The Lair (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (26 page)

They look at each other, without curiosity. One of them tall, fat, bald with a mustache, the other taller, fatter, black, thick, curly hair and black skin. A discharged hussar and a black American, ready to take out his saxophone.

“Mr. Joe?”

The man nods his big, heavy head.

“Madam Beatrice Artwein called yesterday, to … “

“Ah, Beatrice! Betty. That’s what we call her. Yes, baby, the lady called. I have the key.”

He smiles. Large, immaculate teeth. Large, black eyes burning with the delight of complicity.

“Yes, baby, I have the key ready. Two hours. That’s it.”

Peter doesn’t return the smile, he’s somber and distant.

“Perfect. I’ll take the key and come back. I’ll be back quickly.” The great Joe Louis bends toward the drawer, pulls out the key tied with a blue cord. He’s no longer smiling, or looking at the client, he’s become somber and distant.

Lu. Supple, tall, elegant. Red jacket. Her face is hollow, white, matte. Hair pulled back in a bun, her forehead free.

“A small, simple room. A bed. A shower, toilet, mirror. Without towels, but cheap,” Beatrice had explained. “Without perfumes, creams, towels. You don’t forget where you are, nor what you’re there for. Promiscuity intensifies the promiscuous appetite. It defies conventions, sharpens pleasure.”

Fourth floor. The hallway. Precise directions: 401-411 to the left, 412-419 to the right. 416. A bed, an armchair. A narrow bed. On the sheet, a brown stain in the left corner. Lu in the doorway. Mute, immobile. From one second to the next, she’ll slam the door, abandon the room and her marriage.

Peter doesn’t forget the risk, not even in his dreams: Lu wasn’t made for squalor, it freezes her up.

In the middle of the room, prepared for shame and disaster, he records, attentively, the movements of the black plaits. Lu is no longer Lu … Slowly, she unbuttons the dress jacket, one button at a time. The red silk slips down. Nothing underneath. She holds her young breasts in her palms. She offers them to him! Smooth, bare shoulders, proud throat. She puts her long hands around her neck, like a coil. Velvety palms, thin fingers. She remains like that, exposed, looking at the narrow, dirty window. She pulls down the zipper of her jeans. She comes out of those blue pipes, naked.

Espadrilles. She looks at them with pity, first one, then the other,
the left, right, she pulls out her foot slowly, the left, the right, she moves her legs away. Long toes, narrow foot of ivory. Her lips vibrate past the white stripe of her teeth. Lu isn’t Lu! In her hand she holds a small, black, plastic object. She presses the button. A dull sound can be heard coming from the ceiling. Lu points her index finger to the low, gray ceiling, showing her partner the little television in the ceiling.

On the screen an angelic face and a body of an adolescent: Beatrice Artwein! Betty … at that very moment she’s throwing off her golden bra, the golden leaf in between her thin, brown legs. Shaved head. Incipient breasts, prominent, electric nipples. Pink vulva warmed with the short fingers of a young girl. She’s kneeling in front of the bald giant with the mustache, slowly unbuttoning the rigid jeans of the hussar, button by button.

Peter sweats uncomfortably, frightened by Lu, who waits for him naked on the bed, wetting her fever-burned lips with her tongue. On the screen, Betty ecstatically caresses the naked, hairy thighs of her colleague Ga
par.

Peter stretches out on the bed, Lu imitates the movements of Madam Artwein! Simulacrum! Betty and Lu turn their backs to their partners, who bend over Betty, over Lu.

Lost gaze on the screen. Lu is in the bathroom, the shower can be heard. On the screen Betty, bent under the man, receives the penetration, quivering. The bodies accelerate the rhythm, hands searching for each other, as well as mouths, the professional and the client panting and gasping. From the threshold of the bathroom door, Lu listens to the moaning, smiling. Now she’s wearing a red dress, short, very short. In her black bun there’s a small white bridal tiara. White gloves, a pearl choker at her throat.

A click to the ceiling and the copulation disappears. Peter is on his feet. Black suit, giant, patent leather shoes. White bow tie, white kerchief in the breast pocket of the lustrous jacket.

The couple arm in arm in the courtyard of the socialist town hall of Sector 4 in the capital. In the far end of the yard, alone, Madam Eva Kirschner-Ga
par is waiting, diminished, seemingly lower in stature, drawn into herself, gray haired, with a grease-stained, wrin-kled
and mottled apron over her golden dress. She lifts the hem and wipes her tearful eyes and dirty glasses with her apron. The festive couple passes by her, without seeing her. The entrance into the department of the city clerk’s office. The official charged with the union descends the stairs solemnly to meet them.

It’s Professor Augustin Gora! A little white beard, the gray goatee of a Slavic beadle. Nobility and the ridiculous in his timid manner, devoid of vigor.

The professor embraces the bride, kisses each cheek. He squeezes Mynheer’s hand discreetly. He looks at him insistently, fascinated by the famous character, whose acquaintance he finally has the privilege to make.

Gora wears a green dress coat and a wide band, red, yellow, and blue, over his shoulder and across his breast. He makes a cavalier gesture to the bride, then to her partner, inviting them inside the building.

The mother-in-law suddenly intervenes, shaking with sobs. The professor smiles at the uninvited, invites the trio inside. The bride and the mother-in-law climb the three steps, the groom stands still and stiff like a statue.

The professor repeats the gesture, he tips forward again, like a mannequin, but the groom shows no sign of life. Dead, but upright. Stiff, with glassy, phosphorescent eyes.

Professor Gora smiles, bows toward the bride and hands her a large yellow envelope.

Peter sweats, pants, moans, twisting, throwing off the flaming blanket and sheets. He holds on to the edge of the bed with clenched hands, jumps to his feet, frightened and determined to talk to Gora.

Professor Gora isn’t accessible. He sits for many hours in front of the computer, transcribing the agitated night from which he’s just escaped.

It’s not Saturday, it’s Friday. Tara isn’t bringing the mail, but reporting.

“I’ve become a suspect!”

“Who hasn’t?”

“What do you mean?”

“The investigation doesn’t exclude any hypothesis. Any suspicion. The easiest one: the reporter herself.”

“I didn’t report anything.”

“You brought the postcard. The threat. You triggered the action. You could be complicit.”

“That’s what Ms. Tang thinks. I went to see her. I understand that you didn’t like her either?”

“She was polite. As was Patrick Murphy, Special Agent FBI. Actually, I’m not supposed to tell you that I saw them.”

“You can tell me; I’m complicit. I’m going to see Patrick again, too, says Ms. Tang. With me she wasn’t polite. She asked me to transcribe the whole text from the postcard. In front of her. So she could compare the handwriting with those few words from the address on the card … All she had to do was get my file from the dean; she would have found handwriting samples there.”

“She’ll find and compare them, don’t you worry. So you might be the author of the letter. Is that what she’s suggesting?”

“She’s not suggesting, she’s investigating. Patrick is going to threaten me, I’m sure of it. ‘Either you tell the truth, or I’ll aggravate your situation.’ Tang suspects me. ‘How is it, then, that you take the professor’s mail? It’s addressed to him, not you.’”

“She’s right.”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

“Yes, it was.”

“When I saw how overwhelmed you get by the mountains of mail! Plus, I’m paid to do it! You pay me! I told that blonde. I was sure that it would shatter the suspicion.”

“The suspicion that you wrote the postcard?”

“No, that won’t go away too quickly.”

“Then, what?”

“That I sort the mail so I can come here.”

“She said that?”

“It’s a small college. If you try to hide, you just multiply the
suspicions. My roommate sees me coming with the bag of letters for Professor Ga
par. I sort the mail for the eccentric Peter Ga
par.”

“Eccentric, yes… And what else did Tang ask you?”

“If I tell you, will I be able to sleep better?”

“Has sleep become a problem?”

“Not yet. I’m not the one with a death threat hanging over me.”

“We all have a death threat hanging over us.”

“You’ve said that before. Are you having nightmares? Insomnia?”

“Maybe. I’ve lived my whole life in the city. I don’t understand nature. I’m having a hard time adapting to nights in the woods.”

“So you’re alert. You’re prowling. That’s why you’re not sleeping.”

“Anxiety makes us childish. Only children are afraid of the dark. And the woods.”

“Do you want me to sleep here? On the couch.”

“Sleep here? No. Not in any event. It wouldn’t help me. Nor would it dissolve Ms. Tang’s suspicions. Why did the student provoke the professor’s neuroses? So that he’d become dependent on her? To get into his bed and blackmail him?”

“If she entered his house and his bed, she must care about the professor. She’d have no reason to torment him.”

“Maybe she’s a monster. Dracula.”

“A monster… it would bolster the attraction.”

Tara continues to scrutinize him, like a policeman. Ga
par does the same. Tara smiles; Ga
par smiles, too.