Bibliography

For Isaac Babel

Evening: Spring, 1945

Walking with Ana from Slatinanu, where the Party organization had its headquarters, to Cuza-voda,¹ we’d come home late, as late as possible. Not wanting to wake the house, we’d climb to my little room on tiptoe, in whispers, holding hands, I one step ahead, she behind, both overly sensitive to the creak of the slowly rotting stairs. She’d leave very quickly in the first weeks, at two, two-thirty the most. Then, we’d climb down together, with the same care, and I’d take her to her home on Olteni, not far from mine. Only, having decided to get married as soon as possible after all the madness in Piata Palatului²—the feverishness of the March victory—her departures started lengthening toward to the increasingly early spring dawns. We would climb downstairs differently now. From my point of view, Ana could stay any length of time in my place upstairs. She could meet my mother, my grandfather early mornings at the door—my father woke later—without any of that bothering me. I had a feeling in my bones, though, about what the unprecedented achievement of bringing a woman into the house would mean for my folks—witness my sensitivity on the stairs. But none of that mattered to me because I was full of holy ire against the conventions of their petit-bourgeois world, which had to be blown up, of course. I loathed the mores I’d submitted to for nineteen years, the habits of morning, noon and night, the religion that had become stupid after just a few...