Cecilia Ştefănescu’s Intrarea soarelui (2008), published in
English as Sun Alley (Istros Books,
2013), is an enigmatic novel tracing the relationship of Emilia and Sorin,
generally known as Emi and Sal. The
story is told from Sal’s perspective, though there are hints he may not be a
reliable narrator. Childhood friends on
the cusp of puberty – not quite platonic yet not fully sexual, apart from some
fumbling Sal initiates – they bond then undergo the vicissitudes of painful
separation, and reacquaintance in adulthood, by which time they are married to
other people and Sal and his wife have twin daughters. Their extra-marital affair naturally brings
complications when their spouses find out.
As children they live close to
each other in Bucharest, Sal in the titular Sun Alley. The time seems to be the 1980s, though there
is little sense of the political situation.
These could be kids anywhere, with the same interests as those in other
cities in other countries at that time: Sal is part of a gang of boys who play
football and mess around. By the time
they reach adulthood, Emi and Sal are living in a post-communist society, but
they are as locked into their mutual roles as they ever were.
The children try to keep their
relationship secret from Sal’s friends and parents, as if that is possible, but
it does mean secrecy becomes an integral part of their feelings for each
other. Sal first meets Emi when she is
in the middle of cutting pictures out of magazines, careless of the owner’s
feelings. And so it proves in her
attitude to males, as Sal learns as an adult that not only did she have sex
with Sal’s friend Harry, albeit at Harry’s insistence, but may have done with
other friends of his, and also with her husband’s brother. Curiously when these episodes occur Sal loses
consciousness, so at some level he may intuit what is happening, even if in
some kind of altered state. It is the
sort of novel that refuses to spell such things out, leaving interpretations
open.
Early on the reader realises this
is not going to be an ordinary coming-of-age story because there is a dreamlike
quality to much of the book and the narrative thread is often difficult to
follow. For example, on his way to see
Emi, Sal is caught in a shower and shelters in Harry’s building. Going into the basement he finds the corpse
of a beautiful young woman, and ghoulishly cuts off her finger bearing a gemstone
ring on it. Naturally he wants to share
the secret with Emi and gives her the ring, which as an adult she wears. Who the corpse is, and why she is laid out in
the basement, are unresolved matters. If
not for the ring she might never have existed outside Sal’s imagination.
Later Sal persuades Emi to run away
as his family is moving to another district and they will be separated. After various misadventures they find refuge
in the garden shed of an old man who lives alone, and he gives them food, until
Sal’s parents and the police arrive to take them home. Sal’s ability to persuade Emi, verging on
controlling behaviour, appears to continue into adulthood, with Emi the
emotionally frailer of the two. Sal’s
family do move, which seems to put an end to the friendship, until they meet
again by chance twenty years later.
The novel shifts timeframes in a
complex elliptical patterning from childhood to adulthood and back again. In fact it is possible the child and adult
versions overlap, the youngsters eavesdropping on their adult selves, or adults
with similar preoccupations to those they will have at the same age. Or does Sal have precognitive visions? There is a hint the body in the basement is
Emi in the future, yet it seems she dies in an hotel room, and the ring Sal
steals from the body is real enough. In
hospital, the young Sal meets another patient who calls herself ‘Mary Jane’,
but may be a vision of a future Emi after a suicide attempt. Sal recounts the tragic love of Tristan and
Isolde to Emi, and says of Tristan he ‘has a special capacity: that of seeing
things that others don’t see.’ He might
be talking about himself. Yet
paradoxically he fails to see what is in front of his eyes, most notably at the
end when he thinks Emi is sleeping on the hotel bed, though it is clear she is
dead.
Ştefănescu has a good sense of the
physicality of love, especially young love, and the thin line between consent
and coercion. When the action moves to
the adult Sal and Emi it feels pedestrian by contrast. She explores a variety of themes in an
assured manner: the pleasures and insecurities of adolescent love; how early
hopes can be unfulfilled; the pain of betrayal by those we thought we could
rely on but who prove untrustworthy; the attempt to balance our commitments and
our desires, and the selfish nature of the latter.
Contemplating the destructive
nature of Sal and Emi’s bond, the reader wonders if this is love or rather
co-dependency, willing to sacrifice the happiness of others for their own but
with Emi not strong enough to rise to the challenge. At the end they are left with each other, Sal
experiencing visions of people who are not present. The pair are in the hotel room, and after
stripping Emi when she is clearly dead Sal finds her breasts ‘flaccid, lifeless
flesh. He shivered and swung round to
ask his friends for help, but they had left.
Most likely, they had had enough of the charade, were sick of all the
pretence and lies.’ And who could blame
them?
