Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent

by Mircea Eliade

  ‘What do you mean by virginal?’ I put in, adding fuel to the fire.

  ‘Spare me your philology, doctor...’

  ‘It’s not a question of philology’, I retorted, becoming angry. ‘It’s a question of virgins.’

  Robert was upset that we didn’t understand him. Whenever he can’t come up with an answer, he sighs: we just don’t understand him.

  ‘Did you know that Maria wrote to me?...

  Dinu and I were both certain that she hadn’t.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She bores me with her declarations of love.’

  ‘I told her that I didn’t love her anymore. She’s not my type...’

  And he lay down on the bench again, his gaze still fastened on the linden tree. He was thinking. By now the music had stopped. Couples came walking past under the trees, and Dinu watched them. Ah, the first days of summer and all their temptations! It filled me with excitement too, but I resisted. I didn’t want to succumb to melancholy and end up telling them about my own more or less imaginary bucolic idylls.

  ‘I’ve never seen you walking down the street with a woman’, Dinu launched a surprise attack.

  ‘I don’t wander the streets with my lovers...’

  There was a pause. I sensed that Dinu was getting agitated. He was certainly tempted to open his heart to someone. I’ve become extremely observant. I can quickly recognize people who are tormented by this inner compulsion. Many of my friends confide in me. They regard me as a born confessor. But they’ve never realized how little I care about the state of their souls. Because their confessions aren’t sincere. They all try to be the most original in the eyes of others: to make them admire or sympathize with them.

  Yet having said that, even I am occasionally tempted to bare my soul. But I hold myself back. I never tell anyone about what I imagine might be happening in the depths of my being. Confessions annoy me. They’re a sign of weakness. I don’t understand how a man could need support from someone else. When times are hard, even the best of friends is an enemy. At moments like that you have to be alone. It’s alone that we either stand or fall.

  And I can’t confide in my friends. They have already made up their minds about me: I’m ‘the doctor’. While I – from the little I understand – think otherwise. But if I were to open up to my friends, they’d tell me that everything I say is just a ‘pose.’ For boys, ‘posing’ means anything that distinguishes them from each other.

  Bowing to the inevitable, I asked Dinu who his first woman had been.

  ‘What, I haven’t told you?’ He sat up, absolutely delighted.

  He had told me countless times.

  ‘You told me ages ago, but I don’t remember it that well. Besides, Robert should hear this as well...’

  ‘Yes, yes, that would be interesting.’

  As Robert sat up, I noticed that his eyes were alert.

  I had heard about this escapade numerous times, in several different versions. So far, Dinu had had seventeen women. I even knew their names, the colour of their hair, and many other details. But his versions about the first woman interested me particularly – mainly because they were so varied and amusing. In one he told me that his first woman had been a widow with red hair who lived on the same street as him; in another, it was the opposite: she had raven-black hair, was married and very rich. But that wasn’t all. He would recount sub-categories of the same story as well as variations of variations. For instance, his first woman had had black hair, was a widow and lived on the same street as him; or she was a redhead, married and rich; or lived on the same street, etc.

  Dinu began in a nonchalant tone. He – a handsome boy in the Third Form, with black eyes, cherry lips, and wearing a well-tailored tunic – was walking home from school one day when, without warning, a flustered maidservant rushed out of an alleyway and grabbed him by the hand. Before he knew what was happening he found himself in a bedroom. In the bedroom there was a bed, and in the bed, a voluptuously clad girl with copper-coloured hair.

  ‘A girl?’ said Robert, his curiosity aroused.

  ‘That was only how it seemed,’ replied the other, warily.

  I didn’t say a word. But Robert decided to, and leant over to me.

  ‘Doesn’t it seem to you, Doctor, that Dinu’s escapade is somewhat reminiscent of Caragiale’s The Sin?

  To me it certainly did seem ‘reminiscent’. But feigning innocence, I replied: ‘So you think Dinu’s first woman was in Caragiale’s play, The Sin?’

  For the next five minutes we listened to military music coming from the other side of the lake.

  ‘Have you read The Sin? Robert asked him.

  ‘I don’t remember...’

  By the time we left the Cişmigiu Gardens it was getting late. As I write, I can’t hear a single electric tram out on the boulevard. I don’t feel like sleeping. It’s hot. And I’m not at all happy.

  I know what I’m going through: I’m sentimental. It’s pointless trying to hide it. I’m as sentimental as any other adolescent. Otherwise I wouldn’t be unhappy now. I have no reason to be unhappy.

  So I understand now why I’m unhappy. It’s because I didn’t ‘open my heart’ to my friends. I’m just like all the others.

  I need friends as well. There’s no point in lying to myself. So I’m just like all the others.

  I want truth, and nothing but the truth. I want to be sincere.

  Yet apparently I’m not aware of this. Aren’t I aware that I’m sentimental and weak, completely lacking willpower? Don’t I also dream of blonde virgins, with whom I stroll through the park in the moonlight, or sail on the lake in a white rowing boat? Don’t I imagine myself performing heroic deeds, winning the victor’s laurels and the kisses of beautiful women who I’ve never met and who...?

  But all these things are sad and foolish. I won’t get any better by writing about them in my notebook. And I can’t even write about them. They’re laughable.

  I must do something else. I should get my rope and whip myself. Because I’m an imbecile. Because I waste time wandering round the Cişmigiu Gardens, and am wasting time even now, dreaming of radiant marguerites with my eyes raised heavenward and my hands clasped over my breast.

  And there’s more. I’m the biggest simpleton of all, as much as I try to hide it. I’m such a simpleton that I’m not shocked at how I’ve wasted this whole evening, or at the feebleness of my soul, or the ruin that is my willpower, or the barren wasteland of my mind. And here I am, writing this instead of purifying myself with my whip. I’m disgusted with everything, even with pain. I was looking forward to physical pain. But now...

  I’m not even tired. And I can’t even read.

  Which is a sure sign that I’m an imbecile.

  A Friend

  My friend Marcu is tall and skinny, with large, bulging eyes, curly hair, long fingers and long legs. He sits at the back of the class and reads French novels. The other boys think he’s stupid, and they call him, ‘Splinter’ because of the length of his nose, and sometimes ‘Moses’ because he’s a Jew. Marcu doesn’t get annoyed at either of these nicknames. He arrives every morning with a novel in his bag, and sits quietly reading it at the back. If there’s any commotion he just frowns and carries on reading. If people climb onto the desks, he puts his fingers in his ears and keeps reading. Even if a fight breaks out at the desk next to him, he simply moves to another desk and continues to read.

  He reads his novel.

  He even reads when a master is in the room. At these times he props his book against the back of the boy in front of him. He even reads while the master is actually teaching, because Marcu believes that schoolmasters are without exception blithering idiots, and that what they teach is harmful to a healthy brain. Sometimes his neighbours warn him: ‘Marcu, he’s nearly got to you!’

  This means that those whose names come
just before his in the class register have already been called. Disgruntled, Marcu raises his large eyes from his book. He inquires about the lesson. Occasionally he even goes so far as to ask someone to explain something. He never misses an opportunity to throw the master a ‘red herring’ – as long as he doesn’t have to spend too long up at the blackboard, because the novel must be read at all costs. But if he’s asked a question in chemistry, however, he doesn’t move a muscle. He knows he’ll still get an ‘Unsatisfactory’ anyway.

  ‘Ionescu Corneliu, Ionescu Stelian, Malareanu Marcu...’

  A classmate nudged him: ‘Up you go, Marcu! Your name’s been called.’

  Marcu joined the queue in front of the blackboard, arms crossed. When his turn came, and Toivinovici asked him a question, he calmly answered: ‘I don’t know sir.’

  ‘What about the industrial preparation of sulphuric acid?’

  ‘I don’t know sir.’

  So Toivinovici asked the first two boys, who had been cramming frantically all week.

  They gabbled away and covered the board with formulae.

  ‘That’ll do. Marcu, could you draw a diagram of the structure of the compound pentaphosphoric acid?’

  ‘I don’t know sir.’

  ‘Go and sit down, Marcu.’

  He walked away, grinning, his long arms bumping against the desks. When he got back to his seat, he complained to his neighbours: ‘Why did you make me close my book?’

  Once Noisil caught him reading in class. The master was pacing up and down the room, explaining the different phases of the Hundred Years War, when he spotted Marcu immersed in volume I of Le Rouge et le Noir, which I had lent him.

  Noisil promptly put his hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Reading books in history class is not allowed. What did I tell you before?’

  Marcu couldn’t remember. Noisil suspended him for three days.

  ‘You are to donate the book to the school library,’ Noisil told him.

  Filled with chagrin, I remembered that it was my book.

  When he came back to school, Marcu told us that his parents hadn’t found out about him being suspended, because every morning he left home with his schoolbag and spent the day reading novels in the Cişmigiu Gardens, until the factory sirens sounded in the evening.

  ‘God bless Noisil!’ he said. ‘Thanks to him I was able to finish Les Miserables.’*

  He always cheats during tests. He either gets out his textbook or a crib sheet, or his neighbours whisper the answers to him. Nothing seems to ruffle him, and he never spares a thought for what would happen if he were unlucky enough to get caught. The masters think he’s dense and uneducated. When he’s called up to the blackboard, he goes red and comes out with irrelevant nonsense, stutters or doesn’t say anything at all. This is why his classmates consider him incurably stupid. Although some people, those who are less inclined to judge hastily, wonder why someone who reads so many books is sent out of class so often, and either mumbles to himself, or says nothing at all like a complete ignoramus.

  ‘Because he doesn’t care about school or the teachers!’ I cry, taking his side.

  I know that when he’s not forced to regurgitate schoolwork, Marcu speaks beautifully and with great originality. We became friends one evening as we walked home from school together. I was criticizing La Garçonne*, a novel by Margueritte, while he defended it.

  Up till then I hadn’t known any more about him than all the others. But I soon realized that I was wrong. He was crazy about Balzac, and even managed to convert me. We read only Balzac, everything we could lay our hands on. We were soon great authorities on La Comédie Humaine, and competed with each other to know the most about the characters, minutiae and all the other curiosities of Balzac’s work. When our supplies ran out, we scoured the bookshops and second-hand dealers until we found what we wanted.

  Between us we introduced the rest of the class to Balzac. One of our first disciples was Robert. We tormented him by giving him the worst novels to read, and he admired them. When he began to suspect that we were making fun of him, he would assure us hesitantly: ‘To be honest I didn’t think L’Enfant Maudit* was brilliant. It’s good, but not very...’

  The other boys call Marcu a communist and an anarchist, but it doesn’t bother him, because it’s his own fault that they use these names. One morning, he came to school with some socialist propaganda material, booklets by Engels and Kautsky, and Marx’s Das Kapital. Another time he took two French books with red covers out of his bag: Stirner’s L’Unique*, and a large volume by Kropotkin. Marcu said they were very interesting, but the others – who knew all about him – discovered that the books were anarchistic, and began to be frightened of him. They don’t hate him, but look down on him, and some speak with aristocratic disdain of the danger of the ‘Bolshevik hell.’

  Marcu was never really serious when he said he supported anarchism. He simply said that it was interesting, and if we asked he would explain anarchist ideology to us. But if he felt like annoying the aristocrats, he would admit to being a disciple of Kropotikin and Bakunin.

  The aristocrats are convinced that he really is a follower of anarchism and communism, but that he’s afraid to admit it publicly. If anyone were to tell the aristocrats that anarchists and communists are irreconcilable, they would say he was talking nonsense.

  Marcu assures the sons of the gentry that it won’t be long before their land is expropriated again. When I asked him how he knew this, he told me he made it up, to worry the landowners’ sons. In our class there are only two, but Marcu claims that there are actually far more.

  Not everyone knows how to talk to Marcu. He always finds a reason to doubt whatever he has just said. This doesn’t bother me at all; on the contrary, I find him most original. Only when I produce one argument after another and he still won’t accept them as valid – because he finds them dubious – do I get angry. I think he actually enjoys all this, and maybe I’m not far wrong in guessing that the aim of all his arguing is just to annoy the rest of us.

  ‘I’ve got him going!’

  Whenever he manages to ‘get someone going’, Marcu is very pleased with himself. He runs his fingers through his curly hair and can’t sit still. That’s why not just anyone can talk to him.

  Whenever there’s a general discussion in class and the aristocrats are involved, he automatically takes the other side, even if it’s wrong. He always ends up ‘getting the aristocrats going’.

  Particularly Furtuneanu. Furtuneanu refers to him as a ‘destructive Jew,’ forgetting that he’s actually very close to another Jew, Lazimir, a rich boy with whom he plays poker every week. Furtu­neanu has loathed Marcu ever since he was ‘discourteous’ to him. We all had to have our hair cut, shaved to at least number 3, and most of us did as we were told. The few who forgot were sent to get it done during class, to their great delight. Furtuneanu was the only one to come back with his dark, flowing locks still intact, untouched by clippers for two years. His father came with him, and told the Headmaster that if his son were forced to have his hair cut then he would remove him from the school. The Headmaster gave in, and accepted the ‘medical certificate’ that explained that the pupil Furtuneanu Petre couldn’t have a hair cut because he suffered from an ear infection. It was true that Furtuneanu had had otitis, but that was a year ago and he still had long hair. The rest of the class rebelled at first, but then gave in, just like the Headmaster.

  However, the other masters demanded an explanation. So Furtuneanu provided one: ‘After suffering from an ear infection I now catch cold easily. If my head were shaved, it would only take the slightest breeze and the infection would come back. That’s why...’

  ‘...His mummy keeps him wrapped in cotton wool,’ Marcu whispered to the boy next to him, but loud enough for Trollo to hear. The others all sniggered.

  ‘Please don’t address me in a way in whic
h I wouldn’t address you. Please behave with decorum. Please make an effort to be well-mannered, even if that’s not the way you’ve been brought up at home...’

  ‘It sounds like you’re going to choke’, Marcu replied, impassively.

  The roars of laughter prevented Furtuneanu from saying any more. But after the lesson had finished, he went and sat next to Marcu and talked to him for a quarter of an hour. His face turned bright red, and he kept spraying saliva through a gap where two of his front teeth had fallen out. He insulted Marcu, told him he was badly brought-up, and concluded with these terrible words: ‘Don’t ever shake my hand in the street again!’

  Marcu was red in the face as well, but seemed unperturbed. Later on he told me how glad he was to have been able to make Furtureanu spit and bellow for a quarter of an hour.

  From that moment on, Furtuneanu became Marcu’s sworn enemy.

  He had no reason to admire him in any case, because he didn’t really know him. During lessons, in front of the master and his classmates, Marcu rarely says anything original. Only in our private discussions is he able to be himself. Perhaps he’s nervous in front of the other boys, or thinks it’s wiser not to reveal himself too much. All the same, I was astonished when, quite inexplicably, Marcu wasn’t able to analyse Eminescu’s poem, the Emperor and Proletarian without referring to the criticism by Gherea. Yet this wasn’t the first time that he couldn’t answer a question in class without relying on other people’s work. Perhaps he finds the presence of the class and the master intimidating.

  Marcu told me that he doesn’t believe in anything, and doubts every­thing. Yet when he’s defending a theory or opposing someone, he will only challenge – and with great precision – the actual arguments that they put forward. And when it comes to his own assertions, he makes his case with great conviction. Perhaps he doesn’t realize that at these times he isn’t being very sceptical.

  *

  Today I read a book by Ionel Teodoreanu, Childhood Lane, and I cried. I wasn’t ashamed: I cried. I quickly washed my face with cold water so no one would see an emotional, short-sighted boy with tears in his eyes. All day long I was in love with Sonia. I even believed I’d had more success with her than Stefānel did. I imagined that I was handsome, interesting, and illustrious. I imagined myself at la Medeleni, playing Scheherezade, with Sonia near me.