Arch of Triumph (62 page)

“What name will you give them when they arrest you?”

“My own. I have only made use of it once here—five years ago.” Ravic was silent for a while. “Boris,” he said then. “Joan is dead. shot by a man. She is lying in Veber’s hospital. She must be buried. Veber has promised to take care of it, but I don’t know whether he’ll be called up before that. Will you look after it? Don’t ask me any questions, say yes and be done with it.”

“Yes,” Morosow said.

“All right. Adieu, Boris. Take any of my belongings you can use. And move into my room. You always wanted my bathroom anyway. I’ll go now. So long.”

“Merde!”
Morosow said.

“All right. I’ll meet you after the war at Fouquet’s.”

“Which side? Champs Elysées or George V?”

“George V. We are idiots. Heroic snotty idiots. So long, Boris.”

“Merde!”
Morosow said. “We don’t even dare to say goodbye decently. Come here, idiot.”

He kissed Ravic on the right and left cheek. Ravic felt his beard and the smell of pipe tobacco. It was not pleasant. He walked to the hotel.

The refugees were standing in the Catacombs. Like the first Christians, Ravic thought. The first Europeans. A plain-clothes man was sitting at a desk under the artificial palm, writing down the particulars about each person. Two policemen guarded the doors through which no one had any intention of fleeing. “Passport?” the man in plain clothes asked Ravic.

“No.”

“Other papers?”

“No.”

“Illegally here?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I fled from Germany. It was impossible to obtain papers.”

“Your name?”

“Fresenburg.”

“First name?”

“Ludwig.”

“Jew?”

“No.”

“Profession?”

“Doctor.”

The man was writing. “Doctor?” he said and held a slip of paper toward him. “Do you know a doctor who calls himself Ravic?”

“No.”

“He is supposed to live here. We received a denunciation of him.”

Ravic looked at him. Eugénie, he thought. She had asked him if he was going to return to his hotel, and she had been so surprised to see him still free.

“I told you that no one of that name lives here,” declared the proprietress, who was standing by the door leading to the kitchen.

“Be quiet,” the man said ill-humouredly. “You’ll be punished anyway because you did not report these people.”

“I’m proud of it. If humaneness is to be punished, then go ahead!”

The man looked as if he wanted to answer; but he stopped himself with a gesture of dismissal. The proprietress stared at him challengingly. She had protection and was not afraid.

“Pack your things,” the man said to Ravic. “Take your underwear with you and something to eat, enough for a day. Also a blanket, if you have one.”

A policeman came upstairs with him. The doors to most rooms stood open. Ravic took his suitcase and blanket.

“Nothing else?” the policeman asked.

“Nothing else.”

“You are leaving the other things here?”

“I’m leaving the other things here.”

“This too?” The policeman pointed to the little wooden Madonna that Joan had sent him at the International after they had first met.

“That too.”

They went downstairs. Clarisse, the Alsatian maid, handed Ravic a package. Ravic noticed that the others had similar packages. “Something to eat,” declared the proprietress. “So that you won’t go hungry. I’m convinced there will be no preparations made where you’re going.”

She stared at the plain-clothes man. “Don’t talk so much,” he said angrily. “I didn’t declare war.”

“Nor did these people.”

“Leave me alone.” He looked at the policemen. “Ready? Take them away.”

The dark crowd began to move. Ravic noticed the man with the woman who had seen the cockroaches. The man supported her with his free arm. Under the other he had a suitcase, and he held another in his hand. The boy also was dragging a suitcase. The man looked at Ravic beseechingly. Ravic nodded. “I have instruments and medicine with me,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.”

They climbed into the truck. The motor roared. The car moved off. The proprietress stood in the doorway and waved. “Where are we going?” someone asked a policeman.

“I don’t know.”

Ravic stood beside Rosenfeld and the false Aaron Goldberg. Rosenfeld carried a roll under his arm. The Cézanne and Gauguin were in it. His face worked. “The Spanish visa,” he said. “Expired before I—” He broke off. “The Bird of Death has gone,” he said then. “Markus Meyer, yesterday to America.”

The truck shook. They all stood tightly pressed against one another. Hardly anyone spoke. They drove around a corner. Ravic noticed the fatalist Seidenbaum. He stood pressed into a corner. “Here we are again,” he said.

Ravic searched for a cigarette. He found none. But he remembered he had packed enough in his bag. “Yes,” he said. “Human beings can stand a great deal.”

The car drove along the Avenue Wagram and turned into the Place de l’Etoile. There was no light anywhere. The square was nothing but darkness. It was so dark that one could not even see the Arc de Triomphe.

ERICH MARIA REMARQUE
was born in Germany in 1898, and was drafted into the German army during World War I. Throughout the hazardous years following the war he worked at many occupations—schoolteacher, small-town drama critic, racing driver, and editor of a sports magazine. His first novel,
All Quiet on the Western Front
, vividly describing the experiences of German soldiers during World War I, was published in Germany in 1928. It was a brilliant success, selling over a million copies, and it was the first of many literary triumphs by Erich Remarque.

When the Nazis came to power, Remarque left Germany for Switzerland. He rejected all attempts to persuade him to return, and as a result he lost his German citizenship, his books were burned, and his films were banned. He went to the United States in 1938 and became a citizen in 1947. He later lived in Switzerland with his second wife, the actress Paulette Goddard. He died in Switzerland in September 1970.