Arch of Triumph (52 page)

“No. Why?”

“I called up five minutes ago. A group of Germans is sitting inside. Four men. One of them looks like—”

“Where?”

“Next to the orchestra. It’s the only table with four men. You can see it from the door.”

“All right.”

“Take the small table by the door. I’ve kept it free.”

“All right, Boris.”

Ravic paused at the door. The room was dark. The spotlight was on the dance floor. A singer was standing in it, wearing a silver dress. The small cone of light was so strong that one could not recognize anything beyond it. Ravic stared at the table next to the orchestra. It was not discernible. The wall of white shut it off.

He took a seat at the table next to the door. A waiter brought a carafe of vodka. The orchestra seemed to lag. The sweet mist of melodies was creeping, creeping, slow as a snail.
J’attendrai. J’attendrai
.

The singer bowed. Applause broke out. Ravic bent forward. He waited for the spotlight to be cut off. The singer turned to the orchestra. The gypsy nodded and took up his violin. The cymbals threw a few muffled notes into the air. The second song.
La chapelle au clair de lune
. Ravic closed his eyes. It was almost unbearable to wait.

He sat upright again, long before the song was ended. The spotlight was cut off. The lights on the tables came on, glowing. At the first moment he could see nothing but indistinct contours. He had stared into the spotlight too long. He closed his eyes and then looked up. He found the table at once.

Slowly he leaned back. None of the men was Haake. He remained sitting this way for a long time. Suddenly he was terribly tired. Tired behind the eyes. It drifted upon him intermittently in uneven waves. The music, the rise and fall of the voices, the muffled
noise cloaked him in a haze after the quiet of the hotel room, and the new disappointment. It was like a kaleidoscope of sleep, like a gentle hypnosis, enveloping the brain cells, their sketchy thoughts, and their tortured vigil.

He saw Joan at some moment in the pale light-mist in which the dancing couples moved. Her open thirsty face was bent backward, her head close to a man’s shoulder. It did not touch him. No one can become more alien than a person one has loved once, he thought wearily. When the enigmatic umbilical cord between imagination and its object was torn, sheet lightning might still leap from one to the other, there might be fluorescence as if from ghostly stars; but it was dead light. It excited, but it no longer set fire—nothing any longer flowed to and fro. He leaned his head against the back of the banquette. The brief intimacy above abysses. The darkness of the sexes with all their sweet names. Star flowers on a bog which swallowed you up when you started to pick them.

He straightened up. He had to get out before he fell asleep. He called the waiter. “Check, please.”

“There is nothing to pay for,” the waiter said.

“How is—”

“You did not drink anything.”

“Oh yes, that’s right.”

He tipped the man and left.

“No?” Morosow asked outside.

“No,” Ravic replied.

Morosow looked at him. “I give up,” Ravic said. “It is a damned laughable game of Indians. For five days now I’ve been waiting. Haake told me that he always stays for only two or three days in Paris. If that’s so then he must have left again by now. If he was here at all.”

“Go to bed,” Morosow said.

“I can’t sleep. Now I’ll drive back to the Prince de Galles, get my suitcase, and check out.”

“All right,” Morosow said. “Then I’ll meet you tomorrow noon there.”

“Where?”

“In the Prince de Galles.”

Ravic looked at him. “Yes, of course. I’m talking nonsense. Or am I? Maybe not.”

“Wait until tomorrow night.”

“All right. I’ll see. Good night, Boris.”

“Good night, Ravic.”

Ravic drove past the Osiris. He parked the car around the corner. The thought of going back to his room in the International made him shudder. Maybe he could sleep a few hours here. It was Monday. A quiet day for brothels. The doorman was no longer outside. Hardly anyone would still be in there.

Rolande stood beside the door, keeping watch over the big room. The music box made a lot of noise in the almost empty place. “Nothing much going on tonight?” Ravic asked.

“Nothing. Only that bore over there. Lascivious as a monkey, but he doesn’t want to go upstairs with a girl. You know the type. Would like to, but is afraid. Another German. Well, he has paid; it can’t take much longer.”

Ravic looked indifferently toward the table. The man was sitting with his back to him. He had two girls with him. As he leaned toward one of them, taking both her breasts in his hands, Ravic saw his face. It was Haake.

He heard Rolande speaking as if in a haze. He could not understand what she said. He realized only that he had stepped backward
and was standing by the door now so that he could just see the corner of the table without being seen.

Finally Rolande’s voice came through the haze. “Some cognac?”

The squawking of the music box. Still the oscillation, the spasm in the diaphragm! Ravic dug his nails into his palm: Haake must not see him here. And Rolande must not notice that he knew him.

“No,” he heard himself saying. “I’ve had enough. A German, you said? Do you know who he is?”

“No idea.” Rolande shrugged her shoulders. “They all look alike to me. I think this one has never been here before. But don’t you want to have a drink?”

“No. Only wanted to look in—”

He felt Rolande’s eyes on him and forced himself to be calm. “I only wanted to hear when your party is,” he said. “Will it be Thursday or Friday?”

“Thursday, Ravic. You are coming?”

“I’ll be on time. That was all I wanted to know. Now I’ve got to go. Good night, Rolande.”

“Good night, Ravic.”

The lighted night, suddenly roaring. No buildings any more—a thicket of stone, a jungle of windows. Suddenly war again, a crawling patrol, along the empty street. The car, a shelter in which to take cover, the motor droning, lying in ambush for the enemy.

Shoot him down when he comes out? Ravic looked along the street. A few cars, yellow lights, stray cats. Under a street lamp in the distance someone who looked like a policeman. His own license plate, the noise of the shot. Rolande, who had just seen him—he heard Morosow’s: “Risk nothing, nothing! It isn’t worth it.”

No doorman. No taxi. Good. There were few fares on Mondays at this hour. The moment he had thought this, a Citroën taxi rattled past him, and stopped at the door. The driver lit a cigarette and yawned audibly. Ravic felt his skin contracting. He waited.

He deliberated whether to step out and tell the driver that there was no longer anyone inside. Impossible. To send him away on some errand and pay him for it. To Morosow. He snatched a piece of paper out of his pocket, wrote a few lines, tore them up, wrote them again, Morosow should not wait for him at the Scheherazade, signed it with a fictitious name—

The taxi went into gear and drove off. He stared after it, but could not see inside. He did not know whether Haake had stepped in while he had been writing. He went into first gear swiftly. The Talbot shot around the corner after the taxi.

He could not see anyone through the back window. But Haake might be sitting at one side. He passed the taxi slowly. He could not recognize anything in the dark inside of the car. He fell back and again passed the other car as close as possible. The driver turned around and shouted at him. “Hey, you idiot, do you want to run into me?”

“There is a friend of mine in your cab.”

“You drunken fool,” the driver yelled. “Can’t you see the car is empty?”

At that moment Ravic saw that the meter was not running. He made a sharp turn and raced back.

Haake was standing at the curb. He waved. “Hello, taxi.”

Ravic drove close to him and stepped on the brake. “Taxi?” Haake asked.

“No.” Ravic leaned out of the window. “Hello,” he said.

Haake looked at him. His eyes contracted. “What?”

“I think we know each other,” Ravic said in German.

Haake bent forward. The suspicion disappeared from his face.
“Mein Gott—Herr von—von—”

“Horn.”

“Correct! Correct! Herr von Horn. Of course! What a coincidence! My good man, where have you been all this time?”

“Here in Paris. Come, step in. I didn’t know you would be back so soon.”

“I’ve called you up several times. Did you change your hotel?”

“No. It’s still the Prince de Galles.” Ravic opened the door of the car. “Step in. I’ll take you along. You won’t get a taxi very easily at this time.”

Haake put one foot on the running board. Ravic could feel his breath. He saw the red, overheated face. “Prince de Galles,” Haake said. “Damn it, that’s what it was! Called you at the George V.” He laughed loudly. “Now I understand. Prince de Galles, of course. Got the two mixed up. Didn’t bring my old notebook with me. Thought I’d remember.”

Ravic kept an eye on the entrance. It would be some time before anyone came out. The girls had to change first. Nevertheless, he had to get Haake into the car quickly. “Did you intend to go in?” Haake asked in a jovial tone.

“I was thinking of it. But it’s too late.”

Haake blew noisily through his nose. “You said it, friend. I was the last one. They are closing.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s dull in there, anyway. Let’s go somewhere else. Come on!”

“Is anything still open?”

“Of course. The really good places are just starting now. This is only for tourists.”

“Is that so? I thought—this was really something.”

“Not at all. There are much better ones. This is nothing but a cat-house.”

Ravic stepped lightly on the accelerator several times. The motor roared and died down. He had calculated right; Haake carefully climbed onto the seat beside him. “Nice to see you again,” he said. “Really very nice.”

Ravic reached across him and closed the door. “I am delighted, too.”

“Interesting place here! A lot of naked girls. To think the police permit it! Very likely most of them are sick, eh?”

“One is never quite sure in such places.”

Ravic let in the clutch. “Are there any places where one can be absolutely sure?” Haake bit off the end of a cigar. “I wouldn’t like to go home with a dose. On the other hand, one lives only once.”

“Yes,” Ravic said and handed him the electric lighter.

“Where are we driving?”

“How about a
maison de rendez-vous
to begin with?”

“What is that?”

“A house where society ladies go to look for adventure.”

“What? Real society ladies?”

“Yes. Women whose husbands are too old. Women who have boring husbands. Women whose husbands don’t make enough money.”

“But how—they cannot simply—how do they manage it?”

“These women come there for one or more hours. As if for a cocktail or nightcap. Some of them can be called up. It isn’t a brothel in the same sense as these in Montmartre. I know a very nice house in the middle of the Bois. The owner looks the way a duchess should look. Everything is extremely distinguished, discreet, and elegant.”

Ravic spoke slowly and calmly, breathing slowly. He heard himself talking like a tourists’ guide, but he forced himself to go on speaking in order to grow calmer. The veins in his arms trembled. He held onto the wheel tightly with both hands to control the trembling. “You will be surprised when you see the rooms,” he said. “The furniture is genuine, carpets and tapestry old, the wine
select, the service exquisite, and you may be absolutely sure as far as the women are concerned.”

Haake exhaled his cigar smoke. He turned to Ravic. “Listen, all that sounds wonderful, my dear Herr von Horn. There is only one question: certainly this can’t be cheap!”

“I assure you it is not expensive.”

Haake laughed hoarsely in some embarrassment. “It depends on what you mean by that! We Germans with our limited foreign exchange!”

Ravic shook his head. “I know the owner very well. She is indebted to me. She’ll consider us special guests. When you come, you come as a friend of mine and very likely you will not be permitted to pay. A few tips, if anything at all—less than you paid for one bottle in the Osiris.”

“Really?”

“You’ll see.”

Haake moved in his seat. “Donnerwetter, that’s really something!” He smiled broadly at Ravic. “You seem to be informed! You must have rendered a good service to that woman.”

Ravic looked at him. He looked straight into his eyes. “Sometimes places of this kind have difficulties with the authorities. Attempts at blackmail. You know what I mean.”

“And how!” For a moment Haake pondered something. “Are you so influential here?”

“Not really. A few friends in influential positions.”

“That’s something. We could use you to good advantage. Couldn’t we have a talk about it sometime?”

“Certainly. How long are you staying in Paris?”

Haake laughed. “I always seem to meet you when I’m just about to leave. I’m going at seven-thirty this morning.” He looked at the clock in the car. “In two and a half hours. I wanted to tell you. Must be at the Gare du Nord by then. Can we make it?”

“Easily. Do you have to go to your hotel before that?”

“No. My suitcase is at the station. I left the hotel this afternoon. Saved a day’s rent that way. With our foreign exchange—” He laughed again.

Suddenly Ravic realized that he too was laughing. He pressed his hands tightly on the wheel. Impossible, he thought, this is impossible. Something will still happen to interfere! Such a chance is impossible!

The fresh air made Haake feel the alcohol. His voice became slower and heavier. He fixed himself more comfortably in his corner and began to doze. His lower jaw dropped and his eyes closed. The car turned into the soundless darkness of the Bois.

The headlights flew like white specters in front of the car, plucking ghostly trees out of the dark. The odor of acacias rushed through the open window. The noise of the tires on the asphalt was gentle, incessant, as if it would never cease. The motor’s familiar droning, deep and soft in the damp night air. The shimmer of a small pond on the left, the silhouette of willows showing brighter than the dark beeches behind them. Meadows covered with dew, nacreous, pale. The Route de Madrid, the Route de la Porte St. James, the Route de Neuilly. A sleepy house. The smell of the river. The Seine.