“There was one thing we didn’t do, though. We didn’t touch each other.”
“We did touch each other emotionally, and that was probably something deeper, more profound.”
“I don’t agree with you there, I think that’s too philosophical for my taste. This platonic love is a vacuum, fabulous, no doubt, but a vacuum all the same,” said the doctor.
“You know something? I don’t need any regrets and I don’t want to review my life. I simply can’t do that. That’s not what I need,” Iulia looked at him, almost crying.
The doctor shuddered. He had never seen her so vulnerable.
“I’m sorry, that really beats me. I don’t know what to say.… Tell me, how can I help you? I know quite a number of extraordinary professors, we could fight together.”
“I’ve got six more months to live, half a year tops. It’s the very specialists you’ve got in mind that told me that. My problem is different: I don’t know how to find a solution to the only thing I’m interested in, that’s why I need you, your keen mind. You’ve seen death many times, you’ve seen how people react when they’re close to it. I need to do something and I don’t know if I really must do it and how to do it.”
“I’ve been working in the Intensive Care Unit for thirty years now but I’ve never replaced God. My advice might be all wrong.”
Iulia stared at the doctor as she always did when she wanted to understand the person in front of her, to break his code. The doctor braced up to fight her.
“What is it that you want, in fact?”
“I don’t know if it’s all right to tell my sons who their father is. Or let him do it after I’m gone. Or forbid him to get in touch with them. I really don’t know what’s best for them.”
“What, do your sons have a father? I thought you had them with the Holy Ghost. Come on, tell me who the man is.… Why didn’t you choose me for that?”
“You were close,” admitted Iulia rendering the anesthetist breathless. “But your personality was too strong, and I wouldn’t have been able to keep it in check. You’d have claimed this and that, got involved, come out to light. I thought a lot of your qualities at the time: handsome, clever, full of energy. But too much of a womanizer, too busy, too reckless. You’ve been too much of an adventurer, my dear. You couldn’t have been the anonymous father I needed.”
“And who was the perfect father who fit your pattern?” asked the doctor a little annoyed.
“The name is irrelevant, I just want to know what you think. Could this man, after twenty-eight years, come out to light? Is it any use? Dragos has his own family now, and he’s got a child.… Mihai is a college student.…”
“Was it the same man?”
“Of course.”
“Talk to him, I suppose he doesn’t know how sick you are, and find the answers yourselves. You’ve stuck to the same principles all your life, and what was the use of it? Yes, I’ve been an adventurer, I’ve changed five wives, I’ve got young mistresses, but my children know who their father is,” the man, wounded in his memories, threw his words at her.
“You can’t understand it because you’re made of different stuff. I haven’t come here to get even or argue with you. I’m afraid of death and revelations. I’ve just come here for help.”
“Me help you? My sons, although good engineers, are badly off in Bucharest, have lousy jobs and live in rented flats. On the other hand, I haven’t made love to my wife for ten years, I can’t touch her; I’ve just heard my best friend in college told the Securitate people everything about me, and I can have sex only if I take Viagra. I’m not dying but I’ve been a zombie for quite a while. Your compass might have been much better than mine, who knows. I fear death too, although I’ve been facing it for thirty years. I really don’t know what kind of advice to give you!”
The two friends hugged each other compassionately.
* * * *
The very next day Iulia invited over her colleague, Emil Mateescu, a biochemistry professor. Emil Mateescu agreed to go to her place with a mixture of joy and fear, preferring not to ask any questions. He had asked his last question twenty years before. Their story had started much earlier, though, almost thirty years before. All this time their great secret had not been known by anyone else.
Iulia Datcu grew up in a family of ambitious intellectuals. She was so impressed by her parents’ self-seeking that she only wished to surpass them. She went through school like a breeze. She came first in all school years up to the very end of college. She started her teaching career at the Faculty of Food Chemistry, eager to become its dean, sooner or later. She realized that her parents’ jobs made her father and mother go separate ways, turning their marriage into a convention. Then her mother died and, a few months later, her father married another woman and moved out. Everything had been perfect in their family except for the marriage, which made Iulia try hard not to fall in love with anyone.
One day, however, she said to herself it was time to have a child of her own flesh and blood. So she started to look for the man to fit the classical pattern: handsome, clever, good political extraction, good-natured, available, and approachable. At first she liked Dr. Viorel Cheran but, without knowing it, the anesthetist didn’t pass the test so the woman focused on Emil Mateescu next, a fully accomplished, married colleague of hers.
Iulia became aware of the fact that, in order to persuade Emil Mateescu father her child she had to charm him first. Therefore she made him violently fall in love with her. He was one of the most popular professors in their department: he didn’t flunk too many students, didn’t take money or gifts for higher or passing grades, didn’t make advances to female students or have any obvious vices. In a few months’ time Iulia enslaved him with her beauty, intelligence, and ivory body, and thoroughly confused him when, giving herself to him, he saw that at the age of thirty she was still a virgin.
After getting pregnant, especially after giving birth to Dragos, Iulia forbade Emil Mateescu to do two things: say who the child’s father was and go on with their affair. Little by little, she estranged herself from him, accepting his presence only at work.
She became notorious when she gave birth to the child but never revealed the identity of the father, and her career marked the time because of her supposedly loose morals.
The situation didn’t discourage her, on the contrary, she went on doing research, writing studies, and taking care of Dragos. Three years later she decided she wanted another child and resorted to Emil Mateescu again. This time gave him to understand that she wanted him all for herself and would love him for ever. Only to deceive him again. And it worked. Finally, she gave birth to Mihai and sent his father flying for the second time, without any regrets.
Her second son’s birth made Emil Mateescu, who had two daughters, divorce. He found it very hard to buy a bedsit and live there alone. Year after year he waylaid Iulia and her boys, at one time being introduced to them as their mother’s boyfriend but not as their father. He was happy with that too. Gradually he came to take more care of his secret children than his legitimate ones. Still, the boys saw him as a decent man and nothing else.
He had been invited to be there at 19:00. Emil Mateescu bought a nice bunch of five red roses, something he hadn’t done for years, and started thinking of all kinds of scenarios.
“You haven’t made too many changes here, have you?” he said looking around. “I thought that, after Mihai’s going to college, you’d make some.”
“I chose to take some time for myself,” Iulia replied gently.
The tone of her voice touched him, although he sensed something in it that alarmed him. Was it really possible? For the third time?
“Something