When I was a lot younger I had a crush on Natalie Wood
(even today I still believe that of all actresses
she’s the most worthy of my love).
I give myself high marks
for not having become infatuated with B.B. or worse, God forbid, with Marilyn –
such shame has never stained me.
But Natalie Wood is really rather respectable.
I was in love with Natalie Wood.
We’d go for a stroll together in the evening in the Arsenal-Infantrymen-Dionisie Lupu neighborhood
I’d drape my arm around her shoulders and she’d hold me by the waist
it was a very beautiful autumn.
She didn’t mind that I was in my high school uniform.
“Mircea,” she’d coo to me, “Mircea,
you’re so wonderful,
everything an intellectual woman could ever want.”
“And you too, my little kitten, you’re wonderful.”
We’d walk on through withered leaves, no one understood us,
we were too sensitive, too different …
“Natalie,” I’d say to her,
“oh, Natalie, Natalie, Natalie
your name’s so beautiful … you know, Natalie,
today I’m nothing,
while you’re famous, you’ve got a whole filmography behind you,
but I’m going to work hard, Natalie, you’ll see,
I’m going to make the big bucks …”
And the autumn evenings were so sad,
the eyes of my sweetheart so deep …
It began to snow a little
and the trams flashed green at the contact with wet wires.
Then I’d already achieved glory, made money and women
I’d been published in Paris and Chicago
Out of habit, I’d still go to “Cantemir” for sentimental reasons.
Every evening Natalie would be waiting
at the high school gates in her little Porsche
and we’d go for a spin down the Street of the Prophet, Corporal Troncea Street,
back on the Street of the Future.
I recall that one night
she parked the car along a sidewalk
lit a cigarette in the dark, and, with her sensual voice
(but hoarse and bitter then)
she confessed she’d cheated with a man. “Mircea, I had to,
I had to tell you,
I couldn’t have continued on, otherwise. You know,
not for a single moment did I want to go to bed with Robert
but he’s so insistent … these blond guys are just awful …
but believe me, Mircea, believe me, you’re still the best …”
I forgave her.
What you can’t forgive a fallen woman
you must forgive a superior one.
“Cheat on me with your deeds, but not with your thoughts,” that’s all I said.
Then I had to leave for the army.
Daniela came to Cristi Teodorescu almost every week.
The very girl he’s now married to would come see Mera.
Somebody even visited Romulus once.
Natalie never showed up for me.
On Sundays I stood like a dumb jerk at the guardhouse
and ogled the others kissing their sweethearts
and squeezing hands across the table …
When we cleaned the weapons I furtively read “Cinema” magazine,
I clipped out everything about her. About Her.
For ten years I hadn’t heard a thing of her. Life kept us apart.
Then, about a week or so ago, as I was looking for blank tapes,
whom should I see at The Crystal Disk, near Lipscani Street?
Natalie! Natalie was back in Romania!
But she’d aged so much … I didn’t want to talk to her
so I left before she might notice me (outside waiting for her
was that straw-haired Redford with his Cadillac).
Broth tastes dull heated a second time.
No, Natalie,
you made your choice, go your own way.
And yet, when I got back to my villa,
why did the seventeen rooms seem so empty?
For a long time I stared through the frost-covered window at my pool
in which a dead leaf floated …
translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Daniel Mangu