Norman Manea - The Lair

“That would have made me an informant, too, no? They gave me a passport, as well.”

“You were a different case. Ludmila’s relations could have intervened. Maybe they were the ones who made the deal.”

“And you … you came here with a passport, too.”

“They wanted to get rid of me. The secret police files have proof of that. I had uncovered informants among neighbors and friends and relations. I was naive; now I’m suspicious.”

“I remember when you first came. Palade had told me you’d arrived and that he gave you my phone number. But you didn’t call for about six months. When I asked how you were, you said you were jet-lagged. I appreciated your humor, but you seemed disoriented and lost.”

“I was. I’d lost my ability to speak. When I was leaving, at the airport.”

“I remember, you were saying that when they stamped your passport with the exit visa, they also cut out your tongue. We all went through that.”

“Not all of us. Palade came here as a young man, and Professor Gora already knew the language.”

“I sent you to my friend Koch. Izy Koch.”

“You were right about him; he wouldn’t take my money. But I can see this conversation isn’t very interesting; you’re getting bored.”

“It’s interesting, but yes, it’s boring me. I’m happy for this country’s nonsense and goodwill. I suspect that you’re also satisfied with it.”

“I am. I thought I might amuse you with my question about Palade. I don’t know if I ever told you that we were high school classmates. We went on to different things.”

“You never told me.”

“Or that I met with him once, after he returned from his visit back to the Homeland, not long before he was assassinated?”

“Not that, either.”

“He told me that he’d seen Lu, I don’t know if he told you about it.”

This was the final bait. Gora hesitates, deciding whether to lie or not.

“He never told me.”

“At the theater. The Master and Margarita.”

“Did he tell you what she was wearing?”

If that was an ironic question, then it meant he was mocking me and that I’d lost my last chance to challenge him.

“Was it a black, low-cut dress? Or something casual? Did she have her hair up in a bun?”

I didn’t answer. There was a stony silence. Then, abruptly, Gora flared up again.

“A great doctor, the Australian. He fixed me; I’m all brand new! I can just take it all from the top and repeat all the same nonsense. Are you still there, or have you gotten tired?”

He’d taken on the role of the senile, old man. He was probably enjoying himself, taking notes.

“I’m here. You’re right, I’m not so young, either. The invisible hag is waiting in the corner, with gifts of all kinds. Cancer, heart attack, Alzheimer’s, epidemics. Fires, terrorism. At your disposal.”

“Yes, it’s a huge offer. It comes when you least expect it. At night, when the forest darkens. It darkens, but it doesn’t sleep. Even here in the city, I still see woods outside my windows. Monkhood. Willy-nilly apparitions.”

A long pause. It gave me courage.

“And you really weren’t in touch?”

“We weren’t. I wrote to Lu when I arrived. She never wrote back. I wrote again. She never answered the phone, either. I didn’t insist. And I never really looked for my fellow countrymen. Even now, I avoid them, as you well know.”

“Because of this?”

“Not only.”

“And you’ve known nothing about Lu since you left?”

“I recapitulated, going over the past; I didn’t find much. Small trivialities, oddities, ambiguities, brief discrepancies. Trivialities. There were things to ponder, to be sure. Nothing important or drastic, however.”

“And then?”

“I was surprised by her arrival, but I didn’t see her. There was no point. We see each other in the past. The Iron Curtain was a good curtain, sparing us of a lot of things. You worry about what you left behind; you receive no news. You can’t simply board a plane and land in the locus of all that mystery, to see with your own eyes everything that’s being hidden from you. But it’s better this way, isn’t it? You’re spared all blame, aren’t you? What do you say to that? You’re an expert in fortunate and unfortunate and nonexistent faults; what do you think?”

This time he was attacking directly; he was asking questions and didn’t wait for answers. There were only questions boiling with his fury.

“In any case, now I understand. I’m armed; I’m renewed. With the circulation to my heart and brain so much improved, I can understand. These stents were a magical bargain! They restored the circulation to all of my organs, the major and minor ones; they gave me a second chance.”

He was speaking quickly, with fury and speed.

He was the winner alongside his pale Andalusian, under her young gaze, touching those gloves and her young hands. One moment was enough to bring you back; the skin shrivels, the body is dry, the arms livid. Long, old arms and legs. Fragile bones that powder at the first touch. The dust of the skeleton that had been your youth. But I wouldn’t have been able to break Gora’s spell, no matter what I might have said.

“I was turned back from the gates of heaven! It was a postponement. I returned to find out what was left to find out. After this, I’ll bet they’ll take me in. And now, I have to go. Excuse me but Boltan-ski is waiting for me.”

“The Russian?”

“The Ukrainian. The Soviet. You know him?”

“Yes, I know him. The chauffeur of all the Eastern European exiles. Where are you going?”

“He’s taking me to Penn Station.”

“But where are you going?”

“I’m going to meet Avakian. I’ve finally secured a meeting with Bedros Avakian. Always busy, always worried, that one, but he finally agreed to this one favor. I have some questions about Peter and Tara. And about Deste. Supposedly she’s started a fashion house in Sarajevo. I heard that or dreamed it, I don’t know anymore; I’m getting old. Senility. The interrupted story. Interesting, isn’t it?”

“You could say that.”

“As you can see, the New World is a great concern of mine.”

I remained on the line for some time, heard his voice again; he was speaking normally, as if everything else that had been said until then had simply been swept away, or just wasn’t important.

All that was left was for me to ask him what he was reading.

“What book am I reading? I’m not reading anything. I can’t concentrate.”

“There’s not a single book on your table? I don’t believe it.”

“The news, some papers, folders. No books.”

“And on the nightstand?”

“What nightstand?”

“How should I know, the nightstand near your bed.”

“Ah, yes. Rilke. The readers’ sect is diminishing, but not dead. Thank God.”

“Rilke? Poetry? You still read poetry?”

“Not really. It’s a collection of selected works. Short essays, some verse. About love. The protection of one’s own solitude, and the protection of the other’s solitude! If you try to possess the other’s solitude, or try to give your own away, it all goes to hell. That’s the idea. You remember? A good marriage is one where each partner is the protector of the other’s solitude. Something like that.”

“But that’s referring to marriage, not to love.”

“Some say that love is an error of allocation; the poet is attempting to instruct the reader on how to maintain a contractual love. To watch over the other person’s solitude, to protect it, rather, or to leave the other person at the gate of his or her own solitude. A solitude dressed festively, one that comes out of the vast darkness. Not at all badly put. He was young, the old poet.”