The Lair (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (32 page)

“Did he ask about the student-professor relationship?”

“Yes, he didn’t forget.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“That we’re friends. I help you, sometimes. Not just with the mail. On Saturday I slept on the couch in the hallway. So that you wouldn’t be alone. The woods scare you at night.”

“I asked you, that is, to sleep at my place? Is that what you told him?”

“Yes. Isn’t it the truth? Didn’t you ask me?”

“I made that mistake. You refused. Did you tell him you refused?”

“No.”

“You told him that you watched over my sleep?”

“Yes. I told him that I don’t ever make gestures of charity, but since receiving the letter you’ve been having insomnia. I think it’s good to have someone in the house.”

“A lie.”

“That’s not a lie. The lie is that I slept in Professor Ga
par’s house. But you proposed playing games.”

“And you said it wasn’t worth it, it would mean going from lie to lie, we won’t be able to pull it off.”

“I changed my mind. It seems interesting.”

“Interesting? Patrick asked me as well if you do anything for me other than sort my mail. No. I answered no, nothing. He didn’t correct me. He didn’t point out that you said the contrary. So, he knows we’re lying. Or, at least, one of us. Or both. I lied, too … that you never wrote me a letter. The dean of students knows about Tara Nelson’s impertinent letter. I hope Patrick won’t come across that detail; he already seems bored with all of this nonsense.”

He wasn’t convinced that Tara had actually played the game with the cop, as she said. What if she was actually playing with him, rather than with the police officer?

Before saying goodbye, Tara hands him another envelope.

“Another message? Another death threat? With the date and the place where the assassin and victim should meet?”

“No. I brought you a little book, to amuse you.”

Ga
par thanks her, he’s irritated, he doesn’t open the envelope. Once home, he pulls the small volume out of the envelope.

Ambrose Bierce,
The Devil’s Dictionary—Unabridged,
Dover Editions, Inc., New York.

A note at the beginning of the volume, “A sardonic partial lexicon of the English language. Ambrose Bierce (1842-ca. 1914), a Civil War Veteran . . . recognized as one of the most influential American journalists of the end of the 19th century and a notable writer of short fiction and light verse. Two years after the publication of this volume, Bierce ventured down to revolution-riddled Mexico and was never heard from again.”

A marker in the book. Page 42. Geology, Ghost, Ghoul. Yes,
Ghost. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.
The definition is worth re-reading. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear…

Even during the cold nights, when it’s pleasant to remain in bed, Augustin Gora would wake up early. Since he’d changed the country and language in which he lived, he slept only with the help of sleeping pills. Short sleep. He would wake up without any difficulty, would start working so as not to feel his exhaustion. He’d often find himself in front of his computer. He would look at the calendar: Thursday. He would turn the armchair to the left and look at the receiver. Turn the armchair to the right, bend over the desk, pull out the bottom drawer, place the folder titled RA 0298 on the desk. The phone would ring. He would look at it, without pleasure.

“Saint Augustin? Are you in your lair?”

“What lair?”

“Between book covers.”

Gora was silent, annoyed by the glibness of the intruder.

“Yes, between.”

“I’m looking for a bibliographical reference. You’re the authority, you know everything.”

Gora looked at the folder, smiling. The summary of his conversation with Bedros Avakian about Peter’s hiring.

“A quotation. I can’t place it. I know that it’s a quotation. I’ve seen it somewhere. I know it, but I don’t know it. It’s not in the language of my birth, but the language of my death. I’m counting on your speedy reaction.”

Gora listens and moves on to the second file in the folder.

“I know I saw this phrase somewhere. A long time ago, when we were young and bookish. In your English, I don’t have the key.”

Gora was silent, looking at the Avakian page.

“The author could, in fact, be Lady D. Madam Death. The whore with the scythe.”

“I see you know who the author is.”

“But I don’t know the pen name. I repeat the quotation daily to myself. Five, ten times a day. When I am awake and when I sleep. When I walk, and when I remember, while on the toilet, that I was young at some point. Then, I reread the black paper. The devil, the whore’s lover, sent it to me.
Next time,
says her Ladyship.
Next time, I kill. I promise . . .
that’s what the goblin of the night says. Should I believe her? You never know when she’s joking and what the joke is concealing.
Next time, I kill you,
gurgles the filthy monster.”

Ga
par stopped, then took up the entire text with a sigh.

“A quotation, no?”

“Maybe. I think so.”

“Madam Bordello reads literature! I was sure of it. A snob.”

What follows is a tangled story with digressions and parentheses: a few weeks back, Peter received a strange death threat. A joke. The authorities took it seriously. They ordered him to do the same.

“The review about Dima . . . you remember. Then, I was under protection, without the protection of the FBI. These people make you give up your soul with all the questioning. After they are sure that you’re no criminal, they give you senile advice. Now, another investigator. You know what Larry Eight told me?
Don’t relax.
But that’s my nature, sir. That’s who I am, Mr. Murphy, I’m whistling all day long, but I can’t relax …”

Had he stopped or not? It wasn’t clear.

“I’m bothering you at this early hour in the morning because I’m under a lot of pressure. I can’t die illiterate. I have to find out what books the two lovers Mister Devil and Lady Death read at night before going to bed.
Next time I kill. Next time I promise you. Next time, a single line. Labyrinth. Invisible labyrinth.
Eh, what do you say to that?”

“I’m thinking,” Gora whispers. He’d moved the folder to the edge of the table. The Computer knows the answer, and Gora also knows the answer, and is dumbfounded.

“Assumptions. I am weighing things out, and thinking. It’s by . . . so and so or so and so.”

He was smiling. How could you not think of the apprenticeship of exile: from the old typewriter, heavy and rusted, presented annually to the socialist militia for approval, to the American electric typewriter, then to the fax machine, the pages transmitted instantly to the other world, then the computer that often gives birth to another computer. Cosmic schism, the planetary uproar of banality. You are the same Gora who is no longer the same.

He pushed down on the piano keys, humming the magic phrase, the computer hesitated, then the confirmation appeared on the blue screen. He’d wanted to check if the robot knew as much as a professor educated in the old school. It did, look at that, it did.

Saint Augustin, the wizard, knows all the books in the world like the back of his hand, all the books that now a poor kindergarten computer also knows.

“The Old Man? Old Man Dima? Is he writing to us from the other world?” Peter Ga
par asks excitedly. “These were all his concerns . . . magic, the labyrinth, mysticism, the fantastic. It’s he, isn’t it? He wants me to meet him, he loves me, he wants to save me from our sinful world, isn’t that right?”

“That’s possible. I’m leaning toward somebody else.
I’ve known what the Greeks didn’t know: uncertainty.
Do you know the quotation?”

Silence. Ga
par, the basketball player, doesn’t know this quotation. He has no idea about the suspects in the attic; around that time he was still playing hockey and
turca
*
and basketball.

“I’ve known what the Greeks didn’t know: incertitude,” repeated Saint Augustin. A phrase once heard in the socialist attic.

Silence. The deathly silence of the grave and the illiterate.

“I’m leaning toward the blind guy. The Great Blind Man,” whispered Gora, more to himself, convinced that Peter wouldn’t know what he was talking about. Peter had no idea about the attic of the past. He allowed the intruder and himself a breathing pause, to allay
his agitation and his memories. The attic! It was just too much . . . Peter had no idea about the attic of suspects.

“Hello, hello!” the happy intruder exploded. “Perfect! That’s right, I knew you’d have the answer. Bull’s-eye, perfect. Li-qui-da-ted.”

That precious, cunning Augustin offered the magic key, Peter Ga
par was surely mumbling to himself. Just like that, the sonorities of youth in Gomorrah reclaimed! The language of so long ago! The juvenile cadences! Jubilation. Memory reborn, triumphant, all of a sudden!