Norman Manea - The Lair

The papers tremble in the trembling hand. Weary, he lets them fall to the floor. He dials Gora’s number. A long ring, once, three times. He puts down the receiver. He raises it again, dials the number again. A long ring, once, three times, four times.

Recorded on the tape, Gora’s voice invites the caller to leave his name and number where he can be reached.

“Important news, your Holiness. The whore with the scythe mocked me. She rejected me, the Nymphomaniac. She made a fool of me. She refused me, humiliated me. She made a laughing stock out of me, Saint Augustin. She’s leaving me to wander, she’s in no mood for me. She insulted me, rejected me, as you’d reject a sickly runt.”

Click, the receiver. In the mirror, Oliver the Elephant, the tightrope walker, tosses and turns, powerless and overcome.

Peter collects the papers from the ground, lays them on his chest. His certificate of immunity. Exhausted, he closes his eyes.

The meeting with Deste took place in three stages, during his afternoon nap.

The gong rings: the agreed upon hour. Peter knocks lightly on the golden door. He doesn’t wait for it to open. He turns the charmed key in the charmed lock. Courageously, he enters the room. Brief courage. Only a moment’s worth. He stiffens on the threshold.

The conspirator had swept the floor of the cloister cell and washed the dishes in the sink. She’d rearranged the books on the shelf, the carpet on the floor, the cover on the bed. The windows were no longer dusty, the giant shoes and boots and slippers were aligned, obediently, all in a row in front of the coat rack. The clothes put neatly in their place, as if in a dream. On the table, clean plates and glasses, napkins as yellow as lemons, an immaculate tablecloth. Fairy tale. Red wine, black bread.

Destiny had thrown the die. No, Death hadn’t abandoned him. She was, evidently, positioned on the ramp, cloaking herself conscientiously, in order to maintain the game and the tricks. She’d improved the decor, prepared the range and the oven for the fatal supper. Picturesque, tasty morsels, a Byzantine dinner party. Perfect decor, perfect Deste, perfect Death.

Peter takes off his windbreaker, hesitates, turns his back on hell for a moment to hang his windbreaker on the coat rack, keeps his back to the table and the peril.

“I’m going to wash my hands, I’ll be back in a moment.”

Immaculate bathtub, towels folded on the stool. The yellow glass with the brushes and toothpaste. The red robe on the hook. The cabinet behind the mirror. Neatly aligned, razors, deodorants, the green aftershave bottle.

The mirror above the sink shines, hostile. Deep, blue rings under his eyes.

Nearby, he feels the presence of a woman’s body, the hysteria of desire, he twists in his sleep, tortured by the aged Nymphomaniac in the guise of a virgin.

He writhes. Lubricous, a lubricous old man in his sleep.

“Done, I’m ready!”

Professor Peter Ga parin the frame of the door.

The salad bowl, the basket full of sliced black bread. Individual clean pieces of cutlery and glasses. The carafe full of water and the small, empty carafe. The yellow paper napkins.

“No, I didn’t bring candles,” the student explained.

She unties the short, white apron over the short, black skirt, pulled up over her knees. Round, pale knees. Three-quarter black socks. She’s no Ottoman missionary, but more of a Parisian lady’s maid serving Donatien Alphonse Frangois, Marquis de Sade. Blackness, just like at the cinema, interrupting the scene. Interrupted, yes, Peter is sleeping and isn’t sleeping, yes, he’s asleep, then again, sapped, asleep and unharmed, back in the scene.

“I made eggplant salad. Couldn’t go wrong with that one.”

“The salad of nostalgia.”

“I asked an American friend to take me to the organic grocer. The cooking and peeling of the eggplants weren’t easy. An operation at a low flame. And where was I to find a mallet? The little, wooden yataghan, absolutely of wood, otherwise the taste is altered. I tasted it over and over, a hundred times. We make our salad with garlic, you with onion. I diced the onion, mincing, mincing.”

“Let’s have a drink. Where I come from, we start with hard liquor. Tuicd, plum brandy.”

“I know, it’s like libovi a, but more subtle. Even though, where I come from …”

“Yes, yes.. religion …”

“The family I grew up in wasn’t very religious. Bosnia went through a socialist secularization. Then de-Titoization, desecular-ization. But not in our house.”

“I understand, we’ll have wine, then.”

“I prepared a carafe! A small one, for wine. That’s how I like it,” the assassin chirped.

“You prepared everything perfectly, like a crime.”

Interruption, snoring, pitch blackness, whimper, Peter motions with his large hands like shovels, swimming to escape.

“I forgot to give you money for the groceries.”

“I made the invitation. I have money from my husband.”

“Ah, he’s here, in America.”

“He left. Austria. He has a cafe in Linz. He orders flowers over the phone and sends money. The beast! Just like all the rest from where I come. But I prefer those kinds of men. I can’t stand a Mr. Know-How. Mirko is complicated, insufferable. Serbian. The Bosnian conflict destroyed him.”

The story from Scheherazade’s thousand and one nights. The victim’s large body unwinds. An old, bloated child, in his cradle once again.

Scheherazade looks straight into the eyes of the victim. Peter cowers.. the small pale fingers massage his temples.

“My American ennui has embittered me, provoked me. The exhibit, the demented letters, I wanted to see what would happen, to detonate the void, the discipline, the naivete of the Yankees.”

Peter looks down at his shoes, prehistoric fossils sheltering old ghosts.

Hearing annihilates sight, the old man doesn’t raise his gaze, and he avoids the green ray. He tries, finally, to raise it. His leaden lids heavy, impossible to budge them. The student has the head of a boy, hair cut short in a French bob, thin Tibetan brows, hemlock green eyes, a delicate neck, a silk eyelet T-shirt, the skirt too short. A nymphet.

He gets up, he doesn’t get up, the chaos is starting. That’s how the chaos of youth used to start so long ago.

Unhurried, he raises the burden of his body. He feels the green arrow in his chest cavity, in his brain, in his kidneys, which are crushed by the belt that digs into his skin.

A last effort, the movement flips him out of bed and onto the floor. Shaken, awake, happy, a miracle!

Didactic guidelines. Smiles to the left and right. A polite greeting and a polite smile, left to right and all around. The door of the office wide open for any visit. Lower the gaze, so you don’t see cleavage, bare breasts, bare legs hanging casually on the back of the chair to the left of the table. Embracing couples in the alleys of the campus. The nocturnal moans of orgies. The screen. TV commercials. Fresh vegetables and toothpaste. Water skis. A nude young woman, smiling at the amateurs. Avalanches of libertine, apocalyptic images, defying the rhetoric of the moralists. Bare breasts must be ignored, the same with the nymphs’ belly buttons pierced with colored rings, Gauguin’s nymphs, bare feet shuffling through wet grass, knees springing out rhythmically on the bicycle, the mane of blue, green, and orange hair.

The carnival of final copulation before life’s end. The teachings of the Lord and proletarian ethics and political correctness. The indecent, public announcement of the moralist public debate.