I feel ashamed. Seldom have I been so utterly stupid and dull. My intelligence! A certain youthful attitude of mind, that’s all it amounts to. And when you don’t even have that, nothing is left. How else can my total vacuity yesterday be excused? Two hours of conversation, two hours of me being silent. I participated with ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in a conversation from which I had wanted everything. I don’t know what I mean by ‘everything’, but I must mean a lot by it, because I feel so acutely that I completely wasted my visit to Blidaru’s home.

*

On Monday he spoke at the Foundation, as part of the Social Institute’s series of lectures. There was no risk of me being seen in that immense crowd, in my seat in the second balcony.

What charm and simplicity the man has. His style is terse and angular, rough and digressive. He throws out a word, opens a secret door, kicks a stone he’s picked up along the way. Spontaneously, and somehow trusting all to hazard. And then, when the hour is up, and you look despairingly at the field of thought that has been devastated, suddenly – I couldn’t tell you how – matters begin to resolve themselves. The disconnected ideas strewn about over three-quarters of an hour return home in the final quarter, clear, quiet, necessary, utterly compelling, and completing a cycle of reasoning as though it were a symphonic arrangement.

I will understand later, when I’m older, what kind of a thinker Blidaru is. But I already know he is a great artist.

*

He caught up with me in the lecture hall as I was leaving and took my arm in a simple, friendly fashion.

‘Let’s take a stroll.’

I walked with him as far as his home, and several times along the way tried to talk to him. But it wouldn’t come. His fault this time rather than mine, though, as he wasn’t in a mood for chatting. He just wanted to walk, hands in the pockets of his long raincoat, hat over his eyes and his nose in the air, taking in the smell of rain and wet trees – the smell of the last days of November.

I walked nervously beside him, eager to cut through his small-talk to interject the questions I wanted to ask, the things I didn’t clearly understand but which seemed so compelling. Several times I tried to start a sentence and gave up. Several times I formulated one in my mind but was unable to take it anywhere.

He must have sensed how worked up I was there, to his right, tongue-tied yet bursting to speak, because he suddenly halted in the light of a shop window and looked straight at me, in surprise.

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘Professor, what I want to say is …’

But I did not continue.

‘I know what you want to say. You want to say it all. Which is the simplest and the most complicated thing in the world. Forget it. What’s the hurry? There’s none, believe me. We wanted to take a walk: so let’s walk. We’ll talk another time, when it occurs. Only those things that “happen” are worthwhile.’

He gave me a cigarette, took my arm and led me onwards, changing the subject.

2

The university was closed the day before yesterday, 9 December, in anticipation of the 10th. Quiet days, however: the occasional scuffle and an unremarkable street demonstration.

In any case, things have settled down. I’ve re-read, from the green notebook, the page from this day last year.

How young I was! Someday I’ll manage to accept hurt without it affecting my personal calm in the slightest. Perhaps this is the only way to be strong. Anyhow, probably many blows lie in store for me.

I ask myself if fleeing from the dorms and my fellow students, even for this rough sort of life I lead, was in fact an act of courage or one of cowardice.

I ask myself if I have the right, for the sake of my solitude, to laugh at the cheap heroism of Marcel Winder, who still today luxuriates in enumerating the beatings he gets. Though he goes off at the mouth and I restrain myself, the fact remains that he’s the one facing adversity while I turn my back on it.