Arch of Triumph (19 page)

Ravic pulled a bill out of his pocket. “Let’s make life somewhat easier today, Eve. Buy yourself a hat with that. Or a woolen jacket.”

Eve’s eyes lost their dull expression. “Thank you, Mr. Ravic. Today is starting well. Then should I make your bed later?”

“Yes.”

She looked at him. “The lady is a very interesting lady,” she said. “The lady who keeps coming here now.”

“One more word and I’ll take the money away from you.” Ravic
pushed Eve out of the door. “The old lechers are waiting for you. Don’t disappoint them.”

He sat down at the table and ate. The breakfast did not taste particularly good. He got up and continued to eat standing. It tasted better.

The sun hung red above the roofs. The hotel was waking up. Old man Goldberg on the floor below began his morning concert. He coughed and groaned as if he had six lungs. The refugee Wiesenhoff opened his window and whistled a parade march. On the upper floor water gushed. Doors were slammed. Ravic stretched himself. The night had gone. The corruption of the dark was done with. He decided to remain alone for a few days.

Outside the newspaper boys were calling out the morning news. Incidents at the Czechoslovakian frontier. German troops at the Sudeten line. The Munich pact jeopardized.

THE BOY DID NOT SCREAM
. He just stared at the doctors. He was still too stunned to feel any pain. Ravic glanced at the crushed leg. “How old is he?” he asked the mother.

“What?” the woman asked uncomprehendingly.

“How old is he?”

The woman with the kerchief over her head moved her lips. “His leg!” she said. “His leg! It was a truck.”

Ravic listened to his heart. “Has he been sick?”

“His leg!” the woman said. “It is his leg!”

Ravic straightened up. The heart was beating quickly like a bird’s, but there was nothing alarming in the sound. During anesthesia he would have to watch the boy, who looked emaciated and rachitic. He had to start immediately. The torn leg was full of street dirt.

“Will you cut my leg off?” the boy asked.

“No,” Ravic said without believing it.

“It’s better if you cut it off instead of its being stiff.”

Ravic looked attentively at the precocious face. There was not yet any sign of pain in it. “We’ll see,” he said. “Now we’ll have to
put you to sleep. It’s very simple. You needn’t be afraid. Be quite calm.”

“One minute, sir. The number is FO 2019. Will you put it down for my mother?”

“What? What, Jeannot?” his mother asked, startled.

“I noticed the number. The number of the car. FO 2019. I saw it close in front of me. There was a red light. It was the driver’s fault.”

The boy began to breathe laboriously. “The insurance company must pay. The number—”

“I wrote it down,” Ravic said. “Be calm. I wrote everything down.” He motioned to Eugénie to start the anesthetic.

“My mother must go to the police. The insurance company must pay—” Large beads of perspiration appeared on his face as suddenly as if it had been rained on. “If you amputate the leg they pay more—than if it—remains stiff—”

His eyes were sunk in blue-black circles which stood out from his skin like dirty ponds. The boy moaned and tried quickly to say something. “My mother—doesn’t understand—help—her—” He could no longer go on. He began to scream, dull, repressed screams as if a tortured animal cowered within him.

“How is the world outside, Ravic?” Kate Hegstroem asked.

“Why do you want to know that, Kate? Rather think of something pleasanter.”

“I feel as though I have been here for weeks already. Everything else is so remote. As if submerged.”

“Let it remain submerged for a while.”

“No. Otherwise I’ll be afraid that this room is the last ark and that the deluge is already below the window. What’s going on outside, Ravic?”

“Nothing new, Kate. The world goes on eagerly preparing for suicide and at the same time deluding itself about what it’s doing.”

“Will there be war?”

“Everyone knows that there will be war. What one does not yet know is when. Everyone expects a miracle.” Ravic smiled. “Never before have I seen so many politicians who believe in miracles as at present in France and England. And never so few as in Germany.”

She remained lying silent for a while. “To think that it should be possible—” she said then.

“Yes—it seems so impossible that it will happen some day. Just because one considers it so impossible and doesn’t protect oneself against it. Do you have pain, Kate?”

“Not so much that I can’t stand it.” She adjusted her pillow under her head. “I’d like to get away from all this, Ravic.”

“Yes—” he replied without conviction. “Who wouldn’t like to?”

“When I get out of here I’ll go to Italy. To Fiesole. I have a quiet old house there with a garden. I want to stay there for a while. It will still be cool. A veiled serene sun. At noon the early lizards on the south walls. In the evening the bells of Florence. And at night the moon and the stars behind the cypresses. There are books in the house and there is a big stone fireplace with wooden benches around it. The andirons for the wood are set up in such a manner as to hold a stand where one can put one’s glass. Red wine is warmed that way. No people. Only an old couple to keep one’s things in order.”

She looked at Ravic. “Beautiful,” he said. “Quiet, a fireplace, books, and peace. In former days that sort of thing was considered bourgeois. Today it’s the dream of a lost paradise.”

She nodded. “I want to stay there for a while. A few weeks. Maybe even a few months. I don’t know yet. I want to become calm. And then I’ll return and pack and go to America.”

Ravic heard supper trays being carried in the corridor. The rattling of a few dishes. “You are right, Kate,” he said.

She hesitated. “Can I still have a child, Ravic?”

“Not right away. You’ve got to become much stronger first.”

“I don’t mean that. Can I have it sometime? After this operation? Isn’t—”

“No,” Ravic said. “We didn’t remove anything. Not a thing!”

She took a deep breath. “That’s what I wanted to know.”

“But it will still take a long time, Kate. Your entire organism must change first.”

“It does not matter how long it takes.” She smoothed her hair. The stone on her hand glittered in the dark. “It is ridiculous that I am asking for that, isn’t it? Just now.”

“No. That happens often. More often than one would think.”

“Suddenly I have had enough of all this. I want to go back and marry, for good, the old-fashioned way, and have children and be calm and praise God and love life.”

Ravic looked out of the window. The wild red of the sunset hung over the roofs. The electric signs were drowned in it like bloodless shadows of colors.

“It must seem absurd to you, after all you know about me,” Kate Hegstroem said behind him.

“No, not at all.”

“I’ve thought about it these last two days. And I feel younger and lighter than I have for longer than I can remember. When I’m over there I’ll forget the years here like a senseless dream.”

Joan Madou came at four o’clock at night. Ravic woke up when he heard someone at the door. He had gone to sleep, not expecting her. He saw her standing in the open door. She tried to force her
way through with an armful of giant chrysanthemums. He did not see her face. He only saw her figure and the huge bright blossoms. “What is that?” he said. “A forest of chrysanthemums. For heaven’s sake, what does it mean?”

Joan got the flowers through the door and flung them with a flourish onto the bed. The blossoms were wet and cool and the leaves smelled of autumn and earth. “Presents,” she said. “Since I know you I’m beginning to get presents.”

“Take them away. I’m not dead yet. To lie under flowers—what’s more, chrysanthemums—the good old bed of the Hôtel International really looks like a coffin.”

“No!” Joan snatched up the flowers from the bed with a violent movement and threw them on the floor. “You mustn’t—” She straightened up. “Don’t talk like that! Ever!”

Ravic looked at her. He had forgotten how they had met. “Forget it,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything.”

“Don’t talk like that ever again. Not even as a joke. Promise!”

He saw her lips trembling. “But—” he said. “Does it really frighten you so?”

“Yes. It is even worse. I don’t know what it is.”

Ravic got up. “I’ll never make a joke about it again. Are you satisfied now?”

She nodded, leaning on his shoulder. “I don’t know what it is. I simply can’t stand it. It’s like a hand reaching out of the dark. It is fear—blind fear as if it were lying in wait somewhere for me.” She pressed close to him. “Don’t let it happen.”

Ravic held her tight in his arms. “No—I won’t let it happen.”

She nodded again. “You can do it—”

“Yes,” he said with a voice full of sadness and derision, thinking of Kate Hegstroem. “I can. Of course I can—”

She moved in his arms. “I was here yesterday—”

Ravic did not move. “You were?”

“Yes.”

He was silent. Suddenly something perished. How childish he had been! Waiting or not waiting—to what purpose? A foolish game with someone who did not play games.

“You were not here—”

“No.”

“I know I shouldn’t ask you where you were—”

“No.”

She freed herself from his embrace. “I’d like to take a bath,” she said in a changed voice. “Outside it’s snowing. I’m cold. Can I still do it? Or will it wake up the hotel?”

Ravic smiled. “Don’t ask about the consequences if you want to do something. Otherwise you’ll never do it.”

She looked at him. “One should ask in trifling matters. Never in great ones.”

“Also correct.”

She went into the bathroom and let the water run. Ravic sat down by the window and reached for a box of cigarettes. Outside over the roofs stood the red reflection of the town where silently the snow drifted. A taxi whined through the streets. The chrysanthemums gleamed palely on the floor. A newspaper was lying on the sofa. He had brought it along in the evening. Fighting at the Czechoslovakian frontier. Fighting in China. An ultimatum. An overthrown cabinet. He took the paper and pushed it under the chrysanthemums.

Joan came out of the bathroom. She was warm and crouched on the floor beside him among the flowers. “Where were you last night?” she asked.

He reached her down a cigarette. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

He hesitated. “I was here,” he said then, “and waited for you. I thought you weren’t coming and then I left.”

Joan waited. Her cigarette glowed in the dark and died away again.

“That’s all,” Ravic said.

“Did you go out to drink?”

“Yes—”

Joan turned around and looked at him. “Ravic,” she said, “did you really go away because of that?”

“Yes.”

She put her arms on his knees. He felt her warmth through the dressing gown. It was her warmth and the warmth of the gown which was more familiar to him than many years of his life, and suddenly it seemed to him as if both had belonged together for a long time and as if Joan had returned to him from somewhere out of his life.

“Ravic, I’ve come to you every night. You ought to have known that I’d come yesterday too. Didn’t you go out because you didn’t want to see me?”

“No.”

“You can tell me when you don’t want to see me.”

“I would tell you.”

“Wasn’t it that?”

“No, it was really not that.”

“Then I’m happy.”

Ravic looked at her. “What did you say?”

“I’m happy,” she repeated.

He fell silent for a while. “Do you really know what you’re saying?” he asked.

“Yes.”

The pale radiance from outside was mirrored in her eyes. “One shouldn’t say something like that lightly, Joan.”

“I’m not saying it lightly.”

“Happiness,” Ravic said. “Where does it start and where does it end?”

His foot touched the chrysanthemums. Happiness, he thought. The blue horizons of youth. The golden-bright balance of life. Happiness! My God, where was it now?

“It starts with you and ends with you,” Joan said. “That is quite simple.”

Ravic did not reply. What is she talking about? he thought. “Soon you will tell me that you love me,” he said then.

“I love you.”

He made a gesture. “You hardly know me, Joan.”

“What has that to do with it?”

“Much. Love—that means someone you want to grow old with.”

“I don’t know anything about that. It is someone you cannot live without. That’s what I know.”

“Where is the calvados?” Ravic asked.

“On the table. I’ll get it for you. Stay where you are.”

She brought the bottle and a glass and put them on the floor with the flowers. “I know that you don’t love me,” she said.

“Then you know more than I do—”

She looked up quickly. “You will love me,” she said.

“Fine. Let us drink to that.”

“Wait.” She filled the glass and drained it. Then she filled it again and handed it to him. He took it and held it for a moment. All this is not true, he thought. A half dream in the waning night. Words spoken in the dark—how can they be true? Genuine words need much light. “How do you know all that so precisely?” he asked.