Dairy of a Short-Sighted Adolescent E-Book

Mircea Eliade

• Herausgeber: Istros Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 290

Beschreibung

The short-sighted adolescent is a poor schoolboy who is in love with literature, and tries to emulate the lives and works of the writers he most admires. He is also fascinated by science and history, and stays up all night reading. At the age of 17 he decides to write a novel to prove to his teachers that he is not as mediocre as his fellow pupils, and is prepared to give up everything in order to do so. The novel is written in a series of notebooks - the 'diary' of the title - but instead of achieving fame as an author, the myopic protagonist fails his exams and has to repeat the school year.From the perspective of a schoolboy's diary of everyday life in Bucharest in the early 20th century, - his teachers, his classmates' academic and amorous rivalries, his first sexual experiences - we are introduced to the themes of religion, self-knowledge, erotic sensibility, artistic creation and otherness, subjects that would preoccupy Mircea Eliade, one of Romania's most prominent intellectuals, until the end of his life. Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent

Leseprobe

Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent

Mircea Eliade

Revised translation by Christopher Moncrieff with reference to an original translation by Christopher Bartholomew

First published in 2016 by

Istros Books

London, United Kingdom www.istrosbooks.com

Originally published in Romanian as Romanul adolescentului miop

Copyright © Estate of Mircea Eliade, 2016

The right of Mircea Eliade to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

Translation copyright © Metamorphosis Limited

Cover design and typesetting: Davor Pukljak, www.frontispis.hr

ISBN: 978-1-908236-21-0 (printed edition)

978-1-908236-74-6 (Eook)

Istros Books wishes to acknowledge the financial support granted by the Romanian Cultural Institute

With thanks to the Prodan Romanian Cultural Foundation for supporting the publication of this book. www.romanianculture.org

Part I

I Must Write a Novel

As I was all alone I decided to begin writing The Novel of the Short-Sighted Adolescent this very day. I’m going to work on it every afternoon. I don’t need inspiration; I only need to record my life, the life I know; besides, I’ve been thinking about the novel for quite some time. Dinu knows this: I’ve been keeping a Diary since I was in the Fourth Form1, when I had freckles like a Jewish boy and studied chemistry in a laboratory in a recess beside the stove. Whenever I felt sad feelings coming on, I would write in my Diary. And that Diary, which is now two years old, has always had one purpose: to describe the life of an adolescent who suffers from being misunderstood. But this isn’t all it contains. My Diary flatters me, satisfies my longing for revenge; just revenge on those who misunderstand me.

But the novel will be different. I’ll be the hero, naturally. Yet I’m worried that my life – stifled by writing and books – won’t be of interest to my readers. For me, everything I’ve been deprived of, everything I’ve wished for up in my attic in the restless, sultry twilight, is worth more than all the years my classmates wasted on playing cards, family parties and naïve romance. But what of the reader? Even I realize that the sufferings of a short-sighted adolescent won’t touch any hearts if the adolescent doesn’t fall in love and suffer. That’s why I created a character who I initially called Olga. I told Dinu everything that would happen in the presence of this girl. But he cut me short and begged: ‘If we really are friends, please change the heroine’s name to Laura.’

At first I was very agitated, because I didn’t know exactly what kind of girl would touch the heart of a short-sighted adolescent. The only girls I knew were the bootmaker’s daughters from next door, and under no circumstances could they be characters in a novel. The oldest, Maria, was skinny and sharp-tongued: she terrorized her brothers, stole green apricots, and screamed at the top of her voice when she chased after trams. The other one, Puica, was fat and grubby. Neither of them would beguile an adolescent; no one knew that better than I did.

Dinu insisted that he could help. He said he had known a great many girls. But how can I write a novel based on a heroine that Dinu knows? I decided that while I was writing, I would think about my cousin. For several weeks I have been questioning her whenever I see her. I told Dinu that I had her under observation.

‘If you want to write a novel’, she advised me, ‘you should make the hero handsome and kind. And call him Silviu.’

But when I told her the title and subject of the novel, she didn’t like it.

‘There should be two heroes,’ she said. ‘One handsome, the other ugly. And the title should be: Love between Children, or Spring Flowers; or Seventeen.’

My explanations were to no avail: ‘Vally, my dear, this is an intellectual novel, full of internal turmoil’, etc. All to no avail. And then I listened to her girlish confidences. It was very useful, because I learnt the vocabulary that girls use, and began to understand something of her dreams, longings, and troubles. It was as if I were listening to confessions that I had heard a long time ago. I remember thinking that my cousin wasn’t much different to the heroines in novels, or the sort of character that any lovesick soul could imagine. But how could I be sure that my cousin was really the same person who appeared in these girlish fantasies that she occasionally confided to me?

I know that she yearns to be friends with a kind young girl from a noble family, who would have a large country estate where she lives with her brother, a dark, courageous young man. He would lead them through the forest. He would teach them to hunt, and address them by the familiar form of ‘you’. She told me that, one night, she would like to be in the house when it was raided by a gang of thieves. She would grab a revolver and burst into the drawing room just as her friend’s brother was being strangled by a gypsy. She would save the brother’s life and nurse him back to health in a white bedroom where there was a small table covered with coloured flasks. His parents would be very grateful, and, smiling, would leave them alone together.

At this point my cousin stops. She doesn’t want to tell me if she would blush, or shyly withdraw her hand when her friend’s brother whispers in her ear: ‘I love you!’

I have no idea what else my cousin might imagine about this dark, convalescing boy, watched over by his younger sister and a beautiful friend.

Nonetheless, my novel still has to be written. ‘So after this’, said Dinu, ‘who else will dare let you down?’ Perhaps he takes delight in the important role his character will play in the book. He asked me to call the character inspired by him Dinu, and to make him melancholic.

Apart from that I can write whatever I like about him. In fact he insists that I write whatever I like about him. ‘But who could possibly find him interesting?’ I wondered, just like a real author.

For quite some time, school has been getting steadily worse. My one hope is that my novel will be in bookshops by the autumn. I’ll still fail my exams, but it’ll be the last time. My teachers will fear me, they will respect me, and in the staff common room they’ll protest if Vanciu, the maths master, or Faradopol, who teaches German, decide to fail me.

This week I haven’t had much luck; and the end of the final term is getting closer. In French on Monday there was a grammar test. For the past six years, Trollo has only ever tested us on French grammar. And naturally, for six years I haven’t learned a thing. This morning I’ll get an ‘Unsatisfactory’ as usual, just like I got in German when Faradopol asked me to summarize the first act of Nathan der Weise in German. He has made us speak German since we were in our second year. But he has never actually taught us any German...

This morning I set off for school in a melancholy mood. The chestnut trees were in leaf, the sky was blue, but I hadn’t done my homework. I thought: ‘I should go to the Cişmigiu Gardens instead.’ But I would have been embarrassed by my school bag. And the whole time I would have been terrified that I would be spotted by a master. It saddens me to think that I’m still so feeble, timid, and indecisive. I’d love to have a will of iron, to run away from home, to work in the dockyards, sleep in boats, and explore faraway lands. But instead I’m content to dream and put off victory for later, to fill the pages of my Diary. Lost in these gloomy thoughts, I made my way to school. Then Dinu caught up with me and shouted: ‘Hey, Doctor!’ He calls me this because I’m short-sighted and read books by lamplight. He was ecstatic: he had managed to get a ‘Satisfactory’ from Vanciu in the oral test.

Today we have to solve... four difficult, intricate questions.

I changed the subject. I told him that my novel would have four hundred pages and be the first in a series called Dacia Felix. I know I’ll never write this series, but as I had to somehow get my mind off our difficult homework, I told him that the second volume would take place in a hairdressing salon. Dinu laughed.

‘That’ll be difficult, seeing you’ve never been a barber. It would be better for the second volume to be set in a girls’ boarding school.’

I protested, and reminded him that I didn’t know any girls apart from those in our dramatic society, ‘The Muse’. My cousin, my only source of inspiration, had been at a girls’ boarding school run by nuns for several years; but whenever I ask her about school life she gives me a vexed look.

Nonetheless, at the end of The Novel of the Short-Sighted Adolescent, I agreed to include an appeal to all the girls in the Sixth Form, from whom I might obtain diaries, confidences and other intimate details. With material like this, collected ‘sur le vif’,* I’d be able to produce the second volume.

When we walked into the schoolyard we had to forget all about the future Novel and get a move on, so as to avoid the new assistant master. We ran through the hall and took the stairs four at a time. Once in class I sat in the front row, while Dinu slipped quietly to the back.

I don’t have much luck. Other people are lucky with girls, at cards, and at school. I was quite happy to give up girls and cards in order to have luck at school. But I don’t.

Just as I finished copying the first and easiest of the four difficult homework questions from my neighbour, Vanciu walked in. When I saw his register with the black cover and white ends, my courage deserted me. He greeted the class in his usual dignified, magnanimous way, confident of his evident superiority and our imminent misfortune. Every time I see him come in I vow I will study mathematics with a passion, if only to be able to confront him with the same serene, assured expression. Sometimes, – when he asks me a question – I secretly make fun of the belly that he tries to hide beneath the folds of his waistcoat. I realized long ago, however, that Vanciu is a Don Juan. If I were a woman and he my mathematics teacher, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to resist him. He overpowers me with his voice, his calm demeanour, his eyes, with the way he solves the questions that he sets us. Yet it irritates me that he’s never hit me, because then I could hate him. Instead he just calls me a ‘blockhead’ whenever I muddle up algebraic symbols, and ‘bird brain’ when I get nervous at the blackboard, mesmerized by a geometric diagram whose meaning, value, and solution I have to work out.

I prayed, and realized that I didn’t know to whom I was praying. I prayed that Vanciu would turn the page of the register and read out the names of boys from the other end of the alphabet; or that he would be summoned to see the Minister of Education; or that the school secretary would bring him an unexpected message, and that we would have the whole period free. Or perhaps I was praying for something else altogether.

But of course he called me to the blackboard first, even though I wasn’t the only one in the class who hadn’t taken an oral test on this chapter. I walked up solemnly, carrying my exercise book, chalk, and eraser. I didn’t want the others to know that I was scared of Vanciu.

Yet the closer I got to the board, the calmer I became. My panic evaporated. I looked calmly into the master’s eyes, and when he glanced down at my exercise book I gave my classmates an indulgent smile.

‘How many homework questions did we have?’

‘Four.’

‘Where are they?’

‘I wasn’t able to finish them,’ I replied, humiliated, weighing up the look of disappointment in Vanciu’s eyes.

‘Do the first one then. Do you know what it is?...’

I didn’t know, but I nodded that I did. Vanciu turned his chair to face me, crossed his arms and waited. He understood, and began to dictate the question to me: ‘In a circle with radius r, the area created by an arc, where the circle runs around the diameter that passes through an extremity of the arc, has at its base a circle whose surface area is equal to a quarter of the area. Calculate the height x of that area.’

I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t understand a thing, and couldn’t concentrate on the question. I fixed my gaze on some symbols at the corner of the blackboard, and racked my whole body so Vanciu would think I was racking my brains. As I was standing there I said to myself: ‘To hell with it!’ and then my teeth began chattering. It was all I could do.

Vanciu had decided long ago that I was an idiot, so he was lenient. Although perhaps he had worked out that I was faking, that I never paid attention, and from then on refused to indulge my ignorance. Even so, my stuttering, my absent expression and the way I stared blankly at the blackboard had an effect. Vanciu always helped me.

‘Not getting anywhere? We have a circle...’

I remembered that I had drawn a similar one in my exercise book, by tracing round the lid of an inkpot with a pencil. I began to draw a circle, constantly erasing, in order to buy some time. But it was pointless because I didn’t understand the question.

‘Why don’t you do some work, boy?’

‘I do, sir. But I get confused...’

‘He who works hard...’

‘I do work hard, sir...’

‘Don’t interrupt me!... He who works hard doesn’t get confused.’

‘I know, sir...’

‘Out with it then.’

‘I know the answer, but when I...’

‘Repeat the question!’

A long pause. The other boys held their breath.

‘Go and sit down!’

Relieved, I went back to my desk. In his blue book, for the 15th of May Vanciu inscribed a magisterial and painfully legible ‘Below standard’. Attentively and with curiosity I pretended to follow the calculations of my neighbour, a short-sighted Italian with red hair who stubbornly refused to wear his glasses. This boy always did his homework. When questioned he would ramble on and on, with an exasperated Vanciu interrupting occasionally: ‘Get on with it then!’

After Vanciu had gone, the other boys surrounded me excitedly and asked: ‘What are you going to do now, old chap?’

I told them that I didn’t give a damn, because I knew who I was, and that they were just common-or-garden Fifth Formers. When­ever I feel humiliated I assert my superiority, and make a point of showing my contempt for others. I know this is childish, but I can’t help it. As soon as I’ve calmed down I always reproach myself.

I walked home with Dinu, and on the way we planned out the chapters for my novel. I didn’t want to think about the latest ‘Below standard’ that I would have to show my mother in the morning. We both came to the conclusion that my only hope was The Novel of the Short-Sighted Adolescent, and that I ought to start work on it immediately.

Now, however, after having written all these pages in my notebook, I don’t have the courage to begin the first chapter. It’s getting late, tomorrow I have some difficult homework to do; and besides, I left my copy of Bouvard et Pécuchet on the desk, half-read.

1 Fourth Form: In the inter-war period, secondary education in Romania lasted for 8 years. It was, and still is, largely a lycée system, similar to that in France. The nearest UK equivalent to the year groups would be the more traditional terminology that is still used in many Independent Schools. Thus ‘Fourth Form’is the year during which pupils reach the age of 14 (ie: Year 9 in the current British State system). This is followed by the Remove, the Fifth Form, the Lower Sixth and finally the Upper Sixth.

Robert's Glory

Robert once told me that he was very much like D’Annunzio. He has read L’enfant de Volupté and Le Feu, but always refers to Il Piacere as Il Fuoco. He comes to see me in my attic, and speaks in melancholy tones of our foolishness and his glory. As I listen, I think of the character that I will base on him. Every now and then I 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 of the group, and possibly the best behaved. I wanted to prove to myself that I didn’t lack courage. I told myself: ‘If I haven’t put my arm round her by the time I count to ten, then I’m a coward’. The girl kept on blushing more and more furiously. I was pale, gloomy. Talking, talking, talking. All the erotic anecdotes and double-entendres that I could think of were pouring from my lips. The girl, who didn’t always catch the hidden meanings, was totally lost. I strode along beside her, gripping her arm, thrilled by her trembling body, by the scent of her hair, her lips.

I said to myself: ‘You’ve got to kiss her!’ I counted to ten. I wasn’t brave enough. I scowled, blushed, I was confused and humiliated. The girl dared to say something. And then I forced myself to do it. She shuddered beneath my cold lips that were pressed against her cheek, her hair, her shoulder in its faded cloth.

But I had wanted it too much, and moved too fast. It was still daylight. The other couples could be seen and heard walking about. I made my companion sit next to me beside a spindly fir tree. After almost having to be dragged there, she sat down. She didn’t utter a word. She pushed me away with her eyes and hands. I was thinking about who-knows-what act of madness. The girl was terrified. When I kissed her on the lips she leapt up off the seat as if fired from a bow, quickly straightened her dress and rushed away, saying through her tears that she was going to find her sister. All of a sudden my foolish desire to prove that I was an uncouth, uneducated lout evaporated. I went over to her and reproached her for allowing me to kiss her. I don’t know what made me lie. I lied to her when I said that I had simply wanted to find out if she was ‘virtuous’, or if she was like her sister. I began to accuse her sister of all manner of things that made her blush, but it made me feel better. I spoke harshly, hatefully, cruelly about her sister – who I had only just met – insisting that I knew a great many compromising things about her. The girl was on the verge of tears. But I persisted. I told her that she needed to become ‘a virtuous girl’ again. I took pleasure in torturing her in this foolish way.

We all met up again at the far end of the Arena. The girls kissed and embraced my friends. Jean Victor was delighted. Dinu had perhaps already promised himself that he must do this again. All eyes were on us. I was deathly pale, while she was red-faced from crying. But who knows, maybe the others were jealous of us...

I was furious with myself. I couldn’t understand why I had said things that were so out of character, or why I had tormented her in such a ludicrous way, in the name of an overblown moral code that was repugnant as well as alien to my nature. I was completely baffled. It was like something from a nightmare.

On the way back, when I told Robert about my escapade he didn’t know what to believe. But after giving it some thought, he said that it was ‘interesting’, although not very. According to him I should have been much rougher with her, and gone even further. It’s odd how he failed to see that I was upset about what had happened.

Ever since that day, I never go with him to meet girls. He started a rumour that I was scared. Perhaps it wasn’t far from the truth.

Up till now I’ve said rather too little about this friend, who is supposed to be an important character in my novel. It’s possible that I don’t really know him. Robert reads whatever I tell him to, and talks constantly about the books he’s read. But – perhaps because of some hidden jealousy – his shallow rhetoric exasperates me. Robert exasperates me, because he’s sentimental, dull-witted and conceited. But since this notebook also acts as my Diary, shouldn’t I perhaps ask myself: am I not just as conceited? I shouldn’t be afraid of the answer. I realize that I consider myself superior to everyone. But I keep this hidden within me, and the novel won’t reveal it. Robert told me that his quest for glory is the only thing he lives for. I pretended not to understand. And then he began to tell me about D’Annunzio. I envy this Italian, the author of beautiful books, and whose memoires are full of beautiful women. But I’m in no hurry. Before I start craving such extraordinary things, I realize that I will have to work hard and suffer. That’s why I despise my friend: because he expects to achieve glory without working for it. Robert is no genius, of that I’m certain. He’s simply a beautiful boy, just like a girl, who loves going to the theatre and has plans to write three-act plays. One of his main characters will be based on me. He imagines me in my attic, in a coarse Russian shirt like the one I wear in the summer, with glasses and a disconsolate smile. I’ll be a sort of ‘raisonneur’. I’d love to know what Robert thinks of me; not just what he says to my face, but what he actually thinks. I know he’s very dismissive of me because he’s always saying that I know nothing of life, that I live among books. But he’s the one who wastes his time reading novels, and says that he ‘has a life’. He’s complex, because he has known more girls than I have, and because on Sundays he goes for a stroll along the boulevards. And I’m simple, because I regard these childish occupations as obstacles on the hard and bitter road that I have to travel.

When we get together with our many friends, Robert tells us about his dreams of glory. Sceptically, I ask him if he is doing any actual work to achieve this. He tells us that he reads Balzac, Ibsen, and Victor Eftimiu. We tease him unmercifully, because we both like and dislike Robert.

This is the difference between him and me: one dreams of happiness and waits for it, while the other torments himself to achieve it, without giving it too much thought. And that’s another foolish phrase I’ve just written, but I mustn’t cross it out: later on it will remind me how easy it is to draw clear distinctions at the age of seventeen.

In my novel, Robert will have to act and speak in order to make himself known to the reader. He lacks depth and is self-satisfied. I couldn’t resist the temptation to tell him about the major part he would play in the book about our adolescence. He listened with feverish anticipation. I said I was going to exaggerate his faults, make him look ridiculous, that I would gather together all the naïve and foolish nonsense with which he had regaled me and our friends over the past year, and put them in the novel. We sat up until well after midnight. Robert complained that I wasn’t really his friend, that I would expose myself as a liar if I only wrote bad things about him in the novel.

‘And what will you call me?’

‘Jean Victor Robert.’

He protested, crying out that I would compromise his career and his glory. That if I had uncovered so many secrets and ugly things about him, our friendship demanded that they should remain between us.

‘But I’m writing a novel about morals, a psychological novel,’ I lied. ‘It has to include real events and real characters.’

‘Then why don’t you include me in the good parts?’

‘Because the author needs a character who looks ridiculous.’

‘And why does that have to be me?’

‘Because in the novel, Robert is an example of what it is to be ridiculous.’

We parted on bad terms. After thinking it over, however, Robert managed to convince himself that I would never really write a novel where he was portrayed as ridiculous. Ever since then, whenever he talks to me he tries to appear a different person, superior to others and changed by what he has read. He paces up and down my attic with a downcast expression on his face, in exactly the way that I once told him that an anxious, troubled adolescent should walk. He talks to me about Brand, a novel he borrowed from me, and tried as hard as he could to be like a Nordic hero.

It would be interesting to make a note of all the masks that Robert has worn for my benefit over the past few weeks, in order to make me change my opinion of him, and prevent me from portraying him as ridiculous.

I pretend to be convinced by these changes. The other boys were amazed; they thought it was just a practical joke. But Robert was so pleased with these new ‘characters’ that he had adopted that he actually began to believe them. This will require further thought. Because of an allusion I made, Robert has started to believe that he is another person