The chestnut trees were wet after the rain, the boulevards were cold. Above me, only autumnal sky.
I walked apprehensively; intimidated by the glances the others gave me. I set my face in a scowl, to give myself courage. Leaning against a wall, in the passage that led to the administrative offices, I felt a stir of excitement. I did not want to be discovered by anyone; and yet I wanted to discover everyone. I loved everything about them, and I thought about how henceforth they would all be my classmates. There were so many young women, all of them beautiful to me, and all of them, I decided, Hypatias. I felt hopes and desires swelling and anxiously stirring about inside me. I observed; is it not true that these are the best years of my life? And I was not sure whether I should take control of them or allow them to control me.
Gone were the torturous nights of Greek Grammar. One painfully-clear morning I came down from my attic. I was seduced by the chrysanthemums. And the sky, the expansive blue sky. My home seemed so perfect, and so beloved. The courtyard had become my friend. Large lilac bushes bowed humbly in the sunshine. It was then that I decided: I am going to give up Greek, at least for now. You might say that I was waiting for something, promised long ago. But for what, I could not say.
I would have to find new friends. But I did not dare talk to any of my classmates taking their seats at the back, who looked mistrustfully at my glasses and smiling face. Nor did I dare speak to any of the young women taking their seats on the front rows, who were not looking at me at all. I would just have to wait.
It rained, and rained. I bought piles of books after the Baccalaureate exam. Alone in my attic, I read them. My first autumn, I thought. And I smiled.
Attending my first lecture in the Maiorescu Auditorium, I sat next to the window, tormented by too blood-red a sunset and the hand of the girl sitting next to me, too pale, too warm. Below, on the boulevard, passed people who had never heard of our professors. This stupid thought hindered me from understanding the lecturer’s eulogy to Philosophy as the crowning achievement of human endeavour. He spoke slowly and clearly, excruciatingly slowly and clearly. At the end of the lecture, young women took the edge off their irritation by opening and closing their handbags. There were also young women who took notes. They had big ears, and hair heaped wildly on top of their white necks. Other students struck the attitude of thinkers: high foreheads, knitted brows, chins resting on their hands.
I descended the stairs, and yellow globe lights appeared in the night.
In the corridors were couples and groups. The couples were next to windows, with autumn in their eyes. The groups stood along the walls, pointing at shy students, or students whose dresses were too long. Groups always laugh; couples always keep quiet.
My first change: I developed a liking for sentimental souls. At least they don’t think that everything is just a joke, I thought. Why was I saddened by the choices of adolescence, made worse in tumultuous times?
I was embarrassed by my hat, which was too big and too black. My brother had teased me about all students being poets and bohemians. But I had my attic, and I never wrote poetry. Under my big hat, I looked more like a German house painter. I only wore it when it rained. And in autumn it rained, and rained.
The first sign that adolescence had definitively ended: I stopped writing my Diary. From now on, everything would be worked out in my soul, in secret. Another sign: I demanded and received money for the things I published. I had plenty of money and bought myself expensive books.
The streets were colder now, and the walls even gloomier. The chestnut trees were yet another autumn older and around the windows the ivy was turning red.
In the mornings, my soul was serene. But at night, clouds gathered. Why could I not remember the dreams that bourgeoned and took flight in nights of restless sleep?
In the corridor, one evening, in front of a door, I bumped into a girl who looked up at me angrily. I turned pale, and then red, and then pale again. I found out later that she went by the name Bibi. From then on, I greeted her timidly. She never answered. Why did I, of all people, call her Bibi?
I did not have much luck. None of my lycée friends were in any of my classes. But I had got to know a few new faces. One was a student from Bessarabia, tall, blond, and nearly bald. He was majoring in Theology, Law, and Philosophy. He never missed a class and wrote his notes in huge lined notebooks. He had been to Athens, Sofia, and Paris. No one knew anything else about him. He was friends with a Jew who was in love with a beautiful Jewish girl. He was ugly, but he loved her. I realised this when he told the Bessarabian: ‘She’s so intelligent!’ Sad, so sad.
I had also met a snub-nosed girl who read German philosophy books and was proud of her feminist views. She discussed German Philosophy and Feminism with anyone and everyone. She had a rather odd way of beginning a sentence: ‘I mean, do you or do you not agree with me?’
The feminist looked down on the girls who were pretty or uncultured. I overheard the following snatch of conversation.
‘If they haven’t read Hegel, they’re good for nothing!’
‘Really?’
Someone else, indiscreetly, ‘Who put you in charge?’
‘I, sir, am a feminist.’
Another voice, ‘More power to her!’
Every once in a while she would arrive with a pale, delicate young man. The students at the back whispered that he must be one of her disciples.
I also met a brunette, whose hair was cut in a fringe. She spoke in a soft voice and crammed Latin vocabulary before lectures. Once, I caught her reading a book of verse. She blushed. After that, she would smile at me, and I would say hello to her.
If it rained at night, after seminars, we sheltered in a corridor with large windows. Little by little I shed my shyness. I met theology students with long hair, and youthful, unkempt beards. And destitute literature students, who cursed the rain, because they would miss their meal at the cafeteria. And students from distant cities, with wide eyes and mud-specked socks. All kinds of groups set off to the student halls of residence, with their briefcases tucked under their arms.
Once the rain had passed, I made my way home along cold, laved streets. I looked at the lighted windows and imagined warm, cosy rooms, with languid female footfalls on soft rugs. But I did not allow myself to feel any sadness.
*
Autumn, with its sadness and twilight, passed. Two years later, my memories are bitter and heavy. I write this story with peace of mind, hardened by the path that I have taken. But I write a story that is not yet finished. Life goes on, and I write only of the life that has been lived.
TWO: THE CHAIRMAN
I finished that autumn, alone. And then, all of a sudden, in early December, the attic came to life. Evening fell, but upstairs, in my attic, choirs intoned. It had all happened so fast – I am beginning to forget exactly how I came to meet the doctoral student with the broad forehead and nervous smile at the corner of his thin lips. He explained to me, walking down the boulevard, how the city did not yet have a student association, how at the university year after year passed without anyone attending or establishing one. An older gentleman wished to donate his fortune for a students’ club, if only an association existed, but there was no association, because students were happy to spend their years with old friends to whom they were connected by childhood or lycée. If only a room could be found somewhere, a room in which to organise.
‘I have a attic.’
The doctoral student demurred; young men and women are noisy, unruly. They would disturb and annoy whoever else might be at home.
‘But the attic is mine.’
He consented, but only for the choir. Happy, we went our separate ways in the night. The next morning, he climbed the wooden stairs and knocked on my door.
‘So many books, so many books.’
He told me everything he had done