Arch of Triumph (11 page)

“And you went there later in spite of the fact that you knew what had happened to her?”

Lucienne raised her shoulders. “What could I do? I had to risk it. I didn’t know of anyone else. A child—what would I do with a child?” She looked out of the window again. On a balcony opposite stood a man in suspenders, holding an umbrella. “How much longer will I have to stay here, doctor?”

“About one week.”

“One week more?”

“That’s not long. Why?”

“It costs and costs—”

“Maybe we can make it a day or two less.”

“Do you think I can pay it off in installments? I haven’t enough money. It is expensive, thirty francs a day.”

“Who told you that?”

“The nurse.”

“Which one? Eugénie of course—”

“Yes. She said the operation and the bandages would cost extra. Is that very expensive?”

“You have paid for the operation.”

“The nurse said it hadn’t been nearly enough.”

“The nurse doesn’t know much about that, Lucienne. You’d better ask Doctor Veber later.”

“I’d like to know soon.”

“Why?”

“Then I can plan the length of time I’ll have to work to pay it off.” Lucienne looked at her hands. Her fingers were thin and pricked. “I’ve another month’s rent to pay,” she said. “When I came here, it was the thirteenth. I should have given notice on the fifteenth. Now I shall have to pay for another month. For nothing.”

“Haven’t you got anyone to help you?”

Lucienne glanced up. Suddenly her face seemed ten years older. “You know about that yourself, doctor. He was just angry. He didn’t know I was so ignorant. Otherwise he wouldn’t have had anything to do with me.”

Ravic nodded. Things like this weren’t new to him. “Lucienne,” he said, “we could try to get something from the woman who did the abortion. It was her fault. All you need do is to give us her name.”

The girl straightened up quickly. Suddenly she was all resistance. “Police? No! Then I’d get mixed up in it myself.”

“Without police. We would only threaten.”

She laughed bitterly. “You won’t get anything from her that way. She is made of iron. I had to pay her three hundred francs. And for that—” She smoothed her kimono. “Some people just haven’t any luck,” she said without resignation as if she spoke of someone else and not of herself.

“On the contrary,” Ravic replied. “You had a lot of luck.”

He saw Eugénie in the operating room. She was polishing nickel-plated instruments. It was one of her hobbies. She was so absorbed in her work that she did not hear him come in.

“Eugénie,” he said.

She turned around, startled. “Oh you! Do you always have to frighten people?”

“I don’t think I have that much personality. But you shouldn’t frighten the patients with your stories about fees and costs.”

Eugénie drew herself up, the polishing rags in her hand. “Naturally that whore had to blab right away.”

“Eugénie,” Ravic said, “there are more whores among women who have never slept with a man than among those who make
their difficult living that way. Not to mention the married ones. Besides, the girl wasn’t blabbing. You just spoiled the day for her. That’s all.”

“What of it? Sensitive and leading that sort of life!”

You walking moral catechism, Ravic thought. You disgusting model of conscious virtue—what do you know of the forlornness of this little milliner who courageously went to the same midwife who had ruined her friend—and to the same hospital in which the other had died—and who has nothing to say except: What else could I have done? And: How can I pay for it?

“You should marry, Eugénie,” he said. “A widower with children. Or the owner of a funeral parlor.”

“Mr. Ravic,” the nurse replied with dignity, “will you kindly not concern yourself with my private affairs? Otherwise I’ll have to complain to Doctor Veber.”

“You do that anyway all day long.” Ravic was pleased to see two red spots appear over her cheekbones. “Why are pious people so rarely loyal, Eugénie? Cynics have the best character; idealists are the least bearable. Doesn’t that make you think?”

“Thank God, no.”

“That’s what I thought. I am going now to the children of sin. To the Osiris. Just in case Doctor Veber should need me.”

“I hardly think Doctor Veber will need you.”

“Virginity does not quite bestow clairvoyance. He might need me. I’ll be there until about five. Then at my hotel.”

“Nice hotel, that den of Jews!”

Ravic turned around. “Eugénie, all refugees are not Jews. Not even all Jews are Jews. And many of whom you wouldn’t believe it are Jews. I even knew a Jewish Negro once. He was a terribly lonely man. The only thing he loved was Chinese food. That’s how life is.”

The nurse did not answer. She was polishing a nickel plate that was completely spotless.

Ravic was sitting in the bistro on the Rue Boissière, staring through the rainy windows when he saw the man. It was like a blow in the solar plexus. In the first moment he felt only the shock without realizing what it was—but in the next second he had pushed the table aside, jumped from his seat, and thrust himself ruthlessly toward the door through the crowded place.…

Someone caught him by the arm and held onto him. He turned around. “What?” he asked uncomprehendingly. “What?”

It was the waiter. “You did not pay, sir.”

“What?—Oh yes—I’ll be back—” He pulled his arm free.

The waiter flushed. “We don’t allow that here. You have to—”

“Here—”

Ravic pulled a bill out of his pocket, flung it at the waiter, and thrust the door open. He pushed past a group of people and ran around the corner to the right, along the Rue Boissière.

Someone yelled behind him. He recollected himself, stopped running, and walked on as quickly as he could without being conspicuous. It is impossible, he thought, it is absolutely impossible, I must be mad, it is impossible! The face, that face, it must be a resemblance, some kind of damned devilish resemblance, an idiotic trick played by my nerves—it cannot be in Paris, that face, it is in Germany, it is in Berlin, the window was swept by rain, one couldn’t see through it clearly, I must have been mistaken, certainly …

He pushed himself through the crowd letting out from a movie, hastily, searching every face he passed; he peered beneath hats, he met irritated and astonished looks, he went on, on, other faces,
other hats, gray, black, blue, he passed them, he turned back, he stared at them—

He stopped at the intersection of the Avenue Kléber. He suddenly remembered, a woman, a woman with a poodle—and immediately behind her he had seen that man.

He had long since passed the woman with the poodle. Quickly he walked back. Seeing the woman with the dog from a distance, he stopped at the curb. He clenched his fists in his pockets, and he painstakingly watched every passer-by. The poodle stopped at a lamppost, sniffed, and lifted its hind leg with infinite deliberation. Then he ceremoniously scratched the pavement and ran on. Ravic suddenly felt his neck wet with perspiration. He waited another few minutes—the face did not appear. He looked into the parked cars. No one was in them. He turned back again and walked quickly to the subway at the Avenue Kléber. He ran down into the entrance, bought a ticket, and walked along the platform. There were a good many people there. Before he got through searching, a train thundered in, stopped, and disappeared in the tunnel. The platform was empty.

Slowly he walked back to the bistro. He sat down at the table at which he had been sitting. The glass half full of calvados was still there. It seemed strange that it was still standing there.

The waiter shuffled toward Ravic. “Excuse me, sir, I didn’t know—”

“Never mind!” Ravic said. “Bring me another calvados.”

“Another?” The waiter looked at the half-filled glass on the table. “Don’t you want to drink that first?”

“No. Bring me another.”

The waiter lifted the glass and smelled it. “Isn’t it good?”

“It’s all right, only I want another.”

“Very well, sir.”

I was mistaken, Ravic thought. This rain-swept window, partly
blurred—how could anything be positively recognized? He stared through the window. He stared attentively, like a hunter lying in wait, he watched every person passing by—but, at the same time, gray and sharp, a moving picture flashed shadowlike across it, a shred of memory …

Berlin. A summer evening in 1933. The house of the Gestapo. Blood; a bare room without windows; the sharp light of naked electric bulbs; a red-stained table with binding straps; the night-tortured clarity of his brain that had been startled out of unconsciousness a dozen times by being half choked in a pail of water; his kidneys so beaten they no longer ached; the distorted, helpless face of Sybil before him; a couple of torturers in uniform holding her—and a smiling face and a voice explaining in a friendly way what would happen to Sybil if a confession were not forthcoming—Sybil who three days later was reported to have been found hanged.…

The waiter appeared and put the glass on the table. “This is another brand, sir. Didier from Caen, older.”

“All right. Thanks.”

Ravic emptied his glass. He got a package of cigarettes out of his pocket, took one out and lit it. His hands were not yet steady. He flung the match on the floor and ordered another calvados. That face, that smiling face which he thought he had just seen again—he must have been mistaken. It was impossible that Haake was in Paris. Impossible! He shook off the memories. It was senseless to drive oneself mad about it as long as one couldn’t do anything. The time for that would come when everything back there collapsed and one could return. Till then …

He called the waiter and paid. But he could not help searching every face on the streets.

———

He was sitting with Morosow in the Catacombs.

“Do you think it was he?” Morosow asked.

“No. But he looked it. A cursed sort of resemblance. Or my memory is no longer to be trusted.”

“Bad luck that you were in the bistro.”

“Yes.”

Morosow remained silent awhile. “Makes one damn jumpy, doesn’t it?” he said then.

“No. Why?”

“Because one doesn’t know.”

“I know.”

Morosow did not reply.

“Ghosts,” Ravic said. “I thought I’d be over that by now.”

“One never is. I went through the same thing. Especially at the beginning. During the first five or six years. I’m still waiting for three of them who are in Russia. There were seven. Four have died. Two of them were shot by their own party. I’ve been waiting now for more than twenty years. Since 1917. One of the three who is still alive must be seventy by now. The other two, about forty or fifty. They’re the ones I still hope I’ll get. They are for my father.”

Ravic looked at Boris. He was over sixty, but a giant. “You will get them,” he said.

“Yes.” Morosow opened and closed his big hands. “That’s what I’m waiting for. That’s why I live more carefully. I don’t drink so often now. It may take some time yet. And I’ve got to be strong. I don’t want to shoot or knife them.”

“Neither do I.”

They sat for a while. “Shall we play a game of chess?” Morosow asked.

“Yes. But I don’t see any board free.”

“There, the professor is through playing. He played with Levy. As usual he won.”

Ravic went for the board and the chessmen. “You’ve played a long time, professor,” he said. “The whole afternoon.”

The old man nodded. “It distracts you. Chess is more perfect than any game of cards. At cards you have good luck or bad luck. It isn’t sufficiently diverting. Chess is a world in itself. While one is playing, it takes the place of the outside world.” He raised his inflamed eyes. “Which is not so perfect.”

Levy, his partner, suddenly bleated. Then he was silent, turned around, frightened, and followed the professor.

They played two games. Then Morosow got up. “I’ve got to go. To open doors for the cream of humankind. Why don’t you drop in any more at the Scheherazade?”

“I don’t know. Just chance.”

“How about tomorrow night?”

“I can’t tomorrow. I am having dinner at Maxim’s.”

Morosow grinned. “For an illegal refugee you have a lot of nerve to hang out in the most elegant places in Paris.”

“They are the only ones where you are entirely safe, you secure owner of a Nansen passport. One who behaves like a refugee is soon caught. You still should remember that much.”

“All right. With whom are you going then? With the German Ambassador as another protection?”

“With Kate Hegstroem.”

Morosow whistled. “Kate Hegstroem,” he said. “Is she back?”

“She is arriving tomorrow morning. From Vienna.”

“Fine. Then I’ll be seeing you later in the Scheherazade anyway.”

“Maybe not.”

Morosow dismissed the thought. “Impossible! The Scheherazade
is Kate Hegstroem’s headquarters when she is in Paris. You know that as well as I do.”

“This time it’s different. She’ll be going into the hospital. To be operated on one of the next few days.”

“That’s just why she will come. You don’t understand women.” Morosow narrowed his eyes. “Or don’t you want her to come?”

“Why not?”

“It just occurs to me that you haven’t been with us since you sent us that woman. Joan Madou. Seems to be not just chance.”

“Nonsense. I don’t even know that she is still with you. Could you use her?”

“Yes. First she was in the chorus. Now she has a short solo number. Two or three songs.”

“Has she got adjusted meanwhile?”

“Naturally. Why not?”

“She was damned desperate. Poor devil.”

“What?” Morosow asked.

“I said poor devil.”

Morosow smiled. “Ravic,” he replied in a fatherly manner with a face in which suddenly there were steppes, space, knowledge, and all the experience in the world, “don’t talk nonsense. That woman is quite a bitch.”

“What?” Ravic asked.

“A bitch. No prostitute. A bitch. If you were a Russian you would understand.”

Ravic shook his head. “Then she must have changed a lot. So long, Boris! God bless your eyes!”