Norman Manea - The Hooligan's Return

Ever since our return from Transnistria, where she had saved us all by her resilience and devotion, Mother kept repeating that the best thing to do was for all the family to leave the motherland forever. I knew very well the reason why she and my father themselves never left — she would not leave me behind — and I know equally well that she has forgiven me. It was I who finally left her, she would never have abandoned me, but now she is ready to forgive me, even for this betrayal. “It doesn’t matter where I’ll be. Wherever I am, I’ll be here, too,” I had tried to reassure her. And so, here I am, at long last, and nothing else matters. All that matters is the grave and the woman who lies buried in it. That pretentious home called the motherland was only a transient residence, as transient as the traps it had laid for us.

I don’t remember going down from the top of the hill, but there I was, next to the now extinguished candle at the side of the grave. The Secretary of the Jewish community was waiting for me.

“You know,” he said, “the railing is getting a bit rusty. It should be cleaned and repainted. The gravestone, too, is chipped and should be repaired.”

“Of course, I’ll leave some money with the caretaker,” I replied.

I inquire about the cost of the repairs. The money from the Bukovina Foundation Award should cover the cost nicely, and the arrangements are worked out on the spot. I ask for the address of the community office and promise to stop by later with the necessary sum. No. 8 Armenian Street is the address, and I remember it all. That’s the street where, just a few houses away, my parents’ friends Dr. Albert and his beautiful wife used to live, to say nothing of their beautiful daughter, my erstwhile partner in romantic adventures. Dr. Albert is dead now and Mrs. Albert, that vision from Hollywood, is agonizing somewhere in the Holy Land, while their spectacular daughter must by now be resigned to the routine of middle age. Farther up the hill is the Armenian cemetery, where, at night, the ghosts of Romeo and Juliet still wander. Number 17 was the house of my high-school classmate Dinu Moga, whom I am hoping to see. The Kaddish chanter gave me his telephone number and told me that my old friend is unchanged, he meets him often in the street. Armenian Street, I know it well.

“A small, modest house,” the Secretary adds. “It doesn’t look like a headquarters. And there’s no sign, either, you see what I mean …”

No, I don’t. The Kaddish sayer, who has known me since I was a child, realizes from my puzzled expression that I don’t understand.

“Well, they broke the windows a few times … It’s better not to have a sign.”

I look at my watch. It is eleven o’clock on this splendid spring day, time to go see bank director Cucu, who is waiting to present me with Bukovina’s proof of its love.

We leave the cemetery. I know what I’ve always known, and what these silent stones have confirmed: that nothing lasts, that this day accommodating my past is going to end soon.

In town, we stop at the Gah synagogue, where we are met by two elderly members, neatly dressed in the old Austrian fashion, who must have been notified of my visit. They approach and introduce themselves. The names do not mean much, but they tell me they were friends of my parents. I inquire about Dr. Rauch. Yes, he is still alive, over ninety years old, and said he would like to see me. Dr. Rauch lives in one of the apartment buildings nearby. He has known me from childhood and looked after my mother in the years of her illness and old age. It was he who checked her dead pulse just before lunchtime on her last Saturday. We ring the bell, wait, ring again, knock on the door, until somebody finally appears and tells us that the old man has been taken to the hospital during the night with a urinary infection.

At the Commercial Bank, the jovial Mr. Cucu welcomes us with whiskey and anecdotes about Jews. He is a big, voluble man, dressed in a dark blue suit, who speaks with a heavy Moldavian accent. We are treated to stories about the small market town of Săveni, near Dorohoi, where he was an apprentice at the shop of Moses and Sarah, from whom he learned about business and life. These affectionate memories have obviously been enhanced for tourist visits such as this. Finally, he hands me the certificate and the envelope, and apologizes for not being able to join us at lunch, as he has to go out of town.

We walk along the main street, past the old Austrian town hall, the last headquarters of the local Communist Party. The bell in the tower of the Catholic cathedral across the street announces the noon hour, to the tune of “Awake, Romanians,” the new national anthem. A gentleman comes toward us and the reporter-poet stops him. We make the acquaintance of the director of the Agricultural Bank, a massive man with a steady gaze. He and the reporter engage in huddled whispers. When he leaves, I learn that the Agricultural Bank is sponsoring our lunch, at a recently opened restaurant, and that the bank’s car is waiting to take us to our feast. We enter the establishment. American music is booming from two loudspeakers affixed to the wall, which is also decorated with a clutter of posters and advertisements. There are about ten small tables in the tiny room. I open the door to the toilet, only to close it immediately and rush away. I return to the table, and the reporter asks for an interview, his tape recorder at the ready. Why not, I think, after all I let myself be filmed by Cluj television, and I’m not in Bucharest but in my native town, where I have always felt at home, and still do. But first, I tell the reporter, I want to settle accounts for the repairs to my mother’s grave.

On the way to the Jewish community office the driver asks, with pride in his voice, for my opinion of the restaurant. “You can eat as much as you like, this is what Mr. Director said,” he assures me. “Mr. Director is paying for lunch, he told me. Eat as much as you like,” he repeats.

At no. 8 Armenian Street, I enter the small room, made even smaller by the tangle of desks and tables. The office staff seems to be expecting me. Near the door an old gentleman looks at me with affection; an elderly, pale lady looks on shyly. We transact our business and I am given a receipt. We exchange thank yous and smiles. I do not know them, but they seem to know me. We shake hands. Everything is over quickly, too quickly. It has all been so decent, friendly, courteous.

I sit down in the courtyard. A few doors away is the Albert house, with its fateful bedroom. Also the Moga house, and the Armenian church, and the cemetery, and the road to the citadel of Zamca, with its pretty little houses with windows like telescopes, Juliet’s house … The comedy of errors cannot reclaim me. I rise from the nebulas of legends, the driver waves to me, and we return to the restaurant. I give my fellow diners the message I received earlier: We can eat whatever we like. That means grilled pork and roast potatoes, the only items on the menu.

“What memories do you have of Suceava, what is the purpose of your visit?” the reporter-poet asks. I lean into the microphone, and I hear a voice that sounds like mine, but the words are those of a stranger.

“In 1941,” I hear myself saying, “I left Bukovina for the first time. After the war, I became a two-bit juvenile actor in the drama of the Red utopia, whose theatrical character was bound to interest a child. In 1959 I was a junior engineer. I left Suceava again in 1961, after a poignant love affair.” It all sounds false, as though I am reciting something I learned by heart. The two-bit actor, the Red farce — all these adolescent revolutionary sins, meant to baffle the former servants of the Communist myth, who now compete with each other in denouncing the dictatorship whose accomplices they were.