Just look at what he thinks, your ex-friend Mircea Eliade.
Thursday, 21 [September]
I was in court, waiting my turn for an adjournment, when a woman pale with fright leaned across the counsels’ bench and whispered to someone: “They’ve shot Armand Calinescu; it was on the radio.”
I took a taxi and raced home, where I found everyone downstairs at the Pascals, panic-stricken around the radio, though it was broadcasting a normal musical program. What had happened? Half an hour before, the announcer had broken in with a cry of alarm and then hastily said a few unclear words about the killing of the prime minister. After a pause, service resumed and another announcer said that “the interruption to the broadcast was because of an unfortunate incident.”
I was convinced that it had all been a bad joke. Rosetti said on the phone that he thought the same, but that in any case he knew nothing about it. I went into town, and nowhere was there the slightest sign of unrest. The afternoon papers came out at four, as usual.
Back at my place in Calea Victoriei, however, I received a call from Alice Theodorian with news from Armand’s sister-in-law (whom I met myself at Alice’s the day before yesterday). Yes, Armand was murdered today in his car between one and one-thirty; a group of Legionaries had waited beneath a timber cart and opened fire several times when his car approached. At the same time, another group burst into the radio station and broadcast the news. Both groups were captured—but Armand is dead.
If it is true, the situation is disastrous. It is a question not only of the internal situation (which could be dealt with one way or another), but also of the Germans and the Russians, who might enter the country “to establish order” and “to protect their kith and kin.”
From one hour to the next, one day to the next, we could lose everything: a roof over our heads, bread to eat, our modicum of security, even our lives.
And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to be done about it.
It is a wonderfully sunny autumn day. I lie on the chaise longue on my terrace and look at this city, which can be seen so well from above. The streets are full of life, cars drive along in every direction, traffic policemen direct the traffic from their boxes, the shops are open for customers—the whole machinery of this great city seems to be working normally, and yet somewhere at its heart a terrible blow has been delivered, without yet being felt. It is as if we were in a city strewn with dynamite due to explode in five minutes’ time—a city which, for the moment, carries on unawares, as if nothing has happened.
A short while ago I saw a group of Polish refugees coming toward my block. They were raggedly dressed, each carrying a battered backpack, but they were alive—do you know what I mean?—alive and saved. Maybe we (Benu, Mama, Tata, myself) won’t even be that by this evening, tomorrow, or the day after—not even refugees who have escaped the fire with nothing but their lives.
I am probably one of those who are made to await death with resignation, to accept it. I don’t see any defensive gesture I could make; no thought of escape or refuge crosses my mind.
Saturday, 23 [September]
The assassins—six or nine, I still don’t know—were “executed at the scene of the crime” and left on the pavement for a day and a night, with a placard saying: “Traitors to the country!”
Yesterday morning I went there (the other side of the Elefterie Bridge). Thousands of people came by streetcar, by car, by bus, or on foot. It was like a big fair. They were laughing and joking. A company from my regiment only just managed to keep the crowd at a distance from the killers’ dead bodies. (If I had been called up, I might even have been there myself, on guard!) Those who were unable to squeeze through to the front saw nothing. A lady beside me said:
“They should keep order, put us in two rows so that everyone can see.”
People from nearby had brought some wooden stepladders, and those who wanted a better view paid two lei to climb up and look over the rest.
“Don’t do it!” said one guy who had paid his two lei but had been disappointed. “Don’t do it! All you can see are their feet.” It all seemed appalling, humiliating, shameful. Apparently the same spectacle took place in Craiova, Ploiesti, and Turnu Severin. Radio London said last night that there have been “dozens of executions,” but it is whispered that there have been not dozens but hundreds. Some even give a precise figure: four hundred. It seems that all the Legionaries in the camps and prisons have been executed.
I wonder what has happened to Nae. Rosetti asked and was told that he’s been “missing for two days.” What does “missing” mean? Escaped? Taken elsewhere and kept under guard? Shot?
I rang Mircea, also feeling anxious about his fate. He himself answered, and I told him about the proofs of an article of his for the Revistă. But I found out what I wanted to know: he is alive.
It seems that the assassination was planned when the Germans were advancing with dizzying speed to the Polish-Romanian frontier. With the Germans already in northern Bukovina, nothing would have been easier for them than to enter the country at the moment of Armand’s assassination, especially as a plot had been organized among the Bukovinan Romanians to be “liberated by their brothers.” It was all supposed to be a perfect copy—in both design and execution—of the assassination of Dollfuss.4
What spoiled the plan was the unexpected entry of the Russians into Poland, and especially their quite unexpected arrival at the Polish-Romanian frontier, which meant that Romania had no common border with the Germans. That is the only thing which, for the moment, saves us from immediate disaster.
I am at my wit’s end. There is nothing to think, nothing to foresee. Let us wait and, if possible, not lose our heads too much.
Monday, 25 [September]
I came home last night with a heavy heart, terrified at all that is happening and all that might happen. The number of dead is still not clear: tens, hundreds, or thousands.5
At Rîmnicu Sârat, at two o’clock in the morning, Misu Polihroniade, Tell, and the others were shot (“machine-gunned,” according to Nina) and thrown into the prison yard for all to see. In the other towns it was the same story (at least as reported by Constandache6 and Onicescu, who had been in different places and—again according to Nina—seen things with their own eyes). At yesterday’s rehearsals at the Studio, Marietta was in tears in her dressing room, saying that “all the kids at Ciuc” have been shot, as well as the ones at Vaslui. Among them were Belgea and Garcineanu. It’s thought certain that Nae will be shot by this evening. Rosetti, whom I saw in the evening at Camil’s, confirms this. Only late at night was I rung and told that Nae is alive—ill in bed at home, but alive.
I cannot judge this drama politically. I am horrified as a human being. I know that all these people, whether collectively or separately, would have calmly witnessed Legionary terror and killed us with the utmost indifference. I also know that their blindness went beyond all limits. And yet, and yet, I feel sad, troubled, overwhelmed by a bitter taste in the mouth.
I stayed home alone, both yesterday evening and this evening, and the first thing I did back in my room was listen again to Mozart’s andante, which serves me as a refuge. Then I read some of Dubnow’s History of the Jews: the pages about Venice, Padua, Prague, Vienna, and Frankfurt in the sixteenth century. As I read, I felt that I was moving away in time. It is good to know you are from a people that has seen many things down the ages—some even more terrible than what is happening today.
Misu Polihroniade as a martyr for a political cause? Nothing destined him for that. It’s a mistake, a misunderstanding, a tragic joke. He didn’t want that, didn’t believe that, never imagined that. How life makes of us more than we wish or are able to be! How few things actually depend on us! What a chain of remote, unforeseen consequences is within one of our gestures, one incident, one chance event. That guy wanted a deputy’s seat in parliament—at least as a junior minister. And then he ends up a revolutionary. I think that, right up to the last moment, he cou
ldn’t understand why things had taken the turn they did, where exactly they had started to go wrong.
I went to Mircea's yesterday afternoon. I had already seen Nina at the Foundation, pallid, tear-stained, wringing her hands in despair.
"They're going to kill Mircea," she said. "Don't let them kill Mircea."
I went to see them because I know that right now no one has the courage to visit them. Everything pulls us apart, of course, absolutely everything, but I told myself that it will give them a little heart to speak to someone, even if that someone is me. I found him much calmer and at ease. Rosetti will talk to Ralea and lamandi, maybe someone even higher, to get Mircea out of harm's way. We made our laments together— but in different ways. I think I am morally more entitled to feel distressed than he is. For, in one way or another, he willed it, he assented to it.
But today his attitude is pessimistic. “Attitude” is to put it too strongly: rather, remnants of attitudes, barely controlled rages, deep aversions, a terrible hatred that would like to scream but cannot. He said that the current repression is criminal “now that the enemy is at the gates.” But wasn’t the assassination of Armand Călinescu also committed “with the enemy at the gates”? I put the question to him and he shrugged his shoulders.
I didn’t call round to argue with him, nor to be in the right. We shall never settle accounts between us. Or maybe later, when everything has become more remote—if we are still alive then. I have the feeling that what he awaits now, as a kind of desperate revenge, is a German or Russian invasion.
“I believe in the future of the Romanian people,” he said, “but the Romanian state should disappear.”
I left feeling irritated. My attempt to communicate with him, to be of some use by making him feel that he was not abandoned, had been a failure.
Wednesday, 11 October
A disturbing letter from Dinu Noica. I wrote on Rosetti’s behalf suggesting that he publish his thesis at the Foundations. His reply is negative. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with F.R.
“We haven’t seen each other for a long time, dear Mihai, and you don’t know how much I enjoy the pleasure of refusal. How could I not be delighted to refuse one of the things to which I used to be most attached!”
At the same time he wrote a letter to Rosetti (which I read this morning)—a perfectly straightforward refusal, without any ostentation or bravura. It is his way of disowning everything that has happened, his way of remaining faithful to his “ideas.” They are the one and the same ideas that require nothing of Mircea, for example, yet compel Dinu Noica to change his life, his gestures, his everyday behavior.
Monday, 16 [October]
Leni has slept with “Handsome Bubi,” or so Zoe claims. Zoe is mad about “Handsome Bubi,” or so Leni claims. I listen to them both—and laugh. It is a chain of comic situations in which I, without wanting to be, am one link. “Handsome Bubi” hears confessions from the one and the other, learning that I in turn was mad now about Leni, now about Zoe. The whole story is like a vaudeville show, in which I don’t seem to have the most flattering role. The tenor’s part is already taken. But anyway, all this has been going on for several months—and it is only now that I hear about it. Calmly enough, though, to be able to smile.
A splendid autumn day, after a few weeks of cloudy weather. I’d like to lie on the chaise longue in the sun, or go for a walk somewhere on the Stina, or be on the pier in Balcic.
The war still exists, but somewhere far away, on another continent.
Wednesday, 18 [October]
Thirty-two years. I feel old, ugly, worn out. It gives me no pleasure at all to look at myself in the mirror. Sometimes I feel disgusted at the sight of this man, pale, baggy-eyed, and balding, but still with a kind of air of haggard youth. I try not to think of my life—either that which is past, or that which lies ahead. There is a sense of futility that fills me with despair, and that I would like to avoid, to forget.
Leni was here yesterday, and I let her talk again about the affair involving Bubi, Zoe, Leni, and myself. Again I couldn’t help noticing the comedy in this quadrille.
I cannot deny, however, that I still have pangs of feeling and a certain embarrassment at everything that has happened, and everything I failed to anticipate.
I want to go to Predeal next week, for ten to fifteen days, and to finish the novel in that time. Rosetti wants to publish it himself, and I can't refuse him, but I would have preferred Ocneanu, even if it would have been less secure financially. The Foundation's style of book cover, impersonal, austere, and uniform as it is, is quite suitable for a study or an essay, but I fear it would do disservice to a novel.
But it goes without saying that no consideration, however well grounded, will make me offend R. by refusing him the book once he has asked me for it.
Besides, the only important thing in all this is that the novel should appear—as soon as possible. I must get free of it—and I have the feeling that I would thereby also get free of many other old matters that are connected with it.
Thursday, 26 [October]
Maybe in the end I shall manage to leave on Sunday afternoon for Predeal for five or six days, and later for another five or six days. Will that be enough for me to finish the novel? I don’t know, but it will have to be. I have so many things waiting to be done, calling out to me. I keep thinking of the play (which could not bear for long not to be written). More and more, I also think of my future novel, which is occupying more space as it grows both deeper and denser.
If I go, I shall stay at the Robinson villa, where Craciun has the kindness to take me in for only three hundred lei a day. I have fond thoughts about that welcoming, luminous, almost elegant house, and I hope it will also be favorable to my book.
The last few days have been terrible. I was as tired as a packhorse. Each day there was business in court (not all happily resolved—the loss of Leni’s case with Mr. Serbescu was especially distressing), and each day I had to rush to the printer’s in alarm that, because of me, the Revistă might not appear on time. Everything I do—office, court, editing—I do with absurd tension and unease, in panic and disorder, with neither method nor mastery. Am I really incapable of putting a little order, I won’t say into my fragmented life, but at least into my work?
When I came home yesterday, and the day before yesterday, I was not only dropping from fatigue but ashamed of the state I had reached.
I am so inconsiderate that over the last few days I have not even paused for a moment to think of Poldy, who has probably already left Sceaux for his regiment (as he anticipated in a letter I received on Saturday), or anyway for a training center in the Pyrenees.
He must come out of this war in one piece. I would like him to understand that this is his duty. I would like to tell him straight that his life (at least with regard to Mama) also has to make up for my failure of a life.
A little music—Enescu, Franck’s Sonata, a couple of Beethoven pieces, one Mozart, one Bach, one Faure; a Brandenburg concerto (the fifth, I think), Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, more beautiful than ever—and a two-day excursion to Cimpulung with Rosetti, in the miraculous weather of a glorious autumn. These have been my only relaxation, my only escape.
Predeal. Sunday, 29 [October]
The Robinson villa. I am in the room that Suchianu had two years ago. There is only one other lodger in the whole villa—an Italian diplomat, it would seem.
In this quiet I hope to be able to work. I have arrived feeling very weary, with a kind of tightness in my chest (am I a heart case? I keep wondering). But I think that I shall rest and write at the same time. What shatters me in Bucharest is the disorder, the rushing around.
This morning there was a disgusting meeting at the Writers’ Association. Had it not been for Ralea’s candidacy (which he anyway withdrew at the last minute—those democrats make themselves scarce at the first sign of danger), I wouldn’t even have gone along. Herescu the president!7 What a farce!
Monday, 30 [
October]
Midnight
I have finished Chapter Ten, the one I broke off when I left Stîna de Vale. I worked all day, from nine in the morning until now, with a break at midday and another in the evening, to eat and to walk for an hour through Predeal.
The result: ten pages. That’s a record. Don’t let’s talk about quality. I can’t tell what they are like, and I could almost say that it doesn’t interest me. I want to write and to be over with it. May God take care of the rest.
Tuesday, 31 [October]
Three degrees below zero (26 F.]—snow. It also snowed yesterday morning, though by evening the weather had become autumnal again. Now it is well and truly winter. If it stays like this for a couple of days, we’ll all be skiing.
Yesterday I went out en skieur. Why is it that all I have to do to feel more youthful is put on my skiing boots and costume?
Since yesterday we have a new lodger in the villa: a fairly young woman (thirty-two?), not beautiful but with a certain distinction. A brunette. She reads books in French (Sparkenbroke), and also, I think, Polish newspapers. Maybe she is a refugee.
So there are three of us at table and later in the foyer room, but we do not speak to one another. I cannot describe how comfortable this silence makes me feel.
What I like most in the villa is the brightly lit foyer, with its wall-length window, its flowered armchairs, and its scattering of delightful prints (Utrillo, Suzanne Valadon, Pissarro, van Gogh).
Evening
Only seven hours’ work and only five pages written. I must understand that it won’t be easy to repeat yesterday’s performance. I am tired and have to call a halt. The Gunther episode is absorbing. I don’t want to continue haphazardly but to have things clearly in view. I am halfway through Chapter Eleven. I hope to finish it tomorrow.
Journal 1935–1944 Page 31
