That April night, in my personal Diary, rather than my Travel Journal, I wrote:
Today, on a street with some obscure name, I saw the face of a girl. I ran, I looked for her, I saw her again. I returned to the hotel. And now here I am, writing this. I’m in love with the girl, I am in love. I can no longer defend the ramparts of my soul. I’m in love with an unknown girl. I have gazed on her face for so long in my memory that now it has started to fade. I wanted to study her every feature. I was unsettled. And now I can’t precisely remember the face of the girl. But I’m in love, I’m in love.
Maybe I am insane. On my way back to the hotel, I railed against myself and my decisions. I read the first page of my Diary. I know that I’m not insane. But I’ve lost the face of the girl; I’m in love with the girl. I tell myself: I am disturbed, on the verge of insanity. But I know that all resistance is futile. I’m in love with the girl. Is it shameful? Yes, yes, It’s humiliating to be in love, it’s ridiculous, it’s offensive. I’m suffocating. I don’t believe there is any truth in what I have written. Maybe I’m just tired from the journey, or because of Rome. Rome smashed me to pieces and put me back together again. But what if I am no longer myself? I’ll look for myself tomorrow in the city. Everything I now write is lies. It’s only been a few hours and I’m still in love with the girl. But tomorrow, or in a year, or in ten years? I will have to remain silent for ten years. Why did I write in my Diary? I didn’t even manage to calm myself.
How might I meet that girl? I preserve her image behind my closed eyelids. Returning to the Corso, alone, I was struck by somebody who looked like Nişka. I experienced the same turmoil as yesterday. But now I know: the girl resembles Nişka, she has the same eyes and hair.
‘How serenely I write humiliating confessions. From time to time I leaf through the Diary and reread my decisions. I am fulfilling them with difficultly. I suffer, this I can feel, I suffer stupidly. My soul is torn apart with grief and then lifted up with joy. When I remember the face of the girl, I am afflicted with a strange and dreadful feeling; I feel gripped by a strange arm. I am embarrassed to give it a name: is it love?
‘My decisions flood me with desperate, never-ending sadness. I always say to myself: all things pass. But such encouragement seems foolish to me. I wonder how I could have made use of it for so long without observing its vacuity. But what if it only seems vacuous because the temptation is more powerful than I am? That’s why I always say it to myself. It will pass. The sadness of my solitude at the hermitage passed, so too the nostalgias and temptations of autumn. Everything has to pass. But this temptation is powerful, new, agile.
But why did I write about temptation last night? I forgot my decision: love should be controlled rather than driven away. I can’t control it; that’s why it humiliates me. Love is to blame. It caresses me, like a strange claw. I love her, I love her. Who knows what’s wrong with me?
I don’t understand why I was afraid. Wasn’t I looking for love? Didn’t I want to know it and to enslave it? This is love. I know that this is love. Now, I have to deepen it, and master it.
It’s not humiliating. I am in love with her. The words are stupid. How can I recite the words that I’ve learned from others? That’s why I’m not in love. It is not love that has thrown my soul into turmoil. I am not in love with her. I am in love with her.’
Capri Island. ‘I’m in love with Nişka!
Night, in the train, bound for Ancona: Nişka, Nişka, Nişka.
On the boat, bound for Fiume: ‘Why did I suppress it for two years? I have been in love with Nişka since the night we walked back from the monastery. I was even more in love with her at the seaside, on the train, in Jassy. I’m having a difficult time understanding anything. Why try to understand? The Adriatic is blue and my soul is serene. Maybe my anxieties will disappear. Why shouldn’t I be in love with Nişka?
How should I put this? I understand and I feel differently. But I won’t change any of my decisions.
I’ll maintain my tragic sense of existence. I remember that I want to be a hero. What act is more heroic than self-denial? But self-denial that will be neither an extirpation, nor a victory wracked with remorse, I’ll let myself be in love with Nişka. Henceforth I shall not be afraid, I shall say to myself, in my solitude: I’m in love with Nişka. I’ll conceal it from others. I’ll stick to my path, come what may. Love must endure, and I feel that it will endure in my soul.
Anyone in love will swear their faith in love. What everybody else does in the throes of madness, I too shall do.
That’s not true. My madness is not love, but heroism. And I’m not just anybody. This I can write with my head held high. My life was not handed to me; I have constructed it myself, with all its discontents, books read, rebellions. What I endured this autumn, not one of my contemporaries has endured. I fought against sleep, exhaustion, the desires of my young body, the temptation of light reading, madness.
I conquered madness, because I willed it; and I didn’t retreat in the face of it.
When I say: I will preserve this love year after year, concealed and undefiled, I must believe in it. Because I am the one who said it, the only one in whom I trust.
A curious observation: whenever I think or write the word will, I forget everything else, including Nişka. Nişka’s love is far from me now. I should close my book and look out upon the Adriatic: behold, that’s what I am doing.
Will they notice the change when I return to Romania? I feel so different. Many of my thoughts have now become feelings. Intuitions have turned into experiences. I am not sure what part of me has changed. I feel a renewal; I feel more alive; I feel more certain that this is my flesh, and that this is my soul. I cannot explain anything. I feel it!
What if the change is noticeable? How will I meet with Nişka? I won’t need to say anything to her. She won’t be able to understand my abnegation. She would accept me, as her companion, if not husband; of that I am sure. Nişka’s soul belongs to me: I divined her desires, hopes, intentions. Even so, she doesn’t need to know how much I love her. I want us to remain friends. I will suffer all the more seeing how another man possesses her, there, close to me.
I am a madman, and I struggle in vain. Nişka will deny herself, just as I have denied myself. If not, she will be lost. This is easily understood. She will be lost, no matter how prolonged her agony. But Nişka will renounce choosing any other husband.
All of these predictions are pointless. I’m in love with Nişka! This is the single new reality, next to the old reality: me. Everything else is hypotheses and games. I should not be wasting my time.
They all said to me: ‘You are suffering from a nostalgia for the West, because of Italy.’ No one understood; not even Nişka, whom I saw rarely, under the pretext I was revising for exams. She asked me to tell her all about my trip; how could I tell her that I went to Rome, thence to Naples, and thence to Fiume via Ancona?
I followed my course with painful steps. Everything I was trying to forget grew gigantic, deafening, vivid, and barbaric in my memory. Solitude tormented me, but was still my salvation, the means to achieve my great idea.
Summer spent wandering, without forgetting, without weeping. I returned from time to time to the city under lamplight; carrying thick black notebooks. And I would leave, with a notebook and a book. I wandered the mountains, spending little, sleeping in sheepfolds, enduring cold rains. I had begun to be accustomed to my disturbance, my disquietude. I believed that my soul would suffer eternally, discontented with what I was doing. I carried the burden of my solitude along footpaths, to monasteries, to the towns on the Danube.
And I went to the hermitage. ‘Why should I weep?’ I said to myself revisiting my cell. And I did not weep.
At the hermitage, the solitude brought me tranquillity. But it was merely a crisis, which greatly disturbed me. I did not despair, my breast eaten away by unconfessed longing. Concentrating on the pain, rather than on love, I reminded myself: all this must pass.’