We watched planes practising taking off and landing. Marga, who had never seen a plane up close, enjoyed it immensely, as though watching some miraculous spectacle.

She ran through the fields after the shadows of the planes, the wide shadow of a big bird, flying low, several metres above the ground, and let out a cry of victory whenever she managed to step on the tail of one of these fleeting shadows with the toe of her shoe.

Then, tired, she fell into my arms, flushed and breathless, her hair blowing loose in the gentle evening breeze – unable to laugh as much as she wanted, but happy. Exuberantly, noisily happy.

The evening fell slowly, like a fluttering flag, and we turned back towards the city, tired after so much fresh air.

‘Come and sleep with me, Marga.’

I said this to her so simply that she knew I was not joking. She let go of my hand. Not brusquely, but decisively. She is a virtuous girl, after all – and there’s nothing anybody can do about that.

Her moral resistance is more powerful than the most miraculous April dusk.

‘Moral resistance’ is overstating it. Really, it’s something more than a virtue: it’s an inability to cede. Somewhere in the mind of that sensual, loving girl is a voice that asks, ‘And, after that, what will become of you?’ That’s called foresight, and is also called mediocrity.

I don’t doubt either her sense of shame or her passion. But they are both equally modest. She doesn’t have enough of a sense of shame to resist embraces. Or sufficient passion to surrender to them completely. There is always a final line of caution, marking where the effusion must cease.

I’ve watched people playing roulette, contorted with suffering – but those who threw themselves into the game, losing everything, money, honour and life, didn’t seem as abject as the frightened players who trembled for every chip, made endless calculations every five minutes and bowed out the moment they’d lost a ‘reasonable’ amount. I think mediocrity in vice is the most dishonourable kind of mediocrity.

There is something of this fearful moderation in Marga’s way of hesitating. And the feeling that, even in our closest moments of understanding, she has taken, as they say, ‘all the necessary measures’ discourages me.

I know that from this point on any spontaneous action is out of the question.

I’d like to be a vulgar king of the slums, a charming rake, who could seduce his love and be indifferent thereafter. Marga’s excuses would be of the highest order and yet insufficient. Then the issue would not be me and what I can give in exchange, but what she can light-heartedly give away, with a total lack of precaution. In love you’re only worth as much as you can afford to lose.

*

I’m tired of myself, fed up with her. We’re splitting up. She’s a good girl and will make an excellent wife. She’s part of a race of wives.

I can’t recall: is there a female beloved, a lover, in the Bible? Seems there are only mothers, sisters and wives. It’s very nice, but stifling somehow.

I think from here, from this slow slipping into too many attachments, comes the Jew’s taste for solitude, a nostalgia for being on your own, like a stone. I envy the supreme insensibility of objects, their extreme indifference.

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PART THREE

1

I walked back to the site from the station, after accompanying the master, who was taking the train to Braşov.

‘Who’d ever think they’ve been working here five years,’ he said to me on the way, at the corner by the river Ursu, from where you still see, among the tops of the oil derricks, some of the tops of the roofs of our buildings. It was an offhand comment and I didn’t sense he was looking for a sentimental reply from me. He’s not the kind.

‘Five years, indeed,’ I agreed.

At the station, awaiting the train, we again went over the work schedule for the coming week. I gave him some documents to sign and tried to reopen the discussion about the Rice villa, hoping to catch him in a more conciliatory mood in the moment of departure.

‘We might at least wait a few days, until old Ralph gets back.’

‘No, not an hour’s delay. Work will continue as planned. Understood? You’ll answer for any delay and I’ll brook no excuses. The work will continue, even if it rains. Tell Dronţu that.’

Then, because he’d spoken rather harshly, he took my arm and suddenly lowered his voice:

‘That’s how we work. If Rice doesn’t like it, he can demolish it. But all the same, that’s how we work.’

We separated, agreeing.

The day was still bright and I felt the need to wander about on my own.