written on the label, ‘Kafka.’ Like the writer, this register is full of mysteries,” he said in an offhand manner.

I wondered under which code name I had been inscribed, but that mattered less than the fact that I had been admitted into the charmed circle. The salyon , over time, underwent changes, but always I was certain that somewhere, not too far away, Kafka was keeping watch.

I kept looking at the clock on Donna Alba’s table, its metronomic ticking rhythmically marking time to the words that now invaded my mind.

“I am watching the clock. It was given to me by my mother, my omnipotent, immortal mother, who has been lying in the earth for an eternity, for a day, for a minute.” These were words that Donna Alba had recently published. “With an effort, I watch the second clock on the chest of drawers, a solid high-quality clock, which my omnipotent, immortal father joyfully bought for himself just a few days, not more than seven, before he died.”

I did not forget those mournful words.

On the bedframe — made of rosewood, blackened and stained with time — is another watch, the wristwatch of my youth, belonging to my double. It has stopped running long ago and now shows the same time in perpetuity. I am not looking at it, but I know it is there. My father gave it to me, so that I can make a gift of it to my double — an extraordinary Swiss watch, imported from Geneva. They say a gift made of a gift makes heaven, but I think it can also make a Gehenna, because now my omnipotent, immortal father is lying in his grave. And my double, my soulmate, vulnerable, strong, and immortal, is also lying in a hole dug deep in the earth and covered over with dirt, the hole in which I myself repose.

I hear the echo of those words, their metallic ring resounding in my ears, and I see again the smoky day much like this, twenty-five years ago, or maybe centuries, when the telephone brought me the voice of the woman now calling to me from the grave.

I answered Donna Alba’s questions about America, but my words were mere conventional noises, not only because my return to Romania, too, seemed conventional, but because I knew how shocked she had been in 1986 when she heard of my departure, and later, when her beloved husband began to heap abuse on me. Would she be able to speak of her husband’s anger?

“I am rich in losses,” she says. “How shall I put it, I am an expert in this field. So I know what I am talking about. Don’t ever forget what I’m telling you now: you haven’t lost a thing by leaving. On the contrary.”

Donna Alba also seemed to be speaking on behalf of the dead man. Was this a commutation of my sentence? She did not mean loss of language, for she knew, better than many, about the value and worth of words. She had other losses in mind that were, in fact, gains. Was she thus passing judgment on her own remaining in place? I did not have the strength to explain to her what I had learned myself, in the meantime, about gain and loss. All I could hear was the repeated refrain: “You haven’t lost a thing, not a thing, dear Norman. On the contrary.” To escape the obsessive metronome, I asked where the bathroom was. She showed me the way, and even accompanied me for a few steps down a narrow corridor. I switched on the light, and the minuscule bulb shed an uncertain illumination on what looked like some sort of storage room — worn-out suitcases, brooms, brushes, dusty chairs, old clothes, pockmarked basins, old hats, fur collars, old-fashioned shoes. I thought for a second that I caught a glimpse of stuffed birds perched next to chipped busts and disabled umbrellas.

There was a small sink in the corner, next to the toilet. Without looking in the mottled mirror, I turned off the tap, but no use, the thin trickle of rusty water kept on dripping. I took one last look at the cracked toilet bowl with its broken lid, at the dull gray floor and gray walls, the old window frame, the bucket and the mops. I switched off the light, and remained for a second, motionless, in the midst of eternity, among that pile of rubbish unable to summon the courage to resume the visit.

Back in the room, I listened to her tell of Securitate agents who had gotten rich and of suicidal pensioners, about vagabond children and stray dogs. Did she also say something about the Italian shoes one could buy at the corner shop, if one had the money?

After a few more minutes, I was out on the street, but I could still hear her voice. “Who am I? Who am I? I close my eyes and I can still see, but I am not allowed to see. I chase away the ghosts, I try to empty my skull, wet with the salty trickle of sweat. I wonder: Who am I now?” The metallic, slightly tired voice was familiar, the words came from the eternal void. “I thought we knew each other well, my ego and I. Now I wonder, What’s left of me now? In fact, who am I?” My ego and I also know each other well, but as I walked away, I kept repeating that question in which I had lost interest a long time before.

It is only a few minutes’ walk to University Square and my hotel. It is twilight and few people are in the streets. I enter the underpass at the university and emerge on the other side, where street vendors display their newspapers and books. I am close to the wall with the black painted message MONARHIA SALVEAZĂ ROMÂNIA. Across the street is the Intercontinental Hotel, where, on a table in room 1515, lies the traveler’s logbook, ready to confirm that the day and the hours that have passed were indeed real and belonged to me.

The underpass joins the four corners of the intersection of Boulevard Magheru and the boulevard that used to be named Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej. In my previous life, streetcars used to run along the boulevards and there were the usual pedestrian crossings. Here, on this very spot, thirty years ago, destiny had crossed from one side of the street to the other and was coming toward me.

I was watching, hidden from view, on the university corner of the intersection, standing on the narrow street leading to the Institute of Architecture, in that privileged space occupied by the one who can see without being seen. Time had stopped, as it has now. I am waiting for the traffic light to change. She is waiting, too, on the opposite side. I am as invisible as if I were on the moon. She cannot see me. She does not see anyone. She is alone, ethereal, supreme lady of the moment. The traffic light blinks from red to green. Another fraction of a second passes and then she steps into the street. She is wearing a black fur coat and high-heeled ankle boots. Her face is unseen, lit by a nimbus. It is Cella, my wife-to-be. I gaze at her graceful walk, her slender figure. Her face is limpid, like lunar light. This Nordic princess, disguised as a student at the university, was walking straight into my watchful gaze. I was surprised, on that cold afternoon, to see her crossing from the shore of the opposite pavement straight toward the university clock and toward me, a secret, solitary revelation. We were married not too long after.