Arch of Triumph (42 page)

Someone came out of the house. A man. Ravic straightened up. A woman followed him. They were laughing. It was not they. One of the cars started and drove off. He took out another cigarette. Could he have held her? Could he have held her if he had been different? But what could be held? Only an illusion, little else. But wasn’t an illusion enough? Could one ever attain more? Who knew anything about the black whirlpool of life, namelessly seething beneath our senses, which, out of empty uproar, turned it into things, a table, a lamp, home and You and love? There was only a foreboding and a frightening twilight. Was it not enough?

It was not enough. It was enough only if one believed in it. Once the crystal had burst under the hammers of doubt one could only cement it together, but nothing more. Cement it, lie about it, and watch the broken light that once had been a white splendor! Nothing came back. Nothing reshaped itself. Nothing. Even if Joan came back it would not be the same again. A crystal cemented together. The hour had been missed. Nothing would bring it back.

He felt a sharp, unbearable pain. Something rent him, rent inside him. My God, he thought, that this can make me suffer so. I observe myself over my own shoulder, but it doesn’t change anything. I know if I should get it I would let it go again, but that does not quench my longing. I dissect it like a corpse on the table in the morgue, but it only becomes a thousand times more alive. I know that it will pass sometime, but that helps me not at all. He stared with strained eyes up at the windows, and he felt horribly ludicrous, but that did not change anything either.

Suddenly heavy thunder rumbled over the city. Raindrops splashed on the bushes. Ravic got up. He saw the street mottled with black silver. The rain began to sing. The heavy drops beat warmly against his face. And suddenly he no longer knew whether he was ludicrous, or miserable, whether he was suffering or not—he only knew that he was alive. He was alive! He was there, it held him again, it shook him, he was not a spectator any longer, not an onlooker from outside; the great splendor of uncontrollable feeling shot through his veins again like fire through a furnace; it scarcely mattered whether he was happy or unhappy, he was alive and he was fully aware that he was alive and that was enough.

He stood in the rain which was pouring down upon him like heavenly machine-gun fire. He stood there and he was rain and storm and water and earth; the lightning from the horizon crossed within him, he was creature, element; nothing any longer had a name and was thereby made lonesome, everything was the same, love, the pouring rain, the pale fires above the roofs, the earth which seemed to swell; there were no longer any frontiers and he belonged to all this and happiness and unhappiness were empty husks cast off by the overpowering sensation of being alive and feeling it. “You up there,” he said to the lighted window and laughed and was not aware that he laughed. “You small light, you fata morgana, you face that exercises a strange power over me, on
this planet where there are a hundred thousand other faces, better ones, more beautiful, more intelligent, kinder, more faithful and understanding—you, accident, thrown across my way at night, dropped into my life, you, thoughtless, possessive feeling that was washed ashore and crept under my skin while I slept, you, who know hardly more about me than that I resisted and who threw herself against me until I no longer resisted and who then wanted to pass on, I salute you! Here I stand and I never thought to stand like this again. Rain is running through my shirt and is warmer and cooler and softer than your hands and your skin, here I stand, miserable and with the sharp claws of jealousy in my stomach, longing for you, despising you, admiring you, worshiping you, because you cast the lightning that set me ablaze, the lightning hidden in every womb, the spark of life, the black fire, here I stand, no longer like a dead man on furlough with his small cynicism, sarcasm, and portion of courage, no longer cold: alive again, suffering if you like, but again open to all the thunderstorms of life, reborn into its own simple strength! Be blessed, Madonna of the flighty heart, Nike with a Roumanian accent, dream and deceit, broken mirror of a dark god, be blessed, you, unsuspecting, whom I will never tell, for you would mercilessly make capital of it, but you have returned to me what neither Plato nor star chrysanthemums, neither flight nor freedom, neither all poesy nor all mercy, neither despair nor high and patient hope could give me: the simple, strong, immediate life that seemed to me like a crime in this time between two catastrophes! I salute you! Be blessed! I had to lose you in order to learn this! I salute you!”

The rain had turned into a glistening silver curtain. The bushes became fragrant. The smell of the soil was strong and grateful. Someone rushed out of the house opposite and put the top up over the yellow roadster. It did not matter. Nothing mattered. The night was there shaking rain down from the stars; mysterious and
fructifying, it poured down on the stone city with its alleys and gardens, millions of blossoms held out to it their multicolored sex and conceived it; it flung itself into the millions of open arms of the trees and penetrated the soil for its dark nuptials with millions of waiting roots, the rain, the night, nature, growth, they were there, unconcerned about destruction, death, criminals, false saints, victory or defeat, they were there as in every year, and on this night he belonged with them; the shell had broken open, life stretched out, life, life, life, welcomed and blessed.

He walked quickly through the gardens and streets. He did not look back, he walked and walked, and the treetops in the Bois received him like a huge humming beehive, the rain drummed upon them, they swayed and answered, and he felt as if he were young again and were going to a woman for the first time.

“
WHAT SHALL IT BE
?” the waiter asked Ravic.

“Bring me a—”

“What?”

Ravic did not answer.

“I didn’t understand you, sir,” the waiter said.

“Anything. Bring me something.”

“Pernod?”

“Yes.”

Ravic closed his eyes. He slowly opened them again. The man was still sitting there. This time there was no possibility of mistake.

Haake was sitting at the table by the door. He was alone and was eating. A silver plate with the two halves of a langouste and a bottle of champagne in an ice-bucket were on the table. A waiter was standing by the table, mixing a lettuce and tomato salad. Ravic saw all this overdistinctly as though there were a relief engraved on wax behind his eyes. He saw a signet ring with a coat of arms on a red stone when Haake took the bottle out of the ice-bucket. He recognized this ring and the chubby white hand. He
had seen it in the confused nightmare of methodical violence when, after collapsing beside the whipping-table, he had been hurled back from unconsciousness into the glaring light—with Haake before him, carefully stepping back to protect his neat uniform from the water pouring down over Ravic—with his chubby white hand stretched out, pointing at him, and with his soft voice declaring: “That was only the beginning. It has been nothing so far. Now will you reveal the names to us? Or shall we continue? We still have many other possibilities. Your fingernails are still intact, I see.”

Haake looked up. He looked Ravic straight in the eyes. Ravic needed all his strength to remain seated. He took his glass of Pernod, took a swallow, and forced his eyes to look at the salad plate as if the preparations interested him. He did not know whether Haake had recognized him. He could feel how, in a second, his back had become completely wet.

After a while he glanced at the table again. Haake was eating the langouste. He was looking at his plate. His bald head reflected the light. Ravic looked around. The place was crowded. It was impossible to do anything. He had no weapon on him and if he leaped at Haake, there would be ten people to pull him back the next moment. Two minutes later the police. There was nothing he could do but wait and follow Haake. Find out where he lived.

He forced himself to smoke a cigarette and not to glance at Haake again until he had finished it. Slowly, as if he were seeking someone, he looked about. Haake had just finished his langouste. He had the napkin in his hands and was wiping his lips. He did not do it with one hand; he did it with both. He held the napkin taut and touched his lips lightly with it; first one, then the other, like a woman removing lipstick. At that instant he looked straight at Ravic.

Ravic let his eyes wander. He sensed that Haake was continuing
to stare at him. He called the waiter and asked for another Pernod. A second waiter was busy at Haake’s table now. He cleared off the remainders of the langouste, refilled the empty glass, and brought a dish with cheeses. Haake pointed at a piece of melting Brie which was on a mat of straw.

Ravic smoked another cigarette. After a while, out of the corner of his eye, he again saw Haake looking at him. This was no longer accidental. He felt his skin contracting. If Haake had recognized him—he stopped the waiter as he was passing. “Can you bring the Pernod to me outside? I’d like to sit on the terrace. It’s cooler there.”

The waiter hesitated. “It would be easier if you’d pay here. There is another waiter outside. Then I can bring your glass outside to you.”

Ravic shook his head and took a bill out of his pocket. “I can drink it here and order another one outside. Then there won’t be any confusion.”

“Very well, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Ravic emptied his glass without haste. Haake had been listening, that he knew. He had stopped eating while Ravic had been talking. Now he went on with his meal. Ravic still kept quiet for a while. If Haake had recognized him, there was only one thing to be done: to act as if he had not recognized Haake and to continue to watch him from hiding.

After a few minutes he stood up and sauntered out. Almost every table outside was occupied. Ravic remained standing until he found a table from which he could keep an eye on a part of Haake’s table in the restaurant. Haake himself could not see him; but Ravic would see Haake when he got up to leave. He ordered a Pernod and paid at once. He wanted to be ready to follow him immediately.

———

“Ravic—” someone said at his side.

He was startled, as if someone had struck him. Joan stood at his side. He stared at her.

“Ravic—” she repeated. “Don’t you recognize me any more?”

“Yes, of course.” His eyes were on Haake’s table. The waiter was standing there and had brought coffee. He caught his breath. There was still time. “Joan,” he said with an effort, “how do you happen to be here?”

“What a question! Everyone comes to Fouquet’s every day.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

He realized that she was still standing while he was sitting. He got up in such a way that he could still look obliquely at Haake’s table. “I have something to do here, Joan,” he said hastily without looking at her. “I can’t explain what. You must leave me alone.”

“I’ll wait.” Joan sat down. “I’ll see what the woman is like.”

“What woman?” Ravic asked uncomprehendingly.

“The woman you are waiting for.”

“It’s not a woman.”

“Who else?”

He looked at her. “You didn’t recognize me,” she said. “You want to send me away, you are excited—I know there is someone. And I’m going to see who it is.”

Five minutes, Ravic thought. Perhaps even ten or fifteen for the coffee. Haake would smoke another cigarette. Maybe a cigar. He had to see that he was rid of Joan by then.

“All right,” he said. “I can’t prevent that. But sit down somewhere else.”

She did not answer. Her eyes became sharper and her face tense.

“It isn’t a woman,” he said. “And if it were, what the devil business is it of yours? Don’t make yourself ridiculous by acting jealous while you run around with your actor.”

Joan did not answer. She turned in the direction in which he had been looking and tried to discover whom he had been looking at. “Don’t do that,” he said.

“Is she with another man?”

Suddenly Ravic sat down. Haake had heard that he intended to sit on the terrace. If he had recognized him, he would be suspicious and see where he was. In that case it would appear more casual and harmless to be sitting out here with a woman.

“All right,” he said, “you may stay here. What you are thinking is nonsense. I’ll get up at a certain moment and leave. You’ll go with me to a taxi and you won’t come along with me. Will you do that?”

“Why are you so mysterious?”

“I am not mysterious. There is a man here whom I have not seen for a long time. I want to know where he lives. That’s all.”

“It isn’t a woman?”

“No. It is a man and I can’t tell you anything more about it.” The waiter stood by the table. “What do you want to drink?” Ravic asked.

“Calvados.”

“One calvados.” The waiter shuffled away.

“Aren’t you going to have one?”

“No, I’m drinking this.”

Joan studied him. “You don’t know how I hate you sometimes.”

“That may be.” Ravic glanced at Haake’s table. Glass, he thought. Trembling, flowing, glimmering glass. The street, the tables, the people—all immersed in a jelly of quivering glass.