The Lair (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (25 page)

“A new edition of his memoirs appeared. I hesitated, but I wrote it. I was asked to write the review. First I refused, but then I wrote it.”

“Who approached you?”

“A journalist, a friend of the president of the college.”

“I see. It was good for the college.”

“Maybe. He argued that it would be good for me.”

“Was it good?”

“Not really.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No.”

“My colleague Mario says you didn’t receive any threats following the review.”

“I did. In my former country, in the press there. I no longer live there. There were some here, too, a few, in the expat press.”

“Was your wife threatened?”

“Wife? What wife?”

“Or, your partner . . . girlfriend.”

“Partner? Oh, my
significant other,
as you say. My cousin Lu wasn’t threatened.”

“So then, threats in the press.”

“Violent articles, insults, curses. There, far away. Here, just in the expat press.”

“I understand that Professor Portland . . . rather, Palade, had received threats. Why? He wasn’t writing about nationalism.”

“He was. He had dissociated himself from the nationalists of his country. He published violently antinationalist texts.”

“Did your review refer to him, too? He was a disciple of Dima’s.”

“I only wrote about Cosmin Dima’s memoirs. I brought up his political affiliations of the thirties.”

“Did he conceal or manipulate the facts? You said they weren’t new pieces of information.”

“Old information, new situation. The anti-Communist post-Communism. Or anti-Communism after Communism. It’s easier to fight with a corpse … Dima didn’t discuss his secret. Why should he confess in public? What matters is what you do, not who you were, isn’t that right? Pragmatism!”

“Did he have followers? Other than Palade?”

“Probably.”

“And were they scandalized by your review?”

“Probably. Not just them. General indignation.”

“Mario told me that you avoid your former compatriots.”

“I lived among them. There weren’t only horrors; there, joys, too. But here, yes, I avoid them.”

“Why did you contact Officer Pereira?”

“The college contacted him. After Palade’s assassination. The president of the college was convinced that I might be in danger. Mr. Pereira didn’t manage well in the whole Balkan mess. The motives for the assassination weren’t very clear . . . Even now they’re not clear.”

The FBI envoy doesn’t write anything down. He just scrutinizes the face of the interrogated.

“Why would the same group return after two years?”

“What group?”

“The group that threatened you then?”

“I don’t know of any group that would have threatened me.”

“Have you published anything else in the meantime?”

“No, nothing.”

“Does the postcard seem to have been sent by an extremist group?”

“I don’t know.”

“A group of mystics, for example? I understand from Mario that the extremists from the thirties were mystics. Those with ties to Dima were mystics. Orthodox terrorism, no? Are there mystics here, too?

“I don’t know. It’s an odd text. It could be a ruse, to distract the investigation. We don’t know who the sender was, we don’t know anything. Certainly there must be extremist groups among the exiles, but I don’t know anything about them.”

“Is there anything particular to note about the handwriting of the message?’

“Only the name and address are handwritten. The rest, typed or printed by a computer.”

“What do you think about the text?”

“I think it’s a quotation. I don’t know why. Just an impression.”

“Something familiar in the text?”

“Labyrinth. The word
labyrinth.
One of Dima’s obsessions. He
wrote a lot about labyrinths. I spent a few days in the New York Public Library last week. I revisited his books. The obsession is there. The Greek labyrinth. Myth and ritual in the labyrinth. The world as a labyrinth. The city as labyrinth. The mystic spiral and the labyrinth of the cross. The Celtic labyrinth. The labyrinth of human viscera …”

Annoyed, the policeman stands up. Short, thickset, dumpy. Thick, black, wavy hair.

“We’ll see each other in a week. Same time and place.”

“Perfect,” answered the professor, impatient himself to leave the room. Humiliated by his lapses of memory. He knew, and he didn’t know the quotation. The past refused to render the bibliography accurately.

The moment has come to tell about the incident, to reveal the postcard to others, to get opinions, to solicit advice. Gora could replace an entire library, he might be able to offer the solution. Or to call Lu. If she learns about the threat, Lu will want to hear about the adventure, to listen attentively and with great concern.

Peter hesitates, with the receiver to his ear. He makes up his mind, dialing Gora’s number.

“Yes, it is I, the Eastern Mynheer. Yes, you’re right, we haven’t spoken in a long time. But here we are, talking now. A lot, I assure you, we will talk as the condemned talks to his oracle. The impeccable oracle. The unvanquished. For the professor who has read and committed everything to memory, no question is too difficult. And so, then, I have to ask …”

He has the postcard in hand, the mysterious message in front of his face. He is ready, and then he changes his mind again. And that’s how it goes, revulsion wins in the end.

“I’m asking you about the student uprising, which you witnessed. So that I can also understand the world into which I’ve landed. You’ve already told me about it, you’re right. You told me everything
immediately after Larry One hired me at the college. You described the atmosphere in the college; you were protective, concerned, as ever. An innocent produced by the library. I don’t want to call you a mouse; a mouse isn’t innocent, but you are a little angel, a milksop of words. Eh, tell me again about ‘La Passionaria,’ how they spoke from the balcony, the famous Dolores Ibärruri, Rosa Luxemburg, and Clara Zetkin, Ana Pauker and comrade Kollontai. And Senora Perön. Yes, I know, you never mentioned these names.”

Naturally, there was silence. Hypervexed by Peter’s ramblings, Gora yields, as usual.

“A student of mine. Quiet, civilized, I would even say shy. She used to come to class with her boyfriend. A handsome, athletic young man. One day this boy shows up in my office to tell me that the girl would like to speak to me. Babbling, he can’t explain why she didn’t come herself. Yes, there is a problem . . . Two years ago, after getting into the college, the girl went to a party for freshmen. She drank beer, she walked in the woods with a young man. And, and, and . . . what happened? Seemingly something and seemingly nothing. An embrace and then, then, no one knows, the girl doesn’t remember exactly what happened. The only clear thing was that more than two years had passed.

“Yes, now I remember them. Then the girl came, troubled. It wasn’t clear what happened two years ago, but it was clear what had triggered the flashback . . . Two years after the uneventful or half-eventful or a quarter-eventful or a fifth-eventful event, the aggressor passes by the new couple, on a clear, autumn afternoon. He smiles obliquely, as if with a certain understanding. The girl feels insulted; her partner persuades her to file a complaint. The student goes to the president of the college and explains what she can explain. The party, the beer, the woods, the embrace in the grass, the confusion in the dark. Larry One listens. It was around the time when you were charming Bedros Avakian’s students, no? So, then, Larry one listened attentively to the narrative. Any accusation must be heard and resolved in a democracy. The presumed aggressor is punished:
he is not allowed to participate in rehearsals with the rock group The Blind Band for two months. He will also lose his privileged access to the gym and pool.”

“The victim is unsatisfied, isn’t that right?”

“The student feels that she’s been strung along. The accused would reappear from time to time, at rehearsals and at the pool. He was from a wealthy family that donated to the college, that’s what her partner maintained.”

“You advised her to forget everything. You asked her if she has a good relationship with her parents. Yes? Then, take advantage of your summer break, enjoy yourself, protected, relaxed, that’s what you told her. Don’t make this twisted episode the center of your unhappiness; you’re young, pretty, smart, your whole future ahead of you, not behind you. Is that what you told her, Saint Augustin? Like a retarded grandfather just out of the premodern cave, an Eastern European idiot. Misogynist, macho, without scruples.”

“Yes, but nothing came of it. The students liked me; that was why the girl came to me in the first place. Avakian liked me, too.”

“And the Uprising? It exploded the following spring. Slogans and posters everywhere, protesting the administration that encourages sexual harassment. The administration was under siege for three days. Speeches from the balcony of the besieged building. Demonstrations, reporters, negotiations, measures to be taken. And what happened to the erotic trio?”

“The female student received substantial compensation, transferred to a different college, and is now married. The boyfriend is now the president of an organization for the protection of immigrants’ rights in the Midwest. The perpetrator who didn’t perpetrate, or perpetrated a quarter of an act, graduated from the college, went to law school and now works on Wall Street.”

“And Professor Augustin Gora? Did he refine his grandmotherly advice? What advice does he offer to a castaway? Should I be careful? What should I be careful of? Of female students, of gossip, of jokes, of demagogues and suspects and intriguers and envious people? Or our phantoms from far away?”

“Is there trouble? Did something happen to you?”

“No, nothing, but I’m preparing myself. I want to know how to prepare myself. The story of the three-day revolution is instructive, but banal. There’s no mystery, not like Palade’s case.”

“Palade? What’s come over you? It wasn’t the students who killed him, that’s for sure.”

“Whoever acted knew the university perfectly well, the buildings, the schedule, the daily path of the condemned, his astrological and parapsychological and paranormal digressions. It’s not the case with me. I’m an earthling. I trip over chairs, as well as weeds, but no stars. I’m inattentive, but he was too attentive. There’s no connection, I hope, between us.”

“No, there’s no connection,” says Professor Gora, without conviction, probably taking up his reading once again.

Peter Ga
par could also have started up again with his nocturnal visions: the killer Charles Manson and the terrorist Timothy McVeigh and the cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer and other vanquishing experts, documentaries about deaf-mutes and cancer, about astronauts and populations in the jungle, American football, classical and box office film hits, chamber music, as well as jazz. After midnight, the games of distraction and pornography and karate videos or courses in exotic languages, everything an insomniac heart needs.

A long, vertical sign on a tall building. Dirty walls, dusty ornaments: the Hotel Esplanade. The corner of 48th Street and Eighth Avenue. Drug addicts, prostitutes, beggars, mystics, vagabonds of all races.

She stops, bewildered, looking for her companion. She sees him in the back of a sex shop. She moves toward the display with the sunglasses and plasters her palms on the glass.

A tap on her shoulder. “Here I am,” Peter whispers into her velveteen ear. Lu gazes down at the pavement.

“Do you want me to go back to the place I escaped from? You’re crazy with these sex shops! You can’t restrain yourself.”

Peter takes a step back.

“Crazy? This is mass culture! Therapy. The industry with the highest-grossing income. We can’t ignore the well-being of the country. It’s our country, isn’t that right? They’re our countrymen.”

Lu is silent. She swallows, gloomily.

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told you about my dream.”

“What dream?”

“Last week, Friday. I was in a poetic state of mind. I was dreaming about a phallus. A child in the shape of a phallus. A tender form, it asked for protection, for tenderness. Like a child. And I was crying, emotional. It unsettles me even now.”

Peter feels dizzy looking into her big, tearful eyes, which she was wiping, ashamed, with her trembling hands. Lu backs away, her gaze to the ground. Peter runs after her, waving, laughing. They disappear.

The street remains. The storefronts, the sex shops, the Chinese vegetable cart, the Turkish restaurant, the Mexican umbrella store, the bustle of the hookers, the pickpockets with the sombreros, the Pakistani druggist’s shop.

A street, and another street. Clean, quiet, deserted. A solid building, stone and brick. An Anglican facade, gothic windows framed by wrought iron. Letters chiseled into the stone. The Young Men’s Christian Association.

On the threshold, Peter. White, sweaty shirt. Sleeves rolled up, his gaze on the hunt. He surveys left-right, looks at his watch. He’s waiting for someone, gives up, goes inside. Traffic, loud teenagers, suitcases and backpacks.

An immense black guard, an immense hand on the telephone. He watches the door and the elevator. The giant Peter in front of an even bigger giant, it’s hard to win these caricature competitions.