The Lair (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (57 page)

“Taxus. Express Two.”

He gnashed his teeth, his eyes closed. He was no Buddhist, the tortured body could not separate itself from the tortured mind. He was counting the slowly solidifying seconds in his stabbed chest.

“How is it going?”

Whom was the doctor addressing, God, Death? The magic of computerized rejuvenation had its own rules and lexicon. “How is it going, Professor? How is it going?”

“Ah, so. So, so.”

“There isn’t much more to go. Ten minutes, maybe twenty.”

So, then, an hour, two hours. The stabbing sensation advanced, long razors, his chest weighted down by a granite tombstone. His leather-cuffed hands and legs. The ceiling was sliding down, a giant granite press on top of his chest. An air vacuum, suffocation.

“Express Two.”

Maybe he ought to yell, though! Americans respect the ability to grin and bear one’s suffering, but also to express it. A jungle yell: please, stop! S
top!
This is the patient’s entitlement to stop his own torture! Death, that old whore, is enjoying herself, she knows that the rebellion of the dying is pure futility.

“Express Two. There’s only a little farther to go, Professor Gora. I know it’s hard … just a little further.”

An hour, two hours, nine, it no longer mattered, the sacred ten minutes are still an eternity. He could no longer yell, he was exhausted, he’d missed his chance to cancel the deal with Meph-istopheles, he’d lost his final strength, he couldn’t stand another moment, not another moment here.

“All right, we’re finished.”

Ten minutes, that was all, ten minutes. No, not quite, another second, two, five, eight seconds, done.

“I know it was hard. Five stents! Difficult positions. It was no fun for me, either.”

The doctor took off his sweaty scrubs and threw them in the corner of the room. Naked and solid from the waist up, he left the room just like that, naked and shameless.

The scrawny little mustached man wheeled the bed toward the elevator, then toward door 568. A bright room, separated into two by a curtain. In each half, an empty bed. The metal nightstand, the television, the screen that registers his blood pressure, the window toward the courtyard.

“I heard it took a long time. Two and a half hours. A long time! Five stents. You first had two, now there are seven. A major overhaul.”

He recognized the voice. The deep, Polish timbre. Just back from the other world, he had too low a tolerance for the dish of the day.

The major overhaul doesn’t remove the body from the head. He’s connected to the sphygmomanometer and the pulse monitor, the bedpan, the needle in his vein.

“Try to sleep. The bandaged spot will be painful. It’s called an Angio-Seal Vascular Closure Device. The wound will gradually heal, the plug will be absorbed by the body in ninety days. If you end up needing another procedure … but that won’t happen. Anyway, the puncture would be made at least a centimeter from where it is now. Take the pills, sleep. The bell is by the nightstand, call if you need anything.”

Eyes closed. He couldn’t move, he didn’t even want to move. All he wanted was to sleep. The flushing of energy, dizziness, dozing off, intangible sleep. Anesthetized, delirious. Eternity.

The noise from the neighboring bed sounded like a crisis. The patient, the wife, the daughter, the son-in-law. They interfered one at a time, or together.

“I’m Bill McKelly. Kelly & Kelly Corporation, New Jersey. Well known, I realize. A month ago we had proceedings in New Jersey. We need to redo it. That’s why I came here. I’m friends with Dr. Chase. John Chase, the dermatologist. The head medic of dermatology. Everyone knows him, I’m sure. As I’ve said, I want my wife to remain here tonight, with me. I know, I know the rules, there are also exceptions. The armchair, yes, she’ll sleep in the armchair. Okay, I’ll call Chase.”

Irritated, Bill explains to his wife that John had promised to arrange everything, he just needs to keep his word. A heated discussion with Johnny followed, two brave lads appeared, carrying a cot. The commotion continued. There was talk of a wedding in Minnesota in two weeks. Plane tickets, gifts, clothing.

The Polish woman brought new pills, the antacid tea. And a large, thick book.

“You forgot your picture album. In the morning. In the preopera-tive room. Maybe you can use it, if you can’t sleep. Along with the sedatives, it should do the trick.”

Halina smiled, revealing teeth as white as Polish snow.

“Would you like me to turn on the TV? Would that entertain you?”

No, it wouldn’t. Mr. McKelly’s daughter and the son-in-law had left. The wife was quiet, the husband was snoring. Gora groped for the sedatives.

He awoke in the middle of the night. He ought to have opened his eyes, but he couldn’t. He could sense a streak of light coming from the street, through the window, he would have liked to open his eyes, but his lids were too heavy.

On the screen, a chessboard, a glass half-full. A black liquor with big bubbles. Nearby, a metal can. A Coca-Cola. The game of the century! Peter had become a celebrity, the New World loves celebrities. The patient doesn’t open his eyes, his lids are as heavy as a tombstone. Noise, agitation, someone had overturned the chessboard. The king, the queen, the bishops tumbling mercilessly on the floor, toward the phosphorescent corner of the room.

“A little bit more, a little bit more, to the left. Just a little more. You must wake up.”

He awoke groggily, recognizing Halina’s cooing voice.

“A little bit, just a little bit, and you should wake up.”

She’d fluffed his pillow higher, was raising him up slowly from the waist. He saw her, he was finally opening his old lids.

“Your blood pressure is high. Your pressure went up.”

“How do you know?”

“We’re watching the monitor. The general monitor connected to the monitor in the room.”

On the screen, Peter is no longer playing chess with Mephistoph-eles. Green diagrams and digits appeared instead. The whirlpools of panic, difficult breathing. In the left part of his chest, a hostile armor. His pressure had risen: two hundred over ninety-nine. The doctor on call, a Chinese resident, and a tall, red-haired assistant had arrived. “Yes, we’ll try an injection.” The syringe, another two syringes, for the blood test.

“What medication do you take for your high blood pressure?”

Someone murmured, “Fifty milligrams of Cozar. The blue pill, one hundred milligrams of Cozar.”

“Rest now, we’ll return in an hour.”

Halina gestured toward the bell by the bedside.

The diagrams varied. He closed his eyes, he opened his eyes. One hundred ninety-one over 92, 194 over 93.

Halina leaned down attentively to give him the glass of water.

“The control enzyme is too high. You’re going to stay another day.”

Was that how tests were done, instantly? Who had made the decision to keep the patient an extra day in the hospital against the rules of economy? The situation must be serious, otherwise they wouldn’t be spending more money. “We are just numbers, accounts, nothing more,” the Soviet man had warned.

Halina leaned over again, took his blood, raised his pillow.

“Everything will be all right. The pressure will drop, it will be okay.”

“Yes, I can see that, 189 over 90. Is this a drop or an error?”

Halina was smiling, without responding. The patient smiled, as well, he would have liked to ask her to tell the story of her arrival in America, the ESL classes, minuscule Mexicans and little Chinese crones and busty Brazilians, her first job, a cook at a Portuguese restaurant, the first-aid night classes, the affair with the naval officer, her first trip to Texas, the arrival of her brother from Lodz.

The patient was smiling, exhausted, senile, powerless to ask or listen to anything, grateful for the Polish woman’s smile.

Four in the morning. At 6 the commotion would start, they would take the temperature of the dying, they would check every room, they would bring breakfast, morning visitors would arrive, including the magician Hostal.

“The level of the enzymes has improved. We’re still going to hold you another day. There’s no need to worry. Today you’re going to receive instructions for the months and year to come. The medication, the states of emergency, diet, exercise program, the periodic checkups.”

Instructions for his resurrection, alongside other similarly privileged individuals.

“Everything will be okay,” Doctor Hostal assures him. You’ve been rejuvenated, but this youth is no joke. Diet, exercise, medication.”

The patient was watching him, but he couldn’t manage a response. He wanted to be accepted as the Australian’s neighbor, wherever Edward Hostal lived, he would promise to be a discreet neighbor, he understood the irritations and the exhaustion of the wizard who passed daily, ten, a hundred times a day, from one suffering heart to another, unabated and precise and smiling, he wouldn’t bother him, he wouldn’t ask for anything but for a protective proximity to this god of cardiologists. That was all he wanted, that was it, it would be enough, it would diminish his panic and loneliness, yes, why shouldn’t he say it, even his loneliness. He would move anywhere just to be close to Hostal, a silent, invisible neighbor, a younger and wiser brother, a man who had succeeded in being much more useful than he, Augustin Gora, would ever be.

“I would like to thank you for … ”

“No, no, don’t worry. Yesterday, Elvira would have accompanied you home just like last time. Today she can’t. I spoke with the porter to call you a cab. He’ll take you to the cab, he’ll speak to the driver and ask him to help you to the entrance of your apartment. You have my number. Call me anytime.”

Home, in his solitary bed! He was satisfied, he’d located Peter at the chess table, on the screen of the planetary night, he’d managed to speak to him calmly, whispering as if to a dear and addle-brained cousin, he’d managed to surprise him and move him, Peter had interrupted his game and responded to him in his turn, timidly, submissively, as if he were speaking to an older and wiser cousin.

From wherever he may have been coming, from Nevada near Gina Monteverdi, Tara’s cheerful aunt, or from the polygamous refuge with the nine wives of the Mormon Alexander Joseph, from the Long Haul Estate near Big Water, Utah, or from the drama classes from the Methodist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, or from the
Sea Hawk
among the Coast Guard of Key West, Florida, the ship that had intercepted twenty-five million pounds of
marijuana and ten thousand pounds of cocaine, from any page of the
American Album
—wherever it was, Peter had in the end arrived, of course, in New York, on the evening of September 9, 2001.

He hadn’t forgotten that many months ago, his cousin, Professor Augustin Gora, had reserved for him a room at the Hotel Esplanade, on the corner of 48th Street and Eighth Avenue. On Tuesday, September 11, he was to meet with the lawyer whom Gora had hired, to obtain his miraculous green card. He would enter the ranks of new people in the New World, he’d no longer need to hide in the wilderness. No one knew about the meeting at the World Trade Center, he hadn’t told anyone, the secret remained between the two of them, to deter any of the dubious astral alignments that might provoke a crime such as the one that had befallen Palade.

Suddenly at 8:46 in the morning, the formation
Herostratus,
the nineteen knifemen in the Show of the Century. All the televisions in the world watch the planes full of passengers and nineteen angels of death flying toward Salvation.

Peter tries to exit the subway, in the area of chaos. Crowded subway. The world stunned, the deaf-mutes and the cynical jokers, you could barely breathe. Allah-Yussuma-Osama’s messengers called for the saintly and eternal paradise, on the television screens across the entire planet. The metro halted. The cars closed tight. No, no suspects have been identified. Captive bodies, stuck to one another, incapable of holding each other up. Among them, David and Eva Ga
par.

Ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes, David and Eva remained pasted, next to each other, at the end of the train car. Minutes are hours, forty minutes seem like an eternity. A stroke can occur even faster.

A few minutes before the metro starts up again.

Cautious movements. The bandage protects the incision, the wound is green, bruised, his skin would regain its usual pallor.

“Short, slow walks at the start. After two weeks, easy exercises.
Gradually, routine exercise. Half an hour per day. Or longer, forty-minute walks. Measure your tension at various hours. Keep track of the figures in a notebook. We will reevaluate in a month.”

The walk was short. Bouts of panic, sharp stabs in his temples, the chest loaded with toxins. The body estranged. Confused signals. It was difficult to block the brain’s sensor, the body was disoriented. The first warnings, often false, fueled his unease. His mind under alarm, lubricous, can’t find the remedy. Quickly, quickly, the ambulance. Neighbor Hostal wasn’t his neighbor, and he considered himself merely a
plumber,
a modest repairman of florid pipes. The cardiac patient needed to be connected to the global panel of the ambulance, instant and perfect response.