Arch of Triumph (20 page)

“Because I love you.”

How she handles that word, Ravic thought. Without deliberation, like an empty bowl. She fills it with something and calls it love. With how many things had it been filled already! With fear of being alone—with stimulation through another ego—with the boosting of one’s self-reliance—with the glittering reflection of one’s fantasy—but who really knows? Wasn’t what I said about growing old together the stupidest thing of all? Isn’t she far more right with her spontaneousness? And why do I sit here on a winter night, between wars, and spout words like a schoolmaster? Why do I resist, instead of plunging myself into it disbelievingly?

“Why do you resist?” Joan asked.

“What?”

“Why do you resist?” she repeated. “I don’t resist—what should I resist?”

“I don’t know. Something within you is closed up and you don’t want to let anything or anyone in.”

“Come,” Ravic said, “let me have another drink.”

“I am happy and I wish you were happy, too. I am completely happy. I wake up with you and I go to sleep with you. I don’t know anything else. My head is made of silver when I think of both of us and sometimes it is like a violin. The streets are full of us as if we were music, and from time to time people break in and talk and pictures flash by like a movie, but the music remains. That always remains.”

A few weeks ago you were still unhappy, Ravic thought, and you did not know me. An easy happiness. He emptied his glass of calvados. “Have you been happy often?” he asked.

“Not often.”

“But sometimes. When was the last time your head was made of silver?”

“Why do you ask me?”

“Just to ask something. Without a reason.”

“I have forgotten. And I don’t want to know any more. It was different.”

“It’s always different.”

She smiled at him. Her face was bright and open like a flower with few leaves that hid nothing. “Two years ago,” she said. “It did not last long. In Milan.”

“Were you alone at that time?”

“No. I was with someone else. He was very unhappy and jealous and did not understand.”

“Naturally not.”

“You would understand. He made terrible scenes.” She made herself comfortable, pulled a pillow down from the sofa and pushed it behind her back. “He called me a whore and faithless and ungrateful. It wasn’t true. I was faithful as long as I loved him. He didn’t understand that I did not love him any longer.”

“One never understands that.”

“Yes, you would understand. But I would always love you. You are different and everything is different with us. He wanted to kill me.” She laughed. “They always want to kill. A few months later the other one wanted to kill me. But they never do it. You would never want to kill me.”

“Only with calvados,” Ravic said. “Pass the bottle. The conversation, thank God, is becoming more human. A few minutes ago I was pretty frightened.”

“Because I love you?”

“We won’t start that again. That’s like parading about in a frock coat and a powdered wig. We are together—for shorter or longer, who knows? We are together, that’s enough. Why do we have to label it?”

“I don’t like that ‘for shorter or longer.’ But those are only words. You won’t leave me. These too are only words, and you know it.”

“Naturally. Has anyone you loved ever left you?”

“Yes.” She looked at him. “One always leaves the other. Sometimes the other is quicker.”

“And what did you do?”

“Everything!” She took the glass out of his hands and finished it. “Everything! But it didn’t help. I was terribly unhappy.”

“For long?”

“For a week. About a week.”

“That isn’t long.”

“It’s an eternity if you are really unhappy. I was so unhappy with every part of me that everything was exhausted after a week. My hair was unhappy, my skin, my bed, even my clothes. I was so filled with unhappiness that nothing else existed. And if nothing else exists any more, unhappiness ceases to be unhappiness—because there is nothing left with which to compare it. Then it is nothing but complete exhaustion. And then it is over. Slowly one starts to live again.”

She kissed his hand. He felt the soft cautious lips. “What are you thinking of?” she asked.

“Of nothing. Nothing but that you are of a wild innocence. Completely corrupt and not corrupt at all. The most dangerous thing in the world. Give me back the glass. I’ll drink to my friend Morosow, the connoisseur of the human heart.”

“I don’t like Morosow. Can’t we drink to someone else?”

“Naturally you don’t like him. He has keen eyes. Let’s drink to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes, to you.”

“I’m not dangerous,” Joan said. “I’m in danger, but not dangerous.”

“The fact that you think so is part of it. Nothing will ever happen to you.
Salute
.”

“
Salute
. But you don’t understand me.”

“Who wants to understand? That’s the cause of all misunderstandings in the world. Pass me the bottle.”

“You drink too much. Why do you want to drink so much?”

“Joan,” Ravic said, “the day will come when you will say: Too much! You drink too much, you’ll say and believe that you desire my good only. In reality, you will simply want to prevent my excursions into a sphere which you cannot control.
Salute!
Today we celebrate. We have gloriously escaped pathos which stood like a fat cloud outside the window. We slew it with pathos.
Salute!

She straightened up. She propped herself with her hands on the floor and looked at him. Her eyes were wide open, the bathrobe had slipped down from her shoulders, her hair was thrown back on the nape of her neck, and there was something of a bright young lioness about her in the dark. “I know,” she said calmly, “you’re laughing at me, I know it and I don’t mind. I feel that I’m alive; I feel it in my whole being, my breath is different and my sleep is no longer dead, my joints have purpose again and my hands are no longer empty, and it does not matter to me what you think about it and what you may say about it, I let myself fly and I let myself run and I throw myself into it, without a thought, and I am happy and I am neither cautious nor afraid of saying it, even if you do laugh at me and make fun of me—”

Ravic was silent for a while. “I’m not making fun of you,” he then said. “I’m making fun of myself, Joan—”

She leaned toward him. “Why? There is something in the back of your head that resists. Why?”

“There is nothing that resists. I am just slower than you are.”

She shook her head. “It’s not only that. There’s something that wants to remain alone. I feel it. It’s like a barrier.”

“There’s no barrier. That is merely fifteen more years of life than you have had. Not everyone’s life is like a house that belongs to
him and that he can go on decorating ever more richly with the furniture of his memory. Some people live in hotels, in many hotels. The years close behind them like hotel doors—and the only thing that remains is a little courage and no regrets.”

She did not answer for some time. He did not know whether she had listened to him or not. He looked out of the window and calmly felt the deep glow of the calvados in his veins. The beat of the pulses was still and became a widespread quietness in which the machine guns of ceaselessly ticking time were silent. The moon rose, a blurred red, over the roofs like the cupola of a mosque, half hidden by clouds, emerging slowly while the earth sank into the drifting snow.

“I know,” Joan said, her hands on his knees and her chin on her hands, “it’s foolish to tell you these earlier things about myself. I could be silent or I could lie, but I don’t want to. Why should I not tell you everything about my life and why should I make more out of it? I’d rather make less out of it because it is laughable to me now and I don’t understand it any more and you may laugh about it and also about me too.”

Ravic looked at her. One of her knees was crushing a few of the large white blossoms against the newspaper he had bought. A strange night, he thought. Somewhere now there is shooting and men are being hunted and imprisoned and tortured and murdered, some corner of a peaceful world is being trampled upon, and one knows it, helplessly, and life buzzes on in the bright bistros of the city, no one cares, and people go calmly to sleep, and I am sitting here with a woman between pale chrysanthemums and a bottle of calvados, and the shadow of love rises, trembling, lonesome, strange and sad, it too an exile from the safe gardens of the past, shy and wild and quick as if it had no right—

“Joan,” he said slowly and wanted to say something entirely different, “it is good that you are here.”

She looked at him.

He took her hands. “You understand what that means? More than a thousand other words—”

She nodded. Suddenly her eyes were filled with tears. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said, “I know.”

“That’s not true,” Ravic replied and knew that she was right.

“No, nothing at all. You must love me, beloved. That’s all.”

He did not answer.

“You must love me,” she repeated. “Otherwise I’m lost.”

Lost—he thought. What a word! How easily she uses it. Who is really lost does not talk.

“
DID YOU TAKE
my leg off?” Jeannot asked.

His thin face was bloodless and white like the wall of an old house. His freckles stood out very large and dark as though they did not belong to his face but were drops of paint sprinkled over it. The stump of his leg lay under a wire basket over which the blanket was drawn.

“Have you any pain?” Ravic asked.

“Yes. In my foot. My foot hurts very much. I asked the nurse. The old dragon wouldn’t tell me.”

“The leg has been amputated,” Ravic said.

“Above the knee or below the knee?”

“Ten centimeters above it. Your knee was crushed and could not be saved.”

“Good,” Jeannot said. “That makes about fifteen per cent more from the insurance company. Very good. An artificial leg is an artificial leg, whether above or below the knee. But fifteen per cent more is something you can put into your pocket every month.” He hesitated for a moment. “For the time being you’d better not tell
my mother. She can’t see it anyway with this parrot cage over the stump.”

“We won’t tell her anything, Jeannot.”

“The insurance company must pay an annuity for life. That’s correct, isn’t it?”

“I think so.”

His face twisted into a grimace. “They’ll be surprised. I am thirteen years old. They’ll have to pay for a long time. Do you know yet which insurance company it is?”

“Not yet. But we have the number of the car. You kept it in mind. The police have been here already. They want to question you. You were still asleep this morning. They’ll come again tonight.”

Jeannot deliberated. “Witnesses,” he said then. “It’s important that we have witnesses. Have we any?”

“I think your mother has two addresses. She had the slips of paper in her hand.”

The boy became restless. “She’ll lose them. If only she hasn’t lost them already. You know how old people are. Where is she now?”

“Your mother sat at your bedside all night and until noon today. Only then were we able to send her away. She’ll come back again soon.”

“Let’s hope she’ll still have them. The police—” He made a weak gesture with his emaciated hand. “Cheats,” he murmured. “They are all cheats. In cahoots with the insurance companies. But if one has good witnesses—when will she come back?”

“Soon. Don’t get excited about it. It’ll be all right.”

Jeannot moved his mouth as if he were chewing something. “Sometimes they pay the whole amount at once. A settlement instead of an annuity. We could start a business with it, mother and I.”

“Now rest,” Ravic said. “You’ll have time to think about it later.”

The boy shook his head. “You will,” Ravic repeated. “You must be rested when the police come.”

“Yes, you’re right. What shall I do?”

“Sleep.”

“But then—”

“They’ll wake you up.”

“Red light. I’m sure it was a red light.”

“Certainly. And now try to sleep. There is a bell in case you should need anything.”

“Doctor—”

“Yes?” Ravic turned around.

“If everything works out—” Jeannot lay on his pillow and something like a smile flitted across his twisted, precocious face. “Sometimes one is lucky after all, isn’t one?”

The evening was humid and warm. Tattered clouds floated low over the city. In front of Fouquet’s restaurant, circular coke-ovens had been set up. A few tables and chairs stood around them. Morosow was sitting at one of them. He beckoned to Ravic. “Come, have a drink with me.”

Ravic sat down beside him. “We sit too much in rooms,” Morosow declared. “Has that ever occurred to you?”

“But you don’t. You’re always standing in front of the Scheherazade.”

“My boy, spare me your miserable logic. Evenings I’m a sort of two-legged door at the Scheherazade, but not a human being in the open. We live in rooms too much, I say. We think too much in rooms. We make love too much in rooms. We despair too much in rooms. Can you despair in the open?”

“And how!” Ravic said.