Norman Manea - The Lair

After lunch, a walk around campus. The small cemetery on the hill. Ga par stops in front of every tombstone. Irish, Italians, Jews, a Portuguese, Germans, Dutch. The clan of the dead is disorganized, like nature itself. The pliant stone leaning slightly to the left is called Sabina. Nothing else. Sabina-Germany, and no other specification. The name of futility, like any name.

If the assassin is perfect, Professor Ga par will end up here, near Sabina, thankful for the brotherhood of exiles.

The library. Second floor, the magazine stand. Then, two hours of class. Calm and sarcastic, as in the glory days. In the evening at eight, the patrol car. Officer Garcia, fat, smiling. He will return in two hours. “Two hours? I thought we’d understood each other…”

“Yes, but Madame Tang thinks this is the right thing. At night we come every three hours, and we no longer knock on the door. Don’t pull the blinds, and leave the light on.”

The strangling of the invalid on channel 2. The debate about the rape on channel 4. The massacre in Rwanda on 9. Monsters on 11, vaudeville on 12, the jungle on 53, the basketball game on 22, shootings on 43. And back: 53, 2, 22. Alternative realities annul reality.

The New York Times. Wednesday, October 12. Postmark: Old Glory. The American flag. For U.S. addresses only. Stamp: New York. Yes, you can identify the stamp, the postal code, officer Jimmy Smith Trooper should have seen or actually saw the envelope’s stamp in the meantime.

Typed text, the address written out by hand. Big letters: N looks like W, A doesn’t have the unifying line, it’s like a rooftop. The address is precise, even the name of the cabin, Boumer House, which no one knows. The college, the town, the state, the ZIP code. Dear— typed. The first name of the addressee written out by hand. Toni, Philip, Susan, Norman, Rosalind, Peter, whomever. The way you’d fill out a form. A trick, evidently, so that the threat won’t seem individualized. Dear Peter…

Next time I kill you. Or the next time? Kill you or I will kill you? Next time! So then, a future date! Had there already been a failed attempt? A previous try? Signed: D. Devil? Dummy? Destiny? Deity? Death? Yes, Death! Ubiquitous whore.

A failed trick. No postcard was addressed to Larry or Madame Tang or the dean, only to an old and faithful target. Lady Death hadn’t forgotten Mynheer. An encoded love note.

The fragment from the paper on the back was just another trick. To divert the amateurs, not the addressee.

The car, the brakes, the headlights. There are no dogs, no, the Van Nest patrol is replacing the Garcia patrol.

“Don’t worry, we pass by here every hour.”

“Every hour? I thought it was every two hours.”

“Don’t wait up for us; you should sleep.”

“I wasn’t waiting. I go to bed late, anyway. As late as I can. And I get up often, even without you.”

“Routine check. You can go to sleep, the place is under surveillance.”

Wednesday morning. A warm day, sun, scents of spring. The professor seems listless in the conversation with the two students who wait for him in his office. At two in the afternoon, he gets a call from the FBI Officer Patrick Murphy. He knows about Officer Pereira and about the scandal following the publication of the review; he’s also heard about the card and the threat.

“Have you ever published anything on Rushdie?”

“Rushdie? The writer? The condemned? We’re back to books again? Where does it end? The whole thing is absurd! I wanted to throw out the card, believe me.”

“Please calm down and speak more slowly, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Police Officer Patrick requests a meeting. Next Tuesday. Yes, at the office. Gray building, faculty offices, façade covered in ivy.

“There’s no need for directions,” Patrick cuts him off quickly. “I’ll find the place. Tuesday, 1:30 p.m.”

The grumpy Patrick was more interesting than the formal Pereira, with his gentle, stupid advice.

Ga par is tired of his solitary cottage. He calls a taxi, quickly packs up some things and papers, checks the faucets, the stove, draws the curtains. At the train station, he scrutinizes the passengers attentively, one by one.

The City on the Moon. The public library. Encyclopedias and dictionaries, the stories of the world looking for another world.

Monday morning, the return train, banal passengers. Night, disordered woods. Noises. Tormented birds, barbed wire, the routine of the sentinels.

Tuesday, at 1:30 p.m., without knocking on the door, a stout, solid man enters the office. Thick lips, small brow, the look of a bully. Hairy. His checkered coat barely reaches around his body. Dark gaze. A business card thrown on the table: Patrick Murphy, Special Agent. Larry Number Eight, yes, yes, Larry Eight.

“I spoke on the phone with Mario. He no longer works in this area. He told me the story of Professor Portland’s assassination, about the scandal that followed. And your article, another scandal. How old was the professor?”

“Palade was young.”

“Palade?”

“Same person. He changed his name here.”

“Oh? No, not him. The Mentor. The celebrity.”

“Cosmin Dima had died some years before. He was over eighty.”

“Let’s start with your review. The press piece. Fascism, nationalism, those kinds of things. Why did it provoke such a scandal?”

“A reminder of unpleasant things.”

“New things?”

“No, they weren’t new. The context was new. Post-Communism. New beginnings, new icons. The confusion of freedom. For the East, just as for the immigrants here.”

“How famous was this Dima?”

“As famous as a man of letters can be famous. He wasn’t an athlete or a movie star, or a sexy escort doing two weeks’ time for drunk driving, whom the network is paying a million for an interview about her sadness in her jail cell. A million! Dima didn’t get that much from all his books that appeared all over the world. No, no, Old Man Dima was something else.”

“A nationalist?”

“In his youth. Maybe even afterward. In his country and mine he’s a real cult figure. He’s an icon, everyone used to say.”

“Why did you write the article? Why now?”

“A new edition of his memoirs appeared. I hesitated, but I wrote it. I was asked to write the review. First I refused, but then I wrote it.”

“Who approached you?”

“A journalist, a friend of the president of the college.”

“I see. It was good for the college.”

“Maybe. He argued that it would be good for me.”

“Was it good?”

“Not really.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No.”

“My colleague Mario says you didn’t receive any threats following the review.”

“I did. In my former country, in the press there. I no longer live there. There were some here, too, a few, in the expat press.”

“Was your wife threatened?”

“Wife? What wife?”

“Or, your partner. . girlfriend.”

“Partner? Oh, my significant other, as you say. My cousin Lu wasn’t threatened.”

“So then, threats in the press.”

“Violent articles, insults, curses. There, far away. Here, just in the expat press.”

“I understand that Professor Portland. . rather, Palade, had received threats. Why? He wasn’t writing about nationalism.”

“He was. He had dissociated himself from the nationalists of his country. He published violently antinationalist texts.”