Ghiţă Blidaru has pointedly refused to visit us in Uioara, and thus refused to set eyes on what he considers always to be a ‘deliberate crime’.

‘At last, he’s giving in,’ I said to myself, hastily, receiving the telegram. It was premature of me. Far from giving in, he has decided to criticize our work publicly.

His course this year will deal with the Romanian economy and its European deformations. The opening lecture will focus specifically on the two Uioaras, Old and New, as the starting point for the entire course. That’s why he’s here: to get some first-hand information.

He wouldn’t let me accompany him on his walk through the village. He assumes I’m in league with Vieru.

‘Stay at the oilfield and do your job. I’ll wander around on my own.’

In the evening he came to my workplace to get me. I was in boots, overalls and a short-sleeved collarless shirt. It seems I’ve turned terribly dark in the sun over the last few weeks.

‘You resemble a stonemason,’ he said to me. ‘It makes me happy to look at you.’

Like a stonemason … I don’t know about that. But I do feel free, at peace, ready to take things as they come, to await their unfolding with acceptance, to behold them without fear, to lose them without despair. I think of the big personal problems I used to have and I don’t understand them. I don’t understand them, and good riddance.

Life is easy. Life is terribly easy.

*

It rained two days in a row and the road from the cabin to Old Uioara is full of mud. I made a mighty fire in the stove and spent both evenings reading until past midnight. It smells of autumn – and we’re only in September. It brightened a little this morning and I thought the weather was picking up, but then it began pouring again, even more heavily.

At five, I received a visit that took me aback. Marjorie Dunton, in a raincoat, bareheaded, wet and trembling and noisy. (I hadn’t seen her in recent days. Except for once, last Wednesday I think, on the way to Prahova. She was with Dronţu, whom I just greeted in passing as he seemed terribly embarrassed.)

‘I’ve come to get you out of your lair.’

I found for her a dry blanket, slippers, a dressing gown and settled her by the fire so she could dry her hair, which, being so wet, was no longer blonde.

I made tea and had her drink it with lots of cognac.

So, we talked about this and that … I told her that in three or four days I would be leaving for Bucharest.

‘I know. You left around this time last year too.’

I like the direct way she speaks, without pauses, without pushiness, rather boyishly.

Later, Marin came in from the oilfield, not at all surprised at finding her with me. We walked her home together and, several times, where there was too much mud, I carried her over, swinging her and singing ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’.

She sang, triumphantly twirling the beret I’d given her to cover her head.

It’s a long way to Tipperary

It’s a long way to go …

2

The November issue of Der Querschnitt features a long essay on Mircea Vieru’s work, with photographs, scale models and reproductions. A special section on the Uioara project.

So, success. Definitive, incontrovertible success, from beyond the horizons of Bucharest. Who would have said, years ago, that it would come so soon?

When the professor took me the first time to Vieru’s house, I found him at the lowest point of his career. He was close to giving up the fight. If Ralph T. Rice hadn’t appeared from nowhere, Vieru would have been a broken man. I still don’t know today how he managed to put up with so much.

I couldn’t open a newspaper without finding a piece of news, an act of treachery, a farce. Everywhere, in the gossip columns, the society pages, in humorous magazines, in caricatures, the ‘affair of the day’, everywhere Mircea Vieru, only Mircea Vieru, every day Mircea Vieru. Every gaffe was attributed to him, every piece of nonsense was spoken by him, every joke was on him. In the summer, in the Cărăbuş review theatre, Tănase, with a trowel in one hand and a brick in the other, recited a couplet explaining the whole ‘affair’.