Norman Manea - The Lair

Halina leaned over again, took his blood, raised his pillow.

“Everything will be all right. The pressure will drop, it will be okay.”

“Yes, I can see that, 189 over 90. Is this a drop or an error?”

Halina was smiling, without responding. The patient smiled, as well, he would have liked to ask her to tell the story of her arrival in America, the ESL classes, minuscule Mexicans and little Chinese crones and busty Brazilians, her first job, a cook at a Portuguese restaurant, the first-aid night classes, the affair with the naval officer, her first trip to Texas, the arrival of her brother from Lodz.

The patient was smiling, exhausted, senile, powerless to ask or listen to anything, grateful for the Polish woman’s smile.

Four in the morning. At 6 the commotion would start, they would take the temperature of the dying, they would check every room, they would bring breakfast, morning visitors would arrive, including the magician Hostal.

“The level of the enzymes has improved. We’re still going to hold you another day. There’s no need to worry. Today you’re going to receive instructions for the months and year to come. The medication, the states of emergency, diet, exercise program, the periodic checkups.”

Instructions for his resurrection, alongside other similarly privileged individuals.

“Everything will be okay,” Doctor Hostal assures him. You’ve been rejuvenated, but this youth is no joke. Diet, exercise, medication.”

The patient was watching him, but he couldn’t manage a response. He wanted to be accepted as the Australian’s neighbor, wherever Edward Hostal lived, he would promise to be a discreet neighbor, he understood the irritations and the exhaustion of the wizard who passed daily, ten, a hundred times a day, from one suffering heart to another, unabated and precise and smiling, he wouldn’t bother him, he wouldn’t ask for anything but for a protective proximity to this god of cardiologists. That was all he wanted, that was it, it would be enough, it would diminish his panic and loneliness, yes, why shouldn’t he say it, even his loneliness. He would move anywhere just to be close to Hostal, a silent, invisible neighbor, a younger and wiser brother, a man who had succeeded in being much more useful than he, Augustin Gora, would ever be.

“I would like to thank you for … ”

“No, no, don’t worry. Yesterday, Elvira would have accompanied you home just like last time. Today she can’t. I spoke with the porter to call you a cab. He’ll take you to the cab, he’ll speak to the driver and ask him to help you to the entrance of your apartment. You have my number. Call me anytime.”

Home, in his solitary bed! He was satisfied, he’d located Peter at the chess table, on the screen of the planetary night, he’d managed to speak to him calmly, whispering as if to a dear and addle-brained cousin, he’d managed to surprise him and move him, Peter had interrupted his game and responded to him in his turn, timidly, submissively, as if he were speaking to an older and wiser cousin.

From wherever he may have been coming, from Nevada near Gina Monteverdi, Tara’s cheerful aunt, or from the polygamous refuge with the nine wives of the Mormon Alexander Joseph, from the Long Haul Estate near Big Water, Utah, or from the drama classes from the Methodist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, or from the Sea Hawk among the Coast Guard of Key West, Florida, the ship that had intercepted twenty-five million pounds of marijuana and ten thousand pounds of cocaine, from any page of the American Album —wherever it was, Peter had in the end arrived, of course, in New York, on the evening of September 9, 2001.

He hadn’t forgotten that many months ago, his cousin, Professor Augustin Gora, had reserved for him a room at the Hotel Esplanade, on the corner of 48th Street and Eighth Avenue. On Tuesday, September 11, he was to meet with the lawyer whom Gora had hired, to obtain his miraculous green card. He would enter the ranks of new people in the New World, he’d no longer need to hide in the wilderness. No one knew about the meeting at the World Trade Center, he hadn’t told anyone, the secret remained between the two of them, to deter any of the dubious astral alignments that might provoke a crime such as the one that had befallen Palade.

Suddenly at 8:46 in the morning, the formation Herostratus, the nineteen knifemen in the Show of the Century. All the televisions in the world watch the planes full of passengers and nineteen angels of death flying toward Salvation.

Peter tries to exit the subway, in the area of chaos. Crowded subway. The world stunned, the deaf-mutes and the cynical jokers, you could barely breathe. Allah-Yussuma-Osama’s messengers called for the saintly and eternal paradise, on the television screens across the entire planet. The metro halted. The cars closed tight. No, no suspects have been identified. Captive bodies, stuck to one another, incapable of holding each other up. Among them, David and Eva Ga par.

Ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes, David and Eva remained pasted, next to each other, at the end of the train car. Minutes are hours, forty minutes seem like an eternity. A stroke can occur even faster.

A few minutes before the metro starts up again.

Cautious movements. The bandage protects the incision, the wound is green, bruised, his skin would regain its usual pallor.

“Short, slow walks at the start. After two weeks, easy exercises. Gradually, routine exercise. Half an hour per day. Or longer, forty-minute walks. Measure your tension at various hours. Keep track of the figures in a notebook. We will reevaluate in a month.”

The walk was short. Bouts of panic, sharp stabs in his temples, the chest loaded with toxins. The body estranged. Confused signals. It was difficult to block the brain’s sensor, the body was disoriented. The first warnings, often false, fueled his unease. His mind under alarm, lubricous, can’t find the remedy. Quickly, quickly, the ambulance. Neighbor Hostal wasn’t his neighbor, and he considered himself merely a plumber, a modest repairman of florid pipes. The cardiac patient needed to be connected to the global panel of the ambulance, instant and perfect response.

These aren’t just the exaggerations of loneliness, as Izy thinks, they are the digits of the blood pressure monitor. Figures, in the era of figures and numbers, Comrade Boltanski teaches us.

He won’t call Bar-El. He’s going to clip his fingernails, that’s what he’s going to do. Eyes goggling the monitor that is going haywire.

Who’s going to clip your nails, Professor? Try as you might to concentrate on this minor drudgery, in the end you still can’t prevent the unfortunate moment; you’ve pushed the nail scissors in too deep, the nail and the finger and the cuff of your shirt are covered in blood. Thin and frenetic blood, difficult to stop.

“Try to avoid bleeding. The drugs will thin your blood and you may not be able to stop bleeding, you may get an infection. An infection would be a very serious thing, if it reaches your heart. There have been fatal cases.”

Neosporin against cuts and infections! You can’t find the ointment, nor the Band-Aids, you never put things back in their place, always playing hide-and-seek. Madam Neosporin and Sir Band-Aid are having a laugh at the blunderings of the blunderer. Where have you hidden, you saboteurs? Hocus-pocus, now you see them, now you don’t, just like us mortals, here today, gone tomorrow. Ha, there you are in between the towels. I feel like the fat and playful Ga par, his silly games.