Norman Manea - The Lair

“And when is your birthday?” I asked, to break the tension.

“The beginning of January,” Palade hurried to return to the story. “’Capricorn. I see blood. Blood on your temple,’ the witch said. Tou’re on a kingly throne, and blood is pouring from your temple. A bad omen. Guard yourself from enemies, young man. From enclosed spaces, from strangers,’ said the oracle.”

“So, then, you believe in these signs, you read the ads.”

“The life of the mind has its own dangers. Not just the apparent truth, but also the hidden, dangerous one. Coincidences, errors make up a codified game.”

“And whom else did you meet from the attic?”

“Ah, you’re thinking of Lu, you seemed to be interested in Madam Gora. . you asked me last time, too, what I think of her. I ran into her. At the theater, The Master and Margarita, actually. A mystical play, isn’t it? Or magical? I remembered the play from when we were there. Imagine that, it was still being produced. Lu, yes, with a younger cousin, or that was how she presented him. A tall, bald, solid man with a moustache, very quiet, but ready, it seemed, to let himself go at any moment. Lu intimidated him, and I intimidated him. I asked her to a coffee. She even came. We talked a while. About Gora, as well. Even about Gora.”

The word even kept repeating itself: she even came, even about Gora — the unusual was Mihnea Palade’s routine.

“She said she was cured. Short hair, very short, like a boy. A shock. A slender face, vibrating movements, the vibrations of her fragility, deepened eyes, same hands as ever, superb hands. She seemed taller, lighter. Illness is a mystery, it has its own magic, it brings you closer to the unknown and the mystical. Especially such a grave illness.. you’re in transit. In between. Closer to death, you feel more intensely the mystery of life. Illness intensifies sensuality. Out of words and gestures I was guessing at the unperceivable, reprimanded by decency and fear, fear of the self, not just of others. Lu is more than a single woman, as I’ve said. That was how I first saw her long ago, and how I still see her now. It’s just that now, after her illness, she seems more accessible, open, freer, more thirsty …”

I was listening to him, I wasn’t listening, I craved more details, that was for certain, but I changed the subject, to escape my own self.

“Do you think that former Secret Service agents have special reasons to follow you here, as well?”

He didn’t answer right away, as I would have expected. It seemed that he needed time to decide how and what to say.

“I don’t know what they have in their files, I wouldn’t rule out any hypotheses, I am a man of hypotheses, I believe in secrets and secret needs. A double or multiple life. The imposture is only another embodiment, apart from the known, accepted one. See even here, in the United States of freedom and taboo, a politician slips into the whirlpool of a short erotic adventure now and then. An enormous scandal erupts, and the politician is ruined. In France he’d be admired. The old adulterer has been proof since the beginning that man lies in everything. Doesn’t he care about the poor, about religion, about his children, about America’s future? Of course he does!”

He was quiet for a moment and took a long look at me.

“No, I wasn’t an informant, if that’s what you want to know. That isn’t why the agents of yesterday and today would be following me. I don’t know the reasons why they would. And maybe it’s better that way.”

He was saying that this would be our last conversation, so then, it was a confession.

“I was living in blasphemous, admired America, chaos obsessed with order and freedom, pragmatic and religious, corrupt and idealistic, hundreds of sects, thousands of armed racists, illiterates of all degrees, corruption and lunacy and spectacle. And grandeur! Imperfect, fortunately. Only a dictatorship is perfect.”

“What did she say about Gora? What did Lu say about Gora? Did she agree to talk about him? Why didn’t she follow him here?”

Palade searched my face, disappointed. He was smiling, with sly complicity, as if the questions had been a failed copout from the unmentioned question.

“It’s quite possible that Lu is abandoning, barely now, the place she never wanted to abandon. I asked her about Gora. Why hadn’t she followed him? ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to know yet,’ was what she said. ‘We’re all irreplaceable and our ages are irreplaceable, we can’t be replaced even by our own selves, in another age and in changed surroundings,’ she said. ‘I don’t know and I don’t want to know, I shouldn’t know.’ What’s certain is that she’s become less retractile and equivocal. Okay, we’ll end here, I’m in a hurry, I’m preparing three different books, I have publishing contracts to look at, a lot of work, until next May. The month of May is inscribed in my brother’s dream.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“A session with the Political Bureau. The former Political Bureau. Lilliputian marionettes made of straw and cotton and velvet. Just like in the puppet theater. The obese chef, the gardener with his rake, the stenographer with his small glasses. Generals, youths in the green shirts of the Legion, workers with caps and red bands, activists. A large banner across the entire wall. Nationalism, Communism’s last refuge. In our day there were others: Workers, the Party’s golden foundation, or, Man, the most precious capital. They were discussing my case, the date of my execution, waiting for a

sign, some indication. The Genius of the Carpathians seemed befuddled, turning toward one of the capped guides. This is what my brother Lucian told me. The dream.”

Palade wrapped his scarf around his neck. He was in a navy blue suit, as always, with a white shirt, open at the neck, red scarf made of soft wool.

“The marionette responded hoarsely, like a ventriloquist’s doll. The holiday of the Orthodox saints.’ The Genius smiled, he liked the crudity of the guide, he nodded his head and waved his hand in approval. The marionettes took out their notepads and noted the date, the holiday in May. This year I got off, nothing happened. Unfortunately, I don’t have that gypsy here to untangle the mystery.”

He tightened his scarf again around his neck, though it was warm and humid. His thick, woolen scarf around his neck like a kind of useless armor.

It was our last meeting.

Some time has gone by since then. Peter Ga par might also have met with Palade again in the parallel worlds of the transmigrations, and he will communicate to us if the enigma of his disappearance is the same as Mihnea Palade’s.

Ga par’s telephone message seems like a challenge. Had he guessed the whole time that he was the hero of the obituary on Gora’s desk? The message was promptly transcribed into Folder RA 0298. The funereal diversion requires professionalism! Gora had specialized, he’d learned to maintain the good disposition of those still living; the farce named biography became the obituary farce. He would select a fragment, then another, for those left on this side of the River Styx.

She mocked me, the whore! She made a laughing stock out of me. The Nymphomaniac. . she’s in no mood for me. Transcribed from the tape, the words rest obediently in the Mynheer Folder. Gora had listened to the message dozens of times, he knows it by heart. With the transcription in front of him, he listens for the inflections in the voice, comparing the phonetics and the written page, looking for new meanings. He ignores the transmigration of the soul, in which Mihnea Palade believed.