“Vital” decisions

In his mind, my father had drawn up a list of things he considered indispensable to propose to me or impose upon me: piano, swimming, a good secondary school, the science track, engineering. Over the years he checked them off as steps toward responsibility and dignity, while I, a frail child, could scarcely understand the mechanism behind those decisions.

First, I had to attend the best secondary school in Bucharest. For four years I crossed Dealul Spirii and then Cișmigiu Park to attend the “Nicolae Bălcescu” High School, formerly—and later once again—the “Saint Sava National College.” That daily journey, which seemed to me merely a constraint, became, without my realizing it, a form of discipline. I was learning to arrive on time, to repeat a route, to submit to an external rhythm that would later prove useful.

I then had to acquire a “profitable” profession, rather than become an archaeologist or theatre director, as I would have liked. Thus, in the tenth grade I chose the science track, to the indignation of my Latin teacher, who saw me as a future great Latinist. In my father’s mind, the science track seemed safer for the child of a modest intellectual family, forced to confront the obstacles posed by one’s political dossier in a world increasingly oriented toward technology and industry. I regretted Latin, theatre and history, but my mind gradually began to adapt to the more rigorous rhythms of mathematics and physics.

I also had to learn how hard money was to earn. During my secondary-school summer holidays, therefore, I had to work “in the field of labour” for a small amount of money, but money earned through “sweat.” In the end, I was to become an engineer, not an accountant or anything else. My father arranged a nominal job for me at a factory so that I might obtain a scholarship that would ease my admission to the Faculty of Power Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest. I did not need that safety net: I passed the entrance examination among the highest-ranked candidates.

For him, my success confirmed that the plan was working. For me, things were more mixed. I obeyed him, although inwardly I rebelled, because I knew he wanted what was best for me. It was not blind submission, but that form of trust a child places—even against his own will—in the adult who maps out his path. Yet I also preserved an inner territory into which I did not allow him to enter.

Masculinity and silence

In one area alone my father did not manage to guide me as he would have wished: my way of relating to girls, seduction and the idea of masculinity. In his view, a young man had to be bold, self-assured, able to approach girls without hesitation and not remain a prisoner of shyness. I, however, was much more reserved. I curled up like a hedgehog whenever anyone tried to broach the subject.

He tried to approach it through Uncle Tibi, with whom I had a more open channel of communication, but even then I closed myself off. My uncles also tried to draw me out of my silence: they took me for walks, told risqué jokes or made allusions intended to test my reaction. I did not cover my ears; I smiled politely and remained silent. It was neither pure modesty nor complete innocence, but rather an inability to speak with them about matters I preferred to keep to myself.

At one point, my father tried a more elaborate strategy. I think I was in my final year of secondary school, or perhaps already in my first year at university. He told me that a colleague of his, younger than he was and the daughter of a famous professor, C.G.D., at the Academy of Commerce—let us call her Magda D.—wanted to go hiking and, being as fond of the mountains as I was, would be delighted to have me accompany her. She did not dare go alone.

I did not refuse. I met Magda and found her a pleasant young woman, a few years older than I was, likeable and lively enough that I would not be bored in her company. We boarded the train, got off at Sinaia and began the climb on foot, without taking the cable car, as I preferred. Slowly we reached Vârful cu Dor. The route was beautiful, the conversation easy, and the mountain, as usual, supplied its own share of enchantment.

We both stayed in the same room. I imagine that, in my father’s mind, this was the core of the entire strategy. In the evening, alone in our room, we found that the beds were parallel and close enough for us to continue the conversation begun on the way. We talked for a while, about one thing and another, and then went to sleep. The next day we descended to Sinaia and took the train back to Bucharest.

At Gara de Nord we parted politely, and that was all. I never saw Magda again. I assume she told my father, honestly or perhaps merely discreetly, that nothing had happened between us. I think the episode disappointed him. He had invested in this little staging a hope that I failed to fulfil. He probably believed that closeness to a young woman, in an apparently natural setting, would draw me out of my shyness.

The truth is that my father and I did not share that kind of intimacy. He continued to look at me, probably with concern, as at a young man slow to acquire the self-confidence of mature men. He died without being entirely reassured that I would know how to manage my emotional life. Perhaps this was one of the greatest distances between us: he wanted to prepare me for the world, while I defended my silences, my hesitations and my own way of growing up.

The lifeguard and the Black Sea

As I leaf through old photographs, I notice something unsettling: I have many pictures with my father from the years when I was small, either taken by his friend, the photographer Filip, or with the bellows Agfa camera of which he was proud and which produced large 6×9 negatives. After that, there are almost none from the time when I began school. It is as though, with the alphabet and exercise books, something withdrew from the frame of our family memories.

On some occasions I photographed him or he photographed me, as though one of us wanted to fix a moment forever. But the two of us together barely exist in photographs. Perhaps my mother did not know how to operate the camera well enough to capture us both. Perhaps our “togetherness” unfolded in the silence of the house and did not need to be proved on glossy paper. Or perhaps, more simply, my father was always in motion, and a camera cannot capture what does not stand still.

Years later, I found a photograph of my father and me taken by my mother while we were on holiday at Lacul Roșu in 1958 (Fig. 4). The last one! It has a special value for me: it is not merely a holiday photograph, but the final visible sign of a closeness that otherwise remained chiefly in gestures, rules and silences.

As a rule, the three of us spent our holidays by the sea, at Vasile Roaită, where my father had the opportunity to swim, as though returning to a simple normality. Some summers we also went to the mountains: Predeal, Lacul Roșu or Călimănești. Such images possess a special melancholy: they are not merely “holiday photographs,” but signs of a man who, amid obligations and strain, still found a strip of freedom—water, air, mountains—for himself and his family.

I remember one summer, when I think I was six, in which I went to the seaside at Vasile Roaită with my father alone. My mother had undergone an operation and was convalescing; the doctor had forbidden her to go to the sea. I knew our daily routine: it was the same as in previous years. Something, however, had changed: our social life. When we arrived later at the beach in the morning, places were already being kept for us close to the water, where we liked to sit.

A group of young women, some younger and some older, had taken us under their wing and, arriving early at the beach, kept our place by spreading their sheets where we usually sat. What had happened? Soon after arriving at the resort, my father had met Lali on the beach, an acquaintance from Bucharest and the daughter of my piano teacher. Lali was accompanied by a friend of about the same age; both were around twenty-five. They settled beside us because they enjoyed talking with my father.

Many of them could not swim, so my father, an excellent swimmer, offered to teach them. The proposal was enthusiastically accepted. Without entirely neglecting me, he devoted much time to the young women, first teaching them to float face down and then on their backs, supporting them with his hands beneath the water so they would not sink. When they accidentally swallowed a mouthful of salt water, they clung fearfully to his neck. Athletic as he was, my father carefully took them in his arms until they calmed down.

Seeing my father’s success as a swimming instructor, other young women hovered around us, trying to strike up a conversation with him with the obvious aim of learning to swim as well. He accepted them all as pupils, supporting them in his arms, first face down and then on their backs. On the beach, either to repay him or to distinguish themselves in his eyes, they competed in spoiling me, so I could hardly complain of lacking company. To the child I was then, my father’s success was an almost heroic spectacle.

His fame grew on a cloudy morning when rain could already be sensed in the air. Trusting that the sun which had shone on the preceding days would not fail us, we all headed toward the beach, hoping the weather would improve. From the promenade we stared, impressed, at a sea that had turned almost black, with enormous waves rushing onto the shore and breaking with a sinister roar. The red flag raised by the lifeguards and the signs reading “Bathing Prohibited” barred access to the water.

We were surrounded by my father’s pupils, who wanted him to tell them what we could do that morning. Always courteous toward women, he tried to please them all. Suddenly cries rose from the crowd gathered on the promenade: “Look, far out there—someone is in the water!” We all turned toward the indicated point. It seemed to be true: from time to time a head could be seen emerging among the waves, beyond the buoys. It appeared to be signalling with its arms. “Save him, save him, do something! He’ll drown!” came from every direction.

I saw my father frown as he tried to assess the situation. Then, suddenly, he undressed, left his sandals on the promenade, entrusted me to Lali and ran down to the beach. Reaching the water’s edge, he plunged into the threatening waves. The lifeguards’ whistles and the crowd’s shouts for him to return were useless—he probably could not hear them, drowned out by the roar of the furious sea. Once the water deepened, he launched himself forward and began swimming the crawl in his textbook-perfect style.

A wave struck him and my father disappeared, then emerged again, swimming and trying to approach the head that appeared and vanished offshore. The distance visibly diminished, while all of us watched with our hearts in our mouths, praying that everything would end well. I felt like crying, yet at the same time I was proud of my father and of the strength I knew so well.

My father reached the man, circled him once or twice, tucked his head beneath his arm and started back, swimming with only one arm. The current worked against him, though not strongly enough to drag him farther out. With jerking, increasingly vigorous movements, he managed to approach the shore. Beyond the buoy, at his height of 1.85 metres, his feet touched the bottom. He dragged the drowned man’s body behind him; it was now clear that the man was dead. He emerged from the water and laid the lifeless body on the beach. Applause and cries of “Bravo!” rose from the crowd.

My father later told me that, on reaching the man, he had seized him by the hair—as one does with a drowning person in order to keep the head above water. But the hair came away in his hand. He understood that the man had been dead for some time and decided that he could not leave him there at the mercy of the waves; he had to bring him ashore. Once back in Bucharest, we told my mother nothing about my father’s unusual feat, nor about his swimming lessons. I cannot say why. Among us, silences already had their own rules.

A geography of the provisional

The plan my father had devised for me was not a whim, but a defensive reflex born of a complicated life story that for a long time I regarded merely as background. It was not background. It was the foundation. After a childhood full of hardship and changes of direction according to whichever way the wind blew, my father managed to graduate from the Academy of Economic Studies. At first he worked for the State Planning Committee, within the Ministry of Finance system.

Then came the period of internal struggles within the Communist Party and successive purges, culminating in the removal of the Ana Pauker–Vasile Luca group. In those convulsions, my father—as, indeed, was my mother—was dismissed. A person could lose a job, but in those days he also lost, along with it, any peace of mind about tomorrow.

He had to begin again, from the bottom. He trained as a lathe operator and worked as a turner. Today I imagine that descent: from offices and accounting plans into noise, metal shavings and oil. He did not treat it as punishment, but as a chance to survive. Then, when a side door opened once more, he entered without drama: chief accountant at a construction site near Anina.

From there, step by step, he re-entered the circuit of chief accountants at building sites around Bucharest—a geography of provisional arrangements, with successive moves, new teams, deadlines, pressure and the sense that one must continually prove one’s right to be “up” again.

Together with my mother, he sat the examinations to become a chartered accountant. I can still see them in my affectionate memory, studying side by side: two people sustaining their home and future through a shared, almost austere effort, with the seriousness of those who know that opportunity does not often return. From time to time he received commissions for accounting expert reports—a limited but important form of recognition.

Toward the end of his life, he had finally obtained a good position: chief accountant in a Bucharest construction trust. It was a return, not triumphant but natural, after so many fresh starts. I wonder whether this very instability of work did not imperceptibly wear away not only his health, but also his share of freedom.

He had practised sports—swimming, football, skating—but frequent job changes, fatigue, travel and tension slowly closed those windows. He gained weight. He was diagnosed with hypertension which, with his customary precision, he described as being “of adrenal origin.” Perhaps behind the severity I sometimes felt at home there was also this exhaustion: that of a man who knew from experience how quickly the ground beneath one’s feet can collapse and how dearly every wrong turn may be paid for.

That is probably why his plan for me was not a whim but a defensive reflex: to keep me away from insecurity, chance and the risk of slipping “downward.” He wanted to give me a solid profession, discipline, a kind of armour. Perhaps he even dreamed, without saying it very often, that technical training might one day allow me to go abroad, beyond the enclosure of an autarkic regime.

Resistance without rupture

My relationship with my father was not free of tension. At times I rebelled against his decisions; I disliked the punishments and the demands I felt were excessive. Yet these objections never broke the bond between us. At the time I suffered and felt wronged or humiliated, but those passing reactions never became a final judgement of him as a human being.

With time, he too softened his severity, especially after seeing that I studied well and overcame obstacles with distinction. In many respects he watched my progress as confirmation that his plan had not been in vain. Only much later did I understand that his strictness was, in its own way, a form of care, while my silences did not signify rejection but my awkward way of protecting my inner self. I was learning to raise defensive walls without demolishing the bridges between us.

Making peace with the plan

When I look back, I can clearly see the path my father chose for me. Each choice then seemed like a command written on an austere slate—piano, sport, secondary school, science track, engineering—but with time I understood that all of them arose from his desire to give me security. At four, the piano keys murmured rules in black and white. With childish resistance I rejected the imposed daily rhythm, yet that discipline remained somewhere within me.

At about the same time, my father placed me in Dezideriu’s arms, and Dezideriu threw me into the deep pool, just as, in a way, my father also threw me into the sea of life’s objectives. Thus I learned that water can truly discipline us, just as life’s goals can be reached only through the discipline of rules. Swimming, even without glittering medals, formed my perseverance and my joy in feeling free amid nature.

The piano—even though I abandoned it in rebellion—revealed discipline to me. Secondary school and university, with their daily journeys through Bucharest, taught me to fit into an external rhythm that still helps me breathe deeply in spaces of decision and responsibility. All those “musts” of my father’s gave firm shape to my idea of the future.

I do not deny that my father was rigid. It was clear that my achievements were also his. But today I better understand what he wanted: behind the plan lay not a desire to dominate, but his own way of securing my future. I now understand what I once regarded as a deficiency: my father’s plan was his way of loving me. It was not demonstrative love, nor tenderness easily recognised by a child, but it was a constant, even stubborn, form of care. Behind the harshness stood the fear of a man who had known how it was to fall; behind the rules stood the wish that his son should not be equally vulnerable before the world.

Making peace with my father’s decisions does not mean passive acceptance, but the adult choice to see the meaning behind every detail. I make peace with the “harmony” of his system because, behind the severity, I have found the good intention. In the end, I gave him what he wanted: balance, preparation and integration into the world. To struggle through life sometimes means wearing your parents’ shoes—not because you wish to follow their footsteps exactly, but because the road is long and you need good footwear.

The night my father died

When I entered university, my parents decided that I could no longer sleep in the same room with them. I agreed: for some time I had felt uncomfortable, aware that my mere presence disturbed their intimacy. Yet the “decision” also had a very concrete core: there was scarcely anywhere else for me to sleep.

The other bedroom and the dining room were occupied respectively by Draga and Radu, and by my grandmother Linica. Only the hallway remained free, though it was a passage for everyone. After her divorce from Radu, Draga insisted that she did not mind my sleeping there. My daybed was therefore moved from my parents’ room into the hallway.

I thus slept beneath the two large paintings brought from the Paris Universal Exposition by Grandfather Petruș’s brother and given to the “newlyweds” for their religious wedding in 1919. It was a passageway and yet, for me, it had become a corner of my own: a bed, two paintings and a peace accepted by everyone. I believe that, in that modest arrangement, we were all content.

More than a year had passed since that move when, one early-January night near midnight, I heard my mother shouting from my parents’ room: “Jean, Jean, look at me!” We all rushed in—my grandmother, Draga and I. My father, his pyjama jacket open at the chest, lay on the bed with his eyes closed, apparently mumbling something. My mother telephoned Tibi and urgently called him over. Tibi arrived within minutes, but nothing could be done. My father had died at only forty-five, after a massive stroke. I was only nineteen.

My mother was devastated, and at that moment this concerned me more than my father’s death. I tried to console her, but I had no valid argument. In the face of such a collapse, words are only noise. My grandmother, accustomed to the many deaths she had lived through, set about organising the funeral. Her first act was to remove me from the house: I was not to take part in the long and painful Orthodox preparations for burial.

Where could I go? Naturally, to my friend Nicu in the student residence. They telephoned him, and Nicu, grieved by my father’s death—he had known and liked him—agreed to receive me for as long as necessary. I remember that winter as a weight in the air: cold, journeys, worries and something unreal in everything that was happening.

The severe winter weather complicated all the preparations. Grandmother Maria, my father’s mother, was also summoned from Reghin. A mother’s surviving her son has always been regarded as an injustice of fate, and Grandmother Maria endured that feeling without being able to soften it. She would outlive him by six years. What kind of years were they? It is difficult to say, though one can imagine.

I returned home on the day of the funeral, when everything was ready. I experienced it all as though in a dream. I did not want to believe that my father would no longer be present in my life, precisely now, when I could prove to him that his efforts would bear fruit.

We then went to Ghencea Cemetery, where my father was entombed in one of the six niches of the family vault, hastily made available: the niche of my grandfather, my father’s father-in-law, who had died twenty years earlier. Looking back, their 1938 conversation, recounted in My Parents, laid the foundation stone of our family. My grandfather, who had then imposed strict but fair conditions on the marriage, was the man whom my father would replace as head of the household and, in the end, in the niche of the family vault. This symbolic exchange in the space of eternity closes one destiny and brings back into the light, with gratitude, the exceptional role of my mother, Zizi, who through discipline and love formed the bridge between these two powerful personalities.

A mature reflection

The blizzard quickly drove us home, leaving my father alone in that narrow cell. For a long time I was left with an image I could not easily reconcile with the rest of life: a man who had raised me through rules and plans, abruptly enclosed in a space without a plan, without a future, without a single “must.” Only later did I understand that what had ended there was not merely a destiny, but also a certain order within our home. I was becoming the head of the family.

That is about all I can say now. There are other things to be written about my father and his destiny, but I do not wish to force them into disclosure. Some memories need time before they can be expressed.

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