Arch of Triumph (43 page)

“You are cold, egotistic—”

“Joan,” Ravic said, “we’ll discuss this some other time.”

She was silent while the waiter put the glass before her. Ravic paid at once.

“You got me into all this,” she then said challengingly.

“I know.” For a moment he saw Haake’s hand over the table, the chubby white hand reaching for the sugar.

“You! No one but you! You have never loved me and you played with me and you saw that I loved you and you did not take it seriously.”

“That is true.”

“What?”

“It is true,” Ravic said without looking at her. “But it became different later on.”

“Yes, later! Later! Everything was upside-down then. Then it was too late. It was your fault.”

“I know.”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” Her face was white and angry. “You’re not even listening!”

“I am.” He looked at her. Talk, say something, no matter what. “Did you have a fight with your actor?”

“Yes.”

“That will pass.”

Blue smoke from the corner. The waiter was pouring coffee again. Haake seemed to be taking his time. “I could have denied it,” Joan said. “I could have said I just came here by accident. I didn’t. I was looking for you. I am going to leave him.”

“That’s what one is always going to do. It’s part of it.”

“I’m afraid of him. He threatens me. He wants to shoot me.”

“What?” Suddenly Ravic looked up. “What was that?”

“He says he’ll shoot me.”

“Who?” He had only half listened. Now he understood. “Oh, I see! You don’t believe it, do you?”

“He has a terrible temper.”

“Nonsense! Whoever says such a thing never does it. Least of all an actor.”

What am I talking about? he thought. What is all this? What does she want here? A voice, a face above the roaring in my ears. What does it matter to me? “Why are you telling me all this?” he asked.

“I’m going to leave him. I want to come back to you.”

If he takes a taxi it will take me at least a few seconds until I can stop one, Ravic thought. By the time it gets started it might be too late. He got up. “Wait here. I’ll be back at once.”

“What do you want—”

He did not answer.

He crossed the street quickly and hailed a taxi. “Here are ten francs. Can you wait for me a few minutes? I still have something to do inside.”

The driver looked at the money. Then at Ravic. Ravic winked. The driver winked back. He turned the bill around slowly. “That’s extra,” Ravic said. “You know why—”

“I understand.” The driver grinned. “All right, I’ll park here.”

“Park so that you can get started immediately.”

“All right, chief.”

Ravic forced his way back through the crowd. Suddenly his throat tightened. He saw Haake standing in the doorway. He did not hear what Joan was saying. “Wait!” he said. “Wait! Just a moment! One second!”

“No.”

She rose. “You’ll regret this!” She was almost sobbing. He forced himself to smile. He held her hand tight. Haake was still standing there. “Sit down,” Ravic said. “One second.”

“No!”

Her hand strained in his grip. He let her go. He did not want a
scene. She left quickly, making her way through the rows of tables close by the door. Haake followed her with his eyes. Then he slowly looked back at Ravic, then again in the direction in which Joan had gone. Ravic sat down. Suddenly the blood thundered in his temples. He took out his wallet and pretended to be looking for something. He noticed that Haake was slowly walking between the tables. He looked indifferently in the opposite direction. Haake had to pass the place he was looking at.

He waited. It seemed to take endless time. Suddenly he was seized by a hot fear. What if Haake had turned back? He quickly turned his head. Haake was not there any more. Not there any more. For a moment everything turned around him. “Will you permit me?” someone asked at his side.

Ravic did not hear. He looked at the door. Haake had not gone back into the restaurant. Jump up, he thought, run after him, still try to get hold of him. Then the voice was there behind him again. He turned his head and stared. Haake had come around behind his back and was standing now beside him. He pointed at the chair on which Joan had been sitting. “Will you permit me? There is no other table free.”

Ravic nodded. He was unable to say anything. The blood was drained from his head. It ebbed and ebbed as if it would run under the chair and leave his body behind like an empty sack. He pressed his back close against the back of the chair. There stood his glass still in front of him. The milky fluid. He lifted it and drank. It was heavy. He looked at the glass. It was steady in his hand. The trembling was in his veins.

Haake ordered a fine champagne. An old fine champagne. He spoke French with a heavy German accent. Ravic called a newspaper boy.
“Paris Soir.”

The newspaper boy looked cautiously toward the entrance. He
knew the old newspaper woman was standing there. He handed Ravic the newspaper, folded, as though accidentally, grabbed the coin, and quickly disappeared.

He must have recognized me, Ravic thought. Otherwise why would he have come? He had not counted on that. Now he could only stay and see what Haake wanted and act accordingly.

He picked up the newspaper, read the headlines, and put it back on the table. Haake looked at him. “Fine evening,” he said in German.

Ravic nodded.

Haake smiled. “Keen eye, eh?”

“Apparently.”

“I saw you while I was still inside.”

Ravic nodded attentively and indifferently. He was strained to the utmost. He could not imagine what Haake’s intentions were. The latter could not know that Ravic was in France illegally. But maybe the Gestapo had known even that. But for that there still was time.

“I recognized you at once,” Haake said.

Ravic looked at him. “That scar,” Haake said and pointed at Ravic’s forehead. “Member of a student corps. Therefore you must be German. Or have studied in Germany.”

He laughed. Ravic was still looking at him. This was impossible! It was too ridiculous! He breathed deeply in sudden relief. Haake had no idea who he was. He thought the scar on his forehead was a dueling scar. Ravic laughed. He laughed with Haake. He had to dig his nails into the palm of his hand to make himself stop laughing.

“Is that correct?” Haake asked with jovial pride.

“Yes, exactly.”

The scar on his forehead. He had got it when they had beaten him in the cellar at Gestapo headquarters before Haake’s very eyes.
Blood had run into his own eyes and mouth. And now Haake sat here, mistaking it for a dueling scar, and was proud of himself.

The waiter brought Haake’s fine. Haake sniffed at it like a connoisseur. “That’s one thing they have here!” he declared. “Good cognac! Otherwise—” He winked at Ravic. “Everything’s rotten. A people of rentiers. They don’t want anything but security and a good life. Helpless against us.”

Ravic thought he’d be unable to talk. He thought if he talked he would seize his glass, smash it against the edge of the table, and dig the sharp splinters into Haake’s eyes. He took the glass, carefully and with effort, emptied it, and put it quietly down again.

“What is that?” Haake asked.

“Pernod. A substitute for absinthe.”

“Ah, absinthe. The stuff that makes the French impotent, eh?” Haake smiled. “Pardon me! Nothing personal intended.”

“Absinthe is prohibited,” Ravic said. “This is a harmless substitute. Absinthe is said to make one sterile, not impotent. That’s why it is prohibited. This is anise. Tastes like licorice-water.”

It worked, he thought. It worked and without much excitement either. He could answer, easily and smoothly. There was turmoil deep inside him, roaring and black—but the surface appeared calm.

“Do you live here?” Haake asked.

“Yes.”

“Have you lived here long?”

“Always.”

“I understand,” Haake said. “A foreign German. Born here, eh?”

Ravic nodded.

Haake drank his fine. “Some of our best men are Germans born in foreign countries. Our Fuehrer’s deputy, born in Egypt. Rosenberg, in Russia. Darré comes from Argentina. It’s the political conviction that counts, eh?”

“Only that,” Ravic replied.

“I thought so.” Haake’s face radiated satisfaction. Then he bowed slightly across the table, and it seemed as if he clicked his heels under the table at the same time. “By the way—permit me—von Haake.”

Ravic repeated the ceremony. “Horn.” It was one of his former pseudonyms.

“Von Horn?” Haake asked.

“Yes.”

Haake nodded. He became more intimate. He had met a man of his own class. “You must know Paris well, eh?”

“Fairly.”

“I don’t mean the museums.” Haake grinned like a man of the world.

“I know what you mean.”

The Aryan superman would like to go slumming, and doesn’t know where to go, Ravic thought. If I could get him into a hidden corner somewhere, a lonely bistro, an out-of-the-way brothel—he deliberated quickly. Some place where he wouldn’t be disturbed and hindered.

“There are all sorts of interesting things here, eh?” Haake asked.

“You haven’t been in Paris long?”

“I come here every other week for two or three days. Sort of a check-up. Pretty important. We have built up quite a few things here during the last year. It’s working out wonderfully. I can’t talk about it, but”—Haake laughed—“you can buy almost anything here. A corrupt lot. We know almost everything we want to know. We don’t even have to look for information. They bring it themselves. Treason as a form of patriotism. A result of the party system. Each party betrays the others and their country for their own profit. Our advantage. We have a great many friends here of our political persuasion. In the most influential circles.” He lifted his
glass, examined it, found it empty, and put it down again. “They don’t even arm themselves. They think we won’t demand anything from them if they are unarmed. If you knew the number of their planes and tanks, you would laugh yourself sick at these candidates for suicide.”

Ravic listened. He was all attention and yet everything swam around him as in a dream just before the awakening. The tables, the waiters, the sweet nocturnal commotion of life, the gliding rows of automobiles, the moon above the houses, the multicolored electric signs on the house fronts—and the garrulous manifold murderer opposite him who had ruined his life.

Two women in short tailored suits passed by. They smiled at Ravic. It was Yvette and Marthe from the Osiris. They were having their day off.

“Chic, Donnerwetter!” Haake said.

A side-street, Ravic thought. A narrow empty side-street—if I could get him there. Or into the Bois. “Those are two ladies who live by love,” he said.

Haake looked after them. “They’re very good-looking. The people here know all about that, don’t they?” He ordered another fine. “May I offer you a drink?”

“Thanks, I’d rather stick to this one.”

“They are supposed to have fantastic brothels here. Places with performances and that sort of thing.” Haake’s eyes glittered. They glittered as they had years ago in the stark light of the cellar.

I must not think of that, Ravic thought. Not now. “Have you ever been in one?” he asked.

“I have been in several. For observation, naturally. To see how low a people can sink. But surely not in the right ones. Of course I’ve got to be careful. It could be wrongly interpreted.”

Ravic nodded. “You needn’t be afraid of that. There are places where tourists never come.”

“Do you know about them?”

“Of course. Quite a lot.”

Haake drank his second fine. He became friendlier. The inhibitions he had had in Germany fell from him. Ravic felt that he was completely unsuspecting. “I intend to stroll about a bit tonight,” he said to Haake.

“Indeed?”

“Yes. I do it now and then. One should learn everything one can.”

“Right! Absolutely right!”

Haake stared straight at him for a moment. Get him drunk, Ravic thought. If it won’t work any other way, get him drunk and drag him off somewhere.

Haake’s expression had changed. He was not tipsy, he was only lost in thought. “It’s a pity,” he said finally. “I would have liked to come with you.”

Ravic did not reply. He wanted to avoid anything that might make Haake suspicious.

“I must go back to Berlin tonight.” Haake looked at his watch. “In an hour and a half.”

Ravic sat there completely calm. I must go with him, he thought. Surely he lives in a hotel. Not a private apartment. I must go with him to his room and catch him there.

“I’m just waiting here for two acquaintances of mine,” Haake said. “Should be here any minute. They are traveling with me. My things are already at the station. We are going straight from here to the train.”

I’ve lost, Ravic thought. Why haven’t I a gun with me? Why did I, idiot that I am, come to believe in recent months that what happened before was an hallucination? I could shoot him on the street and try to escape through a subway entrance.

“It’s a pity,” Haake said. “But perhaps we can make it next time. I’ll be back again in two weeks.”

Ravic breathed again. “All right,” he said.

“Where do you live? I could call you up then.”

“In the Prince de Galles. Just across the street.”

Haake took a notebook out of his pocket and put down the address. Ravic looked at the elegant covers of flexible red Russian leather. The pencil was a thin gold one. What must be in there, he thought. Probably information that will lead to torture and death.

Haake put his notebook back into his pocket. “Chic woman you were talking to before,” he said.

Ravic had to think for a second. “Ah so—yes, very.”

“In the movies?”

“Something of that sort.”

“Good acquaintance?”

“Just that.”

Haake looked straight ahead, meditatively. “That’s the difficulty here—to make the acquaintance of someone nice. One doesn’t have time enough and does not have the right opportunities—”

“That can be arranged,” Ravic said.

“Really? You aren’t interested?”

“In what?”

Haake laughed in embarrassment. “For instance, in the lady with whom you spoke?”