The Lair (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (29 page)

“Meaning?”

“Gilbert told me, at some point, about the eccentricities of the refugee Peter Ga
par.”

“Aha, you mean Dracula’s eccentricities.”

“Not quite. Maybe Gilbert didn’t have all the information. He was talking about childish, endearing eccentricities.”

“For example?”

“You eat every day in the faculty lounge, I understand.”

“Where else?”

“Greeted with happiness. There are amicable signs from all the tables, they call you over. They want you among them.”

“The advantage of the exotic stranger. He rouses curiosity. They want to hear stories from the Stone Age.”

“Especially when the stranger is generous. He tells stories, but he also brings gifts.”

Ga
par doesn’t ask any more questions. He understands what she’s talking about.

“You bring them all kinds of wonderful things. The Belgian chocolate and Swiss chocolate impressed everyone.”

“That’s what I was after. The stranger is curious, too, wants to understand the robots of the postmodern millennium. I brought first-class chocolate. To see how diets and discipline and Protestant austerity get swept under the rug.”

“And did it get swept under the rug?”

“Yes. Truffles are magic. Demonic. I’m a fat foodie, as you can see. I wanted to see how the fitness fanatics would react. I watched deliriously to see the first truffle in the mouths of the ascetics. Just one, that’s all. After that, the drug takes its effect. Ir-re-sis-ti-ble. You want another and another, as many as you can, to fill you with happiness, until you choke.”

“Yes, Gilbert told me. After a few sessions of that kind of intoxication, you switched the drug.”

“I brought jars of pickles. Pickled in salt, not vinegar, as they’re done here. Amazing stuff. The wonder of the wild East.”

“And then, other wonders.”

“Roasted peppers. Eggplant salad. Divine.”

“I know. Gilbert hadn’t forgotten any of the temptations. He’s Greek. You floored him. Same with the postmodern natives. Robots, as you call them. Where did you find these things? How did you haul them here?”

“I found the chocolate at the Chocolatier. In the Lunar City. I ordered, they sent. It awoke my national ambitions. In Queens I found all the charms of the East. Serbian, Russian, Greek, Hungarian, Romanian. Stuffed grape leaves, stuffed cabbage, pickled herring, roe salad, stuffed chicken, lamb meatloaf, brains, kidneys, fries, feta cheese,
burduf
sheep cheese, eggplant salad, black pudding, Romanian and Serbian meatball sausages, preserves of all kinds. I couldn’t take everything. A jar at a time. Just to try. A taste of the East. The tongue that tastes and the tongue that speaks. The essential. The matrix, as they say.”

“You took care of everyone but me.”

“That’s not true. I took care of you, am taking care of you. I didn’t want to replace the American pie with a Carpathian pie; the comparison would be humiliating for a superpower. Apple pie, with cheese, doughnuts with sour cream, “poale-n brau” Danishes, pudding with raspberries, dumplings with prune jam or blueberries or cheese or rose preserves, crepes with ricotta, cinnamon buns, honey buns, Moldovan sweet bread, cheese bread, this is the gastronomy of my friends from the former Eastern Empire, from Bukovina, not mine, since I’m on the former Habsburgic Empire’s border! But today, however, next to the Yankee pie, we have a miracle. Mir-a-cle! The gift of the gods. Sour cherry preserves. A singular delicacy. From Bukovina, where a friend of mine was born. He was a mathematician, murdered by someone in a bathroom stall. My cousin’s husband is also from Bukovina. In fact, he’s my cousin, too, isn’t he? Small, sour-sweet, black and wily, inestimable cherries. The recipe of the gods. With no equal. Unearthly. Ce-les-tial!”

Peter shows Tara the small, black jar next to the small, yellow jar.

“Sour cherries from Bukovina. You should learn geography.”

“I will learn. I bet this is an aphrodisiac.”

“Naturally. I hope you won’t turn it down.”

“I won’t turn it down. I don’t think Gilbert would turn it down, either.”

Gilbert?! A venomous fly stings Professor Ga
par’s viscera. It didn’t matter that he’d slept well and prepared himself for the Saturday night meeting. It didn’t matter one bit; he was losing the game.

“The thread that gets tangled. The knot, as labyrinth. Initiation,” continued Tara, putting down her glass, then the slice of pie, then the spoon with traces of the black and yellow miracle. “The serpentine maze leads to the center. Is the center the female sex? The arrow aims for the center, the sperm aims for the ovum.
Regressus ad uterum.
Is it the same as
descensus ad infernos?”

The glass frozen at Ga
par’s lips. He slurps it to the bottom. He puts the empty glass on the table. He’s regained his composure, ready to confront all banalities and surprises.

“So then, you want me to sleep here, on the couch? To make you feel better, less alone. So that I can be here when you get panicked and need a nurse. That wouldn’t intimidate you?”

“I’ve gotten used to the idea already.”

“You’re not afraid of becoming dependent.”

“I’ll be careful, that won’t happen.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t. Let’s change the subject.”

“Very well. But we should still tell Patrick, no? We’ll tell him what we want?”

“It isn’t what I want. Not anymore.”

“Something has intervened.”

“Something has.”

“But you accept the game, the substitution.”

“The imposture, you mean? There’s no point. It will complicate things. We won’t be able to sustain the lie through other interfacing lies. Patrick is no joke. Nor is Jennifer Tang. Here, the authorities are no joke, I don’t know if you’re aware of this.”

“Nor anywhere else.”

“I’d like more wine. Aren’t you afraid of losing your lucidity?”

“Or of you losing yours.”

“The student isn’t sure if the professor is speaking the truth.”

“I’m embarrassed, I don’t have another bottle.”

“It is possible that this is also a lie.”

“It isn’t. I don’t have another bottle of the same wine, I mean to say. I didn’t think it would be necessary. I wasn’t even sure it would be good. I have American wine.”

“California wine is excellent. Better than what we drank. No offense.”

“None taken. I wanted an exotic atmosphere, with wine from exotic places. But it’s not a good idea to mix the past with the present.”

“And between them, we eat pie.”

“American pie.”

“Yes, American. We are in America. American student, American professor.”

“Okay. Until the touch of invisible and perpetual death, the game continues.”

The evening extends past midnight. Tara proves herself to have quite a high tolerance to drink and to the dialogue’s traps.

“Professor, forgive a poor, ignorant wanderer. I need some guidance. I’m about to have a new meeting with the free world’s police department. Larry Eight. Mr. Murphy.”

Gora was silent, used to Peter’s casual entrances.

“Police Officer Murphy will again subject me to a long interrogation about Dima and Palade and the elite of our little elite homeland.”

“I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Palade remembered a certain Marga Stern, information received from Saint Augustin Gora. A lover from Dima’s youth, with whom he maintained an unclear relationship even after he was married, after her own marriage and divorce. I understand she was deported to Transnistria. I don’t know if she survived or not, the important thing for me is Dima’s indifference in relation to Marga Stern and other coreligionists. The real danger was imminent around that time. He didn’t look into her fate, didn’t send a single word of encouragement. Palade wasn’t sure about the information from the professor. He suspected that it might be a fabulous fabrication.”

“There was a rumor that Marga died in Transnistria, but it isn’t true. She survived, God knows how, and returned to the village where she’d tried to hide during the war, and there, two weeks later, she killed herself. There’s a short note about her in Dima’s
Green Notebook,
at the end of the war:
Poor Marga, how much she must have suffered.
That was all. A late tribute to youth, maybe a conjectural obligation.”

“Ah, so you know more about her.”

“I learned about it when I spent all that time in the attic room, where all the talk was about Dima. I researched it, looked into references and discovered the story of Marga Stern.”

“Would that interest Police Officer Murphy?”

“During the time of anti-Semitic laws, then later when the deportations started, Dima never once looked into Marga’s situation,” Gora continued, as if he hadn’t even heard the question. “He could have, even though he was far away and overwhelmed with his own problems. There would have been means of communication.”

“Did he have other friends from her community?”

“I don’t know, I don’t think so. I only know about Marga. Immediately after Dima got married, she did, too, but she divorced quickly, after a few months.”

“Was she beautiful? Like Madam Gora? Like Ludmila Serafim, married to the eminent professor Gora?”

“It was said that she had no capacity for generalization and that she was proud of this. Never pathetic, scared of abstractions, concentrated on facts, objects, sensations. Good sense, moderation.”

“It’s as if you knew her directly.”

“Dima would call on her, alert with desire, then would retire from her, then call her again. A delicate, discreet, loyal partner. Biologically calm.”

“Biologically calm, is that what you said?”

“Yes, that’s what people who knew her said. She loved Dima. Marga Stern seemed to me a very memorable character. Absolute respect for the real.”

“Indeed, but maybe it’s a bit much for Larry Eight. Police Officer Murphy wouldn’t understand Marga’s chaste intelligence, nor Dima’s indifference, he’d call those things pragmatism, the only thing he understands. He has the head of an army officer and a notebook in which he doesn’t write anything.”

“I’m sure he recorded you on tape.”

“I didn’t see any recording devices.”

“You don’t need to see them. Maybe he doesn’t even have any, but has a perfect memory.”

“It’s not enough. He would have to provide a faithful report at the trial. Otherwise, it has no value in the face of justice.”