Us architecture students went to the college of medicine, because we didn’t have enough Jews in with us.’

He is moved, almost. It would be unfair of me not to understand: these are his memories of his younger days. They’re mine too – though they’re less cheerful. In any case, it would be grotesque of me to want to get indignant about these dead and buried matters. It’s not serious or aggressive any more. These ‘Down with the Yids’ of today are almost innocent, almost likable.

We strolled until late, relating innumerable tales of those times. Marin boasted of his deeds.

‘Back then I had a cudgel you wouldn’t believe. The Jews scarpered at the sight of me. I’d become famous at the faculty of medicine. ‘Dronţu from architecture.’ Who hadn’t heard of me? I’m surprised you hadn’t heard of me … I was wild!’

Isn’t it strange that I find myself good friends today with the unhappy heroes from the notebook of 1923?

I couldn’t say exactly how the successive truces which have brought us together were made. In any case, in our first year of university we were thrown into opposite corners, while today we find ourselves together in the same place. It’s no small matter.

A new page has been turned, and new questions arise. The uproar at the university was fine and well, but insufficient. You can’t build a life out of that kind of thing. Not even for those engaged in ‘a struggle to claim their rights’. Nor for us, whose struggle concerned ‘internal problems’.

I realize, as though in the wake of a storm, that the same winds buffeted us both and that we were being wrecked in the same sinking vessel. It’s easy to cry ‘Hooligans’, and very convenient. It’s almost as simple as ‘Down with the Yids’. Is that all there was to our little drama?

Back then I guessed there was something else to it. Now I’m sure of it. But it’s got nothing to do with a natural bandit like Marin Dronţu. It concerns Pârlea. Marin Dronţu flailing about with his cudgel is irrelevant. He’s just a demonstrator. Pârlea is a more serious case and, with him in mind, I wonder if it is always easier to be a hooligan than a victim. I have no doubt that Pârlea has suffered greatly through the path he has taken. His political nihilism, his innocent revolts and his formidable imprecations perhaps show puerility of thought, but what is interesting is not their quality, but his sincerity in living them, the passion he submits them to. It goes without saying, when someone is beating your head with a stick, it’s all the same to you whether he’s a bandit or a hero, and I won’t get so precious about it as to declare I’d prefer to be killed by an ideological revolver than by an illiterate one.

Though I can see my personal situation as being just as bad either way, I can still allow myself to reflect a little on my aggressor. Well, in the case of Ştefan Pârlea, I don’t envy him at all. Student unrest was for me perhaps a tragedy, but it was for him too. I provoked him one evening into speaking about his role in the movement. He replied with deliberate harshness.

‘I’m not sorry about what happened. I’m sorry about how it ended: in indifference, in forgetting … Smashing windows is fine.