Arch of Triumph (53 page)

Ravic drove along the Boulevard de la Seine. Two barges floated on the moonlit water. A dog barked on the farther one. Voices came across the water. A light burned on the forward deck of the first barge. Ravic did not stop the car. He kept it at an even speed not to wake Haake and drove along the Seine. He had intended to stop there. It was impossible. The barges were too close to the bank. He turned into the Rue de la Ferme, away from the river, back to the Allée de Longchamp. He stayed on it beyond the Allée de la Reine
Marguerite, driving carefully, and then turned into the narrower roads.

As he looked over at Haake he saw that his eyes were open. Haake looked at him. He had raised his head, without shifting, and was looking at Ravic. His eyes shone like blue glass balls in the faint light from the dashboard. It was like an electric shock. “Awake?” Ravic asked.

Haake did not answer. He looked at Ravic. He did not move. Not even his eyes moved.

“Where are we?” he asked finally.

“In the Bois de Boulogne. Very near the Restaurant des Cascades.”

“How long have we been driving?”

“Ten minutes.”

“It has been longer.”

“Hardly.”

“Before I fell asleep I looked at the clock. We’ve been driving more than half an hour.”

“Really?” Ravic said. “I didn’t think it was so long. We’ll be there soon.”

Haake’s eyes had not left Ravic. “Where?”

“At the
maison de rendez-vous
.”

Haake moved. “Drive back,” he said.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

He was no longer drunk. He was clearheaded and awake. His face had changed. His joviality and bonhomie had disappeared. For the first time Ravic saw again the face he had known, the face that had been engraved on his memory forever in the terror chamber of the Gestapo. And suddenly the uneasiness he had felt all along since he had met Haake disappeared, the feeling that he was going to kill a stranger who actually did not matter to
him. In his car he had had an amiable drinker of red wine and he had searched in vain for reasons in that man’s face, for the reasons that were uppermost in his mind no matter what he tried to think of. Now, suddenly, they were again the same eyes he had seen before him when he had awakened out of unconsciousness in an agony of pain. The same cold eyes, the same cold, low, penetrating voice—

Something in Ravic reversed direction abruptly. It was like a current changing poles. The tension remained; but the vacillation, the nervousness, and the uncertainty were converted into a single current which had only one aim, and nothing was left but that. Years fell into ashes, the room with its gray walls was back again, the unshaded white lights, the smell of blood, leather, sweat, pain, and fear.

“Why?” Ravic asked.

“I must go back. I’m expected at the hotel.”

“But you said your things were already at the station.”

“Yes, they are. But I’ve still got to settle something before I leave. I had forgotten all about it. Drive back.”

“All right.”

During the last week Ravic had driven through the Bois a dozen times during the daytime and at night. He recognized where he was. Still a few minutes. He turned to the left into a narrow road.

“Are we going back?”

“Yes.”

The heavy aroma under trees through which no sun shone during the day. The denser darkness. The brighter gleam of the headlights. Ravic saw in the mirror that Haake’s left hand was stealing away from the door, slowly, carefully. Right-hand drive, he thought, thank God this Talbot has a right-hand drive! He took a curve, held the wheel with his left hand, pretended to sway with the
turns, then accelerated on the straight road, the car raced ahead and a few seconds later he stepped on the brake with all his strength.

The Talbot bucked. The brakes screeched. Ravic held one foot on the brake, the other was pushed against the floor for balance. Haake, whose feet had no support and who had not expected the jolt, shot forward from the waist. He could not get his hand out of his pocket in time and his forehead crashed against the edge of the windshield and the dashboard. At this moment Ravic struck him in the neck, just below the head, with the heavy monkey wrench he had taken from the right side-pocket.

Haake did not rise. He was slumped sidewise. His right shoulder kept him from slipping down. It jammed his body against the dashboard.

Ravic drove on at once. He crossed the avenue and dimmed the headlights. He drove on and waited to see if anyone had heard the screeching of the brakes. He deliberated whether to pull Haake out of the car and hide him behind the bushes in case anyone came by. Finally he stopped beside a crossroad, switched off the lights and the motor, jumped out of the car, lifted the hood, opened the door, and listened. If anybody came, he could see and hear him at a distance. Time enough then to drag Haake behind a bush and to act as if something were wrong with the motor.

The silence was like a noise. It was so sudden and inconceivable that it hummed. Ravic clenched his hands until it hurt. He knew it was his blood that was humming in his ears. He breathed deeply and slowly.

The humming grew into a roaring. Through the roaring he heard a shrill sound which grew louder. Ravic listened with all his might. It grew louder, metallic—then suddenly he realized that it was made by crickets and that the roaring had ceased. There were only the crickets in the awakening day on a narrow strip of a meadow diagonally in front of him.

The meadow lay bathed in the early light. Ravic closed the hood. It was high time. He had to get through with it before there was too much light. He looked about. This place was not good. No place in the Bois was good. It was too light along the Seine. He hadn’t counted on its being so late. He whirled around. He had heard a scraping and scratching, then a groaning. One of Haake’s hands had crept out of the open car door and was scratching along the running board. Ravic realized then that he still held the monkey wrench in his hand. He seized Haake by the collar of his coat, lifted him so that the head came free and struck him twice. The groaning ceased.

Something clattered. Ravic stood still. Then he saw that it was a revolver that had dropped from the seat onto the running board. Haake must have been holding it before the brake had been applied. Ravic flung it back into the car.

He listened again. The crickets. The meadow. The sky that became lighter and seemed to recede. In a little while the sun would be out. Ravic opened the door, dragged Haake out of the car, pushed the front seat down, and tried to shove Haake onto the floor of the car between the back seat and the front seat. It would not do. There was not enough room. He walked around the car and opened the trunk. He emptied it quickly. Then he pulled Haake out of the car again and dragged him to the back. Haake was not yet dead. He was very heavy. Sweat ran down Ravic’s face. He succeeded in squeezing the body into the trunk. He forced him in like an embryo, with the knees doubled up.

He took the tools, a shovel, and a car-jack from the ground, and put them in the front of the car. A bird began to sing in a tree near him. He was startled. It seemed louder than anything he had ever heard. He looked at the meadow. It had become still lighter.

He could not take any chances. He went back and half lifted the cover of the trunk. He put his left foot on the rear fender and kept the cover half open with his knee, just high enough to reach under
it easily with his hands. If anyone came by, it would look as if he were harmlessly working at something and he could immediately let the cover drop. There was a long ride ahead. He had to kill Haake first.

The head was near the right-hand corner. He could see it. The neck was soft; the arteries still pulsed. He pressed his hands firmly around Haake’s throat and held tight.

It seemed to take forever. The head moved a little. Only a little. The body tried to stretch out. It seemed trapped in its clothes. The mouth opened. Shrilly the bird began to warble again. The tongue was thick, with a yellow coating. And suddenly Haake opened one eye. It protruded, seemed to gain light and vision, seemed to free itself and to come toward Ravic—then the body yielded. Ravic still held on for a time. Done.

The cover slammed shut. Ravic took a few steps. Then he leaned against a tree and vomited. He felt as if his stomach were being wrenched out. He tried to check it. It did not help.

When he looked up he saw a man coming across the meadow. The man was staring at him. Ravic stayed where he was. The man approached. His gait was slow, unconcerned. He was dressed like a gardener or worker. He looked at Ravic. Ravic spat and took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He lighted one and inhaled the smoke. The smoke rasped and burnt in his throat. The man crossed the road. He looked at the place where Ravic had vomited and then at the car and then at Ravic. He did not say anything and Ravic could not read anything in the man’s face. He disappeared beyond the crossroad with slow steps.

Ravic waited a few seconds more. Then he locked the trunk of the car and started the motor. There was nothing more to be done in the Bois. It was too light. He must drive to St.-Germain. He knew the woods there.

AN HOUR LATER
he stopped in front of a small inn. He was very hungry, and his head felt numb. He parked the car in front of the building where there were two tables and a few chairs. He ordered coffee and brioches and went to wash. The washroom stank. He asked for a glass and washed out his mouth. Then he washed his hands and went back.

Breakfast was on the table. The coffee smelled like all the breakfasts in the world, swallows flew along the roofs, and the sun hung its first golden tapestries on the walls of the houses. People were going to work and a maid with skirt drawn up was scrubbing the floors behind the beaded curtains of the bistro. It was the most peaceful summer morning Ravic had seen in a long time.

He drank the hot coffee but he could not make up his mind to eat. He did not want to touch anything with his hands. He looked at them. Nonsense, he thought. Damnation, I’m not going to start getting complexes. I must eat. He drank another cup of coffee. He took a cigarette out of his pack and took pains not to put the end he had touched into his mouth. I can’t go on this way, he thought.
But nevertheless he did not eat anything. I must get entirely through with it first, he thought, and got up and paid.

A herd of cows. Butterflies. The sun over the fields. The sun on the glass of the windshield. The sun on the top of the car. The sun on the glittering metal of the trunk under which Haake lay—killed without having heard why and by whom. It should have been different—

“Do you recognize me, Haake? Do you know who I am?”

He saw the red face before him. “No, why? Who are you? Have we met before?”

“Yes.”

“When? Were we close friends? At Officers’ Training School, perhaps? I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember, Haake? It was not at Officers’ Training School. It was after that.”

“After? But you’ve lived abroad. I have never been out of Germany. Only in the last two years, here in Paris. Perhaps we drank—”

“No, we did not drink together. And it wasn’t here. In Germany, Haake!”

A barrier. Railroad tracks. A garden, small roses, phlox, and sunflowers. Waiting. A forlorn black train puffing through the endless morning. Reflected in the windshield, alive, the eyes that were now in the trunk jelly-like and filling with dust that sifted in through the cracks.

“In Germany? Ah, I understand! At one of the party rallies. Nuremberg. I think I remember. Wasn’t it at the Nuremberger Hof?”

“No, Haake.” Ravic spoke slowly into the glass of the windshield and he felt the black wave of the years coming back. “Not in Nuremberg. In Berlin.”

“Berlin?” The shadowy face broken by reflections showed a trace of jovial impatience. “Now let’s hear it, my friend, let’s hear the story! Stop
beating about the bush and don’t keep me on the rack any longer! Where was it?”

The wave, up to his arms now, rising out of the earth. “On the rack, Haake! Just that! On the rack!”

A laugh, uncertain, wary. “Don’t make jokes, my friend.”

“On the rack, Haake! Do you know now who I am?”

The laughter, more uncertain, more wary, menacing. “How should I know? I see thousands of people. I can’t remember each individual. If you’re referring to the secret police—”

“Yes, Haake, the Gestapo.”

A shrug of the shoulders. On his guard. “In case you were ever questioned there—”

“Yes. Do you remember?”

Once more a shrug of the shoulders. “How should I remember? We have questioned thousands—”

“Questioned! Beaten into unconsciousness, kidneys crushed, bones broken, thrown into cellars like sacks, dragged up again, faces torn, testicles crushed—that was what you called questioning! The hot frightful moaning of those who were no longer able to cry—questioned! The whimpering between unconsciousness and consciousness, kicks in the belly, rubber clubs, whips—yes, all that you innocently called ‘questioning’!”