Norman Manea - The Lair

“Was she beautiful? Like Madam Gora? Like Ludmila Serafim, married to the eminent professor Gora?”

“It was said that she had no capacity for generalization and that she was proud of this. Never pathetic, scared of abstractions, concentrated on facts, objects, sensations. Good sense, moderation.”

“It’s as if you knew her directly.”

“Dima would call on her, alert with desire, then would retire from her, then call her again. A delicate, discreet, loyal partner. Biologically calm.”

“Biologically calm, is that what you said?”

“Yes, that’s what people who knew her said. She loved Dima. Marga Stern seemed to me a very memorable character. Absolute respect for the real.”

“Indeed, but maybe it’s a bit much for Larry Eight. Police Officer Murphy wouldn’t understand Marga’s chaste intelligence, nor Dima’s indifference, he’d call those things pragmatism, the only thing he understands. He has the head of an army officer and a notebook in which he doesn’t write anything.”

“I’m sure he recorded you on tape.”

“I didn’t see any recording devices.”

“You don’t need to see them. Maybe he doesn’t even have any, but has a perfect memory.”

“It’s not enough. He would have to provide a faithful report at the trial. Otherwise, it has no value in the face of justice.”

“You haven’t gotten to justice yet, you have a ways to go yet. It’s possible that…”

Peter, however, had hung up the phone.

“Officer Pereira confirms that two years ago you refused to write a certain article. Did then someone force you to write it?”

“I wrote it of my own free will. After much hesitation. And with little pleasure.”

“Did the president of the college convince you to do it?”

“I asked him for advice. He advised me to write it.”

“How long did it take?”

“Six months.”

“And the hesitation?”

“I don’t remember. Two, three months. I was doing research during that time. The bibliography wasn’t accessible. Some things are known; other things remain obscure. Or inaccessible. In secret archives.”

“Communist archives?”

“Probably. Not only. Maybe C.I.A.”

“C.I.A. documents?”

The eyes of the thickset Patrick flicker. He pulls the notebook in which he writes nothing closer.

“The entrance visa to the U.S., for example. As a member or sympathizer of an extremist political organization, the Old Man should have had a lot of difficulty obtaining a visa. His old political articles had appeared in a time when there were still democratic options. The C.I.A. is more lenient with the Germans who became Nazis after Hitler prohibited political parties than those who did so when there were still other options in Germany. This should hold true for all countries, don’t you think? Additionally, the Old Man had been a diplomat during the war. On the side of the Axis Powers. The C.I.A. knew all of these things. But he didn’t have any problems. Or maybe …”

“Maybe what?”

“The anti-Communists were useful during the Cold War. The past can be forgotten, if necessary.”

“A pact with the devil, then?”

“Not with the devil. With the C.I.A.”

“You hesitated to write the review because of the C.I.A.?”

“No. I don’t even know if the C.I.A. hypothesis is valid. I hesitated because I don’t like public scandals. I’m tired of the just cause. Communism was a just cause. For my father, it was. And not only for him.”

“Shutting people up, confiscating the property they earned through hard work, you call that a just cause?”

“Not those things, necessarily, no. But opposing fascism, for example. To maintain the illusion of a more just future. The luminous, humanist future, that’s what the slogans promised.”

“So, then, what was the accusation against the Old Man? A valuable man allied with killers?”

“This, too. During a time when, let’s be honest, all of Europe had gone insane. But after the war? Amnesia. Immoral amnesia. . amoral. He didn’t seem to care at all about his complicit involvement in the tragedy. He’d arrived, after all, in a pragmatic country, hadn’t he? What mattered was what he did, not what he’d once thought. America encourages change.”

“And had he changed?”

“I don’t know. Every man changes now and then. I don’t think he’d changed his mind about democracy, if that’s what you want to know.”

“What did he think about democracy?”

“Corrupt, vulgar. Infantile. Demagogic. Chaotic. Stupid. Decadent. Hypocritical.”

The police officer doesn’t seem at all discouraged by the avalanche of adjectives.

“Did he promote these ideas?”

“At one time. Now, it would have been idiotic. He discussed them, maybe, with his old comrades. He kept in touch with them. Nostalgia for his youth, perhaps, when he believed himself to be part of the marching rank and file? Now he was doing his duty at the university, he was writing books and becoming famous. Would it have helped him to undermine himself with confessions? Self-indictment? Here, in your country, I mean, in our country, you can refuse to accuse yourself. Would it have made the world a better place? Would it have improved the future? No one was asking him to proclaim his own mistakes and guilt.” “Then why did you write the review?”

“I was asked to write it. Not to unmask Dima, who was dead. It was just the review of a book, in a weekly journal, not even a daily paper. The book had been published with the author’s approval. He had produced all kinds of memoirs, diaries, he liked looking in the mirror. A mirror ruined by flies and fogged up by the breath of the author. I wrote an honest review. No more, no less.”

“Without a moral subtext?”

“A review in a journal with modest circulation.”

A long silence followed. . “Angels don’t write books,” the Eastern European had whispered. He didn’t know if it was part of his answer or if there was any connection at all. The inaudible thoughts of a mortal… Police Officer Patrick had heard, however. He stared, intrigued, at Ga par’s face and was silent.

“Angels don’t write books…” Was that some sort of bitter and light conclusion about Dima, or about all the scribes delirious with the vanity and infantilism of uniqueness? Hard to say what Peter’s muttering had meant or if it had meant anything at all. The silence between the interrogator and the interrogated had grown.

“Mr. Murphy, I am ready to confess.”

Mr. Murphy was listening, imperturbable. The decisive moment had come, the interrogation was proving very efficient, because of the sleuth-hound, the guilty party was ready to confess to the villainous operation. Mister Murphy put his hands on the table, near Mister Ga par’s large hands, and bent amicably over the table, to be closer to the miserable wretch.

“I realize, talking to you, that I’m the product of my country.

This I want to say. I circle around certain ambiguities, I cultivate them, through all kinds of copouts that are nothing but copouts. I avoid the essential. I thought I’d healed myself. I haven’t. Over there, there’s a difference between the sins of a beggar and a celebrity. A big difference. They are treated differently, very differently.”

“That’s true everywhere.”

“Probably, but I feel infected. There, the question that takes priority is who are you, not what have you done. I’m not immune, I’ve realized, specifically in the case of Dima. It’s probably that it intrigues me, contradictions appeal to me, as well as ambiguities, secrets, subterfuges, subtleties, everything that is more than the essential. That’s it. That’s my confession, so that you know whom you’re dealing with. An infected man. Maybe, not totally. No, not totally.”