The Lair (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (58 page)

These aren’t just the exaggerations of loneliness, as Izy thinks, they are the digits of the blood pressure monitor. Figures, in the era of figures and numbers, Comrade Boltanski teaches us.

He won’t call Bar-El. He’s going to clip his fingernails, that’s what he’s going to do. Eyes goggling the monitor that is going haywire.

Who’s going to clip your nails, Professor? Try as you might to concentrate on this minor drudgery, in the end you still can’t prevent the unfortunate moment; you’ve pushed the nail scissors in too deep, the nail and the finger and the cuff of your shirt are covered in blood. Thin and frenetic blood, difficult to stop.

“Try to avoid bleeding. The drugs will thin your blood and you may not be able to stop bleeding, you may get an infection. An infection would be a very serious thing, if it reaches your heart. There have been fatal cases.”

Neosporin against cuts and infections! You can’t find the ointment, nor the Band-Aids, you never put things back in their place, always playing hide-and-seek. Madam Neosporin and Sir Band-Aid are having a laugh at the blunderings of the blunderer. Where have you hidden, you saboteurs? Hocus-pocus, now you see them, now you don’t, just like us mortals, here today, gone tomorrow. Ha, there you are in between the towels. I feel like the fat and playful Ga
par, his silly games.

The monitor reads 189 over 94. Pressure on his nape, the body returned to the brain. Alarm in the kidneys and intestines, in the urinary tract and circulatory and respiratory systems. Gasps, spasms, you don’t know where the next attack will be. You want to sleep, to die in your sleep, forgotten by the Great Dispatcher.

Indigestion, cramps, burning. Will the body’s new age be spent on the toilet? A defective spark plug here, another defective connection there, tired suspension, a corroded carburetor, a worn pump and worn-out brakes and worn-down frame. The danger didn’t originate in the heart. The passages had been cleaned, the soldered joints reinforced, the engine restored. The spirit was working, the armatures of Faust had enlarged the arteries, the blood was pumping.

The unexpected is the great advantage of the cardiac patient, the great danger and the great privilege. All of a sudden, it’s over, you’re granted rest.

Gora had paused on the way to the couch. The desire for sleep and the fear of sleep. One hesitation overcame the contrary hesitation. All he had to do was walk agitatedly the length and width and diagonal of the room, until he arrived at the democratic throne of the water closet. There he explored old age and the cowardly tendencies that old age spurred. It was day, another day, then night, then the next day, just as in the Bible. The tension monitor had become cordial, same as with the dialogue between the soul, the stomach, and the brain. The patient was waiting for the multiplying warnings. Day tension, night tension, numbers, numbers, Comrade Boltanski, columns of numbers measure the daily cardiograms.

Gora repeated to himself: there is no fear. No, there’s no fear, only the humiliation of uncertainty, the sadism of postponement. I am enslaved to a body on which I can no longer depend. It has betrayed me, it’s gone off and moved into my brain, and I can’t draw it out of there, it’s pointless for Izy to ask me to do it, I can’t budge it from here. That’s it, I’m going to start the obituary,
Cora’s Obituary.
The relating of yet another meaningless death will induce calm, and calm pacifies tension and unease.

A serene afternoon. He sat at his desk, in front of the computer. The blue screen, the first letters. White, clear, clean, familiar, as ever.

In the window, the bulb of the sun where eternity lives. The sun up high in the clear sky, and here, close by in the square of the window and on the red flooring.

Impatient to animate the letters and commas and questions, one born out of another, however, he didn’t touch the keys.

The keyboard frightened him. He’d pulled out the large, thick
American Album
from the left of his desk. One last time, Peter chatted with the Mormon and his wives. Then with the Coast Guard lieutenant who had captured the contraband bandits. Then, after a while: the first angioplasty of the obituarist, the second angioplasty. Peter had arrived inside the hullabaloo of old television sets in Backer’s store in Phoenix, Arizona. Mr. Backer, naked down to the waist, in shorts and three-quarter socks, old, torn sneakers without laces, large hands blackened by oil and dust. In Colorado, he’d scoured the immense airplane cemetery maintained for forty years by the J. W. Duff Aircraft Company, then Alaska’s North Slope Borough, eighty thousand square meters of ice and tundra, surrounding the town of Barrow and seven smaller towns, 20 percent of America’s daily petrol production. The Eskimo mayor, like 80 percent of the people he managed, talked about the seasonal whale hunts. Had Mynheer Ga
par truly arrived there, among the Eskimos, or was he nowhere at all?

Gora put a hand on the album. The blue gloves at the edge of the table. Abruptly, his breathing stops short. He tries to inhale and exhale normally, as he’d been instructed to do. His brow and temples were sweating. Shivers. Tremors. In the bedroom, the monitor. The small, short sound: 196 over 102. Bar-El or Lu or Hostal or Peter or the investigator Murphy or the defunct Dima, someone needed to come to aid the dying man!

It was late, even the poet Yussuma Ben Laden was sleeping, there was no one to call. Izy!

“Call the ambulance, my boy. You can’t stay wound up with that
tension all night. Nine, one, one. You have the number. The boys come quickly, they take you in, they treat you even along the way, before you get to the destination. After they see you at the hospital, you tell them to call me. When they get word from a doctor, they’ll do it. Not out of some collegiate spirit, but out of fear. Yes, yes, have them call me. It’s not serious, but don’t wait. You waited enough in your life. Now caution means urgency.”

The patient on a stretcher, the monitor connected to his left arm. He threw down the sweet liquor, then the aspirin, the EMT was massaging his wise forehead, assuring him that everything will be all right.

The halls of the emergency room. Traffic, many patients begging for the postponement of death. Two resident doctors. One blonde, freckled, thickset, and chatty and another supple and quiet Thai woman with little glasses no bigger than a thimble on her minuscule, childlike nose. Questions and answers, the sick heart’s history, tension rising. The patient didn’t have a fever, despite the sweating and shivering, which had ruffled him up in the ambulance as well as now. Small, continuous trepidations.

They took his blood, took him to radiology, gave him the first two pink pills and a glass of water. The freckled Irish woman was in a rush to get his case over with.

“Nothing unusual. As you can see, your tension has gone down. One forty over eighty-five. The tests look normal, same with the radiogram, the cardiogram. You’re free to go. Taxis come constantly, you’ll find one quickly. You’re lucky, you get to spend tonight at home.”

“What was the cause of the attack?”

The thickset woman had no time for commentary. She raised her short hands to the ceiling.

“We don’t know. We don’t know.”

Her Thai colleague hands him the release forms.

“It just happens sometimes … at a certain age, irregularities start to appear. Your test results are clear, the radiogram, the cardiogram, just as Rebecca told you.”

Aha, Rebecca, is it? The Irish take their names from the Bible.

Ah, so we’re back talking about age! Age is fishing for attention, it compels you, it compels you to …

“In fact, at any age,” the young woman added.

The incident was repeated two weeks later. The dream of Lu. A white, silken blouse. She was meticulously cleaning the vegetables, preparing the raspberries, the cherries, the wine. The slow joy of the living, concentration and sensuality. Thin, loose-fitting pants made of green silk. A sleeveless and transparent linen blouse over the pants. Sandals with a single strap on an otherwise bare foot. A supple, elastic body. A narrow, Andalusian head. The body vibrated at the first touch. She threw off her sandals, her pants, her minuscule underwear, a rusted leaf. The lips of her sex, the puff of her curly hair. The lashes trembling, as well as her voice. The electric fingers chaining her captive. A faraway look in her eyes, somewhere in the green of the great trees, whisper and whimper, calling the prisoner’s name.

Suddenly the heaviness in the chest. He breathed with difficulty, sweat covered his forehead and temples, the cold invaded his feet, hands, shoulders. He was shivering. The back of his neck ached, the anguish was rising. His moist neck and hands. Cold. He was trembling.

The monitor frowned: 201 over 110. The telephone: 911. The EMTs, the hospital, consultations, tests. Benign results. After a couple of hours, his blood pressure goes down: 143 over 90.

From time’s lottery machine I pulled out the winning numbers, Comrade Boltanski: the temperature, the white and red hemoglobin count, the glycemic index, cholesterol, even these have been tempered. We can’t ask for anything more than that. These are the high marks of good behavior.

On the event of the following crisis, he didn’t call the ambulance anymore, he just took a pill for his hypertension and a sedative.

He needed a psychiatrist, Izy told him. He’d never seen one before nor did he aspire to that indifference called equilibrium. His high school classmate assured him that he wouldn’t be prodded
with indiscreet questions or harsh treatments, nor would he be reincarnated into God knows what hyperactive persona.

Dr. Stephen Kelly was tall, all skin-and-bones, gray-haired, taciturn. The patient informed him that he wasn’t prone to confessions, that all he wants is the pill that will make him functional again, that was it.

The psychiatrist smiled. It seemed like an approving smile.

“What is the problem? What happened?”

The professor admitted that he’d gone through a calendar crisis. He wasn’t asked to explain what he’d meant by that. He added himself, “Two angioplasties. A slow and uncertain recovery with moments of panic,” the patient added. Raised levels of artery tension, cold sweats, panting, shortness of breath.

Stephen Kelly’s silence continued. Ah, yes, the patient wanted to add that he would prefer a minimal dose. Even less.

The doctor smiled, he seemed to approve of everything he was hearing. He prescribed a medication with a pleasant-sounding name.

“From the Prozac family.”

“Prozac? I’ve heard horror stories about this miracle drug called Prozac. A student of mine was taking Prozac, and her depression was transformed into a continuous smile. Rictus. Sneering grin. It would have frightened even the president’s bodyguards.”

“The minimal dose is fifty milligrams. We’ll start with a quarter of a minimal dose. We’ll try it gradually and see what happens. Is that okay?”

It was okay. On the following visit, the dose went up to twenty-five milligrams. The taciturn visit cost three hundred dollars. Unlike Bar-El, Dr. Kelly responded promptly to any and all telephone calls.

The dosage kept increasing until it reached the minimal dose. Then, panic attacks, anguish. Pain at the back of his neck, tremors, sweating. Kelly recommended reducing the dosage, then trying a different medication.

The patient received a new prescription. He contemplated it for
a long time, he never did go to the pharmacy, nor did he ever go back to Dr. Kelly.

Exercise will replace the pills. Dr. Bar-El had steered him toward some three-month regime. Physical therapy. Ten minutes of warm-ups, then ten minutes on three different machines, then ten minutes of cooling-down exercises. The bus ride to the periphery of York Avenue and back. The effort becomes more intense, his exhaustion diminishes, the day arranges itself around the diversion. Revitaliza-tion, fuel for self-esteem.

The experiment concluded at the end of August. At the closing ceremony each contestant promised to continue training thirty minutes per day or to walk for an hour at a brisk pace.

Back to deserted hours, specters. The transparent linen blouse. The sandals, the otherwise bare foot. The supple body under the rays of the moon. The Andalusian head, the intense gaze. She threw off her sandals, her pants, the leaf of her underwear, taking the patient’s palm in her own long, delicate, and narrow hand, making it into a fist. Her lashes trembled, just like her voice, her fingers trembled, electrified.