Norman Manea - Captives

This miserable wooden bench is full of snow. Only a few green stripes are visible, as if it were a dead crocodile caged in fallen snow. So there isn’t any point: I mustn’t stay long in the same place.

• • •

They proved to be understanding, and they really worked miracles with their science. The effects appeared quickly. In less than three months I was another person — or rather the person I had been before. I am grateful to my father for saving me from the common room, where I might have seen all sorts of macerated faces, which is how they looked sometimes in the corridor or the courtyard, making speeches and waving their hands, blinking horribly, bringing their hands to their hair, their throats with a full range of coughs, tics, twitches, and salivated gibberish. As a caregiver, Father proved careful and particularly efficient, as he knew how to be: orderly, restrained in suffering, which he mastered like a shameful secret that might have been able to unite us. The cheerful, young, distant nurse would pop into my clean white cell from time to time, or her boss would come with his thick lips and his characteristic way of contracting his cheek and shifting his thick, rectangular glasses in a single movement. He held out his hand to shake every day and spoke in a baritone voice that vibrated with reserved force. Sometimes the higher-ups visited me as well: the diagnostic professor, the emergency radiotelegraphist, the expert in analyses and recuperations, and the reeducation and requalification instructors. They listened to me with great attention. They asked me questions to find out where the malfunction was and what I was thinking. I was a bastard. I lied. I cheated. I coveted. . no, appropriated my neighbors’ work and wives. I didn’t help my near and dear. I wasn’t capable of love. I didn’t respond to love. That girl with the big eyes wasn’t like the others. It was no laughing matter. What would I have done with such a woman? We would have been afraid of each other. She thought I’d remain perpetually worthy of her protection, to fondle and diddle this weak body: a scrawny boy, transparent with deeply ringed eyes, passing through the rivers of the night in the shadow of the patrols, with big bad cinematographic eyes. They nodded. They understood, the conversation tired me. I hadn’t the strength, the patience, the appetite. The people around me stared — hideous, ravenous, haunted. They understood right away. They had come across cases of this kind.

They succeeded, of course. So I slept: I slept a lot. It was important for me to sleep, and they succeeded: I kept sleeping. Then they explained to me that I wasn’t guilty. Such monstrous atrocities happen daily — no, they didn’t say monstrous atrocities, they said it differently, movements, not movements, not mistruths, not motives, yes, marvels: marvels of this sort happen all the time. Mysteries, mutations, meshugaas . . yes, yes, minor problems. Which is to say, the girl will eventually find someone else, and I another girl. We’ll mature, so they were saying. We will mature. Such things solve themselves with time. Maybe it was all for the best. She was an overly sentimental girl, no, not sentimental, sensitive. That’s all I needed. I was better off out of it. Yes, but I. . not by much, I explained to them — in fact, I was always indifferent, forgetful, not that I feel. . no, not that I care, the proof was the way I behaved: like a brute, like a blessing, because she was alone, in fact. They nodded their heads and gestured with their hands. They understood what I was saying. They were right: I had no connection to the Captain, nor to Monica’s mother, the old lady, Rebeca Smântănescu locked away in her madhouse, and it’s no good to go see war movies, either, or those horror movies — that’s way too much. The reason was that I had worked a lot; probably I’d worked too much. I explained to them that it wasn’t true: I was working sometimes, but playing hooky often, and that wasn’t important — probably I didn’t like what I was doing. I shrugged my shoulders, but they were right.

One afternoon I had an interesting discussion with the doctor. He came, adjusted his glasses, and talked to me about the formidable power consumed in playing the role of the defeated — the weak, powerless, frightened one — which is altogether greater than playing the role of the solid, steadfast, stoic, severe, character — the victor. The doctor who came to keep an eye on me was right, and that lady professor was consequently right too — ha! She wasn’t stupid, the daughter of the crazy old woman who spent the rest of her life bent over the grave of her executed husband, Monica’s father. Look, Little Moni wasn’t dumb. But change was advantageous from all points of view. I listened to the doctor attentively, and I understood him. He had a gentle voice and was the subtlest of my caregivers.

They considered my intention to kill the professor grievous but interesting, and they didn’t interrupt me as I told them about it. I continued telling the story coherently, logically, and they didn’t contradict me, no, not at all: they’d been reviewing this matter for a while, and that was normal. They told me that the shock (the moment when I lost control of the reins). . that was the problem, but, still, it was only an effect. They were searching for causes, or in other words the etiology, so that they could prescribe the right treatment.

And the treatments were very good. I managed to sleep. That made them happy and calmed them down. After several months I understood that it doesn’t help to rush in and out of treatment if certain details are still eating you alive. And it’s not good to pay too much attention to details either. You have to work in an orderly way, get some rest, have some fun (within reason), keep yourself busy, and work without fail, otherwise, you’re screwed. But first understand what you like, what suits you best, and busy yourself with that, though not abusively. The principle is to cure yourself of tristesse , no, of triumph, no. . of temerity, that’s it, to cure yourself of temerity. . to stop believing that you can make any old thing of yourself or that the others have to do who-knows-what, and in general for you to keep to your place, and embrace that order, which is to say, you shouldn’t be looking left and right all the time. You should see to your business, work for specific results. This can be achieved and enjoyed.

Of course I couldn’t change my trade. It was a wonderful trade, like all trades, except that I should work in the open air, which could be easily arranged, of course.

They always smiled in a friendly way. They told me I should work in a place where I wouldn’t have too much time for idleness or trifles — it was better like that — because you shouldn’t have too much time, and you shouldn’t get too concerned, either. You see to your business. Don’t let yourself wander. We can’t solve everything. And those people who were watching over me, most of them young, like me, that’s what they were doing: they had a great deal of patience, really a tremendous amount, even with a person like me. I would need to become more sober, no, more sociable — I was still messing up letters, words, ideas; I’d stammer occasionally, but I was getting better: when the treatment was over, I was thinking and expressing myself clearly.

That’s the main thing — I mustn’t isolate myself, I should seek people out, observe, as one should, their lapses, no, not lapses, their lives, and life in general. And the inverse of that: I shouldn’t spend too much time looking left and right, but that was only an apparent contradiction. They told me not to observe too much, but that I should still look. I shouldn’t get into details. In short, I should be engaged with others, but in a certain way. Ultimately everything revers. . no, revenges itself, rots and decays — look at the evidence. I agreed with them that everything depended on my attitude. An effort of will was needed; after all, I wasn’t a child. I’d work patiently and precisely, and to find pleasure in this would be even better. . even the smallest things. For example: shaving. That’s been disgusting for a while, of course. Hair keeps on growing, perpetually, and every which way — black, blond, red hairs, white hairs, some longer, others shorter, dirty, sweaty. . again the foam, the blade, the alcohol — you can lose your mind. On top of that, you keep seeing yourself in the mirror, too — that bloated, aging, sleepy, yellow face. This is exactly the place for willpower. Once. Twice. Then things begin to feel normal again — you stop thinking about everything. Shaving is a hygienic operation, a daily ritual. Just don’t stop and think about every motion or analyze every single strand of hair. The razor, the foam, and the alcohol are organized in the mirror: don’t study your face, but avoid nicking yourself, too. It’s the same with everything. Matters have to be solved efficiently and quickly, without dedicating yourself wholeheartedly to them. Only I wasn’t stupid, and there was no solution except the exercise of will.