Arch of Triumph (31 page)

“You hit the scissors,” Ravic said.

Leval put his hand into his pocket. “Don’t you think you’re rather impertinent?” he asked suddenly with the calm of a man who can afford to control himself because the other person is dependent on him.

“Impertinent?” Ravic looked at him, astonished. “You call that impertinence? We are neither in school nor in a reformatory for
repentant criminals! I’m acting in self-defense—would you like me to feel like a criminal begging for a mild sentence? Only because I’m not a Nazi and therefore have no papers? The fact that we still don’t consider ourselves criminals, although we have had experience of all kinds of prison, police, humiliations, only because we want to remain alive—that’s the only thing that keeps us upright, don’t you understand? God knows this is something other than impertinence.”

Leval did not answer. “Have you practiced here?” he asked.

“No.”

The scar must be smaller by now, Ravic thought. I sewed it nicely at that time. It was quite a job with all that fat. Meanwhile he’s been stuffing himself again. Stuffing and drinking.

“That’s where the greatest danger is,” Leval explained. “Without examinations, without control, you hang around here. Who knows for how long! Don’t think that I believe you about those three weeks. Who knows what you had your hand in, in how many shady affairs!”

In your paunch with its hardened arteries, its swollen liver, and its fermenting gall bladder, Ravic thought. And if I hadn’t had my hand in it, your friend, Durant, would probably have killed you in a humane and idiotic way and would have become even more famous as a surgeon because of it and would have raised his fees.

“This is where the greatest danger lies,” Leval repeated. “You are not permitted to practice. So you will accept anything that comes your way, that’s obvious. I was talking about it with one of our authorities. He’s of entirely the same opinion. If you really know anything about medical science, his name should be familiar to you—”

No, Ravic thought, that’s impossible. He won’t say Durant now. Life can’t crack such jokes!

“Professor Durant,” Leval said with dignity. “He explained it to me. Menials, students who have not yet completed their studies,
masseurs, assistants, here all these claim to have been great medical men in Germany. Who can check on that? Illegal operations, abortions, collaboration with midwives, quackery, and heaven knows what else. We can’t be severe enough!”

Durant, Ravic thought. That’s his revenge for the two thousand francs. But who’ll do his operations now? Binot, surely. Very likely they have got together again.

He noticed that he was no longer listening. He did not become attentive again until Veber’s name was mentioned. “A certain Doctor Veber has spoken in your behalf. Do you know him?”

“Slightly.”

“He was here.” Leval gazed straight ahead for a moment. Then he sneezed loudly, got his handkerchief out and blew his nose circumstantially, contemplated what he had blown out, folded his handkerchief together and put it into his pocket again. “I can’t do anything for you. We must be severe. You’ll be deported.”

“I know that.”

“Have you been in France before?”

“No.”

“Six months’ imprisonment if you return. You know that?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll see to it that you are deported as soon as possible. That’s all I can do. Have you any money?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Then you will have to pay for the trip of your escort and yourself to the border.” He nodded. “You may go now.”

“Any special hour when we have to be back?” Ravic asked the official who was escorting him.

“Not exactly. It depends. Why?”

“I’d like to drink an apéritif.”

The official looked at him. “I won’t run away,” Ravic said. He drew a twenty-franc bill out of his pocket and toyed with it.

“All right. A few minutes can’t make any difference.”

They had the taxi stop at the next bistro. There were a few tables already standing outside. It was cool, but the sun was shining. “What will you have?” Ravic asked.

“Amèr Picon. Nothing else at this hour of the day.”

“Give me a fine. Without water.”

Ravic sat there calmly and breathed deeply. Air—what could that be! The branches of the trees on the sidewalk had brown shining buds. There was a smell of fresh bread and new wine. The waiter brought the glasses. “Where is the telephone?” Ravic asked.

“Inside—to your right, next to the toilets.”

“But—” the official said.

Ravic put the twenty-franc bill into his hand. “You can probably imagine to whom I’m going to telephone. I won’t disappear. You can come with me. Come along.”

The official didn’t hesitate for long. “All right,” he said and got up. “A human being is a human being, after all.”

“Joan—”

“Ravic! My God! Where are you? Have they let you out? Tell me where you are!”

“In a bistro—”

“Stop it! Tell me where you really are!”

“I’m really in a bistro.”

“Where? Are you no longer in prison? Where have you been all this time? This Morosow—”

“He told you exactly what went wrong with me.”

“He hasn’t even told me where they took you. I would have come right away—”

“That’s why he didn’t tell you, Joan. Better so.”

“Why do you telephone from a bistro? Why don’t you come here?”

“I can’t come. I’ve only a few minutes. I had to persuade the official to stop here for a moment. Joan, I’ll be sent to Switzerland in the next few days, and—” Ravic glanced out the window. The official was leaning on the counter and talking. “And I’ll be back at once.” He waited. “Joan.”

“I’ll come. I’ll come at once. Where are you?”

“You can’t come. I’m half an hour’s distance from you. I’ve only a few minutes left.”

“Hold the official off! Give him money! I can bring money with me!”

“Joan,” Ravic said. “It won’t work. I must stop now.”

He heard her breathe. “You don’t want to see me?” she then asked.

It was difficult. I shouldn’t have telephoned, he thought. How can one explain anything without being able to look at the other person. “I’d like nothing better than to see you, Joan.”

“Then come! That man can come with you!”

“It’s impossible. I must stop now. Tell me quickly what you’re doing now.”

“What? How do you mean that?”

“What are you wearing? Where are you?”

“In my room. In bed. I was up late last night. I can put something on in a minute and come right away.”

Late last night. Of course. All that went right on also while one was imprisoned. One forgot about it. In bed, half asleep, her hair tumbled on the pillows, stockings scattered on chairs, lingerie, an evening gown—things began to reel; the window of the hot telephone booth, half misted by his breath; the infinitely remote head of the official that swam in it as though in an aquarium—he pulled himself together. “I must stop now, Joan.”

He heard her disconcerted voice. “But that’s impossible! You can’t simply go away like this and I don’t know anything, either where you are going or what—” Propped up, the pillows pushed aside, the telephone like a weapon and an enemy in her hand, the shoulders, the eyes, deep and dark with excitement …

“I’m not going to war. I’m merely traveling to Switzerland. I’ll be back soon. Imagine I am a businessman who is going to sell a carload of machine guns to the League of Nations.”

“When you come back, then it will be the same all over again. I won’t be able to live from fear.”

“Say the last sentence once more.”

“It’s true.” Her voice became angry. “I’m the last one to be told anything. Veber can visit you, not I! You’ve called up Morosow, not me! And now you’re going—”

“My God,” Ravic said. “We won’t quarrel, Joan.”

“I’m not quarreling. I’m merely saying what’s wrong.”

“All right. I must stop now. Adieu, Joan.”

“Ravic!” she called. “Ravic!”

“Yes—”

“Come back again! Come back again! I’m lost without you!”

“I’ll come back.”

“Yes—yes—”

“Adieu, Joan. I’ll be back soon.”

He stood in the hot steaming booth for a moment. Then he noticed that his hand had not let go of the receiver. He opened the door. The official looked up. He smiled good-naturedly. “Through?”

“Yes.”

They went back outside to their table. Ravic emptied his glass. I shouldn’t have telephoned, he thought. I was calm before. Now I am confused. I should have known that a telephone conversation could bring nothing else. Not for me, or for Joan. He felt the temptation to go back, to call up again and tell her everything he
really wanted to tell her. To explain to her why he couldn’t see her. That he didn’t want her to see him as he was, dirty, under guard. But he would come out and it would be the same all over again. “I think we’ve got to move on,” the official said.

“Yes—”

Ravic called the waiter. “Give me two small bottles of cognac, all the newspapers and a dozen packages of Caporals. And the check.” He looked at the official. “Permissible, isn’t it?”

“A man is a man,” the official said.

The waiter brought the bottles and cigarettes. “Open the bottles,” Ravic said, while he carefully distributed the cigarettes in his pockets. He corked the bottles again in such a way that he could easily open them without a corkscrew and put them into the inside pocket of his coat.

“You’re good at that,” the official said.

“Practice. Sorry to say. As a boy I would never have thought I might have to play Indian again in my old age.”

The Pole and the writer were enthusiastic about the cognac. The plumber did not drink strong liquor. He was a beer drinker and explained in detail how much better the beer had been in Berlin. Ravic lay on his plank and read the papers. The Pole did not read; he didn’t understand French. He smoked and was happy. At night the plumber began to cry. Ravic was awake. He listened to the suppressed sobbing and stared at the small window behind which glimmered a pale sky. He could not sleep. Nor could he later on when the plumber was calm. Too well lived, he thought. Too many things already to hurt when one didn’t have them any more.

RAVIC WAS ON HIS WAY
from the station. He was tired and dirty. Thirteen hours in a hot train with people who ate garlic, with hunters and their dogs, with women who held cages containing chickens and pigeons on their laps. And before that almost three months at the frontier—

He walked along the Champs Elysées. There was a twinkling in the dusk. Ravic looked up. The twinkling seemed to come from pyramids of mirrors standing around the Rond Point and reflecting back and forth the last gray light of May.

He stopped and looked more sharply. There actually were pyramids of mirrors. They were everywhere, behind the tulip beds in ghostlike repetition. “What’s that?” he asked a gardener who was leveling a bed of newly turned dirt.

“Mirrors,” the gardener answered, without looking up.

“I can see that. The last time I was here they weren’t around.”

“Haven’t you been here for some time?”

“Three months.”

“Ah, three months. This was done in the last two weeks. For
the King of England. Coming for a visit. So he can see his face mirrored here.”

“Terrible,” Ravic said.

“Of course,” the gardener replied without surprise.

Ravic walked on. Three months—three years—three days; what was time? Nothing and everything. The fact that the chestnut trees were in bloom now—and before they hadn’t yet had any leaves—that Germany had broken her treaties again and occupied the whole of Czechoslovakia—that in Geneva, the refugee Josef Blumenthal had shot himself in a fit of hysterical laughter in front of the Palace of the League of Nations—that somewhere in his own chest there was the aching remnant of the pneumonia he had survived in Belfort under the name of Guenther—and that now, on an evening soft as a woman’s breast, he was back again; all this held almost no surprise for him. One took it as one took many things, with fatalistic calm, which was the only weapon of helplessness. The sky was the same everywhere, always the same, above murder and hatred and sacrifice and love—the trees blossomed anew, unsuspectingly, every year—the plum-blue dusk changed and came and went, unconcerned with passports, betrayal, despair, and hope. It was good to be in Paris again. It was good to walk, to walk slowly, without thinking, along this street in the silver-gray light; it was good to have this hour, still full of respite, full of a mild interchange at the boundary where a distant grief and the tender recurrent happiness of simply being alive melted into each other like horizons—this first hour of arrival before one was again pierced by knives and arrows—this strange animal feeling, this breath reaching far and coming from afar, this breeze, without emotion yet, along the streets of the heart, past the dull fires of facts, past the nail-studded cross of bygone days and past the barbed hooks of the future, this caesura, the silence within oscillation, the moment of pause, most open and most secret form of
being, the unemphatic beat of eternity in the very transitoriness of the world—

Morosow sat in the Palm Room of the International. He was drinking a bottle of Vouvray. “Hello, Boris old fellow,” Ravic said. “I seem to have returned at the right moment. Is that Vouvray?”