Aguletti cried during chemistry today, and invoked the memory of his late father so Toivinovici wouldn’t give him an ‘Unsatisfactory.’ The whole scene made me blush with embarrassment, and clench my fists in exasperation. I was overcome by indescribable feelings of both pity and revulsion for Aguletti, contempt for him and sympathy for the master.
Fănică wished he was as good at faking as Aguletti. Aguletti is a malingerer and a liar. I would gladly lie as well, if I could; but why did he bring his dead father into it?
I think the whole class had the same feeling of excruciating embarrassment.
*
I’d very much like to get to know Dinu, to know him really well, for the purposes of my novel. It’s not enough to simply be aware that he’s handsome, decent, and intelligent. I can sense that there’s something in his soul that eludes the rest of us. Why is it that he is showing less and less interest in chemistry these days? We used to study together at his house, in a makeshift laboratory set up on benches in a small room in the basement. But this year he’s virtually forgotten even the most basic formulae. He’s not ‘passionate’ about it anymore, to use one of my favourite expressions. He doesn’t do any work. He hardly reads any literature, just goes for walks and sleeps a lot. Dinu has never been terribly industrious, or organized. But now he’s completely changed. It might just be a personal crisis. Yet sometimes, when I’m alone, I wonder if this is actually the real Dinu, if his passion for science over the last year and a half was nothing but an illusion? What if he were deceiving himself as well as the rest of us all that time, and is only now beginning to realize who he is?
I’m not yet sure what role he’ll play in the novel.
*
Robert’s eyes hurt from reading too much, and because of the formalin that the classrooms were sprayed with on Sunday. He kept rubbing his eyes, and now they are red and watering. He sat there looking morose, holding a handkerchief to his eyes. I’m sure he sees himself as a character from Ibsen, afflicted by spiritual and physical torments. He wandered around so we would see how much he was suffering, and feel sorry for him. If a master asked him why he was holding a handkerchief to his eyes, he was delighted, and replied in a way that implied that any intelligent person would realize that his eyes hurt because he had been reading too much.
Yesterday he said to me: ‘You can’t imagine how much my eyes hurt. Last night I read until two o’clock.’
I pretended to be amazed that he read so little, and told him that I never go to bed before three – which was a lie.
*
Maths test. As usual it was a very easy question. But since I didn’t know a thing, – because I hadn’t learnt anything during the entire year – I stared at it uncomprehendingly. My lack of knowledge began to make me feel miserable. If I had done even a little reading I could have worked it out. Around me the other boys were hard at it. Only Malureanu and Colonas were looking at their exercise books with the same fixed gaze as me. The three of us were the most useless at maths in the class.
Sitting there unable to do anything began to annoy me. I managed to write out a series of calculations that had nothing to do with the subject. It was a question on trigonometry, but all I knew about trigonometry was how to work out if something is a right-angled triangle. I wrote down everything I knew: if I left the page blank I would have got an ‘Unsatisfactory’.
During the first term, in order to infuriate Vanciu and get my own back on him for smiling at what he always presumed was my ignorance when I was up at the blackboard, I would close my exercise book and start writing on a sheet of paper I took from my bag. I wrote so Vanciu would see me, and so he would get annoyed because he didn’t know what I was writing or why I was writing, and would wonder how I had the courage to do it. Vanciu watched me, and couldn’t believe his eyes. Meanwhile I was delighted to have the chance to analyse myself and take notes about my current spiritual state.
When I’d finished I stuffed the piece of paper into my pocket –
where there was already quite a bundle.
If I get another ‘Unsatisfactory’ at the end of this term, there’s no hope for me.
*
A note from 2nd June, when I saw that the boys at the desks in front of me looked sad, weren’t talking, and were lost in thought.
See what is happening to our hearts and souls now we have come to the end of the academic year: we are overwhelmed with melancholy. We’re exhausted, sick of school, weary of the heat, and yet we’re sad because it’s the end of the year. We give the impression of being grateful, we laugh and talk, but deep down inside we feel the stirrings of nostalgia. This is perfectly understandable. Perhaps we’re thinking about the joys of summer, but it makes us sad when we remember that we’ll be alone. The prospect of separation dispels the pleasure.
Are we really so attached to each other after six years of being in the same class? Or is there maybe another reason? Perhaps we’re downhearted because, after Easter, our holidays never quite live up to what we expected. We imagine that the first few days of the holidays will be a kind of paradise. But they never are. It’s simply that, little by little during the last week or so of term we grow accustomed to the joys of freedom, and when the final bell rings we search in vain for this vast, never-ending pleasure. Or at least I’ve never found it myself. It’s true that many of us might appear cheerful and boisterous, but as far as I’m concerned that doesn’t mean anything. I’ve put on the same act many a time...
*
Today, Fănică got a ‘Good’ in Chemistry. He went back to his desk exhausted, looking shattered; when he apologized for not having brought his exercise book, his voice trembled. After Toivinovici had left, he went up and kissed the blackboard then gave the rest of us a hundred lei for croissants and chocolate. Which was the height of madness, given Fănică’s usual miserliness. With the ‘Good’ that he got in the oral test, he was guaranteed to be average in the class.
Fănică is terrified of chemistry. I’m sure he revises each question at least ten or fifteen times, and then forgets it all the moment he’s called up to the board. He’s a bag of nerves, as if he’s standing in front of the School Inspector. He goes bright red, he stutters, his fingers crush the chalk against the board rubber. He hates Toivinovici and shakes with fright every time the door opens during a chemistry lesson. Surprise written tests bring him out in a sweat, he wriggles around at his desk, gets caught immediately whenever he tries to ask his neighbour even the most trifling question, becomes flustered, spills ink, and writes out the same question at least three times. Several days before a written exam he loses his appetite. The night before he revises until after midnight and wakes up in a cold sweat. He arrives at school weak, confused and exhausted. When Toivinovici walks into the room, Fănică is rooted to the spot and can’t take his eyes off him. He only snaps out of it when the register is being taken. And then he gets nervous, impatient, and starts fidgeting, tormenting himself until Toivinovici reads out the questions or gives out the subject of the exam.
If the bell rings before he’s finished his work, Fănică goes bezerk. He tries frantically to write down any conclusion that he can think of. During the whole test he writes ‘reference material’ generally related to the subject in order to fill as many pages as possible, and convince Tovinovici that he has done some work. His conclusions are usually the best part, because they aren’t ‘reference material.’
Fănică always keeps a packet of headache pills in his shirt pocket. The other boys are fond of him because he’s intelligent and timid. He laughs and jokes in every class except chemistry and maths. And he’s adept at knowing the best way to apologize to the masters. Yet no one is quite sure why he’s known as ‘Rooster.’
3 Words and phrases marked with an asterisk appear in French in the original text.