Arch of Triumph (60 page)

She looked at him. Her face was smeared, the mascara had run from her eyelashes and her lipstick was rubbed up on one side. One side of her face looked like that of a cheap circus clown, the other with the black smear under her eye like that of a tired, worn-out whore. Over it her hair shone.

“I don’t want to be operated on,” she whispered.

“We’ll see. Maybe we won’t have to.”

“Is it—” She stopped.

“No,” Ravic said. “Not serious. Only we have all the instruments there.”

“Instruments—”

“For the examination. Now I’ll—it won’t hurt—”

The injection had taken effect. Her eyes lost their anxious fixity, while Ravic cautiously examined her.

The man returned. “The ambulance is on its way.”

“Call up Auteuil 1357. It’s a hospital. I’ll talk to them.”

The man disappeared obediently. “You will help me—” Joan whispered.

“Of course.”

“I don’t want to have pain.”

“You won’t.”

“I can’t—I can’t endure—” She became drowsy. Her voice died down. “I can’t—”

Ravic looked at the wound where the bullet had entered. None of the large vessels was injured. He saw no wound where the bullet had left. He did not say anything. He applied a compress bandage. He did not say what he feared. “Who put you on the bed?” he asked. “Did you—”

“He—”

“Were you—could you walk?”

Alarmed, her eyes returned from veiled lakes. “What? Is it—I—no—I could not move my foot. My leg—what is it, Ravic?”

“Nothing. I thought so. You’ll be all right again.”

The man appeared. “The hospital—”

Ravic quickly went to the telephone. “Who is it? Eugénie? A room—yes—and call up Veber.” He looked toward the bedroom. Softly: “Have everything ready. We must go to work right away. I’ve ordered an ambulance. An accident—yes—yes—right—yes—in ten minutes—”

He hung up. He stayed where he was for a while. The table. A bottle of crème de menthe, disgusting stuff, glasses, perfumed cigarettes, abominable, all this was like a bad movie, a gun on the rug, blood here too, everything unreal, what makes me feel that? he thought. It is true—and now he also knew who the other man was that had called for him. The suit with those padded shoulders, that smoothly brushed pomaded hair, the slight smell of toilet water that had irritated him in the car, those rings on his fingers—it was the actor all right about whose threats he had laughed so much. Well aimed, he thought. Not aimed at all, he thought. Such a shot could not have been aimed, one could hit with such precision only when one had no such idea and did not intend to hit at all.

He went back. The man was kneeling by the bed. Of course kneeling, it could not be otherwise, talking, wailing, talking, syllables rolling from his tongue. “Get up,” Ravic said.

The man rose obediently. Absent-mindedly he brushed the dust from the knees of his trousers. Ravic looked at his face. Tears! That too! “I did not intend to, sir! I swear I didn’t mean to hit her, I did not intend to, an accident, a blind, unhappy accident!”

Ravic’s stomach contracted. Blind accident! Soon he’ll talk in blank verse! “I know that. Now go down and wait for the ambulance.”

The man wanted to say something. “Go!” Ravic said. “Keep that damn elevator ready. God knows how we’ll get down with the stretcher.”

“You’ll help me, Ravic,” Joan said drowsily.

“Yes,” he said without hope.

“You are here. I am always at peace when you are with me.”

The smeared face smiled. The clown grinned, the whore smiled laboriously.

“Bébée, I didn’t—” the man said at the door.

“Get out!” Ravic said. “Damn it, go, will you!”

Joan lay still for a while. Then she opened her eyes. “He is an idiot,” she said with surprising clarity. “Naturally he didn’t intend to—the poor lamb—only wanted to show off.” A strange, almost impish expression was in her eyes. “I too never believed it—I teased him—into—”

“You must not talk.”

“Teased—” Her eyes narrowed to a slit. “Now that’s the way I am, Ravic—my life—he didn’t want to hit—hit—and—”

The eyes closed completely. The smile died away. Ravic kept listening in the direction of the door.

———

“We can’t get the stretcher into the elevator. It is too narrow. At best, half upright.”

“Can you get it around the landings?”

The interne went out. “Maybe. We would have to raise it high. We’d better tie her down.”

They fastened her. Joan was half asleep. At times she groaned. The internes left the apartment. “Have you a key?” Ravic asked the actor.

“I—no, why?”

“To lock the apartment.”

“No. But there is a key somewhere.”

“Look for it and lock the door.” The internes were busy on the first landing. “Take the revolver with you. You can throw it away outside.”

“I—I’ll—I’ll give myself up to the police. Is she seriously hurt?”

“Yes.”

The man began to perspire. The sweat surged from his pores so suddenly, it seemed there was nothing else under his skin. He went back into the apartment.

Ravic followed the internes carrying the stretcher. The hallway was equipped with electric lights that stayed on only three minutes and then went out. On each landing there was a button with which to turn them on again. The internes got halfway down on each floor with relative ease. The turns were difficult. They had to raise the stretcher high above their heads and over the railing to get around. Their huge shadows danced on the walls. Where have I seen this before? I’ve seen this somewhere before, Ravic thought, disconcerted. Then it occurred to him. With Raszinsky, at the very beginning.

The doors opened while the internes called directions and the
stretcher tore pieces of plaster from the walls. Curious faces appeared at half-opened doors, pajamas, mussed hair, sleep-puffed faces, nightgowns, purple, poison green, with tropical flowers—

The light went out again. The internes grumbled in the dark and stopped. “Lights!”

Ravic searched for the button. He touched a woman’s breast, smelled stale breath, something brushed his legs. The light flashed up again. A woman with yellow hair stared at him. Her face hung in rings of fat, cold cream shone on it, and with her hand she held a crepe de Chine robe with a thousand coquettish ruches. She looked like a fat bulldog on a lace bed. “Dead?” she asked with glittering eyes.

“No.” Ravic walked on. Something squeaked, spat. A cat jumped back. “Fifi!” The woman bent down, her heavy knees spread wide. “My God, Fifi, did they step on you?”

Ravic walked down the stairs. The stretcher wavered below him. He saw Joan’s head, which moved with the movement of the stretcher. He could not see her eyes.

The last landing. The light went out again. Ravic ran up the first flight again to find the button. At that moment, the elevator began to hum and it glided brightly lit down through the quiet darkness as if it were descending from heaven. The actor was standing in the open wire cage. He glided noiselessly, irresistibly down past the stretcher, like an apparition. He had found the elevator waiting upstairs and had used it to catch up with them. It was sensible, but it produced a ghostlike and terrifyingly comic effect.

Ravic looked up. The trembling had left him. His hands no longer felt sweaty under the rubber gloves. He had changed them twice. There was no choice but to overcome it.

Veber stood opposite him. “If you like, Ravic, call Marteau. He
could be here in fifteen minutes. You can assist him and he can do it.”

“No, too late. I couldn’t anyway. Looking on even less than this.”

Ravic took a breath. He was calm now. He began to work. The skin. White. Skin like anyone’s skin, he told himself. Joan’s skin. Skin like any other. Blood. Joan’s blood. Blood like any other’s blood. Tampon. The torn muscle. Tampon. Caution. Go on. A shred of silver brocade. Threads. Go on. The channel of the wound. Splinters. Go on. The channel leading to—leading to—

Ravic felt his head growing empty. Slowly he straightened up. “Here, look at that—the seventh vertebra—”

Veber bent over the incision. “That looks bad.”

“Not bad. Hopeless. There’s nothing to be done.”

Ravic looked at his hands. They moved under the rubber gloves. They were strong hands, good hands, they had operated a thousand times and had sewn ripped bodies together again, they had often been successful and sometimes not, and a few times they had made the almost impossible possible, one chance in a hundred—but now, now when everything depended on them, they were helpless.

He could do nothing. No one could do anything. An operation was impossible. There he stood and stared at the red wound. He could have had Marteau called. Marteau would say the same thing.

“Is there nothing that can be done?” Veber asked.

“Nothing. It would only shorten her life. Weaken her. You see where the bullet lies. I can’t even remove it.”

“The pulse is fluttering, rising—one hundred thirty—” Eugénie said from behind the screen.

The wound grew a shade grayer. As if a breath of darkness had blown over it. Ravic had the caffeine needle ready in his hand. “Coramine, quickly! Stop the anesthetic!”

He made the second injection. “How is it now?”

“Unchanged.”

The blood still had a leaden tinge. “Keep the adrenaline injection and the oxygen apparatus ready!”

The blood became darker. It was as if clouds floated outside and cast their shadows over it. As if someone were standing in front of a window drawing the curtains tight. “Blood,” Ravic said desperately. “A blood transfusion. But I don’t know her blood type.”

The oxygen apparatus began to work. “Nothing? What is it? Nothing?”

“Pulse falling. One hundred twenty. Very weak.”

Life came back. “Now? Better?”

“The same.”

He waited. “Now? Better?”

“Better. More regular.”

The shadows disappeared. The edges of the wound lost their gray color. The blood became blood again. Still blood. The oxygen was working.

“Her eyelids are fluttering,” Eugénie said.

“It doesn’t matter. She may wake up.” Ravic applied the bandage.

“How is the pulse?”

“More regular.”

“That was by a hair’s breadth,” Veber said.

Ravic felt a pressure on his eyelids. It was sweat. Thick drops. He straightened up. The oxygen apparatus buzzed. “Keep it going.”

He walked around the table and stood there for a while. He did not think of anything. He looked at the tank and at Joan’s face. It quivered. It was not yet dead.

“Shock,” he said to Veber. “Here is a sample of her blood. We must send it out. Where can we get blood?”

“At the American Hospital.”

“All right. We must try it. It won’t help. Only prolong it a little.” He watched the tank. “Do you have to inform the police?”

“Yes,” Veber said. “I ought to. Then you’ll have two officials here who will want to question you. Do you want that?”

“No.”

“All right. We can think that over this afternoon.”

“Enough, Eugénie,” Ravic said.

Joan’s temples had regained a little color. The gray white had a tinge of pink. Her pulse was beating regularly, weak and clear. “We can take her back. I’ll stay here.”

She moved. One hand moved. Her right hand moved. Her left did not move.

“Ravic,” she said.

“Yes—”

“Did you operate on me?”

“No, Joan. It was not necessary. We have only cleaned the wound.”

“Will you stay here?”

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes and fell asleep again. Ravic went to the door. “Bring me some coffee,” he said to the day nurse.

“Coffee and rolls?”

“No, just coffee.”

He went back and opened the window. The morning stood clear and resplendent above the roofs. Sparrows were playing in the eaves. Ravic sat down by the window and smoked. He blew the smoke out of the window.

The nurse returned with the coffee. He put it beside him and
drank and smoked and looked out of the window. When he turned back from the bright morning, the room seemed dark. He got up and looked at Joan. She was still asleep. Her face had been cleaned and it was very pale. Her lips were hardly visible.

He took the tray with the coffeepot and the cup outside. He put it on a table in the corridor. There was a smell of floor polish and pus. The nurse carried a pail with old bandages past him. Somewhere a vacuum cleaner was droning.

Joan became restless. Soon she would wake up again. Wake up with pain. The pain would increase. She might live a few more hours or a few days. The pain would be so strong that no injection would any longer be of much help.

Ravic went for a needle and ampules. Joan opened her eyes when he returned. He looked at her.

“Headache,” she murmured.

He waited. She tried to move her head. Her eyelids seemed heavy. She moved her eyeballs with effort. “It feels like lead—”

She became wider awake. “I can’t stand that—”

“It will be better soon—”

He gave her an injection. “It didn’t ache so much before—” She moved her head. “Ravic,” she whispered, “I don’t want to suffer. I—promise that I won’t suffer—my grandmother—I saw her—I don’t want that—and it didn’t help her at all—promise—”

“I promise, Joan. You won’t have much pain. Almost none.”

She set her teeth. “Will it help soon?”

“Yes—soon. In a few minutes—”

“What is wrong—with my arm—”

“Nothing. You can’t move it. It will come back again.”

“And my leg—my right leg—”

She tried to pull it up. It did not move.

“It’s the same, Joan. Don’t do anything. It will come back.”

She moved her head.

“I just intended to begin—to live differently—” she whispered.

Ravic did not reply. There was nothing he could say. Maybe it was true. Who did not always intend that?

She tossed her head from side to side restlessly again. Her voice came monotonous and with effort. “It was good—you came. What—would have happened—without you?”

“Yes—”

The same thing, he thought in despair. The same thing would have happened. Any quack would have been good enough for that. Any quack. The one time when I most needed all that I know and have learned, it is in vain. Any penny-doctor could have done the same thing. Nothing.