The Lair

Part III

Before disappearing, Peter had a last meeting, with Lyova Boltanski.

Penn Station! He emerges from the crowd, his gaze up to the sky. The present! The present, the traveler was mumbling. The motto and prayer of his new life: the present!

The yellow cab brakes at the curb’s edge. Lyova was waiting for him, just as they’d agreed.

“Thank you, you’re a man of your word. The Soviet is a man of his word.”

“The American is, too, if he’s paid well enough. You paid me well. Too well.”

“Well, what do you think … I owed you. Noblesse oblige, say the French. What do the Ukrainians say?”

“Why the Ukrainians?”

“Well, aren’t you from Odessa?”

“I’m a Soviet. I told you but you didn’t understand. Ein Man ein Wort, this I know from my family. It’s not French, but I think it’s the same.”

“Almost the same.”

“Okay. Where are we going?”

“I don’t know the exact address, but I know where it is.”

“New York isn’t a village, we need an address.”

“Do you know how to get to Lenox Hospital? A major hospital. Near the hospital, there’s a doctor’s office.”

“Again to the doctor? The girlfriend moved to Lenox? The girlfriend or the partner or the wife who doesn’t want to see you and who disappears before you appear.”

“No, she didn’t move. It’s not for her I’m going.”

“Are you ill? Or is it a psychiatrist? I asked you last time, and you didn’t answer. A psychiatrist?”

“I answered last time and I am answering now. No, he’s not a psychiatrist. Dr. Koch is an internist, an unfashionable profession in America.”

“That’s right. Specialized doctors. For the left hand and for the right hand, for knees and tendons and for headaches or baldness aches. Ten digits in the hands and feet? A specialist for each one. Twenty specialists! And a specialist for each nail of each finger. Another twenty! Dentists who do only fillings and others who pull teeth, others who take care of gums, other who implant new, more durable fangs. The Ford method, the division of labor. Maximum output. Charlie Chaplin’s film. I saw it dozens of times in the Soviet Union.”

“Modern Times, that’s what it was called, wasn’t it? Efficient and ferocious capitalism. So, you saw movies in your socialist country. What about books? Did you read books?”

“I read. Whatever I could get my hands on.”

“Whatever you could get your hands on? We all fell into that trap of books.”

“Why trap?”

“Oh, I’m just saying … it was a den where you could be alone, we had nothing else, just books.”

“Doctor Koch … Koch you said?”

“That’s his name.”

“So then, it’s the lungs. Bacillus Koch, that’s all I remember from school. Something wrong with your lungs?”

“Not a goddamn thing. I don’t call him Koch, I call him Avicenna. You know who Avicenna was.”

“I know, and if I don’t know I still don’t care. So then, you’re ill in general, not in the lungs. The nail of your little toe on your left foot?”

“I’m not going for a consultation. I am bringing him a present. This tube.”

“Aha, you don’t have that heavy briefcase, now you have a tube. So then, you’re not going to the library, or to the library cafe, and you’re not going to lose your wallet.”

“No I’m not going to lose it. And I have money, don’t worry.”

Peter holds a long tube made of blue cardboard, with a lid, under his arm.

“I’m bringing a message.”

“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 Gapar’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.

Gapar 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. Gapar was preoccupied with deafmutes, he probably knows about the Cholos Quartet.

At 9:30 Gora was looking for Peter Gapar 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 Gapar 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 Gapar, 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.

Nor had Tara let slip a single word about Anthony, the messenger of God, nearby resident of Reno, Nevada, page 124 in the album.

Black suit, red shirt, white cowboy hat. A crucifix hanging at his neck, on a thick chain. Also a string of pearls that ends with a white cross made of bone. Thick lips, white teeth, large nose, strong. White, shingled house. In the orange minivan there are some busy placards: prochoice murders — unborn babies with no choice — abortion crucifies babies. On the Archangel Anthony’s T — shirt, in large red letters: Prochoice kills babies. “People say I’m crazy. Yes, crazy about life,” murmurs Anthony, pensively. He arrives at the church at 7:30 in the morning and initiates the crusade on the streets of Reno. “I served in the Army for twenty years, but I’ve never fought so hard. It’s World War III. The massacre of the unborn.”

Gora closes opens closes opens the album. He sips again, thoughtfully, from the tall cup. He closes his eyes, suspended in no place. It’s good to be in no place. Peter invokes the time of exile, the present. Gora glorifies the nomad’s geography, “Better to be nowhere than anywhere.” He lets fall a daily tear of joy and anguish for the good fortune of being nowhere.

Smitty’s in Orleans, Mississippi. The Hardstone brothers, John and Jimmy.

Twin bachelors, the old men dress the same and mimic each other’s gestures and words. They sit at the wooden table. J and J gaze toward the door through which Gora is entering. The topographic twins drink their coffee and Coca — Cola here every afternoon, abandoning their eighty — seven — year — old mother, together with whom they’ve always lived. The French photographer come to capture them sitting at Smitty’s in Orleans, Mississippi, for the collection A Day in America is no Monsieur Pierre Gapar. No, no, it’s not he.

Gora looks at his watch, to find out what hour the exile Peter is killing and in what time zone. Suddenly, he’s tempted by the old phantoms. There wasn’t more than a step from Peter to Lu. He looks for Gapar but keeps running into Lu. “I didn’t know her; I knew her,” confessed Gora, at one point. “She’d existed for a long time inside of me. An undreamed of rediscovery, too often imagined in dreams.”

The retrospective exercise had captured him again. His wife watched over his straying; he’d have invented her if she didn’t exist. Then, as now, he was searching for the torment of Lu.

The attraction between cousins, if that’s what it was, flouted convention differently from a marriage outside the ethnic community. Lu often protected herself through conventions, but she didn’t lack deviations from the norm. When everyone around her dreamed of emigrating, Lu refused to. Afterward, to everyone’s stupefaction, she appeared in the New World with a cousin who was younger than the suitors who had most likely stormed her. Her evasions couldn’t be found in the obituary that Gora had prepared for Peter Gapar.

A thin evening. The castanets of heels on the asphalt, the melancholy of the twilight. Augustin Gora was contemplating the unknown woman. As if the matter at hand weren’t the enchantment of beauty, but about other incidental gifts. All beauty did was to heighten those gifts, but it could also diminish them. He didn’t want to admit that coincidence that had sent him a stand — in.

“I wasn’t discovering her as much as revisiting her,” he’d said at one point. “She’d been inside me for a long time.” He wouldn’t have admitted, however, that “recognition” could blind him, impeding his discovery of what was beyond the momentary revelation. He watched, furtively, the shoe with the heel and the strap. The strap at the back left the ankle free, the stalk of her leg began at her delicate ankle and rose toward her bare knee, and the rest was lightheadedness.

Rendezvous, walks, exercises in intoxication. The world was departing. Fumbling, games, insomnia. The first night. He’d heard her murmuring, “I want it differently.” Removed from the stranger’s body, Gora remained stretched on his back, as if he hadn’t heard. Eventually he got up. Lu was balled up and curled. Resumed panting, rhythm and exhaustion.

Lu didn’t talk about the past. Not because she was withholding scandalous mysteries, but because she refused access to the intimacy that she considered simple, natural, but intangible.

Is that how it all was? There seemed to be too many detours. The unknown frightened her; it took some time before she grew accustomed to Gora. The unknown inside her, however, frightened her even more, and she was unable to touch that unknown in the presence of another, no matter how close he might be.

In Peter she found a relative; was that the prerequisite of the familiar? Was the familiar repetitive and boring, but safe; was newness aggressive and illusory?

“I wasn’t discovering her as much as revisiting her. She’d been inside me, she was waiting there,” said the husband, bereft.

What could possibly explain Lu’s steadfast refusal to follow her beloved husband? Had it been resignation … and not rebellion? Lu despised the theatrics of rebellions. Had she carefully weighed the alternatives before deciding that the safest solution was precisely the most unusual and risky, to stay put? The known, no matter how rotten, of one’s familiar surroundings? Wasn’t conjugal life also a known, familiar stability?

Did the night of the return from the train station, decades ago, portend the future alliance with Peter? Had she discovered herself then, unexpectedly? An obscure, ancestral predisposition, in the troubled depths of the past, of which he knew too little. Hosted suddenly by the chasm that had taken hold? Finding Peter again after Gora’s departure had perhaps rekindled the memory of that night. A confirmation. She related to him because they were already related to each other through a past about which neither of them knew enough, a past that didn’t even belong to Peter, though he was the product of its malformations. A past with which Lu communicated obscurely, primarily in moments of panic. Was that it?

As usual Gora was nurturing masochistic questions. For many hours he would aim right at the vulnerable place, the bleeding wound.

“You didn’t become an alien enemy, not even after your adored wife left you! That’s something, really something. Not in our little, idyllic country and not in more honorable places,” the phantom Peter taunted in nocturnal visits.

Some decades past, Peter’s appearance changed not only Lu’s perception of herself and the world around her, but also his own. In the caution with which he’d been surrounded in the house of relatives he was meeting for the first time, he’d felt something mysterious and bizarre. Once he’d gotten back home, he subjected his mother to interrogations. He discovered, gradually, what had been hidden from him. However, for him the effect was not in the least inhibiting, as it had been for his beautiful cousin, about whom he knew nothing except what was contained in his wet dreams. The tragedy that Eva related in too great a detail had, in fact, liberated him. Still absorbed by basketball and parties and mountain hikes among his happy circle of friends, he cared very little about his education, or his career, or his rejection from the architecture university on account of the former Party prosecutor David Gapar’s anti — Party records. He graduated easily from the architecture high school, was satisfied with sports, parties, women, and books. Yes, books appeared, too, among his preoccupations.

“Laughter, Professor. That’s the solution when there’s none other. Mynheer Peeperkorn is the solution, Comrade.”

Gora didn’t remember anything except for the title of the story by which Peter had conquered his socialist audience. Was it a deaf — mute Mynheer? That would be something!

“Laughter, that’s the solution. Not just during the day, but also at night. At night when the unwelcome visitors appear.”

Gora waved off the ghost with a bothered gesture. He hadn’t heard anything about the fugitive in a long time and he didn’t look for him anymore, except within himself.

“I can’t find him within myself, no matter how much I look for him.”

Was Peter’s interminable obituary his own lament, scored on a foreign manuscript?

The dawn was brightening. Exhausted, Gora was caressing the yellow gloves on the desk. The yellow folder slept.

After Peter Gapar disappeared in the great American void, the obituary consumed most of Gora’s time, putting a healthy distance between his immediate reality and the fictive — and even more immediate — reality. He defied the bureaucratic, biographical limits, accustomed to naming the strict facts of the life lived. After all, any biography was just an obituary; every history has an end and an obituarist.

After Peter disappeared, the Obituary RA 0298 had gained not only legitimacy but also urgency. Who could prove that Peter’s disappearance wasn’t definitive? Only Peter himself, who was in no hurry to produce the proof. Whom to ask and where to look for him? In the presumptions and potentialities it omitted from the bureaucratic biography.

Gora stopped short, with the red pencil suspended in the air. Shouldn’t he address Lu, finally?

The actor and the trapeze artist know what stage fright is; Gora also knew the spell in which every moment can produce a disaster. No matter how well he managed the manuscript … his hand trembled, his voice trembled, his temples were wet, as well as his hands, and snakes were ransacking his insides.

The telephone was just a step away, but, gratefully, Lu remained, inaccessible. Happiness was there, in the past that shouldn’t be disturbed. He murmured, “I don’t want the present; I don’t want to let go of happiness.”

The pencil in the air, his gaze on the screen with the day’s obituaries. Diurnal and nocturnal encounters and reencounters, accelerating his pulse and his mind.

The moment’s screen connects you instantly anywhere and transcribes your speaking or your silence. He could manage simple operations at the computer, and when he failed — that is, often — the rules went under. He couldn’t recuperate them; he’d lose the point of departure. It was the same with the driving; he’d be fine until the first mistake. Then the bewilderment would cancel his memory and instincts, and he became useless. He’d renounced the wheel but didn’t renounce shaving every morning, terrified that he might forget the routine, never to recover it again; it was the same with the tie, the terror, every time, that he’d forgotten how to tie the knot.

As usual, he’d awoken very early in the morning. The superb light of September. Bitter coffee, the abbreviated movements of coming back to life. Afterwards, he’d read Peter’s wanderings toward the Italian Gina Monteverdi, Tara’s aunt, and the felines that she’d borne.

He watched, stupefied, the gloves at the end of the table. He’d turned his face to the screen. Smoke, fire, panic. Horrified faces. The floors were crumbling. Apocalypse. The sky had become a giant cloud of smoke and flames, chasing the fire trucks and ambulances on the ground. Screams, blood, flames, the sky was on fire, while the sky outside Professor Gora’s window remained torpid, blue and free of scars.

Gora was at the window. Nothing was happening, the sky as undisturbed as at the beginning of the world, despite the world on the screen, which exploded with burning meteors. A cosmic alarm.

He hurried to the phone. Quickly, quickly, in just a few minutes contact with the earthlings will become impossible. His hands trembled, the receiver trembled.

“Yes, this is Dr. Koch. Ah, it’s you, Gusti. Yes, I’m answering, as you can see. Poor Dora fainted. Yes, I know, I heard, I’m watching everything on TV, just like you, just like the whole world. Yes, we’re okay. For now. Of course, for now. There’s nothing except for now. Yes, Lu’s fine, as well. Nearby, in her office. Alarmed, just like all of us. No, no more than that.”

The voice had ceased, and he had no one else to call. He sat back down and rearranged the sheets of paper.

The Obituary of the Planet. You no longer write with a pencil or a pen or with the cumbersome old typewriter, but on the screen of the world in flames. Fingers on the keyboard, letters on the screen, you’re alone, but connected to the world that — voila! — rushes into your sheltered place and, with a single thrust, dissipates all of your evasions, and solitude.

The terrorists had tired of the virtues and vices and garbage and splendor of this poor, passing world! Boredom, yes, pure and simple boredom. They just couldn’t stand the sins and pleasures of the world any longer. Determined to hurry Redemption, to accelerate the speed toward Paradise. Love! It was love they wanted, isn’t it? Absolute, perpetual, blind! The bent cross and the sickle and hammer and the bleeding half — moon defied human love, which was imperfect and ephemeral. Perpetual, blind and blinding love, this is what they promised. Perfection, magic, utopia. The meanness of the quotidian, the grunts of engorgement and sex, the haughtiness of wealth and disbelief needs to be destroyed! Haunting images: bending cross, sickle and hammer, star, half — moon, the golden calf and the mangy goat, the sacred and disabled infant, the rock of philosophy and the deaf — mute oracle, thrashing and adoring unto death and beyond it.

Immense steel wings in the burning sky. The September Bird coasts, golden sovereign and ferocious, above the hysterical anthill. In the steel belly, the captives.

The Monster smashed the Tower of Babel. Flames and smoke and spattered bodies in the black ether, over the cliff and waves of Babylon.

The wired news anchor repeated the details of the invasion, adding the latest breaking sound bites. Through the air were flying hands and heads, hats and wheelchairs, the red card of the watchmaker David Gapar, the briefcase of Officer Patrick, Dima’s encyclopedias, Avakian’s glasses, Detective Lonrot’s revolver, the brassiere of the siren Beatrice Artwein and the blind cat Gattino and the melancholic elephant Oliver; the yellow sheets from the yellow folder on Professor Gora’s desk flew, turning through the air, like some extraterrestrial kites. The funereal whirlwind unified and dissipated everything, nothing counted any longer, just the obituary.

The alchemists and wise men were right when they spoke of maladies and not just magic. The syndrome of the detour is love, my little one, that’s all and basta. Fin — ished! Vitality and melancholy to the delirious end. De — li — ri — ous, my child. Nothing else in the charts except for remembrance. Remembrance of love, the final flash, my dear Lu. That’s all that remains. Your husband, unable to reach his arms out to the lover who had been his wife, thinks only of you. “It was good for me in your aura; happiness hurt,” is what you wrote on the corner of a crumpled sheet of paper, after our first night. You disappeared so that the dawn could give us back the world. Those words are in me, letter by letter, the whirling script of the void.

“It was good for me in your aura; we’ll pay together.” Husband and wife know the danger of boredom; husband and lover know the spell and curse of the lure. We were all stammering, the blundering words of desire, its delirious powerlessness. In my cell of papyrus, the past is present and the present is an echo of the past.

The September Bird carries the message of love turned into hatred. Transfigured by love and hatred and blinded by piety, the pilots offer a gift of horror.

After Koch’s voice faded, Gora found himself alone again; Dima was far away, as well as Palade and Gapar and Larry One — Two — Three — Nine. He would have walked out into the street, to be among his kind, to receive the Apocalypse along with them, but he withdraws into his shell instead, away from people, away from the apocalypse.

The second coming of the Savior, Armageddon, the appearance of the Antichrist, the exit of the planet from its orbit, the return of the Imam, the First and Last, nuclear war. The asteroid of Damnation had hit, the meteor, the Cathedral of Planetary Transactions, where mystics, usurers and alchemists murmur, on their knees, every four minutes and fifty — three seconds, their eyes on the monetary diagrams, the same laconic and lewd prayer: money — money — money — money.

The professor sits down again in front of the flaming screen, takes out the immaculate, white folder. On the cover, large letters in blood: THE OBITUARY OF THE PLANETa.

8:45 A.M.:

Flight controllers in Boston intercept a voice in the cabin of Flight 11. “We have plans,” the voice announces in an uncertain but intelligible English. “Remain calm and you’ll be okay.” The plane turns and changes course for the Devil’s Metropolis.

8:46 A.M.:

An unidentified plane, with ninety — two passengers on board, slams into the grandiose edifice of globalization, the World Trade Center. The floors burn and the gasworks of the heating system explodes. Smoke fills the sky and covers the ground; the ants run, dazed, along the streets below.

9:05 A.M.:

The FBI is alerted. A second plane, with sixty — four passengers on board, slams into the World Trade Center, exploding on impact.

9:37 A.M.:

A Boeing 757 (American Airlines 77) penetrates three of the five concentric circles of the Pentagon, the Fortress of Power. The offices of the Martian God are in flames.

10:00 A.M.:

The North Tower of Babel collapses. One hundred ten floors.

10:10 A.M.:

The airports of the New World close. The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine denies its implication in the Massacre of the Infidels.

10:12 A.M.:

A new explosion at the Pentagon, the most secure building in the world.

10:15 A.M.:

The evacuation of the White House.

10:24 A.M.:

The South Tower of Babel collapses.

10:25 A.M.:

In Lebanon, Palestinians celebrate their victory over the Yankees.

10:35 A.M.:

Air Force One, carrying the president of the Satanic Superpower, makes a course for the presidential bunker, escorted by fifty fighter jets.

Five hours since Professor Gora had begun the first day of the rest of his life. He stared at the bookshelves, the white gloves on the table, the thick, red lips of the newscaster. Channels CNN, CBS, NBC, PBS, MSNBC, the cartoon networks, the sports channels, music and porn stations all transmit the same spectacle of the band Hero — stratus. The anthem of Purification, with lyrics by Yussuma — Osama Ben Laden.

The Babel Tower of Transaction, the Fortress of the Pentagon, the White House for the White Clown … is that all? And the Library?

Gora felt insulted. The planetary explosion in which he’d had the privilege of participating insulted him: he couldn’t stand being associated with the symbols of Money and Power. The band of nineteen daggers, the Herostratus Band, wasn’t worthy of the Great Ending! The knifemen didn’t know the Qur’an, and the fanatics didn’t speak the magnificent language of the Library.

Illiterates! The Library holds everything. The memories and projects of the world, the genius and madness of the loyal and the infidels, the Bible of the Jewish prophets and the Qur’an of your own Prophet, and the Testament of the crucified prophet, and Mein Kampf of the fool prophet and the Manifesto of the Marxist prophet. The decrees of the Inquisition and the Proclamation of the Rights of Man, the games of the child Mozart, and of the earless Van Gogh, Homer and Krishna and Confucius, Madame Bovary and Karenina and Mother Teresa, Cassius Clay and the Bucharest phone book of 1936. Everything, everything, even a volume of verses written by the adored Ben Laden, translated into the language of the adored William Shakespeare, the verses of Iosif Visarionovich Djugasvili and his rival Mao Zedong.

Everything comes from the Library, not from the Transnational Commerce Brothel, nor from the Citadel of Missiles or the Presidential Ranch.

Irritated, Gora shut off communication with the Apocalypse.

The planet’s necrologist needed Mynheer. He pulled from a drawer the sheets of paper where he’d jotted down notes about Peter’s meeting with Officer Murphy.

“Dima maintained that we live in a desanctified world,” Gasssssspar answered. The potbellied Patrick jumped out of his seat. “Oh, world where nothing is sacred, but the sacred hides in the profane,” continued Gasssssspar. “The world is full of churches, mosques, and synagogues. And I go to church,” the policeman murmured. “The religious state wants us all. There’s the rub. The rub becomes a bomb. The bomb will scatter us and make us sacred.”

He’d found the connection! He had to relate it urgently to the young ladies on the TV screen: the END. He waited with his red pencil in hand, he’d grabbed it again, to write in the margins of the page: Too simple, Peter! Old Man Dima was referring to transcendence, not just to God.

The band of sacred knives jubilated in the gong of the crime. Herostratus was the name of the unforgettable destroyer of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, the name of whose builder no one remembers! No one. Only the name of the destroyer lingers for centuries in the smeared memory of mortals. The Herostratus Band learned to pilot and destroy the plane, but they wouldn’t have known how to build it. Destruction, yes, is intoxication and exaltation and the great anthem sung by the troubadours of The End.

Gora noted, conscientiously, for posterity, the Chronology of The End.

10:43 A.M.:

A plane crashes in the industrial park near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

10:56 A.M.:

Yasser Arafat declares that his organization bears no responsibility in the disastrous events of this historic day.

11:14 A.M.:

The United Nations building is evacuated, and the Statue of Liberty hides in the smoke of explosions.

11:30 A.M.:

General Wesley Clark announces that the criminal action had been planned by the poet Ben Laden.

11:48 A.M.:

The Centers for Disease Control take precautionary measures in anticipation of a biological attack.

11:57 A.M.:

An anonymous phone call to the American consulate in Porto, threatening the explosion of the entire planet.

12:17 p.m.:

Disneyland closes its gates.

12:20 p.m.:

An unidentified individual claims responsibility, in the name of the Japanese Red Army, for the aerial attacks, revenge on the part of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the same time, on the phone line of the nationalist weekly

Al Wahdej,

a voice claims — in Arabic, with a Russian accent — the attack on the Twin Towers in New York.

12:25 p.m.:

The price of oil rises by two dollars per barrel on the world market.

12:26 p.m.:

Over the telephone, Mark Whening, the spokesman for the American embassy in Bucharest, thanks the Romanian authorities and citizens for their solidarity and excuses himself for not appearing in front of reporters, fearing an attempt on his life.

Professor Gora interrupts his transcription of the news at 12:27 P.M. He pours himself a glass of milk and, with the renewed thirst of the survivor, contemplates the white and refreshing liquid of genesis.

12:48 p.m.:

Ahmed Mitawakil, the Taliban Afghan minister of external affairs, rebuffs insinuations that the poet Yussuma Ben Laden instigated the massacre.

1:04 p.m.:

The political analyst Jonathan Eyal qualifies the event of the day as “the best — planned action of its kind in all of history.”

2:32 p.m.:

Two aircraft carriers appear in New York Harbor to preempt imminent attacks.

3:27 p.m.:

A possible attack on NATO headquarters in Brussels is announced.

^{3:35 p.m.:}

The military base in Aviano, Italy, declares itself ready for battle.

3:59 p.m.:

Air Force One directs its course toward Offutt, Nebraska, to the headquarters of Strategic Air Command. The White House announces that the First Lady of the United States and the two First Daughters are, thank God, sheltered safely.

Professor Gora feels suddenly overwhelmed by the presidential news and interrupts contact with the planet once more, exhausted. He lies down. He sleeps deeply, lost at sea, twisted in his sheets, unable to release himself from the conversation with Eva Gapar. From the first moment of the assault, Eva Kirschner — Gapar was in hysterics. She hadn’t heard from Peter in a long time. The wanderer had grown more and more distant, though there was no longer a distance that was distant enough; disaster finds you everywhere you go. Conceived at Auschwitz, Peter had plunged into the socialist den, then into the free madness of the free world. Now where would he close the circle?

Difficult to calm Eva down. Even more difficult to leave her without an answer. Professor Gora felt responsible. He’d been the only person with whom Eva had maintained contact since Peter had arrived in the New World. No, Peter wasn’t among the victims, dear Mrs. Gapar; after the madness of these days passes we’ll get some news from that fool Peter. All, yes all of us — his parents from the Carpathian paradise, Dr. Koch and his assistant Ludmila Sera — fim, her ex — husband Augustin Gora, Beatrice Artwein, and the Soviet man Boltanski — will have news from our good boy Peter.

True, he had a meeting that morning precisely at the World Trade Center. Unfortunately, precisely on that morning and precisely in that cursed building, Peter was to meet a lawyer who specialized in immigration, paid for by Professor Gora. The meeting had been scheduled many months in advance, before Peter’s disappearance. The meeting was with a famous and expensive lawyer.

However, this is not a fatal certainty, not at all. No one knows whether Peter went to the meeting. No one knows whether he even remembered, in his wanderings, the day and place, or whether he even cared about this bureaucratic disaster. Still, if he’d intended to keep the appointment, it couldn’t have been the first hour of the day. It was hard for Peter to wake up in the morning, as you well know, the Hotel Esplanade was far away from the grandiose World Trade Center, the meeting would have been around lunchtime.

There was a favorable new premise, as well. Half an hour ago it was announced, via trustworthy sources, that the sons and daughters of the Chosen People had been forewarned the night before not to find themselves in or around the Babel Towers on the morning of the great manipulation. Naturally, a manipulation: the demonstration we all watched is, in fact, a staging of considerable proportions. Those nineteen actors are, in reality, agents of CIA special forces, trained in the Arab language and the Islamic tradition. Herostratus, the code name of the operation, was chosen by a star Harvard graduate, Samuel Knish, the leader of the project. His parents had been assassinated when he and his twin sister were five years old. They’d lived in an isolated village on the Lebanese border. Samuel was now a historian of Antiquity, obsessed with the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem, which was why he’d christened the band of knifemen Herostratus, the name of the infamous Greek arsonist.

Well, okay, so not one of 2,974 victims of the massacre comes from among the Chosen People. Not one! You’re right. The Almighty repaid those who recognized him first and those with whom he closed the Sacred Covenant. If there were still a few sacrifices among them, it was merely due to negligence … yes, there were some.

Professor Gora sees, in his sleep, the planetary screen, as he describes to Eva the figures from his electronic mail: 246 victims in the hijacked planes that exploded; 2,603 in New York, in the World Trade Center and on the ground; 125 in the Pentagon of Power. At 8:45 a.m. there were 7,400 civilians in the Towers of Babel; other sources say 14,154. Those who were under the area of impact were promptly evacuated, others died under the ruins, some ran toward the roof, but access was blocked and they threw themselves into the emptiness. Hundreds of firemen also died, in the heroic rescue operation. None of those sacrificed, I repeat, not one was among the coreligionists of Peter! You’re right, it’s not just the hand of the Almighty looking for redemption after Auschwitz but also the solidarity of those who’ve learned that they need to rely on themselves, as you say.

Peter and his coreligionists are alive and unscathed in the City on the Moon, as he used to call the metropolis of exiles. It was because of him, I’m sure, that Tara, Deste, Mrs. Monteverdi, and her adorable cats also escaped. When they decided to accompany him, he warned them, I’m sure of it. Peter is a frivolous and unreliable scatterbrain with a generous soul, warm like bread fresh out of the oven.

Of course, there will be unpleasant consequences for Peter, as well as those young ladies, but it won’t be death. Peter called the witch with the scythe “The Nymphomaniac,” and he played hide — and — seek with her. He said often that here, in America, he will dominate the game. He led the cannibal astray this time as well, you can be sure of it.

What happened today marks the beginning of the new millennium of suspicion and guilt. Inevitably, the infantile college prank that Deste allowed herself to make will become, unfortunately, more suspect than it was already. There will be investigations, important personalities will be summoned, such as Atatürk and Borges, but also the college president Avakian and Professor Anteos and Ms. Tang and the student Tara Nelson. Even more likely, Deste Onal and her husband who was now in Austria, the family exiled in Germany, relatives in Sarajevo and the former Ottoman Empire, and even Peter, yes, Peter Gapar and his cousin Lu, Dr. Koch, the Soviet Boltanski, the Italian Beatrice Artwein, and I wouldn’t be surprised, not at all surprised if even Professor Gora were to be included in the parade of suspects.

The day had grown long, and he couldn’t sleep. Gora tossed and turned, moaning until, at last, he woke up. His absence would not be tolerated in this nonstop staging of the apocalypse. The news of the assault repeated itself and multiplied on that fatal day, and the day that followed, and after, a single and often prolonged day, grandiose and endless.

In the superb twilight, the city was speechless, silent. Long convoys of pedestrians were heading home. Stiffened subways. The sadness and discipline syndrome, solidarity and horror, unified the city dwellers who’d been so hurried and disparate the day before. How was it possible not to suspect everyone? And how could no one anticipate the disaster that a suspect hunt will lead to?

Professor Gora had an ever — increasing need for an interlocutor. The room had shrunken; the tenant had shrunken.

The meeting with Eva Gapar had been long. He spoke to her at length, she listened like a deaf — mute, barely out of the crematorium. He wasn’t at all sure that he’d diminished her panic. Nor would it have been normal for him to succeed in doing so. He was glad to return to his routine interlocutors.

Books, yes, that’s my refuge, dear Eva. Do you remember when Peter gradually began to prefer books over basketball? David, his father, was still a valid and lucid man then, not an invalid in an asylum, desperate and frantic over Peter’s metamorphosis. And with good reason. He was ever more bizarre, isolated, hungry for books. Peter wasn’t the same; no one remains the same after such an astral initiation.

Who’d heard of a death threat through a quotation from a book? What kind of person beats his brains to find out the code, and only after that, welds something together, ever to be haunted by inescapable phantoms? A code of the sect … The sect of readers sent our friend the encrypted missive, through a girl who also reads a few books herself. Sign of recognition and esteem and alarm. A quotation, find it and awaken it and unravel it, if you can! The threat didn’t come from the Nymphomaniac but from the cult, unless the Nymphomaniac is actually the cult’s deity. Peter had suffered not just from fear and loneliness but because he also belonged to the cult. He wanted, at any price, to decode the message. It was a matter of honor and pride.

We’re like dogs, dear Eva. We sniff each other and we instantly recognize each other in the language of citations and charades. Poor Peter couldn’t identify the source of the quotation! You could laugh yourself to death thinking about death’s invitation to an idle chat. The literary reference was within him, but in the language of his youth. He couldn’t transfer or locate it in the vocabulary of his new age. Youth was forever reminding him that it was never returning, no matter what he did.

In the end, I helped him, not only because you asked me in weekly letters to keep you posted on his progress after the breakup with Lu but because, at some point, that quotation became a mark on my calendar. I wasn’t a know — it — all, as Peter said, but I had lived that quotation, not only memorized it. I used to frequent a group of students for whom literature and readings had become the supreme drug. We looked endlessly for hidden meanings in the texts. Tyranny stimulates the necessity for hiding and esoteric dialogue. In the dubious loft of the dubious readers, the books that were discussed were hard to procure, old, and new, filled with codes and mysterious symbolisms. It was there that I first encountered the story Death and the Compass, from which, decades later, the enchanting student from Sarajevo would extract her citation death threat.

A coincidence spanning countries and seas and meridians! Who could have imagined it, outside of the devotees themselves?

Here on free turf, the sect is somewhat reduced, naturally, lacking the necessary nerve to spy and pry, but even here, exiles and sleepers in search of the North Star wade to their navels in the subterranean and supercelestial black holes of the esoteric. Palade and his great schoolmaster Dima and even Augustin Gora wrote about this enigmatic and overevaluated story that drove the playful Deste to distraction.

I knew the quotation by heart. Translated in all the languages of the world. That’s the truth, always simpler than we suppose.

I pulled Peter out of one labyrinth and threw him into a deeper one. “I know what the Greeks didn’t know,” declared the blind man from Buenos Aires. Uncertainty. I made the mistake to relate these words to Peter. After I indicated the source of the citation, the uncertainty grew. Peter made the connection with Palade’s assassination and Dima’s obscure past, in which the esoteric had played a fatal role. It was as if he were again living in the captivity of socialism or the terror of the swastika — branded archangels, haunted by ubiquitous shadows with impeccable eyes and ears and weapons. It was fortunate that the hell he’d entered had lasted only little while. Soon enough, the mystery was deflated. The death threat had been the game of a child! But the farce had hurt Peter deeply and had sent him into the great American emptiness.

Yes, there will be consequences, acts of vengeance and arrests and sieges. Maybe that’s why Peter’s reappearance is so late in coming; he’s waiting for things to settle. Either way, he is alive. And whatever unpleasant repercussions he may have to confront, they can’t compete with today’s massacre.

Today, today, today, repeated Gora in front of the screen that day and the days that followed, unified in the same, long and exhausting day.

So, dear Mrs. Kirschner, our dearest Peter had entered the game initiated by the pretty Bosnian, along with Tara and Avakian and Anteos. They will be investigated, naturally, like so many others, Muslims or Greeks or Armenians or Russians or refugees of all kinds — and, believe me, also Americans.

Days and nights pass quickly, months and years and also we mortals, but the attack of the September Bird continues, a bizarre astronomical paradox. Weeks and months and seasons in a single, dilated, and damned day.

Maybe you’ve heard, dear Eva, of the formidable Margarete, also known as Margot. American, not Iraqi or Iranian. Margot H. survived the disaster and found out that her fiance, David, had lost his life in the explosion. Traumatized, she decided not to let herself be defeated, but instead to put her American energy in service to the Cause. She arrives at the front of the Association of the Babel Towers Survivors, asks for and receives support from senators and bankers, from television networks and from philanthropic organizations. Her story reaches the anguished souls of the mourners, soothing their unsoothable pain. She’d lived through horrific scenes among corpses, had smelled burned skin, had seen human bits flying through the air. In the last moments she was thinking, naturally, about her fiance, David, about her wedding dress and their wedding vows. A fireman brought me out in his arms, the unhappy widow Margot would explain, recovered from the other world. He handed me over to someone else, who started to carry me toward the ambulance. We didn’t make it that far. We crouched under a truck, he covered me with his large, benevolent body, explained the faus — tian Margarete of the softened planet. The air was burning, we couldn’t see anything, I breathed through his gas mask, until help arrived. America and the world listened to her, petrified and tearing and drawing courage from her courageous words. She wouldn’t admit defeat, she fought with herself and destiny, to win and to help her kind win.

Only the words were strange, dear Eva. Heard so often and in various circumstances. Tired old cliches, in contrast to a circumstance so acute, personal, and extreme. Language, however, is everything, in the end! Style makes the man, as we’ve learned. Suspicion wasn’t too far behind, however, and it was discovered that the brave Margarete, with a burn extended over her entire left arm, wasn’t in New York on September 11, but in Spain, where she was studying at a Catalan university.

She conceived her narrative, with great care, about a year after Black September. David had, indeed, perished, even though he was among the chosen people. He’d been overlooked by the team conducting the secret rescue mission the night before. David’s poor family, however, had been warned through a special channel, though they declared to the cameras of justice and postcards that they knew of no such rescue conspiracy, and that they’d never heard of the famous Margarete. The first affirmation might make us doubt the second, had there not existed irrefutable evidence of the fantasy readily exploited by the impostor, and not for the first time.

This is the garden of the One and Only God. Full of the many and the varied. Multiple world, multiplying itself in the air and on the ground, as our friend Palade used to say. Multiple worlds in the garden of our Unique and Singular Master.

In the days and nights and months that followed, the anchorite Gora was in dire need of an interlocutor. There were so many things left to debate and discuss, and he grew weary of discussing them only with himself. And Eva’s silence depressed him.

On the table, the immense album A Day in the Life of America had been replaced with a pile of books about the rabbi Paul of Tars, the exile who sowed discord everywhere he went, like the rebel prophets before and after him. Propaganda and agitation for the unification of the world under a single banner! All will be admitted equally, the converts of the new, singularly valid religion. Let them accept that singular religion, let them form a column in the army of that singular religion. Jesus addressed only his own place and tribe, without ambitions to convert anyone; he was candid and holy, like the legendary idiot Mishkin and like Alyosha Karamazov and their brothers from other legends. Globalized modernity redeems itself from Paul.

The infidels are left behind and, heaven have mercy on them, they teach us about Lenin and Mao Zedong and all the ayatollahs and Fascist fervor. Was the poet Yussuma — Osama the new Saint Paul who decrees who is chosen and who is damned? The terrorists, the deaf — mutes follow his instruction, as if under hypnosis: tear down the sinful world to establish the Absolute and to shorten the road to Paradise.

Lost fools! Sin doesn’t lie hidden in the Pentagon or in the World Trade Center but in the Library! The poems of Yussuma rest alongside the immodest Beats and the Qur’an of the Ayatollah and the Epistles of Paul, neighbors to Einstein, Karl Marx’s Manifesto, Mein Kampf, and Dante. Imperial cookbooks are near the manuals for decoding dreams in 888 languages and dialects of the world. War and commerce are nothing but games, in the labyrinth of games that animates the apathy of our kind.

This is what I’m up to, dear Eva, I’m conversing with the solitary Yussuma and with Paul the exile, while waiting for a telephone call from our dear Peter. Peter Gapar, not the Apostle Peter.

I spent the last few nights in useless controversies with the Apostle Peter and Saint Tara and the Apostle Paul from Cilicia, from the Greek Diaspora. I wanted to find out what would have happened if Peter from Galilee had won the dispute instead of Paul the Greek Jew.

What if is another game we use to kill time and boredom, the disease that spares no one, not even the Almighty, and which catapulted the nineteen knifemen in the belly of the September Bird. What if is the code of the sect that raises and devours libraries. The shelves are full of bibles and war manuals, legends of ants and dragons, maps of the sky, philatelic classifications, and the dialects of the world.

Eva Gapar rested during Gora’s long, afternoon naps. Now he was awake and protected again in the fortress of his books.

The groggy professor was thinking about libraries and books. And words. Saramago’s scribe was rewriting Portugal’s history with a single word; Shakespeare’s kings reign in the mind of the playwright; Dante exiled the pope of his time to the Inferno, like a merchant of spiritual goods; Napoleon becomes an understudy in a musical comedy, in the reviews of Tolstoy; Roth sits the Hitler — phile Lindbergh in Roosevelt’s presidential armchair; the sacred verses become satanic in the games of the infidel Rushdie; the atomic button ignites the word Start. Mynheer was born in The Magic Mountain of a book; Paul and Peter live the pages of the Evangelicals; the prophet Yussuma resides in the Qur’an and in the half — moon of the Holy War. Our dear Peter’s misfortune also started with books; I plunged him into the complicated biography and bibliography of the Old Man, an addict intoxicated by books, rattled by the library in flames, watching books and ages dissolve into the ether. I couldn’t forget this when I was summoned to unmask the erudite Dima for the sins that deserved to be unmasked, but I also never forgot the millions of Jesus Christs burnt in crematoriums, together with the books they carried in their souls, nor the rabbi Yehoshua of Nazareth, who carried in himself a book and provoked the writing of a thousand others.

I’m convinced that Peter Gapar is alive, but I don’t ignore his mother’s unease. She asks me, weekly, if I know anything about the fate of her disappeared son. Lu spoke to me often about Eva Kirschner — Gapar at the time when we ourselves were discussing the possibility of having a son. Even while irradiated by amorous affection, I didn’t avoid hard questions. Peter Gapar embodied a revival after death for the couple Eva and David Gapar; why shouldn’t our own progenitor be the seal of the enlightenment that had been given to us?

The nickname “Mynheer” came from a book and from a parody he himself imagined; the death threat named an author who had proclaimed himself the high priest of the library. Today’s and yesterday’s and tomorrow’s terrorists follow the words in books that they imagine were written by the Great Anonymous One. What are those poor offices of commercial transaction compared to the Temple of the Word? Nothing but vulgar and childish diversions! The grand adventures are all produced in the great, silent halls where Love invents codes of refuge, in science and lyricism and navigation, gastronomy and astronomy. Traces of ether and blood stain the pages of manuals and epistles gathered over the millennia; the recent invention of the little screen of offers and laconic dialogue also had its origins in the Library.

The days and nights that followed the days and nights after September 11, 2001, found Gora captivated by the same dialogue with the void.

There was day and night and the second day and the days and weeks and following seasons, the endless day and night of uncertainty.

The evening was darkening, and the light vibrated through the peaceful landscape in the window. The earth continued to turn on its axis and around the sun that was setting, melancholy; Lu’s gloves and the books on the shelf were in their places, alive, as ever.

Professor Gora waited, every day, for the assault on the Library. His library and all the libraries of the world. A simultaneous, decisive assault on all libraries, the likes of which would make the assault on the Towers of Transactions and Rockets seem like poor improvisations. A historic day, engraved in red and black.

The phone wasn’t working or the subscriber wasn’t answering on the historic day and the historic night, or any others. Once, at 11 o’clock in the evening, I managed to reach him.

“I’m all right,” the professor said softly.

He wasn’t expecting me to call, although he’d called me so many times with regard to Gapar and Marga Stern. He’d told me about Eva Gapar’s letters and about the hourly succession on September 11, 2001, hours he knew by heart, about Saint Paul and Saint Peter and Yussuma Ben Laden and about the target that all the stupid and illiterate terrorists had missed: the Library.

I had prepared a piquant history about Lu and Michael Stolz. I had to postpone it, I was taking advantage of Gora’s unexpected loquacity.

“It just so happens that farce precedes tragedy and not the other way around, as Marx thought. I’m thinking about the letter Peter received and about Borges’ story.”

I let him summarize the chain of events once again. I promised him I’d call him soon, so we could try a normal conversation, on a more normal day.

The following conversation opened, as I’d planned, with information about Stolz and Lu. It seemed like my only chance to draw him out of the solitude that followed the shock. I began abruptly. He was listening, quietly, without reaction, as if it were an anecdote about people unknown to him. He didn’t ask how I’d come across all of those details. He then allowed himself some predictable questions.

“A party?”

“An anniversary. A pretext. In Long Island, at the house of a couple who ran a banker’s club. The man, a former pilot, had deserted to the Occident. First Belgium, then America. He’d managed, through political pressure, to bring his wife, who was a gym trainer. Repurposed in America as a fashion designer. They ran the club together, and they used it when it was empty. The party took place on a day like that. During the period after the great assault. During and after natural disaster instincts intensify. Sometimes, to the point of hysterics. Lu had been a high school classmate of Raluca’s, the gym trainer, and Stolz had come with a superb, young African woman who captivated all the gazes in the room. Lu arrived late, with Dr. Wu, a colleague at Koch’s office. The atmosphere was already heightened, but no one suspected that it would come to a swingers’ party.”

Gora was listening, but he wasn’t asking for details.

“The flirting intensified, three of the couples exchanged partners, in the end. When she left with Stolz, Lu gave the young Dr. Wu, dazed by Raluca, a short wave.”

Professor Gora wasn’t asking for details.

Professor Gora didn’t seem impressed by the excess of the insinuations.

If he wasn’t just faking, if he’d actually become indifferent with regard to Lu’s present, Gora had given me good news.

The great city had pastoral suburbs. A solemn petrifaction. Ashen squirrels, the red cat. The crows, pompous procession of wild turkeys. The deer among the brush.

The forest had overrun the previous night, white, snowbound, and it was advancing even now, from all sides. The branches were shaking, the white powder fell furiously from the tall trees, stuck into the ground that was also advancing closer and closer, then retreating.

The forest was far away, along the horizon, then again it grew near, approaching, white, frozen. Just as in a silent movie. There was no rustling, nothing. The branches were prostrating themselves, agitated, ready to snap, the wind was whipping the flake powder, but no sound could be heard. A morbid silence, then movement. The bizarre came and couldn’t come to an end.

Now, in the first hours of the morning, the trees were solemn, unmoving. The crows were landing and taking off among the restless squirrels. That was all, nothing more, beyond the window of the mute house, not a sound, not even the slightest rustling. Nothing could be heard, not the cars that passed on the road, nothing.

Professor Gora wasn’t and had never been a part of the landscape. That was what he’d felt in his former country, all the more so in the new terrain, a lost intruder in unconscious nature.

He was looking around differently from the year before. More attentively to what exists and what will continue to exist after the viewer will disappear, along with the generation of squirrels and crows and supple, stupid deer that populate the meadow. The forest will still be here, just like the river that has flowed through the valley for ages. He’d have been a perishable embodiment in the forests of his former country, as well, the guinea pig of an implacable moment. The traces of his terrestrial trajectory will diminish until they disappear completely. He hadn’t left behind any children or grandchildren. Even if he’d wanted to, posterity wouldn’t have modified its flows and cycles. He’d detected the code of limits.

Banal melancholy! Instanced by a telephone message, that was it!

“The Nuclear Magnetic Resonance results say that the arteries are blocked. Sixty to seventy percent. It wouldn’t be bad, at your age. I, however, am skeptical. It could be worse than that. Let’s check. The age of the patient requires precaution.”

“Any age,” Dr. Bar — El added immediately. Age, again! Koch had said the same thing. His old friend from school. He’d asked him if he’d ever had a cardiac exam.

“No, not recently. The last one was about eight years ago. Then I exchanged the doctor with the dyed hair for a taciturn female doctor. She said it wasn’t necessary.”

“At your age, it’s a good thing to do. I’ll send you to a good cardiologist,” Koch had decided. “He has naturally colored hair. And he’s not taciturn. He’s Israeli, however.”

“These guys are obligated to think fast.”

“At your age you need fast doctors. I’m not much of one. For us in the old country, there wasn’t much of a hurry.”

And that was how the comedy of old age began.

Youth and the places of long ago truly had a different rhythm. Many years had passed since Isidor Koch listened to the confession of his benchmate Augustin Gora. Not in the room where they did their homework together, but in the large basement, full of wine bottles and old leather armchairs belonging to the Koch family. Izy, as people called Isidor, opened his eyes wide, stupefied.

“What? You want to love the Chosen People? Have you lost your senses? It’s the Disease of Puberty … Are you in love with the people who crucified Jesus? Isn’t that what you say? We crucified him and will pay for the sin, in time everlasting, they say. You want to trade one legend for another?”

“If it’s a legend, I can trade it however I want. I thought we’d decided never to use ‘you,’ ‘us,’ ‘them,’ anymore … Jesus, yes, loved his people. The Romans had an interest in his execution … maybe the Jews, too, though I don’t think so. They didn’t accept him as the Messiah, they preferred to keep waiting. They chose an incomplete, open thought. Idolatry is a fixed idea; this is idolatry. But you don’t understand what I’m saying.”

“I don’t understand, and it’s better that way,” Izy had said.

“You don’t know anything, you haven’t read anything. I’m for Peter, not for Paul.”

Izy was silent, stone still, as if he were hearing Chinese.

“Peter said that you can’t be Christian if you were never a Jew.”

“Okay, you can get circumcised. A slashed prick … wait, I’ll show you.”

Izy made a gesture as if he were about to open his fly. Gusti pushed him, disgusted, sending the little Izy staggering.

“The Apostle Paul was an activist. He wanted to spread the movement, to internationalize it. Workers of the world, unite! I’m with Peter.”

“You’re an idiot, that’s what you are. You trade one fable for another, you’ve admitted. You’ll get over it, your lordship. You’ve had other fits like this. You wanted to be Oblomov, Don Quixote. That Dutchman, Peeperkorn.”

“Who am I, Izy? I’m nobody.”

“You’re an outstanding student. The best in the whole school.”

“Nonsense! A cliche. The obedient boy who always does his homework on time.”

“You don’t even do it all the time. You want something special? You’re my friend, that’s something special. You, the outstanding student, are friends with the lazy, fat kid in the house. Izy, the accordionist.”

“Your kind is different, Izy.”

“You said we’re going to avoid saying ‘you,’ ‘they,’ ‘we.’ ”

“You’ve suffered. I’m obsessed with the mystique of suffering.”

“Ah … you want me to crucify you? I’ll train, I promise you, I’ll become the most valiant kid in class, in the whole school, I’ll get to work, I’ll prepare the cross, the nails, the crown of thorns.”

“You’re the incurable idiot, not me. A real ox, that’s what you are, Izy. That’s it, we’ll talk when you’ve evolved a bit more and can vote.”

Thousands of years had passed, Dr. Koch has been able to vote for a long time, the joke was long forgotten. The patient still remembered it right before the great exam.

“What cardiologist are you sending me to? What’s his name? El — Al?”

“No, it’s not an airline company. Bar — El. Rhymes with El — Al. Bar — El.”

Dr. Bernard Bar — El was a tall, brown — haired man. Elegant, efficient. He was quick on his feet, immediately scheduled an appointment for the exam. The Russian technician was also elegant and polite. He measured Gora’s tension, his pulse attentively, performed the electrocardiogram, injected the colorful substance into his vein. After a half an hour, treadmill. Berni Bar — El was holding the cardiac patient’s hand, watching the monitor.

“Good, good, go on. How’s it feel? Can you keep going?”

“Yes, I can.”

Just when you think you’re giving your soul, and you’re all out, the doctor taps you on the shoulder. “Okay, okay, we’ll stop here.”

He hadn’t given his all, he wasn’t expecting the interruption. “Have you had any chest pain recently? Shortness of breath, sharp pain?”

“No, nothing. Just the stomach. I went to see Dr. Koch.”

“Dr. Koch sent me the endoscopy and the colonoscopy results. Your stomach is perfectly normal.”

’But the patient has one foot in the grave,’ we joke in my country. My stomach is killing me. Koch changed the medication several times. In vain. I have a monster in my guts.”

“Okay, we’ll figure it out. Now, we need an NMR for the heart. Quickly. I don’t know if insurance will cover that. Are you prepared to pay for it if necessary?”

“If necessary, if it’s urgent … ”

“Seven to eight hundred dollars. I’ll call the hospital right away.”

The patient finds himself at the hospital in an hour. The benevolent black receptionist looked down the list, attentively, right away. “Gora, yes, Augustin Gora.”

After two days, Bar — El calls. Unsatisfied by the investigation.

“I don’t believe the results. I want to double check. The age of the patient requires precaution. Any age, for that matter. I’m going to schedule you for an angiogram. Call me and we’ll arrange the appointment.”

That was the morning message.

The beautiful winter landscape knew nothing about Bar — El. A photogenic stoniness, grandeur. The professor was watching the woods. Nearby on the couch, the large, heavy album A Day in the Life of America, HarperCollins Publishers. Blue cover. A black rider with a black hat, a black horse, and a white half — moon, against the night’s blue sky. Underneath, We are frenzied and happy and hopeful. We are zealots and zanies and high school kids just starting to wonder what the world is all about. That was how the Yankees described themselves, with humor. The album of his new family.

The symbolic photograph, a blonde girl and a blond boy, dressed in white, dance, holding each other, with their eyes closed, transfigured. This is May 2,1986.

Where was I on May 2, 1986? Lu was in our former country, Peter Peeperkorn on a page in a German novel, the future patient Gora knew nothing about the blocked arteries or about angioplasty.

Gusti Gora and Izy Koch remained friends even after the mysterious meeting in the basement. The controversy continued, Izy increasingly more irritated, Gora increasingly more bullheaded about the possibility, which he’d grown bored of justifying.

“Love isn’t necessary, Gusti,” Koch was saying, “We don’t need love, listen to me. In our madness, it’s what we’re always waiting for. Love. To be loved, imagine that! After ages of hate and disorienta — tion, the world will suddenly love us. Love your neighbor better than yourself? Your neighbor! Yes, I understand … but you can’t love your neighbor better than you love your own skin. It’s a lie. Never more than yourself. It isn’t possible. And if it’s possible, it’s too much. Why should they love us? Because we’re better, more beautiful? Impeccable? We’re not. So then, let them leave us alone. That’s all, that’s all! You hear? That’s all! Let them stop asking us to be better, more beautiful, impeccable. That’s all! We don’t need love, Gusti.”

Gusti was walling himself into the mountain. Soon after, he’d given up the disputes with Izy, or with anyone else, on the subject. When conflicts appeared on the taboo theme, or jokes about the side curls or the traditional insults, he’d simply leave the room. He’d go through years of school that way, and for a long time afterward, when, an assistant at the university, he frequented an attic where there were heated debates about the most heated questions in the world. Lu was never to discover her husband’s juvenile obsession with the Apostle Peter, and Isidor Koch, was, by then, far away.

At the end of high school, Izy signed up for the Institute of Physical Culture and Athletics, no more, no less! Gora was stupefied. Koch had become a champion weight thrower, weightlifter, and rower. Isidor Koch, an athlete?! This wasn’t the image by which his people had gained their renown and antipathy. And, as if the exotic choice weren’t exotic enough, Izy had chosen Cluj, the capital of Transylvania, as the place where he would pursue his study.

“This program exists here, too. Why would you go so far away?”

“People are more serious there. I’m fed up with the jokes people make about me, as well as the jokes I make myself. And besides, there’s the unknown to consider! Anonymity! Just think, a place where no one knows you!”

Gora was smiling. Cluj was much smaller than Bucharest, the anonymity would evaporate fairly quickly. But he didn’t contradict the athlete, he just thought about his friend affectionately.

After a year, Izy came back home. Not for his studies, but for his departure. He’d been claimed by a wealthy uncle in Venezuela, he was abandoning the socialist paradise.

“Our Max has become an oil tycoon! Heaps of money. Remember that. When you want to escape, I will buy your freedom. Don’t expect a wealth of correspondence, but you will have my address very soon.”

The address from Caracas came late, on a spectacular postcard. A few words, “Here’s my address and my hello. Yours, as ever, your Holiness!”

Gora would send him regular bits of information about their classmates’ evolution, with no allusion to the Homeland or to Venezuela. No answer. After a few years, he received a photograph. Isidor Koch, in medical school, holding a tennis racket, near a group of supple, smiling young women. The address on the back was that of a studio apartment he’d bought in Caracas, near the university. Then, after graduation, a photograph from New York. The wedding: Isidor Koch and Isabel Motola. An elegant synagogue, elegant grooms, elegant attendants. On the back, some brief words about the bride, a doctor as well, American, the daughter of a renowned rheumatolo — gist. “Today at our wedding on Fifth Avenue, my old friend Augustin Gora was also present. His place is here. Write to me.”

Gora didn’t respond. Correspondence with the outside could diminish his already uncertain chances of obtaining a passport.

He didn’t look for Koch immediately when he arrived in New York. He wasn’t ready for that meeting, there was too much to recapitulate, many things that couldn’t even be recapitulated. Izy would have found Lu’s refusal to follow him very irritating. In the letter where he’d described their first meeting, Gora had outlined her beauty, her intelligence, refinement without mentioning her ethnicity. Izy didn’t ask any questions. No, he wasn’t ready to convince Dr. Koch that the ethnicity hadn’t determined his choice, nor had it been the thing that destroyed their marriage … or that the separation from her hadn’t shaken his convictions.

When Peter Gapar appeared, Professor Gora intervened, nevertheless, and asked Koch to hire his former wife. Izy responded with a long silence, waiting for details, didn’t get them, the silence continued, but he hired Madam Gora.

Gusti kept postponing the meeting with his former classmate and friend, under various pretexts. Koch understood, it seemed, that there were coded dilemmas at work, he didn’t insist. They agreed, during one of their rare telephone conversations, never to speak of it again. They’d kept their word until the September Bird invaded. He’d called to find out if Lu was all right, the most important piece of news that day. Then, silence. Then, the monster in his stomach appeared, and he needed a doctor. Had Izy become just like all the doctors in America, good interpreters of computers and statistics but not of patients? Otherwise he’d never have resisted the competition, Gora told himself on his way to the office of his former classmate.

“And where are you from,” the cab driver asked.

“From the Balkans. And yourself?”

“From the Soviet Union.”

“It’s big. The Soviet Union is a big place.”

“Well, ‘the Balkans’ are no village, either. I’m from the Soviet Union.”

The driver had been recommended to him by Peter, long before his disappearance. Gapar had told him, “He’s from our youth.”

“Boltanski isn’t a Lithuanian or Kyrgyz name.”

“I’m a Soviet. That’s what I was, that’s what I’ve remained. I understand you’re going to the doctor.”

“Yes, a former schoolmate.”

“From the Balkans?”

“From the Balkans. He’s helping me find the specialist I need. And you, what did you do in the Soviet Union?”

“The army. I was in the army. The Red Army.”

“With that name?”

“With this name. Israel Lyova Boltanski. In officer training there were two of us. Out of four thousand students. Good marks, they had no choice. I’ve remained a Soviet. If a friend calls me at two in the morning and needs me, I’m there. No matter how tired, no matter how sick. And I’m sick. Kidneys destroyed. In your wonderful America I worked the first ten years driving a truck. A giant truck. Day and night. I know their doctors. They ask you about your insurance instead of your illness. What insurance do you have? We’re just numbers. Digits, statistics. No, sir, we’re very sorry, the doctor doesn’t accept this form of insurance, we’re sorry. Yankee politesse. Business! The salvation of this country.”

“How do you mean?”

“The economy! It maintains the rot. Greed and cunning, the wealthy getting wealthier, the lies of the politicians, the gossip on the TV. Democracy is a bigger lie than the hammer and sickle.”

“You really think so?”

“I do. You need millions of dollars to become a senator. You beg for those millions from others, and then you return the favors. A single salvation: the economy. The manipulation of human defects! It maintains the rot. Work, business, money. Exploitation to the point of blood. If the boss wants, you’re done in two minutes’ notice. You lose your medical coverage, then your house, car, everything. So then you are careful not to lose those things. You work like a slave and slavery becomes dear to you. Where I come from, when you say something about the government, you’d say, “the motherfucking government.” Here they say God bless America! The mania of work. You work like an animal, to the half — hour before they take you to the cemetery.”

“So why did you come here?”

“Eh … for the children. For the children, as the story goes. A boy and a girl. We do everything for them. They have no idea and they don’t care. We work like mad, my wife and I. To give them everything, so they can have everything. A soulless generation, mister … My daughter, dear heart. Little Sofia. Sofia Boltanska. Boltanskaia. A college student. Beautiful, intelligent, spoiled, elegant, everything you want. This summer she’s going to a seminar at Syracuse University! She found God knows what on the Internet. Summer courses at Syracuse University. ‘You’re going to leave us now?’ I ask her. ‘Your mother doesn’t know what else to do for you, so that everything’s washed, ironed, starched, folded to perfection. And what about me, my little Sofia? How can you be so far away from me for the whole month?’ ‘A month, Papa?’ she says. ‘What’s a month? We’ll talk on the phone, Papa, we’ll talk on the phone.’ You hear that? The phone! I bet over email, too!”

Dr. Izy Koch had aged, but his memory was intact and he never forgot to let you know.

“You’ve arrived where you should have arrived a long time ago. I sent you the address, just as I’d promised, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you sent it to me.”

“And I updated it whenever it changed. Isn’t that right?”

“That’s right.”

“You buckled! The apathy numbed you. Decades. Decades wasted.”

Gora was quiet, smiling. He was looking at Dr. Koch’s immaculate lab coat, his small gold — rimmed glasses, his white, disheveled hair, his burgundy tie, the blue shirt, large, hairy hands. He looked and smiled and said nothing.

“I hope you kept the secret. Our secret from the basement.”

“I kept it.”

“You didn’t make any public declarations of fidelity to the socialist Utopia and the socialist terror, you didn’t betray the multitudes of gaping mouths, you didn’t sign any declarations of surrender. You did none of those things, isn’t that right?”

“No, I didn’t do any of those things.”

“And you didn’t provide any secret information to the police? Tell me you didn’t. I’ve heard that informants were everywhere, and that it was very difficult not to become one of them. You’ll have to recount it all sometime, won’t you? Now we’re going to go into the office, to see if you have the same body. We’ll deal with the soul another time.”

In his office Koch was meticulous, turning the patient over on all sides.

“We’ll take care of the stomach, but I don’t think that’s the only thing.”

And that was how Gora arrived at Dr. Bar — El. After the stress test and the NMR, he called Izy once again. For the angiogram Bar — El had referred him to Edward Hostal, an Australian doctor.

“Born and raised in Australia. A wanderer just like us. A great, great doctor. You’re in very good hands. Small, but good hands. I know him. Not to worry!”

“And … just as we discussed. Not a word to her!”

“My dear Gora, how long have we known each other? We know what a secret means.”

We know and we rediscover, every day, until death’s bludgeon wakes us.

The treadmill is connected to the heart — rate monitor and to the pulse of the soul. Abruptly, the red warning light. Alarm. The gong announces the countdown. Eyes wide open to the vicinity, to see clearly what it is, will soon no longer see anything. The dead squirrel in front of the house, the rotted tree. The wear of the living, the inevitable that annuls everything that was, as if it had never been.

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 Gapar 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 Gapar … 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.

Gapar 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.

Now he was entering another phase of solitude. In his recovery bed, the exile tally doesn’t soothe him: he’d published exegeses of medieval Spanish and French literature, essays about Latin American prose, research on popular mythology and the folklore of totalitarian states, he’d taught at major universities. It seemed to him that he was perpetuating a simulacrum.

He admired America; its contradictions and fatuousness didn’t bother him. He had no hope of setting roots, so he saw it with a serene detachment. The admiration of a child handling his toy, conscious that it’s nothing more than an impersonal toy. He’d exchanged the short and amusing obituaries with a more laborious experiment. “More stimulating,” as he used to say.

He was no Don Quixote, nor Mr. K, nor Oblomov, nor Hans Castorp, nor a duller Ulrich, nothing close to the many embodiments of his adolescence. President Avakian regretted seeing him leave the small college for a large university, and he sent his regrets through Koch. To Koch, he described him as civilized, erudite, affable. Koch, in turn, hurried to transmit the kind words to Gusti. “Good for the ego,” Izy Koch added.

“Yes, I liked your friend, doctor. Even the commotion that he sometimes — very rarely — produced. Certain oddities. I was told about the departmental meeting when two new courses for the fall semester were discussed. The Russian professor had proposed ‘Homosexuality in Russian Literature.’ Professor Gora couldn’t keep his mouth shut. ‘In Russian literature? Nicevo. Who? Tolstoy, Chekov, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Babel? Gogol was impotent, made love to a big rubber doll custom — ordered especially for him. It’s not French or German or British literature,’ said the Eastern European. His colleagues had fallen silent. The young Russian professor had frozen solid, he’d come across someone who knew more than he did.”

The pleasure with which Avakian related the mishap represented the pleasure with which he’d heard it himself, the first time and then even a few times afterward.

“The Russian professor mentioned a few minor names, including Tsvetaeva. ‘I don’t know about Tsvetaeva,’ replied Gora, ‘I have no idea about her and I don’t care. She was married to a man she loved, she had a son and lovers, but that isn’t the problem. One name isn’t enough for a whole course.’ When it was time to vote, there were four abstainers, Professor Gora against, and the rest, for. Madam Van Last, the professor of Victorian theater, huffed out of the room. Outside the door, she shook her finger at the exile. ‘You, sir, you’re stuck in your curriculums from the East, here we’re in a different century.’ Was she right, I wonder? She came to me to report Gora, called him a Stalinist straight out. And there were others. I refused to discuss it. He hadn’t shipwrecked himself in America just to be censored, and he wasn’t a Stalinist and had never been. I knew his life’s story well enough. What else did they want? He never came to report that they don’t know a thing about Russian literature. That’s how it is here, the great democracy full of taboos. People are people, they need fixed props. Thoughts furiously fixed on those props produce cyclical typhoons. Sexual abuse of children, diets, flying saucers, ghosts in the walls, messages from the dead. In the meantime, I myself discovered some interesting novels by homosexual Russian writers. But at that time, no one knew anything about them. Gora never participated in another departmental meeting. I’m sorry to see him go.”

“Avakian’s rhythm then slowed down a notch,” Koch said, pausing for a long time and waiting for Gusti’s reaction.

“After that incident he never again participated in another departmental meeting, Avakian told me. At lunchtime, in the dining hall, if you looked for a table with just two chairs and put your briefcase and coat on one of them, it was a sign you wanted to be alone. And you would succeed. The comments weren’t very kind. Solitude is suspect in America. It’s considered arrogance. But President Avakian was sorry to see you go.”

Izy retold the story, waiting for his wisdom and magnanimity.

“Yes, he’s missed. Students took to him, nicknamed him ‘Pnin,’ Nabokov’s hero in the novel by the same title. When he transferred, I told him I’d try to keep him at our little college, even if he weren’t the erudite that he is. Simply so that students could benefit from his decency and candor, as a point of reference. When we said farewell, I said to him, ‘Timofei Pavlich, I would have tried to keep you here at any cost and under any circumstances. I don’t know that I would have been able to put up with Nabokov, but you, Timofei Pavlich, yes, for sure.’ He laughed, he knew about the nickname, he liked being called Pnin.”

Doctor Koch had his own commentary to add.

“The nickname didn’t surprise me. Of course it was from a book! Green horses on the walls, our people in the Balkans say. Not just green horses, but green horses on the walls. Or in books. Chimeras. You found Saint Peter from a book as well. You should have learned to drive, to wander around this extraordinary country, to travel across the world. To charm actual people, which you could have done, to allow yourself to be enchanted, as you deserved to be. I never forgot your ideas about my people. The chosen people, the people of the book. The Book, of course! Even though you knew no one other than the fat accordionist in the class. I mean, me. No scholar, as you well know. And you knew Jesus and Peter and Judas and Paul and other Christians like them from books, as well. The Sacred Country is the Country of Books, isn’t that right? You asked me if I’d heard about ‘the man without qualities.’ If I’d heard, not if I’d read about him! As if we were talking about a neighbor. You knew I’m not a big reader. You told me, and I will never forget this, ‘Your only aristocracy is intellectual, you never got to sit still in one place, to build a social aristocracy.’ The book is the only real aristocracy. Produced through misfortune. I was listening with my mouth gaping, same as my eyes and ears. The man without qualities? Now what was that? The man without balls? You laughed, and I hope you’ll laugh now, too. But time has passed and keeps on passing. Even for someone hidden in books.”

That was Dr. Koch! Now time was passing differently, a different pace, measured differently. One’s body can’t be the same forever, so then, everything passes, the mind, pride, frustrations. Even uncertainty changes. Laconic thinking … nothing from the great words is what it used to be.

“Has anything remained unchanged,” the phantom of the evening asked.

“The woman inside of me,” murmured Gora. “Invincible, because she is absent.”

Thick, black hair in a thick, long plait down her back. Large, smoldering eyes. Deep, intense, infantile melancholy. Matte, white forehead. Arched, Oriental brows. Aquiline nose, drawn with a thin brush. Pronounced lips, vibrating slightly. A young throat. Blue.

Jealousy begins in imagination, but also in memory. There, the lost body holds the lost soul. There, in memory: naked, on her back, her long legs raised to the ceiling or crouched, her back turned. She received the man with a whimper. There, Professor, you can hear the whimpers of pleasure, you can see the one who was with her and is no longer. And you see the one who replaced him. The stiletto bleeds the memory. The pain of the moment advances slowly, slowly.

Love is just moaning, what books call love. The whimpers of the infantilized soul. Peter above the kneeling woman, who whimpers gently, like other times. Pale breasts, the curve of her thighs, the seashell of her sex. Long arms, clutching Gora passionately, clutching Gapar passionately. The abrupt movement of the head. Her black mane thrown on her back.

Old Gora was writhing again. Again abandoned. Ulysses cast away, not toward his home, but away from any home, among wanderers who’d lost the chains that had once tied them to the mast. They dreamed, as he did, of the imposture of survival, liberation.

Old Professor Gora felt old. The couple Lu and Peter sent him back to an irretrievable and poisoned time.

The exile before the exile, then wandering, the hope that Lu might reappear. Then, routine, nonstop work, in the country that works nonstop, to forget itself. Long days and short nights and long years and speed always fueled by the consumption of time. The Crusoe calendar: twenty years in the new territory. Dizziness, enchantment, regeneration, and, once again, estrangement. A hospitable, dynamic country, and a screen that separates. The stranger has advantages in the country of exiles, but he wouldn’t dare compose the obituary of a native of this mixture of races and languages and beliefs that make up the Kingdom of the Unknown.

On his table he kept open the massive album A Day in the Life of America, the wilderness where he looked for Tara and Deste and Peter.

Gora slowly closes the book. He closes his eyes. He’s tired, and it isn’t the first time. He lowers himself, exhausted, into the armchair. One minute, five, then five hours.

He opens his eyes and discovers the white gloves on the table. “The most beautiful hands in the world,” Professor Gora hears. The index, the middle finger, the ring finger with the golden band, the little finger and the thumb, which wasn’t very thick at all, but timid, sleepy. The pink tipped fingernails, with white rims. Five troubled little beings, haptic magic. The professor believed in nothing but books, and it was from books that he learned that the ends of the fingers have the densest areas of nerves in the body, the Latin name manus — manus, in the corrupt Latin of his country, ties hands to gloves.* He’d have liked to write a poem to those gloves, but he wasn’t a poet.

During a suffocating summer, he’d gone to an exposition in London, called The Hands. He’d wandered through the room for a few hours, back and forth, stone still in front of each image then returning, again and again, to the worn hands of the Indian, the childlike hands of the midget — clown, the ivory articulations of the geisha and again in front of the fist of the boxer and the small, pale fingers of the pianist caressing the keys, then again the transfigured courtesan, touching her sex, the soldier with the finger on the trigger, the potato pickers holding their lucky bounty, the cook happily clutching to his chest an immense grayish cabbage resembling the brains of a Neanderthal, the perforated glove of the cyclist and the greenish glove of the surgeon and the silken gloves of the actress who dominates the memory of century.

It was cool in the great, deserted gallery, no one else but a young Irish woman, with red hair and the waistline of a ballerina, who was contemplating her own freckled fingers while sitting in a chair made of coffee — colored leather. He had watched her, as well, from afar, hoping she’d raise her gaze, but no, the girl couldn’t separate her gaze from the image she was scrutinizing.

Outside there were crowds and haze, but before long he found the store he’d heard about. Small, elegant, expensive. He knew the number. He bought the first two pairs of gloves for his collection.

Haptic magic couldn’t describe that sensation, he knew only that he was setting his blood in motion instantly. The hands, a part of the brain, controlled by the cerebral cortex in greater measure than any other part of the body! That was what his friends said, his books, that is. He’d researched like a madman, he’d scoured the lines in his own hands, like a pilgrim. The unmistakable fingerprint. The line of the heart, the line of a wasted life. The length and form of the palm and the fingers recalled the coded character of the woman who disappeared from his life. He would unclench her long and delicate fingers slowly, blinded by the rounded, mother — of — pearl fingernails tipped with a white line.

He’d tried to replace the gloves with reproductions of Dürer’s hands, gathered in a heap on the table. In vain. White and black and red, yellow, blue gloves made of leather and silk, out of the skins of antelope and snake, the most expensive wool and the finest cotton, hunted in the windows of the most expensive boutiques, during sickly pilgrimages.

Nothing could replace the joy of spending considerable sums of money on his cherished inmates. He studied them, he stockpiled them, he brought them out to the light, one pair at a time or all at once, in a moment of fury and ecstasy, such as on this evening.

The angioplasty is followed by depression, he’d been warned by Koch and Bar — El. Koch called him daily to remind him that, statistically, depression was a very normal consequence of the procedure, and that it will gradually diminish.

The statistics, of course, can’t do without them, Koch had become a real American.

“The calendar becomes a metronome, I know. But you are all right, you will be all right. You’ve won yourself some time, modern medicine does wonders these days.”

After a few weeks, Koch invites him to meet his family. He can’t keep refusing, he can’t keep postponing.

“You have to go out, you can’t keep sitting around among your old papers. They guard you, I know the theory, but sometimes they don’t guard you anymore, they suffocate you. My wife is a great hostess, and it has been much too long since you and I spoke for real.”

American time is short, good intentions rarely find their appropriate respite, but they both knew that they could count on each other. Yes, yes, that’s right, the patient confirmed.

Isabel instantly lit the atmosphere of the spectacular Koch family home on Madison Avenue. The children possessed the natural tendencies of the new generation, but also the residue of an old world upbringing, they listened attentively, they spoke rarely and intelligently.

Instead of the chocolate cake that everyone refused because of their diets, dessert was a discussion on a troubling theme.

“Now I’m convinced that you were right,” Izy began, loosening his burgundy tie, which was perfectly matched to his blue silk dress shirt, “you should be open, on the side of the victim.”

He felt no need to specify who the victim was.

“I’ve come to the side of the Chosen People. Exactly because I reject the role of the victim, and not because I take it on.”

The family had probably already heard this emphatic discourse many times. It was only Gora who understood the implications. A code established long ago, in the basement of the Koch family house. Antonio and Carla, the family’s beautiful twins, as well as Isabel, all saw Izy as the admirable fighter for the cause. They all remembered the manipulated news in the press, the games of the great powers, the displacement of grudges on the left and right.

“It’s not exactly displacement,” Izy had corrected him. “It’s an accumulation.”

Gora was watching him attentively, even though he wasn’t really paying attention. The pain in his chest persisted, amplifying his unease and timidity. He couldn’t concentrate. The doctor didn’t notice and it was all for the better.

“You were right back then, about the two apostles. I assume you’ve expanded your thinking about the matter … ”

“I haven’t.”

“I have. Paul was a radical, Peter wasn’t. But … ” The dinner companions were now having a coffee. “Izy shouldn’t have provoked me,” the patient was thinking. Neither coffee nor philosophy is good for a cardiac patient. The cardiac patient couldn’t focus.

“I wouldn’t have thought that you’d be interested in these kinds of discussions.”

“I’m not, I just want to make up my mind. The Messiah means finalization. Certainty, conclusion, an end point. A finite thought. You were saying at one point that incomplete, open, anticipatory thinking appealed to you.”

“I no longer need occult justifications.”

“But you had them.”

“Now it’s getting late, and the patients must go to bed.”

“I thought you’d become a writer. You loved books and fiction.”

“Unfortunately, I’m too rational.”

“So you’ve assimilated. Pragmatism is rational.”

“It may be, yes, but that’s a simplification. A limitation.”

The doctor didn’t want the patient to leave, he knew that no one was waiting for him at home.

“Let me tell you a story about our friend Gapar.”

They were in Izy’s room, the others had retreated.

“He came to see me, about a month ago. Before he disappeared. He’s disappeared, hasn’t he? I heard that, but I don’t believe it. I think he’s just hiding somewhere and will reappear. Before disappearing he came to see me. Not for a consultation. A courtesy visit. To pay me a kindness. He didn’t want to see me. He left a tube with a work of art inside, to be given to me.”

“A work of art?”

Gora had perked up, was in focus. Izy’s schemes had succeeded in getting his body out of his head. The cerebral machine was shaking again, plugged in.

“I’ll show it to you if you want.”

“Yes, I’d like to see it.”

“He gave me an inestimable work of art. A watercolor done by an elephant.”

Gora was present, he was focused, his heart beat intensely.

“Watercolor, drawing, I don’t know the difference. The master — work of an artist. Elephas Maximus. Elephantus. The revenge of Peter Gapar! B.B., the queen of animals, was right. You remember Brigitte Bardot? Raw, naked beauty. Now she’s an old crone who loves and defends animals. I would assume that she also has work by Elephantus.”

Izy pulled from under his desk a massive blue tube, out of which he extracted the drawing. He unrolled it, turned it over to show the stamp of authenticity. Thai Elephant Conservation Center. In English and Thai. Nearby, handwritten, Aet/Male, 11 years old. The trunk holds the brush. Rounded lines of yellow and black.

“The artist Aet is no worse than their bipedal counterparts who get millions for a scribbling. You know the story with Hokusai, I think … the king called him, asked him to demonstrate the making of a painting. The painter spread a canvas on the floor and asked for a hen. He put one of the hen’s feet in the red color, let her strut all over the canvas. Then he stuck the other foot in the blue color. The hen covered the field quickly. When the king asked the painter what the painting meant, Hokusai answered without hesitation: autumn twilight. I don’t know if the king got the joke. I appreciated Gapar’s revenge. I used to always call him an elephant. Because of his scandalous dimensions. He was just getting fatter and fatter, he didn’t care.”

Gora searched the yellow and black forms. The yellow ended in black, the black melted, suddenly, into yellow. It wasn’t bad at all.

“What’s the title?”

“I don’t know. Gapar didn’t mention a title. Let’s call it, ‘Untitled.’ ”

“The art of an elephant needs a title. RA0298. That’s the title.”

“That’s not a title. It’s a serial number.”

“We all become serial numbers. Not engraved on the arm, like in Auschwitz, but on the credit card. Visa Card, MasterCard, Platinum Card. Social Security Card, Insurance Card, MetroCard. Resident Card. Resident Alien Card Number 0298. That’s Gapar’s number. We’re all numbers, says the Soviet cabdriver Boltanski. I know him from Gapar, too. He’s his driver.”

“But this isn’t Gapar’s work, it’s by the artist Aet, eleven years old. Your friend attached a page with the history of the work and the artist. He insisted that the gift was an extravagance, not an insult. Many scholarly details, to convince me that it’s a serious thing, worthy of respect. Have you heard of the great Cambodian chef at Pierre’s? A superexpensive restaurant where Kissinger and Sharon Stone and Norman Mailer and Wall Street suits eat. Monsieur Gerard. Gerard Fun, the Cambodian nobleman who studied in Paris while his country was being devastated by the Communists. He became a famous chef in New York, at Pierre’s. That was how he met Beatrice.”

“Beatrice? What Beatrice? Dante wasn’t resurrected, was he?”

“He wasn’t and I’m not disappointed.”

“Beatrice, Gapar’s friend. Larry Five, that was what he’d called her. At the start I didn’t understand, Gapar raves sometimes. Larry Five, Larry Five, until I understood Larry Five is a woman. A wealthy widow. Gapar’s former colleague in the New York University doctorate program that he never finished.”

“Yes, I know about that. And the elephants?”

“Monsieur Gerard introduced Beatrice to two exiled Cambodian painters, poor and talented. She was very impressed, she agreed to back the project, ‘Painting Elephants.’ An art school for elephants that are becoming less useful. Looking after them costs money, as well as their medical care. I read that each one receives, at birth, a young male caretaker who will look after them until death. Asian elephants. The African ones are a different story. Gapar bought the drawing at a Christie’s auction. Beatrice steered him there. I don’t think that your friend will come back for a consultation. He got fed up with my telling him that he’s immense, like an elephant. Maybe he got as far as Thailand.”

“Did he suggest something to that effect?”

“No, but he didn’t ask after Lu. He entered the office like a meteor, dropped off the tube and was gone. Forever.”

Gora was silent. Koch, too. The show was over.

“You were wonderful, Izy, you were fantastic. I forgot all about the angioplasty, the stents, the panic.”

Izy was looking at him and smiling.

“I’m glad. There’s something else, while we’re here … Gapar left a letter, too. He wanted to inform me that he’s not supporting the Republican Party, and that the prophet Mohammed was born in the Year of the Elephant. He told me not to forget this! Forty years before the birth of Islam. And when the Abyssinian king, the tyrant Abraha, attacked Mecca, he didn’t use just one huge new weapon but many elephants. Gapar wanted very badly to improve my education before leaving.”

Now Gora smiled, as well, looking at his friend.

“And there’s still another strange allusion. He said to ask you if you have a code name. He’s referring to the secret police, isn’t he?”

“I assume so. He’s asking if I was an informant. There were many. Stalkers and stalked, that was the game. Sometimes the role was cumulative.”

“I knew what I was doing when I ran. I’d be interested to talk about this. You and I can talk about anything, right? Nothing will ever change between us?”

“Of course.”

Izy was convinced that a long conversation would follow. Gusti didn’t seem inclined.

“Yes, it’s interesting. We’ll talk some other time. I’m tired, and it’s late. You were wonderful, Izy, fantastic. I forgot about the angio — plasty, the stents, the panic.”

The two old classmates embraced fraternally, as they used to many years ago.

Izy remained pensive in the doorway. Surprised not by Gora’s refusal but by the way in which he interrupted the questions. He’d thanked him with the same words, repeated mechanically, identically, twice. Once home, Gora fell asleep instantly. The following morning he seemed perfectly recovered.

Recovered, he rushed to the small screen.

The Thai National Institute for Elephants was giving away extraordinary gifts for lovers of animals and art. Original paintings, executed by elephants with or without the guiding hands and minds of people. There were no forgeries in this extraordinary collection of abstract creativity — that was the name of the collection, Abstract Creativity.

The paper was handmade, especially for the collection, out of 100 percent recycled materials and free of bacteria, according to the needs of the medium, the acrylics were of the highest quality, imported from England and France.

The elephants had succeeded in forgetting their immense bodies, the patient concluded, encouraged. Each one had, from birth till death, his or her own caretaker and instructor, who knew his or her pedigree and history perfectly. The instructors were trained for the Great Project through special courses: how to prepare the brushes and paints, when to give the signal to start, and particularly, to finish. The opportune stopping of the creative exercise was essential. Elephants don’t know when to stop, they would keep going forever.

The celebrated Lampang Conservation Center fought against the disappearance of Asian elephants, reduced by half from the hundred thousand that lived in Thailand only ten years before. The funds obtained by the Lampang Center served for maintenance and for raising public awareness about the dramatic fate of these creatures.

It wasn’t a matter only of Thailand or South Africa, but also of Colorado Springs, where the drawings of the celebrated artist Lucky were being sold in a solo exhibition, held at the municipal airport. Born in 1980, Lucky had arrived at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in 1981, after she’d been orphaned in Kruger National Park in South Africa. She lives here with her friend Kimba, also from South Africa. In spite of her spectacular dimensions and weight, Lucky adapted to the courses in just a few weeks. Attentive to details, she works only with the brushes that she likes. “Elephants have over a hundred thousand muscles,” the computer was telling Professor Gora, who was following the forty — eighth birthday celebration of the African elephant Hydari, in the Philadelphia Zoo. Hydari, nicknamed Dari, was the oldest of his kind. Then Gora found himself in the Toledo Zoo, where little Louie received birthday presents, a festive cake and gifts to his tastes, for his fifth birthday. In the Oakland Zoo, the public observed the diet and caretaking of the elephants, in Los Angeles they were celebrating the one — year anniversary of the enchanting Ruby’s retreat, at seven years old, from an acting career in the Performing Welfare Society.

“The image trumps the word! The planetary transmission has no competition in the library!”

Was it Gapar’s voice? The question had burst victoriously through the fog of his thoughts.

“Is there another more insane and formidable country than this one? Idealistic, pragmatic, cynical, and religious. For — mi — dab — le! And that’s final! The online commercial agency Novica represents fifteen academies of elephant art. Elephantine art, is that right? That’s right and it’s formidable. For — mi — dab — le, that’s all.”

You hear that? Online! Elephant painting! Fifteen art academies!

Where do you find this stuff? In books? No, on the stupid little screen!

It had been hard for him to get used to the invention, harder than it was for Lucky with the brushes, but it became a necessity, just like all useless things that replace other useless things. In one second you find anything you look for, but one little mistake and you don’t know how to get out of the labyrinth. Lost, humiliated, you don’t remember the rectifying action to take. Only the Army of Technical and Infantile Aid can help you; three— and eight— and eighteen — year — old children with tiny laptops in their ears and nostrils. All of them conceived and born of the magic instrument, not in the maternal placenta.

In one second, the can of information opens again, just like in fairy tales. No need for a library, school or books, professors, the child presses a button and there it is: Information. Another era, other needs, another speed, other tastes, the charm of Lucky the elephant surpasses the barriers of time, space, and generations.

Lucky, the star of Cheyenne Mountain, prefers painting in tempera, in pink and red. She signed every artwork. While her trunk gracefully handled the brush, the giant quadruped vocalized her ecstasy: a little grumble of satisfaction, as might be heard only in the studios of the great artists. The voices of the plebe annoyed her. She would stop, disgusted at the buzzing of admirers, many minutes would pass before inspiration came back to her. When the instructor gave the final signal, Lucky would sign the piece with an arrogant gesture of her trunk, and her friend Kimba would apply the stamp over the artist’s signature, a proper hoof mark.

But what about Aet, the eleven — year — old male artist, the author of the masterpiece RA0298? Gora searches all over for him, among the celebrities, waiting for some telepathic sign from Gapar.

All of a sudden, dubious signals in his chest. He doesn’t have the courage to measure his blood pressure, he rejects the alarm.

New headlines had appeared on the screen, thank God: on the coast of the Black Sea, near the same Tomis where Ovid was exiled long ago, a certain Victor — nicknamed — The — Elephant walked the streets alongside an elephant dressed in a giant national costume, for his electoral campaign. So, then, Elephantus wasn’t active only in Uncle Sam’s electoral campaign, but also on the Pontus Euxinus, where the persecuted Ovid bemoaned his estrangement.

Gora was increasingly convinced that Peter Gapar was in Thailand, at a school for elephant instructors. At some point he’d published a book about the Baroque, the art of elephants would surely justify a new edition for mass distribution.

He pulled from the shelf the book in which Pieter had died, watched by the melancholic, bibliophile Castorp, and by Lady Chauchat. After Mynheer Peeperkorn had given up his burlesque soul, overcome by the tropical fever, the melancholic Castorp disappeared, as well, swallowed by the apocalypse of the war. “Farewell, brave, spoiled child,” whispered Hans Castorp’s obituary, which closed with the question, “Will love rise out of the burning sky?”

The question lingered beyond the pages on which Pieter Peeper — korn had died, but there was no more time for old questions. Gora needed to call the doctor. An enterprise even more urgent than reading.

Busy, busy, tack — tack — tack. The phone was busy. Five, ten minutes. Finally! The voice of salvation.

“Dr. Bar — El, please. I’m his patient. Last name is Gora. It’s an emergency.”

“Hold, please.”

Five, ten minutes. Click, the connection is broken. Gora takes his blood pressure. Raised. He breathes heavily. He tries to remain calm.

“Dr. Bar — El. The connection was interrupted. I’m … ”

“Yes, yes, Gora, the professor, please hold.”

He waits. No one was coming. Yes, the sleepy voice returned.

“The doctor is busy. He will call you in ten minutes.”

He closed his eyes. Ten minutes isn’t long, no one dies in ten minutes. Ten minutes, twenty, thirty. Thirty! Three times ten, you can die in less than thirty minutes.

“It’s Professor Gora again, Dr. Bar — El’s patient.”

“Ah, yes … he didn’t call? He really didn’t call? Hold, please.”

Click, connection to Dr. Bar — El’s office.

“Hello, yes. Professor Gora? What happened?”

“Well, today, about an hour ago … ”

“One moment, one moment. Don’t hang up, please wait just one moment … ”

The receiver to his ear. One moment, two, nine. The patient looks at his watch … ten, twelve minutes. He slams the phone.

Tension, heavy chest, restricted respiration. The nape of his neck ached. In the left side of his chest, the villainous neuralgia. The lining in his arteries, he could feel the lining in his brain. In his left arm, above his elbow in his underarm, sharp, shooting pain.

The vials on his nightstand. Plavix, Toprol, Aspirin, Norvasc, Cozar, Vytorine, Xanax. The remedies of old age.

“Now you’re young again, just like new,” Koch and Bar — El and Hostal had announced after the operation. “You can eat and enjoy what you want. In moderation, of course, but with pleasure. Joie de vivre, that’s the recipe.”

To assure his joie de vivre, Bar — El had renewed seven prescriptions.

In his palm, the small green pill. He broke it. Since he didn’t talk to the doctor, he takes a half of a Cozar, he will go to sleep early, will sleep profoundly, in the morning will be back to Earth. That’s what happened. The fingers on the keys of the computer. “Dear Dr. Bar — El, yesterday I waited over an hour to speak to you on the phone. I would like to be able to reach you when I need to.”

No response. A day, two days, nine days.

“How is it possible that he didn’t call you? Not even the next day, or the third day? Not even after you wrote to him? To hell with him! You need a doctor who’s available,” declared Izy.

“He’s a good doctor. He made the right diagnosis, despite the confusing test results. But he’s not accessible. I’m having some rough days. I can’t fully breathe, the volume of my breathing is incomplete. I stop at three — quarters, I can’t breathe to the end.”

“I know how it is. I’ll find you another cardiologist. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

“I don’t want to find another. Bar — El saved my life.”

“Listen, Gusti, we’ve known each other a long time. I know that your favorite team is called The Chosen People. I did a residency in Tel Aviv, at Hadassah, their big hospital. Good doctors, better than we have here. But rushed, fast. They’re trained by alarms, they live on speed, in between wars and bomb attacks. They don’t have time, they’re in year five thousand seven hundred and God knows what, they don’t have time. Think about it, five thousand seven hundred! No discussion, you’re going to someone else.”

“I’ll try again with Bar — El. It’s hard for me to leave someone. You know the way I am.”

“I know. I know how you are about the homeland, about me … about Lu. It’s hard for you to connect with new people. Okay, I’ll give you another one of theirs. Of ours, that is. Yours, even, I don’t want to insult Saint Peter. Dr. Liebling. He treats me, as well. Lieb — ling! Are you happy with that? I will call him. Look, I’ll call him right now.”

Gora had muted the phone, he wasn’t giving up. He wanted to remain in the care of Bar — El. Fresh panic attacks. Sweating, shuddering, heavy nape. He would have balled himself up in bed or he might have called Boltanski to take him, bed and all, to the emergency room. Bar — El had no idea about the excessive loyalty of the patient. He didn’t answer the phone, the fax was dead, email blocked.

Today and yesterday, blood pressure 190 over 95. “We’re numbers, my man. Listen to the Soviet, we’re numbers, that’s all. Capitalists don’t know anything outside of numbers. Doctors, lawyers, garbage men, senators, policemen. All of them. Anyone, everyone. All they do is count numbers!”

Gora had called the Australian.

“Yes, I remember your name,” the receptionist answered sleepily. Dr. Hostal is attending a cardiology conference in Michigan. He will be back in the afternoon. He’s already on the plane. When he arrives, I will tell him you called. High blood pressure and strange, sharp pains in your chest, that’s the message, I understand. You don’t know if it’s heartburn or actually heart pains. Shooting pain, weakness, high blood pressure. Panic? Yes, bouts of panic, I’ve noted. I will relay the message, you can rest assured.”

Hostal called him in the late afternoon.

“Okay, please come first thing, the day after tomorrow. We’ll perform the second angioplasty. Tomorrow you’ll go to have blood drawn. They will prepare the paperwork for your admittance, and we’ll operate the day after tomorrow.”

Gora swallowed an aspirin and a sedative.

“Of course, there are risks. There are always risks. I told you the first time, as well. Heart failure, stroke. All possible. It happens rarely. We’re working with statistics, the risks exist, but they are not great.”

Statistics, of course. The Soviet man would grow very fond of that word. Even Hostal didn’t ignore the arithmetic of globalization. Capitalism with a human mask had conquered socialism with a human mask. “He will explode as well, he will explode, we will all explode,” sang the group Herostratus.

The shadow was widening in his chest. The spider advanced toward the left shoulder and arm, the thorax swelled and waned with the moaning. A low boil, torpor. Breathing down to a pant. A heavy, granite nape. Professor Gora has no one to leave behind, to whom will he leave his memories, his obituaries. He never managed to finish Peter’s obituary, and now Izy and Bar — El and the Australian Dr. Hostal were disputing their positions.

The Gora folder was chock full of images of arteries before and after the rejuvenation, the images of the heart, cardiograms, blood and urine and saliva and dandruff tests, tests of stress and endurance, prescriptions and warnings. A technical Obituary, without words, just numbers, appropriate to the new century. Devoid of memory or metaphor. The stents won’t rot in the ground where the bones and heart and memories will rot, said the Obituary.

“You’re fixed! You’re young, good as new. You can do anything you want, eat quite anything you want,” said the god in the white lab coat. “The stents are ultradurable. A rare metal, deathless. They will survive in the ground, long after nothing else has survived.”

Gora had dozed off, repeating Mephistopheles’ message to himself. He was smiling. The devil was a clown who was reversing his age, without asking for his soul in return. Just proof of medical insurance. Not the soul, Comrade Boltanski, just the account number of my medical insurance. A number, yes, that’s all, not the soul. Proof of insurance. Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Medicare, Atlantic, AARP.

Professor Gora was smiling, in spite of his exhaustion, his extreme exhaustion and drowsiness. The panic had depleted him.

He awoke looking out the window at the woods. The setting sun, the day being swept away. His head on the table. His exhaustion widening. A body made of wax. A timorous whizzing sound at first, then more insistent, like a cricket. The phone. He’d set the volume of his phone to minimum, he couldn’t stand alarms. He extended his hand. The receiver so heavy, he could barely lift it.

He didn’t recognize my voice, he was delirious.

“Yes, I am sleepy. A rough day, yes, and a rough night to follow tomorrow. The second angioplasty. The locust will gorge itself on the waste lining my arteries. And I will be able to watch it all on the little screen. The new millennium’s photo — moto — loto, on the little screen.”

Gora had paused.

“I’m raving, like Gapar. I keep looking for him, in vain, inside myself and outside myself. Now, since this illness took me out from where I was among my books and hurled me into chaos, I speak just like him. Isn’t that true that I’m speaking like him?”

I didn’t think so, or, who knows, at the very least, it was a simple imitation.

“Yes, where were we? Of course, there are risks. Rare risks, the statistics say. That is, the doctors say that the statistics say that the risks are rare. You’re right. We should believe them, we have no choice but to believe them.”

He was listening attentively to my good wishes, as if they were important pieces of news.

“Thank you, thank you. I should have called you more often, as well, we should have spoken more often. After the surgery. Call me after the surgery. Yes, yes, I’ve made mistakes, too, and not just one or two. I don’t know if she’s happy. No, I don’t know, I’m not Saint Augustin.”

After hanging up, I’d wager that Gora was probably muttering to himself, “People are essentially good, people are good.” The world is good, also in dreams produced by illness and medication, but if you happen to encounter dreams and books, then you should neither scorn nor abandon the world.

The telephone message had made him happy. The speaker seemed a man of goodwill who wanted to wish the patient a speedy recovery. A well — wisher, he deserved a good obituary.

Gora smiled, a shadow had passed, an infantile and villainous shadow across his tired face.