Norman Manea - The Lair

“Yes, Gilbert told me. After a few sessions of that kind of intoxication, you switched the drug.”

“I brought jars of pickles. Pickled in salt, not vinegar, as they’re done here. Amazing stuff. The wonder of the wild East.”

“And then, other wonders.”

“Roasted peppers. Eggplant salad. Divine.”

“I know. Gilbert hadn’t forgotten any of the temptations. He’s Greek. You floored him. Same with the postmodern natives. Robots, as you call them. Where did you find these things? How did you haul them here?”

“I found the chocolate at the Chocolatier. In the Lunar City. I ordered, they sent. It awoke my national ambitions. In Queens I found all the charms of the East. Serbian, Russian, Greek, Hungarian, Romanian. Stuffed grape leaves, stuffed cabbage, pickled herring, roe salad, stuffed chicken, lamb meatloaf, brains, kidneys, fries, feta cheese, burduf sheep cheese, eggplant salad, black pudding, Romanian and Serbian meatball sausages, preserves of all kinds. I couldn’t take everything. A jar at a time. Just to try. A taste of the East. The tongue that tastes and the tongue that speaks. The essential. The matrix, as they say.”

“You took care of everyone but me.”

“That’s not true. I took care of you, am taking care of you. I didn’t want to replace the American pie with a Carpathian pie; the comparison would be humiliating for a superpower. Apple pie, with cheese, doughnuts with sour cream, “poale-n brau” Danishes, pudding with raspberries, dumplings with prune jam or blueberries or cheese or rose preserves, crepes with ricotta, cinnamon buns, honey buns, Moldovan sweet bread, cheese bread, this is the gastronomy of my friends from the former Eastern Empire, from Bukovina, not mine, since I’m on the former Habsburgic Empire’s border! But today, however, next to the Yankee pie, we have a miracle. Mir-a-cle! The gift of the gods. Sour cherry preserves. A singular delicacy. From Bukovina, where a friend of mine was born. He was a mathematician, murdered by someone in a bathroom stall. My cousin’s husband is also from Bukovina. In fact, he’s my cousin, too, isn’t he? Small, sour-sweet, black and wily, inestimable cherries. The recipe of the gods. With no equal. Unearthly. Ce-les-tial!”

Peter shows Tara the small, black jar next to the small, yellow jar.

“Sour cherries from Bukovina. You should learn geography.”

“I will learn. I bet this is an aphrodisiac.”

“Naturally. I hope you won’t turn it down.”

“I won’t turn it down. I don’t think Gilbert would turn it down, either.”

Gilbert?! A venomous fly stings Professor Ga par’s viscera. It didn’t matter that he’d slept well and prepared himself for the Saturday night meeting. It didn’t matter one bit; he was losing the game.

“The thread that gets tangled. The knot, as labyrinth. Initiation,” continued Tara, putting down her glass, then the slice of pie, then the spoon with traces of the black and yellow miracle. “The serpentine maze leads to the center. Is the center the female sex? The arrow aims for the center, the sperm aims for the ovum. Regressus ad uterum. Is it the same as descensus ad infernos?”

The glass frozen at Ga par’s lips. He slurps it to the bottom. He puts the empty glass on the table. He’s regained his composure, ready to confront all banalities and surprises.

“So then, you want me to sleep here, on the couch? To make you feel better, less alone. So that I can be here when you get panicked and need a nurse. That wouldn’t intimidate you?”

“I’ve gotten used to the idea already.”

“You’re not afraid of becoming dependent.”

“I’ll be careful, that won’t happen.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t. Let’s change the subject.”

“Very well. But we should still tell Patrick, no? We’ll tell him what we want?”

“It isn’t what I want. Not anymore.”

“Something has intervened.”

“Something has.”

“But you accept the game, the substitution.”

“The imposture, you mean? There’s no point. It will complicate things. We won’t be able to sustain the lie through other interfacing lies. Patrick is no joke. Nor is Jennifer Tang. Here, the authorities are no joke, I don’t know if you’re aware of this.”

“Nor anywhere else.”

“I’d like more wine. Aren’t you afraid of losing your lucidity?”

“Or of you losing yours.”

“The student isn’t sure if the professor is speaking the truth.”

“I’m embarrassed, I don’t have another bottle.”

“It is possible that this is also a lie.”

“It isn’t. I don’t have another bottle of the same wine, I mean to say. I didn’t think it would be necessary. I wasn’t even sure it would be good. I have American wine.”

“California wine is excellent. Better than what we drank. No offense.”

“None taken. I wanted an exotic atmosphere, with wine from exotic places. But it’s not a good idea to mix the past with the present.”

“And between them, we eat pie.”

“American pie.”

“Yes, American. We are in America. American student, American professor.”

“Okay. Until the touch of invisible and perpetual death, the game continues.”

The evening extends past midnight. Tara proves herself to have quite a high tolerance to drink and to the dialogue’s traps.

“Professor, forgive a poor, ignorant wanderer. I need some guidance. I’m about to have a new meeting with the free world’s police department. Larry Eight. Mr. Murphy.”

Gora was silent, used to Peter’s casual entrances.

“Police Officer Murphy will again subject me to a long interrogation about Dima and Palade and the elite of our little elite homeland.”

“I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Palade remembered a certain Marga Stern, information received from Saint Augustin Gora. A lover from Dima’s youth, with whom he maintained an unclear relationship even after he was married, after her own marriage and divorce. I understand she was deported to Transnistria. I don’t know if she survived or not, the important thing for me is Dima’s indifference in relation to Marga Stern and other coreligionists. The real danger was imminent around that time. He didn’t look into her fate, didn’t send a single word of encouragement. Palade wasn’t sure about the information from the professor. He suspected that it might be a fabulous fabrication.”

“There was a rumor that Marga died in Transnistria, but it isn’t true. She survived, God knows how, and returned to the village where she’d tried to hide during the war, and there, two weeks later, she killed herself. There’s a short note about her in Dima’s Green Notebook, at the end of the war: Poor Marga, how much she must have suffered. That was all. A late tribute to youth, maybe a conjectural obligation.”

“Ah, so you know more about her.”

“I learned about it when I spent all that time in the attic room, where all the talk was about Dima. I researched it, looked into references and discovered the story of Marga Stern.”

“Would that interest Police Officer Murphy?”

“During the time of anti-Semitic laws, then later when the deportations started, Dima never once looked into Marga’s situation,” Gora continued, as if he hadn’t even heard the question. “He could have, even though he was far away and overwhelmed with his own problems. There would have been means of communication.”

“Did he have other friends from her community?”

“I don’t know, I don’t think so. I only know about Marga. Immediately after Dima got married, she did, too, but she divorced quickly, after a few months.”