Arch of Triumph (6 page)

The woman looked at him. He felt she knew what he was thinking and he was embarrassed. But it was better to be embarrassed for an instant and to be left alone later.

“Good,” the woman said. “You are right.”

Ravic ordered the suitcases carried down to a taxi. The Hôtel de Milan was only a few minutes’ ride. He rented a room and went upstairs with the woman. It was a room on the second floor, with wallpaper of rose-garlands, a bed, a wardrobe, and a table with two chairs. “Is this all right?” he asked.

“Yes. Very good.”

Ravic eyed the wallpaper. It was terrible. “At least it seems to be clean in here,” he said. “Bright and clean.”

“Yes.”

The suitcases were brought upstairs. “Now you have everything here.”

“Yes, thanks. Many thanks.”

She sat down on the bed. Her face was pale and expressionless. “You should go to bed. Do you think you will be able to sleep?”

“I’ll try.”

He took an aluminum tube out of his pocket and shook a few tablets out of it. “Here is something to make you sleep. With water. Do you want to take it now?”

“No, later.”

“All right. I’ll go now. I’ll look you up one of these days. Try to sleep as soon as possible. Here is the address of the funeral parlor in case something comes up. But don’t go there. Think of yourself. I’ll come around.” Ravic hesitated a moment. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Madou. Joan Madou.”

“Joan Madou. All right. I’ll remember it.” He knew he would not remember it and he would not look her up. But because he knew it he wished to keep up appearances. “I’d better write it down,” he said and took a prescription pad out of his vest pocket. “Here—write it yourself. That’s simpler.”

She took the pad and wrote down her name. He looked at it, tore the sheet off, and stuck it in a side pocket of his coat. “Go to bed right away,” he said. “Tomorrow everything will seem different. It sounds stupid and trite, but it is true: all you need now is sleep and a little time. A certain amount of time that you have to get through. Do you know that?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Take the tablets and sleep well.”

“Yes, thank you. Thanks for everything. I don’t know what I would have done without you. I really don’t know.”

She offered her hand. It was cool to the touch and she had a firm clasp. Good, he thought. There is some determination here already.

Ravic stepped into the street. He inhaled the moist, soft wind. Automobiles, people, a few early whores already at the corners, brasseries, bistros, the smell of tobacco, apéritifs, and gasoline—quick, fluctuating life. How sweet it could taste in passing! He looked up at the hotel front. A few lighted windows. Behind one of them the woman was sitting now and staring straight ahead. He took the slip with her name out of his pocket, tore it up, and threw it away. Forget. What a word, he thought. Full of horror, comfort, and apparitions! Who could live without forgetting? But who could forget enough? The ashes of memory that ground one’s heart. Only when one had nothing more to live for, was one free.

He went to the Place de l’Etoile. A great crowd filled the square. Searchlights had been placed behind the Arc de Triomphe. They illuminated the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. A huge blue-white-red flag waved in the wind in front of it. It was the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the 1918 Armistice. The sky was overcast and the beam of the searchlights threw the shadow of the flag against the floating clouds, dull and blurred and torn. It looked like a ragged flag which gradually melted into the slowly darkening sky. Somewhere a military band was playing. It sounded weak and thin. There was no singing. The crowd stood silent. “Armistice,” an old woman said at Ravic’s side. “I lost my husband in the last war. Now it’s my son’s turn. Armistice. Who knows what next year will bring.…”

THE FEVER CHART
over the bed was new and clean. Only the name was on it. Lucienne Martinet. Buttes-Chaumont. Rue Clavel.

The girl’s face on the pillow was gray. She had been operated on the night before. Ravic carefully listened to her heart. Then he straightened up. “Better,” he said. “The blood transfusion worked a minor miracle. If she lasts one more day she has a chance.”

“Fine,” Veber said. “Congratulations. It didn’t look as if she had. A pulse of a hundred forty and a blood pressure of eighty; caffeine, coramine—that was damn close.”

Ravic shrugged his shoulders. “That’s nothing to be congratulated for. She came earlier than the other girl. The one with the gold chain around her ankle. That was all.”

He covered the girl up. “This is the second case within a week. If it goes on you’ll have a hospital for mishandled abortions from the Buttes-Chaumont. Wasn’t the other girl from there, too?”

Veber nodded. “Yes. And from the Rue Clavel. They probably knew each other and went to the same midwife. She even came about the same time in the evening as the other girl. It’s a good
thing I was able to get hold of you at the hotel. I was afraid you wouldn’t be in.”

Ravic looked at him. “When one lives in a hotel one usually isn’t in at night, Veber. Hotel rooms in November aren’t particularly cheerful.”

“I can imagine that. But then why do you go on living in a hotel?”

“It’s a comfortable and impersonal way of living. One’s alone and one isn’t alone.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Yes.”

“You could have all that in another way too. If you’d rent a small apartment, it would be just the same.”

“Maybe.” Ravic bent over the girl again.

“Don’t you think so, too, Eugénie?” Veber asked.

The nurse glanced up. “Mr. Ravic will never do it,” she said coldly.

“Doctor Ravic, Eugénie,” Veber corrected. “I’ve told you a hundred times. He was chief surgeon in a great hospital in Germany. Far more important than I am.”

“Here—” the nurse began and straightened her glasses.

Veber quickly stopped her. “All right! All right! We know all that. This country doesn’t recognize foreign degrees. Idiotic at that! But what makes you so sure he won’t take an apartment?”

“Mr. Ravic is a lost man. He will never build a home for himself.”

“What?” Veber asked in astonishment. “What’s that you are saying?”

“There is no longer anything sacred to Mr. Ravic. That’s the reason.”

“Bravo,” Ravic said from the girl’s bedside.

“I have never heard anything like it!” Veber stared at Eugénie.

“Why don’t you ask him yourself, Doctor Veber?”

Ravic smiled. “You hit the mark, Eugénie. But when there is no longer anything sacred to one, everything again becomes sacred in a more human way. One reveres the spark of life that pulses even in an earthworm and that forces it from time to time up to the light of day. That’s not meant to be a comparison.”

“You can’t insult me. You have no faith.” Eugénie energetically smoothed her white coat over her breast. “Thank God, I have my faith!”

Ravic straightened up. “Faith can easily make one fanatical. That’s why all religions have cost so much blood.” He grinned. “Tolerance is the daughter of doubt, Eugénie. That explains why you, with all your faith, are so much more aggressive toward me than I, lost infidel, am toward you.”

Veber guffawed. “There you are, Eugénie. Don’t answer! You’ll get in even deeper!”

“My dignity as a woman—”

“Fine!” Veber interrupted. “Stick to that. That’s always good. I’ve got to leave now. I’ve still some things to do in the office. Come, Ravic. Good morning, Eugénie.”

“Good morning, Doctor Veber.”

“Good morning, Nurse Eugénie,” Ravic said.

“Good morning,” Eugénie replied with an effort and only after Veber had turned around to look at her.

Veber’s office was crowded with Empire furniture; white and gold and fragile. Photographs of his house and garden hung on the wall above his desk. A modern broad chaise longue stood against the wall. Veber slept on it when he stayed overnight. The private hospital belonged to him.

“What would you like to drink, Ravic? Cognac or Dubonnet?”

“Coffee, if there is any left.”

“Of course.” Veber placed the coffeepot on the desk and put the plug in. Then he turned to Ravic. “Can you substitute for me in the Osiris this afternoon?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Not in the least. I’ve no other plans.”

“Fine. Then I won’t have to drive in again just to go there. I can work in my garden. I’d have asked Fauchon but he is on his vacation.”

“Nonsense,” Ravic said. “I’ve done it often enough.”

“That’s right. Nevertheless—”

“Nevertheless no longer exists nowadays. Not for me.”

“Yes. It’s idiotic enough that you are not permitted to work here officially and have to hide out as a ghost surgeon.”

“But Veber! That’s an old story now. It is happening to all physicians who fled from Germany.”

“Just the same! It’s ridiculous! You perform Durant’s most difficult operations and he makes a name for himself.”

“Better than if he did them himself.”

Veber laughed. “I’m a fine one to talk. You do mine too. But after all, I am a gynecologist and not a specialist in surgery.”

The coffeepot began to hum. Veber turned it off. He took cups out of a closet and poured the coffee. “One thing I really don’t understand, Ravic,” he said. “Why do you go on living in that depressing hole, the International? Why don’t you rent one of those nice new apartments in the neighborhood of the Bois? You could buy some furniture anywhere cheap. Then at least you’d know what’s your own!”

“Yes,” Ravic said. “Then I would know what was my own!”

“See! Why don’t you do it?”

Ravic took a gulp of his coffee. It was bitter and very strong.
“Veber,” he said, “you are a magnificent example of the convenient thinking of our time. In one breath you are sorry because I work illegally here—and at the same time you ask me why I don’t rent a nice apartment—”

“What’s one got to do with the other?”

Ravic smiled patiently. “If I take an apartment I must be registered with the police. I would need a passport and a visa for that.”

“That’s right. I hadn’t thought of that. And in hotels you don’t need any?”

“There too. But, thank God, there are a few hotels in Paris that don’t take registration too seriously.” Ravic poured a few drops of cognac into his coffee. “One of them is the International. That’s why I live there. I don’t know how the landlady arranges it. But she must have good connections. Either the police really don’t know about it or they are bribed. At any rate I have lived there for quite a long time undisturbed.”

Veber leaned back. “Ravic!” he said. “I didn’t know that. I only thought you weren’t permitted to work here. That’s a hell of a situation!”

“It’s paradise. Compared with a German concentration camp.”

“And the police? If they do come some day?”

“If they catch us we get a few weeks’ imprisonment and are deported across the border. Mostly into Switzerland. In case of a second offense we get six months in prison.”

“What?”

“Six months,” Ravic said.

Veber stared at him. “But that’s impossible! That’s inhuman!”

“That’s what I thought, too. Until I experienced it.”

“How do you mean experienced? Has that ever happened to you?”

“Not once. Three times. Just as to hundreds of others as well.
In the beginning, when I knew nothing about it and counted on so-called humaneness. After that I went to Spain—where I didn’t need any passport—and got a second lesson in applied humaneness. From German and Italian fliers. Then later when I returned to France I, of course, knew the ins and outs of it.”

Veber got up. “But for heaven’s sake”—he figured it out—“then you have been imprisoned over a year for nothing.”

“Not as long as that. Only two months.”

“How is that? Didn’t you say in the case of a second offense it was six months?”

Ravic smiled. “There are no second offenses when one is experienced. One is deported under one name and simply returns under another. If possible, at another point on the frontier. That’s how we avoid it. Since we have no papers it can only be proven if someone recognizes us personally. That very rarely happens. Ravic is my third name. I’ve used it for almost two years. Nothing has happened in that time. It seems to have brought me luck. I’m beginning to like it more every day. By now I’ve almost forgotten my real name.”

Veber shook his head. “And all this simply because you are not a Nazi!”

“Naturally. Nazis have first-class papers. And all the visas they want.”

“Nice world we live in! And the government doesn’t do a thing!”

“There are several million men out of work for whom the government has to care first. Besides it’s not only in France. The same thing is happening everywhere.”

Ravic got up. “Adieu, Veber. I’ll look in on the girl again in two hours. And once more at night.”

Veber followed him to the door. “Listen, Ravic,” he said. “Why don’t you come out to our house sometime? For dinner.”

“Certainly.” Ravic knew he would not go. “Sometime soon. Adieu, Veber.”

“Adieu, Ravic. And do come, really.”

Ravic went into the nearest bistro. He sat by a window so that he could look out upon the street. He loved that—to sit without thinking and watch the people passing by. Paris was the city where one could best spend one’s time doing nothing.