Ana’s name was hard to eradicate. The lackey slid a putty knife from his pants pocket and began to chip at the gold-and-black paint. He chastised himself under his breath: Be careful, be careful, man, if you break this you’ll be lower than shit. The noise of the knife against the glass, the insupportable and reverential noise — that’s what made me finally speak. Excuse me, I said, but what are you doing? Such a question cannot be asked without sounding like you have just shambled on stage in a hideous, wooden play of domestic life. I knew that, yet I asked it. And even asked it again. The lackey looked at me. His knife stopped. Then he smiled a smile punctuated by a golden incisor and said: No need to worry, sir, it’s all authorized. The knife scraped and scraped. More shreds of Ana’s name flaked down to the tiling. The lackey went back to work with his rag.
I told him to stop, at once. He did, though he tried — by a series of blinks and grimaces — to mask his instant obedience as surprise. This is fully authorized, sir, whined the lackey, I have full authorization. From whom, I said, making sure to be grammatical. From the boss, sir, he said. What boss, I said. From Dr. Sanchis Mira, he said. And where, I said, is Dr. Mariategui? The lackey shrugged. I heard she went on sabbatical. He returned to scraping and rubbing, and I walked past him into Ana’s office. I caught an esteric whiff of his solvent. You can’t go in there, he mumbled. I didn’t respond. Even her scent — soap and sand — had dissipated. The lackey started whining again when I tore open Ana’s desk drawers. You can’t, sir, you just can’t, moaned the lackey. The first one empty. In the second, gray grit. In the third: an enormous canine taken from a jaw, its root intact.
The lackey froze, rag aloft. The silence deep enough to reveal the slopping noise the solvent made against the sides of its jar. It doesn’t concern me, it doesn’t concern me, sir, I’m just here as maintenance, just doing construction, said the lackey. What is this, I shouted. My voice had taken on a nauseating, false-thunder rattle. The lackey dropped his solvent beaker. The glass splintered and an acrid, brief gust made my eyes water. The lackey was already running off down the hall. On the glass panel only the letter E remained.
In Ana’s office, I found nothing else. There was one window, which overlooked from eight floors up a deep concrete service area crammed with sky-blue dumpsters holding construction debris. This view explained nothing. And neither did the white patches once screened by Filloy. My throat burned, stinging tears careened down my face. I wept into my hands.
A loud, curt noise startled me. The doorknob striking the bared office wall and leaving a lunar dent. Four legitimate representatives of sky-blue authority now crowded the open doorway. Two men and two women. Their faces gentle and, so to speak, nullified. Their apparent squad leader, a woman with sharp, high cheekbones and an inky, minuscule mole at the upper-right-hand corner of her rich lips, called back into the hallway: This is the one? It was Luxemburg, who had first accosted me in this hallway the night of the cocktail reception. Mr. Pasternak, said Luxemburg, put it down. Her command baffled me and I stepped forward to ask for clarification. Put it down, you fucking faggot, she said — her voice level and velvety — or are you deaf? She pointed at the tooth.
I told her I would not relinquish it. She took out her baton. Don’t be an idiot, Mr. Pasternak, she said. I held the tooth. She struck my wrist with the baton once, lightly. My hand opened involuntarily and the tooth hit the puce tiles. Or: it struck eternity and its minor thump struck my tympanum. You were told to stay away, said Luxemburg. Her adjutants kept their eyes on me. I have no intention of leaving, I said. It’s not up to you, can’t you see that, you goddamn professors don’t fucking understand anything, said Luxemburg. Her adjutants nodded three nods. I said, again, that I was not going anywhere, that I demanded to see Dr. Mariategui, my academic sponsor, my colleague, and my valued friend. The last phrase I shouted. My scoured throat ached. Jesus fucking Christ, said Luxemburg. She readied her baton. A leather cord dangled from the butt, and to this cord was affixed a gold label. I am going to ask you once more, said Luxemburg. I did not speak. In the silence, intestinal rumblings (to this day I believe they came from the lackey). Fuck you, then, said Luxemburg, as she brought her baton down on my right shoulder. On the cord label I saw the words, the three words, the three modulated, florilegial, black, slanted, English words.
12.
MY MOLAR LAY ON the nightstand. Yellow-gray, at rest. The footboard whippets slept, reflected in the dressing mirror. When I touched my eyebrows, my fingers scraped against bands of gauze. To the extent that I was present anywhere I was present in my bedroom (Violeta’s), dusty and breezy.
Violeta herself sat at the desk, my useless papers rustling behind her back. She wore a pink oxford shirt and jeans; bare feet, darkly tanned. They dumped you on the sidewalk, she said. Then she held up two white slips of paper, grimy with writing. Dr. Mariategui left these, she said as she set them back down on the desk. The name stunned me, sickened me with hope. Then I remembered — she meant the Colegiales nephrologist, her old friend, and as she approached (and as her double appeared, stately and silent, in the dressing mirror) I read the name on the prescriptions: FELICIANO MARIATEGUI, D.M. Don’t try to speak or move too much just yet, she said, internal medicine is not his specialty but he told me you need rest. She went on as my excavated molar stared at me. I’ve heard about cases like this, but I never thought they’d do it to a foreigner. She must have found the tooth beside me on the sidewalk and placed it on the nightstand, I thought.
Her strong palm across my forehead. It landed there, rested there. Blunt morning light filled my open mouth. My tongue dead, heated, adhesive. In Violeta’s right hand a glass filled with water and ice (also more blunt sunlight). The cold liquid hurt my throat but I gulped it down in the amphibious manner so frequent with Homo sapiens. Violeta told me I should be very grateful to Dr. Mariategui, who’d come late last night. A house call, Mr. Pasternak, in an era when house calls are utterly obsolete. I apologized. I attempted to apologize, I should say. The nephrologist had packed the wound in my gum with gauze. Violeta, who had managed to decipher my dry groans, told me to save my apologies: The Department of Social Praxis really had been getting out of hand, there was no denying it.
I passed out again. When I woke, the sun was well past zenith. Almost down. No longer shining into my mouth. I managed to get up, though the raw socket in my gum pulsed at every step. I picked the gauze pads free from my eyebrows. They came away smeared with tacky blood, and tore out hair as well. A green bruise shone under my right eye; another one, blue, shone on my left shoulder. The orderly, faint marks of a boot tread had not yet faded from my sternum, and my testicles were still swollen. The stream of water striking them in the shower caused a pain so intense and exquisite that I almost came, even as I cursed and spat. My urine streaking into the drain had a pinkish tint. The foam that spattered the sink during my dental ablutions was likewise pink.