smile: I picture a more complete Robert, altered, transfigured.
Then he becomes suspicious: ‘What is it, Doctor?’
I have to quickly come up with a clever response. For some time Robert has suspected that I’m concealing my real opinion of him. He both admires and despises me at the same time. He’s always complaining about his weaknesses, which prevent him from attaining real glory.
‘If glory were mine, women and money would come to me effortlessly...’
Whenever he talks about women, his face suddenly lights up. In my petulance, which is my usual way of dealing with him, I’ve caught him out more than once by accusing him of only knowing about women from books and films. He’s probably still a virgin. He’s an adolescent with no eyebrows, the lips of a peasant girl, a shiny chin, soft cheeks and a broad forehead. I tell everyone that Robert is a beautiful boy.
But I still haven’t written anything in the notebooks devoted to my novel. No one is forcing me to produce a detailed portrait of my friend. Even so, I now want to concentrate on Robert, because he’ll be an important character in the book, and I need to think about the conflict he’ll create.
A conflict between whom? That’s what’s preventing me from starting the first chapter. I don’t have a plot. All I know is that I’m the hero. Of course, the novel will revolve around a crisis at the end of my adolescence. I’ll portray and analyse myself in relation to my friends and classmates. But I still have to come up with a plot. And since there can’t be a plot until there’s a heroine, I’ll have to include my cousin. But I’ve tried that, and couldn’t manage a single page. I thought I should write in the way other novels are written: florid, exaggerated, with painstaking detail. Yet I soon realized that I was straying from what I was capable of saying, and repeating scenes I had read elsewhere. So once again I put off starting the chapter.
But what will be the subject of my novel? My great love for the heroine, who’s on holiday in the country? No. I’ve never been in love; none of my friends have ever been in love in the way that people fall in love in novels. I’m not sure anyone would be interested in reading about an emotion that the author has never experienced. Besides, I don’t think that love is the most interesting thing that can happen to an adolescent. All I know about is our adolescence. But do I have to write about that, and that alone? I’ve experienced far more interesting crises. As have some of my friends. I’ll have to find a crisis that links all the heroes and heroines of the novel. If I could find such a crisis, I’d be delighted. It would make my job so much easier.
Because then I could simply introduce the characters one by one; none of them older than seventeen. Without any effort, the central crisis would become crystal clear. And the novel would continue and end as it needed to. When...
But all this is just rambling. I haven’t thought of anything natural, or based on real life, that could transform my novel into one with a genuine plot. My friends say that I should write a novel based on the life of schoolboys... A little-known world, undervalued and misunderstood in literature. But I can’t describe it accurately. Without wanting to I always change things, exaggerate. Yet the most important thing is that the novel must be published, so I can move up a year at school. It should be a reflection of my soul, without being psychoanalytical; because I don’t want it distorted by analysis. And I’m certainly not going to write it in the form of a Diary; if I did, I would constantly forget that I was writing for unknown readers. I would concern myself too much with minutiae, and it simply wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t have the one thing that I’m seeking.
Once I’d finished the last sentence, I stopped. Is this really the only thing that I’m looking for? I don’t know, I don’t know. There are so many things I could write about, but I don’t have it in me to put them down on paper. Whatever the case, I’ll tell the truth about myself and other people in my Diary, but not in a novel to be read by strangers, who have no need to know about all my shortcomings...
I don’t always think like this. But I enjoy contradicting myself. That’s why I don’t like to go back over old memories.
But I’ve lost the thread again. The fact is that The Novel of the Short-Sighted Adolescent will be a series of vignettes, impressions, portraits, conclusions about school life and the adolescent soul. This might seem dull and analytical; particularly the word ‘conclusions’. Yet what is certain is that there will be no conclusions in the novel – because up till now I’ve never found a use for them. And who will narrate this series of scenes? Should I give up on my hero’s romance?
Robert is the starting point, of that I’m certain. What if, in the novel, I make him fall in love with a girl who Dinu also loves... but that’s silly. I’ve never seen either of them in love. Their little dalliances tell me nothing, because they’re never changed by them. But once again I’ve wandered off into a critical debate. My novel will be written without discussions and explanations of any kind.
These sketches for chapter one have come to nothing. I’ll try and do some more preparatory work for the novel, and organize my material – about myself and other people – in this Diary. Although if my imagination runs riot and starts changing reality, I’ll make sure I encourage it, give it some help, and not curb it like I‘ve done in the past. I’ll decide whether or not to add extra pages, and provide clarification: ‘This passage is untrue; things happened differently.’ Come what may, preparations for the novel, draft plans for certain chapters – which will be narrated in the third person – will have to be done systematically. Robert, who I’ve strayed away from here, is a good pretext.
During Passion Week2, I set out with my friend Jean Victor Robert on my first romantic escapade. My friends think I’m shy with girls. The fact is, I suffer because I’m short-sighted and ugly. I’d suffer even more if I were rejected. Because I want to conquer every heart. That’s why I’m withdrawn and self-conscious. I dream of the day when, as a result of my work, all eyes will be on me. Until that time, no one will understand how much I suffer.
But all this has nothing to do with romantic escapades. I must make sure not to let such things find their way into my novel.
Bundled along by Robert and Perri, and joined by Dinu, we met up with four girls in Carol Park that afternoon. Everyone knows that Carol Park is where pupils from the lycée go to meet. That was why I was against the idea from the start. I get embarrassed when strangers look at me. There were too many people there, especially couples. But we – us in our school caps and the girls in uniform – were just as suspect as the rest. Nonetheless, that’s where we decided to meet.
Robert knew the girls already. He insisted that it was them who had made the first move, and so he had resigned himself to speaking to them. Perri whispered in our ears that they had actually ‘picked them up’ on the boulevard one evening. Robert had been embarrassed, and talked about French literature. And the girls were enchanted.
Smiling and blushing, we met the girls on a secluded path near the Roman Arena. They introduced themselves, giving their names rather hesitantly. Despite their efforts to appear innocent and make us think that this was their first such rendezvous, they gave the impression of being dressmakers’ apprentices. They were wearing simple clothes, and had powdered cheeks, carefully arranged hair and a smattering of lipstick. I heard some wonderful opening gambits, along with silly ironies and encouraging laughter and affectations. But the girls seemed flattered with our company. We strolled along together, two girls and two boys. I was only listening to Robert, who was trying to start a conversation about love and women. The blatancy of Perri’s flirting was impressive. Dinu didn’t say very much to them, and stared into their eyes, smoking, waiting for his charm to take effect. With a coarse lock of red hair hanging over my forehead, I kept quiet.
It would be pointless to repeat the conversation. After half an hour the ice was broken. We wandered off in pairs, me with the sister of the girl that Robert liked: a brunette wearing a white hat, and with white cheeks and dark eyes. Every time I looked at her I was seized with the unsettling thought that I had already seen her in every group of girls who I had met at every lycée and school event. She was the shortest