should go for a walk in the Cişmigiu Gardens. Robert was wearing white trousers and shoes with bows; Dinu’s jacket was unbuttoned: he had an antelope-skin belt and a silver cigarette case. Neither were wearing a cap or hat. Jean Victor Robert – who considers himself a genius – rested his forehead in his right hand whenever he needed to sit down. Dinu – who girls say is ‘good-looking and ironic’ – endeavours to be seen as a cynic, a paradoxical Don Juan.
I buttoned my tunic and we went out into the street. Robert sighed, Dinu offered me a cigarette. Robert sighs because he’s a genius. He told me one night that geniuses are unhappy.
‘Why?’
From the heights of his greater knowledge, Robert gave me a kindly pat on the shoulder.
‘You simply wouldn’t understand...’
To Robert, I’m just ‘the doctor.’ I have all the symptoms: I’m ugly, already deformed by short-sightedness and have erudite preoccupations. But Robert the genius was quick to console me: ‘We all have our burden in life, doctor...’
Dinu is mistrustful and judgemental. He’s suspicious of Robert because he’s as handsome as he is, and – although he tells anyone who’ll listen that he’s not afraid of Robert – this rivalry unsettles him. It became even more conspicuous at a wedding, when Robert’s partner, a blonde girl from Târgovişte who had just passed her baccalaureate, gave Dinu a rose from her corsage at the end of the evening. He still keeps it in a casket, along with letters and small coloured bottles. Whenever anyone mentions this, Robert smiles broadly.
It’s so childish...
Out on the boulevard, I watched all the girls and women who were walking past. We each did our best to be the boldest.
‘Beautiful body,’ said Dinu, with the tone of an established expert.
‘I don’t like her legs, retorted Robert, disdainfully.
In the twilight Dinu blushed; predictably he ignored my attempt at arbitration.
‘Have you seen Sylvia lately?’ countered Robert. The lovely Sylvia was a former ‘sweetheart’ of Dinu’s, who he saw at the same family gatherings twice a year: on the Feast of Saint Dumitru and the third day of Easter. For several months, Sylvia has been under Robert’s spell.
Dinu pretended to find their romance amusing.
‘She’s become quite ghastly recently.’
‘You think so? Robert asked, disingenuously.
‘But then, Sylvia’s always been such a common girl...’
Seeing there was going to be a blazing row, I put an end to this dissection of Sylvia by asking a stupid question. After which I decided we should have a rest.
‘Why don’t we pick up some girls?’
I found the suggestion distasteful, and Robert sat down, happy that I hadn’t agreed.
Dinu smoked dreamily. Robert was building up to give a great sigh. I just waited. I knew what was going to happen. We were seventeen years old, it was a summer night with military music playing in the background, so I knew the pair of them would soon become melancholy. Their rivalry would disappear. And then would come the vapid, whispered, tearful confessions between defenceless, all-too susceptible friends.
Dinu is more reserved when it comes to opening his heart. Robert, by contrast, is effusive and obsessive. His eyes close. He becomes distant, his imagination begins to wander. He sees himself as a tortured, demoniacal soul. Dinu is more modest; he says that he’s like Anatole France: a sceptic and an epicurean.
But that particular night I was determined to put a stop to any conversation that looked like turning into a confessional. Robert avoided my gaze.
‘You’re so unhappy, doctor...’
The idea that we were going to talk about me was flattering. This is something that we all want, so we try and keep the conversation going for as long as possible. But at this moment in particular it was quite dangerous.
‘I’m not the least bit unhappy...’
‘It’s pointless trying to hide it’, replied Robert, his tone profound and lyrical.
Dinu was listening, waiting to get his revenge.
‘How can you live without love, without women, without romance?’ Robert went on, his eyes fixed on the top of a linden tree.
‘That’s how life is for me’, I replied, humbly.’
‘You call that living, young fellow?...’
When Robert speaks of life and ‘love,’ he speaks rhythmically, like an actor on stage.
‘How can you not know the pleasures of youth... the pleasure of conquering a woman, having her at your feet, of thrusting aside the overflowing cup of love she offers you?...’
‘What cup?’ I pretended I didn’t understand, foreseeing the danger of listening to Robert wax lyrical for a quarter of an hour.
‘What? You don’t understand me, doctor?’
‘If you spoke a little more clearly...’
‘To be inebriated by the scent of soft, smooth bodies, to walk under the trees, arm in arm with your slave...’
I glanced at Dinu, wondering why he didn’t attack. In the grip of romantic fever, Robert had exposed himself. It was the ideal moment for Dinu’s ‘irony’ to be aroused.
‘Women... no one really understands them... to lie in pure white, virginal beds...’
Dinu couldn’t contain himself.
‘Come off it, Robert! How much longer do we have to put up with your fantasies?’
‘They’re not fantasies, my dear fellow,’ replied Robert, conceitedly. ‘They are the realest of realities.’
‘And when have you ever had a virgin?’
‘I didn’t say that I’ve had a virgin. I said “virginal beds”...’
‘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