Back to Jilava
The van took us slowly and hurriedly from Malmaison to Jilava before noon. We get out: Fort 13. We are greeted by Lieutenant Ștefan, with the face of a primate, of an anthropoid, the gestures and the look of a prison colony sergeant in a film noir. He takes great pleasure in it, playing his role in slow motion, like a gambler spinning his cards.
We spend the rest of the day in a small, unimaginably filthy quarantine cell, the doors unopened. In the evening we are transferred to the cave, a huge, dark, smelly cave which, although it is electrically lit, has a number of dark corners and – as so often in so many places of detention, but this is the first contact – everything looks so gloomy and oppressive that it doesn’t seem real. The presence of Dr. Voiculescu is touching, very old, all bones, gentle, soft-spoken, peaceful, noble, quick-witted, but broken by fatigue.
A strange feeling of immense happiness. Reasons: Because I have finally escaped the investigation. Prison, according to the Securitate, is a limbo, an oasis, a heaven. Then the first meeting with the legionaries (not only our lot were in quarantine), from whom I rushed to learn the Morse alphabet and verses in Crainic and Gyric – my hasty enthusiasm amused them. And, of course, the very reassuring presence of Voiculescu. But also the memory – exhilarating – of the time I spent in the van.
Where I was placed in a partition, a niche, a dungeon, with Sandu L., a former legionnaire. Barely squeezed in, he even spoke to me. He told me that he was very sorry that he had been a legionnaire, and asked me to forgive him; it would be very unpleasant for me to stay with him, so close to him. Don’t I fear it? He hadn’t even finished when the roof of the car opened up, the blue sky opened up. I reply that I don’t see why he should talk to me about forgiveness, that if it’s like that, I should ask him for forgiveness because I’m Jewish, and he should stay with me, that as far as guilt is concerned, we’re all guilty, all together. Now that we have asked each other for forgiveness, I suggest that we reconcile, embrace each other, call each other by name. By the light of the bulb in the carcass on wheels, we kiss and – considering the ridiculous to be empty talk and non-existent feeling – we suddenly and abundantly know – under the blue sky – that state of unspeakable happiness against which any drink, any eroticism, any spectacle, any food, any reading, any journey, any exam taken, any ministerial portfolio is nothing but dust and ashes, delusion, emptiness, void, sounding brass and rattling cymbals, a state following the fulfilment of an action in accordance with divine prescriptions. Waves of joy pour over us, flow over us, flood us, overwhelm us. I ask Saint Seraphim – and if I am copying Saint Seraphim of Sarov in the scene in the forest with Motovilov, I am doing it unintentionally – if he doesn’t see on my lips the smile that I see on his: the joy that comes from the uncreated energies. For in the narrow corner of the room was also Gregory Pallama, the former St. Seraphim, with Nicholas Motovilov after him.
The behaviour of the guards in the prison was so bad, the atmosphere so dramatic, the memory of the scene with Sandu L. so acute, the prospect of long suffering so clear, that I couldn’t help moving from one end of the cell to the other in a state of incredible, exalted excitement. I can’t believe that everything can be so complete, that I am experiencing such blessed happiness.
Doctor Voiculescu and Bishop Leu (badly beaten, on crutches, wrapped in the silky robes of a high mountain sheepfold) were questioned at length by the guards, who were probably bored. Both are mocked, insulted and cursed. The others get off more easily.
– You mean it’s possible to be Christian, you mean it’s possible to act like a Christian, to make Christian gestures. Christianity can also be arithmetic.
I can’t believe that the bells of the Church of the Capra rang for me in vain.
(Fr. Nicolae Steinhardt – Diary of Happiness)