Arch of Triumph (58 page)

The air in the Catacombs was sultry and stale. The room had no windows. An old couple was sitting beneath the dusty artificial palm. They were completely immersed in sadness which surrounded them like a wall. Both sat motionless, hand in hand, and it seemed as if they would never be able to get up again.

Suddenly Ravic had the feeling that all the misery of the world was locked into this ill-lighted basement room. The sickly electric bulbs hung yellow and withered on the walls and made everything seem even more disconsolate. The silence, the whispering, the searching of papers which had already been turned over a hundred times, the re-counting of them, the silent waiting, the helpless expectation of the end, the little spasmodic acts of courage, life a thousand times humiliated and now pushed into a corner, terrified because it could not go on any farther—all of a sudden he felt it, he could smell the odor of it, he smelled the fear, the ultimate overwhelming silent fear, he smelled it and he knew where he had smelled it before, in the concentration camp as they drove the people in from the streets, from their beds, and made them stand in the barracks and wait for whatever was to happen to them.

Two people sat at the table next to him. A woman, with hair parted in the middle, and a man. A boy of about eight stood before them. He had been listening at the tables and now came over to them. “Why are we Jews?” he asked the woman.

The woman did not answer.

Ravic looked at Morosow. “I must go,” he said. “To the hospital.”

“I must go, too.”

They walked up the stairs. “Too much is too much,” Morosow said. “I, a former anti-Semite, tell you that.”

———

The hospital was a cheerful place in comparison with the Catacombs. Here too was pain, sickness, and misery; but here at least it had some kind of logic and sense. One knew why it was this way and what was to be done and what not. These were facts: one could see them and one could try to do something about them.

Veber was sitting in his examination room, reading a paper. Ravic looked over his shoulder. “Fine state of affairs, isn’t it?”

Veber threw the paper onto the floor. “That corrupt gang! Fifty per cent of our politicians should be hanged!”

“Ninety,” Ravic declared. “Did you get more news about the woman in Durant’s hospital?”

“She is all right.” Veber nervously reached for a cigar. “It’s simple for you, Ravic. But I am a Frenchman.”

“I am nothing at all. But I only wish Germany were just as corrupt as France.”

Veber glanced up. “I am talking nonsense. I’m sorry.” He forgot to light his cigar. “There can’t be war, Ravic. It simply can’t be! It’s all barking and threatening. Something will happen at the last moment!”

He remained silent for a while. The self-assurance he had had before was gone. “After all, we still have the Maginot Line,” he said then, almost entreatingly.

“Naturally,” Ravic replied without conviction. He had heard that a thousand times. Discussions with Frenchmen usually ended with this statement.

Veber wiped his forehead. “Durant has transferred his fortune to America. His secretary told me.”

“Typical.”

Veber looked at Ravic with weary eyes. “He isn’t the only one. My brother-in-law exchanged his French bonds for American securities. Gaston Nerée has his money in dollars in a safe. And Dupont is supposed to have hidden a few sacks of gold in his garden.” He rose. “I can’t talk about it. I refuse. It is impossible. It is impossible that France could be betrayed and sold out. When danger threatens all will unite. All.”

“All,” Ravic said without smiling. “Even the industrialists and politicians who are doing business with Germany now.”

Veber controlled himself. “Ravic—we’d better talk about something else.”

“All right. I’m taking Kate Hegstroem to Cherbourg. I’ll be back at midnight.”

Veber breathed heavily. “What—what have you arranged for yourself, Ravic?”

“Nothing. We’ll be sent to a French concentration camp. It’ll be better than a German one.”

“Impossible. France won’t lock up any refugees.”

“Let’s wait and see. It’s a matter of course and one can’t say anything against it.”

“Ravic—”

“All right. Let’s wait and see. Let’s hope you’re right. Do you know that the Louvre is being emptied? They are sending the best paintings to central France.”

“No. Who told you?”

“I was there this afternoon. The blue windows of the cathedral in Chartres have been packed up, too. I was there yesterday. A sentimental journey. Wanted to see them once more. They had already been removed. There is an airfield too close. New windows had been put in. Just as they did last year at the time of the Munich conference.”

“You see!” Veber instantly seized upon this. “Nothing happened then. Great excitement, and then came Chamberlain with the umbrella of peace.”

“Yes. The umbrella of peace is still in London, and the goddess of victory is still standing in the Louvre—without a head. It will stay there. Too heavy to move. I must go. Kate Hegstroem is waiting.”

The
Normandie
was lying at the quay, blazing in the night with a thousand lights. The wind came from the water, cool and salty. Kate Hegstroem drew her fur closer to her. She was very thin. Her face was almost all bone over which the skin was stretched, with frighteningly large eyes like dark pools.

“I’d rather stay here,” she said. “Suddenly it’s so difficult to leave.”

Ravic stared at her. There lay the mighty ship, the gangway was brightly lighted, people streamed inside, many of them hurrying as if they were afraid of arriving too late at the last moment. There lay the shimmering palace, and its name was no longer
Normandie
, its name was Escape, Flight, Salvation; in a thousand cities and rooms and dirty hotels and cellars of Europe it was life’s unattainable fata morgana for ten thousand people, and here beside him someone at whose vitals death was gnawing said in a thin and lovely voice, “I’d rather stay here.”

All this made no sense. For the refugees in the International, for the thousand Internationals throughout Europe, for all the harassed, the tortured, the fleeing, the trapped, this would have been the Land of Promise; they would have broken down sobbing and kissed the gangway and would have believed in miracles if they had held the ticket that fluttered in the tired hand beside him, the
ticket of a human being who in any case was traveling into death and who said indifferently, “I’d rather stay here.”

A group of Americans arrived. Deliberate, jovial, noisy. They had all the time in the world. The consulate had urged them to leave. They discussed it. It was really a pity. It would have been fun to look on longer. What could happen to them, after all? The ambassador! They were neutral! It was really a pity!

The fragrance of perfume. Jewels. The sparkling of diamonds. A few hours ago they were still sitting in Maxim’s, ridiculously cheap in dollars, with a Corton ’29, a Pol Roger ’28 as the climax—now on ship they would sit in the bar, playing backgammon, drinking whisky—

and in front of the consulate the long lines of hopeless people, the smell of mortal dread like a cloud above them, a few overworked employees, the court of last resort, an assistant secretary shaking his head again and again, “No, no visa, no, impossible,” the silent condemnation of silent innocence; Ravic stared at the ship which was not a ship any more, which was an ark, the last ark about to glide off before the deluge, the deluge which one had once escaped and which now was about to overtake one.

“It’s time to go, Kate.”

“Is it? Adieu, Ravic.”

“Adieu, Kate.”

“We don’t need to lie to each other, eh?”

“No.”

“Follow me soon—”

“Certainly, Kate, soon—”

“Adieu, Ravic. Thanks for everything. I’ll go now. I’ll go up there and wave to you. Stay here until the ship sails and wave to me.”

“All right, Kate.”

Slowly she went up the gangway. Her body swayed ever so slightly. Her figure, slimmer than all the others beside her, clear in its structure, almost without flesh, had the black elegance of certain death. Her face was bold as the head of an Egyptian bronze cat—only contour, breath, and eyes.

The last passengers. A Jew, streaming with sweat, a fur coat over his arm, almost hysterical, with two porters, yelling, running. The last Americans. Then the gangway slowly being drawn up. A strange feeling. Drawn up, irrevocably. The end. A narrow strip of water. The frontier. Two meters of water only—but already the frontier between Europe and America. Between rescue and destruction.

Ravic looked for Kate Hegstroem. He soon found her. She was standing at the railing, waving. He waved back.

The ship did not seem to move. The land seemed to withdraw. Only a little. Hardly perceptible. And suddenly the blazing ship was free. It floated upon the dark water, against the dark sky, unattainable. Kate Hegstroem was no longer to be recognized, no one was to be recognized any longer, and those left behind looked at each other silently, embarrassed or with false gaiety, and then hurriedly or hesitatingly they went their ways.

He drove the car back through the night to Paris. The hedges and orchards of Normandy flew past him. The moon hung oval and large in the misty sky. The ship was forgotten. Only the landscape remained. The landscape, the smell of hay and ripe apples, the silence and the deep peace of the inevitable.

The car ran almost noiselessly. It ran as if gravity had no power over it. Houses glided past, churches, villages, the golden spots of the estaminets and bistros, a gleaming river, a mill, and then again the even contour of the plain, the sky arching above it like the
inside of a huge shell in whose milky nacre shimmered the pearl of the moon.

It was like an end and a fulfillment. Ravic had felt this several times before; but now it had become entire, very strong and unescapable, it penetrated him and there was no longer any resistance.

Everything was floating and without weight. Future and past met and both were without desire or pain. No one thing was more important and stronger than anything else. The horizons were in equilibrium and for one strange moment the scales of his existence were even. Fate was never stronger than the serene courage with which one faced it. If one could no longer stand it, one could kill oneself. This was good to know, but it was also good to know that one was never completely lost so long as one was alive.

Ravic knew the danger; he knew whither he was going and he also knew that tomorrow he would resist again—but suddenly in this night, in this hour of his return from a lost Ararat into the blood-smell of coming destruction, everything became nameless. Danger was danger and not danger; fate was at the same time a sacrifice and the deity to whom one sacrificed. And tomorrow was an unknown world.

Everything was all right. That which had been and that which was still to come. It was enough. If it were the end, it was all right so. He had loved somebody and lost her. He had hated another and killed him. Both had freed him. One had brought his feelings to life again; the other had eradicated his past. Nothing remained behind unfulfilled. No desire was left; no hatred, nor any lament. If this were a new beginning, then that was what it was. One would start without expectation, prepared for many things, with the simple strength of experience which had strengthened and not torn asunder. The ashes had been cleared away. Paralyzed places were alive again. Cynicism had turned into strength. It was all right.

———

Beyond Caen came the horses. Long columns in the night, horses, horses, shadowy in the moonlight. And then men, four deep, with bundles, cardboard boxes, packages. The beginning of the mobilization.

One could hardly hear them. No one sang. Hardly anyone spoke. They moved silently through the night. Columns of shadows on the right side of the road to leave space for the cars.

Ravic passed one after the other. Horses, he thought, horses. Like 1914. No tanks. Horses.

He stopped near a gasoline station and had the car refilled. There were still some lights in the windows of the village, but it had become almost silent. One of the columns was moving through it. People stared after it; they did not wave.

“I’ve got to go tomorrow,” the man at the gasoline station said. He had a brown, clear-cut, peasant face. “My father was killed in the last war. My grandfather in 1870. I go tomorrow. It’s always the same. We have been doing this now for a couple of hundred years. And it doesn’t help; we have to go again.”

His look embraced the shabby pump, the small house next to it, and the woman standing silently beside him. “Twenty-eight francs thirty, sir.”

Again the landscape. The moon. Lisieux. Evreux. Columns. Horses. Silence. Ravic stopped before a small restaurant. Outside were two tables. The proprietress declared she had nothing left to eat. A dinner was a dinner, and in France an omelette and cheese were not a dinner. But finally she was persuaded and even provided salad and coffee and a carafe of vin ordinaire.

Ravic sat alone in front of the pink house and ate. Mist drifted over the meadows. A few frogs croaked. It was very quiet. But from the top floor of the house came the sounds of a loud-speaker.
A voice. The usual voice, comforting, confident, hopeless, and completely superfluous. Everyone listened and no one believed.

He paid. “Paris will be blacked out,” the proprietress said. “They have just announced it over the radio.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Against air raids. As a precaution. They say on the radio everything is only a precaution. There will be no war. They are about to negotiate. What do you say?”

“I don’t think there will be a war.” Ravic did not know what else he could say.

“God grant it. But what’s the use? The Germans will take Poland. And then they will demand Alsace-Lorraine. Then the colonies. Then something else. And always more until we give up or have to make war. And so it’s better to do it right away.”

The proprietress went slowly back into the house. A new column came down the road.

The red reflection of Paris against the horizon. Blacked out; Paris would be blacked out. It was natural; but it sounded strange: Paris blacked out. Paris. As if the light of the world were to be blacked out.