Norman Manea - The Lair

To absorb the joy of the moment, its delusions. He was no longer young, and even if he were young, he still couldn’t call for deferment, the hazard asked to be respected.

Books had kept him unaware of the cycles of aging and diminishing. He looked at the shelves where friends rested in between worn covers, friends who’d accompanied him along the exodus before the definitive exodus. Tomorrow he will present himself, anxiously and politely, to the surgeon Dr. Hostal, for the farewell. A nostalgic fraternization, because it was final. Should you extend a hand, as an epilogue, to the one who tried to keep you among the living, what more human ritual can you seek?

When you have no one from whom you are about to separate yourself, your loneliness intensifies in the final moments, but it’s also purer, independent of others. Parents disappeared long ago, he’d adjusted with difficulty to being far from them, and with their painful bouts of longing. Oblomov dedicated long odes to laziness, Izy had remained in the basement of youth, and Saint Peter in Galilee, Kira Varlaam was dedicating herself to her autistic son, Dima was stealing away to the void as to an undeserved amnesty, the Cavalier from La Mancha never forgave Dulcinea’s infidelity, Pal — ade was dispatched by a bullet, just like his hero Lonrot, Peter Ga par made himself invisible, legitimizing, through a broad prank, his renowned Dutch namesake. The little blonde girl in the blue one — horse carriage was still passing in front of the enchanted and chimerical boy, just as she did in childhood. And Lu had survived, in her magic youth, dizzy with aphrodisiacs. After so many years since the separation that never successfully became a parting, any ritual of separation from Lu would have been ridiculous, and, as was obvious, futile.

He was caressing the clean surface of the desk, books all pushed to the side, along with the red gloves of the past. Tomorrow, after the dying man’s last shudder, everything will remain in its place, the books and Lu and the obituary of the disappeared, until they disappear as well, sweeping away all traces of the deceased. For some time the retina of Edward Hostal will preserve the face of the patient who, at the end, wanted to assure him not of his gratitude but of the serenity with which he’d accepted the ephemeral. He had resisted serenity often with a candid obstinacy. Enriched, nevertheless, he would tell Hostal that he’d been enriched often by the ephemeral’s immaterial intensity and ineffable joy, even while convinced that in the end, the material would conquer all. He’d tell the Australian that these joyful and passing oppositions were not at all negligible.

The patient arrived early at the hospital, as he’d been requested to do. He listened attentively to the instructions: if the angiogram shows that there’s need for an intervention, an angioplasty will be performed on the spot; at the point where the leg connects to the hip, a small imaging catheter will be introduced into the femoral artery. It will advance toward the artery that needs cleaning, the catheter will expand, compressing the buildup, dilating the artery, and a small metal tube will replace the balloon to maintain the dilation. You will be sedated, not fully anesthetized, the doctor requires the live and conscious reaction of the patient.

Stretched out on the narrow bed, hands and legs restrained, Augustin Gora was looking at the computer screen. Doctor Ponte — corvo appeared, a tall, lanky man with black hair. Then Maestro Hostal, the professor. Small, dense. Small hands and small, blue eyes. White, curly hair, cropped short. Solid, dense, he inspires trust.

“No anesthetic, as you know. We need the patient’s lucidity. You will receive a calming syrup.”

The Chinese woman handed him a glass with a pink liquor, the patient drank it to the bottom. He felt the insertion in the vein of the leg, the trajectory of the camera for making images of his insides, he closed his eyes, the electronic cricket worked intensely, the patient squeezed the metal railing of the bed to which he was restrained. Eyes closed, teeth clenched.

Hostal is once again by the patient’s side.

“I have good news and I have bad news. Which do you want first?”

“The good.”

“We can intervene.”

It meant it was all going to hell, and the devil was going to humiliate the dying.

“The bad news is that your arteries are blocked. Over 90 percent, some even 99 percent. It’s that sour cream from Bukovina … If you agree, we’ll begin the procedure.”

“I don’t think I have an alternative.”

“Not really. The intervention isn’t foolproof. There are risks. Heart attack, stroke. It happens rarely, but it isn’t impossible.”

The Australian was silent, and the patient, as well.

“So then, you agree? We’ll operate?”

“Yes, we’ll operate.”

“Oxygen will be pumped into the blocked artery. It will clean out the buildup. Then, we will fit in the metal lining. It is called a stent. It will keep the artery open so that circulation can normalize.”

The doctor had rolled up his sleeves, and shifted over to the computer.

The arrow directly targeted the chest cavity. Deep, deeper. On the screen, the insect was feeling out its trajectory. A vibrating, bedeviled little locust, nibbling away at the waste in the artery. A sharp, persistent pain. Gora closed his eyes and held the bars alongside his bed with both hands.

“Taxus,” Hostal orders. “Express Two.”

The patient opens his eyes: the nurse was pulling a little cylinder out of a drawer down below. She’d torn the packaging and was now handing the cylinder to the doctor. A minuscule little shell, delicate. A long, poisonous pain right to his liquefied brain. Then, another cylinder. The long, thin arrow. Another sharp pain, moaning, whimpering, the patient closes his eyes, opens his eyes, squeezes the bars, unclenches his hands, then clenches them again. Time no longer exists, it consumes itself.

“An hour and ten minutes,” announces the Chinese woman with a slight speech impediment.

“I’ve fitted you with two stents,” Hostal explained. “We’ve resolved two central arteries. The others, next time. Come back in a month, a month and a half.”

He’d remained by the bed, looking at the revived patient, smiling at him.

“We’re only plumbers. Fixing pipes.”

The doors open, the professor and the assistant exit. The patient is unrestrained at his hands and feet. The male nurse with the moustache pushes the wheelchair to the room on the third floor. He’s hooked up to the monitor. The diagram on the screen in front of the bed. The pills and the water glass on the metal cart. Eyes closed in reverie.

The blonde, tall nurse on afternoon duty had entered the room.

“You called?”

The pills had triggered some acidity and the stomach pains had returned. He managed to mumble, “Where are you from?”

The beauty smiled, “Polish.”

“I’d thought maybe from Hollywood,” the patient murmured.

Tall, thin, superb, she should have adapted to the New World in a bar or on a stage, not in the hallways of the hospital poisoned with odors and moans.

Looking a little like the prey of werewolves, Gora was moaning, but smiling at the beautiful Polish woman. “I feel as if I were Ga par … I miss Mynheer.” Burning and pain. She returned with a spoonful of yellowish liquid. She raised his pillow, and then the spoon advanced toward his livid lips. The patient sipped the liquor, dizzy with stabs of pain, and with enchantment. Mollified and drawn into the waters of sleep.