pages and be the first in a series called Dacia Felix. I know I’ll never write this series, but as I had to somehow get my mind off our difficult homework, I told him that the second volume would take place in a hairdressing salon. Dinu laughed.
‘That’ll be difficult, seeing you’ve never been a barber. It would be better for the second volume to be set in a girls’ boarding school.’
I protested, and reminded him that I didn’t know any girls apart from those in our dramatic society, ‘The Muse’. My cousin, my only source of inspiration, had been at a girls’ boarding school run by nuns for several years; but whenever I ask her about school life she gives me a vexed look.
Nonetheless, at the end of The Novel of the Short-Sighted Adolescent, I agreed to include an appeal to all the girls in the Sixth Form, from whom I might obtain diaries, confidences and other intimate details. With material like this, collected ‘sur le vif’,* I’d be able to produce the second volume.
When we walked into the schoolyard we had to forget all about the future Novel and get a move on, so as to avoid the new assistant master. We ran through the hall and took the stairs four at a time. Once in class I sat in the front row, while Dinu slipped quietly to the back.
I don’t have much luck. Other people are lucky with girls, at cards, and at school. I was quite happy to give up girls and cards in order to have luck at school. But I don’t.
Just as I finished copying the first and easiest of the four difficult homework questions from my neighbour, Vanciu walked in. When I saw his register with the black cover and white ends, my courage deserted me. He greeted the class in his usual dignified, magnanimous way, confident of his evident superiority and our imminent misfortune. Every time I see him come in I vow I will study mathematics with a passion, if only to be able to confront him with the same serene, assured expression. Sometimes, – when he asks me a question – I secretly make fun of the belly that he tries to hide beneath the folds of his waistcoat. I realized long ago, however, that Vanciu is a Don Juan. If I were a woman and he my mathematics teacher, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to resist him. He overpowers me with his voice, his calm demeanour, his eyes, with the way he solves the questions that he sets us. Yet it irritates me that he’s never hit me, because then I could hate him. Instead he just calls me a ‘blockhead’ whenever I muddle up algebraic symbols, and ‘bird brain’ when I get nervous at the blackboard, mesmerized by a geometric diagram whose meaning, value, and solution I have to work out.
I prayed, and realized that I didn’t know to whom I was praying. I prayed that Vanciu would turn the page of the register and read out the names of boys from the other end of the alphabet; or that he would be summoned to see the Minister of Education; or that the school secretary would bring him an unexpected message, and that we would have the whole period free. Or perhaps I was praying for something else altogether.
But of course he called me to the blackboard first, even though I wasn’t the only one in the class who hadn’t taken an oral test on this chapter. I walked up solemnly, carrying my exercise book, chalk, and eraser. I didn’t want the others to know that I was scared of Vanciu.
Yet the closer I got to the board, the calmer I became. My panic evaporated. I looked calmly into the master’s eyes, and when he glanced down at my exercise book I gave my classmates an indulgent smile.
‘How many homework questions did we have?’
‘Four.’
‘Where are they?’
‘I wasn’t able to finish them,’ I replied, humiliated, weighing up the look of disappointment in Vanciu’s eyes.
‘Do the first one then. Do you know what it is?...’
I didn’t know, but I nodded that I did. Vanciu turned his chair to face me, crossed his arms and waited. He understood, and began to dictate the question to me: ‘In a circle with radius r, the area created by an arc, where the circle runs around the diameter that passes through an extremity of the arc, has at its base a circle whose surface area is equal to a quarter of the area. Calculate the height x of that area.’
I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t understand a thing, and couldn’t concentrate on the question. I fixed my gaze on some symbols at the corner of the blackboard, and racked my whole body so Vanciu would think I was racking my brains. As I was standing there I said to myself: ‘To hell with it!’ and then my teeth began chattering. It was all I could do.
Vanciu had decided long ago that I was an idiot, so he was lenient. Although perhaps he had worked out that I was faking, that I never paid attention, and from then on refused to indulge my ignorance. Even so, my stuttering, my absent expression and the way I stared blankly at the blackboard had an effect. Vanciu always helped me.
‘Not getting anywhere? We have a circle...’
I remembered that I had drawn a similar one in my exercise book, by tracing round the lid of an inkpot with a pencil. I began to draw a circle, constantly erasing, in order to buy some time. But it was pointless because I didn’t understand the question.
‘Why don’t you do some work, boy?’
‘I do, sir. But I get confused...’
‘He who works hard...’
‘I do work hard, sir...’
‘Don’t interrupt me!... He who works hard doesn’t get confused.’
‘I know, sir...’
‘Out with it then.’
‘I know the answer, but when I...’
‘Repeat the question!’
A long pause. The other boys held their breath.
‘Go and sit down!’
Relieved, I went back to my desk. In his blue book, for the 15th of May Vanciu inscribed a magisterial and painfully legible ‘Below standard’. Attentively and with curiosity I pretended to follow the calculations of my neighbour, a short-sighted Italian with red hair who stubbornly refused to wear his glasses. This boy always did his homework. When questioned he would ramble on and on, with an exasperated Vanciu interrupting occasionally: ‘Get on with it then!’
After Vanciu had gone, the other boys surrounded me excitedly and asked: ‘What are you going to do now, old chap?’
I told them that I didn’t give a damn, because I knew who I was, and that they were just common-or-garden Fifth Formers. Whenever I feel humiliated I assert my superiority, and make a point of showing my contempt for others. I know this is childish, but I can’t help it. As soon as I’ve calmed down I always reproach myself.
I walked home with Dinu, and on the way we planned out the chapters for my novel. I didn’t want to think about the latest ‘Below standard’ that I would have to show my mother in the morning. We both came to the conclusion that my only hope was The Novel of the Short-Sighted Adolescent, and that I ought to start work on it immediately.
Now, however, after having written all these pages in my notebook, I don’t have the courage to begin the first chapter. It’s getting late, tomorrow I have some difficult homework to do; and besides, I left my copy of Bouvard et Pécuchet on the desk, half-read.
1 Fourth Form: In the inter-war period, secondary education in Romania lasted for 8 years. It was, and still is, largely a lycée system, similar to that in France. The nearest UK equivalent to the year groups would be the more traditional terminology that is still used in many Independent Schools. Thus ‘Fourth Form’is the year during which pupils reach the age of 14 (ie: Year 9 in the current British State system). This is followed by the Remove, the Fifth Form, the Lower Sixth and finally the Upper Sixth.
Robert's Glory
Robert once told me that he was very much like D’Annunzio. He has read L’enfant de Volupté and Le Feu, but always refers to Il Piacere as Il Fuoco. He comes to see me