The Lair (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (52 page)

To absorb the joy of the moment, its delusions. He was no longer young, and even if he were young, he still couldn’t call for deferment, the hazard asked to be respected.

Books had kept him unaware of the cycles of aging and diminishing. He looked at the shelves where friends rested in between worn covers, friends who’d accompanied him along the exodus before the definitive exodus. Tomorrow he will present himself, anxiously and politely, to the surgeon Dr. Hostal, for the farewell. A nostalgic fraternization, because it was final. Should you extend a hand, as an epilogue, to the one who tried to keep you among the living, what more human ritual can you seek?

When you have no one from whom you are about to separate yourself, your loneliness intensifies in the final moments, but it’s also purer, independent of others. Parents disappeared long ago, he’d adjusted with difficulty to being far from them, and with their painful bouts of longing. Oblomov dedicated long odes to laziness, Izy had remained in the basement of youth, and Saint Peter in Galilee, Kira Varlaam was dedicating herself to her autistic son, Dima was stealing away to the void as to an undeserved amnesty, the Cavalier from La Mancha never forgave Dulcinea’s infidelity, Pal–ade was dispatched by a bullet, just like his hero Lonrot, Peter Ga
par made himself invisible, legitimizing, through a broad prank, his renowned Dutch namesake. The little blonde girl in the blue one–horse carriage was still passing in front of the enchanted and chimerical boy, just as she did in childhood. And Lu had survived, in her magic youth, dizzy with aphrodisiacs. After so many years since the separation that never successfully became a parting, any ritual of separation from Lu would have been ridiculous, and, as was obvious, futile.

He was caressing the clean surface of the desk, books all pushed to the side, along with the red gloves of the past. Tomorrow, after the
dying man’s last shudder, everything will remain in its place, the books and Lu and the obituary of the disappeared, until they disappear as well, sweeping away all traces of the deceased. For some time the retina of Edward Hostal will preserve the face of the patient who, at the end, wanted to assure him not of his gratitude but of the serenity with which he’d accepted the ephemeral. He had resisted serenity often with a candid obstinacy. Enriched, nevertheless, he would tell Hostal that he’d been enriched often by the ephemeral’s immaterial intensity and ineffable joy, even while convinced that in the end, the material would conquer all. He’d tell the Australian that these joyful and passing oppositions were not at all negligible.

The patient arrived early at the hospital, as he’d been requested to do. He listened attentively to the instructions: if the angiogram shows that there’s need for an intervention, an angioplasty will be performed on the spot; at the point where the leg connects to the hip, a small imaging catheter will be introduced into the femoral artery. It will advance toward the artery that needs cleaning, the catheter will expand, compressing the buildup, dilating the artery, and a small metal tube will replace the balloon to maintain the dilation. You will be sedated, not fully anesthetized, the doctor requires the live and conscious reaction of the patient.

Stretched out on the narrow bed, hands and legs restrained, Augustin Gora was looking at the computer screen. Doctor Ponte–corvo appeared, a tall, lanky man with black hair. Then Maestro Hostal, the professor. Small, dense. Small hands and small, blue eyes. White, curly hair, cropped short. Solid, dense, he inspires trust.

“No anesthetic, as you know. We need the patient’s lucidity. You will receive a calming syrup.”

The Chinese woman handed him a glass with a pink liquor, the patient drank it to the bottom. He felt the insertion in the vein of the leg, the trajectory of the camera for making images of his insides, he closed his eyes, the electronic cricket worked intensely, the patient
squeezed the metal railing of the bed to which he was restrained. Eyes closed, teeth clenched.

Hostal is once again by the patient’s side.

“I have good news and I have bad news. Which do you want first?”

“The good.”

“We can intervene.”

It meant it was all going to hell, and the devil was going to humiliate the dying.

“The bad news is that your arteries are blocked. Over 90 percent, some even 99 percent. It’s that sour cream from Bukovina … If you agree, we’ll begin the procedure.”

“I don’t think I have an alternative.”

“Not really. The intervention isn’t foolproof. There are risks. Heart attack, stroke. It happens rarely, but it isn’t impossible.”

The Australian was silent, and the patient, as well.

“So then, you agree? We’ll operate?”

“Yes, we’ll operate.”

“Oxygen will be pumped into the blocked artery. It will clean out the buildup. Then, we will fit in the metal lining. It is called a stent. It will keep the artery open so that circulation can normalize.”

The doctor had rolled up his sleeves, and shifted over to the computer.

The arrow directly targeted the chest cavity. Deep, deeper. On the screen, the insect was feeling out its trajectory. A vibrating, bedeviled little locust, nibbling away at the waste in the artery. A sharp, persistent pain. Gora closed his eyes and held the bars alongside his bed with both hands.

“Taxus,” Hostal orders. “Express Two.”

The patient opens his eyes: the nurse was pulling a little cylinder out of a drawer down below. She’d torn the packaging and was now handing the cylinder to the doctor. A minuscule little shell, delicate. A long, poisonous pain right to his liquefied brain. Then, another cylinder. The long, thin arrow. Another sharp pain, moaning, whimpering, the patient closes his eyes, opens his eyes, squeezes the
bars, unclenches his hands, then clenches them again. Time no longer exists, it consumes itself.

“An hour and ten minutes,” announces the Chinese woman with a slight speech impediment.

“I’ve fitted you with two stents,” Hostal explained. “We’ve resolved two central arteries. The others, next time. Come back in a month, a month and a half.”

He’d remained by the bed, looking at the revived patient, smiling at him.

“We’re only plumbers. Fixing pipes.”

The doors open, the professor and the assistant exit. The patient is unrestrained at his hands and feet. The male nurse with the moustache pushes the wheelchair to the room on the third floor. He’s hooked up to the monitor. The diagram on the screen in front of the bed. The pills and the water glass on the metal cart. Eyes closed in reverie.

The blonde, tall nurse on afternoon duty had entered the room.

“You called?”

The pills had triggered some acidity and the stomach pains had returned. He managed to mumble, “Where are you from?”

The beauty smiled, “Polish.”

“I’d thought maybe from Hollywood,” the patient murmured.

Tall, thin, superb, she should have adapted to the New World in a bar or on a stage, not in the hallways of the hospital poisoned with odors and moans.

Looking a little like the prey of werewolves, Gora was moaning, but smiling at the beautiful Polish woman. “I feel as if I were Ga
par … I miss Mynheer.” Burning and pain. She returned with a spoonful of yellowish liquid. She raised his pillow, and then the spoon advanced toward his livid lips. The patient sipped the liquor, dizzy with stabs of pain, and with enchantment. Mollified and drawn into the waters of sleep.

When he awoke, the nurse had widened. Now she wore glasses and looked Mongolian. She was smiling, happy, motherly, an immaculate set of teeth. The thermometer. In his mouth, under his
tongue. “Okay, you don’t have a temperature and your blood pressure is normal.” She’d removed his bedpan, she brings a small plate with five colored pills and glass of water. Soon, it’s time for breakfast, then the morning visit, then discharge. The patients stay only one night, that’s the rule, time is money, the sick person comes, leaves, the bill remains, the Soviet Boltanski was right. The telephone.

“I’m Doctor Bar–El. How do you feel, Professor? Hostal told me that you had 95–to–99 percent blockage. We caught it in time, I felt the urgency. Everything is okay, I will see you in two weeks.”

Hostal appeared, like a chef in white with a chef’s bonnet, fresh out of the cookie lab. Small, solid, trustworthy. In his hand, the folder full of cliches.

“Here is the image of what’s been done and what is left to be done. Here’s the narrowing of the artery, here the other artery, the corner of the curvature, the casing. There were constrictions in three places along one of the arteries. It’s the latest kind of stent, treated with a protective substance that impedes future buildup. I hope you are feeling well. The angioplasty must be repeated. We’ll repair the other arteries in two months. I know Koch, he told me about you. He also told me how delicious breakfast is in Bukovina, thick sour cream with wild strawberries.”

No, Doctor Hostal wasn’t Moliere’s medic, nor was he the bureaucrat of modern times.

“I see that here, too, just like everywhere, there’s a gridlock of patients.”

“Yes, it is. I get home at eight in the evening, I wake up at five. I would like to spend more time with my family, my children. All I do all day is postpone farewells between people.”

Gora tightened his gaze and his ears perked, he wasn’t expecting this formula. Truly, it would have been a shame for him to take leave of this stranger, and it wouldn’t have been right for him to take leave of himself in front of any other witnesses.

Hostal extended his small hand, the patient squeezed it in his own small hand. The doctor offered him his business card.

“My assistant returns calls promptly. Call anytime.”

The patient leans, with some difficulty, to the left. Hostal had something to add still.

“Oh, yes … I forgot. Izy told me that there’s no one to accompany you out of the hospital. You have no family here in America.”

“No, I don’t.”

“I’ve arranged with a nurse. She’ll call the cab and accompany you home. Her name is Elvira, and she’s from your country.”

The little grandma with white hair, leaning on a cane, was taking the place of mother and aunt and concerned neighbor. A touching gift: his native language. The familiar, therapy in the wilderness. Doting Elvira protects the patient with jokes and endearments all the way to his door. Ready to put him to bed, to tuck him in and make his tea.

“Thank you, thank you, Elvira. You are very kind. Were you here in America in 1986?” The little grandma watched him, puzzled.

“Yes, of course, I was here.”

“In May of 1986? You were here?”

“Yes, of course, I was here. I came in 1969.”

“So on May 2, 1986, you were here, then?”

Elvira was wide–eyed, didn’t understand what the professor wanted. She didn’t figure into his album
A Day in America,
didn’t know that
that day
was May 2, 1986. Gora thanked her for the company, opened the door, bent to the left and pushed the door with his shoulder.

The big world is actually quite small. Koch knew Larry One, also known as Avakian, who knew Larry Two, who knew Beatrice Artwein.

Ga
par had brought his entire, own world into Gora’s world, and Gora had given him Dima and Palade. The threatening letter Gag–par received had revived the attic of suspects from long ago.