Norman Manea - The Lair

“Your kind is different, Izy.”

“You said we’re going to avoid saying ‘you,’ ‘they,’ ‘we.’ ”

“You’ve suffered. I’m obsessed with the mystique of suffering.”

“Ah … you want me to crucify you? I’ll train, I promise you, I’ll become the most valiant kid in class, in the whole school, I’ll get to work, I’ll prepare the cross, the nails, the crown of thorns.”

“You’re the incurable idiot, not me. A real ox, that’s what you are, Izy. That’s it, we’ll talk when you’ve evolved a bit more and can vote.”

Thousands of years had passed, Dr. Koch has been able to vote for a long time, the joke was long forgotten. The patient still remembered it right before the great exam.

“What cardiologist are you sending me to? What’s his name? El — Al?”

“No, it’s not an airline company. Bar — El. Rhymes with El — Al. Bar — El.”

Dr. Bernard Bar — El was a tall, brown — haired man. Elegant, efficient. He was quick on his feet, immediately scheduled an appointment for the exam. The Russian technician was also elegant and polite. He measured Gora’s tension, his pulse attentively, performed the electrocardiogram, injected the colorful substance into his vein. After a half an hour, treadmill. Berni Bar — El was holding the cardiac patient’s hand, watching the monitor.

“Good, good, go on. How’s it feel? Can you keep going?”

“Yes, I can.”

Just when you think you’re giving your soul, and you’re all out, the doctor taps you on the shoulder. “Okay, okay, we’ll stop here.”

He hadn’t given his all, he wasn’t expecting the interruption. “Have you had any chest pain recently? Shortness of breath, sharp pain?”

“No, nothing. Just the stomach. I went to see Dr. Koch.”

“Dr. Koch sent me the endoscopy and the colonoscopy results. Your stomach is perfectly normal.”

’But the patient has one foot in the grave,’ we joke in my country. My stomach is killing me. Koch changed the medication several times. In vain. I have a monster in my guts.”

“Okay, we’ll figure it out. Now, we need an NMR for the heart. Quickly. I don’t know if insurance will cover that. Are you prepared to pay for it if necessary?”

“If necessary, if it’s urgent … ”

“Seven to eight hundred dollars. I’ll call the hospital right away.”

The patient finds himself at the hospital in an hour. The benevolent black receptionist looked down the list, attentively, right away. “Gora, yes, Augustin Gora.”

After two days, Bar — El calls. Unsatisfied by the investigation.

“I don’t believe the results. I want to double check. The age of the patient requires precaution. Any age, for that matter. I’m going to schedule you for an angiogram. Call me and we’ll arrange the appointment.”

That was the morning message.

The beautiful winter landscape knew nothing about Bar — El. A photogenic stoniness, grandeur. The professor was watching the woods. Nearby on the couch, the large, heavy album A Day in the Life of America, HarperCollins Publishers. Blue cover. A black rider with a black hat, a black horse, and a white half — moon, against the night’s blue sky. Underneath, We are frenzied and happy and hopeful. We are zealots and zanies and high school kids just starting to wonder what the world is all about. That was how the Yankees described themselves, with humor. The album of his new family.

The symbolic photograph, a blonde girl and a blond boy, dressed in white, dance, holding each other, with their eyes closed, transfigured. This is May 2,1986.

Where was I on May 2, 1986? Lu was in our former country, Peter Peeperkorn on a page in a German novel, the future patient Gora knew nothing about the blocked arteries or about angioplasty.

Gusti Gora and Izy Koch remained friends even after the mysterious meeting in the basement. The controversy continued, Izy increasingly more irritated, Gora increasingly more bullheaded about the possibility, which he’d grown bored of justifying.

“Love isn’t necessary, Gusti,” Koch was saying, “We don’t need love, listen to me. In our madness, it’s what we’re always waiting for. Love. To be loved, imagine that! After ages of hate and disorienta — tion, the world will suddenly love us. Love your neighbor better than yourself? Your neighbor! Yes, I understand … but you can’t love your neighbor better than you love your own skin. It’s a lie. Never more than yourself. It isn’t possible. And if it’s possible, it’s too much. Why should they love us? Because we’re better, more beautiful? Impeccable? We’re not. So then, let them leave us alone. That’s all, that’s all! You hear? That’s all! Let them stop asking us to be better, more beautiful, impeccable. That’s all! We don’t need love, Gusti.”

Gusti was walling himself into the mountain. Soon after, he’d given up the disputes with Izy, or with anyone else, on the subject. When conflicts appeared on the taboo theme, or jokes about the side curls or the traditional insults, he’d simply leave the room. He’d go through years of school that way, and for a long time afterward, when, an assistant at the university, he frequented an attic where there were heated debates about the most heated questions in the world. Lu was never to discover her husband’s juvenile obsession with the Apostle Peter, and Isidor Koch, was, by then, far away.

At the end of high school, Izy signed up for the Institute of Physical Culture and Athletics, no more, no less! Gora was stupefied. Koch had become a champion weight thrower, weightlifter, and rower. Isidor Koch, an athlete?! This wasn’t the image by which his people had gained their renown and antipathy. And, as if the exotic choice weren’t exotic enough, Izy had chosen Cluj, the capital of Transylvania, as the place where he would pursue his study.

“This program exists here, too. Why would you go so far away?”

“People are more serious there. I’m fed up with the jokes people make about me, as well as the jokes I make myself. And besides, there’s the unknown to consider! Anonymity! Just think, a place where no one knows you!”

Gora was smiling. Cluj was much smaller than Bucharest, the anonymity would evaporate fairly quickly. But he didn’t contradict the athlete, he just thought about his friend affectionately.

After a year, Izy came back home. Not for his studies, but for his departure. He’d been claimed by a wealthy uncle in Venezuela, he was abandoning the socialist paradise.

“Our Max has become an oil tycoon! Heaps of money. Remember that. When you want to escape, I will buy your freedom. Don’t expect a wealth of correspondence, but you will have my address very soon.”

The address from Caracas came late, on a spectacular postcard. A few words, “Here’s my address and my hello. Yours, as ever, your Holiness!”

Gora would send him regular bits of information about their classmates’ evolution, with no allusion to the Homeland or to Venezuela. No answer. After a few years, he received a photograph. Isidor Koch, in medical school, holding a tennis racket, near a group of supple, smiling young women. The address on the back was that of a studio apartment he’d bought in Caracas, near the university. Then, after graduation, a photograph from New York. The wedding: Isidor Koch and Isabel Motola. An elegant synagogue, elegant grooms, elegant attendants. On the back, some brief words about the bride, a doctor as well, American, the daughter of a renowned rheumatolo — gist. “Today at our wedding on Fifth Avenue, my old friend Augustin Gora was also present. His place is here. Write to me.”

Gora didn’t respond. Correspondence with the outside could diminish his already uncertain chances of obtaining a passport.