Arch of Triumph (36 page)

He went downstairs. He felt rather miserable. “Has anyone called?” he asked.

The night concierge, who had just arrived, shook his head. His mouth was full of garlic sausage.

“I expect a call. Meanwhile I’ll be downstairs.”

He went back to Morosow.

———

They played a game of chess. Morosow won and looked around contentedly. Meanwhile the women had silently disappeared. He rang the sacristan bell. “Clarisse! A carafe of rosé.”

“That Finkenstein plays like a sewing machine,” he declared. “It’s nauseating! A mathematician. I hate perfection. It’s not human.” He looked at Ravic. “Why are you here on such an evening?”

“I’m waiting for a call.”

“Are you engaged again in killing someone in a scientific manner?”

“I removed a man’s stomach yesterday.”

Morosow filled their glasses. “Here you are sitting and drinking,” he said reproachfully, “and over there your victim is lying in delirium. There’s something inhuman in that too. At least you should have a stomach-ache.”

“Correct,” Ravic replied. “Therein lies the misery of the world, Boris. We never feel what we do to others. But why do you want to start your reform with the doctors? Politicians and generals would be better. Then we would have world peace.”

Morosow leaned back and studied Ravic. “One should never know doctors personally,” he declared. “It takes away some of our confidence in them. I have been drunk with you—how could I have you operate on me? I might be sure that you were a better surgeon than someone else I didn’t know—nevertheless I’d take the other. Confidence in the unknown—a deep-rooted human quality, old fellow! Doctors should live in hospitals and never be let out into the world of the uninitiated. Your predecessors, the witches and medicine men, knew that. When I’m operated on I wish to believe in superhuman power.”

“I wouldn’t operate on you either, Boris.”

“Why not?”

“No doctor likes to operate on his brother.”

“I won’t do you the favor anyhow. I’ll die of apoplexy during my sleep. I work toward it cheerfully.” Morosow stared at Ravic like a happy child. Then he got up. “I’ve got to go. To open doors in that center of culture, Montmartre. Actually, what does man live for?”

“To think about it. Any other question?”

“Yes. Why does he die just when he has done that and has become a bit more sensible?”

“Some people die without having become more sensible.”

“Don’t evade my question. And don’t start talking about the transmigration of souls.”

“I’ll ask you something else first. Lions kill antelopes; spiders flies; foxes chickens; which is the only race in the world that wars on itself uninterruptedly, fighting and killing one another?”

“Those are questions for children. The crown of creation, of course, the human being—who invented the words love, kindness, and mercy.”

“Good. And who is the only being in Nature that is capable of committing suicide and does it?”

“Again the human being—who invented eternity, God, and resurrection.”

“Excellent,” Ravic said. “You see of how many contradictions we consist. And you want to know why we die?”

Morosow looked up with surprise. Then he took a big gulp. “You sophist,” he declared. “You dodger.”

Ravic looked at him. Joan, something thought inside him. If she would only come in now, through that dirty glass door over there! “The mistake was, Boris,” he said, “that we began to think. If we had stuck to the bliss of ruttishness and feeding, all this
would not have happened. Someone experiments with us—but he doesn’t seem to have found the solution as yet. We won’t complain. Experimental animals too should have professional pride.”

“The slaughterers say so. Never the oxen. The scientists say so. Never the guinea pigs. The doctors say so. Never the white mice.”

“Correct—” If she would come in with her swaying stride which always gave her the appearance of walking against a gentle wind. “Long live the law of sufficient reason! Come, Boris, let’s drink a glass to beauty—the gracious eternity of the instant! Do you know what else the human being alone can do? Laugh and cry.”

“And get drunk. On brandy, wine, philosophy and women and hope and despair. Do you know what he too alone knows? That he must die. As antitoxin he was given imagination. The stone is real. The plant too. The animal as well. They are fitted for their purpose. They don’t know they have to die. Man knows it. Ascend, soul! Fly! Don’t sob, you legal murderer! Haven’t we just sung the song of songs of mankind?”

Morosow shook the gray palm so that its dust flew up. “Brave symbol of a touching southern hope, dream plant of a French landlady, farewell! And you too, man without a home, creeping plant without ground, pickpocket of death, farewell! Be proud that you are a romantic!”

He grinned at Ravic.

Ravic did not return the grin. He looked at the door. It was opening. The night concierge came in. He approached their table. The telephone, Ravic thought. Finally! After all! He did not get up. He waited. He felt his arms tightening.

“Your cigarettes, Mr. Morosow,” the concierge said. “The boy has just brought them.”

“Thanks.” Morosow put the box with the Russian cigarettes into his pocket. “So long, Ravic. Will I see you later?”

“Maybe. So long, Boris.”

———

The man without a stomach stared at Ravic. He felt sick but could not vomit. He no longer had anything to vomit with. He was like a man without legs whose feet ached.

He was very restless. Ravic gave him an injection. This man had little chance of staying alive. His heart was not too good and one of his lungs was full of healed-up caverns. During his thirty-five years of life he had not had much health. For years a stomach ulcer, an arrested tuberculosis, and now a carcinoma. His hospital report showed that he had been married for four years; his wife had died in childbed; the child died three years later of tuberculosis. No relatives. Now he was lying here and staring at him and he did not want to die and was patient and brave and did not know that he would have to be fed through the colon and that he could no longer enjoy one of the few pleasures of his existence, pickles and boiled beef. There he lay, smelling and cut to pieces, and he possessed something that made his eyes move and that was called a soul. Be proud that you are a romantic! The song of songs of mankind!

Ravic hung up the tablet with the fever chart and the pulse. The nurse rose and waited. Lying beside her on the chair she had a red sweater which she had started to knit. The knitting needles were stuck in it and the yarn was lying on the floor. The thin thread of wool which hung down was like a thin thread of blood, as if the sweater were bleeding.

That man is lying there, Ravic thought, and even with the injection he will go through a terrible night with pain, immobility, shortness of breath, and nightmares—and I am waiting for a woman and I think it will be a difficult night for me if she doesn’t come. I know how ridiculous it is in comparison with this dying man, in comparison with Baston Perrier in the next room, whose
arm was crushed, in comparison with thousands of others, in comparison with all that is happening tonight in the world—and nevertheless it does not help. It doesn’t help, it is of no avail, it does not change anything, it remains the same. What had Morosow said? Why don’t you have a stomach-ache? Yes, why not?

“Call me in case anything happens,” he said to the nurse. It was the same one who had received the record-player from Kate Hegstroem.

“The gentleman is very resigned,” she said.

“What is he?” Ravic asked, astonished.

“Very resigned. A good patient.”

Ravic looked around. There was nothing the nurse could expect as a present. Very resigned—what expressions nurses used at times! This poor devil was fighting with all the armies of his blood corpuscles and his nerve cells against death—he was not a bit resigned.

He went back to the hotel. He met Goldberg in front of the door. An old man with a gray beard and a thick gold watch chain across his vest. “Nice evening,” Goldberg said.

“Yes.” Ravic thought of the woman in Wiesenhoff’s room. “Don’t you want to go for a walk?” he asked.

“I have. To the Concorde and back.”

To the Concorde. There stood the American Embassy, white under the stars, silent and empty, a Noah’s Ark in which there were stamps for visas, unattainable. Goldberg had stood before it, outside by the Crillon, and had stared at the entrance and the dark windows as if at a Rembrandt or the Koh-i-noor diamond.

“Don’t you want to walk around a bit more? We could go to the Arc and back.” Ravic said and thought: If I save those two up there, then Joan will be in my room. Or she will come in meanwhile.

Goldberg shook his head. “I must go upstairs. I’m sure my wife is waiting for me. I’ve been away for more than two hours.”

Ravic looked at his watch. It was almost half past twelve. There was no need to save anybody. Mrs. Goldberg would have been back in her room some time ago. He watched Goldberg slowly climbing up the stairs. Then he went to the concierge. “Has anyone called me up?”

“No.”

His room was brightly lit. He remembered leaving it that way. The bed gleamed as if snow had surprisingly fallen. He took the slip he had put on the table before he had left and on which he had written that he would be back in half an hour, and tore it to pieces. He looked for something to drink. There was nothing. He went downstairs again. The concierge had no calvados. He only had cognac. Ravic took with him a bottle of Hennessy and a bottle of Vouvray. He talked to the concierge for some time and the latter proved to him that Loulou II would have the best chance in the next race for two-year-olds at Saint-Cloud. The Spaniard Alvarez passed by. Ravic noticed that he still limped a bit. He bought a newspaper and went back to his room. How long such an evening could be! Who does not believe in miracles where love is concerned is lost, the lawyer Arensen had said in Berlin in 1933. Two weeks later he was sent to a concentration camp because his beloved had denounced him. Ravic opened the bottle of Vouvray and got a volume of Plato from the table. A few minutes later he put it aside and sat down by the window.

He stared at the telephone. That damned, black instrument. He could not call up Joan. He did not know her new number. He did not even know where she was living. He had not asked her and she had told him nothing. Probably she had purposely not said anything. So she would still have an excuse.

He drank a glass of the light wine. Foolish, he thought. I am
waiting for a woman who was here this very morning. For three and a half months I didn’t see her and I did not miss her as much as now when she has been away for a day. It would have been simpler if I had never seen her again. I was adjusted to it. Now …

He rose. It wasn’t that either. It was the uncertainty that fed on him. It was mistrust that had stolen into him increasingly hour by hour.

He went to the door. He knew that it was not locked; but he made sure of it once more. He began to read the paper; but he read it as if through a veil. Disturbances in Poland. The inevitable clash. The claim to the Corridor, the treaty of England and France with Poland. The approaching war. He let the paper drop and turned off the light. He lay in the dark and waited. He could not sleep. He switched the light on again. The bottle of Hennessy stood on the table. He did not open it. He got up and again sat down by the window. The night was cool and high and starlit. A few cats screeched in the yards. A man in shorts stood on the balcony opposite and scratched himself. He yawned aloud and retired to his lighted room. Ravic looked at the bed. He knew he would not be able to sleep. There was no point in reading either. He hardly remembered what he had read before. To leave—that would be best. But where to go? It made no difference. He did not want to leave either. He wanted to know something. Damn it—he held the bottle of cognac in his hand and put it back. Then he looked in his pocket for a few sleeping tablets. The same kind he had given the red-headed Finkenstein. He was sleeping now. Ravic swallowed them. It was doubtful whether he himself would sleep. He took one more. If Joan came he would wake up.

She did not come. Nor did she come next night.

EUGÉNIE CAME INTO
the room in which the man without a stomach was lying. “Telephone, Mr. Ravic.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. The switchboard girl told me outside.”

Ravic did not at once recognize Joan’s voice. It sounded blurred and very far away. “Joan,” he said, “where are you?”

It sounded as if she were away from Paris. He almost expected her to mention some place on the Riviera. She had never called him at the hospital before. “I am in my apartment,” she said.

“Here in Paris?”

“Of course. Where else?”

“Are you sick?”

“No. Why?”

“Because you called me at the hospital.”

“I called your hotel. You had left. That’s why I called the hospital.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No. What should be wrong? I wanted to know how you are.”

Her voice was clearer now. Ravic got out a cigarette and a book of matches. He squeezed the upper part beneath his elbow, tore off a match, and lighted it.