Gaudeamus by Mircea Eliade

Author:Mircea Eliade [Eliade, Mircea]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Istros Books
Published: 2018-05-03T20:46:15+00:00

SIXTEEN: THE NEWSPAPER OFFICE

My professor of logic was now also a journalist. I met him in a newspaper office filled with cigar smoke, with threadbare sofas and walls garbed in colourful posters. He flicked through my manuscript with a well-meaning eye.

‘We’ll publish it. Drop by tomorrow and speak with Trăznea.’

Trăznea, or Thunderer, was an opinion writer and man to be feared. A while ago he had written a few good lines about me. This encouraged me. I waited impatiently for the day to pass. Once again, I climbed the stairs to the newspaper office. On the secretary’s desk, a swarthy, impulsive man, with unruly hair and gestures, was speaking. Timidly, I remained next to the door. By his manner of speaking, I realised he must be Trăznea. He recounted a quarrel he had had with a cabman. He insulted the cabman from the beginning, and every time he brought him up, he piled on a new insult. When he mentioned the cabman’s horse, the horse became the object of lewd insinuations. He described the cab, the road, the rain. And he cursed them all in turn. The cabman had refused to take him. So, in the newspaper office he recounted everything he had said to the cabman. On hearing the cabman insult him, he had turned around and insulted the cabman. Naturally, the cabman had responded in kind. And a quarrel had ensued. He had ended up giving him a ride, soaked to the skin.

He winked at me. The professor introduced me.

‘And you are? We’ve given you a job in the newspaper office. You can write whatever you like, except politics or reportage.’

I was flustered and not sure how to thank him.

‘Let me give you a tip: never offer praise. Defame! In my experience I only ever get respect from the dramatists I besmirch in my reviews.’

He launched into another anecdote. And then he remembered he had not written the editorial. He broke off his anecdote to muse on what the subject should be.

‘Something that will draw blood.’

He snarled, with wet lips and white teeth. The doorman brought him a letter and news that a woman wanted to see him.

‘Is she beautiful?’

‘No, old.’

‘Why even bother to ask, then? Don’t you realise that I’m not here for anyone until I’ve written my article?’

He continued with his anecdote while reading the letter. I am not sure whether he finished the letter, but he did not finish the anecdote. Hitting on a subject, he stormed off into the next room. I remained and was introduced to the others: the secretary, a tall, brown-haired man, was absorbed in reading letters from the provinces. He did not acknowledge me, would not answer questions, and did not take his eyes off the manuscripts before him. Not for one moment did his right hand, stained with blue ink, let go of his pen. He erased, added, pasted correction slips in the margins, rang for the errand boy, sent bundles of manuscripts to the printer’s, ordered corrections, sent

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