Grandma reads with a certain air of superiority. For her, Grandmother and I are both illiterate, since all my French and German books don’t compensate for my ignorance of her Bible.

We began properly, in the beginning, with ‘Let there be light’. I listen to Grandma and the story becomes new to me, its appeal diaristic rather than biblical. Grandma reads avidly, visibly curious, turning the pages nervously and immersed in the delivery, as if it were about people she knew, neighbours or close relatives.

Sometimes, at decisive passages, she stops briefly, shakes her head and makes a sound of amazement, regret or tribulation with her tongue against the roof of her mouth (tsk, tsk) as if wanting to tell Abraham, Esther, Sarah or Jacob that they’re being foolish or imprudent.

There’s nothing ceremonious in the way Grandma reads. The Patriarchs don’t intimidate her. They, too, are hard-working men with wives and children, with troubles and sorrows. And if she, my grandmother, can place her experience at their disposal, as an elderly woman who has seen and lived through so much, why shouldn’t she?

Who knows? – perhaps such-and-such a patriarch has a sick child who needs to be rubbed with aromatic vinegar, or somebody has hurt a finger and needs some healing herbs, or whatever else. Or some biblical wife may need some lemon salt to put in the dinner, she’s out of it and the shop is far away … It happens – it happens in life – why not in the Bible? …

*

A vast, white, crystalline morning. The north wind raged through the night, through the streets, against the windows, against the rooftops.

Now, everything is shocked-still and transparent, as though under an immense glass sphere. If you shout, you can be heard from one end of the street to another, or perhaps further, as far as the Danube.

I finally made it to the docks. The mountains of snow that yesterday were surging up at us now lie defeated, like wild beasts, their muzzles laid upon their paws. Giant shaggy white lions, soft-maned, reclining.

There is only light, as if in the heart of a frozen sun. Something abstract in this steady, shining silence.

Only the Danube is rough and disturbed. Choppy, ashen – there is something agonized about it, arrested in its onward tumble. You would say it had frozen wave by wave, each wave struggling and suffering in defeat.

There is nothing of my lively, hurried Danube of March in it, my leisurely, regal Danube of autumn. It’s different, utterly different, deeper, more tumultuous, more silent.

5

We spend the afternoons in the workshop, drawing and modelling. It’s difficult, I have to admit. But it is work I could learn to love, unlike the standard morning classes, which are all as mediocre here as at the law and philosophy faculties. This is why I always return with pleasure to modelling clay in the workshop. Of course, what I’m making is absolutely worthless, and I wonder if I will ever manage to achieve anything in this world of earth, stone and cement.

As a mental exercise, though, I’ve never found anything more calming than this game of modelling clay. It’s a docile, malleable material with its own odd character and sometimes between my fingers I find a shape I hadn’t sought; a gracefully leaning oval, a rough face with terse broken lines or some other wonder drawn from the reluctant, indifferent material, which hides so many facets within itself.

And meanwhile, with my hands busy, my mind absorbed by the small phenomenon happening before my eyes, I have a feeling of freedom such as I doubt I’ve ever had before, even in the best days of the holidays.

It’s a form of detachment from myself, as distinct as a physical sensation.

In the evening, when I hang my overalls on the hook and wash my hands, everything seems to me clear and orderly, as it is in a simple, well-managed household.

Were I of a slightly more lyrical temperament, I’d write a hymn to tools, a song of praise for work. Fortunately, though, I’m sensitive enough to the ridiculousness of my inner enthusiasm to be aware how immature and amateurish it is. I have something of the naivety of a first-year medical student, ready to discover a cure for cancer. A real architect would probably laugh heartily, were he to read what I write here.

*

It seems Blidaru’s last few lectures, from Christmas until today, have been impressive. ‘This is no longer political economy,’ I’ve heard the specialists cry in the chancellery of the faculty. They may be right. From what I’ve managed to find out from the professor himself, and from what others have told me, it seems that, strictly speaking, his course about currency is no longer an economics course, but rather one about the philosophy of culture.

My study schedule doesn’t allow me even an hour on Thursday and Saturday, when Ghiţă Blidaru has his lectures. Anyway, he has vowed, if he catches me there, to just throw me out: ‘You’ve no business being at my course. Stay here where you are, and work. Full stop.’

*

I see him only occasionally, evenings, at his house, but when I do see him we stay up late, talking.