Every summer the city on the hill is drowned in green, which explodes in the church park, at the Citadel and at the Cabin and the Grove, while the green willows of the River girdle the city. The summer of fir trees and willows flaps big, unseen wings in a fervor of lofty pure air, torrid gusts of vibrating blood make a limp, limpid body seem withdrawn, lifted up, twisted by stellar whirls; the thick swift bulb is heard in the chest, the eardrum gets thinner, hands fall and revive, the humid eyes beg; knees are like stone, cold, temples and napes hurt. But the body breathes greedily, depressurized. Shoulders, voice, gaze feel released, throat burnt, parched, and lips wetted by tongue, in thirst; deserted wondering, when that someone awaited, and called for, vainly delays the fleeting happiness of summer that passes into the others, and in one only, with a high clear trumpet note given at sunrise, high on the hill, at the Citadel... Every time the same and yet different this summer, when frolic chooses for another lunatic, confusion, dizziness, the famished-ferocious-fury, the fantastic fuming fluorescence of the nights, the cold of insomnias. It is another summer.Two years before, for a week, he had filled the living and talking sheet-screen of the cinema with the timid smile of a dainty, cute child, being the only master of the white rectangle, with his trumpet, at the pioneer games, or strolling – seemingly – around the Artek. The buzz of glory had filled the streets and the faces bathed in the golden green of the summer. Next had come the festivals, the reciting, the speeches, the poems, and the aura of gracious and precarious provincial celebrity. Now everything seemed to have ended; the pressed tie hanged in the wardrobe, by the towels and handkerchiefs.There followed a summer of indifference. He felt that the dowry of admiration and curiosity, which their eyes bestowed on him, had not diminished. The little ham actor could always smile just as cinematographically as they all expected. That's how the previous summer had been, a summer dragged through sun-scorched dust.Then it had ended, but not quite. In the winter holidays he had joined, or rather had been taken to, the first meeting of the adults. The star was welcomed duly… They had taken his coat, and a few moments after the orchestra intoned a languid dance, when the girls had the freedom to choose their partners. Ten, or God knew how many, smiling long drinks of water, sure of their experience, crowded around him: Lia, Rodica, Mia, Ruth, Pussy, a pouting brunette, then the constantly laughing Sonia, and others, he no longer remembered which was what, the color of their manes getting mixed in his head as the star became all flustered.I then felt Iulia trembling close to me. That's how all that madness began, those crazy things at home, that's why I hanged with their group of boys and girls two years my seniors who were graduating from high school.His fellow townspeople had not forgotten the smile on the cinema screen or the poems for peace rendered at the "fêtes champetres". They did no longer point their fingers at him but continued to recognize their hero and stalk him.There was talk in town about a certain trip to the monastery, prolonged overnight, and this earned the young ladies poorer grades; a few prize-winners even kissed good-bye their wreathes that year. Hazy happenings, muddled by the new summer, the wild outpour of fir green, evenings at the Grove or at the Citadel, the low tremor of the willows in the morning at the River where the cries of summer erupted, whizzing, water rushing in the gazes secreted by the swimmers who, until then had been stuck in the province of other seasons, weighed upon by garments, throttled by the vigilant swarming of neighbors and pedagogues.Actually, the landscapes died swiftly, the Citadel and the River did not matter, only the eagerness there that tantalized me at night when the Grove and the Citadel and the River would become livelier and more dangerous than in daytime.The parents were happy with the trophy of every year; in the big mirror of their bedroom their offspring seemed to them a blessed amulet, a Chinese Humpty-Dumpty, lucky and secretive, frail, handsome, a decorated prizewinner with hair duly parted. In the eyes of the teachers my hair could be tamed too by a decent parting, smoothed to the right and to the left, nape well shaved and pink. But sufficed it to gaze once into the clear water of the river or at Iulia, into her limpid glossy water that my hair would stand up wildly, huge and crispy, in locks that grew bigger and bigger falling in unruly waves, "like a medusa", as the geography teacher, Eat-All, had put it. I looked at my nails bit to the core, I sucked blood, breathed in the smell of blood and the skin of our young body, paralyzed in the silence and cracking of the inebriated bushes, when boughs snapped amidst long whispers as if to awaken the small, hidden fire. They passed through the park. Night was setting in, there were no more free benches, and so the entire group headed to the Grove, naturally, each with his pussycat. Traian with Lia, Victor with Mia, Andrei with Radu and Titus, making tom-cattish commentaries, Pupu with… perhaps still with Rodica, and the mustachioed Valeriu coming last, drowsily. At due distance from the group, the little squirt and the supple, translucent sensitive one, because of her weak lungs. They would talk in the distance. The madness of interminable, rolled-r's discussions. They followed the gang though, at a suitable distance, he carrying on his shoulders his fresh deerskin jacket, and avoiding her eyes.The low cavernous grotto of the cinema had frightened me, for two hours, as long as our hands had fumbled wildly with underwear and epidermis… if only it had happened there at long last, in the hot darkness composed of so many breaths, when the bald pate on the right, too engrossed in the stupidity on the screen, would not have had the time to get outraged at what we were doing and did not have the courage to do. "Let's go out, please, I can't take it any more." Sure, we went after an hour and a half, dazed, as if drained by a séance from where we had escaped jumping out of the window.In the flow of people leaving the hall, satisfied with the weekly amusement, the pubescent dared a tender gesture: he took off his jacket to put it on the deer shoulders.They were walking silently, separated. That is how they had left the cinema hall, and how they had met the group: silent and separated. They looked for a bench in the church park. None was free. So they set off, muted and small, dwarfed, behind the others, to the Grove.It was growing dark. The public regained the vitality of other summers, the breath of the sky above to which they thought to get lifted at times, to caress the contour of the moon.The candidate had left everything to the jacket, now on her sweet frail shoulders. He did not boast the patience or the courage, or the necessary brutality, had he at least been familiar with the details of initiation. Nor had he the cunning to allow himself to be seduced for initiation so that he could find out what it was all about. He refused to see the sky, the sarcastically gaping moon. He forgot to breathe; he dwelt in a hostile chaos, heated and weird. The forest pumped air through his nostrils and the hollow of his chest, the strong fir air that had dizzied him even two months before when leaving the park. Then he had plucked up his courage, and she had let it happen, they had kissed, and Iulia had slid her hand over him, a fabulous fall, light years, without a chute, a wild cry of victory and drunkenness, which obviously had not released him.The letter craze had been going on for some months, they had been smoked out and read hesitatingly; his old folks had been flabbergasted. They did not suspect that such compositions were just putting off the threat. The frail photogenic archangel had stumbled – predictably, that is naturally – into the fine and frail arms of a literate, consumptive and suave, whose colors had all gone into adjectives. Stuck, for nearly two hours, in the darkness of the fir trees, amongst the whispers of the others, they did not budge; they did not dare come close to each other. It was to this extent that the little miss preferred procrastination. Or perhaps she ignored what she was postponing, the sensible girl being also sensitive. Or she knew too well, and was enjoying the vagueness at length, like a long-versed connoisseur. So they got up when the others had left. They set off for Iulia's house without a word, freezing in front of the windows of her house, again. With a half gesture, he took the jacket off her shoulders; she didn't move. Only when the jacket slipped into his hands did she put out her pale sweet fingers to a sleeve, and caressed it. He turned briskly, caught under the wheel of a toy cart crushing him, blowing everything in the air; to free himself he swirled on his heels and left without a word.It was late and the few passersby might have noticed, intrigued, that the known face of the little actor and orator no longer resembled his self. The boy advanced slowly, with difficulty. The lights of the house were put out. That could mean either that they were expecting to be woken up, or that Sanda was not sleeping and she would open the door.No light either in the kitchen, at the front. A light knock would probably wake her up. She would open the door slowly, in silence, and everything would be all right.Something, somebody was moving with a rustle. As if there were persons whispering, muffled.Sanda was sleeping in the kitchen, the so-called kitchen. From there to his room he had to cross the corridor and pass through two doors.She did not put on the light. She opened the door very cautiously, in the dark, and stuck herself to the edge of the bed so that the boy could pass by the wall.The light coming from the street lamp hit her blue eyes, her spread out, wet hair, and her striped shirt, disclosing her shoulders, her steamy breasts.The door closed swiftly behind their backs. With a hand on the doorknob, she had turned half a step forward without coming unstuck from the bed though.For a second, the bright streak of light whitened the crumpled sheets, coloring the kaki cap outlined on the edge of the bed.Perfect darkness, not the slightest motion. Hard breathing, a mixed smell, the heavy haze of the squeaking bed.The bed is on the right, I lean against its edge, further off the stove, three more steps – the door. Sanda doesn't let me lean on the edge of the bed. She takes me to the first door. Her breath whistles in my brain. My breath, her breath, I no longer know which, it try to count, they get superposed, one two three, hard to distinguish, one more, three, perhaps three... Her hand is hot, a little wet, slippery, my fingers slide up, to her warm elbow. A pungent smell, damp sheets. An oppressive, stifling silence to which I looked forward, throughout summer, during all those nights, from close quarters, from my room where I will get to be again sometime perhaps, but here is the first door, a slight threshold, the washing basin on the right. Three more steps and I am above the cellar. The floor gets curved and squeaky. With my left hand I touch the water boiler. I hear Sanda behind me, plopping across the bed with slow moves; the bed rustles, and the voices seem to be mumbling something.I am here. I press slowly all the way; I must not release the handle. I open the door letting the handle go only when I have turned it back. I unclasp my fingers slowly, I know the technique very well: you must close the door only when you have fully pressed the handle. That's it. I am in the room. I have closed the door; the bed is near by, under the glass rectangle, the photomontage of my legendary campaigns. The shadows of the boughs come through the open window to play on the photographs, and the pioneer seems to be mustachioed.In the gulf of my insomnias, night after night when I returned home reeling, drained and flushed, I would spy the torrid obscure noises coming from the kitchen. My clothes neatly placed on the chair, my shoes on trees, my shirt on a hook, the shadows of the boughs on the photos of glorious pioneer actions, that's what I saw, listening until dawn to the hazy silence in the house. The summer's restlessness whistled thinly, black and cuddled at night in the Citadel and the Grove in the kitchen. It called me, making me dizzy, not to be late as I tarried among the reels of adjectives that had prolonged the afternoon and muddled my evenings with so many precious indecisions.I no longer need pajamas; I keep only my sweatshirt. They are sleeping next door. The cardboard with the photos moves, waving the mustaches. The bed squeaks. The silence weighs on my chest, on my shoulders. I feel as if under a tank, I hear myself breathing. In the two years since she has been with us, Sanda has slept in the kitchen in that wooden bed. In winter, it gets cold, as it is right next to the door, at the entrance.That wooden bed of hers also squeaks, I know, even harder. The rumpled sheets smelled of sweat and something else, a pungent sweet smell, of still wet heat, smoldering, and again something else, lazy, languid, sort of a sleep whiff, beastly.My eyes have grown used to the darkness; they no longer get tired. I watch out for the breathing. It gallops, whipping time up so that it escapes me; I cannot reach it any more.Iulia's skin, a flickering sheen, cool, her lips parched, burnt by bites. Every evening the same madness, a little more advanced, a little subdued, we drained each other like hot, steaming linen. Her breasts came out fuming of the obliquely twisted shirt. Sanda reeled, dazed, lazy, she pushed me on, hurriedly.The house is dead; endless vigil until I hear the key. A key turns in the lock on the front door, at Sanda's. They are coming in; no, they are going out, naturally. She is alone, guilty, she knows, she is waiting, she will pay for it...I look for a cool spot on my pillow, or my sheet. Everything is blazing, like a rubber foil. The pillow seems filled with lukewarm water. The room weighs down on me, nauseatingly. The nausea of the mendacious summer, of past, deceitful, twisted summers, now collected in a curse. The room stifles; this thin indigo bubble of the night must be blown up, blown up and trodden upon, torn and dirtied that gluey wait, that ravenous mouth of saliva and blood and warmth, replete with the foam of adjectives. For a moment I hear the low, falsetto murmur of faked, belated innocence. Her long hair, her hot delicate sanatorium breathing. Let me learn the motions, drip in the wet sticky mouth of the beast, pulsating in my gums, burning, bleeding, voraciously waiting for the fall of the prey. Finally lost, sold. That is alive, devour-able.Silence. No move. The handle must be pressed down fully, and then the door pushed. Footsteps resound in my chest, in my brain.I am above the cellar. Here the floor squeaks. On the right the boiler, on the left the basin. My hand slides on the next handle, pushing the second door.Darkness hovers in the cage. I am close to the stove, just one step away. Nobody has budged. Faint but perceptible breathing. I have been heard, perhaps even expected. A compromise, a small price for keeping quiet. If I want I can occupy the crater, the malady of the summer night, its miserable tatters, blind man in lava of maggots and polyps. I swim through the illusory screen of the cinema, now waved, like myself wet and dirty, smelly, infested, like myself. Here are my lunatic hands, my hair, my wet naked belly of promises, and the green of summer, darkened, in the hair that spreads out luminescent with bacteria. I bite at the apple of her shoulder, and Sanda moans gently; I finally meet Iulia's lips, frayed, her skin with a watery sheen, and the apples of her shoulders wet. The warm, hungry muzzle of the deer has gone rabid drinking me in. I was pulled into the vortex that ravaged my blood, subdued and ailing with summer viruses. Accursed shiver that finally gets into me, an itch of shame and ferocity, of oblivion and disgust, of pleasure and perdition, ever closer, too close, in myself... from The First Gates, Albatros, 1975 Judging by the number of prestigious awards and translations, Norman Manea (b. 1936), who settled in the United States in the late 1980s, is presently perhaps the most successful Romanian-born writer. A rich life experience, ominously started with his deportation, at the age of five, together with other Jews, lies at the foundation of a modernist prose that dissects the various forms that evil may take.
by Norman Manea (b. 1936)
