Norman Manea - The Lair

An arrogant little gnome, Monsieur Koch! Made to give lectures, not consultations.

The patient comes to the office of rhetoric for Lu. The mystery is no longer a mystery; the doctor’s employee skips out every time. Ever since his stratagem was discovered, the pachyderm is no longer welcomed like an honored guest and admitted immediately into the office, as he had been previously. He must obediently wait his turn. So much the better! In a half an hour, who knows, a miracle might happen. What if Lu, hurrying to escape, accidentally forgets her purse? Maybe no sooner than she’s left, she will reappear, carelessly, in front of the stalker.

The door opens. Koch makes a weary sign.

The patient follows him into the office. Flustered, he collapses into Avicenna’s armchair. With an index finger, Koch sends him promptly to his own place.

“On the scale.”

The scale is unfriendly. There will be admonishments, therapeutic offenses.

Koch seems to have lost interest in the spectacle, however. He takes a long look at the patient, from top to bottom, straightens his little, freckled finger toward the red needle of the scale, then toward the patient, then again toward the scale.

“An elephant! You’re like an elephant. The scale doesn’t lie. An elephant!”

Soon, the elephant finds himself outside on a bench, in a nearby park. He considers the passersby and their impatience before their weekly rest.

He leaves the park and looks at his watch. He gazes up at the sky.

The present! The present, the pedestrian repeats the motto of his new life and enters Barnes & Noble, Broadway, corner of 66th Street.

“Do you, by any chance, have postcards of elephants?”

The young man behind the computer gives him a long and attentive look.

“I don’t think so. I haven’t seen any, I don’t think.”

“How is that possible? It’s the country’s political symbol. Are all the bookstores Democrats?”

The young man becomes more voluble.

“No, we don’t have the donkey, either… I don’t think we have postcards with elephants or donkeys. But you can look. Here, on the ground floor, to the left, there are albums, art prints, photographs. To the left, around the corner.”

Peter rifles scrupulously through the posters, albums, piles of postcards and. . finds more than he’d hoped for. A red sky, two elephants advancing, in the air, one toward the other, with immense burdens on their backs. Long, thin legs, from the sky to the ground. Dalí.

He leaves the bookstore with the print in hand, raises his gaze toward the sky; stupefied, he finds himself faced with an unknown man who stretches out a small, white hand.

James Curtis.

The day is over, Peter fills a glass full of water, and another. He doesn’t turn on the light, the headlights from the parking lot nearby are enough. He throws himself into the armchair, moves to the couch, now fully awake. On the table, the pile of letters from a week, or two. Envelopes, ads, fliers, magazines, postcards. Junk mail. He pushes the heap to the edge of the table. The present becomes the past; yesterday morning, P.O. Box 1079, metaxi to the station, the river, the train, the crowd in Penn Station, the library, Koch’s office where Lu was hiding, the consultation, the humiliation routine. The Dali sky, the Dali elephants. The producer Curtis. Lyova, the compassionate taxi driver from Babel’s Odessa.

He gets up, he walks toward the coatrack; he finds in the pocket of his coat the business card with the golden name James Curtis, and he throws it onto the pile of letters. The proof of the day that was and wasn’t.

The station, the train, the primordial waters, the small terminal station, another taxi. No longer Lyova Boltanski, but Red Hat Jerry. The throb in his left shoulder, the sickly hiss. Words barely get through. Nine dollars and fifty cents! If you have no money, be quiet until you reach the destination, the scatterbrained Peter Ga parhad learned. You ask the driver to wait, you’ll be back with the money in a minute. One minute, two, however long it takes to search the pockets of your pants and coats and shirts, where you forget your white money for your black days. In the end, you scrounge up fourteen dollars. The driver deserves twelve. Two dollars left. Two new dollars and two new dollars make four, four quarters make the whole.

The night follows, sleep, nocturnal turbulence. It comes again and again, the dawn, you wake up an elephant, unprepared for the day’s little tumbling routines.

He’d learned recently from the papers that Oliver the circus elephant was having a harder and harder time memorizing his tricks. One evening he simply abandoned the arena, completely disoriented. Initially prepared to punish him, the trainer found himself behind the scenes of an even more powerful show; defeated and collapsing on his four giant legs, Oliver sighed and sighed heartrending sighs. Tears poured down his ashen and wrinkled face. Peter gazed at him, troubled, in the mirror.

Another day, a new week under Dalí’s cupola, Dali the ringmaster.

He keeps reading books, magazines, letters. They accumulate, a year’s worth, collecting since the day he plunged into the college in the woods, books, letters from students and professors and the administration, scholarly journals and political appeals and juvenile announcements. Tara’s letter. He didn’t forget where he’d put it, this he didn’t forget. Any indictment should be preserved.

Dear Professor,

My mother called me with my midterm grades …

Why didn’t you give me a “Fail,” or at least an “Incomplete”??? I never handed in the final. Another professor treated me much better-he failed me! I respect him. It’s the first time that someone proved himself honest with me, in terms I’ve established. That’s a relief. Freedom. I was hoping for at least two shameful marks. So I can finally break down. You’ve deceived me.

The prologue described the tone of the rest.

I had even prepared my mother, warning her that I didn’t have much to show for this semester. In response, she sent me lingerie. I wrote to my brother. He responded with a confession: he’s gay. As in, what the hell do I know about depression?! He sent me a box of cookies and my stuffed rabbit from childhood.

Tell me honestly, do you ever fail anyone? Am I too vain to imagine this possibility?

“Careful, my dear vagabond,” says President Larry, “these days the universities are run by the students, their parents, their money, and their lawyers. Professors are just part of the decor. You wake up, when you least expect it, in a mess you couldn’t have imagined in that sweet penal colony that you escaped.” And if Larry One says this, it must be true.

The extempore professor should inform the dean of any studentrelation problems. That’s what President Larry advises.

Dear Rosemarie,

As I’ve mentioned, Tara Nelson was one of the best students in my class that semester, but she never handed in the final. I gave her a good mark anyway. She’d done extremely well on previous assignments and her oral presentation was very strong. The same with class discussion; she frequently gave a perfect performance.

She has just sent me her final. It’s very good. I am attaching her letter, as promised. Very unsettling! Just like the short telephone conversation I had with her yesterday, just like our short meeting last Tuesday, when she came to apologize for the letter. It is possible she is going through some kind of depression and may need help.

Tara didn’t drop out of college, as she’d planned, nor did she go home for summer vacation. She found a job in the library archives. He ran into her one evening, walking alone along the campus alleys. Then, another time, having a coffee, in the library hall. Then, more regularly.