One more pathetic outburst like that and I’ll give up keeping a diary. What matters is whether I can understand calmly, critically, what is happening now to myself and others. Otherwise …

People say that this afternoon they’ll decide to close the university indefinitely.

2

Yesterday, on the platform, as I was getting off the train, Mama looked thinner and older than ever under the weak station lights. It was probably only her usual nerves, in our first hour of being together again.

Her nerves … ‘Have you got all your parcels? You didn’t leave anything on the train? Button up your collar properly. Now, to find a carriage …’ She talks a lot, hurriedly, about so many little things, and doesn’t wipe the tear from her lashes, afraid I’d notice it.

*

First walk in town. Triumphal procession down Main Street, between two rows of Jewish shopkeepers who salute me loudly, each from his own shop, with discreet knowing nods.

‘It’s nothing, lads, keep your chins up, God is good, it’ll pass.’

‘For two thousand years …’ says Moritz Bercovici (manufacturing and footwear), trying to explain to me the cause of our persecution.

At the barber’s, the owner himself takes the honour of cutting my hair and asks during the operation if I have any bruises, scars … if you know what I mean, sir.

‘No, I’ve no idea.’

‘Well, the fighting.’

‘What fighting?’

‘The fighting at the university. Didn’t you get beaten up?’

‘No.’

‘Not at all?’

‘Not at all.’

The man is perplexed. He cuts my hair grudgingly, unenthusiastically.

*

A family evening. My cousin Viky has returned with her husband from their honeymoon. Seems she’s pregnant. An uncle finds the matter amusing.

‘You’ve been hard at work, you two!’

Viky is embarrassed, her husband serious.

‘Well, young fellow, there you go! You’re done for now! Whether you like it or not, feel like it or not, you have to … You know the story about the train?’

He tells the story about the train. Everybody laughs loudly. In the corner, Mama looks at me, confused …

I might have ended up like the rest of them, a fat married shopkeeper, playing poker on Sunday evening and talking dirty to newlyweds. You know the one about the train?

I sometimes ask myself, fearfully, if I have wholly succeeded in escaping them.

*

I asked Mama if we could stay at home. She works, I read. I look up from the book from time to time to see her, beautiful, calm, with the most peaceful forehead I know, with her eyes a little tired with age. Forty-three? Forty-four? I’m afraid to ask her.

‘How are you getting on in Bucharest?’

‘Fine. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason.’

She continues working, without looking at me.

‘You know, Mama, if sending me 4,000 is too hard …’

She doesn’t respond. I go to the other side of the table, take her right hand in mine and squeeze it inquiringly.

‘It’s late, son. Time for bed.’

I should have guessed. Things have not been going well at home. There’s no more money. I’ve told her that from now on I’ll manage on 2,000 a month. I’ll stay in the student dormitories. It’s fine there too, it’s warm and clean and comfortable. (She doesn’t seem to believe me – and I talk quickly, surprised at the positive qualities that I’ve suddenly discovered in those barracks in the Jewish quarter in Văcăreşti.)

*

I can hear her breathing in the next room. I’m well aware that she can’t sleep and deliberately breathes as if she’s sleeping to fool me so that I won’t be worried.

Such childish nonsense. I should be ashamed of it, but I am not. At my age, unable to leave home for three months without that feeling of something clutching at my heart, without that great yearning overwhelming me just as I am about to be embraced goodbye. If I weren’t ashamed, I’d go and kiss her now, as I would in the past, when I woke in the night from a bad dream. The bad dream: that suitcase packed for the journey.

3

The voluptuousness of being alone in a world that believes it owns you. It’s not pride.