The Lair (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (31 page)

The theories seemed to be tiring Peter out, as well as Patrick. Ga
par sighed heavily at the final thought, as though after too long a toil.

“Was the president of the college hoping to help you gain prestige? He hired you in spite of a lot of opposition.”

“I don’t know that there was so much opposition. Larry—excuse me, President Avakian—was convinced that the review should be written. A just cause, he said. I have to cure myself of my Eastern European equivocation, he said. He’d been a student at the university where the Old Man became a great American professor. The coincidence irritated him.”

“Why did you refuse to be presented as a dissident?”

“I was never imprisoned. I didn’t even demonstrate.”

“You asked to have removed from the college’s guidebook the part in your bio where you’re described as a Holocaust survivor.”

“I was born after all that; I’m not a survivor. In my family, the use of that word was forbidden.”

“Why?”

“Humility. A friend of my father’s who came back from Auschwitz asked a doctor to remove from his arm the piece of skin that had his prisoner number. It was the first thing he did when he came back! He never again mentioned those years.”

“You made anti-Semitic comments at Club 84, at the first job you held in America.”

“The owners were wealthy Jews. I protested to their arrogance, not their Jewishness. The arrogance of wealth. They were throwing away massive quantities of food. I came from a country that was starving. I would have protested to a Chinese club, as well.”

“But in the end, why did you really write the article? That review.”

Peter is quiet. Not to find the appropriate response, but in order to look the interrogator directly in the eyes.

“I had a long conversation with Professor Palade before he was assassinated. Neither of us suspected what was about to happen. I went specifically to see him, to talk to him. He was an expert on the subject.”

“Did you know him? Were you friends?”

“A mutual friend made the acquaintance. Palade felt he was in danger, but I didn’t give it too much attention. I was obsessed with my review. I wanted information, advice.”

“And did he advise you?”

“The Old Man had been his mentor. He’d helped him come to America. He adored him. He knew all of his work and his life. He was the one who asked me to write the article.”

“Why?”

“After the Old Man’s death, a lot of old secrets were uncovered. Palade found himself implicated, without wanting to be. He began writing against nationalism in the exile journals. Violent. Incendiary. He’d discovered motes on the sun. His sun. He was suffering.
The pieces he wrote were an announcement, perhaps, of a reevaluation of the Maestro. I’m not sure. In any event, they cost him his life.”

“Was he afraid?”

“I don’t know. He was an odd fellow. Obsessed by mental constructs. Presentiments, parapsychology, esoteric codes. I wasn’t. . . I’m no good at these things. I’m blocked. I didn’t pay attention. Afraid, yes, I think he was afraid.”

“Was the meeting useful?”

“It was decisive.”

“Did he tell you things you didn’t know?”

“ Tour text will resurrect the Old Man,’ he said. ‘Even if as the result of a thrashing, he will live again. His postmortem prestige couldn’t be damaged any more than he damaged it himself when he was living,’ Palade said; ‘the reaction to the text will reveal the paltriness of his admirers, that’s all. The posthumous paltriness. The paltriness of sanctification.’ That public lynching was reserved for me, but Palade didn’t talk about this.”

Patrick was silent, waiting for the revelation, the true revelation, as opposed to trivial diversions.

“A minor, but real detail shocked me. It’s verifiable. The Mae-stro’s doctor.”

Patrick waits for the great moment.

“The drop that tips the glass. The small, but decisive drop.”

Patrick isn’t taking notes. The notebook and pen wait, humbly, at the corner of the table.

“The Old Man had hired a driver. Specifically for visits to his doctor. Frequent visits. He could have taken a taxi, but he wanted his own chauffeur, a man he could trust. He didn’t drive, of course.”

“Of course?”

“Palade didn’t drive, either. Neither do I, for that matter.”

“You don’t drive? And how do you get by? The campus is completely isolated, you can’t get to the city except by driving. Does that student, Tara Nelson, drive you?”

“Sometimes. Rarely.”

“So then, the scholar had a driver. He brought him to the doctor.”

“Hired just for these trips.”

“Having a driver is nothing out of the ordinary. And we all have doctors.”

“A special doctor. A comrade from youth. Immigrated to America after the war. Old himself, now.”

“Renowned?”

“Somewhat. Dima could have found someone better. He lacked neither money nor fame, he could have the best doctor at his disposal, but he chose his old friend with connections to Fascist circles, in America and South America. That doctor published a book. I own it. Propaganda. Terrorism. In the name of anti-Communism.”

“What’s it called?”

Ga
par dictates and Patrick transcribes the title, year, publisher. “What kind of Fascist circles?”

“The World Anti-Communist League. The founder, Otto von Bolschwing, was convicted as a member of the SS. He collaborated after the war with the American Army’s Corps of Counterintelligence.”

“A just cause.”

“Maybe. American counterintelligence offered protection to people like the doctor or the former SS commander Bolschwing, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1961. Bolschwing lived here over twenty years, until his death. The doctor, Dima’s comrade, was just presenting the same old Nazi and Fascist slogans, repackaged in a new language. The wrapping of the present… and the League …”

“I don’t see what you oppose in an anti-Communist organization.”

“Its members. A former dictator of Guatemala. He was an official in Mussolini’s government. Eight former Republican members of American Congress.”

“American congressmen represent a free country.”

“Naturally, but they stand behind a former SS commander from Holland. A distinguished Englishwoman, a baroness who stood mil-itantly for European freedom, and a former minister in the Nazi
government of Croatia. A former adjunct to the American Secret Service and a former Belgian general and a former founder of the Japanese Liberal Party and a former member of the Egyptian parliament, known for his ties to former Nazis.”

“A lot of formers.”

“Yes. And a member of the former Argentine junta. A member of the Saudi Arabian royal family. The leader of the Spanish anti-Marxist group. Two Yale professors. A varied team. Not without Nazis and Fascists.”

“The anti-Fascists were Communists.”

“There were some non-Communist anti-Fascists, as well. The Old Man Dima could have chosen a different doctor. The past should have made him circumspect. He visited his former comrade often. Was he complying with some kind of arrangement with the C.I.A.? The possibility is worth looking into.”

Patrick doesn’t seem at all interested in the suggestion, doesn’t take note.

“So then, Old Man Dima, as you call him, wasn’t just a great professor in a pragmatic world. He doesn’t seem very pragmatic . . . but his apprentice? Mr. Portland.”

“Palade.”

“Okay, Palade. A scholar who was just as important, you say, a mathematician, parapsychologist, philosopher. And antinationalist. Why was he assassinated? By whom? By people involved with Dima and the doctor?”

“I don’t know. There was talk about cooperation between the secret police from the old country and American nationalist exiles. There’s no proof of anything. And there will never be, I’m sure.”

“Does the threat letter you received come from the same source?”

“I don’t know.”

“You were insisting that it might be a joke.”

“That was what I’d thought. Gradually, I entered the psychology of the stalked. The president, dean, and head of campus security convinced me.”

“Or the student who sorts your mail?”

“She, as well. She agreed with them. I am worried about the letter, I will admit.”

“Do you regret publishing the review?”

“I had reservations, as I told you. I published the text, and the reservations remained. It doesn’t mean I regret it. No, I don’t regret it. The facts I exposed were absolutely accurate. Then I had dreams about the Old Man. Several times. In front of his burning library. The flames were engulfing me, as well. Burning, without escape, on the pyre. I also dreamed about his apprentice, Palade. Conversations with a cadaver. A skeleton, a dead man.”

Patrick doesn’t seem interested in such digressions, continuing to suspect the Eastern European refugee.

“Do you trust Tara Nelson?”

Professor Ga
par doesn’t respond immediately.

“Yes, I trust her. You’ve also suggested that she’s useful to my American reeducation. That’s not a negligible advantage.”

“Has she ever written you any letters?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“We would compare the handwriting style. Which can be faked, of course.”

“She’s never written me any letters.”

“Other students? Do you receive letters from students? Or anyone else?”

“Not really. And I don’t hold on to them.”

The interrogator appears to be finished with the interrogation. He closes his notebook and sinks into his chair, massive and relaxed. He needs a break, he gives the suspect a long, calm look. He puts his large hands on the notebook on the table.

“I’d like to understand a little better.”

Finished, but not finished.

“To understand where Palade and Dima intersect and then come apart. And how you relate to them.”

The policeman and the suspect look into each other’s eyes. Gag-par hesitates to answer, has too much to say, too much to explain.

“Dima’s political choices probably correspond to his philosophy.
He seemed to prefer polytheism over the limitations of monotheism. He found the universal in nature and vegetation. Interested in myth, without being a mystic, he opted for an organic world, a return to nature, to the cosmic. An agrarian vision? It’s more complicated than that. Antimodern, probably. Palade was intoxicated by the mysteries, and he paid close attention to the theories of information and cognitive studies. He sees exile as an essential cosmic condition. Obsessed with parallel and permeable worlds, quantum physics and infinite universes. His death wasn’t natural like Dima’s, but abrupt and enigmatic. Horrible.”

“And you studied all of these theories before writing the review? Or did you discuss them with Palade?”

“With him, as well, but mostly with another mutual friend of ours. An erudite scholar. He explained everything I didn’t know and gave me a list of books that I don’t at all feel like reading.”

Patrick wasn’t interested in erudite scholars.

“I understand,” the policeman announces in closing, slapping the notebook on the table with both hands. We will talk again Friday morning.”

The interval is shortened! Neither the interrogator nor the interrogated comments on the change.

After two hours, in the library café, Tara Nelson informs Peter Gag-par about her meeting with Patrick.