Arch of Triumph (40 page)

“Then I’ll take you home.”

She slowly took one step backward. “You don’t love me any more—” she said softly and almost threateningly.

“Did you come to find that out?”

“Yes—that too. Not only that—but that was part of it.”

“My God, Joan,” Ravic replied impatiently. “Then you have just heard one of the most candid confessions of love.”

She did not answer. She looked at him. “Do you think that otherwise I would mind keeping you here, no matter who you’re living with?” he said.

Slowly she began to smile. It wasn’t really a smile—it was a radiance from within as if someone had lit a lamp in her and the glow was gradually mounting to her eyes. “Thank you, Ravic,” she said. And after a while warily, still looking at him, “You won’t leave me?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You’ll wait? You won’t leave me?”

“I think there is not much danger. To judge by my experience with you.”

“Thank you.” She was changed. How quickly she consoles herself, he thought. But why shouldn’t she? She thought she had gained what she wanted even without staying there. She kissed him. “I knew you would be this way, Ravic. You had to be this way. Now I’ll go. Don’t take me home. Now I can go alone.”

She stood by the door. “Don’t come again,” he said. “And don’t think about anything. You won’t perish.”

“No. Good night, Ravic.”

“Good night, Joan.”

He went to the wall and turned on the light. You have to be this way—he shook himself slightly. They are made of clay and gold, he thought. Of lies and infatuation. Of deception and shameless truth. He sat down by the window. From below still came the low, monotonous wailing. A woman who had deceived her husband and was bewailing him because he was dead. But perhaps only because her religion prescribed it. Ravic wondered that he was not more unhappy.

“
YES, I
’
M BACK, RAVIC
,” Kate Hegstroem said.

She was sitting in her room in the Hôtel Lancaster. She had become thinner. The flesh under her skin appeared sunken, as if it had been hollowed out from inside with fine instruments. Her features stood out more sharply and her skin was like silk that would tear easily.

“I thought you were still in Florence—or in Cannes—or America by now.”

“I was in Florence the whole time. In Fiesole. Until I couldn’t stand it any more. Do you remember how I tried to persuade you to come with me? Books, a fireplace, evenings, peace? The books were there—the fireplace too—but the peace! Ravic, even the town of Francis of Assisi has become loud. Loud and disquieting like everything else there. Where he preached love to the birds, there are now files of men in uniform marching hither and yon, growing drunk on boasts, big words, and groundless hate.”

“But it was always that way, Kate.”

“Not this way. A few years ago my major-domo was still a friendly man in Manchester trousers and bast shoes. Now he is a
hero in high boots and black shirt, complete with daggers, and he delivers speeches saying that the Mediterranean Sea must become Italian, that England must be destroyed, and that Nice, Corsica, and Savoy must be returned to Italy. Ravic, this amiable nation that hasn’t won a war for ages has gone mad since she was allowed to win in Ethiopia and Spain. Friends of mine who were reasonable even a few years ago seriously believe today that they can conquer England within three months. The country is boiling. What’s going on? I fled from the brutality of brown shirts in Vienna; now I have left Italy because of the madness of black ones; somewhere else there are said to be green ones, in America silver ones, of course—is the world in the midst of a shirt delirium?”

“Apparently. But that will change soon. The single color will be red.”

“Red?”

“Yes. Red like blood.”

Kate Hegstroem looked down into the yard. The late afternoon light filtered soft and green through the foliage of the chestnut trees. “One can’t believe it,” she said. “Two wars within twenty years—that’s too much. We are still too tired from the first.”

“Only the victors. Not the vanquished. To be victorious makes one careless.”

“Yes, maybe.” She looked at him. “Then there isn’t much time left, is there?”

“Not too much now, I’m afraid.”

“Do you think there will be enough for me?”

“Why not?” Ravic glanced up. She did not avoid his eyes. “Did you see Fiola?” he asked.

“Yes, once or twice. He was one of the few who had not yet been infected with the black pest.”

Ravic did not answer. He waited.

Kate Hegstroem took a string of pearls from the table and let them glide through her hands. Between her long thin fingers they were like a costly rosary. “I almost feel like the Wandering Jew,” she said. “In search of a little peace. But I seem to have set out at the wrong time. It is no longer anywhere. Only here—here there is still a remnant of it.”

Ravic looked at the pearls. They were formed by shapeless gray mollusks irritated by a foreign substance, a grain of sand between their shells. Such softly gleaming beauty arose from an accidental irritation. One should make a note of that, he thought. “Didn’t you intend to go to America, Kate? Anyone who can leave Europe should do so. It is too late for anything else.”

“Do you want to send me away?”

“No. But didn’t you say last time that you intended to settle your affairs and return to America?”

“Yes. But now I no longer want to. Not yet. I’ll stay on here for some time.”

“Paris is hot and unpleasant in summer.”

She put her pearls aside. “Not if it is the last summer, Ravic.”

“The last?”

“Yes. The last before I go back.”

Ravic was silent. How much does she know? he wondered. What has Fiola told her?

“What’s going on at the Scheherazade?” she asked.

“I haven’t been there for a long time. Morosow says it is overcrowded every night. As all other places are.”

“In summer?”

“Yes, in summer when most of them used to be closed. Are you surprised at that?”

“No. Everyone is grasping whatever he can before the end.”

“Yes,” Ravic said.

“Will you take me there some time?”

“Of course, Kate. Whenever you like. I thought you didn’t want to go there again.”

“I thought so, too. I’ve changed my mind. I too intend to grasp whatever I still can.”

He looked at her. “All right, Kate,” he said then. “Whenever you like.”

He got up. She went to the door with him. She leaned against the doorframe, slender, with her dry, silken skin that looked as though it would rustle if one touched it. Her eyes were very clear and larger than before. She gave him her hand. It was hot and dry. “Why didn’t you tell me what was wrong with me?” she asked lightly as if she were asking about the weather.

He stared at her and did not answer.

“I could have stood it,” she said and the ghost of an ironical smile with no reproach in it flitted across her face. “Adieu, Ravic!”

The man without the stomach was dead. He had moaned for three days and by that time morphine was of little help. Ravic and Veber had known that he would die. They could have spared him these three last days. They had not done it because there was a religion that preached love of one’s neighbor and prohibited the shortening of his sufferings. And there was a law to back it up.

“Did you send a wire to his family?” Ravic asked.

“He has none,” Veber said.

“Or to any other of his connections?”

“There is nobody.”

“Nobody?”

“Nobody. The concierge from his apartment house was here. He never received any letters, except catalogues from mail-order houses and pamphlets about alcoholism, tuberculosis, venereal disease,
and the like. He never had visitors. He had paid in advance for the operation and four weeks of hospitalization. Two weeks of hospitalization too much. The concierge claims he promised her everything he possessed because she had taken care of him. She demanded a refund for the two weeks. She had been like a mother to him. You should have seen that mother. She said she had been put to all kinds of expenses for him. She had paid out the money for his rent. I told her that he had paid here in advance; there was no good reason why he shouldn’t have done it for his apartment as well. Besides, all that was a matter for the police. Whereupon she cursed me.”

“Money,” Ravic said. “How inventive it makes one!”

Veber laughed. “We’ll inform the authorities. They can take care of it. And the funeral as well.”

Ravic cast one more look at the man without relatives and stomach. There he lay and his face was changing during this hour as it had never changed during the thirty-five years of his life. Out of the frozen spasm of his last breath was gradually emerging the stark face of death. The accidental in it was melting away, the marks of dying were being washed out, and from this twisted, ordinary face was being formed, austere and silent, the eternal mask.

Ravic went out. He met the night nurse in the corridor. She had just arrived. “The man in twelve is dead,” he said. “He died half an hour ago. You don’t have to sit up any more.” And when he saw her face, “Did he leave you anything?”

She hesitated. “No. He was a very cool person. And he hardly spoke at all in the last days.”

“No, he didn’t.”

The nurse looked at Ravic in a housewifely manner. “He had a wonderful dressing case. All silver. In fact, rather too dainty for a man. More for a lady.”

“Didn’t you tell him?”

“We did speak about it once. Tuesday night; at that time he was calmer. But he said that silver was all right for a man too. And the brushes were so good. They were no longer to be had nowadays. Otherwise he spoke little.”

“The silver will go to the authorities now. He had no relatives.”

The nurse nodded understandingly. “It’s a pity! It’ll get black. And brushes deteriorate if they aren’t new and don’t get used. They should be washed first.”

“Yes, it’s a pity,” Ravic said. “It would have been better if you had got them. Then, at least, someone would have enjoyed them.”

The nurse smiled gratefully. “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t expect anything. Dying people rarely give anything away. Only those who are recuperating. Dying people don’t want to believe that they must die. That’s why they don’t do it. Then too, some don’t do it out of spite. You wouldn’t believe it, doctor, how terrible dying people can be! What they say sometimes before they die!”

Her red-cheeked childish face was open and clear. She did not pay any attention to what happened around her if it did not affect her small world. Dying people were naughty or helpless children. One took care of them until they were dead, and then new ones came, some of them became healthy and were grateful, others were not, and some just died. That’s how it was. Nothing to disquiet one. It was much more important whether the prices at the sale at Bon Marché were reduced, or Cousin Jean was to marry Anne Couturier.

It actually was more important, Ravic thought. The small circle that protected one from chaos. Otherwise where would one be?

He was sitting in front of the Café Triomphe. The night was pallid and cloudy. It was warm, and somewhere lightning flashed noiselessly. Life crept more densely along the sidewalks. A woman with a blue satin hat sat down at his table.

“Will you buy me a vermouth?” she asked.

“Yes. But leave me alone. I’m waiting for someone.”

“We can wait together.”

“Better not. I’m waiting for a woman wrestler from the Palais du Sport.”

The woman smiled. She was so thickly painted that one saw the smile only on her lips. Everything else was a white mask. “Come with me,” she said. “I have a sweet apartment. And I am good.”

Ravic shook his head. He put a five-franc bill on the table. “Here. Adieu. And good luck.”

The woman took the bill, folded it, and pushed it under her garter. “Blue?” she asked.

“No.”

“I am good against the blues. I have a very nice friend. Young,” she added after a pause. “Breasts like the Eiffel Tower.”

“Some other time.”

“All right.” The woman got up and took another seat a few tables away. She looked at him again a few times, then she bought a sport paper and began to read the results of the races.

Ravic stared into the bustling crowd which incessantly pushed along past the tables. The band inside was playing Viennese waltzes. The lightning grew stronger. A group of young homosexuals, coquettish and noisy, perched at the adjoining table like a swarm of parrots. They wore beards, the newest fashion, and jackets too broad in the shoulders and too narrow in the waists.

A girl stopped at Ravic’s table and looked at him. She seemed vaguely familiar to him, but there were many that he knew slightly. She looked like one of the dainty whores with the appeal of helplessness.

“Don’t you recognize me?” she asked.

“Of course,” Ravic said. He hadn’t any idea. “How are you?”

“Fine. But don’t you really know me any more?”

“I forget names. But of course I know you. It’s a long time since we saw each other last.”

“Yes. You gave Bobo a good scare that time.” She smiled. “You saved my life and now you don’t recognize me.”