Norman Manea - The Lair

I had prepared a piquant history about Lu and Michael Stolz. I had to postpone it, I was taking advantage of Gora’s unexpected loquacity.

“It just so happens that farce precedes tragedy and not the other way around, as Marx thought. I’m thinking about the letter Peter received and about Borges’ story.”

I let him summarize the chain of events once again. I promised him I’d call him soon, so we could try a normal conversation, on a more normal day.

The following conversation opened, as I’d planned, with information about Stolz and Lu. It seemed like my only chance to draw him out of the solitude that followed the shock. I began abruptly. He was listening, quietly, without reaction, as if it were an anecdote about people unknown to him. He didn’t ask how I’d come across all of those details. He then allowed himself some predictable questions.

“A party?”

“An anniversary. A pretext. In Long Island, at the house of a couple who ran a banker’s club. The man, a former pilot, had deserted to the Occident. First Belgium, then America. He’d managed, through political pressure, to bring his wife, who was a gym trainer. Repurposed in America as a fashion designer. They ran the club together, and they used it when it was empty. The party took place on a day like that. During the period after the great assault. During and after natural disaster instincts intensify. Sometimes, to the point of hysterics. Lu had been a high school classmate of Raluca’s, the gym trainer, and Stolz had come with a superb, young African woman who captivated all the gazes in the room. Lu arrived late, with Dr. Wu, a colleague at Koch’s office. The atmosphere was already heightened, but no one suspected that it would come to a swingers’ party.”

Gora was listening, but he wasn’t asking for details.

“The flirting intensified, three of the couples exchanged partners, in the end. When she left with Stolz, Lu gave the young Dr. Wu, dazed by Raluca, a short wave.”

Professor Gora wasn’t asking for details.

Professor Gora didn’t seem impressed by the excess of the insinuations.

If he wasn’t just faking, if he’d actually become indifferent with regard to Lu’s present, Gora had given me good news.

The great city had pastoral suburbs. A solemn petrifaction. Ashen squirrels, the red cat. The crows, pompous procession of wild turkeys. The deer among the brush.

The forest had overrun the previous night, white, snowbound, and it was advancing even now, from all sides. The branches were shaking, the white powder fell furiously from the tall trees, stuck into the ground that was also advancing closer and closer, then retreating.

The forest was far away, along the horizon, then again it grew near, approaching, white, frozen. Just as in a silent movie. There was no rustling, nothing. The branches were prostrating themselves, agitated, ready to snap, the wind was whipping the flake powder, but no sound could be heard. A morbid silence, then movement. The bizarre came and couldn’t come to an end.

Now, in the first hours of the morning, the trees were solemn, unmoving. The crows were landing and taking off among the restless squirrels. That was all, nothing more, beyond the window of the mute house, not a sound, not even the slightest rustling. Nothing could be heard, not the cars that passed on the road, nothing.

Professor Gora wasn’t and had never been a part of the landscape. That was what he’d felt in his former country, all the more so in the new terrain, a lost intruder in unconscious nature.

He was looking around differently from the year before. More attentively to what exists and what will continue to exist after the viewer will disappear, along with the generation of squirrels and crows and supple, stupid deer that populate the meadow. The forest will still be here, just like the river that has flowed through the valley for ages. He’d have been a perishable embodiment in the forests of his former country, as well, the guinea pig of an implacable moment. The traces of his terrestrial trajectory will diminish until they disappear completely. He hadn’t left behind any children or grandchildren. Even if he’d wanted to, posterity wouldn’t have modified its flows and cycles. He’d detected the code of limits.

Banal melancholy! Instanced by a telephone message, that was it!

“The Nuclear Magnetic Resonance results say that the arteries are blocked. Sixty to seventy percent. It wouldn’t be bad, at your age. I, however, am skeptical. It could be worse than that. Let’s check. The age of the patient requires precaution.”

“Any age,” Dr. Bar — El added immediately. Age, again! Koch had said the same thing. His old friend from school. He’d asked him if he’d ever had a cardiac exam.

“No, not recently. The last one was about eight years ago. Then I exchanged the doctor with the dyed hair for a taciturn female doctor. She said it wasn’t necessary.”

“At your age, it’s a good thing to do. I’ll send you to a good cardiologist,” Koch had decided. “He has naturally colored hair. And he’s not taciturn. He’s Israeli, however.”

“These guys are obligated to think fast.”

“At your age you need fast doctors. I’m not much of one. For us in the old country, there wasn’t much of a hurry.”

And that was how the comedy of old age began.

Youth and the places of long ago truly had a different rhythm. Many years had passed since Isidor Koch listened to the confession of his benchmate Augustin Gora. Not in the room where they did their homework together, but in the large basement, full of wine bottles and old leather armchairs belonging to the Koch family. Izy, as people called Isidor, opened his eyes wide, stupefied.

“What? You want to love the Chosen People? Have you lost your senses? It’s the Disease of Puberty … Are you in love with the people who crucified Jesus? Isn’t that what you say? We crucified him and will pay for the sin, in time everlasting, they say. You want to trade one legend for another?”

“If it’s a legend, I can trade it however I want. I thought we’d decided never to use ‘you,’ ‘us,’ ‘them,’ anymore … Jesus, yes, loved his people. The Romans had an interest in his execution … maybe the Jews, too, though I don’t think so. They didn’t accept him as the Messiah, they preferred to keep waiting. They chose an incomplete, open thought. Idolatry is a fixed idea; this is idolatry. But you don’t understand what I’m saying.”

“I don’t understand, and it’s better that way,” Izy had said.

“You don’t know anything, you haven’t read anything. I’m for Peter, not for Paul.”

Izy was silent, stone still, as if he were hearing Chinese.

“Peter said that you can’t be Christian if you were never a Jew.”

“Okay, you can get circumcised. A slashed prick … wait, I’ll show you.”

Izy made a gesture as if he were about to open his fly. Gusti pushed him, disgusted, sending the little Izy staggering.

“The Apostle Paul was an activist. He wanted to spread the movement, to internationalize it. Workers of the world, unite! I’m with Peter.”

“You’re an idiot, that’s what you are. You trade one fable for another, you’ve admitted. You’ll get over it, your lordship. You’ve had other fits like this. You wanted to be Oblomov, Don Quixote. That Dutchman, Peeperkorn.”

“Who am I, Izy? I’m nobody.”

“You’re an outstanding student. The best in the whole school.”

“Nonsense! A cliche. The obedient boy who always does his homework on time.”

“You don’t even do it all the time. You want something special? You’re my friend, that’s something special. You, the outstanding student, are friends with the lazy, fat kid in the house. Izy, the accordionist.”