Searching for Cioran

Romania, 1995–1997

Romania, 1995–1997 1995, Bucharest July 2. Off to Romania again. As I embark from Barcelona, in a battered old plane piloted by a Captain Turkey (!), I start to wonder if I am going to make it all the way there, and why I’m going back. What masochistic impulse drives me back to the dusty, dirty place that was my place of origin? Poverty is degrading, and Romania is a degraded and profoundly humiliated country. First impressions before landing confirm my misgivings: a wintry landscape in full summer, enveloped in mist (not autumn mists but pollution), and dust endemic everywhere. Obligatory features of all Romanian landscapes: dirt, dust, rust, black, and gray. 220 Memoirs of a Publishing Scoundrel July 12. Back in Bucharest following my Cioran trail. I feel like a prisoner here. At least my “cell” is pleasant this time around, a roomy apartment with all the American comforts. A fortress, above the din of Bucharest traffic and all the sore sights of this city’s streets. I’m wasting my time. For three days, I’ve been trying to get in touch with the director of the French Institute in Bucharest that awarded C. his scholarship in 1937. Impossible to get him on the phone or get an appointment. One would think he was a government minister or something, rather than a French civil servant supposed to make himself available to the public. Nasty secretary trained to keep people at bay. Very evasive, not sure that I can see him at all, I should call back the next day. So next morning I call again, but no, he is not available. I call the director of the Fulbright Commission and ask her to intervene on my behalf. She does so, and I get an appointment , but the following day it’s cancelled. Message: M. Norbert Dodille is too busy to see me, and he’s sure he has nothing to tell me besides. However, I may speak to the head librarian, although she probably does not know much about the history of the institute and its archives, where I could find C.’s application for a fellowship dating 1937, and so on. It sounds like they don’t know anything. Or don’t want to cooperate? Very discouraging. I call back to see if the secretary could find out at least whether the Institute’s files are in Romania or in France. Again, they don’t know. Still, I insist, there must be such a file, for I saw a quote from it in Liiceanu’s book. She goes back to ask. All of a sudden, a squeaky male voice comes on the phone, speaking Romanian well and rapidly but with a faint accent. I suspect it is the mighty invisible Dodille himself: “We do not have anything on EC, we do not know anything.” I: “M. Dodille, is this M. Dodille?” Voice continues to repeat with its mechanical and hysterical shriek: “We don’t have anything on C. Yes, it’s me.” I: “I’m sorry to bother you, M. Dodille, but . . .” “Yes, you’re bothering me very much!” He hangs up abruptly. Of Dodille, I only know from Simone that he wears loud neckties. Now I also know he has a high voice. I’m shocked, offended, angry. I call the commission to complain. The person in the office who is the cause of all my trouble, since she failed to make an appointment with Dodille as I had asked her to do two months in advance, is too busy with her own travel plans for the States to care. She’s also too limited to see beyond schedules and papers. I call up the director again, and she promises to speak to the new cultural attach é with whom she has an engagement to dine in the evening. She is on the mondain Bucharest circuit. She might well complain for me, because this indirectly affects her as well, since she had personally asked for an appointment for me, and he snubbed her as well as me. On the other hand, everyone is polite on the dinner party circuit, and they may not want to stir up things for Dodille. Two Americans who have the right reaction, Julie and Ken, are both indignant that a civil servant behaved so uncivilly. But Julie’s Romanian friend is right, we are in the Balkans here, and this is a Frenchman [3.149.234.141] Project MUSE (2024-04...