Norman Manea - The Lair

Was Peter Ga par going to take advantage of the postponement by continuing to play with the Nymphomaniac, as he’d promised when he first arrived in the New World? Or would he put an end to the game, embittered, proving that he decides the epilogue after all?

Suicide doesn’t seem likely.

The grump left a grumpy message and disappeared. Not a word afterward. Did this message preclude the kind of assault with which Mihnea Palade was honored? The telephone in the Eastern European professor’s shack rang and rang, while the college’s secretary maintained that the professor had solicited a leave of absence, an unpaid vacation. Was there a forwarding address? No answer to that question, the bureaucrats aren’t allowed to violate the professor’s privacy.

Had he taken off, in the end, with Deste? Or did he go with Tara to Nevada’s Nirvana, to discover the true America, the wilderness of freedom? Which Tara? The one who examined the relationship between underwear and moldy pasta, the difference between an odor and a stink, or the mailwoman who delivered threat letters? An easygoing, cordial, wise partner, no relation to the neurotic who yearned for bad marks?

Disappeared in America’s labyrinth, Peter doesn’t answer. Did he encounter the Blind Man from Buenos Aires at the Grand Canyon?

Gora considers himself an untrustworthy columnist. Revitalized by the alternative, he passes his hand over the folder, looking at the corner of the table, where the red gloves rest.

Before disappearing, Peter had a last meeting, with Lyova Boltanski.

Penn Station! He emerges from the crowd, his gaze up to the sky. The present! The present, the traveler was mumbling. The motto and prayer of his new life: the present!

The yellow cab brakes at the curb’s edge. Lyova was waiting for him, just as they’d agreed.

“Thank you, you’re a man of your word. The Soviet is a man of his word.”

“The American is, too, if he’s paid well enough. You paid me well. Too well.”

“Well, what do you think … I owed you. Noblesse oblige, say the French. What do the Ukrainians say?”

“Why the Ukrainians?”

“Well, aren’t you from Odessa?”

“I’m a Soviet. I told you but you didn’t understand. Ein Man ein Wort, this I know from my family. It’s not French, but I think it’s the same.”

“Almost the same.”

“Okay. Where are we going?”

“I don’t know the exact address, but I know where it is.”

“New York isn’t a village, we need an address.”

“Do you know how to get to Lenox Hospital? A major hospital. Near the hospital, there’s a doctor’s office.”

“Again to the doctor? The girlfriend moved to Lenox? The girlfriend or the partner or the wife who doesn’t want to see you and who disappears before you appear.”

“No, she didn’t move. It’s not for her I’m going.”

“Are you ill? Or is it a psychiatrist? I asked you last time, and you didn’t answer. A psychiatrist?”

“I answered last time and I am answering now. No, he’s not a psychiatrist. Dr. Koch is an internist, an unfashionable profession in America.”

“That’s right. Specialized doctors. For the left hand and for the right hand, for knees and tendons and for headaches or baldness aches. Ten digits in the hands and feet? A specialist for each one. Twenty specialists! And a specialist for each nail of each finger. Another twenty! Dentists who do only fillings and others who pull teeth, others who take care of gums, other who implant new, more durable fangs. The Ford method, the division of labor. Maximum output. Charlie Chaplin’s film. I saw it dozens of times in the Soviet Union.”

“Modern Times, that’s what it was called, wasn’t it? Efficient and ferocious capitalism. So, you saw movies in your socialist country. What about books? Did you read books?”

“I read. Whatever I could get my hands on.”

“Whatever you could get your hands on? We all fell into that trap of books.”

“Why trap?”

“Oh, I’m just saying … it was a den where you could be alone, we had nothing else, just books.”

“Doctor Koch … Koch you said?”

“That’s his name.”

“So then, it’s the lungs. Bacillus Koch, that’s all I remember from school. Something wrong with your lungs?”

“Not a goddamn thing. I don’t call him Koch, I call him Avicenna. You know who Avicenna was.”

“I know, and if I don’t know I still don’t care. So then, you’re ill in general, not in the lungs. The nail of your little toe on your left foot?”

“I’m not going for a consultation. I am bringing him a present. This tube.”

“Aha, you don’t have that heavy briefcase, now you have a tube. So then, you’re not going to the library, or to the library cafe, and you’re not going to lose your wallet.”

“No I’m not going to lose it. And I have money, don’t worry.”

Peter holds a long tube made of blue cardboard, with a lid, under his arm.

“I’m bringing a message.”

“That big? About the girlfriend who works with him? You’re begging him to help you with your unrequited love, to prescribe an elixir? Tubes for unwanted maps or diplomas, like this one, could also be used for a papyrus with the magic formula for love.”

“I am bringing him a gift. A rare engraving. I bought it for him.”

“Ah, a gift. Of gratitude. Conventions from the old world. Noblesse … how did you say?”

“Noblesse oblige.”

“Yes, yes, oblige. Something other than Ein Man ein Wort. Now I understand. Something else altogether.”

“Not altogether.”

“Gratitude for treatment.”

“Not only.”

“You were saying it was a message. The message is separate?”

“Separate. But the gift is also a message. The letter is another message.”

“Aha, about your friend.”

“About a friend. A mutual friend.”

“Aha. Something pleasant or unpleasant?”

“Unpleasant.”

“One warm, one cold. The gift as a thanks, the message as poison.”

“Something like that.”

To the right of the hospital, traffic, cars, taxis, ambulances. “We’re here, I think we’re here. Now where are we going?”

“Ahead, just a little farther. We’ll pass the intersection, the first building after the intersection is Koch’s office. Avicenna.”

Lyova stops in front of the clinic. Peter has his money ready, he counts it, he doesn’t want to give too much, it would offend the Soviet.

“Thank you, Lyova. You’re a man of your word.”

“I am. Whenever you need me. You have my phone number.”

“Yes, I have it. I took it down, I won’t lose it.”

Abruptly, he changes his mind.

“In fact, wait for me. I’ll be right back and we’ll go.”

“Where, to Eastern Europe?”

“No, to Penn Station. The train leaves in an hour.”

“The big city tires you out, you come and you run.”

“It enchants me. There isn’t another like it in the whole world. The City on the Moon. But I’m in a hurry. A big hurry.”

Peter enters the little waiting room, full of patients, doesn’t look around, two steps to the window where little Spanish Dora sits in vigil. He hands her the tube, shows her the white ticket on the blue tube, where it says “Dr. Koch — Avicenna.” He turns on his heels.

Lyova is at his post, the train is at its post, America functions perfectly, Peter disappears.

Gora also has Boltanski’s number. “Use it whenever you need, it will remind you of our youth!” Peter would say. He’d never used it and he had no idea that, right before disappearing, Peter had traveled in Lyova’s yellow cab.