Norman Manea - The Hooligan's Return

I ask for Mr. Blumenfeld, the secretary. The short man in a leather jacket, standing next to the porter, turns to me. “I could take you there in the car, I’m the community’s driver.” “You have to get authorization,” says the porter, pointing to the building at the back of the courtyard and pronouncing a name I can’t catch. “You have to talk to the gentleman over there, at the office.”

Mr. Isaacson, or Jacobson, or Abramson, keeps his eyes glued to some file. I explain who I am, where I come from, and why I am here. I need the address or telephone number of Mr. Blumenfeld. Silence. I add that Mr. Blumenfeld knows me. The official does not lift his eyes. Head still lowered, he barks, “What do you want?”

I will not respond until he emerges from those important papers.

Finally, he looks up. “Who are you and what do you want? Mr. Blumenfeld has a fracture or something. He’s in bed, on sick leave. And I’m busy.”

I bang the door shut and manage to suppress a curse, but I am silently boiling over with rage. I walk past the porter’s lodge and then continue down Bălcescu Boulevard, back to my hotel. I think Sebastian mentions, somewhere in his Journal , the need one feels, in difficult times, to be with one’s fellow believers, as well as the ensuing disappointment.

The city is deserted, except for the occasional pedestrian or stray dog, first one dog, then two, then three, then four. I have been told that hundreds, thousands, of starving dogs are loose on the streets, menacing the citizens. I hadn’t encountered any packs, but then, I haven’t been out that much. Now I can imagine, having seen these quartets, what it would be like to meet a whole, snarling pack.

The streets are still empty, the doors are locked, there are no signs of life at the windows, on the balconies, the terraces. There is nothing moving. Yet, after a few more steps, in front of the paint shop, there she is — the ghost. There are only the two of us on that narrow sidewalk. The old woman is familiar with the street to which I had often accompanied her. Yes, there is no doubt about who it is. I recognize the thin, pale legs, the white, short-cropped hair, the bony, bent shoulders, the sleeveless, shapeless dress, the shopping bag in one hand, the sweater in the other. She is walking slowly while I hurry on, and yet we are walking together, shoulder to shoulder. In front of the hotel, I am alone again, and the narrow, crooked streets are also behind me, in the void.

Back in my room, I manage to obtain Mr. Blumenfeld’s telephone number and I call him. The convalescent man speaks in a weakened, aged voice. Yes, I can come and visit anytime. I set off again toward the Amzei market. On the way I stop at a post office — happily open — to buy postcards for my American friends. The woman at the counter scrutinizes me intently. Is she someone I know? I don’t recognize her pleasant, open face. She keeps on smiling at me while I choose my cards. I admire her large, moist eyes, full lips, perfect teeth. From the very first moment, I liked her calm, pleasant manner. She recalls similar, forgotten images, the domesticity of an inhabitable past, a time when one did not need many words.

“Do you happen to speak German?” she asks.

“Yes,” I reply, cheered by her friendly voice.

“Oh, you are my salvation, really.”

She hands me a note with instructions in German, directions on how to use a powder for coloring Easter eggs. I translate; the lady nods in understanding and writes down the information, smiling all the while. At one time, the young man I once was would not have remained unresponsive to the hidden promise of that smile.

I go to the shop in the Amzei market where, in Communist days, one might find the rare allocation of meat. Now the shoppers are mostly Romanians from abroad, come to celebrate Easter as they used to. I buy a few bottles of expensive Romanian wine for my friend Golden Brain, and also two bottles of whiskey, one for him, the other for my planned trip to Suceava.

The apartment house where the Blumenfelds live stands in the middle of a vacant lot, the result of all the demolition work that has been going on in the neighborhood. The lady of the house opens the door and I recognize her, the petite, beautiful woman who was a striking presence at all the community festivities, usually accompanied by her tall, handsome, distinguished husband. Mr. Blumenfeld looks visibly aged and has lost his once-imposing posture. I am offered a cup of coffee, which I decline, and Mrs. Blumenfeld brings a glass of water on a small crystal saucer. Time has deposited its thin layers of rust over this old-fashioned, comfortable home.

I pull up my chair next to the convalescent’s armchair and inform him of the reason for my visit. A few months ago, I had applied for a certificate showing that my family was deported in 1941 to Transnistria. The certificate is for my father, who emigrated to Israel in 1989, at the age of eighty-one, and who now lives in an old people’s home in Jerusalem, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Mr. Blumenfeld takes notes, confirms that the files of the deportees are now in the community’s archives, and yes, a certificate will be issued, so that Father can receive the reparations due him — not from the Romanians, of course. He does not ask lengthy questions, his infirmity makes him irritable. The situation in post-Communist Romania, like his advanced age, is not conducive to cheerfulness.

A deputy minister for transportation in the Communist government, Mr. Blumenfeld, upon retirement, like other Jewish Communist officials, became a leader in the Jewish community, with which he had interrupted contact in the postwar years. He was always seeking to avoid harming anybody, and to offer help, if at all possible. Used to the whims of authority, he proved useful in his new position as Secretary of the Jewish community. The end of the Communist dictatorship found him, however, not among the system’s adversaries, as might be expected. Now, in old age, he found adaptation to the capitalist chaos a humiliating experience.

I am expected for lunch at Naum’s, my old friend Golden Brain. His destiny has not been too different from that of Mr. Blumenfeld, and as a talented writer, he has found additional career options. Then there is his wife, Felicia, the heroine who has ensured their conjugal sanity for the last thirty years. During my last decade in Bucharest, I used to celebrate all the festivities — Christmas and Easter, as well as Jewish holidays and profane observances — in their spacious home, where now the only novelty is their big, black, jumpy dog.

Lunch will be a lengthy affair, I know, a carefully planned gastronomic gradation. Tarama salata and spiced, chopped lamb begin the procession of dishes to stimulate the appetite, accompanied by homemade plum brandy and red and white wines to intensify the flavors. Foreigners, invited into a Romanian home in the years of the Communist dictatorship, were amazed by the culinary abundance, which contrasted so sharply with the prevailing deprivations. When I was visited by relatives or acquaintances from abroad, I always avoided any explanation regarding the ingenious tricks needed for such shows of hospitality.

We clink the first glasses. Golden Brain and Felicia toast each other with the traditional “Christ is risen.” We talk about New York and Bard, about the American conductor’s concerts. We pay tribute to the salads, the borscht, the roast lamb and pork, the pickles, the white and red wines. The conversation moves from Donna Alba to her husband, who died shortly before the demise of Communism, on which he had wasted so much intelligent effort. We talk about former friends who, in the meantime, had relocated to the cemetery, and about those relocated to Paris, New York, and Tel Aviv. We gossip about friends and acquaintances still active here, in the free-market post-Communist world, as they were, until recently, in the Communist netherworld.