82 292
Mircea Cartarescu
82
meter above the ground.
Another night I saw that I
could step on the surface
of the tar black water and
I walked across it. But the
nocturnal Circus Park, as
different from the daylight
park as woman from man,
has never ravaged me as
much as in the night when I
arrived to an area I had not
seen as a child, although
I’d known it was there. It
was very far, towards the
Lacul Tei Boulevard, where
the winding alley suddenly
opened to a vast space of
terrible loneliness. In the
middle there was a basin
full of black water. A statue
was standing in the basin,
a naked young man who
defended
himself
with
his arms against a terrible
threat. His stony silent dread
caught me too, because that
teenager was obviously me,
his eyes enlarged with terror
were my eyes.
I
have
always
been
frightened, pure fear arisen
not fromthoughts of danger,
but from life itself. I have
permanently lived the dread
of the blind, the disquiet of
the deaf. I could never truly
sleep at night, because the
instant I closed my eyes I
knewtherewas somebody in
the roomwhowas looking at
me, who was slowly coming
closer to my sleeping face.
How could I defend myself
when my senses resorbed,
when I surrendered to the
enormous world? My dread
has always come especially
from the fact that we do
not know how the world
is, we only know its face
illuminated by senses. We
know the world constructed