Norman Manea - The Lair

“The female student received substantial compensation, transferred to a different college, and is now married. The boyfriend is now the president of an organization for the protection of immigrants’ rights in the Midwest. The perpetrator who didn’t perpetrate, or perpetrated a quarter of an act, graduated from the college, went to law school and now works on Wall Street.”

“And Professor Augustin Gora? Did he refine his grandmotherly advice? What advice does he offer to a castaway? Should I be careful? What should I be careful of? Of female students, of gossip, of jokes, of demagogues and suspects and intriguers and envious people? Or our phantoms from far away?”

“Is there trouble? Did something happen to you?”

“No, nothing, but I’m preparing myself. I want to know how to prepare myself. The story of the three-day revolution is instructive, but banal. There’s no mystery, not like Palade’s case.”

“Palade? What’s come over you? It wasn’t the students who killed him, that’s for sure.”

“Whoever acted knew the university perfectly well, the buildings, the schedule, the daily path of the condemned, his astrological and parapsychological and paranormal digressions. It’s not the case with me. I’m an earthling. I trip over chairs, as well as weeds, but no stars. I’m inattentive, but he was too attentive. There’s no connection, I hope, between us.”

“No, there’s no connection,” says Professor Gora, without conviction, probably taking up his reading once again.

Peter Ga par could also have started up again with his nocturnal visions: the killer Charles Manson and the terrorist Timothy McVeigh and the cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer and other vanquishing experts, documentaries about deaf-mutes and cancer, about astronauts and populations in the jungle, American football, classical and box office film hits, chamber music, as well as jazz. After midnight, the games of distraction and pornography and karate videos or courses in exotic languages, everything an insomniac heart needs.

A long, vertical sign on a tall building. Dirty walls, dusty ornaments: the Hotel Esplanade. The corner of 48th Street and Eighth Avenue. Drug addicts, prostitutes, beggars, mystics, vagabonds of all races.

She stops, bewildered, looking for her companion. She sees him in the back of a sex shop. She moves toward the display with the sunglasses and plasters her palms on the glass.

A tap on her shoulder. “Here I am,” Peter whispers into her velveteen ear. Lu gazes down at the pavement.

“Do you want me to go back to the place I escaped from? You’re crazy with these sex shops! You can’t restrain yourself.”

Peter takes a step back.

“Crazy? This is mass culture! Therapy. The industry with the highest-grossing income. We can’t ignore the well-being of the country. It’s our country, isn’t that right? They’re our countrymen.”

Lu is silent. She swallows, gloomily.

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told you about my dream.”

“What dream?”

“Last week, Friday. I was in a poetic state of mind. I was dreaming about a phallus. A child in the shape of a phallus. A tender form, it asked for protection, for tenderness. Like a child. And I was crying, emotional. It unsettles me even now.”

Peter feels dizzy looking into her big, tearful eyes, which she was wiping, ashamed, with her trembling hands. Lu backs away, her gaze to the ground. Peter runs after her, waving, laughing. They disappear.

The street remains. The storefronts, the sex shops, the Chinese vegetable cart, the Turkish restaurant, the Mexican umbrella store, the bustle of the hookers, the pickpockets with the sombreros, the Pakistani druggist’s shop.

A street, and another street. Clean, quiet, deserted. A solid building, stone and brick. An Anglican facade, gothic windows framed by wrought iron. Letters chiseled into the stone. The Young Men’s Christian Association.

On the threshold, Peter. White, sweaty shirt. Sleeves rolled up, his gaze on the hunt. He surveys left-right, looks at his watch. He’s waiting for someone, gives up, goes inside. Traffic, loud teenagers, suitcases and backpacks.

An immense black guard, an immense hand on the telephone. He watches the door and the elevator. The giant Peter in front of an even bigger giant, it’s hard to win these caricature competitions.

They look at each other, without curiosity. One of them tall, fat, bald with a mustache, the other taller, fatter, black, thick, curly hair and black skin. A discharged hussar and a black American, ready to take out his saxophone.

“Mr. Joe?”

The man nods his big, heavy head.

“Madam Beatrice Artwein called yesterday, to … “

“Ah, Beatrice! Betty. That’s what we call her. Yes, baby, the lady called. I have the key.”

He smiles. Large, immaculate teeth. Large, black eyes burning with the delight of complicity.

“Yes, baby, I have the key ready. Two hours. That’s it.”

Peter doesn’t return the smile, he’s somber and distant.

“Perfect. I’ll take the key and come back. I’ll be back quickly.” The great Joe Louis bends toward the drawer, pulls out the key tied with a blue cord. He’s no longer smiling, or looking at the client, he’s become somber and distant.

Lu. Supple, tall, elegant. Red jacket. Her face is hollow, white, matte. Hair pulled back in a bun, her forehead free.

“A small, simple room. A bed. A shower, toilet, mirror. Without towels, but cheap,” Beatrice had explained. “Without perfumes, creams, towels. You don’t forget where you are, nor what you’re there for. Promiscuity intensifies the promiscuous appetite. It defies conventions, sharpens pleasure.”

Fourth floor. The hallway. Precise directions: 401–411 to the left, 412–419 to the right. 416. A bed, an armchair. A narrow bed. On the sheet, a brown stain in the left corner. Lu in the doorway. Mute, immobile. From one second to the next, she’ll slam the door, abandon the room and her marriage.

Peter doesn’t forget the risk, not even in his dreams: Lu wasn’t made for squalor, it freezes her up.

In the middle of the room, prepared for shame and disaster, he records, attentively, the movements of the black plaits. Lu is no longer Lu … Slowly, she unbuttons the dress jacket, one button at a time. The red silk slips down. Nothing underneath. She holds her young breasts in her palms. She offers them to him! Smooth, bare shoulders, proud throat. She puts her long hands around her neck, like a coil. Velvety palms, thin fingers. She remains like that, exposed, looking at the narrow, dirty window. She pulls down the zipper of her jeans. She comes out of those blue pipes, naked.

Espadrilles. She looks at them with pity, first one, then the other, the left, right, she pulls out her foot slowly, the left, the right, she moves her legs away. Long toes, narrow foot of ivory. Her lips vibrate past the white stripe of her teeth. Lu isn’t Lu! In her hand she holds a small, black, plastic object. She presses the button. A dull sound can be heard coming from the ceiling. Lu points her index finger to the low, gray ceiling, showing her partner the little television in the ceiling.

On the screen an angelic face and a body of an adolescent: Beatrice Artwein! Betty … at that very moment she’s throwing off her golden bra, the golden leaf in between her thin, brown legs. Shaved head. Incipient breasts, prominent, electric nipples. Pink vulva warmed with the short fingers of a young girl. She’s kneeling in front of the bald giant with the mustache, slowly unbuttoning the rigid jeans of the hussar, button by button.

Peter sweats uncomfortably, frightened by Lu, who waits for him naked on the bed, wetting her fever-burned lips with her tongue. On the screen, Betty ecstatically caresses the naked, hairy thighs of her colleague Ga par.