The Lair (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) by Norman Manea Page A
Authors: Norman Manea
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left without one. You’ve got plenty of choices here. Chinese, Irish, Arab, whatever your heart desires. Even immigrants from our former country, if you can’t break away from the native cuisine.”
Gora was no longer sure if this was Gaspar’s final account ofPalade. After Palade’s death, he returned often to the subject of the Palade-Gapar meeting. The way you reminisce about friends while keeping vigil by their coffins, when only the imagination can modify everything that was never meant to be.
Palade knew too much, and it bored him to take up the tortuous enigma of Cosmin Dima once again. For years on end, he’d struggled on his own, agitated, down the serpentine and darkened roads of the Maestro; he never fully recovered. But Peter’s own life, in turn, was curious. Here was a survivor! The survivor child in the belly of survival. And then there was his rejection of the Communism upheld by his prosecutor father. Curiosity probably overcame the hangover.
“Did he make you tell him the story of his life?”
“He proposed something like that, without saying it, a kind of exchange. I offer him my story, he gives me Dima’s. In spite of all his bitterness, he’d been, and still was at the time, fascinated by Dima, his attraction to modernism, then myth, transcendence, mystic nationalism, extremist politics, defeat, his refuge in mystery and masks, then his academic career. Was it all Dima’s inability to examine himself? His narcissism empowered his evasions. He couldn’t admit his guilt or his mistakes; he didn’t have time; his great projects were subjugating posterity. Though often at the pulpit of spirituality, he declined to debate on moral themes and condescended to the babbling mob.”
“The Dima capsule contains modernism, nationalism, mysticism, diplomacy, and brothels. Narcissism, exile, isolation, esoteric evasions, academic excellence.”
Gora was listening, absolutely unconvinced that Gapar was relating the meeting honestly.
“And the refusal of a naive democracy, naturally! The Anglo-Saxon world won’t ever accept him, Dima said, right before taking advantage of the New World’s freedom. Narrow-minded to the rhetoric of progress. Democracy and debate were for the masses’ consumption. It was hard for Palade to move from the unlimitedadmiration he had for the Guru to suspicion. He’d uncovered documents, he’d scrutinized the gaps in his biography, the coded allusions in his work. He still adored him. An extraordinary spirit, a lucid conversationalist, erudite, childlike, adorable. I didn’t have the unrequited lover’s disappointment to contend with, as he did. I only had to decide if I would write the review.”
“Have you decided?”
“Yes. We’re not going to untie these knots that are so tightly tangled! That’s what Palade yelled. Freedom and spectacle? To hell with that. The sacred and the profane, narcissism and hypocrisy and so on? He was no less fascinated than Dima himself had been fascinated by his esoteric adventure. The revolt was against himself; he was suspicious of himself, suspicious of his own revolt, just as he was suspicious of his admiration for Dima.”
Did the voice of the intruder come from the void or from inside of Gora himself? He himself knew the whole story all too well, and then Palade had told him the same things, as well, and more than once. Dima’s widow had entrusted him with access to the
Green Notebooks
of the deceased. Him, Gora, but not Palade. In the yellowed pages of a school notebook, an isolated man was struggling with erotic frustration and the frenzy of writing, furious that Germany was incapable of defeating the Communist beast and the democratic chameleon.
“I recalled the novella about the comrades who were tried for terrorism in 1938; I imagined the night when the Movement mobilized; I saw the photograph of the virile Leader, the moral and mystic guide. Was the sacred hidden inside the profane? Did the Maestro still believe
Gora was no longer sure if this was Gaspar’s final account ofPalade. After Palade’s death, he returned often to the subject of the Palade-Gapar meeting. The way you reminisce about friends while keeping vigil by their coffins, when only the imagination can modify everything that was never meant to be.
Palade knew too much, and it bored him to take up the tortuous enigma of Cosmin Dima once again. For years on end, he’d struggled on his own, agitated, down the serpentine and darkened roads of the Maestro; he never fully recovered. But Peter’s own life, in turn, was curious. Here was a survivor! The survivor child in the belly of survival. And then there was his rejection of the Communism upheld by his prosecutor father. Curiosity probably overcame the hangover.
“Did he make you tell him the story of his life?”
“He proposed something like that, without saying it, a kind of exchange. I offer him my story, he gives me Dima’s. In spite of all his bitterness, he’d been, and still was at the time, fascinated by Dima, his attraction to modernism, then myth, transcendence, mystic nationalism, extremist politics, defeat, his refuge in mystery and masks, then his academic career. Was it all Dima’s inability to examine himself? His narcissism empowered his evasions. He couldn’t admit his guilt or his mistakes; he didn’t have time; his great projects were subjugating posterity. Though often at the pulpit of spirituality, he declined to debate on moral themes and condescended to the babbling mob.”
“The Dima capsule contains modernism, nationalism, mysticism, diplomacy, and brothels. Narcissism, exile, isolation, esoteric evasions, academic excellence.”
Gora was listening, absolutely unconvinced that Gapar was relating the meeting honestly.
“And the refusal of a naive democracy, naturally! The Anglo-Saxon world won’t ever accept him, Dima said, right before taking advantage of the New World’s freedom. Narrow-minded to the rhetoric of progress. Democracy and debate were for the masses’ consumption. It was hard for Palade to move from the unlimitedadmiration he had for the Guru to suspicion. He’d uncovered documents, he’d scrutinized the gaps in his biography, the coded allusions in his work. He still adored him. An extraordinary spirit, a lucid conversationalist, erudite, childlike, adorable. I didn’t have the unrequited lover’s disappointment to contend with, as he did. I only had to decide if I would write the review.”
“Have you decided?”
“Yes. We’re not going to untie these knots that are so tightly tangled! That’s what Palade yelled. Freedom and spectacle? To hell with that. The sacred and the profane, narcissism and hypocrisy and so on? He was no less fascinated than Dima himself had been fascinated by his esoteric adventure. The revolt was against himself; he was suspicious of himself, suspicious of his own revolt, just as he was suspicious of his admiration for Dima.”
Did the voice of the intruder come from the void or from inside of Gora himself? He himself knew the whole story all too well, and then Palade had told him the same things, as well, and more than once. Dima’s widow had entrusted him with access to the
Green Notebooks
of the deceased. Him, Gora, but not Palade. In the yellowed pages of a school notebook, an isolated man was struggling with erotic frustration and the frenzy of writing, furious that Germany was incapable of defeating the Communist beast and the democratic chameleon.
“I recalled the novella about the comrades who were tried for terrorism in 1938; I imagined the night when the Movement mobilized; I saw the photograph of the virile Leader, the moral and mystic guide. Was the sacred hidden inside the profane? Did the Maestro still believe
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