‘I’m leaving.’
Mr Gabriel reacted in a way no one ever would have predicted, given his glacial serenity. He convulsed, threw on his coat, and ran out of the door. We didn’t even have time to turn on the light to the wooden flight of stairs. In fright, we heard him stumbling, stamping down the stairs.
‘What’s up with you, Malec? Where are you going? Why don’t you stay, to party with these students? Champagne, games!’
The ‘Boss’ came back smiling.
‘That’s just the way he is – but he’s a good chap.’
He started to speak. We all listened to him in bewilderment. Radu smoked heavily, Nonora was annoyed. Whispers:
‘They’ve ruined our party!’
Then we heard soft snowballs hitting the windows. Peering out of the window, I could see ‘Malec’ down below. Mr Elefterescu waved to him. We all looked at each other in bafflement.
‘He’s crying, poor chap. I best be going.’
Right then it seemed to me that the attic had grown cold. I put some more wood in the stove. The ‘Boss’ shook a few hands, smiling regretfully.
‘Too bad about the champagne.’
After we heard the gate close in the courtyard down below, we took a deep breath. The chairman was furious.
‘Who invited them?’
‘Savages!’
‘Malec is in the preliminary stages of mental debility.’
The deputy chairman proffered his clear and objective opinion: ‘It is, I believe, the result of inbreeding.’
We were unable to forget the episode until close to midnight. The bizarre, grotesque atmosphere left by the stares and attitude of ‘Malec’ and the suspicious effrontery of Mr Elefterescu the polytechnic student vanished. We ate, and filled our glasses with red wine. Gaidaroff positioned himself next to Măriuca, Radu next to Nonora, and the medical student girls next to members of the committee, ‘Florenţa’ between the two law students, Bibi between Andrei and myself. Bibi was the most disturbed by the visit and the harsh verdict of the deputy chairman. She was sullen, and stared at Andrei and him alone.
After the champagne, we decided to play games. We were all in high spirits. I suppose that the aftermath of the odd experience, and the magnitude of the averted crisis, had generated a surplus of energy waiting to be released.
The one thing I had feared at the beginning of the game did indeed occur, that is, having to kiss Nonora. With everyone else revelling in the sight and judging me to be too timid.
Nonora was calm; her eyes seared like a branding iron, but then grew clouded and sad.
‘Come on, get on with it – don’t bore me.’
‘Should I start with your forehead?’
‘If you’re perverse.’
‘How many times?’ I said, trying to delay.
‘Why don’t you start, and then I’ll tell you when to stop.’
But with everyone laughing, how could I tell them I could not kiss Nonora like that?
‘One … two … three … five … nine … five … four … The boys counted. Nonora, having tired of it, stopped me. She laughed.
‘You have no idea.’
I was agitated, furious. I had to defend myself, but I didn’t know what to say.
‘In front of an audience, obviously I don’t know how.’
‘There’s no point; don’t flatter yourself.’
The next morning, I woke up distraught. I would like to have written down everything that was going on in my soul. But I had got out of the habit of writing my Diary. And besides, I didn’t understand what was going on. I had allowed myself to be carried away by life, the club, the chairman, Nonora, Bibi. I fell asleep again and dreamed strange dreams, in which men shouted: ‘Boss, boss, Malec is calling for you!’
We saw each other nearly every day. Nonora brought over most of the items for the raffle. Radu came with her and unloaded the packages from a cart, discontentedly smoking cigarette after cigarette. Radu may have still gone to bed at dawn, but he never missed a chance to meet up with Nonora. Whenever we were alone he praised Nonora’s eyes, lips, arms, shoulders, and skin. He told me about touching her knee in the cinema, only to be checked by her fist; about kisses in passageways and backstreets. None of it really affected me. It interested me as something new and different. Nonora, who suspected Radu’s indiscretions, looked at me with defiant eyes. She tried to provoke a reaction by stopping in the middle of one of her anecdotes: ‘He doesn’t understand.’
I knew Nonora didn’t believe what she was saying. But all the same I was humiliated by the pitying looks from the girls and the vulgar superiority of the boys. Even so, I endured the situation with a mix of amusement and forbearing that I could not quite understand. One night, I would be alone with Nonora, make my move, clasp her wildly, kiss her long and hard on the mouth. But I knew that that was as far as I would go. I cannot tell you how many times I heard Radu complain about how she led him on, how she laughed seductively in his face, how she kissed him, how she cuddled him, gritting her teeth, but holding his sweaty hand in her own, before pulling back, with a devilish smile: ‘That’s quite enough! Now go away!’
I could have done the same. But why did I avoid it, determined to be viewed as an anomalous example of purity and innocence, when I had the same mediocre sex life as everybody else, dependent on pure chance?
I did not understand my attraction to Nonora. But from the first time she spoke my name, I was happy. I wasn’t brave enough to ask myself whether I liked her. But I had the feeling that something else altogether attracted me to her and delighted me in her presence. I knew how futile it was to read German after Nonora left. I think of all the pages I failed to absorb, because of the overpoweringly fresh scent of her that still lingered in my nostrils and the scenes recounted by Radu that flashed before my eyes.
I was afraid of her, and I wanted her. Catching myself desiring her, I would feel humiliated, I would scold and deride myself. A few hours would then pass, and again I would find myself wanting her.
The morning of the festival, she came to the train station, nervous about the role she had been assigned in the play. She hadn’t quite memorised her lines yet. With Radu, she drank four cognacs in the station buffet. She refused to let him pay.
‘You’ll cater to my every whim at the ball. Maybe you’ll even make me your queen.’
Radu sat enigmatically, whispering to her between puffs on his cigarette, ‘You’re so delicious.’
‘You’re insufferable!’
‘Your nostrils are quivering.’
‘And you assume it’s because of you?’
‘Naturally.’
‘You’re such a brute.’
‘I know; but you like me.’
Nonora feigned laughter.
‘You look like a convict: ugly, short-sighted, vulgar.’
‘But you still like me.’
‘You’re annoying, and you have a stutter. Go away; you aren’t fun anymore.’
Bibi was sick with longing for Andrei. Gaidaroff carried the makeup kit. The chairman, with lively eyes shining beneath a weary brow, ran back and forth with crates of items for the raffle, a crate of costumes, tickets for members, a folder of documents. The committee tried, without much success, to bring order to our expedition. Our raucous party occupied an entire train carriage. The chairman suggested we