She straightened up. She propped herself with her hands on the floor and looked at him. Her eyes were wide open, the bathrobe had slipped down from her shoulders, her hair was thrown back on the nape of her neck, and there was something of a bright young lioness about her in the dark. “I know,” she said calmly, “you’re laughing at me, I know it and I don’t mind. I feel that I’m alive; I feel it in my whole being, my breath is different and my sleep is no longer dead, my joints have purpose again and my hands are no longer empty, and it does not matter to me what you think about it and what you may say about it, I let myself fly and I let myself run and I throw myself into it, without a thought, and I am happy and I am neither cautious nor afraid of saying it, even if you do laugh at me and make fun of me—”
Ravic was silent for a while. “I’m not making fun of you,” he then said. “I’m making fun of myself, Joan—”
She leaned toward him. “Why? There is something in the back of your head that resists. Why?”
“There is nothing that resists. I am just slower than you are.”
She shook her head. “It’s not only that. There’s something that wants to remain alone. I feel it. It’s like a barrier.”
“There’s no barrier. That is merely fifteen more years of life than you have had. Not everyone’s life is like a house that belongs to him and that he can go on decorating ever more richly with the furniture of his memory. Some people live in hotels, in many hotels. The years close behind them like hotel doors—and the only thing that remains is a little courage and no regrets.”
She did not answer for some time. He did not know whether she had listened to him or not. He looked out of the window and calmly felt the deep glow of the calvados in his veins. The beat of the pulses was still and became a widespread quietness in which the machine guns of ceaselessly ticking time were silent. The moon rose, a blurred red, over the roofs like the cupola of a mosque, half hidden by clouds, emerging slowly while the earth sank into the drifting snow.
“I know,” Joan said, her hands on his knees and her chin on her hands, “it’s foolish to tell you these earlier things about myself. I could be silent or I could lie, but I don’t want to. Why should I not tell you everything about my life and why should I make more out of it? I’d rather make less out of it because it is laughable to me now and I don’t understand it any more and you may laugh about it and also about me too.”
Ravic looked at her. One of her knees was crushing a few of the large white blossoms against the newspaper he had bought. A strange night, he thought. Somewhere now there is shooting and men are being hunted and imprisoned and tortured and murdered, some corner of a peaceful world is being trampled upon, and one knows it, helplessly, and life buzzes on in the bright bistros of the city, no one cares, and people go calmly to sleep, and I am sitting here with a woman between pale chrysanthemums and a bottle of calvados, and the shadow of love rises, trembling, lonesome, strange and sad, it too an exile from the safe gardens of the past, shy and wild and quick as if it had no right—
“Joan,” he said slowly and wanted to say something entirely different, “it is good that you are here.”
She looked at him.
He took her hands. “You understand what that means? More than a thousand other words—”
She nodded. Suddenly her eyes were filled with tears. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said, “I know.”
“That’s not true,” Ravic replied and knew that she was right.
“No, nothing at all. You must love me, beloved. That’s all.”
He did not answer.
“You must love me,” she repeated. “Otherwise I’m lost.”
Lost—he thought. What a word! How easily she uses it. Who is really lost does not talk.
12
“DID YOU TAKE my leg off?” Jeannot asked.
His thin face was bloodless and white like the wall of an old house. His freckles stood out very large and dark as though they did not belong to his face but were drops of paint sprinkled over it. The stump of his leg lay under a wire basket over which the blanket was drawn.
“Have you any pain?” Ravic asked.
“Yes. In my foot. My foot hurts very much. I asked the nurse. The old dragon wouldn’t tell me.”
“The leg has been amputated,” Ravic said.
“Above the knee or below the knee?”
“Ten centimeters above it. Your knee was crushed and could not be saved.”
“Good,” Jeannot said. “That makes about fifteen per cent more from the insurance company. Very good. An artificial leg is an artificial leg, whether above or below the knee. But fifteen per cent more is something you can put into your pocket every month.” He hesitated for a moment. “For the time being you’d better not tell my mother. She can’t see it anyway with this parrot cage over the stump.”
“We won’t tell her anything, Jeannot.”
“The insurance company must pay an annuity for life. That’s correct, isn’t it?”
“I think so.”
His face twisted into a grimace. “They’ll be surprised. I am thirteen years old. They’ll have to pay for a long time. Do you know yet which insurance company it is?”
“Not yet. But we have the number of the car. You kept it in mind. The police have been here already. They want to question you. You were still asleep this morning. They’ll come again tonight.”
Jeannot deliberated. “Witnesses,” he said then. “It’s important that we have witnesses. Have we any?”
“I think your mother has two addresses. She had the slips of paper in her hand.”
The boy became restless. “She’ll lose them. If only she hasn’t lost them already. You know how old people are. Where is she now?”
“Your mother sat at your bedside all night and until noon today. Only then were we able to send her away. She’ll come back again soon.”
“Let’s hope she’ll still have them. The police—” He made a weak gesture with his emaciated hand. “Cheats,” he murmured. “They are all cheats. In cahoots with the insurance companies. But if one has good witnesses—when will she come back?”
“Soon. Don’t get excited about it. It’ll be all right.”
Jeannot moved his mouth as if he were chewing something. “Sometimes they pay the whole amount at once. A settlement instead of an annuity. We could start a business with it, mother and I.”
“Now rest,” Ravic said. “You’ll have time to think about it later.”
The boy shook his head. “You will,” Ravic repeated. “You must be rested when the police come.”
“Yes, you’re right. What shall I do?”
“Sleep.”
“But then—”
“They’ll wake you up.”
“Red light. I’m sure it was a red light.”
“Certainly. And now try to sleep. There is a bell in case you should need anything.”
“Doctor—”
“Yes?” Ravic turned around.
“If everything works out—” Jeannot lay on his pillow and something like a smile flitted across his twisted, precocious face. “Sometimes one is lucky after all, isn’t one?”
The evening was humid and warm. Tattered clouds floated low over the city. In front of Fouquet’s restaurant, circular coke-ovens had been set up. A few tables and chairs stood around them. Morosow was sitting at one of them. He beckoned to Ravic. “Come, have a drink with me.”
Ravic sat down beside him. “We sit too much in rooms,” Morosow declared. “Has that ever occurred to you?”
“But you don’t. You’re always standing in front of the Scheherazade.”
“My boy, spare me your miserable logic. Evenings I’m a sort of two-legged door at the Scheherazade, but not a human being in the open. We live in rooms too much, I say. We think too much in rooms. We make love too much in rooms. We despair too much in rooms. Can you despair in the open?”
“And how!” Ravic said.
“Only because we live too much i
n rooms. Not if one is used to the open. One despairs more decently in a landscape than in a two-room-and-kitchenette apartment. More comfortably, too. Don’t contradict me! To contradict shows an occidental narrowness of the mind. Who actually wants to be right? Today is my day off and I wish to absorb life. By the way, we also drink too much in rooms.”
“We also urinate too much in rooms.”
“Get away with your irony. The facts of life are simple and trivial. Only our imagination gives life to them. It makes the laundry pole of facts a flagstaff of dreams. Am I right?”
“No.”
“Of course not. I don’t even want to be.”
“Of course you are right.”
“Good, brother. We also sleep too much in rooms. We become pieces of furniture. Stone buildings have broken our spines. We have become walking sofas, dressing tables, safes, leases, salaries, kitchen pots, and water toilets.”
“Correct. Walking party platforms, ammunition factories, institutes for the blind and asylums for the insane.”
“Don’t keep interrupting me. Drink, be quiet and live, you murderer with the scalpel. See what has become of us. As far as I know, only the old Greeks had gods of drinking and the joy of life: Bacchus and Dionysus. Instead of that we have Freud, inferiority complexes and the psychoanalysis. We’re afraid of the too great words in love and not afraid of much too great words in politics. A sorry generation!” Morosow winked.
Ravic winked, too. “Good old cynic with dreams,” he said. “Are you engaged in improving the world again?”
Morosow grinned. “I’m engaged in feeling it, you romantic without illusions, for a short time on earth, called Ravic.”
Ravic laughed. “For a very short time. This is now my third life as far as names go. Is this Polish vodka?”
“Estonian. From Riga. The best. Pour—and then let us sit calmly here and stare at the most beautiful street in the world and praise this mild evening and casually spit in the face of despair.”
The fire in the coke-ovens crackled. A man with a violin took up a position by the curb and began to play Auprès de ma blonde. Passers-by jostled him, the bow scraped, but the man continued to play as if he were alone. It sounded thin and empty. The violin seemed to be freezing. Two Moroccans went from table to table and offered garish carpets of artificial silk.
The newspaper boys passed with the latest editions. Morosow bought the Paris Soir and the Intransigeant. He read the headlines and pushed the newspapers aside. “They are all damned counterfeiters,” he growled. “Have you ever observed that we are living in the age of counterfeiters?”
“No. I thought we were living in the age of cans.”
“Cans? How so?”
Ravic pointed at the newspapers. “Cans. We don’t have to think any more. Everything is pre-meditated, pre-chewed, pre-felt. Cans. All you have to do is open them. Delivered to your home three times a day. Nothing any more to cultivate yourself, or let grow and boil on the fire of questions, of doubt, and of desire. Cans.” He grinned. “We don’t live easily, Boris. Just cheaply.”
“Cans with false labels.” Morosow lifted the papers. “Counterfeiting! Take a look at that! They build their ammunition factories because they want peace; their concentration camps because they love the truth; justice is the cover for every factional madness; political gangsters are saviors; and freedom is the big word for all greed for power. Counterfeit money! Counterfeit spiritual money! The lie as propaganda. Kitchen Machiavellism. Idealism in the hands of the underworld. If at least they would be honest—” He crushed the newspapers together and threw them away.
“Very likely we are reading too many newspapers in rooms,” Ravic said and laughed.
“Naturally. In the open one only needs them to start a fire—”
Morosow stopped abruptly. Ravic was no longer sitting beside him. He had jumped up and was pushing his way through the crowd in front of the café in the direction of the Avenue George V.
Morosow sat for a second, astonished. Then he pulled some money out of his pocket, threw it onto a china plate beside the glasses, and followed Ravic. He did not know what had happened but he followed him anyhow, to be at hand if he should need him. He saw no police. Neither did he see any plain-clothes detectives hunting Ravic. The sidewalks were packed with people. Good for him, Morosow thought. If a policeman recognized him, he can easily escape. He saw Ravic again only when he had reached the Avenue George V. The traffic lights changed at that moment and the jammed lines of cars dashed forward. Notwithstanding, Ravic tried to cross the street. A taxi almost knocked him down. The cabdriver was furious. Morosow grabbed Ravic’s arm from behind and pulled him back. “Are you mad?” he cried. “Do you want to commit suicide? What’s the matter?”
Ravic did not answer. He stared across the street. The traffic was very dense. Car after car, four rows deep. It was impossible to get through.
Morosow shook him. “What happened, Ravic? The police?”
“No.” Ravic did not take his eyes from the passing cars.
“What is it? What is it, Ravic?”
“Haake—”
“What?” Morosow’s eyes narrowed. “What does he look like? Quick! Quick, Ravic!”
“A gray coat—”
The shrill whistle of the traffic policeman came from the middle of the Champs Elysées. Ravic dashed across between the last cars. A dark gray coat—that was all he knew. He crossed the Avenue George V and the Rue Bassano. Suddenly there were dozens of gray coats. He cursed and walked on as quickly as he could. The traffic had stopped at the Rue Galilée. He rapidly crossed it and ruthlessly pushed his way through the crowd, along the Champs Elysées. He came to the Rue de Presbourg, crossed it, and suddenly stood still. Before him was the Place de I’Etoile, huge, confusing, full of traffic, with streets branching off in all directions. Gone! No one could be found here.
He turned around slowly, still scrutinizing the faces of the crowd—but his excitement was gone. Suddenly he felt very empty. He must have been mistaken again—or Haake had escaped him a second time. But could one be mistaken twice? Could someone disappear from the surface of the earth twice? There were the side-streets. Haake could have turned into one of those. He looked along the Rue de Presbourg. Cars, cars, and people, people. The busiest hour of the evening. There was no point in searching along them. Too late again.
“Nothing?” Morosow asked when he caught up with him.
Ravic shook his head. “I am probably seeing ghosts again.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“I thought so. Only just a minute ago. Now—now I don’t know at all.”
Morosow looked at him. “There are many faces that look alike, Ravic.”
“Yes, and some that one never forgets.”
Ravic stood still. “What do you want to do?” Morosow asked.
“I don’t know. What can I do now?”
Morosow stared into the crowd. “Damned bad luck! Just at this time. Close of business. Everything crowded—”
“Yes—”
“And, moreover, the light! Half-darkness. Could you see him well?”
Ravic did not answer.
Morosow took his arm. “Listen,” he said. “Running around in the streets and cross-streets is pointless. While you are looking through one street you will think he is in the next one. Not a chance. Let’s go back to Fouquet’s. That’s the best place. You can keep a better lookout from there than by running around. In case he comes back, you’ll be able to see him from there.”
They sat down at an outside table which was open to the street in two directions. For a long time they sat in silence. “What do you intend to do if you meet him?” Morosow asked finally. “Do you know yet?”
Ravic shook his head.
“Think about it. It’s better for you to know beforehand. There’s no sense in being taken by surprise and doing something foolish. Particularly not in your situation. You don’t want to be imprisoned for years?”
Ravic looked
up. He did not answer. He only looked at Morosow.
“It wouldn’t matter to me,” Morosow said. “If it were me. But it does matter to me in your case. What would you have done if he had been the one and you had got hold of him across the street at the corner?”
“I don’t know, Boris. I really don’t know.”
“You have nothing on you, have you?”
“No.”
“If you had attacked him without planning it, you would have been separated in a minute. By now you would be at police headquarters and he would probably have got away with a few black-and-blue marks. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Ravic stared into the street.
Morosow deliberated. “At best you might have tried to push him under an automobile at the intersection. But that wouldn’t have been sure either. He might have got away with a couple of scratches.”
“I won’t push him under an automobile,” Ravic replied without taking his eyes from the street.
“I know that. I wouldn’t do it either.”
Morosow was silent for a while. “Ravic,” he said then. “If he was the one and if you meet him you must be dead sure what to do, you know that? You’ll have only one chance.”
“Yes, I know.” Ravic continued to stare into the street.
“If you should see him follow him. But don’t do anything else. Only follow him. Find out where he lives. Nothing else. All the rest you can work out later. Take your time. Do nothing foolish. Do you hear?”
“Yes,” Ravic said absent-mindedly and stared into the street.
A man selling pistachio nuts came to their table. He was followed by a boy with toy mice. He made them dance on the marble table top and run up his sleeve. The violin player appeared for the second time. Now he wore a hat and played Parlez moi d’amour. An old lady with a syphilitic nose was hawking violets.
Morosow looked at his watch. “Eight,” he said. “It’s senseless to wait any longer, Ravic. We’ve been sitting here for over two hours already. The man won’t come back now. Everyone in France is eating supper somewhere at this hour.”