The beginning of the friendship

I met Nicu in my first year at the Faculty of Power Engineering of the Bucharest Polytechnic. We had only just entered that new, austere and promising world in which each of us was trying to find his place. We had noticed one another during lectures, and a sense of complicity soon developed between us. As usual, I was the one who took the first step. Perhaps the few drops of Transylvanian blood in me had recognized in him an older brother who had come from beyond the mountains. During lectures we sat side by side and took notes diligently: mine were calligraphic, while his handwriting was almost impossible to decipher.

After the first year, our academic paths diverged. I was selected for the newly established Automation programme, while Nicu continued along his original path. In the meantime, F., a colleague several years older than us, had joined our small circle, and we both treated him with a certain deference. He too had moved to Automation. With Nicu, however, after that first year our meetings shifted outside the university. Our friendship no longer depended on timetables, lectures or laboratories.

Nicu came from a village in Sibiu County, roughly equidistant from Sibiu, Sebeș and Alba Iulia. He was of medium height, with an olive complexion, a slightly upturned nose, brown hair already beginning to recede from his rounded forehead, and very lively hazel-green eyes. He came from a peasant family. He had attended the village school, then a technical school, and had decided to apply to university. He neither felt ashamed of his origins nor turned them into a badge of honour. He was calm, attentive and reflective, with a modesty that did not conceal his intelligence.

He lived in a student hall with other Transylvanian colleagues. He knew how to listen without hurrying you and without turning the conversation into a lesson. He did not analyse you or correct you at every step. Sometimes it was enough simply to have him beside you.

He often came to my home, especially at weekends. My parents knew and appreciated him, invited him to stay for meals, and his presence had become natural in our household. My father especially valued what he affectionately called the Transylvanian in Nicu: his moderation, seriousness and composed way of looking at things.

In his company, my own anxieties seemed less complicated. He came from a world different from mine and carried it with him without ostentation: the village, the hills, work and patience. He never tried to prove anything to me. Precisely for that reason, I had much to learn from him.

A friendship difficult to define

Our friendship had, especially at the beginning, an intensity I did not know how to explain. When we were alone, some of his gently admonishing jokes awakened an affection in me that I sometimes expressed through spontaneous embraces. Nicu accepted them naturally, without rejecting me or making me feel ridiculous. In those years, our relationships with girls were sporadic, and my need for closeness was still mixed with many of the uncertainties of youth.

Later I asked myself what I had really been seeking in his closeness: security, understanding, tenderness, or the presence of a friend more balanced than I was. Yet I was not jealous when he told me about his adventures with girls. On the contrary, I tried to advise him—me, the great expert with no experience—on how to get out of his romantic entanglements.

If he realized how important this friendship was to me, Nicu never made an issue of it. He had the delicacy not to mock my vulnerability. In time, my effusiveness subsided, but the trust between us remained. No more complicated definition was needed: it had been, and continued to be, a true friendship.

My father’s death

In January, when I was in my second year, my father died. He was only forty-five. His death came at a moment when, after years of tension and misunderstanding, we had begun to draw close again. My admission to university had reassured him; he was pleased that I had passed my first year well and was beginning to find my way. Just when our relationship seemed to be settling, he disappeared.

My mother insisted that I should not stay at home while the funeral was being prepared. I went to Nicu at the student hall. I was utterly disoriented and could not imagine life without my father. Nicu did not offer grand words. He stayed with me, listened, and came to the funeral. He had known my father and had been welcomed into our home. His presence during those days is something I have never forgotten.

The road to Groapa Florii

In the summer after our third year, Nicu invited me to spend a few days at his home. I travelled by train to Sibiu, then took a RATA bus toward his village, close to the border with Alba County. The sun was nearing the horizon when I got off. Nicu was waiting for me, took my rucksack onto his back and said with a mysterious air:

— We have some walking to do. First we will stop at my sister’s house in the village, then we will go home, to Groapa Florii.

I knew he had a sister, but I had learned little about his family. Nicu was discreet, and I had not asked. His sister met us at the gate with one child in her arms and another by the hand. She had heard the RATA bus arrive and had come out to meet us. In the yard, a little white-and-spotted dog greeted us cheerfully. She invited us inside, but Nicu was in a hurry: we had to reach Groapa Florii before dark.

We left the paved road and climbed along a path through apple and plum orchards. From the ridge we could see hill after hill, broad backs covered in green pastures and lit by the red glow of sunset.

— What happiness it must be to live in such a paradise, I said, with the enthusiasm of a tourist from the city.

Nicu looked at me for a long moment.

— You are only a tourist here. I lived here. It is beautiful, but living in such isolation is a sentence. My father should never have brought my mother into this wilderness.

We had been friends for three years, and I was discovering that I knew almost nothing about the tensions within his family. He had not told me, and I had not asked. For the first time I understood that his silence was not merely a character trait; it also concealed a history he carried alone.

Groapa Florii

We descended into a small hollow and climbed the opposite hill. On a flat patch between two slopes we saw a peasant house and a barn, with two small lights in the windows struggling against the first stars. The image was so beautiful that my stubborn city-dweller’s conviction returned:

— I still think it is a paradise.

— You will see that it is not quite so, Nicu replied.

His father had inherited the house in the village, where his daughter now lived, and this isolated homestead, without electricity or running water. After the children had left, he had withdrawn here with his wife, a cow and a few hens. He said he was happy there. From what Nicu told me, his mother had accepted that life without the same joy.

When they heard us, his parents came out to meet us. Nicu’s mother impressed me at once. She was a beautiful woman, with the same hazel-green eyes and the same complexion as her son. She looked much younger than she was. His father, Mr T., had the appearance of an older man: he walked with a stick, dragged one leg and spoke little.

Inside the house, by the light of an oil lamp, the room retained something of an older world: a beamed ceiling, peasant furniture, flowered curtains and a large wooden table. His mother set out food prepared in the household. Everything was simple and carefully made.

After dinner we went outside so that Nicu could smoke his cigarette. We lay on the grass and looked at the dark vault of the sky, pierced by stars and seemingly resting on the surrounding hills. The stars seemed closer than in Bucharest. We spoke little and were silent for long stretches. With Nicu, silence was never oppressive.

His parents wanted to give me their bedroom, but I preferred to sleep in the barn, on a straw mattress, near Nicu’s place. The scent of freshly cut hay was intoxicating. In the morning the rooster and the hens woke me, in a world where the day began without an alarm clock.

The three days

During the three days at Groapa Florii we walked over the hills and talked more than usual. Nicu showed me the places of his childhood: where he had taken the sheep to graze, where the does sheltered, and the meadow where, as a boy, he had made plans to leave that place one day. To me, the landscape was almost idyllic. For him, its beauty remained mixed with the memory of isolation.

When I left, Nicu accompanied me to the bus for Sibiu. Nothing spectacular had happened during those days, but I knew him better. I had understood something of his reserve and of the sadness hidden beneath his calm. I was proud that Nicu had chosen me, of all people, to show me the places of his childhood. When we met again in Bucharest that autumn, we were closer than before.

Nicu’s mother’s death

Soon afterwards I learned that his mother had died of stomach cancer. Nicu told me only after he had returned from the funeral. I had not had the chance to stand by him as he had stood by me when my father died. For the first time I felt that friendship could also contain such imbalances: one person is present at the right moment, while the other learns too late.

The missed trip to the Făgăraș Mountains

From that period I also remember an episode in which Nicu appears only indirectly, through his absence. Together with F. we had decided that, before the university year began, the three of us would make a trip into the Făgăraș Mountains. I had roamed through many mountain ranges, but had not yet reached the Făgăraș. For Nicu they were nearby mountains: he could travel from home to our meeting point at Sebeșu de Sus railway station. F. and I were to arrive by a local train from Brașov.

The plan was ambitious. We wanted to climb the Moașa Valley to Suru Chalet and, over the following days, continue along the ridge toward Negoiu, Bâlea, Moldoveanu and Urlea. I had studied the Făgăraș guidebook and knew that the walk to the chalet would take about four hours. The Moașa waters descended in waterfalls, and the route was described as steep and wild. That was precisely what attracted me.

When F. and I reached Sebeșu de Sus, we sat on a bench in the shade and took our food out of our rucksacks. It was an unusually hot September day. The station fountain gave cold water that seemed to come straight from the mountain, and we cooled ourselves by washing to the waist. The first train from Sibiu passed, then the second. Nicu did not appear.

At about half past three we decided we could wait no longer. The days had grown shorter, and we still had several hours of climbing ahead of us. The two of us set off with the reckless confidence of youth. The mountain was covered in cloud, but we had good boots, makeshift capes of thick cellophane, and torches. Rain, we told ourselves, could not stop us.

The rain came quickly. The climb proved harder than I had imagined, and nightfall caught us still far from the chalet. When we emerged from the trees, the rain turned to snow. The beams of our torches were lost in the dense flakes, and the path was barely visible among the rocks. F. went ahead without complaining. I was beginning to run out of strength.

At one point I collapsed beside a rock and told him I could go no farther. I had never before been so frightened in the mountains. F. first tried to persuade me gently. When he saw that he was failing, he took my rucksack and strapped it in front of him, over his own. Then he almost forced me to my feet:

— I will carry you as well if you refuse to walk on your own feet.

I knew him well enough to believe him. Without the rucksack, I took a few steps, then a few more. After about ten minutes we heard dogs barking. Through the snow, the lights of Suru Chalet appeared. The chalet was occupied by workers building a forest road, but two beds were found for us. The next day, worried by my condition, F. decided that we should descend. Back at the station, we looked at the massif shining in the sun, its ridges freshly covered with snow.

I no longer remember what explanation Nicu gave us for not coming. I only know that we were not angry with him. Perhaps we should have been less forgiving; perhaps he had a serious reason. After so many years I can no longer reconstruct the circumstances. The episode remained mainly an adventure lived with F. and proof that, in my friendship with Nicu, one missed meeting did not alter the bond between us.

Marriage

At the graduation ball, Nicu also asked P., a colleague he had known since the first year, to dance. She was a pretty, cultivated and calm young woman. They danced together for almost the entire evening, and their relationship continued after graduation. Nicu, deeply in love, told me about his visits to her family home and about her parents’ reservations concerning a marriage to a young man from the countryside.

P. did not give up her choice, and her parents eventually accepted the marriage. I attended the wedding with my mother, among the few guests on the groom’s side. I was happy for them, although I had the impression that the differences between the two families had not disappeared.

After the marriage, Nicu lived for a time with his parents-in-law. From what he told me, living together was not easy, and he felt that his origins continued to be regarded with reserve. After their son was born, Nicu and P. bought a small two-room flat in Berceni. The move was postponed, however, because P. did not want to leave her parents alone. I do not know all the circumstances of their family life, but I know that Nicu felt the strain of this situation.

The adult years

Professionally, Nicu did very well. In order to remain in Bucharest, close to his family, he gave up the occupation for which he had originally trained and eventually reached a managerial position in a large computing centre. He was intelligent, balanced and skilled in dealing with people.

Gradually, we saw each other less often. I sometimes visited the computing centre, while meetings between our families became sporadic. The friendship no longer had the almost daily presence of our student years, but it had not disappeared. We both regarded it as a bond that did not need to be reaffirmed at every meeting.

Parting

Nicu was the only friend whom, in August 1989, I told that I intended to remain abroad. The day before my departure I went to see him. I did not want him to learn from others about a decision that was going to change my life.

We embraced, hoping that we would see each other again soon. I remember the sadness on his face, but I do not want to attribute to him today a premonition he may never have had. For both of us it was simply a separation whose duration we could not know.

Illness

In the early 1990s I learned that Nicu had colon cancer and needed surgery. On my first visit back to Romania, I went to see him at Fundeni Hospital. He had recently been operated on by a very good surgeon, and I found him optimistic. As we walked through the corridors, he joked and spoke about the future. I did not know whether he was unafraid or whether, in his usual way, he simply did not want to show his fear and worry me.

Some time later, in Rome, I met two of his colleagues, to whom Nicu had given my telephone number. Over coffee, they reproached me:

— You, Nicu’s best friend, left him alone in his condition? What kind of friend are you?

I was stunned. I had not known what had happened. Only on my next visit to Bucharest did I learn more.

Loneliness in Berceni

After the operation, Nicu had moved alone into the flat in Berceni. From what I understood at the time, he had made this decision so as not to burden those living in the shared home, where his mother-in-law also had serious health problems. I do not fully know their motives or the tensions between them. His son brought him food, and Nicu spoke of the boy with great pride.

I went to see him. He showed me the pouch he wore under his shirt and tried to make light of the situation. Even when ill, he tried to spare others the burden of his suffering. His colleagues’ reproach stayed with me. I understood that, although I had always carried him in my thoughts, I had not known in time how lonely he had become.

The funeral

Not long afterwards Nicu died. He was buried in the cemetery in Berceni. I was in Romania at the time, in Constanța, and came urgently to Bucharest. I felt out of place among his colleagues and P.’s relatives. I wished I could have remained alone with him for a few moments, to say goodbye without witnesses.

At the memorial meal, held in the Berceni flat, I finally came to know their son better. I had followed his progress from a distance as a student in Automation, through my colleagues, who told me he was very good. My conversation with him confirmed the pride with which Nicu had always spoken of the boy.

Finding the grave again

After his death, every year on 14 August, his birthday, I light a candle for him at home. For a time I also went to the grave whenever I was in Bucharest. Later I could no longer find it: the cemetery had changed, the paths resembled one another, and I had not retained the landmarks.

Recently, P. took me to the grave again. She told me that she still sometimes speaks to Nicu and that he continues to be present in her life. She has not remarried and lives in her parents’ house. Their son, now married and with children, left the country, but she remained in Bucharest.

What remained

I do not know whether Nicu ever understood how important his friendship was to me. Perhaps I too failed to understand in time that, during our youth, he had offered me a space of trust in which I could be anxious and uncertain without being judged. Later, distance and the circumstances of life made us less present for one another than we would have wished.

When I think of Nicu, however, I do not see him ill or alone in the flat in Berceni, as I saw him for the last time. I see him at Groapa Florii, lying on the grass, smoking and looking at the sky. He spoke little and was silent for long stretches, and so was I. With him, silence required no explanation. Perhaps this is the form in which his friendship has remained with me: an affectionate silence.