Arch of Triumph (49 page)

These toy elevators of Paris! Flimsy prisons, creaking, coughing, open at the top, open at the sides, nothing but a bottom with a few iron grills, one bulb burnt out, gloomily flickering, the other one loosely screwed in—finally the top floor. He pushed the gate open, rang the bell.

Joan opened. He stared at her. No blood—her face normal, nothing. “What’s the matter?” he said. “Where is—”

“Ravic. You came!”

“Where is—have you done something?”

She stepped back. He took a few steps. Looked around the room. No one there. “Where? In the bedroom?”

“What?” she asked.

“Is anyone in the bedroom? Is anyone with you?”

“No. Why?”

He looked at her. “But I wouldn’t have anyone with me when you were coming,” she said.

He was still looking at her. There she stood, healthy and smiling at him. “How do you get such ideas?” Her smile deepened. “Ravic,” she said and he realized, as if a hailstorm were beating against his face, that she thought he was jealous and was enjoying it. The bag with the instruments suddenly weighed a ton in his hands. He put it on a chair. “You damned cheat,” he said.

“What? What has got into you?”

“You damned cheat,” he repeated. “And ass that I am to fall for it.”

He picked up his bag and turned toward the door. She was immediately at his side. “What are you going to do? Don’t go! You can’t leave me alone! I don’t know what may happen if you leave me alone!”

“Liar!” he said. “Miserable liar! It doesn’t matter that you are lying, but that you can do it so cheaply is disgusting. This isn’t something to play with!”

She pushed him away from the door. “But why don’t you look around? Something has happened! You can see for yourself! Look what he did in his rage! And I’m afraid he’ll come back! You don’t know what he can do.”

A chair was lying on the floor. A lamp. Some pieces of broken glass. “Put on your shoes when you walk around,” Ravic said, “so as not to cut yourself. That’s all the advice I can give you.”

Among the pieces of glass lay a photograph. He pushed the
glass aside with his foot and picked up the picture. “Here—” He threw it on the table. “And now leave me in peace.”

She stood before him. She looked at him. Her face had changed. “Ravic,” she said in a low, restrained voice. “I don’t care what you call me. I have lied often. And I’ll continue to lie. All of you want it.” She pushed the photograph aside. It slid across the table and dropped in such a way that Ravic could see it. It was not the picture of the man whom he had seen with Joan in the Cloche d’Or.

“Everyone wants it,” she said, full of contempt. “Don’t lie, don’t lie! Only speak the truth! And when one does they can’t stand it. None of them! But I didn’t often lie to you. Not to you. With you I didn’t want to—”

“All right,” Ravic said. “We don’t have to go into that.” Suddenly he was moved in a strange way. Something had touched him. He got angry. He did not want to be touched any more.

“No. With you it wasn’t necessary,” she said and looked at him almost beseechingly.

“Joan—”

“And I’m not lying now either. I’m not lying, not entirely, Ravic. I called you up because I was really afraid. Luckily I got him out of the door. I locked it and he yelled and raged outside—so I called you up. It was the first thing that entered my mind. Is that so wrong?”

“You were damned calm and untroubled when I came.”

“Because he was gone. And because I thought you would come to help me.”

“All right. Then everything is in order now and I can leave.”

“He’ll come again. He shouted he would come again. He is sitting somewhere now and drinking. I know that. And when he comes back drunk, then he isn’t as you are—he can’t drink—”

“Enough!” Ravic said. “Stop it. It’s too absurd. Your door is all right. And don’t do such a thing again.”

She remained where she was. “What else can I do?” she burst out suddenly.

“Nothing.”

“I call you up—three times, four times—you don’t answer. And when you answer you tell me to leave you alone. What does that mean?”

“Just that.”

“Just that? How—just that? Are we automatons one can turn on and off? One night everything is wonderful and full of love and then suddenly …”

She became silent as she looked at Ravic’s face. “I was sure that was coming,” he said in a low voice. “I was sure you’d try to make good use of it. It’s just like you! You knew then that it was the last time and you should have left it at that. You were with me and because it was the last time it was the way it was and it was good and it was a goodbye and we were full of each other and that would have been in our memory; but you couldn’t resist exploiting it like a businessman, turning it into a new demand, making of something unique, something that had wings, a creeping prolongation. And because I wouldn’t have it, now you use this disgusting trick and one has to chew over a thing that even to speak of is shameless.”

“I—”

“You knew it!” he interrupted her. “Don’t lie again! I don’t want to repeat what you said. I’m not yet able to do it! You knew! We both knew. You did not want to come back again.”

“I did not come back again!”

Ravic stared at her. He controlled himself with an effort. “All right. Then you called—”

“I called you up because I was afraid!”

“Oh, God,” Ravic said. “This is too idiotic! I give up.”

She smiled slowly. “I too, Ravic. Don’t you see that I only want you to stay here?”

“That’s just what I don’t want.”

“Why?” She was still smiling.

Ravic felt beaten. She simply refused to understand him and if he began to explain to her, who knew where it would end? “It is a cursed corruption,” he said finally. “Something you can’t understand.”

“I can,” she replied slowly. “Maybe. But why is it different from last week?”

“It was the same then.”

She looked at him. “I don’t care for definitions.”

He did not answer. He felt how she got the better of him. “Ravic,” she said and came closer. “Yes, I said at that time it was the end. I said you would never hear from me again. I said it because you wanted me to. That I don’t do it—can’t you understand that?”

“No,” he replied in a rough tone. “All I understand is that you want to sleep with two men.”

She did not move. “No,” she said then. “But even if that were true, how does it concern you?”

He stared at her.

“What does it really matter to you?” she repeated. “I love you. Isn’t that enough?”

“No.”

“You don’t have to be jealous. The others could. Not you. Nor have you ever been—”

“Really?”

“No, you don’t even know what it means.”

“Of course not. Because I don’t make dramatic scenes like your young man—”

She smiled. “Ravic,” she said. “Jealousy begins with the air the other breathes.”

He did not answer. She stood before him and looked at him. She looked at him and was silent. The air, the narrow corridor, the dim light—suddenly everything was full of her. Full of waiting, of a breathless gentle compelling force, like the attraction of the ground for one leaning dizzily over the low railing of a tower.

Ravic felt it. He resisted. He didn’t want to be caught by it. Now he no longer thought of going. If he went, this would pursue him. And he did not want to be pursued. He wanted to have a clear ending. Tomorrow he would need clarity.

“Have you brandy here?” he asked.

“Yes. What do you want? Calvados?”

“Cognac, if you have it. Or calvados if you like. It makes no difference.”

She walked quickly over to the small chest. He looked after her. The light air, the invisible radiation, the allure, the “here let us build our huts,” the old, eternal deception—as though peace could ever come of the blood for longer than one night.

Jealousy. He didn’t know anything about it? But didn’t he know something of the imperfection of love? Wasn’t that an older, less quenchable pain than the little personal misery, jealousy? Did it not begin even with the knowledge that one would have to die first, before the other?

Joan did not bring calvados. She brought a bottle of cognac. Good, he thought. Sometimes she shows some perception. He pushed the photograph aside to put his glass down. Then he took it up again. It was the simplest way to break the effect of a woman—to look at one’s successor. “Strange, how bad my memory is,” he said. “I thought the boy looked quite different.”

She put the bottle down. “But that’s not him.”

“So—already someone else.”

“Yes. That was the reason for everything.”

Ravic took a gulp of cognac. “You are damned tactless. One should have no photographs around when the former lover comes. One never has photographs standing around. It’s bad taste.”

“It wasn’t standing around. He found it. He searched around. And one does have photographs. You don’t understand that. A woman understands. I didn’t want him to see it.”

“And now you’ve had a row. Are you dependent on him?”

“No. I have my contract. For two years.”

“Did he get it for you?”

“Why not?” She was honestly surprised. “Is that important?”

“No. But there are people who get bitter about things like that.”

She raised her shoulders. He saw it. A memory. A nostalgia. Shoulders that once had risen with her breathing beside him, softly, regularly, in sleep. A fleeting cloud of glittering birds in the reddish night sky. Far? How far away? Speak, invisible bookkeeper! Is it only buried, or are these really the last fleeting reflections? Who knows?

He picked up the photo that lay on the table. A face. Any face. One among millions.

“Since when?” he asked.

“Not long. We are working together. A few days ago. After you didn’t—at Fouquet’s—”

He raised his hand. “All right, all right. I know. If that evening I had—you know it isn’t true.”

She hesitated. “No—”

“You know it. Don’t lie! Nothing of importance has such a short breath.”

What did he want to hear? Why had he said that? Didn’t he want to hear a lie after all? “It is true and it is not true,” she said. “I can’t help myself, Ravic. I am driven by it. It is as though I were missing something. I seize it, I must have it, and then it’s nothing.
And then I grope for something new. I know in advance that it will end the same way, but I can’t leave it alone. It drives me and it tosses me aside; it satisfies me for a short time and then it lets go of me and leaves me empty once more, like hunger, and then it returns again.”

Lost, Ravic thought. Truly and completely lost now. No more mistake, no entanglement, no awakening, no coming back. It was good to know that. It was good to know it when the vapors of fantasy should begin once more to dull the lenses of knowledge.

Gentle, inexorable, and hopeless chemistry! Blood that once had flowed together could never do it again with equal force. What still held Joan and from time to time drove her back to him was a part of him that she had not yet penetrated. Once she did penetrate it, she would be gone forever. Who wanted to wait for that? Who would be satisfied to? Who give himself up for it?

“I wish I were as strong as you, Ravic.”

He laughed. Now this. “You are much stronger than I am.”

“No. You can see how I run after you.”

“That proves it. You can afford to do it. I can’t.”

She looked at him attentively for a moment. Then the radiance that had flitted across her face left it.

“You can’t love,” she said. “You never give yourself.”

“You always do, That’s why you always get saved.”

“Can’t you talk seriously with me?”

“I am talking seriously with you.”

“If I am always saved, then why can’t I get away from you?”

“You get away from me all right.”

“Leave that. You know that has nothing to do with it. If I had been able to get away from you, I wouldn’t be running after you. Others I have forgotten. Not you. Why?”

Ravic took a sip. “Maybe because you couldn’t get me completely under your feet.”

She was taken aback. Then she shook her head. “I didn’t manage to get them all under my feet, as you call it. Some not at all. And I have forgotten them. I was unhappy but I forgot them.”

“You will also forget me. It’s just too recent.”

“No. You make me restless. No, never.”

“You won’t believe how much one can forget,” Ravic said. “It’s a great blessing and a damned misfortune.”

“You still haven’t told me why it is like this with us.”

“This is something neither of us can explain. We could talk as long as we wanted. It would only get more confused. There are things that can’t be explained. And some one can’t understand. Blessed be the bit of jungle within us. I’ll go now.”

She stood up quickly. “You can’t leave me alone.”

“Do you want to sleep with me?”

She looked at him and said nothing. “I hope not,” he said. “Why do you ask that?”

“To cheer myself up. Go to bed. It’s already light outside. No time for tragedies.”

“You don’t want to stay?”

“No. And I’ll never come back.”

She stood very quiet. “Never?”

“Never. And you’ll never again come to me.”

She slowly shook her head. Then she pointed to the table. “Because of this?”

“No.”

“I don’t understand you. We can, after all—”

“No!” he said quickly. “Not that. The formula of a friendship. The little vegetable garden on the lava of dead emotions. No, we can’t do that. Not we. It may be possible with small affairs. Even then it’s wrong. Love should not be polluted with friendship. An end is an end.”

“But why just now—”

“You are right. It should have been earlier. When I returned from Switzerland. But no one is omniscient. And sometimes one doesn’t want to know everything. It was—” He broke off.

“What was it?” She stood before him as though there were something she could not understand and which she urgently had to know. She was pale and her eyes were translucent. “What was it with us, Ravic?” she whispered.

Behind her hair the corridor, dimly lit, swaying in the light as though it led far into a shaft where promises darkened, wet with the tears of many generations and the dew of constantly renewed hopes. “Love—” he said.