NORMAN MANEA
549
I
HAD SEEN HIM
in passing during a visit to Paris at the beginning of the
1980s, on an evening that I would spend with Marie-France, his grace–
ful and devoted daughter. He came into the hall for a few moments,
lonely and vulnerable, just to meet me. We only exchanged a few unim–
portant words. An affectionate absence on the sad Charlot's face, a sort
of not necessarily alcoholic dizziness.
"Already drunk, after several cocktails (on a Saturday morning), he
starts talking to me about his mother," Sebastian wrote in 194I. Over
forty years had passed, it was a Saturday evening, not morning, but the
tormented inner self seemed to ask for relief this time too, "as if a bur–
den would lie heavy on him, as if he would smother." The burden, per–
haps a secret rusted by time but still bleeding, was that "precious leper"
who was born of a Jewish mother.
His face seemed to bear the trace of that absolute grief of under–
standing human reality. His "confidence" in man's ability to save him–
self, despite the horrors he himself produces, clearly had been the result,
not of naivete or optimism, as the student from Tbilisi believed, but of
the ultimate need to "force" the gods' grace.
When we went into the street, Marie-France told me about Ionesco's
meeting with an important Romanian fiction writer. After skeptically
inspecting the roomy apartment, located in the heart of Paris, at Boule–
vard Montparnasse 96A, the visitor from Bucharest expressed his dis–
appointment that a writer of such standing and a member of the French
Academy had not been given a villa with a garden and adequate atmos–
phere, as socialist Rhinoromania's "classics" were. The member of the
French Academy did not seem offended. He called Marie-France and
asked her to show the guest her small room too, so that he could see
that the apartment had one more room... .
I was not quite listening to this meaningful anecdote. The noble sad–
ness of his face, which I had seen in one of destiny'S moments, was
haunting me.
I can't get used to life.
I was hearing around me and inside
me Berenger's voice reading the author's unforgettable face.
I
woul~
be troubled every time Ionesco's name made me recall his
face .
Translated from the Romanian
by
Liviu Bleoca
