The Lair (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (45 page)

“That big? About the girlfriend who works with him? You’re begging him to help you with your unrequited love, to prescribe an elixir? Tubes for unwanted maps or diplomas, like this one, could also be used for a papyrus with the magic formula for love.”

“I am bringing him a gift. A rare engraving. I bought it for him.”

“Ah, a gift. Of gratitude. Conventions from the old world.
Noblesse …
how did you say?”

“Noblesse oblige.”

“Yes, yes,
oblige.
Something other than
Ein Man ein Wort.
Now I understand. Something else altogether.”

“Not altogether.”

“Gratitude for treatment.”

“Not only.”

“You were saying it was a message. The message is separate?”

“Separate. But the gift is also a message. The letter is another message.”

“Aha, about your friend.”

“About a friend. A mutual friend.”

“Aha. Something pleasant or unpleasant?”

“Unpleasant.”

“One warm, one cold. The gift as a thanks, the message as poison.”

“Something like that.”

To the right of the hospital, traffic, cars, taxis, ambulances. “We’re here, I think we’re here. Now where are we going?”

“Ahead, just a little farther. We’ll pass the intersection, the first building after the intersection is Koch’s office. Avicenna.”

Lyova stops in front of the clinic. Peter has his money ready, he counts it, he doesn’t want to give too much, it would offend the Soviet.

“Thank you, Lyova. You’re a man of your word.”

“I am. Whenever you need me. You have my phone number.”

“Yes, I have it. I took it down, I won’t lose it.”

Abruptly, he changes his mind.

“In fact, wait for me. I’ll be right back and we’ll go.”

“Where, to Eastern Europe?”

“No, to Penn Station. The train leaves in an hour.”

“The big city tires you out, you come and you run.”

“It enchants me. There isn’t another like it in the whole world. The City on the Moon. But I’m in a hurry. A big hurry.”

Peter enters the little waiting room, full of patients, doesn’t look around, two steps to the window where little Spanish Dora sits in vigil. He hands her the tube, shows her the white ticket on the blue tube, where it says “Dr. Koch–Avicenna.” He turns on his heels.

Lyova is at his post, the train is at its post, America functions perfectly, Peter disappears.

Gora also has Boltanski’s number. “Use it whenever you need, it will remind you of our youth!” Peter would say. He’d never used it and he had no idea that, right before disappearing, Peter had traveled in Lyova’s yellow cab.

Naturally, Koch–Avicenna could have provided information about Peter Ga
par’s farewell visit, but the information was neither pleasant nor urgent. Doctor Koch was waiting for the right moment.

She mocked me, the whore! The Nymphomaniac … she’s in no mood for me.

But maybe she was in the mood and hadn’t concluded the game. The postponement only proved that the adventure hadn’t reached any kind of conclusion.

The time is 7:30 in the morning. Gora is awake, ready for the adventure. The adventure of looking for the disappeared.

The Magic Mountain
is nearby in its known place, on the hospitable shelf, all you had to do was extend an arm, but Mynheer Pieter Peeperkorn and Hans Castorp, his humiliated rival, and the strange Clavdia Chauchat, with the almond eyes, were very far away, in a Europe of another age.

Ga
par had to be looked for in today’s America. Gora prepared himself for the adventure, he had before him the guide with photographs and text:
A Day in the Life of America.
At any page you open, you find the America where the runaway is holing up.

On the chair, faded jeans. In front of the chair, on the sandy carpet, the bag made of purple plastic, the large, round watch, black dial with golden digits. In the back, the wooden bed, the white hat of the lampshade. In the foreground, a white shoe made of perforated leather, a brown one, with a cord, the great
Webster’s Dictionary, from A to Z.
To the left of the image, bare, tanned legs the color of honey. The juvenile foot presses into the carpeting. The face and shoulders and bust are missing from the image. But the legs are here, from bottom to top. Nails painted with pink polish, delicate skin, from the pink heel to the ankle.

This morning Tara had become Sandra, from the middle school in Lakeview, Michigan, in the massive album called
200 of the World’s Leading Photojournalists.

The album open, on the table, in front of the computer.

Sandra isn’t disciplined like Tara, she’s incapable of establishing priorities; the chaos of the room reflects the panic with which she is studying for her end of year exams. Her classmates are all the same. Different times, Professor, another geography and another history from the one you escaped.

The time is 8 a.m.
Deste is getting ready for the ritual. The Prabhupada Palace at the top of Mount Moundsville in West Virginia. Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, watches over the six hundred followers. Native Americans, the pride of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness. Deste from now on is known as Veena Dasi, in the classic Indian Bhataratanyam dance. Symmetrical barrettes made of gold in her hair. From the center of her
tiara, a golden chain, pearl diadem, golden rosette, a greenish jade stone in the middle. On her forehead, Veena Dasi has drawings made with gold filigree. Between her brows, which are blackened with Indian ink, the red dot, of blood. Over her green silk shirt, from her shoulders to her waist, the sari, with a yellow veil.

The adolescent Veena Dasi, her real name Renee Walker, doesn’t look at all like Deste. Deste would sooner resemble the instructor Jatila Devi. On the lustrous page of the album, Jatila arranges the tiara on the crown of Renee’s head; Renee becomes Veena.

The mouth slightly open, the lips anticipating. A little mother–of–pearl clover piercing her nostril. The diadem in arabesques. Red, green, golden jewelry. The velvety lobe of the ear, a tress of black hair, black eyes. Lashes and brows of a nocturnal butterfly. A model escaped from a serai in Sarajevo.

In the Prabhupada Palace in West Virginia, United States of America, Deste became Jatila Devi! Professor Gora thinks about her melancholically, waiting for the runaway Peter to appear from one moment to the next.

The time is 9 in the morning. The Cholos Quartet is there in front of the obituarist’s unmade bed. The young woman in panties and tank top, a towel tied like a turban on her head, the other girl seen from the back, also in panties and a tank, with curlers in her hair, the hairy man in jeans, with the bandaged head and the little boy Joe, a mere child. On the bed, the brush, the comb, the pants, a roll of toilet paper. Arturo, Lisa, Rosaria, “Cholos,” members of a band from a Mexican border town, born in America, in conflict with their Spanish tradition and their Anglo–Saxon civilization. Each one has a nickname, says the album.

Arturo’s name is “Chango,” Lisa is “Bad Girl,” the woman Rosaria is “Smiley.” They live together in the district of White Fence, a barrio in East Los Angeles, they move around in the same old car. None of them has a job. They take turns watching over little Joe, “El Boo Boo,” Rosaria’s child. She’s the one with the towel on her head like a turban. Little Joe is the only one among them who is not deaf and mute.
Ga
par was preoccupied with deafmutes, he probably knows about the Cholos Quartet.

At 9:30 Gora was looking for Peter Ga
par inside the store that dated back to 1921, belonging to the Ciemniak family, on Joseph Campau Street, in Hamtramck, Michigan. Peter the gourmand … is undoubtedly admiring through a window some of the Ciemniak kielbasa that was so renowned in the Detroit area.

At 10:30 Gora meets Eileen Slocum, from Newport, Rhode Island, descended from the clan of Roger Williams, who founded the state in 1636. Red dress suit, closed at the neck. Sharp features, freckles; blond, wiry hair. Her wrinkled hand looks like the hand of a sixty– to seventy–year–old. Eileen and her husband, John, a retired diplomat, boast eleven great–grandchildren and an imposing family manor. The short, dark–haired butler carries the tray and silverware and silver cup for breakfast. Carlo Juarez had worked at the Argentine embassy in Washington until 1982, when the ambassador was recalled as a result of the war in the Falklands. No, the fat Peter Ga
par wasn’t there.

At 11:00, the convoy arrives in Nevada, in Golden Valley. Gina Monteverdi, the aunt that Tara had promised to Professor Peter Ga
par, was there on the side of the road to welcome him. She held in her arms Sofia the cat and the greenish teapot that held the aphrodisiac. Rosy, dimpled cheeks. Rich, thick, black hair, with some white strands. Pink flannel robe that reached the ground. Gina had just stepped out of the house to wait for the guest, at the intersection that bore the name of her adored feline Sofia. Black cat with long, white whiskers. The Sofia Crossroads. On the street sign, an orange rhombus, the figure of a cat and the warning:
Cat. Slow Crossing.
Step on the brakes, Professor; this is how the pilgrims who’ve landed in the Nirvana of Nevada do things. That crazy Sofia deserves this homage, as well as the siblings, Marta, Rita, and Lucia. Tara hadn’t divulged the Italian origins of the aunt from Nirvana, nor the fact that Gina had borne four charmed felines.