I don’t think she saw me. And she was also here last Thursday. (Hacker from accounting brought her by motor car and I heard it from his mouth.) ‘Give her my regards, if you’re heading back together this evening.’ ‘No,’ Hacker replied, ‘I’m going back alone. Mrs Dunton is spending the night in Bucharest.’

On Friday, in the workshop, I dropped it on Dronţu. ‘Did you sleep well last night, Marin?’

Stupid question.

*

Sami Winkler called by to see me at the workshop, to ask me for a letter of recommendation for Ralph T. Rice.

‘Are you looking to be a miner?’

‘It’s not for me. It’s for some boys we’re training for going to Palestine. And they need a couple of months’ experience in a refinery. I thought you might be able to smooth the way in the head office. Unpaid work, you understand.’

I brought Winkler round to Piaţa Rosetti and introduced him to old Ralph. I think he’s going to do it.

‘I hope you don’t mind, Winkler, and excuse me for asking. Did you complete your thesis?’

‘I abandoned it a long time ago. It no longer interests me. I’ll stay another two or three years, then I’m leaving. I’ll be a farmer in some colony.’

‘Why a farmer? Don’t they need doctors over there?’

‘Doctors perhaps, but not diplomas. I’ll be working the land somewhere, in a colony, and when a doctor’s needed I’ll act as a doctor. I still know how to do a bandage.’

Winkler means what he says. For the last four years he’s worked from spring to autumn on a farm in Bessarabia organized by Zionists to train pioneers.

‘I’m not boasting, but I can plough very well.’

He says this simply, without giving himself airs, almost with indifference, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

‘Explain to me, please, why you’re leaving. In 1923 it would have been understandable. But today, now that things have settled down? I’ve the impression that everything has changed over the last five years. It’s safer, there’s more goodwill, more understanding. You can breathe, you can talk with people.’

‘Perhaps. But I’m leaving, not running away. I’m not leaving because it’s bad here and there it’s good, but simply because I can’t live anywhere in the world but there. I’m a Zionist, not a deserter. Listen, in 1923, in the middle of anti-Semitic unrest, Zionism was at its apogee, while today, when everything is calm and prosperous, Zionism finds itself in crisis. But I prefer this Zionism in crisis, because it’s made up of determined people, while the Zionism of 1923 was made up of frightened people.’

*

Evening at Costaridi’s. Long arguments about angst, contemporary neurosis, Gide, the war generation, Berdyaev … I’m amazed at the verve with which people can discuss angst while drinking a coffee. In 1923, in my green notebook period, I would probably have argued passionately. These days I experience a very specific discomfort in dealing with any broad problem, whether it’s angst or destiny or crisis … It’s the abuse of language that puts me off.

Look at Radu Şiriu, broad-shouldered, fit, pink and plump, declaring, with no sense of the ridiculous, as if in a Russian novel:

‘I know nothing, I don’t understand anything: I’m experiencing a crisis.’

How does he manage not to choke on the poor taste of such a declaration? ‘It’s trivial,’ I remark to those around me.

‘Yes, trivial,’ says Ştefan D. Pârlea, picking up the remark from the other corner. ‘Yes, it’s in poor taste. So what? Is that what we need? To be delicate, spiritual, sceptical? A culture based on good manners – it disgusts me. Don’t feel any pain, because it’s in poor taste. Don’t scream, because of what the neighbours will say? Don’t live, it isn’t polite. Dear people, enough of this stupidity.