Norman Manea - The Lair

From time’s lottery machine I pulled out the winning numbers, Comrade Boltanski: the temperature, the white and red hemoglobin count, the glycemic index, cholesterol, even these have been tempered. We can’t ask for anything more than that. These are the high marks of good behavior.

On the event of the following crisis, he didn’t call the ambulance anymore, he just took a pill for his hypertension and a sedative.

He needed a psychiatrist, Izy told him. He’d never seen one before nor did he aspire to that indifference called equilibrium. His high school classmate assured him that he wouldn’t be prodded with indiscreet questions or harsh treatments, nor would he be reincarnated into God knows what hyperactive persona.

Dr. Stephen Kelly was tall, all skin-and-bones, gray-haired, taciturn. The patient informed him that he wasn’t prone to confessions, that all he wants is the pill that will make him functional again, that was it.

The psychiatrist smiled. It seemed like an approving smile.

“What is the problem? What happened?”

The professor admitted that he’d gone through a calendar crisis. He wasn’t asked to explain what he’d meant by that. He added himself, “Two angioplasties. A slow and uncertain recovery with moments of panic,” the patient added. Raised levels of artery tension, cold sweats, panting, shortness of breath.

Stephen Kelly’s silence continued. Ah, yes, the patient wanted to add that he would prefer a minimal dose. Even less.

The doctor smiled, he seemed to approve of everything he was hearing. He prescribed a medication with a pleasant-sounding name.

“From the Prozac family.”

“Prozac? I’ve heard horror stories about this miracle drug called Prozac. A student of mine was taking Prozac, and her depression was transformed into a continuous smile. Rictus. Sneering grin. It would have frightened even the president’s bodyguards.”

“The minimal dose is fifty milligrams. We’ll start with a quarter of a minimal dose. We’ll try it gradually and see what happens. Is that okay?”

It was okay. On the following visit, the dose went up to twenty-five milligrams. The taciturn visit cost three hundred dollars. Unlike Bar-El, Dr. Kelly responded promptly to any and all telephone calls.

The dosage kept increasing until it reached the minimal dose. Then, panic attacks, anguish. Pain at the back of his neck, tremors, sweating. Kelly recommended reducing the dosage, then trying a different medication.

The patient received a new prescription. He contemplated it for a long time, he never did go to the pharmacy, nor did he ever go back to Dr. Kelly.

Exercise will replace the pills. Dr. Bar-El had steered him toward some three-month regime. Physical therapy. Ten minutes of warm-ups, then ten minutes on three different machines, then ten minutes of cooling-down exercises. The bus ride to the periphery of York Avenue and back. The effort becomes more intense, his exhaustion diminishes, the day arranges itself around the diversion. Revitaliza-tion, fuel for self-esteem.

The experiment concluded at the end of August. At the closing ceremony each contestant promised to continue training thirty minutes per day or to walk for an hour at a brisk pace.

Back to deserted hours, specters. The transparent linen blouse. The sandals, the otherwise bare foot. The supple body under the rays of the moon. The Andalusian head, the intense gaze. She threw off her sandals, her pants, the leaf of her underwear, taking the patient’s palm in her own long, delicate, and narrow hand, making it into a fist. Her lashes trembled, just like her voice, her fingers trembled, electrified.

“Tell me about your childhood … ” she said. She listened attentively, avid and already distant, somewhere in the green of the great trees. A fraction, enough to start you awake. And she’s back here. A burned look, her fingers touch the torrid center.

After a month Gora returned to the psychiatrist. A new office, four secretaries, elevators, bathrooms. The gray-haired Dr. Kelly inspires trust. Another pill. Small, preliminary doses. The normal dose has a positive effect. He increased the dosage by another quarter-pill. The patient seemed to have found his pill and his dosage. He slept well, didn’t feel tired. He took up his reading again, and his Obituary.

He accepted the status of a cardiac patient: a cocktail of six pills in the morning, two for dessert in the evening.

Thirsty for life, he considered its offers. Books and trees, faces and foods, the river, Lu’s gloves, the chair, the computer, the bathtub, the wintry forest, the album A Day in the Life of America, the cat on the verandah, the telephone, the blue towel, the ridiculous shoes. He’d lost the energy for revolt, the absurd had become comic. The path had been short, short, silly blind groping through the property called biography. He was ready for the retrospective.

He pushed the yellow folder with his hand and pulled the gloves toward himself. He set them down in front of himself, separate, the left glove to the left, the right glove to the right. He placed his palms on each. His hands were shorter than Lu’s, but wider. Even if he could manage to slip them inside, he still wouldn’t have been able to feel the navel of her long, delicate fingers.

He pressed the palms of each of the two gloves, his left hand on the left glove, his right hand on the right glove. The skin vibrated. Magnetic field, copulation. He looked out at the forest through the window. His hands on the two instruments of reanimation.

Dr. Hostal had given him the chance to feel that magic touch again.

The lottery offered a deferment. Brought back from the other world and abandoned on the border between that place and life, Gora was learning calm, serenity, and an ashen indifference.

There were new games: the morning exercises, the evening walk. Controlling the blood pressure, medication, visits to Dr. Morse, who had replaced Bar-El. Elvira visited him twice a week to clean his apartment and to keep him away from restaurants, to which he went anyway on the weekends.

After the second angioplasty, a telephonic interlocutor reappeared.

“And how are you feeling? Any better?”

I insisted that he tell me about the whole intervention in great detail, about why he’d been hospitalized an additional night, about the erratic variations in his blood pressure.

He seemed overwhelmed by the shock he’d endured. I had to try to divert his attention away from his illness.

“Do you remember the revolution at the college?”

“Yes, of course,” Gora mumbled.

“I had just arrived then. To you it had seemed like an apt initiation. You explained to me the mechanics of these litigious epidemics. You said they were cyclical, that people need the illusion of morality. Speeches from the balconies, blocked access to the administration, picketing, impassioned slogans. For someone who had just escaped the paradise of Communism, it was a grotesque parody.”

I found out that Gora no longer saw anyone, outside of Elvira. He’d become very timid, he said; he wasn’t sure of his own body. I was trying something, to distract him; I was happy that he’d agreed to play my game.

“I kept all the clippings from the papers. The scandal of the rape that wasn’t a rape. The revolution. The trial. The settlement with the student.”

The salad days in the desert of liberty. We’d each discovered that we were looking for our own captive oases. Religion. Rhetoric. Charity. Ser vility to bosses and bank accounts. Frustration. You can understand the extraordinary experiment only gradually.

“And what about that tall, brown-haired student Tim? The one who’d come to talk to you on Tereza’s behalf. Tim and Tereza. And then, the buck … ”