The Lair (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (17 page)

Those who knew him knew him as the brilliant scholar, the former participant in secret debates in an attic refashioned as intellectual redoubt; they expected more from him. It seemed that he himself hadn’t forgotten the large attic with the enormous skylight, where we’d met for the first time.

Mihnea had brought me there, curious to watch my reaction to
the heated discussions. I was silent and attentive among the participants; I didn’t comment and I didn’t inform anyone, not even Mihnea, before taking leave of that feverish company. Bookish discussions with long lines of dialogue, like essays read out loud. I was intrigued by those people, their way of speaking as if they were writing, instead of the other way around, which is a much more common occurrence. In the end, their tirades bored me, though I never forgot them. They were excessive and bizarre, not just for the promiscuous intellectual that I was then; but I never again frequented troublesome attics.

Neither Mihnea Palade, nor Augustin Gora, nor Lu, suspected that they would meet me again, sometime. As for Peter Ga
par, he wasn’t there. At that time he was still a teenager in the province.

None of us suspected, then, that we’d see each other again in exile, across decades and meridians.

The old trees, the uncertain sky of spring: Dr. Koch is there. The narrow waiting room, the diplomas arranged on the office walls, the doctor among them. In the park, a trio of black puppeteers juggling the strings of the marionettes in the bombardment of music. The doctor among them. The playground, the swimming pool. Alleys to the left and right. Passersby of all ages and races. Dr. Koch cloned in dozens of hurried impersonators.

The kaleidoscope of the citadel and little Dr. Koch in the center.

The vise was squeezing his forehead and temples. Two expired sedatives from the old Gomorrah and a fresh, perfect aspirin from fresh, perfect Babylon. Night after night, gathered into one night.

Peter Ga
par, thrown on the banks of a new morning. In the mirror. The little gnome Koch repeated the sentence, “Have you looked in the mirror? An elephant! An elephant. The scale doesn’t lie. An elephant.”

Soon the elephant finds himself on a bench, in the nearby park. He leaves the park; he looks at his watch. His gaze floats up, to the sky. The present, the motto of his new life: the present. That’s all. The unknown extends a small, white hand.

“A TV commercial. It pays well. The chess player concentrating on the match will slowly extend a hand toward the glass of Coke.”

The corner of Broadway and 63rd Street. One step to the left, then another. Taxi! The yellow cab brakes at the curb’s edge.

Above the steering wheel, the photo and the name of the driver. Russian accent. The hoarse voice of a smoker. A wide, gentle face,
small eyes, large teeth, a brow furrowed with wrinkles. Lyova drives calmly, slowly. In front of the train station, he gently stops the motor and, simultaneously, the meter.

“Eight dollars.”

The passenger stammers, doesn’t stammer.

“Two dollars! That’s all I have, two dollars. My credit card is in my wallet, which I forgot at the library. In the cafeteria of the library. Or, maybe, at Dr. Koch’s office. Forgive me. I have a new MetroCard, worth twenty dollars. I will give you that. I bought it today.”

“Get out of here with your MetroCard! Get out, get out!” yells Lyova, swearing in Russian, or in Ukrainian.

The madman doesn’t move.

“Give me your address.”

“What address?”

“Your address. Your phone number. Your bank account.”

“You want my email, too? You can’t do anything without an email address these days.”

“Anything, just so I can find you and send you the money. The debt I owe you.”

Lyova looks the crazy man in the eyes, like those ophthalmologists who examine the retinas of paralytics. He pulls out the pad of receipts from the right of the steering wheel, tears a sheet and extends it to the passenger.

“Okay. I hope you won’t be back.”

“No danger of that.”

The crowd. The hubbub, the haze. After a while, after looking at the departure schedule, the traveler discovers platform number 9.

T
he present
, that’s all there is. The city on the Moon. It’s not so bad, it could be worse, thinks the passenger. The Russian, that is the Ukrainian, that is the Soviet, was a decent man. A decent day, that’s the conclusion, Doctor.

The river travels gently along the left side of the train. You never wade twice in the same primordial water, which never ages, and which is never the same. A fluid horizon, a fluid, therapeutic sleep.

The conductor taps him gingerly on the shoulder. The sleeper quickly grabs his bag and his coat.

And now he’s off the train, addled, in the station, gazing at the wide and gentle river in front of him. The platform is deserted, mountains in the distance, the river a step away.

A cold, clear afternoon. The beginning of the world. The end of the world. In between them, a short armistice. The chronometer swallows the seconds of the calendar.

The day hasn’t surrendered to the black waters, it isn’t nighttime yet. Depleted, Peter moves from the old couch to the old armchair. He gets up, staggering on his long, old legs. One small step and a big step and another small one. To the vault of the bed.

Midnight. The rustling of the woods. Nocturnal waters surrounding the cabin. Murmurs, babblings. The numbed body, the mind besmirched. The body is our house, according to little Avicenna.

The day hadn’t started in front of Barnes & Noble, where the TV producer Mr. Curtis had appeared, nor in the office of Dr. Koch, but in the cabin in the woods, in the all-forgiving vault of the bed.

You wake up a mole, a mollusk, a roach. Like yesterday morning, like the day before that. In no rush to free yourself of the night’s tombstone.

You remember the chest pains of the previous night. The vise squeezes your forehead and the temples. Death? It isn’t eternal peace, but a stubbornly recurring nightmare.

It was late, he could no longer call the doctor. The doctors are bored; to prove to them that it’s a matter of life and death, you have to transmit a final whimper and die on the spot, and that’s it. He swallowed two expired sedatives from the old Gomorrah and a fresh, perfect aspirin from the fresh, perfect Babylon, where he found himself now. You have to learn to get used to yourself, you vagrant. Night after night collected into a single night. Neglect, the dilation of membranes and a shapeless shell. Anxiety, numbness, sudden awakenings.

No, he hadn’t died. Evidently, he was alive, thrown on the banks of the new morning by the alarm of the phone. He twists his pachyderm body from one side to the other, the bed whines; he rises, finally. In front of the mirror: an elephant! Not a mole or roach, but an elephant, unprepared for the day’s little tumbling routines.

He lowers himself onto his heavy legs and sighs. A buffoon, in front of the mirror. The phone. The phone is ringing. The voice of little Dora, the delicate Spanish woman with the thick voice.

“The doctor arrived ten minutes ago. He received your message and is waiting for you. Dr. Koch is waiting for you. Today, at one.”

“May I speak with Lu?”

Dora loses her patience, flustered.

“No, Lu isn’t here. And I’m in a hurry, my sister is here to see me. Okay, we’re waiting for you. One o’clock, today, Friday.”

Soft legs, belly hanging, puffed like a sack.

He shouldn’t have called Koch! He’s in no mood for admonishments.

“You’re in the strangers’ country, where no one is a stranger. Unhappiness isn’t the domicile of the chosen people, you should know! If you don’t believe me, return to rotten Denmark like Hamlet and your obituary will be written in your native language!”

An arrogant little gnome, Monsieur Koch! Made to give lectures, not consultations.

The patient comes to the office of rhetoric for Lu. The mystery is no longer a mystery; the doctor’s employee skips out every time. Ever since his stratagem was discovered, the pachyderm is no longer welcomed like an honored guest and admitted immediately into the office, as he had been previously. He must obediently wait his turn. So much the better! In a half an hour, who knows, a miracle might happen. What if Lu, hurrying to escape, accidentally forgets her purse? Maybe no sooner than she’s left, she will reappear, carelessly, in front of the stalker.

The door opens. Koch makes a weary sign.

The patient follows him into the office. Flustered, he collapses
into Avicenna’s armchair. With an index finger, Koch sends him promptly to his own place.

“On the scale.”

The scale is unfriendly. There will be admonishments, therapeutic offenses.

Koch seems to have lost interest in the spectacle, however. He takes a long look at the patient, from top to bottom, straightens his little, freckled finger toward the red needle of the scale, then toward the patient, then again toward the scale.

“An elephant! You’re like an elephant. The scale doesn’t lie. An elephant!”

Soon, the elephant finds himself outside on a bench, in a nearby park. He considers the passersby and their impatience before their weekly rest.

He leaves the park and looks at his watch. He gazes up at the sky.

The present! The present, the pedestrian repeats the motto of his new life and enters Barnes & Noble, Broadway, corner of 66th Street.

“Do you, by any chance, have postcards of elephants?”

The young man behind the computer gives him a long and attentive look.

“I don’t think so. I haven’t seen any, I don’t think.”

“How is that possible? It’s the country’s political symbol. Are all the bookstores Democrats?”

The young man becomes more voluble.

“No, we don’t have the donkey, either… I don’t think we have postcards with elephants or donkeys. But you can look. Here, on the ground floor, to the left, there are albums, art prints, photographs. To the left, around the corner.”

Peter rifles scrupulously through the posters, albums, piles of postcards and . . . finds more than he’d hoped for. A red sky, two elephants advancing, in the air, one toward the other, with immense burdens on their backs. Long, thin legs, from the sky to the ground. Dalí.

He leaves the bookstore with the print in hand, raises his gaze toward the sky; stupefied, he finds himself faced with an unknown man who stretches out a small, white hand.

James Curtis.

The day is over, Peter fills a glass full of water, and another. He doesn’t turn on the light, the headlights from the parking lot nearby are enough. He throws himself into the armchair, moves to the couch, now fully awake. On the table, the pile of letters from a week, or two. Envelopes, ads, fliers, magazines, postcards. Junk mail. He pushes the heap to the edge of the table. The present becomes the past; yesterday morning, P.O. Box 1079,
^me
taxi to the station, the river, the train, the crowd in Penn Station, the library, Koch’s office where Lu was hiding, the consultation, the humiliation routine. The Dali sky, the Dali elephants. The producer Curtis. Lyova, the compassionate taxi driver from Babel’s Odessa.

He gets up, he walks toward the coatrack; he finds in the pocket of his coat the business card with the golden name James Curtis, and he throws it onto the pile of letters. The proof of the day that was and wasn’t.

The station, the train, the primordial waters, the small terminal station, another taxi. No longer Lyova Boltanski, but Red Hat Jerry. The throb in his left shoulder, the sickly hiss. Words barely get through. Nine dollars and fifty cents! If you have no money, be quiet until you reach the destination, the scatterbrained Peter Ga
parhad learned. You ask the driver to wait, you’ll be back with the money in a minute. One minute, two, however long it takes to search the pockets of your pants and coats and shirts, where you forget your white money for your black days. In the end, you scrounge up fourteen dollars. The driver deserves twelve. Two dollars left. Two new dollars and two new dollars make four, four quarters make the whole.