The Devil Never Sleeps (12 page)
Read The Devil Never Sleeps Online
Authors: Andrei Codrescu
All the exclusive eateries charged American prices: Each tab for these meals came to several hundred dollars, which in Romania is plain obscene. A tenured university professor makes $150 a month, while a skilled working man can count on about $30. How anyone survives is a mystery. The prices on the free markets in Bucharest are very high, as are the prices for clothes and shoes. Yet the city had plenty of elegant people, and all the restaurants were full. On the boulevards of Bucharest, once trafficked exclusively by the locally made Dacia cars, there were plenty of Oldsmobiles, Jeeps, and BMWs. Armani-suited young men with cellular phones and rail-thin model-type
girlfriends swarmed the Calea Victoriei, the still-elegant though grimy main street, where the casinos and the Western-style shops are. It would be all too easy to call all these types “the new Mafia,” or “the new businessmen,” depending on your tolerance, but many of them seemed to be just stylish young students. I thought about stopping one couple to ask them in detail the price of their duds, hoping to analyze the data in the manner of Guy Davenport's in-depth look at the famous painting
American Gothic
. I didn't have the nerve, but the mystery preoccupied me.
girlfriends swarmed the Calea Victoriei, the still-elegant though grimy main street, where the casinos and the Western-style shops are. It would be all too easy to call all these types “the new Mafia,” or “the new businessmen,” depending on your tolerance, but many of them seemed to be just stylish young students. I thought about stopping one couple to ask them in detail the price of their duds, hoping to analyze the data in the manner of Guy Davenport's in-depth look at the famous painting
American Gothic
. I didn't have the nerve, but the mystery preoccupied me.
I got an unexpected clue when I saw the Cultural Foundation budget lying on Augustin Buzura's desk while I was giving a phone interview in his office. It was ridiculously small. The gala night's meal would have cost about half of the annual budget. Yet the foundation was well staffed by bright, multilingual women and men, and it employed several chauffeurs with well-maintained cars. The explanation I was given was that the foundation budget came from the Ministry of the Exterior and that it was subject to supplemental funds when needed. Augustin Buzura was also a tireless fundraiser who personally solicited businesses for aid. While this explained how the foundation got by, everyone else, it seemed, had access to supplemental funds that were more mysterious. Given that a professional's average monthly salary was about fifty dollars per month, it was hard to see how my friends survived. I glimpsed the existence of a vast underground economy, the presence of unspoken budgets, possible through an immensely complicated web of personal connections. The country's elites were linked and the links had been created, enforced, and reinforced in the very restaurants of the powerful
patronii.
patronii.
The existence of this underground must be plain as day to anyone involved, but to me it was shocking. I am not naive. The underground economies of Eastern Europe and Russia have been well documented by both the local press and international media. I knew that the most obvious new capitalists were smart old communists who transferred state property to private use. But I'd believed, on the basis of the lofty ideas about “democracy” being debated in the better forums, that the nation was honestly striving to build a civil society based on frank and open exchange. The former dissidents, now in positions of responsibility, had been the keepers of a moral discourse of such purity it shamed those of us in the West who, like most people, try to get by as best we can. Recall Václav Havel's extraordinary speech to both houses of Congress in 1993. He mentioned God, integrity, philosophers, and
Western civilization, notions so alien to our political discourse, it made the worst cynics weep. And yet here were people, not quite Havels but still, who were plainly part of a
modus vivendi
that belied such loftiness. From their inability to wait in line to their paper budgets, the keepers of the moral discourse played the game.
Western civilization, notions so alien to our political discourse, it made the worst cynics weep. And yet here were people, not quite Havels but still, who were plainly part of a
modus vivendi
that belied such loftiness. From their inability to wait in line to their paper budgets, the keepers of the moral discourse played the game.
My new vision of the underground was that it was
total.
There was no one in the whole country who was not somehow involved. How could they survive otherwise? The stated paper earnings of most people were below subsistence levels.
total.
There was no one in the whole country who was not somehow involved. How could they survive otherwise? The stated paper earnings of most people were below subsistence levels.
So radical a vision can be rightly called paranoiac if I hadn't had plenty of occasions to see the banal reality of much of my previous paranoias. When I'd called “the revolution” a coup d'état there were still plenty of believers. When I suspected my old high-school chums of secret connections, I'd had little proof. Later, they admitted it freely. But my paranoia is not the point. As I was to find out, paranoias much greater than mine flourished in the minds of most individuals I encountered, including, to my regret, some of my very best friends. I would be committing hubris to think that my paranoias are somehow more realistic than theirs. Still, the paranoia of an outsider and the tissue of paranoias that make up the psychic life of a nation are quite different things.
The exhausting round of galas and festivities in Bucharest would have quickly taken its toll if it hadn't been for the sweet madness of Nardi who, while paranoid like most Romanians, acted as if he were entirely free to speak his mind. Nardi crossed himself every time we passed a church but had a Jewish grandmother and a Jewish wife, and was, on top of everything, interested in Indian spirituality and the occult. This was by no means unique: A staggering amount of superstition possessed every Romanian in some form. Forty years of dialectical Marxism had done no more than to create believers in astrology, amulets, and the occult.
In Nardi's case, all this took on the form of continual questioning and an earnest enthusiasm for the life of the mind. While quite merciless in his appraisal of people, including some of our good friends, he assumed the presence of a higher reality in everyone and everything. The realistic level at
which he operated was mitigated by an insane generosity and genuine love for fellow beings. Nardi's generosity was only proportionally greater than that of most Romanians, who exhibit a syndrome I once called “aggressive hospitality.” The idea is to make continual gifts to friends and strangers, pick up every restaurant tab, give unlimited time and attention, and proffer any service whether possible or impossible. The fervor of this national mania may have equivalents only in the potlatch cultures of some Native Americans, but in those cultures there is at least the reasonable certainty that the beneficiaries of the exchange will eventually reciprocate. No such certainty attends the suicidal generosity of Romanians and, of all Romanians, Nardi's was the greatest. He fought to pay for everything, made me gifts of his most cherished possessions, and would have jumped off a cliff if he'd thought it would please me. This attitude was wholly bothersome to me until I understood, in Sibiu, that he couldn't help it.
which he operated was mitigated by an insane generosity and genuine love for fellow beings. Nardi's generosity was only proportionally greater than that of most Romanians, who exhibit a syndrome I once called “aggressive hospitality.” The idea is to make continual gifts to friends and strangers, pick up every restaurant tab, give unlimited time and attention, and proffer any service whether possible or impossible. The fervor of this national mania may have equivalents only in the potlatch cultures of some Native Americans, but in those cultures there is at least the reasonable certainty that the beneficiaries of the exchange will eventually reciprocate. No such certainty attends the suicidal generosity of Romanians and, of all Romanians, Nardi's was the greatest. He fought to pay for everything, made me gifts of his most cherished possessions, and would have jumped off a cliff if he'd thought it would please me. This attitude was wholly bothersome to me until I understood, in Sibiu, that he couldn't help it.
My hosts this time were not my high-school chums who had been relegated, because of local cultural politics, to playing second fiddle. The highly intellectual group that organized my books' “launching” in Sibiu consisted of the poets and artist editors of
Euphorion
, a smartly produced review of literature. Iustin Panta, Dumitru Chioaru, and Mircea Stanescu met me in the lobby of the Imparatul Romanilor, where I was already something of a celebrity. Mrs. Ionescu, the desk manager, was, as it turned out, a reader. She had consumed all my previously published work and was overjoyed when I presented her with signed copies of the new books. (By morning, she'd read everything, and got no sleep at all.) The
Euphorion
group may not have read as much as Mrs. Ionescu, but they came prepared with a tape recorder and notes.
Euphorion
, a smartly produced review of literature. Iustin Panta, Dumitru Chioaru, and Mircea Stanescu met me in the lobby of the Imparatul Romanilor, where I was already something of a celebrity. Mrs. Ionescu, the desk manager, was, as it turned out, a reader. She had consumed all my previously published work and was overjoyed when I presented her with signed copies of the new books. (By morning, she'd read everything, and got no sleep at all.) The
Euphorion
group may not have read as much as Mrs. Ionescu, but they came prepared with a tape recorder and notes.
The Emperor of the Romans Hotel, once a prewar Austrian style nightspot, was the very place where, my mother told me, my father had “wasted his youth on women and cards.” The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but the hotel in its present incarnation offered no such opportunities. Still, it was an elegant old place. The windows looked over the magical rooftops of Sibiu with their “sleepy eyes,” and the current owner had renovated pleasantly but not excessively. The restaurant below had been the scene of my friends' past nationalist excess but was now full of German tourists who
came in great numbers, though not nearly equal to the numbers of native Germans who'd emigrated from Sibiu after the “revolution.”
came in great numbers, though not nearly equal to the numbers of native Germans who'd emigrated from Sibiu after the “revolution.”
My interviewers had one essential question. Was it possible for a Romanian artist-thinker to contribute coherently to the intellectual dialogue of the West? Have no fear, my friends, I told them. This was the most important thing I told them, though I continued. Have no fear, I said, of speaking your ideas into the vast din that is now the West's babble of discourses. Who you are and what you represent are sorely needed in a world soon to be possessed by a virtuality that makes surrealism a poor source of imagination. There is a place for you by virtue of your desire to participate and by the immense native talent that you have fed on. I cited the examples of Eugen Ionescu (no relation to the desk manager), E. M. Cioran, and Mircea Eliade, who had shaped substantial areas of Western discourse after the war. These writers, I said, brought to the table exactly what you might: the reservoir of an intellectual tradition that is still fresh. I meant these things. At the same time, they hinged on a heavy contingency, namely the business of “who you are and what you represent.” Had I brought into play all I'd been thinking about the self-representations of current Romanians, I might have half offended them. I say “half,” because the Euphorionites were not naive. They knew that their essays were rooted in the dilemmas of a society at odds with itself, a moral swamp from which “les fleurs du mal,” if they were to take sublime forms, had to be obtained at the price of a new integrity. They knew also, or I hoped they did, that the moral contradictions embodied by such of their predecessors as Eliade and Cioran, were no longer tolerable. Cioran and Eliade had been fascists in their youth and, while Cioran had rejected this ideology resolutely, Eliade never had. Did they know this? And if they did, what did it mean to them?
On the night of the “launching” the room at the Student Cultural Center was filled with a chosen group of people. The only reason some of my old friends came was that Nardi, suspecting the
Euphorion
gang of elitism, had contacted the newspaper and the television station on his own. Word had barely gotten out. It hadn't been the group's intention to make this an open forum. When I found this out, I objected most strenuously. “My books,” I said, “should be read by everyone. Besides, my friend Nardi here needs to make a buck to recoup his costs. Everyone you invited is getting free books.” “Point well taken,” exclaimed the director of the Student Center, Constantin Chiriac, “we could have leafleted the union halls and gotten thousands, but we wanted to keep it classy.”
Euphorion
gang of elitism, had contacted the newspaper and the television station on his own. Word had barely gotten out. It hadn't been the group's intention to make this an open forum. When I found this out, I objected most strenuously. “My books,” I said, “should be read by everyone. Besides, my friend Nardi here needs to make a buck to recoup his costs. Everyone you invited is getting free books.” “Point well taken,” exclaimed the director of the Student Center, Constantin Chiriac, “we could have leafleted the union halls and gotten thousands, but we wanted to keep it classy.”
To understand just how twisted this reasoning was, you must know that “the masses,” in whose name the communists had created their own elite, enjoy no more prestige in the post-communist era than they ever did. Opposition intellectuals who took up politics after “the revolution,” who'd had to address the masses, did so against their deepest instincts. The contempt translated into the polls, hence the longevity of Iliescu's standstill government. Nicolae Manolescu, one of Romania's best critical thinkers, told me that a journalist had once come to interview him without having read any of his books. Imagine. The poor journalist. No wonder Manolescu lost so badly at the polls: Only ten voters had read his books.
Nonetheless, the evening was “a success,” as my friends ceaselessly assured me. No matter what happened, how much psychological uneasiness had been produced, the main thing was to be “a success.” The impulse to endow all events, even catastrophes, with a positive spin, is an unfortunate human, not uniquely Romanian, desire. The evening was not a catastrophe, but what did the “success” consist of? It consisted, no doubt, of a genius talk by the sage of Sibiu, the poet and translator Mircea Ivanescu. Wrapped like a cocoon in a silver-haired aura of civility, with Coke-bottom glasses that make his eyes look infinitely deep, Ivanescu, the translator into Romanian of James Joyce and Robert Musil, is the very heart of erudite civilization.
Listening to Ivanescu spin his weave of commentary on the margin of my poor poems, I had the absolute sense of the greatness of Romanian culture. Just as I had previously visioned (not
en
-visioned) the
total underground
of the Romanian economy, I now saw into its murky depths the ingot of pure gold that would save them all. Here was a man, a genius, but, perhaps more important, a scholar, for whom the life of the mind was absolute. The life of his body was as incidental as it is for any saint, because he emanated a simplicity of love that transcended matter. I could provide here the details of his life to prove this assertion, but it is wholly unnecessary. Saints are knowable directly, and if the facts support their sainthood, as they inevitably will, it's only because the pope's bureaucracy demands them. Believe me: Ivanescu is a saint. His living among the citizens of Sibiu, including the Euphorionites, is what makes it possible for them to be equal participants in European culture. I say this knowing full well that there are others like him in Romania, prima facie evidence of moral certainty. This would be a sordid story without them.
en
-visioned) the
total underground
of the Romanian economy, I now saw into its murky depths the ingot of pure gold that would save them all. Here was a man, a genius, but, perhaps more important, a scholar, for whom the life of the mind was absolute. The life of his body was as incidental as it is for any saint, because he emanated a simplicity of love that transcended matter. I could provide here the details of his life to prove this assertion, but it is wholly unnecessary. Saints are knowable directly, and if the facts support their sainthood, as they inevitably will, it's only because the pope's bureaucracy demands them. Believe me: Ivanescu is a saint. His living among the citizens of Sibiu, including the Euphorionites, is what makes it possible for them to be equal participants in European culture. I say this knowing full well that there are others like him in Romania, prima facie evidence of moral certainty. This would be a sordid story without them.
Titi was bursting with enthusiasm: after his unsuccessful run for mayor of Sibiu, he'd gone full tilt into business. He had built a commodity exchange, which he was dying to show me.
The Sibiu Commodity Exchange was a new building near the train station. It was airy and modern, with a wide marble staircase leading to an open meeting room. Titi employed twenty-five brokers with gleaming new computers. Four hundred companies were listed on the exchange. The exchange had opened just the past week, on 12 July 1997. On the desk in his spacious office with wall-sized windows overlooking the ancient spires of Sibiu was a stack of newspapers headlining the event.
“Unfortunately,” Titi sighed, “your President Clinton stole the first page.”
Not completely. News of Titi's exchange was just below the photograph of an open-mouth Clinton captured in midspeech and a toothy Emil Constantinescu caught, one supposes, in midthanks. “The First Futures Trading in Romania Organized on the Occasion of the Exchange's Official Opening!” trumpeted
Tribuna.
Tribuna.
I asked Titi how he'd managed this capitalistic coup. He was a trained veterinarian, a manager until 1989 of a pig farm. He told me an astonishing story. He had put an ad in a New York émigré newspaper seeking financial advice for the founding of a bank. A man of local origin, named Thomas Curtean, answered. Mr. Curtean was guru to numerous American financial institutions. He had written several primary texts about the functioning of brokerage institutions. He was also getting on in age, was nostalgic for his birthplace, and intended to buy, for sentimental reasons, the house where his parents were born. Titi and Curtean struck up a friendship that resulted in Curtean moving into Titi's house for several months and creating the exchange. Curtean trained Titi's brokers gratis, a job for which he normally charged hundreds of thousands of dollars, and supervised every aspect of the enterprise until it began to function.
“What are the laws regarding exchanges?” I asked.
“That's the beauty of it!” shouted Titi. “There aren't any!”
And, of course, since there weren't any, they would be written on the basis of a fait accompli. Titi was writing the laws. He was rightly proud of his
initiative and full of enthusiasm for what his attitude portended. It meant that anyone with the nerve to seize the initiative (and with the necessary connections, naturally) could make a bundle in Romania. In this respect, Romania is where Poland, Hungary, or the Czech Republic were seven years ago.
initiative and full of enthusiasm for what his attitude portended. It meant that anyone with the nerve to seize the initiative (and with the necessary connections, naturally) could make a bundle in Romania. In this respect, Romania is where Poland, Hungary, or the Czech Republic were seven years ago.
Titi's enthusiasm was infectious. In addition to the exchange, he owned a factory for manufacturing meat products and had built a splendid set of apartments for lease to wealthy businessmen or consular residents. He hadn't given up his dream of a ski resort in the mountain village of Saliste and was bubbling with all kinds of other entrepreneurial ideas.
The gleaming new building of the Commodity Exchange contrasted most glaringly with the shabbiness of Sibiu's ancient historical district. Sibiu, a medieval city, is one of the jewels of Europe in terms of its architecture, history, and importance. Cornel Lungu, the director of the Bruckenthal Historical Museum, explained that no effort was being made either to preserve or to renovate the old city. There was a lack of political will, despite the fact that tourism, just trickling now, could revive the local economy.
Titi showed none of his characteristic enthusiasm when I asked him about it. The sorry state of the municipality was the fault of local government, he said, which refused to sell the historical buildings to private investors. Only such investors, backed by laws concerning preservation, could save the city. It was amazing to hear such resolute market ideas: Had so much time passed since 1989 when he'd been the director of a collectivist enterprise?
The business of Sibiu's crumbling architecture and the necessity to save it preoccupied me for the next two days. I brought up the problem with everyone, including my old friend Ion V, who was still an editor at
Tribuna
but seemed depressed. While his friend Titi was getting quickly rich, Ion had remained in place. He suggested the formation of a Codrescu Foundation to see to the old city's revival. This was more than my fragile ego could stand, and I was not about to lend myself to his sagging career.
Tribuna
but seemed depressed. While his friend Titi was getting quickly rich, Ion had remained in place. He suggested the formation of a Codrescu Foundation to see to the old city's revival. This was more than my fragile ego could stand, and I was not about to lend myself to his sagging career.
Just how precarious Ion's standing in town was became evident after the “launching” of my book. Hoping to see all my old and new friends in one place, I suggested that we go eat and drink together. Here, however, I came up against the reality of Romania.
“If V. comes,” one of the
Euphorion
editors said, “none of us will.”
Euphorion
editors said, “none of us will.”
“But he's my friend,” I insisted. “Can you tell me why?”
He did. It was a sordid story that had all the earmarks of gossip and no hard facts.
“Well, then,” I told him, “I don't care if you come.”
Meanwhile, Ion left mysteriously and promised to join us in the
restaurant
.
restaurant
.
“We will go with you,” said the
Euphorion
man, “but when V. comes we are all going to get up and leave.”
Euphorion
man, “but when V. comes we are all going to get up and leave.”
The restaurant was of the
patronul
club variety, an immense space with linen tablecloths and a mirrored stage. The group ordered drinks and food, and we fell into an intense argument about past and present.
patronul
club variety, an immense space with linen tablecloths and a mirrored stage. The group ordered drinks and food, and we fell into an intense argument about past and present.
“Why don't you bring all your suspicions into the open?” I asked. “How long can you go on suspecting and hating people? It is paralyzing. Nothing can go on unless you forgive.”
It wasn't so easy, they explained. “The formers” still had power, they were the newly rich and the still-powerful. To go against them was to risk persecution, just as in the old days. Better to devote oneself to rigorous intellectual activity, restrict oneself nobly to culture.
“But this is simply defeatism,” I cried, with indignant American righteousness, “the press is free. You have the right to speak out. And if you really hate somebody, you can always hire a goon to break their legs.”
During our discussion, and unbeknownst to me, a slew of strippers had appeared on the mirrored stage, courtesy of the
patronul,
who wished to maintain harmony and high-mindedness in his establishment. The only one who noticed the girls was also the only woman at the table, lustin Panta's young girlfriend. She watched in fascinated silence, as the men thrashed in the cauldron of their anxieties.
patronul,
who wished to maintain harmony and high-mindedness in his establishment. The only one who noticed the girls was also the only woman at the table, lustin Panta's young girlfriend. She watched in fascinated silence, as the men thrashed in the cauldron of their anxieties.
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