Arch of Triumph (18 page)

“I have. Listen. The girl paid you three hundred francs. She can sue you for compensation.”

The door was opened. The sinister man entered. “Something wrong, Adèle?”

“No. Sue for compensation? If she goes to court she herself will be sentenced. First of all she, that’s certain because she admits that an abortion was done for her. That I did it still has to be proved. That she can’t.”

The sinister man bleated. “Quiet, Roger,” Madame Boucher said. “You may go.”

“Brunier is outside.”

“All right. Tell him to wait. You know—”

The man nodded and left. With him went a strong smell of cognac. Ravic sniffed. “That’s an old cognac,” he said. “At least thirty, forty years old. Lucky man who drinks something like that early in the afternoon.”

Madame Boucher stared at him for a moment, flabbergasted. Then she slowly drew in her lips. “That’s right. Do you want some?”

“Why not?”

In spite of her fat she was at the door with surprising speed and silentness. “Roger.”

The sinister man came in. “You’ve been drinking the good cognac again! Don’t lie, I smell it! Bring the bottle! Don’t talk, bring the bottle!”

Roger brought the bottle. “I gave Brunier some. He forced me to drink with him.”

Madame Boucher did not answer. She closed the door and fetched a curved glass from the walnut Vertikow. Ravic looked at it with disgust. The head of a woman was engraved on it. Madame Boucher poured and put the glass in front of him on the tablecloth, which was adorned with peacocks. “You seem to be a sensible person, sir,” she said.

Ravic could not deny her a certain respect. She was not of iron, as Lucienne had told him; she was worse—of rubber. You could break iron. Not rubber. Her argument against collecting damages was sound. “Your operation was a failure,” he said. “It had serious consequences. This should be reason enough for you to refund the money.”

“Do you pay money back if a patient dies after an operation?”

“No. But sometimes we don’t take any money for an operation. For instance, from Lucienne.”

Madame Boucher looked at him. “You see—then why is she making such a fuss? She should be glad.”

Ravic lifted his glass. “Madame,” he said, “my respects. One can’t get the better of you.”

The woman slowly put the bottle on the table. “Sir, many have already tried it. But you seem to be more sensible. Do you think this business is fun? Or all the money mine? The police get almost a hundred francs of those three hundred. Do you believe that I could work otherwise? One of them is sitting outside now to get
money. I have to bribe them, always bribe them; there’s no other way. I tell you that here, alone, between the two of us, and should you want to make use of it somehow, I’d deny it and the police would pay no attention. You may believe that.”

“I believe it.”

Madame Boucher cast a quick look at him. When she saw that he did not mean it ironically, she moved a chair closer to him and sat down. She moved the chair like a feather—beneath her fat she seemed to have enormous strength. She refilled his glass with the cognac reserved for bribes. “Three hundred francs looks like a good deal of money—but there are more expenses than just the police. The rent—naturally higher for me than for someone else—laundry, instruments—for me twice as expensive as for physicians—commissions, bribes—I must be on good terms with everyone—drinks, presents at New Year and on birthdays for the officials and their wives—that’s something, sir! Sometimes hardly anything is left.”

“I don’t question that.”

“Then what?”

“That the sort of thing can happen that happened to Lucienne.”

“Does it never happen with doctors?” Madame Boucher asked quickly.

“Not so often by far.”

“Sir.” She straightened up. “I’m honest. I tell every one of the girls who come here that something might happen. And none of them leaves. They beg me to do it. They cry and are desperate. They would commit suicide if I didn’t help them. What scenes have been staged here! They roll on the rug and entreat me! Do you see the corner of that Vertikow there where the veneer is chipped off? A well-to-do lady did that in her desperation. I took care of her. Do you want to see something? Ten pounds of plum jam she sent yesterday are in the kitchen. Out of pure gratitude
although she had paid. I’ll tell you something, sir—” Madame Boucher’s voice rose and became fuller “—you may call me an abortionist—others call me their benefactress and angel.”

She had got up. The kimono billowed around her majestically. The canary began to sing in his cage as if by command. Ravic got up. He had a feeling for melodrama. But he knew too that Madame Boucher did not exaggerate. “All right,” he said. “I’ll go now. For Lucienne you weren’t exactly a benefactress.”

“You should have seen her before! What more does she want? She’s healthy—the child is done with—that was all she wanted. And she doesn’t have to pay for the hospital.”

“She’ll never be able to have a child again.”

Madame Boucher hesitated a second only. “All the better,” she declared, unmoved. “Then she will be overjoyed, that little whore.”

Ravic realized that there was nothing to be done.
“Au revoir, madame,”
he said. “It has been interesting here with you.”

She came close to him. Ravic would have liked to avoid shaking hands with her. But that was not her intention. She lowered her voice in a confidential manner. “You are sensible, sir. More sensible than most doctors. It’s a pity that you—” She hesitated and looked at him encouragingly. “Sometimes one needs for certain cases—an understanding physician could then be of great help—”

Ravic did not object. He wanted to hear more. “It would not harm you,” Madame Boucher added. “Just in special cases—” She studied him like a cat that pretends to love birds. “There are well-to-do clients among them sometimes—naturally always payment in advance and—we are safe, completely safe from the police—I assume you could very well use a few hundred francs on the side—” She tapped him on his shoulder. “A good-looking man like you—”

She seized the bottle with a broad smile. “Well, what do you think?”

“Thanks,” Ravic said and kept her from pouring. “No more. I can’t stand much.” He refused with great reluctance, for the cognac was excellent. The bottle had no label and certainly came from a first-class private cellar. “I’ll think the other matter over. I’ll come again sometime. I’d like to see your instruments. Maybe I can give you some advice as far as they are concerned.”

“I’ll show you my instruments when you come again. Then you’ll show me your papers. Confidence for confidence.”

“You’ve already shown me some confidence.”

“Not the least.” Madame Boucher smiled. “I only made you a proposition which I can deny at any time. You’re not a Frenchman, one can hear that, although you speak well. Nor do you look it. You’re probably a refugee.” She smiled more broadly and looked at him with cool eyes. “One wouldn’t believe you and would be, at best, interested in the French diploma which you haven’t got. Outside in the hall sits a police official. If you want to, you can denounce me right away. You won’t do it. But you can think over my proposition. You wouldn’t give me your name and address, would you?”

“No,” Ravic said, feeling beaten.

“I thought not.” Madame Boucher really looked like a huge well-fed cat now. “Au
revoir, monsieur
. Consider my offer. I’ve often before thought of working with the assistance of a refugee doctor.”

Ravic smiled. He knew why. A refugee doctor would be completely at her mercy. If anything happened he would be guilty. “I’ll think it over,” he said.
“Au revoir, madame.”

He walked along the dark corridor. Behind one of the doors he heard someone moaning. He assumed that the rooms were arranged like small cabins with beds. The women would stay there before they tottered home.

A slim man with a trimmed mustache and an olive-colored skin sat in the hall. He studied Ravic attentively. Roger sat at his side.
He had another bottle of the old cognac on the table. He tried to hide it instinctively when he saw Ravic. Then he grinned and dropped his hand. “
Bon soir, docteur
,” he said and showed his stained teeth. It seemed he had been eavesdropping at the door.

“
Bon soir
, Roger.” It seemed to Ravic appropriate to be intimate. This indestructible woman had almost changed him from an outspoken enemy into an accomplice within half an hour in there. And so it was actually a relief to be not too formal with Roger who, after all that, had something astonishingly human about him.

Downstairs he met two girls. They were looking from door to door. “Sir,” one of them asked with determination, “does Madame Boucher live here in this house?”

Ravic hesitated. But what point was there in saying anything? It would not help at all. They would go. Then too he could not give them any other directions. “On the third floor. There is a name plate on the door.”

The luminous dial of his watch shone in the dark like a tiny imitation sun. It was five o’clock in the morning. Joan should have come at three. It was still possible that she would come. Also possible that she was too tired and had gone straight to her hotel.

Ravic stretched out to go back to sleep. But he could not fall asleep. He lay awake for a long time and looked at the ceiling where the red band from the electric signs on the roof opposite ran at regular intervals. He felt empty and did not know why. It was as if the warmth of his body were slowly seeping through his skin, and as if his blood wanted to lean against something that was not there and that it fell and fell into a soft nothingness. He crossed his hands behind his head and lay quiet. Now he knew he was waiting. And he knew it was not only his consciousness that
waited for Joan Madou—his hands waited and his veins and a strangely alien tenderness within him.

He got up, put on his dressing gown and sat down by the window. He felt the warmth of the soft wool on his skin. The robe was old; he had had it with him for many years. He had slept in it on his flights; he had warmed himself in it during the cold nights in Spain when, dead tired, he had come back from the field hospital to his barracks. Juana, twelve years old, with eyes eighty years old, had died under it in a wrecked hotel in Madrid—with the single wish sometime to own a dress of the same soft wool and to forget how her mother had been ravished and her father trampled to death.

He looked around. The room, a few suitcases, some belongings, a handful of well-read books—a man needed few things to live. And it was good not to get used to many things when life was unsettled. Again and again one had to abandon them or they were taken away. One should be ready to leave every day. That was the reason he had lived alone—when one was on the move one should not have anything that could bind one. Nothing that could stir the heart. The adventure—but nothing more.

He looked at the bed. The crumpled colorless linen. It did not matter that he waited. He had often waited for women. But he felt that he had waited differently—simply, clearly, and brutally. Also sometimes with the anonymous tenderness that enchases desire with silver—but for a long time not as he waited today. Something had crept into him to which he had not paid any attention. Did it stir again? Did it move? How long ago was it? Did something call again out of oblivion, out of blue depths, did it again blow across him like the breath of meadows, full of peppermint, with a row of poplars against the horizon and the smell of woods in April? He did not want to possess anything. He did not want to be possessed. He was on the move.

He got up and began to dress. One must remain independent. Everything began with small dependencies. One did not notice them much. And suddenly one was entangled in the net of habit. Habit for which many names existed—love was one of them. One should not grow accustomed to anything. Not even to a body.

He did not lock the door. If Joan came she would not find him. She could stay if she wanted to. He deliberated for a second whether to leave a note. But he did not want to lie; nor did he want to tell her where he had gone.

He returned about eight o’clock in the morning. He had walked in the cold under the street lights of early dawn and had felt clear and relaxed. But as he stood in front of the hotel he felt again the tenseness.

Joan was not there. Ravic assured himself that he had not expected anything else. But his room seemed to him emptier than usual. He looked around and searched for a sign of her having been there. He found nothing.

He rang for the maid. She came after a while. “I’d like some breakfast,” he said.

She looked at him. She said nothing. He didn’t want to ask her any questions. “Coffee and croissants, Eve.”

“Very well, Mr. Ravic.”

He looked at the bed. If Joan had come one could not very well have expected her to lie down in a crumpled empty bed. Odd, how dead everything became that had to do with the body when there was no longer any warmth—a bed, underwear, even a bath. It was repulsive when it had lost its warmth.

He lighted a cigarette. She might have assumed that he had been called to see a patient. But then he could have left a note. Suddenly he thought himself a good deal of an idiot. He wanted
to be independent and succeeded only in being inconsiderate. Inconsiderate and foolish like an eighteen year old who wants to prove something to himself. There was more dependency in this than if he had waited.

The girl brought his breakfast. “Shall I do the bed now?” she asked.

“Why now?”

“In case you still want to go to sleep. One sleeps better in a freshly made bed.”

She looked at him without expression. “Was someone here?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I only came at seven.”

“Eve,” he said, “how does it feel to have to make a dozen strangers’ beds every morning?”

“It’s all right, Mr. Ravic. As long as the people don’t want anything else. But there are always a few who want more. Though the brothels are so cheap in Paris.”

“In the morning one can’t go into a brothel, Eve. And some guests feel particularly strong in the morning.”

“Yes, especially the old ones.” She shrugged her shoulders. “You lose the tip if you don’t do it, that’s all. Then too some make complaints every minute afterwards—that the room is not clean or that you are fresh. Naturally, out of anger. You can’t do anything about it. That’s how life is.”