Zenobia

fragment

15. At about the same time I lived, temporarily, in a village on the bank of the Someş, I was terribly sick, I crawled through the streets of the village by hanging on fences, I ate nothing but potatoes without salt, nothing else, please keep this detail in mind, I didn’t talk to anybody, the locals stared at me as if I were a ghost.
A few weeks later, when I started to recover, a young woman from the Department of Classical Philology at the University of Bucharest came to see me, she cared about me, she found me ultra-scrawny, my belly swollen by the potatoes, we both went out for a walk, in the field, among daisies and poppies, to the grass so green that it seemed wet, we discussed different things, mostly classical matters, she had brought some books for me to read, I could hardly stand on my feet but I made conversation like an intelligent and cocksure person, I expressed my opinions regarding Theodore the Cyrenaic, nicknamed the Atheist and later the God, and regarding Hypparchia of Maronea, I even had some reservations, I was saddened by some details of their lives, lapses of behavior, pay attention; that’s how it is when you discover the virtues of saliva, the young woman wasn’t to be blamed at all.
And it so happened that suddenly the gases caused by my purifying but unbalanced diet started to put pressure on my bladder; I felt that I would die, that I would go mad with shame, there were two possible solutions: one consisted of the urgent evacuation of the bladder’s liquid, the other, involving sound, related to the equally urgent dispersing of the gases, both solutions inconceivable in front of a girl from the Department of Classical Philology.
Soon I felt that I could not contain myself anymore, I threw myself face down on the earth, I beat the grass with my fists, I groaned as loudly as I could because I had chosen the infamous and degrading sonic solution, which could not be covered by my groans; the young woman looked at me dumbfounded, she was frightened.
“Make no mistake”, I shouted, “when I talk about Theodore I have in mind only his way of life and I refer only to states, not ideas; don’t put me in his or anybody else’s category of people, don’t put me any category whatsoever, don’t forget this”, I shouted (uselessly, because I couldn’t conceal everything) “don’t put labels on me, I’ll suffocate, if I utter a name from those miserable books that you’re bringing me, you’ll immediately find a label for me; remember that I read to recognize not to cognize; remember that I don’t live pro and con, like in your trap” (I shouted more and more furiously). “Remember that I am outside, and get out of here, and make it quick; go to the railroad station, leave me —”
The young woman tried to help me, she didn’t know how, but I soon finished and we continued our walk as if nothing had happened, and I even think that she found enjoyable those hours spent with a pohet, on a field of daisies and poppies.

Gellu Naum. Zenobia. - Northwestern University Press : Evanston, Illinois, 1995, (pp. 77-78)

(Translated by James Brook and Sasha Vlad)