Norman Manea - Captives

This new vocabulary startled me. One could only nod stupidly, not having suspected her of such modern investigations and understandings, which were evidently dangerous because they stretched too far in the direction of error and indulgence. But there was no time to sweat the small stuff. I was waiting for a certain guest, and when I heard, from the next room, that his wife was taking her leave of a nurse, who was our guest, I understood: there was no chance he’d appear. Back then, in the year when Donca was finishing school, if I’d had time to watch her closely and had found a way to get closer to her, it might still have been possible to do something for her, just as it might have been possible to do something for me if the guest that I’d been waiting for had come. Simple, gratuitous suppositions, both.

Came back home for Donca’s first engagement, having been urgently summoned — and again, when things had taken a turn for the worse. Winter had raised snow banks in the streets. Allowed myself then to look for the guest who hadn’t come to the summer party. The truth is, my visits weren’t for the sake of “winning back a sister for myself,” as my parents used to say. They had wanted this daughter and never tired of starting over with her again; but my goal was to find the guest who had been absent on that summer night when Donca was finishing high school. Meanwhile, people had singled me out as a “defective model,” a shell of myself, what was left over after an “imbalance” freed me, and my peculiar search took advantage of the prevailing impression.

It wasn’t easy to find him, but in the end he received me. He was in charge again, although the five years hadn’t passed. He had a suitable office and the same responsibilities on top of new ones. Any normal person would have been terrified to approach a high official freely, and only a madman would have been able to aggressively approach a man whose wife was dying.

— You probably know the reason for my visit.

— To see me.

— And to apologize for the delay. Five years aren’t five minutes or even five months. You once arranged a meeting when I wasn’t able to appear. That probably doesn’t put me in good standing. You’re not a person to summon someone without having a serious reason.

He raised his eyebrows, but to my surprise he quickly entered into the tone tacitly proposed by me. The apparent rebellion hadn’t put him off.

— Indeed. Back then, I called you for something important. As proven by the fact that I had granted myself six months, in order to be able to present myself with all of my bases covered. Given my circumstances back then, it was an act of defiance, out of pride. Things have resolved themselves in the meantime. The conversation no longer has an objective. Your father’s suffering went on for more than six months, I acknowledge, but. .

— Since I came. .

— I wanted to tell you that your father is not guilty.

— Which is to say, less guilty than it appeared.

— It could be said that way, too. But I wanted to tell you that he’s really not guilty.

— Six months or five years of deliberation were necessary for this?

— I felt you were rather susceptible. I didn’t have the right to affirm his innocence till he’d been freed. If I’d done anything else, you might have easily slipped into the role of the victim — and with a certain pleasure.

— To one like him, it would have been possible to forgive any weakness. And that was evident.

— But it wasn’t clearly a matter of some guilt or weakness — but something else. If friendship is a sign of weakness, then the word itself has an entirely different meaning than the one we’re used to.

The moment had come to let myself lean back in that imperial armchair. It was proper, however, to keep quiet for a while. He understood, and when he believed that the ritual allowed him to continue the performance, he spoke again.

— Your father didn’t tell you anything?

— I didn’t ask him. He said a word or two. He isn’t giving up the role of victor, so I can’t offend him with the questions I have. At one time, I was ready to lay a heap of affection at his feet, but he would have seen that as suspicious.

— Don’t you consider yourself a victor? he asked me, heaving irritably on his throne.

— Then he really should have spoken to you, he went on. I don’t like you. You must know, I-DO-NOT-LIKE-YOU. Your father suffered a fall back then as a result of an inability.

— Of course. He was barely initiated in the strategies and tactics of “abilities.” It wasn’t easy. A former bank clerk can’t change into something else easily.

He looked at me, like an ogre, and stood up with clenched fists. I thought he would hit me, but he paced around the room and the soft rugs seemed to absorb his fury.

— I’m using “inability” in a completely different sense that you want to understand. After finishing the school we sent him to, your father received, as you know, the mission of working in the justice system. There he received anonymously signed tips about abuses committed by people with important positions. He contacted me, asking if informing higher authorities was the right thing to do. The only person who could resolve this matter was a dangerous individual, a comrade who had abused his own power. Nevertheless, I advised your father to go to him, and I felt responsible for what happened. I didn’t know that there were things about me, too, in that denunciation. In his exaggerated correctness, your father didn’t tell me. He wanted to be principled. That cost him his freedom. He wanted to dissociate himself from what he understood was going on, and he took the initiative, in the negative sense.

— What would have been the positive sense?

— In point of fact, your father delayed a certain minor payment. We don’t live in heaven. We wouldn’t have anything to do there. The person to whom your father presented himself assured him that measures would be taken. He gave him freedom of action. False freedom, naturally. Your father hurried to react, and, as I told you, ineptly, provocatively. They stopped him, isolating him in a jail cell. That’s about it.

Yes, that’s about it. I was ready to ask about the more serious cases that Comrade Father had mentioned: condemnations to do hard time, great show trials, executions. There was no sense in that. In these imperial armchairs, in this upholstered room, and before the new chief who was the old boss, the discussion stopped exactly when it should have. We had to be quiet, take our time thinking, look at each other cautiously. And that’s what we did.

— I’d like to ask you something too: is there any truth to what was said about the crisis you went through?

— Everything. Nothing of what’s said was exaggerated enough. Not enough was imagined, and I’d say that it wasn’t a big deal. It would take too long to confirm every detail. Anyhow, this meeting remains an honor for me. I have no right to abuse. .

— Indeed, I’m hurrying to stop by the hospital. If you like, we can talk in the car.

— No, the car goes too quickly.

He looked at me and smiled.

— Good, we’ll walk.

On the wide stairs and then on the street, everybody who saluted the leader saluted me. At the exit from the former Austrian town hall — now the activists’ office building — the porter looked at me as if I were the crown prince. I didn’t have anything else to discuss with the authority who accompanied me, nor did I want to elaborate: the only solution was to imagine that I was talking with Ileana and not her comrade husband.

— You had an exact intuition, Comrade Mehedinţi, imagining me as someone predisposed to sliding into the role of the defeated. I feel like a newborn. Do I have any more chances to lie, which is to say, to defend myself? May I ask how the unexpected identification took place?