NORMAN
MANEA
87
convoys, compact rows of heads bobbed toward the mark. There he
would be giving his speech.
He would have liked to hurl himself into the midst of the exuberant,
dancing crowd.
Walking tired him. They still knew nothing about his mission; the
secret weighed on him. From all directions the wind carried the sound
of loud voices, a deafening chorus. The sun filtered down in lazy rays,
giving him vertigo.
His cousin dragged him along, occasionally squeezing his hand to
remind him that he was still there. He understood that the boy was de–
fending himself the way he usually did, with apathy. Efforts to make the
boy tougher had failed, and finally, exhausted, he had resigned himself to
the child's weakness and confusion.
Little by little, methodically, he tried to understand the boy's
character. But he did not suspect how accustomed the boy was to
withdrawing, as soon as he was figured out, and seeking new hiding
places.
For the past month, since his acquisition of so many relatives in this
unfamiliar town, the boy had been staying with his cousin, the teacher. A
tender refuge, one might have thought, for from the start he cheerfully
indulged the curiousity and kindness these people showed him. Soon af–
ter his arrival he had succeeded in forgetting the feeling of suffocation
that had seized him at times in the past. His hosts were always ready to
cheer him up , to please him with some surprise, keep him company.
Thus for almost a week they had prepared him with soothing words
for the blue vitriol bath. They convinced him to associate the words
"blue vitriol" - words that in fact seemed to belong to a foreign realm
- with the miracle of his future growth, his becoming as big and strong
as other children his age. The hypocrisy of his garrulous relatives hit him
too late. Their deceitful words burned like scalding needles on his red,
inflamed flesh. The water was boiling, stinging. His screams were to no
avail, they held him down, determin ed, their tender smiles gone.
Eventually, satisfied, they informed him that he was cured of his scabies.
He didn't feel the suffocation then. He felt it in the afternoon when
he met with the teacher to rehearse his speech. He had learned to avoid
each new trap as it was laid for him. He no longer made the mistake of
believing he was secure among his own people . Aloof, indifferent, he
observed the smug teacher so trusting in his own intuitions. The sessions
with this cousin had turned into a game played by someone else; he no
longer had reason to rebel.
Recent confrontations had taught him even more than the incident
of the blue vitriol bath . At first he had let himself be deceived by the
manly
camaraderie - no baby-talk, no hugging - that the teacher seemed
