Arch of Triumph (61 page)

By noon she knew. He had not told her anything, but suddenly she knew. “I don’t want to be a cripple, Ravic—What’s the matter with my legs?—I can’t move either of them—any more—”

“Nothing. You’ll be able to walk, as always, as soon as you get up again.”

“As soon as I get—up again. Why are you lying? You don’t—have to lie—”

“I’m not lying, Joan.”

“You are—You have to—You mustn’t—let me lie here—when I am nothing—but pain. Promise me that.”

“I promise.”

“When it’s going to be too much—you’ll have to give me—something. My grandmother—lay in bed for five days—and screamed. I don’t want that, Ravic.”

“You won’t have it. You’ll not have much pain.”

“When it’s going to be too bad—you must give me—something
strong enough—Enough for ever. You must do it—even if I don’t want you to—or am unaware—What I say now goes. Afterward—promise me.”

“I promise. It won’t be necessary.”

The frightened look disappeared. All at once she lay there peacefully. “It’s all right for you—to do it, Ravic,” she whispered. “Without you—I wouldn’t be alive anyway.”

“Nonsense. Of course you would.”

“No. From then on—when we first met—I no longer knew where to—you gave me—this year. It has been a gift of time.” Slowly she turned her head toward him. “Why didn’t I stay—with you?”

“It was my fault, Joan.”

“No. It was—I don’t know—”

Golden noon stood outside the window. The curtains were drawn, but light came through at the sides. Joan lay in a drugged half-sleep. There was already little left of her. These few hours had devoured her like wolves. Her body seemed to grow flat under the blanket. Its resistance ebbed. She floated between sleep and waking. Sometimes she was almost unconscious, sometimes quite clear. The pain became stronger. She began to groan. Ravic gave her an injection. “My head,” she murmured. “It’s getting worse.”

After a while she began to talk again. “The light—too much light—it burns—”

Ravic went to the window. He found the shade and pulled it down. Then he drew the curtains closer together. Now the room was almost dark. He walked back and sat down beside her bed.

Joan moved her lips. “It takes so long—it doesn’t help any longer, Ravic—”

“In a few minutes—”

She lay still. Her hands lay dead on the blanket. “I must—tell you—so much—”

“Later, Joan.”

“No. Now—there is no more time. So much—to explain—”

“I think I know most of it, Joan—”

“You know?”

“I think so—”

The waves. Ravic could see the convulsive waves go through her. Both legs were paralyzed now. Her arms too. Her breast still rose.

“You know—that I always—only—with you—”

“Yes, Joan—”

“The other was—just restlessness—”

“Yes, I know—”

She lay silent for a while. She breathed with effort. “Strange—” she said then very clearly. “Strange—that one can die—when one loves—”

Ravic bent over her. There was only darkness and her face. “I was not good enough—for you,” she whispered.

“You were my life—”

“I can—I want—my arms can never—embrace you—”

He saw how she struggled to lift her arms. “You are in my arms,” he said. “And I in yours.”

She ceased breathing for a moment. Her eyes were entirely in the shade. She opened them. The pupils were very large. Ravic did not know whether she saw him.
“Ti amo,”
she said.

She spoke the language of her childhood. She was too tired for the other one. Ravic took her lifeless hands. Something in him was torn apart. “You have made me live, Joan.” He spoke to the face with the fixed eyes. “You have made me live. I was nothing but stone. You have made me live—”

“Mi ami, tu?”

It was the question of a child that wants to go to sleep. It was the final weariness beyond all the others.

“Joan,” Ravic said. “Love is no word for it. It isn’t enough. It is
a small part only, it is a drop in a river, a leaf on a tree. It is so much more—”

“Sono stata—sempre conte …”

Ravic held her hands, which no longer felt his. “You were always with me,” he said and did not notice that all of a sudden he spoke German. “You were always with me, no matter whether I loved you, hated you, or seemed indifferent—that never changed anything, you were always with me—and always within me—”

Up to now they had always spoken to each other in a borrowed language. Now for the first time, without knowing it, each one spoke his own and the barrier of words fell and they understood each other better than ever.

“Baciami.”

He kissed her hot dry lips. “You were always with me, Joan—always—”

“Son’ stata perduta senza
di te—”

“I was more lost without you. You were all the brightness and the sweet and the bitter—you have shaken me and you have given me yourself and myself—”

Ravic watched her. Her limbs were dead, everything was dead, only her eyes were still alive and her mouth and her breath, and he knew that the auxiliary muscles of respiration would gradually succumb to the paralysis now, she could hardly speak any longer, she was gasping already, her teeth ground together, her face was convulsed, she still struggled to speak, her throat was in spasm, her lips trembled, the rattle, the deep, ghastly rattle, finally a cry broke through. “Ravic,” she stammered. “Help!—Help!—Now!”

He had the needle in readiness. Quickly he picked it up and inserted it under her skin. Quickly, before the next spasm came. She should not suffocate slowly, torturously, again and again, interminably, with always less and less air. She should not suffer senselessly. There was nothing but pain ahead of her. Perhaps for hours.

Her eyelids fluttered. Then they became still. Her lips relaxed. The breathing ceased.

He drew the curtains back and pulled the shade up. Then he returned to the bed. Joan’s face had become fixed and alien.

He closed the door and went into the office. Eugénie sat at a table with the charts. “The patient in number twelve is dead,” Ravic said.

Eugénie nodded without looking up.

“Is Doctor Veber in his room?”

“I think so.”

Ravic went down the corridor. Some of the doors stood open. He walked on to Veber’s room.

“Number twelve is dead, Veber. Now you can call the police.” Veber did not look up. “The police have other things to do now.”

“What?”

Veber pointed at an extra edition of the
Matin
. German troops had invaded Poland. “I have news from the ministry. War will be declared today.”

Ravic put down the paper. “This is it, Veber.”

“Yes. This is the end. Poor France.”

Ravic sat awhile. There was nothing but emptiness. “It is more than France, Veber,” he said then.

Veber stared at him. “For me it’s France. That’s enough.”

Ravic did not answer. “What will you do?” he asked after a while.

“I don’t know. I’ll join my regiment. Things here”—he made a gesture—“someone will take over.”

“You’ll stay here. In wartime, hospitals are needed. They will leave you here.”

“I don’t want to stay here.”

Ravic looked about. “This will be my last day here. I think everything is in order. The uterus case is recovering; the gallbladder case is all right; the cancer case is hopeless, a further operation would be useless. That’s that.”

“Why?” Veber asked in a tired voice. “Why will it be your last day?”

“They’ll round us up as soon as war is declared.” Ravic noticed that Veber was about to say something. “Let’s not argue about it. They’ll do it all right.”

Veber sat down on his chair. “I no longer know. Maybe. Maybe they won’t even fight. Just surrender the country. One no longer knows.”

Ravic got up. “I’ll be back in the evening, if I’m still here. At eight.”

“Yes.”

Ravic went out. He found the actor in the hall. He had forgotten him completely. The man jumped up. “How is she?”

“She is dead.”

The man stared at him. “Dead?” He pressed his hand against his heart with a tragic movement and staggered.

Damned comedian, Ravic thought. Very likely he had played something of the kind so often that he fell back into a role when it really happened to him. But maybe he was honest and the gestures of his profession simply clung absurdly about his real grief.

“Can I see her?”

“What for?”

“I’ve got to see her once more!” The man pressed both hands against his breast. In his hands he held a light brown Homburg with a silk edge. “Don’t you understand! I must—”

He had tears in his eyes. “Listen,” Ravic said impatiently. “You’d better disappear. The woman is dead, and nothing will change that. Settle this affair with yourself. And go to hell! No one
cares whether you get sentenced to a year in prison or dramatically acquitted. Anyhow in a few years you’ll be using it to show off in front of other women to conquer them. Get out, you idiot!”

He gave him a push toward the door. The man hesitated a moment. At the door, he turned around: “You unfeeling beast!
Sale boche!
”

The streets were full of people. They stood in clusters in front of the big running electric bulletins of the newspapers. Ravic drove to the Jardin de Luxembourg. He wanted to be alone for a few hours before he was arrested.

The garden was empty. It lay in the warm light of the late summer afternoon. The trees showed a first premonition of fall, not of the fall that withers, but of the fall that matures. The light was golden, and the blue was a last silk flag of summer.

Ravic sat there for a long time. He saw the light change and the shadows grow longer. He knew they were the last hours in which he would be free. The proprietress of the International could no longer shield anyone once war was declared. He thought of Rolande. Not Rolande either. No one. If he made an attempt to continue his flight now he would be suspected of being a spy.

He sat there until evening. He was not sad. Faces drifted past him. Faces and years. And then the last unmoving face.

At seven he departed. He was leaving the last remnant of peace, the darkening park, and he knew it. A few steps farther up the street, he saw the extra editions of the newspapers. War had been declared.

He ate in a bistro that had no radio. Then he walked back to the hospital. Veber met him. “Will you perform a Caesarean? Someone has just been brought in.”

“Of course.”

He went to change. On his way he met Eugénie. She was taken aback at seeing him. “Didn’t you expect me any more?” he asked.

“No,” she replied and passed him quickly.

The child squealed. It was being washed. Ravic looked at its red screaming face and the tiny fingers. We don’t come into the world with a smile, he thought. He handed the child to the assistant nurse. It was a boy. “Who knows what sort of war he’s in time for,” he said.

He washed. Veber was washing at his side. “If it should turn out that you are arrested, Ravic, will you let me know right away where you are?”

“Why do you want to get into difficulties? It is better now not to know people of my type.”

“Why? Because you were a German? You are a refugee.”

Ravic smiled sadly. “Don’t you know that refugees are always as stones between stones? To their native country they are traitors. And abroad they are still citizens of their native country.”

“That makes no difference to me. But I want you to get out as quickly as possible. Will you give me as a reference?”

“If you want me to.” Ravic knew that he would not do it.

“It is an abominable thought. What would you do there?”

“For a doctor there is something to do everywhere.” Ravic dried his hands. “Will you do me a favor? Take care of Joan’s funeral? There won’t be enough time for me to do it.”

“Naturally. Is there anything else to look after? Property or anything like that?”

“We can leave that to the police. I don’t know whether she has any relatives. It is of no importance.”

He put on his coat. “Adieu, Veber. It was a good time working with you.”

“Adieu, Ravic. We still have to settle for the Caesarean operation.”

“Let’s count that off against the funeral. It will cost you more anyway. I’d like to leave you money for it.”

“Impossible. Impossible, Ravic. Where do you want her to be buried?”

“I don’t know. In any cemetery. I’ll leave her name and address here.” Ravic wrote it down on a bill pad of the hospital.

Veber put the slip under a crystal paperweight in which a silver sheep was cast.

“All right, Ravic. I think I’ll be gone too in a few days. We would hardly have been able to perform many operations without your being here.” He walked outside with him.

“Adieu, Eugénie,” Ravic said.

“Adieu, Herr Ravic.” She looked at him. “Are you going to your hotel?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. I only thought—”

It was dark. A truck was standing in front of the hotel. “Ravic,” Morosow said, coming out from a house entrance near the hotel.

“Boris?” Ravic stopped.

“The police are in the place.”

“I thought so.”

“I have Ivan Kluge’s
carte d’identité
here. You know, the dead Russian. Still valid for eighteen months. Come with me to the Scheherazade. We’ll change the photos. Then you can stay at another hotel as a Russian refugee.”

Ravic shook his head. “Too risky, Boris. One oughtn’t to have forged papers in wartime. Better none at all.”

“Then what will you do?”

“I’ll go into the hotel.”

“Have you thought it over carefully, Ravic?” Morosow asked.

“Yes, carefully.”

“Damn it! Who knows where they will put you.”

“At any rate, they won’t deport me to Germany. That’s over. They won’t even deport me to Switzerland.” Ravic smiled. “For the first time in seven years the police will want to keep us, Boris. It took a war to get that far.”

“It’s rumored they’re going to set up a concentration camp at Longchamp.” Morosow pulled at his beard. “For this you had to flee a German concentration camp—to get into a French one now.”

“Maybe they’ll set us free again soon.”

Morosow did not answer. “Boris,” Ravic said. “Don’t worry about me. Doctors are needed in time of war.”