He continued to cut. The precision of the sharp knife. The sensation of a clean incision. The abdominal cavity. The white coils of the intestines. The man who lay there with his belly opened up had his moral principles, too. He had felt human compassion for Meyer; but he had also felt something that he called his patriotic duty. There was always a screen behind which one could hide—a superior who in turn had his superior—orders, instructions, duties, commands—and finally the many-headed monster, morale, necessity, hard reality, responsibility, or whatever it was called—there was always a screen behind which to evade the simple law of humanity.
There was the gall bladder. Rotten and sick. Hundreds of tournedos Rossini have done this to him, a tripe à la mode de Caen, of heavy canards pressés, pheasants, young chickens, fat sauces, together with bad temper and with thousands of pints of good Bordeaux wines. Professor Meyer had had no such worries. If one should blunder now, cut too far, cut too deep—then in a week would a better man sit in that stuffy room that smelled of files and moths, where trembling refugees awaited their life or death sentences? A better one—but maybe someone worse. This unconscious sixty-year-old body here on the table under the bright lights undoubtedly considered himself humane. Surely he was a kind husband, a good father—but the minute he entered his office he was transformed into a tyrant hiding behind the phrases, “We can’t do that”—and “Where would it get us if”—and so on. France would not have perished if Meyer had continued to eat his meager meals—if the widow Rosenthal had been allowed to go on waiting for her dead son in a maid’s room in the International—if the tubercular drygoods dealer, Stallman, had not been imprisoned for six months because of illegal entry, to be released only to die before he could be shipped across the border.
Fine, the incision was fine. Not too deep. Not too wide. Catgut. The knot. The gall bladder. He showed it to Durant. It shone greasily in the white light. He threw it into the pail. Let’s go on. Why did they sew with reverdin in France? Out with the clip! The warm belly of an average official with a salary of thirty or forty thousand francs a year. How could he pay ten thousand for this operation? Where did he earn the rest? This potbelly had played marbles too. That was a good stitch. Stitch after stitch. Two thousand francs was still written across Durant’s face although his pointed beard was hidden. It was in his eyes. A thousand francs in each eye. Love spoils one’s character. Would I otherwise have squeezed this rentier and shaken his faith in the divinely appointed world order of exploitation? Tomorrow he’ll sit unctuously at this potbelly’s bedside and accept grateful speeches for his work. Careful, there was one more clip. The potbelly means one week at Antibes for Joan and me. A week of light in the rain of ashes of our times. A blue piece of sky before the thunderstorm. Now the seam of the peritoneum. Especially fine for the two thousand francs. I should sew it up with a pair of scissors inside in memory of Meyer. The humming white light. Why does one think so disconnectedly? Newspapers, probably. Radio. The incessant rattling of liars and cowards. The lack of concentration through avalanches of words. Confused brains. Exposed to all the demagogic trash. No longer used to chewing the hard bread of knowledge. Toothless brains. Nonsense. So that’s done now. There’s still the flabby skin. In a few weeks he can again deport trembling refugees. If he doesn’t die. But he won’t. People like him die at eighty, honored, self-respecting, and with proud grandchildren. That’s done with. The end. Take him away!
Ravic drew the gloves from his hands and the mask from his face. The high official glided out of the operating room on soundless wheels. Ravic gazed after him. Leval, he thought, if you only knew! That your thoroughly legal gall bladder had provided me, an illegal refugee, with a few highly illegal days on the Riviera!
He began to wash. Beside him Durant washed his hands slowly and methodically. The hands of an old man with high blood pressure. While carefully rubbing his fingers he rhythmically chewed with his lower jaw, slowly and as if grinding corn. When he stopped rubbing he also stopped chewing. As soon as he started again, the chewing began, too. This time he washed particularly slowly and deliberately. He wants to keep the two thousand francs a few minutes longer, Ravic thought.
“What are you still waiting for?” Durant asked after a while. “For your check.”
“I’ll send you the money as soon as the patient pays. That will be a few weeks after he is released from the hospital.”
Durant began to dry his hands. Then he seized a bottle of Eau de Cologne d’Orsay and rubbed it on. “You have that much confidence in me, haven’t you?” he asked.
Cheat, Ravic thought. Still wants to squeeze out a little humiliation. “You said the patient was a friend of yours who would only pay the expenses.”
“Yes,” Durant replied unobligingly.
“Well—the expenses amount to a few francs for the materials and the nurses. You own the hospital. If you charge a hundred francs for everything—you may deduct that and let me have it later.”
“The expenses, Doctor Ravic,” Durant declared, straightening up, “are, I’m sorry to say, considerably higher than I had thought. The two thousand francs for you are part of them. Therefore I must also charge the patient for that.” He sniffed the Eau de Cologne on his hands. “You see—”
He smiled. His yellow teeth formed a lively contrast to his snow-white beard. As if someone had made water in the snow, Ravic thought. Nevertheless he’ll pay. Veber will give me the money on the strength of it. I won’t do this old goat the favor of begging him for it now.
“All right,” he said. “If it is so difficult for you, then send it later.”
“It is not difficult for me. Although your demand came suddenly and as a surprise. It’s for the sake of order.”
“All right, then we’ll do it for the sake of order; it’s all the same.”
“It’s absolutely not the same.”
“The effect is the same,” Ravic said. “And now excuse me. I want to get a drink. Adieu.”
“Adieu,” Durant said, surprised.
Kate Hegstroem smiled. “Why don’t you come with me, Ravic?”
She stood before him, slender, sure of herself, with long legs, her hands in the pockets of her coat. “The forsythia must be in bloom by now in Fiesole. A yellow fire along the garden wall. A fireplace. Books. Peace.”
Outside a truck thundered along the pavement. The glass frames of the pictures tinkled in the small reception room of the hospital. They were photographs of the Cathedral of Chartres.
“The quiet at night. Far away from everything,” Kate Hegstroem said. “Wouldn’t you love that?”
“Yes. But I couldn’t stand it.”
“Why not?”
“Quiet is only good when one is quiet oneself.”
“I am not quiet myself.”
“You know what you want. That’s almost the same thing.”
“Don’t you know what you want?”
“I don’t want anything.”
Kate Hegstroem slowly buttoned her coat. “Now what is that, Ravic? Happiness or despair?”
He smiled impatiently. “Probably both. As always, both. One shouldn’t think about it too much.”
“What else should one do?”
“Be happy.” She looked at him.
“One doesn’t need anyone else for that,” he said.
“One always needs someone else for that.”
He remained silent. What am I talking about? he thought. Travel chatter, goodbye embarrassment, mealy sermons. “Not for the little happinesses of which you once spoke,” he said. “They bloom everywhere like violets around burnt-down houses. One who doesn’t expect anything will not be disappointed—that’s a good basis. Then anything else that comes along adds a bit to it.”
“It’s nothing at all,” Kate Hegstroem replied. “It only seems so when one lies in bed and thinks cautiously. Not any more when one can walk around. Then one loses it again. One wants more.”
An oblique ray of light fell through the window across her face.
It left her eyes in shadow; just her mouth bloomed in it alone.
“Do you know a doctor in Florence?” Ravic asked.
“No. Do I need one?”
“There’s always a chance some trifling matter may turn up afterwards. Anything. It would make me more comfortable to know that you have a doctor there.”
“I feel very well. And I’ll come back if anything should happen.”
“Of course. This is just a precaution. There is a good physician in Florence. Professor Fiola. Will you remember that? Fiola.”
“I’ll forget it. It isn’t at all important, Ravic.”
“I’ll write him. He’ll take care of you.”
“But why? There is nothing wrong with me.”
“Professional precaution, Kate. Nothing else. I’ll write him to call you up.”
“If you like.” She took her bag. “Adieu, Ravic. I’m leaving. Maybe I’ll go right to Cannes from Florence. And from there to New York on the Conte di Savoia. If you happen to come to America you’ll find a woman in a country house with a husband and children and horses and dogs. I leave the Kate Hegstroem you’ve known here. She has a small grave in the Scheherazade. Have a drink over it now and then when you’re there.”
“All right. With vodka.”
“Yes. With vodka.” She stood undecided in the dark of the room. Now the ray of light fell behind her on one of the photographs of Chartres. The high altar with the cross. “Strange,” she said. “I should be happy. I’m not—”
“That’s true of every farewell. Even farewell to despair.”
She stood before him, hesitating, full of soft life, determined and a little sad. “The simplest thing when saying goodbye always is to go,” Ravic said. “Come, I’ll go out with you.”
“Yes.”
The air was mild and humid. The sky hung above the roofs like glowing iron. “I’ll call a taxi, Kate.”
“No. I’ll walk to the corner. I’ll find one there. It’s the first time I’ve been out.”
“How does it feel?”
“Like wine.”
“Don’t you want me to call a cab for you?”
“No. I’ll walk.”
She looked down the wet street. Then she smiled. “In some corner there is a bit of fear left. Does that go with it, too?”
“Yes. That goes with it.”
“Adieu, Ravic.”
“Adieu, Kate.”
She stood for another second as though she wanted to say something. Then she walked down the stairs with careful steps, slender, still supple, along the street toward the violet-colored evening and toward her destruction. She did not turn back again.
Ravic went back. As he passed the room which Kate Hegstroem had occupied, he heard music. Surprised, he stopped. He knew that there was no new patient there as yet.
He cautiously opened the door and saw the nurse kneeling in front of a record player. She was startled when she heard Ravic and got up. The victrola was playing an old record: La dernière valse.
The girl smoothed her dress. “Miss Hegstroem gave me the victrola as a present,” she said. “It’s an American make. One can’t buy it here. Nowhere in Paris. It’s the only one here. I was trying it out immediately. It plays five records automatically.”
She beamed with pride. “It’s worth at least three thousand francs. And all the records with it. There are fifty-six. Besides there is a radio built in. That’s luck.”
Luck, Ravic thought. Happiness. Again. Here it was a record player. He stopped and listened. The violin flew up from the orchestra like a dove, plaintive and sentimental. It was one of those languishing airs that sometimes touch our hearts more than all the nocturnes of Chopin. Ravic looked around. The bed was stripped and the mattress put up. The laundry was piled by the door. The windows stood open. The evening stared into the room ironically. A fading scent of perfume and the dying strains of a waltz were what was left of Kate Hegstroem.
“I can’t take everything with me at once,” the nurse said. “It is too heavy. I’ll take the victrola along first and then I’ll come back twice and get the records. Maybe even three times. It’s wonderful. One could open a café with it.”
“A good idea,” Ravic said. “Be careful not to break anything.”
15
RAVIC CAME AWAKE very slowly. For a short while he still lay in the strange twilight between dream and reality—the dream was still there, paler and more tattered—and at the same time he realized already that he was dreaming. He was in the Black Forest, close to the German frontier, at a small station. There was the sound of a waterfall near by. The scent of pines came from the mountains. It was summer and the valley was full of the smell of resin and meadows. The railway tracks shone red in the evening sun—as if they had been traversed by a train from which blood was dripping. What am I doing here? Ravic thought. What am I doing here in Germany? I have been in France. I have been in Paris. He floated over a soft iridescent wave which showered more sleep upon him. Paris—now it was melting away, it was only a haze, it disappeared. He was not in Paris. He was in Germany. But why had he come back here?
He walked across the small platform. The conductor was standing by a newsstand. He was reading the Voelkischer Beobachter, a middle-aged man with a fat face and very blond eyebrows. “When does the next train leave?” Ravic asked.
The conductor looked at him lazily. “Where are you going?” Suddenly Ravic felt a wave of hot panic. Where was he? What was the name of this place? What was the name of the station? Should he say Freiburg? Damn it, why didn’t he know where he was? He looked along the platform. No sign. Nowhere the name of the place. He smiled. “I am on furlough,” he said.
“Where do you want to go?” the conductor asked.
“I am just riding around. I got off the train here by chance. I liked the way it looked from the window. Now I don’t like it any more. I can’t stand waterfalls. Now I want to go on.”
“Where do you want to go? You must know where you want to go.”
“Day after tomorrow I have to be in Freiburg. I’ve got time until then. It’s fun to ride along aimlessly.”
“This line doesn’t go to Freiburg,” the conductor said and looked at him.
What nonsense is this? Ravic thought. Why do I ask at all? How did I come here? “I know,” he said. “I’ve plenty of time. Do they have kirsch anywhere here? Genuine Black Forest kirsch?”
“There in the station restaurant,” the conductor said, still looking at him.
Ravic walked slowly across the platform. His steps resounded on the cement under the open roof of the station. He saw two men sitting in the first- and second-class waiting room. He felt their looks on his back. A few swallows flew along under the roof of the station. He made believe he was watching them and looked out of the corner of his eye at the conductor, who was folding up his newspaper. Then he followed Ravic. Ravic went to the restaurant. The place smelled of beer. No one was there. He left the place. The conductor was standing outside. He saw Ravic come out and went into the waiting room. Ravic walked faster. He had made himself suspect, he knew that suddenly. At the corner of the building he turned around. No one was on the platform. He walked hastily through between the express room and the empty baggage office. He ducked under the baggage platform, on which a few milk cans stood, and crept along past the express room window, behind which a telegraph instrument was ticking, until he reached the other side of the building. Cautiously he turned around. Then he quickly crossed the tracks and ran through a blooming meadow toward the pine woods. The powdery heads of the dandelions flew up as he ran across the meadow. When he reached the pines he saw the conductor and the two men standing on the platform. The conductor was pointing at him and the two men began to run. He jumped backward and forced his way through the pines. The coniferous branches beat against his face. He ran in a big circle and then stood still lest his whereabouts be discovered. He heard the men breaking through the pines and continued to run. Every moment he listened. Sometimes he
did not hear anything; then all he could do was wait. Afterwards there would be a crackling again, and he too continued to creep, on hands and knees now, to make less noise. He clenched his hands into fists and held his breath while listening; he felt a convulsive desire to jump up and rush away—but this would disclose where he was. He could move only when the others moved. He lay in a thicket between blue liver-leaves. Hepatica triloba, he thought. Hepatica triloba, the liverleaf. The woods seemed endless. Now there was crackling everywhere. He felt perspiration breaking out of all his pores as if his body were raining. And suddenly his legs gave at the knees as if the joints had softened. He tried to get up. But he was swallowed by the earth. The ground was like a morass. He looked down. The ground was solid. It was his legs. They were of rubber. Now he heard his pursuers closer. They came directly toward him. He dragged himself up but he sank down again on his rubber knees. He dragged his legs, he waded on, laboriously, and he heard the crackling coming closer and closer, then all of a sudden a patch of blue sky appeared through the branches, a glade opened, he knew he was lost if he could not run swiftly across it, he dragged and dragged along and, turning around, he saw behind him a face, craftily smiling, Haake’s face, he sank and sank down, defenseless, helpless, he was suffocating, he tore at his sinking chest with his hands, he groaned—
Had he groaned? Where was he? He felt his hands at his throat. His hands were wet. His throat was wet. His chest was wet, his face was wet. He opened his eyes. He was not yet fully aware of where he was, in the swamp amid the pines or somewhere else. As yet he was altogether unaware of Paris. A white moon hung on a cross above an unknown world. A pale light hung behind a dark cross like a martyred halo. A white dead light cried noiselessly on a pallid iron-colored sky. The full moon stood behind the wooden cross in the window of a room in the Hôtel International in Paris. Ravic sat up. What had this been? A railway train full of blood, dripping blood, madly racing through a summer evening along bloody rails—the hundred times repeated dream of being in Germany again, to be surrounded, persecuted, hunted by the hangmen of a bloody regime which had legalized murder; how often he had gone through it! He stared into the moon, the white vampire sucking the colors of the world with its borrowed light. Those dreams, filled with the horror of the concentration camps, full of the torpid faces of slain friends, full of the tearless, petrified pain of those surviving, full of disconsolate farewell and of loneliness that was beyond lamentation—during the day one succeeded in erecting the barrier, the rampart that was higher than one’s eyes—one had slowly built it during long laborious years, desires strangled with cynicism, memories buried with callousness and trampled down, one had stript everything from oneself including one’s name, cemented over one’s feelings—and when in spite of it at times the livid face of one’s past emerged in an unguarded hour, sweet, ghostlike and calling, one had drowned it by drinking to the point of insensibility. During the day—but nights one was still at its mercy, the brakes of discipline were loosed and the cart began to slip, behind the horizon of consciousness it rose again, it broke out of graves, the frozen cramp was loosened, the shadows came back, one’s blood boiled, one’s sores ran, and the black storm swept across all bulwarks and barricades! To forget—that was easy as long as the lanterns of willpower illuminated the world—but when they faded and the noise of the worms became audible, when a destroyed world emerged out of the floods like a sunken Vineta and lived again—that was something else. One could get drunk, dull, and leaden, night after night, to overcome all that—one could turn the nights into days and the days into nights—during the day one dreamed differently from nights, not in such forlornness, but off from everything. Hadn’t he done it? How often had he returned to the hotel when the first gray of the morning was creeping through the streets? Or had he not waited in the Catacombs with anyone willing to drink with him until Morosow came, from the Scheherazade, who went on drinking with him under the artificial palm where only the clock in that windowless room showed how far the light had waxed outside? Getting drunk in a U-boat, that’s what it was. It was easy to shake your head and declare that one should be sensible. But hell, it wasn’t so easy! Life was life, it was worth nothing and everything; one could throw it away, that was easy, too. But did one not also throw away one’s revenge with it and then did one not throw away as well the thing that, sneered at, spat on, daily and hourly ridiculed, was, nevertheless, roughly called belief in humaneness and humanity? An empty life—one didn’t throw that away like an empty cartridge! It was still good enough to fight with when the time came for it and when it was needed. Not for personal reasons, not even for revenge, however blood-deep revenge might be, not out of egotism, nor for altruistic reasons, however important it might be for one turn of the wheel to help push this world forward out of blood and debris—for no other reason, finally, than to fight, merely to fight, and to wait for one’s chance to fight as long as one still breathed. But the waiting was corrosive and maybe it was hopeless, and to it was added the secret fear that if the time finally came one would be too crushed by then, too eaten up, too inert from waiting, too tired in one’s cells still to be able to march along with the others! Wasn’t that the reason one trampled into oblivion everything that could feed on the nerves, extinguished it, efficiently and callously, with sarcasm, with irony, even with counter-sentimentality, with the escape into another human being, into an alien ego? Until that was done the brutal helplessness would come back again while one was at the mercy of sleep and ghosts.…