Norman Manea - The Hooligan's Return

Before I leave for the rector’s office at the university, I report the problem with the bathroom’s fixtures to the hotel receptionist. She agrees, with some embarrassment. It seems that she is not unaware of the situation. At the rector’s office, I meet with members of the university staff to explain the concept of a college of liberal arts and sciences. Bard is planning to embark on a fund-raising campaign for the purpose of establishing just such a college in Cluj, and is looking for the university’s cooperation. The people I am talking to assure me that they are eager to join in the project. I have no reason to doubt them, since the advantages are all on the Romanian side.

I go out to lunch with the rector. It is difficult to find a restaurant open on Easter Monday. Judging from the waiters’ hoverings, the rector seems to be a well-known figure, but they can offer us only a single dish, roast beef and fried potatoes. Conversation is difficult, unlike our talk of the year before, in a New York café, when the visiting rector from Cluj surprised me with his objective and critical analysis of conditions in Romania, particularly of the problems faced by intellectuals. He knew the Untied States quite well, having received a doctorate from an American university. I was relieved to be spared the anti-American clichés normally served up by so many Romanian literati, as well as by their French mentors. I had asked him whether he would agree that, there often did not seem to be much difference between the extreme language of the Romanian nationalists and the narcissistic discourse of so many Romanian scholars. He agreed, comfortable with the challenge. I accepted his invitation to come to Cluj, and so here I am, armed with a major project for the cultural improvement of his university. I cannot foresee how long it would take for the post-Communist bureaucracy to defeat us.

My friend Liviu Petrescu is now head of the Writers Association in Cluj. Our reunion in 1990 had been a real delight. Liviu was then in New York as director of the Romanian Cultural Center and we used to meet regularly, either at home or at some other place in town. He had given up inviting me to the center after I rejected his suggestion that I be the subject of the inaugural literary evening. I had never stepped into that building, dominated as it was by political functionaries who were most certainly in touch with the Romanian post-Communist media, which, like their predecessors, continued to describe me as the enemy of national values. Liviu, in his delicate way, had tried to build bridges between all the parties concerned. I was sorry when he later quit his post, disgusted with the arrogance of the Romanian diplomats who tried to manipulate him. He was sorry, too — I was soon to be told — that he had not followed my advice and endured the unpleasantness for a little while longer, since his activities in New York had led to radical improvement in the center’s program.

The schedule of events prepared for me by the university did not include anything with Liviu — a sign of the rector’s hostility? — and I have been wondering whether we might get together, at least briefly, the following day, in a break from the official schedule.

We meet on the street, in front of the Dacia publishing house. He has an air of British elegance, dressed in a perfectly tailored suit, with perfectly matching shirt and tie. Also present is Alexandru Vlad, the bohemian-looking writer, with his long hair and a wild beard, whom I used to see regularly in my Bucharest years and with whom I kept up a correspondence after I moved to America.

Liviu has arranged an official meeting with the Cluj Writers Association, where I am finally being offered an antidote to the public hostility. Despite the praise in Liviu’s welcoming speech, I begin to feel that I am here under false colors, as a buffoon tourist, being hailed as the great star of Romanian literature. This caricature does not replace its opposite. On the contrary, it only reinforces it. Augustus the Fool is out of touch with local clichés, and the murmurs of praise sound more like the screeches of invective. It is all like an annoying case of scabies: the more you scratch, the more you suffer. There is no way to win, and I feel guilty because I am as uneasy with the bouquets as I was with the brickbats. I feel completely inadequate in this comedy of the impossible return, so my former compatriots seem justified perhaps in no longer accepting me as one of them. For them, this is what the occasion celebrates — a stranger’s visit. I am no longer used to their pomposities, and I am impolite enough to put an abrupt end to this outpouring of praise, thereby unintentionally offending a friend.

Even the discussion that follows fails to deliver the simple words I have been waiting for. It feels like a meeting of local pensioners, forced to perform in some jolly farce. The only moment of real animation is triggered by a question from an athletic, smartly dressed, Kent-smoking woman: “Do you think that Mircea Eliade’s Legionnaire-inspired writings undermine his literary and scholarly works?” The question is obviously addressed to the “anti-national militant,” as the media continue to depict me. No one seems to care that I am also the author of anti-Communist writings. It would appear that Communism was never a serious concern of the four million or so Party members of socialist Jormania. Do the members of the Cluj audience believe that whatever fame Eliade enjoys in the West could redeem all the pain endured in yesterday’s and today’s Romania? Is this the reason they want to see him enshrined as a saint? These questions remain unspoken, as I give my reply: I have never made any public statements about Eliade’s “literary and scholarly” work. Neither literature nor scholarship can be judged by moral criteria. My “blasphemy” against Eliade did not refer to his fiction or his scholarly achievements. The questioner ignores my answer and carries on with her plea for “conserving Mircea Eliade’s world-renowned works.” Before I leave, I am offered a consolation prize. “This has really been a Party meeting. The only ones here who were never Communist Party members are you and me,” a distinguished academic whispers to me as we go out.

“I’ll never forgive the rector for having kept me off the official schedule of events,” Liviu tells me as we say our goodbyes. I leave feeling guilty for not having been more gracious about accepting his praise. (After the visit to Cluj, I was never to speak to him again. A disease he didn’t know about at the time would soon carry him off.)

The charming wife of the rector presides over the evening meal. The food and wine compensate for the absence of intimacy. The road back to the hotel becomes a perilous adventure, in a car driven uncertainly by the spouse of a professor at the university. The blue notebook is patiently waiting. My thoughts wander far off, to the cemetery in Suceava.

I wake up bleary-eyed and dazed after a sleepless night. Somehow I make my way to the lobby, where I am met by a man with glasses, wearing an elegant overcoat. Politely I extend my hand. The unknown man is smiling, looking as awkward as I. Behind him, I can see Marta Petreu, looking on with a smile. Then I realize that this must be Marta’s husband, Ion Vartic. I haven’t seen him since the tenth anniversary of Echinox , in 1979, when he was one of the literary review’s famous three-member editorial board. Young Ion Vartic has changed, and so have I. Only Marta looks the same, still wearing her air of perpetual student.

I learn that they have returned from a trip to Budapest just to see me. Marta is carrying a hamper containing sandwiches and coffee. We go outside and have breakfast on the lawn, then return to the lobby. The surprise of finding myself again among old friends does not lessen, even after the coffee has dispelled the daze.