Arch of Triumph (56 page)

“All right. Thank you, Rolande.”

“Two days ago someone from the police was here. He inquired about a German. He wanted to know whether he had been here.”

“Really?” Ravic said attentively.

“Yes. He had been here last time you were in. Probably you don’t remember it any more. A stout bald-headed man. He was sitting there with Yvonne and Claire. The police asked whether he had been here and who else had been here.”

“I have no recollection,” Ravic said.

“I’m sure you didn’t pay any attention to him. Of course I didn’t say that you were here for a moment that night.”

Ravic nodded.

“It’s better so,” Rolande declared. “This way one doesn’t give the
flics
a chance to ask innocent people for their passports.”

“Naturally. Did he say what he wanted?”

Rolande shrugged her shoulders. “No. And it’s none of our business. I told him that no one had been here. That’s an old rule of our house. We never know anything. It’s better. Nor was he very much interested in it.”

“Wasn’t he?”

Rolande smiled. “Ravic, there are many Frenchmen who don’t mind what happens to a German tourist. We have plenty to do for ourselves.”

She got up. “I must go. Adieu, Ravic.”

“Adieu, Rolande. It won’t be the same here without you.”

She smiled. “Not right away perhaps. But soon.”

She went to say goodbye to the girls. On her way she looked at the cash register, the chairs and tables again. They were practical presents. She saw them in her café already. Particularly the cash register. It meant income, security, home, and prosperity. Rolande hesitated for a moment; then she could no longer resist. She took a few coins out of her pocket, put them beside the glittering apparatus, and began to work on it. The machine whirred, marked up two francs fifty, the drawer shot out, and Rolande put in her own money with a happy childlike smile.

Curiously the girls came closer and surrounded the cash register. Rolande registered a second time. One franc seventy-five.

“What can one get for one franc seventy-five at your place?” asked Marguerite, who was otherwise known as the Horse.

Rolande considered. “A Dubonnet, two Pernods,” she said then.

“How much do you charge for an Amèr Picon and one beer?”

“Seventy centimes.” Rolande registered zero francs, seventy centimes.

“Cheap,” the Horse said.

“We’ve got to be cheaper than Paris,” Rolande explained.

The girls moved the wicker chairs around the marble tables and sat down carefully. They smoothed their evening dresses and all of a sudden began to act like visitors at Rolande’s future café. “We’d like to have three teas with English biscuits, Madame Rolande,” said Daisy, a delicate blonde who was a special favorite of married men.

“Seven francs eighty.” Rolande kept her cash register busy. “I’m sorry, but English biscuits are expensive.”

At the adjoining table Marguerite, the Horse, raised her head after keen deliberation. “Two bottles of Pommery,” she ordered triumphantly. She liked Rolande and wished to show her affection.

“Ninety francs. Good Pommery!”

“And four cognacs!” breathed the Horse heavily. “It’s my birthday.”

“Four francs forty!” The cash register clattered.

“And four coffees with meringues!”

“Three francs sixty.”

The enchanted Horse stared at Rolande. She could think of nothing more.

The girls crowded around the cash register. “How much is it altogether, Madame Rolande?”

Rolande showed the slip with the printed figures and began to add them. “One hundred five francs eighty.”

“And how much of it is profit?”

“About thirty francs. That’s because of the champagne. You make a lot of money on it.”

“Good,” the Horse said. “Good! That’s how it should always go!”

Rolande came back to Ravic. Her eyes were radiant as only eyes can be when they are full of love or business. “Adieu, Ravic. Don’t forget what I told you.”

“No. Adieu, Rolande.”

She left, strong, upright, clearheaded—for her the future was simple and life was good.

He was sitting with Morosow in front of Fouquet’s. It was nine o’clock in the evening. The terrace was crowded. At a distance behind the Arc two street lights burned with a white and very cold light.

“The rats are leaving Paris,” Morosow said. “There are three rooms empty at the International. That has not happened since 1933.”

“Other refugees will come and fill them.”

“What kind? We have had Russians, Italians, Poles, Spaniards, Germans—”

“French,” Ravic said. “From the frontiers. Refugees. As in the last war.”

Morosow lifted his glass and saw that it was empty. He called the waiter. “Another carafe of Pouilly.”

“How about you, Ravic?” he asked then.

“As a rat?”

“Yes.”

“Nowadays rats too need passports and visas.”

Morosow looked at him disapprovingly. “Have you had any up to now? No. In spite of that you have been in Prague, Vienna, Zurich, Spain, and Paris. Now it’s time that you disappear from here.”

“Where to?” Ravic said. He took the carafe which the waiter had brought. The glass was cool and frosted. He poured the light wine. “To Italy? The Gestapo would wait for me there at the frontier. To Spain? The Falangists are waiting there.”

“To Switzerland.”

“Switzerland is too small. I have been in Switzerland three times. Each time the police caught me after a week and sent me back to France.”

“England. From Belgium as a stowaway.”

“Impossible. They catch you in the harbor and send you back to Belgium. And Belgium is no country for refugees.”

“You can’t go to America. How about Mexico?”

“Overcrowded. And also that would only be possible with some kind of papers.”

“Haven’t you any at all?”

“I had some discharge papers from prisons where I had been under various names because of illegal entry into the country. That’s not exactly the right thing. Of course I always tore them up right away.”

Morosow was silent.

“The flight has come to an end, old Boris,” Ravic said. “At some time it always comes to an end.”

“You know what will happen when war is declared?”

“Of course. A French concentration camp. They’ll be bad because nothing has been prepared in advance.”

“And then?”

Ravic shrugged his shoulders. “One shouldn’t think too far ahead.”

“All right. But do you know what may happen in case everything goes to pieces here while you are sitting in a concentration camp? The Germans may catch you.”

“Me and many others. Maybe. It may also be that they’ll let us go in time. Who knows?”

“And then?”

Ravic took a cigarette out of his pocket. “We won’t discuss it today, Boris. I can’t get out of France. Everywhere else it’s dangerous or impossible. Also I don’t want to move on any more.”

“You don’t want to move on any more?”

“No. I have thought about it. I can’t explain it to you. It can’t be explained. I don’t want to move on any more.”

Morosow remained silent. He looked the crowd over. “There is Joan,” he said.

She was sitting with a man, quite far away, at a table facing the Avenue George V. “Do you know him?” he asked Ravic.

Ravic glanced at them. “No.”

“She seems to change rather fast.”

“She runs after life,” Ravic replied indifferently. “Like most of us do. Breathless, afraid of missing something.”

“One can call it by a different name.”

“One could. But it remains the same. Restlessness, old man. The disease of the last twenty-five years. No one believes any longer that he will grow old peacefully with his savings. Everyone smells the scent of fire and tries to seize what he can. Not you, of course. You are a philosopher of the simple pleasures.”

Morosow did not reply. “She doesn’t know anything about hats,” Ravic said. “Just see what she is wearing! In general she has little taste. That’s her strength. Culture weakens. In the end it always comes back to the naked impulse of life. You yourself are a magnificent example of it.”

Morosow grinned. “Let me have my low pleasures, you wanderer in the air! Who has simple tastes likes many things. He’ll never be left sitting with empty hands. Who is sixty and chasing after love is an idiot who hopes to win although the others play with marked cards. A good brothel sets your mind at peace. The house I frequent has sixteen young women. There, for little money, I am a pasha. The caresses I receive are more genuine than those many a slave of love bemoans. Slave of love, I said.”

“I understand, Boris.”

“Good. Then let us finish this drink. Cool light Pouilly. And let us inhale the silver air of Paris while it is still free from pestilence.”

“Let’s do that. Have you observed that the chestnuts have bloomed for the second time this year?”

Morosow nodded. He pointed to the sky in which Mars twinkled above the darkening roofs, large and red. “Yes, and they say that that fellow up there is closer to our earth than he has been for many years.” He laughed. “Soon we’ll read that somewhere a child has been born with a mole like a sword. And that it was raining blood somewhere else. The only thing missing now is the enigmatic comet of the Middle Ages to make all the ominous signs complete.”

“There is the comet.” Ravic pointed at the electric signs over the newspaper building which seemed to chase each other without intermission, and at the crowd which was standing there, silently, their heads bent backward, staring at them.

They remained sitting for a while. An accordion player posted himself at the curb and played
La Paloma
. The rug peddlers appeared with silken Keshans over their shoulders. A boy sold pistachios at the tables. It looked as it had always looked—until the newspaper boys came. The papers were almost torn from their hands and a few seconds later the terrace, with all the unfolded papers, appeared as if buried under a swarm of huge, white, bloodless moths sitting on their victims greedily, with noiseless flapping wings.

“There goes Joan,” Morosow said.

“Where?”

“Over there, at the corner.”

Joan walked across the street to a gray open car which was parked in the Champs Elysées. She did not see Ravic. The man
who was with her walked around the car and sat down at the wheel. He wore no hat and was rather young. He skillfully maneuvered the car out from between the others. It was a low Delahaye. “Beautiful car,” Ravic said.

“Beautiful tires,” Morosow replied and snorted. “Iron man Ravic,” he added angrily. “The detached Central European. Beautiful car—accursed wench, that I could understand.”

Ravic smiled. “What does it matter? Wench or saint—it’s always what one makes out of it oneself. You with your sixteen women, you can’t understand that, you peaceful patron of brothels. Love is not a businessman who wants to see a return on his investments. And imagination needs only a few nails on which to hang its veil. Whether they are of gold, tin, or covered with rust makes no difference to it. Wherever it gets caught, it is caught. Thornbush or rosebush, as soon as the veil of moonlight and mother-of-pearl has fallen on it, either becomes a fairy tale out of
A Thousand and One Nights
.”

Morosow took a gulp of wine. “You’re talking too much,” he said. “Besides, all this is wrong.”

“I know. But in complete darkness even a will-o’-the-wisp is a light, Boris.”

The coolness came on silver feet from the direction of the Etoile. Ravic put his hand around the frosted glass of wine. It was cool under his hand. His life was cool under his heart. It was borne by the deep breath of night and with it came deep the indifference toward fate. Fate and the future. When had it been like this before? In Antibes, he recalled, when he became aware that Joan would leave him. Indifference that became equanimity. Like the decision not to flee. Not to flee any more. They belonged together. He had had revenge and love. That was enough. It was not everything, but it was as much as a man could ask for. He had not expected
either one again. He had killed Haake and not left Paris. He would not leave it now. That was part of it. Who profited by chance must expose himself to it, too. That was not resignation; it was the calm of a decision beyond logic. Vacillation had come to a stop. Something was set in order. One waited, pulled oneself together, and looked around. It was like a mysterious assurance to which existence committed itself before a caesura. Nothing was of significance any longer. All rivers stood still. A lake lifted its mirror during the night and the morning would show whither it would flow.

“I must go,” Morosow said and looked at his watch. “All right. I’ll stay on, Boris.”

“To enjoy the last evenings before the
Götterdämmerung
, eh?”

“Exactly. All this won’t come again.”

“Is that so bad?”

“No. Neither will we come again. Yesterday is lost, and no tears or magic spells can bring it back. But today is eternal.”

“You are talking too much.” Morosow got up. “Be grateful. You are witnessing the end of a century. It has not been a good century.”

“You also talk too much, Boris.”

Standing, Morosow emptied his glass. He put it down as carefully as if it were dynamite, and wiped his beard. He was in civilian clothes and stood, huge and heavy, before Ravic. “Don’t think that I don’t understand why you won’t leave,” he said slowly. “I can understand very well your not wanting to move on, you fatalistic joiner of bones.”

Ravic returned early to the hotel. He saw a little lost figure sitting in the hall, who, at his entrance, excitedly got up from the sofa
with an odd movement of both hands. He noticed that one of the trouser legs had no foot. Instead a dirty splintery wooden stump showed underneath.

“Doctor, doctor!”

Ravic looked more closely. In the dim light of the hall he saw the face of a youngster, drawn into a broad grin. “Jeannot!” he said in surprise. “Of course, it’s Jeannot!”

“Yes! The same! I have been waiting here for you the whole evening! It was only this afternoon that I got your address. I tried to get it several times before from that old devil, the head nurse in the hospital. But every time she told me you were not in Paris.”