Arch of Triumph (12 page)

“
WHEN DO I HAVE
to be at the hospital, Ravic?” Kate Hegstroem asked.

“Tomorrow night. We’ll operate the day after.”

She stood before him, slim, boyish, self-assured, pretty, and no longer quite young.

“This time I’m afraid,” she said. “I don’t know why. But I’m afraid.”

“You needn’t be. It is a routine matter.”

Ravic had removed her appendix two years before. At that time they had taken a liking to each other and since then had been friends. Sometimes she disappeared for months and then one day she would suddenly return. She was something like a mascot to him. Her appendectomy was the first operation he had performed in Paris. She had brought him luck. Since that time he had continued to work and had had no further difficulties with the police.

She went over to the window and looked out. There lay the courtyard of the Hôtel Lancaster. A huge old chestnut tree stretched its naked arms upward toward the wet sky. “This rain,” she said. “I left Vienna and it was raining. I awoke in Zurich and
it was raining. And now here—” She pushed the curtains back. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I think I’m growing old.”

“One always thinks that when one isn’t.”

“I should be different. I was divorced two weeks ago. I should be gay. But I am tired. Everything repeats itself, Ravic. Why?”

“Nothing repeats itself. We repeat ourselves, that’s all.”

She smiled and sat down on a sofa that stood beside the artificial fireplace. “It’s good to be back,” she said. “Vienna has become a military barracks. Disconsolate. The Germans have trampled it down. And with them the Austrians. The Austrians too, Ravic. I thought that would be a contradiction of nature: an Austrian Nazi. But I’ve seen them.”

“That is not surprising, Kate. Power is the most contagious disease.”

“Yes. And the most deforming. That’s why I asked for a divorce. This charming idler whom I married two years ago suddenly became a shouting stormtroop leader who made old Professor Bernstein wash the streets while he stood by and laughed. Bernstein who, a year ago, had cured him of an inflammation of the kidneys. Pretending that the fee had been too high.” Kate Hegstroem drew in her lips. “The fee which I’d paid, not he.”

“Be glad you are rid of him.”

“He asked two hundred fifty thousand schillings for the divorce.”

“Cheap,” Ravic said. “Anything you can settle with money is cheap.”

“He got nothing.” Kate Hegstroem raised her oval face, which was flawlessly cut like a gem. “I told him what I thought about him, his party, and his leader—and that from now on I would say this publicly. He threatened me with the Gestapo and the concentration camp. I laughed at him. I am still an American and under the protection of the Embassy. Nothing would happen to me—but
to him because he was married to me.” She laughed. “He had not thought of that. He made no trouble from then on.”

Embassy, defense, protection, Ravic thought. That was like something from another life. “I wonder that Bernstein is still able to practice,” he said.

“He no longer can. He examined me secretly when I had the first hemorrhage. Thank God, I can’t have a child. A child by a Nazi—” She shuddered.

Ravic rose. “I must go now. You will be examined once more by Veber in the afternoon. Just for form’s sake.”

“I know. Nevertheless—I am afraid this time.”

“But, Kate—it isn’t the first time. It’s simpler than the removal of your appendix.” Ravic took her lightly around her shoulder. “You were my first operation here. That’s like one’s first love. I’ll take good care of you.”

“Yes,” she said and looked at him.

“All right then. Adieu, Kate. I’ll call for you at eight tonight.”

“Adieu, Ravic. I’m going now to buy an evening dress at Mainbocher. I must get rid of this tiredness. And the feeling of being caught in a spider web. That Vienna,” she said with a bitter smile. “The city of dreams—”

Ravic went down in the elevator and walked through the hall past the bar. A few Americans were sitting there. In the center a huge bunch of red gladioli stood on a table. In the gray diffused light suddenly they had the pale color of old blood and only when he came closer did he notice that they were perfectly fresh. It was merely the light from outside that made them appear so. He looked at them for some time.

There was much commotion on the second floor of the International. A number of rooms stood open, the maids and the valet
were running to and fro, and the proprietress was directing all this from the corridor.

Ravic came down the stairs. “What’s going on here?” he asked.

The proprietress was a buxom woman with a huge bosom and a too small head with short black curls. “The Spaniards have left,” she said.

“I know. But why are you tidying up the rooms so late in the night?”

“We need them tomorrow morning.”

“New German refugees?”

“No, Spanish.”

“Spanish?” Ravic asked, for a moment not understanding what she meant. “How is that? Haven’t they just left?”

The landlady looked at him with her bright black eyes and smiled. It was a smile of simplest understanding and simplest irony. “The others are coming back,” she said.

“Which others?”

“The opposition. But that’s always so.” She called a few words to the girl who was doing the cleaning. “We are an old hotel,” she said then with a certain pride. “Our guests like to return to us. They wait for their old rooms. Naturally a number of them have been killed meanwhile. But the others have waited in Biarritz and Saint-Jean-de-Luz until rooms were vacant.”

Ravic looked at the landlady, astonished. “When were they here before?” he asked.

“But Mr. Ravic!” She was surprised that he did not understand right away. “Of course during that time when Primo de Rivera was dictator in Spain. They had to escape then and they lived here. When Spain became republican they went back and the monarchists and Fascists came here. Now the latter have gone back and the republicans are returning. Those that are still left. A merry-go-round.”

“Yes, indeed,” Ravic said. “A merry-go-round.”

The landlady looked into one of the rooms. A colored print of the former King Alfonso hung over the bed. “Take that down, Jeanne,” she called.

The girl brought the picture. “Here. Put it over here.” The landlady leaned the picture against the wall to her right and walked on. In the next room hung a picture of Generalissimo Franco. “This one too. Put it with the others.”

“Why didn’t these Gomez people take their pictures with them?” Ravic asked.

“Refugees rarely take pictures with them when they go back,” the landlady declared. “Pictures are a comfort in a foreign land. When one returns one no longer needs them. Also the frames are too inconvenient to travel with and the glass breaks easily. Pictures are almost always left in hotels.”

She put two other portraits of the fat generalissimo, one of Alfonso, and a smaller one of Queipo de Llano with the others in the corridor. “The holy pictures can be left inside,” she decided when she discovered a Madonna in glaring colors. “Saints are neutral.”

“Not always,” Ravic said.

“In difficult periods God always has a chance. I have even seen atheists praying here.” With an energetic movement the landlady adjusted her left breast. “Haven’t you ever prayed when the water was up to your neck?”

“Naturally. But I’m not an atheist. I am only a reluctant believer.”

The valet came up the stairs. He carried a pile of pictures across the corridor. “Are you going to redecorate?” Ravic asked.

“Of course. One must have much tact in the hotel business. That’s what really gives a house a good reputation. Particularly with our kind of customers who, I can actually say, are very sensitive about these things. One hardly expects someone to enjoy a
room in which his archenemy looks down on him proudly in bright colors and sometimes even out of a gold frame. Am I not right?”

“One hundred per cent.”

The landlady turned toward the valet. “Put these pictures here, Adolphe. No, you’d better put them in the light against the wall, one next to the other, so that we can see them.”

The man growled and bent down to prepare the exhibition. “What will you hang in there now?” Ravic asked, interested. “Deer and landscapes and eruptions of Vesuvius and the like?”

“Only if there aren’t enough. Otherwise I’ll put back the old pictures.”

“Which old ones?”

“Those from before. Those the gentlemen left here when they took over the government. Here they are.”

She pointed at the left wall of the corridor. The valet had set up the new pictures in a row opposite those which had been taken out of the rooms. There were two of Marx, three of Lenin with the half of one pasted over with paper, a picture of Trotzky, and a few black and white prints of Negrin and other republican leaders of Spain, in smaller frames. They were less conspicuous and none of them was so resplendent with color and decorations and emblems as the pompous row of Alfonsos, Primos, and Francos which stood opposite them on the right. It was a strange sight: those two rows of opposed philosophies silently staring at each other in the dimly lit corridor and between them the French landlady with the tact, experience, and the ironic wisdom of her race.

“I saved these things at that time,” she said, “when those gentlemen checked out. Governments don’t last long these days. You see I was right—now they come in handy. One has to be farsighted in the hotel business.”

She gave orders where to hang the pictures. She sent back the picture of Trotzky. She was not sure about him. Ravic examined
the print of Lenin with the half pasted over. He scratched off part of the paper along the line of Lenin’s head—and from under the piece of paper emerged another head, Trotzky’s, smiling at Lenin. Very likely a follower of Stalin had pasted it over. “Here,” Ravic said. “Another hidden Trotzky. From the good old days of friendship and fraternity.”

The landlady took the picture. “We can throw this one away. It is completely valueless. One half of it persistently insults the other half.” She gave it to the valet. “Keep the frame, Adolphe. It is good oak wood.”

“What will you do with the rest?” Ravic asked. “With the Alfonsos and Francos?”

“They’ll go into the cellar. You can never tell whether or not you will need them again one day.”

“Your cellar must be a wonderful place. A contemporary mausoleum. Have you still other pictures there?”

“Oh naturally; we have other Russian ones—a few simpler pictures of Lenin in cardboard frames, as a last resource, and then those of the last Czar. From Russians who died here. A wonderful original in oil and in a heavy gold frame from a man who committed suicide. Then there are the Italian pictures. Two Garibaldis, three kings, and a somewhat damaged newspaper cut of Mussolini from the days when he was a socialist in Zurich. Certainly that thing has only curiosity value. No one would like to have it hung up.”

“Have you German pictures too?”

“Still a few of Marx; they are the most common; one Lassalle, one Bebel—then a group picture with Ebert, Scheidemann, Noski, and many others. In that picture Noske had been smeared with ink. The gentlemen told me that he became a Nazi.”

“That’s right. You may hang it with the socialistic Mussolini. You have none from the opposite side in Germany, eh?”

“We have! We have one Hindenburg, one Kaiser Wilhelm, one Bismarck, and”—the landlady smiled—“even one of Hitler in a raincoat. It’s a pretty complete collection.”

“What?” Ravic said. “Hitler? Where did you get him?”

“From a homosexual. He came in 1934 and Roehm and the others were killed there. He was full of fear and prayed a lot. Later a rich Argentinean took him along. His first name was Putzi. Do you want to see the picture? It is in the cellar.”

“Not now. Not in the cellar. I’d rather see it when all the rooms in the hotel are filled with the same sort of pictures.”

The landlady looked sharply at him for a moment. “Ah so,” she said then. “You mean when they come as refugees.”

Boris Morosow was standing in front of the Scheherazade in his uniform with the gold braid and he opened the door of the taxi. Ravic stepped out. Morosow smiled. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

“I didn’t intend to.”

“I forced him, Boris.” Kate Hegstroem embraced Morosow. “Thank God, I am back again with you!”

“You have a Russian soul, Katja. Heaven knows why you had to be born in Boston. Come, Ravic.” Morosow thrust the entrance door open. “Man is great in his intentions, but weak in carrying them out. Therein lie our misery and our charm.”

The Scheherazade was decorated like a Caucasian tent. The waiters were Russians in Red Circassian uniforms. The orchestra was composed of Russian and Roumanian gypsies. People sat at small tables which stood by a banquette that ran along the wall. The tables had plate-glass tops illuminated from below. The place was dim and quite crowded.

“What would you like to drink, Kate?” Ravic asked.

“Vodka. And have the gypsies play. I’ve had enough of the ‘Vienna Woods’ played in march time.” She slipped her feet out of her shoes and lifted them onto the banquette. “Now I’m not tired any more, Ravic,” she said. “A few hours of Paris have already changed me. But I still feel as if I had escaped from a concentration camp. Can you imagine that?”

He looked at her. “Approximately,” he replied.

The Circassian brought a small bottle of vodka and glasses. Ravic filled them and handed one to Kate Hegstroem. She drained the glass quickly and thirstily and put it back. Then she looked around. “A moth-eaten hole,” she said and smiled. “But at night it becomes a cave of refuge and of dreams.”

She leaned back. The soft light from under the glass top of the table illumined her face. “Why, Ravic? Everything becomes more colorful at night. Nothing appears difficult then, you think you are able to do anything, and what one cannot achieve is made up for by dreams. Why?”

He smiled. “We have our dreams because without them we could not bear the truth.”

The orchestra began to tune their instruments. A few empty fifths and a few runs on a violin fluttered through the room. “You don’t look like a man who would deceive himself with dreams,” Kate Hegstroem said.