If there was one thing I had understood about my friend since school, it was that he was an arriviste, he wanted to go up in the world. He rarely confessed to the ambition that gnawed away at him and troubled his sleep. But he would give himself away: he chose his friendships, sought as many new acquaintances as possible, stayed abreast of political influences, never missed an aristocratic tea party, flirted with rich young ladies, spoke at seminars, and frequented professors who might eventually be of use to him. Everyone knew that Petre wanted to go up in the world, and they all approved of his ambition. Sometimes he would be vindictive, laugh maliciously, lash out with venomous jokes. A best friend would be declared ‘worthless’ when Petre found himself in company that needed to be won over. In seminars, even when on the losing side of an argument with a friend, he would never concede. He never backed down in front of strangers. He employed years’ worth of pedantic syllogism and his sharp intelligence to demolish arguments if his opponent faltered for a single second or stumbled over a single word in a well-stated question or sentence. No matter what happened, he always had to win.
He worked, but he wanted his work to be publicised and remunerated. He only read books that could help him as a lawyer and political figure, or the latest novels, for the sake of high-society conversation, or works on erudite subjects simplified for the layman, from which he memorised details and quotations for seminars. I do believe he was interested in history and philosophy, but he did not have the time to study them more deeply. Every afternoon he went out: to the University, to tea parties, to friends’. He had discovered an excellent method to expand his culture: he would ask friends to summarise the latest books they had read. Naturally, he absorbed very little of the essence of such books. But enough for him and everybody else, enough for him to be able to drop the books into conversation at the university or in the salons.
He learned English, paying dearly to do so, but only because he was un homme du monde. English literature was not discussed in salons; and he did not read English. But before the premiere of Sfînta Ioana, he bought himself a copy of Shaw’s play, read it, and alluded to it in conversation throughout the run of performances, referring to it by its original English title, pronouncing it impeccably: Saint Joan.
He helped me and worked for the university magazine; it was a good means for him to win the admiration of the professors; he himself aspired to become a university professor. The magazine interested him, naturally; he understood its purpose, and the need for it. But, if we judge it like that, there were so many other good things to be done at the University. Petre may have just complimented our work, and stopped there; if he had not understood its benefits, he would not have worked with us. He was intelligent enough to appreciate an activity and to become involved only after weighing the risks and outlay of time.
We were even better friends than before. We got on well with each other and exchanged ideas. In each of our souls remained a well-guarded secret. I discerned his, and he probably suspected mine. We knew that friendship was one thing, and ambition another. Petre was blinded by his passion. Why should I be upset if in future he should see me on the street and walk straight past? I understood him so well that I liked him all the more when he confessed that there were days when he hated me, and days when he envied me. He nurtured his feelings of revenge undiminished, without forgetting even the most insignificant slight. I was incapable of taking revenge against another person. I understood vengeance as an upsurge of hatred whose purpose was to make me surpass myself, to renew my powers of work, to spur me to create. I sought vengeance by elevating myself, rather than by lashing out. Petre lashed out, venomously and with a smile. Only those who had understood what drove him noticed his vengeance. He masked his hatred with jokes, making light of it.
My friend’s ambition went unconfessed for many years. His greatest humiliation came one sultry night at the beginning of the holidays. The two of us had lingered over a meal in an outdoor restaurant, drinking a good wine. Petre’s eyes were troubled. We reminisced about our school years, about our enemies and our friendships, about afternoons at The Muse dramatic society. We looked back; we had both beaten straight paths, without faltering. And then, by sharing with him the purpose of my life, he betrayed his to me. I was stunned listening to him, even though I, as well as many others, had intuited the truth for years. He told me that he ground his teeth whenever he heard any of us had enjoyed some success, that he would awake with a start in the night, from dreams that slaked his thirst for fame and political power. He told me that he never had a single day’s peace, that he could never put out of his mind the ambition gnawing away at him. But now, it was too late to be cured. His only salvation would be finally to go up in the world, and no longer to seek solace in dreams.
‘I admire your ambition’, I said. ‘It’s a fierce, masculine passion, of which you should never have to be ashamed and which you should never have to conceal.’
‘You forget that concealment of my ambition is demanded by my ambition itself. I want to make it politically; therefore, I must act like a political man; covertly, cautiously.’
‘That is the very part of it I do not like. Your ambition is limited to the political, it is the ambition of the parvenu. You need to cultivate your passion, lend it a metaphysical aspect, develop it against a backdrop of cosmic proportions and implications. As you can see, I am using big words in an attempt to suggest to you the impression I get when I talk about ambition. I would have liked you to be Promethean; but you can’t even manage to be a Rastignac.’
‘I have to make it. Your metaphysical nonsense would prevent me from making real, political progress.’
‘If the passion is authentic, progress is irrelevant; it will never be satisfied. Ambition, like glory, goads and torments you the higher you climb. This truth is embarrassingly banal. Any satisfaction you gain will only serve to inflame redoubled desires. I believe that only by depriving yourself of something will you ever be able to possess and enjoy it.’
‘A paradox. You’ve started to be buffeted by the winds of mysticism. It’s all the rage these days.’
‘It depends what you understand by mysticism. Women and feminised societies have always required a theosophical tonic. The substitutes employed by you intellectuals and social climbers have as little to do with mysticism as Abbé Moreux’s three-franc scientific pamphlets.’
‘Are you being ironic?’
‘No, I was making a point. My mysticism is not bookish, it is not snobbish mimicry. It is an ethical experience; soon, perhaps, it will be a religious experience. Although we are the generation destined to search for God.’
‘What about those who came before us?’
‘They lost Him; absurdly, stupidly, without inner torment, without crises. I believe that God was taken from them that they might function more comfortably in their mediocrity.’
‘You’re engaging in polemic.’
‘No. I am criticising the fact that you, a member of a generation that roots every action and value in a transcendental plane, are bringing into the present an ambition from the past.’
‘I am led by my will.’
‘There is much to be said about your will, but however you might be, I still prefer you to the others.’
‘The obsessive doctrine of manliness, right? This time you are correct. I think masculine passions preordain suffering; and let me tell you again, I suffer greatly.’
That winter, Petre had met a girl who was studying architecture. The inevitable occurred. They spent all their time together. I understood, and kept my silence. One night, Petre visited me, anxious, downcast.
‘Do you know what’s happening to me? I’m undergoing an adolescent crisis. I like this girl, but instead of seducing her, I’ve fallen in love with her. It’s the most inappropriate way of getting to know her. I’m stupid, irremediably stupid. I’m afraid. I love her; it’s revolting, isn’t it?’
‘No.’
A look, deep into my eyes.
‘You’re talking strangely. And what’s more, you’re contradicting your principles.’
‘My “principles” aren’t against love, but rather against annihilation, and nostalgic idiocy brought on by love.’
‘Don’t you remember what you said to me this autumn? That youth is a dangerous time; and that no one finds salvation but the insane.’
‘You exaggerate the way I put it. I merely said that youth is tempted by sentimental and intellectual mediocrity, by the illusion of comfortable happiness; and I also said that only an insane decision, one made in the face of untold opposition, has the power to save. The crisis of youth can only be transcended by means of passion, or madness. Or that is what I thought back then.’
‘You were right. I feel like I’m about to fall, that I’m about to drown, unless I smother this love.’
‘Why smother it?’
‘Because it’s stupid, because it prevents me from going up in the world; I love her so much that I’ve asked her to marry me. I’m going insane. It will pass, right?’
‘Everything passes. I’m obsessed with this refrain. Try to implant it in your mind, in your soul, in your viscera.’
‘I love her, I love her. You’re the only person I’ve told; I had to tell you. I know it’s humiliating, I know it’s stupid, I can’t control myself anymore. I love her like an adolescent. Do you understand how crazy I must have been when I asked her to be my wife? I wanted to run away; but I can’t, I still have exams. I’m a fool, I lack the will, I’m a slave.’
Petre lamented. How could I have helped him? I offered a consoling look. I was interested, albeit not as a friend, in the stark tension between his two desires. I was not sure if ambition or love would win. I thought that if the metaphysical meaning I had told him about were dominant, then Petre’s ambition would triumph, albeit accompanied by tenfold suffering.
‘If he manages to remain insane to the very end, Petre will transcend the crisis of youth. He will achieve as much as the inferior essence of passion will allow. Perhaps Petre believes in happiness; if so, he will become an unfortunate husband. A young man doesn’t need to believe in happiness. His aspirations would then take on a tragic and austere sobriety. But it’s so painful and difficult not to believe in happiness. For the majority, happiness comes to be the given meaning of existence. All the worse for them. Happiness can only be known, validated and mastered once you have doubted it. Not pessimism, but lucidity, calm, and heroic will, which is to say, a masculine and ascetic will.’
I wrote all of this in my Journal, after Petre left. His crisis was not nearing its end. I had once more grown distant from my friends. Petre did not impart anything to me. He was suffering, struggling. He foresaw his defeat.
I followed my own bitter path, far from the eyes of the world. I could sense, in my soul, signs of a bloody reckoning. But I was not afraid. Day and night, I laboured, steeling myself. ‘All of this will serve as preparation’, I told myself. ‘The act too will have to come to pass.’