Arch of Triumph

  “Yes,” he said. “It is good. One way or another.”

  “I couldn’t have endured it, Ravic.”

  “What?”

  “For you to have stayed away. For good.”

  “Didn’t you say you thought I would never come back?”

  “That’s not the same. It would have been different if you had been living in another country. We would only have been separated. I could have come to you, sometime. Or I’d always have been able to believe that. But here, in the same city—don’t you understand?”

  “I do.”

  She straightened up and smoothed her hair. “You can’t leave me alone. You are responsible for me.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “You are responsible for me,” she said and smiled.

  He hated her for a second—for her smile and for the way she said it.

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Joan.”

  “I’m not. You are. From that time on. Without you—”

  “All right. I am responsible for the occupation of Czechoslovakia too. And now stop it. It’s getting light. Soon you must go.”

  “What?” She stared at him. “You don’t want me to stay here?”

  “No.”

  “So—” she said in a low voice, suddenly very angry. “You don’t love me any more.”

  “Good Heavens!” Ravic said. “That too! What idiots have you been with the last few months?”

  “They weren’t idiots. What else could I have done? Sit in the Hôtel de Milan and stare at the walls and go mad?”

  Ravic half straightened up. “No confessions!” he said. “I do not want any confessions! I merely wanted to raise the level of our conversation a bit.”

  She looked at him. Her mouth and her eyes were flat. “Why do you always criticize me? Other people don’t criticize me. With you every little thing immediately becomes a problem.”

  “All right.” Ravic took a big gulp hastily and let himself sink back.

  “It is true!” she said. “One never knows what to make of you. You force me to say things I never intended to say. And then you attack me.”

  Ravic breathed deeply. What was it that he had just before been thinking about? Darkness of love, power of imagination—how fast that could be changed! They did it themselves, incessantly, themselves. They were the most avid destroyers of dreams. But was it their fault? Was it really their fault? Beautiful forlorn driven creatures—a huge magnet somewhere deep in the earth, and above it the multitudinous figures who thought they had their own wills and their own fates—was it their fault? Wasn’t he himself one of them? Did he not cling suspiciously to a bit of tiresome caution and cheap sarcasm—at bottom already knowing what would inevitably happen?

  Joan was huddled at the foot of the bed. She looked like a beautiful angry scrubwoman and at the same time like something that had flown down from the moon and did not know where it was.

  The dawn had turned into the first red of morning and shone on them. The early day blew its pure breath from afar, across all the dirty backyards and the smoky roofs, into the window, and there was still the breath of woods and plains in it.

  “Joan,” Ravic said. “Why have you come?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Yes—why do I ask?”

  “Why do you always ask? I am here. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Yes, Joan. You are right. It is enough.”

  She raised her head. “At last! But first you have to take away all the joy!”

  Joy, Ravic thought. She calls that joy! To be driven by multiple dark propellers, in a gust of breathless desire for repossession—joy? Outside there is a moment of joy, the dew at the window, the ten minutes of silence before the day stretches out its claws. But what the devil was all this about? Wasn’t she right? Wasn’t she right as the dew and the sparrows and the wind and the blood were right? Why did he ask? What did he want to know? She was here, she had flown here, unthinkingly, a night butterfly, a privet hawk moth, a peacock butterfly, quickly—and now he was lying, counting the eyes and small cuts in its wings and staring at the slightly faded blending of its colors. Why all this pretense? And why this hide-and-seek? She has come and I am thus stupidly superior only because she has come, he thought. If she had not come I should be lying here and brooding and heroically trying to deceive myself and wishing secretly that she would come.

  He flung the blankets aside, swung his feet over the edge of the bed, and stepped into his slippers. “What are you going to do?” Joan asked, surprised. “Are you going to throw me out?”

  “No. I’m going to kiss you. I should have done it long before! I’m an idiot, Joan. I have been talking nonsense. It’s wonderful that you have come!”

  A radiance lit up her eyes. “You needn’t get up to kiss me,” she said.

  The red of morning stood high behind the houses. The sky above was a faint blue. A few clouds floated there like sleeping flamingos. “Look at that, Joan! What a day! Do you remember how it used to rain?”

  “Yes. It was always raining, darling. It was gray and it rained.”

  “It was still raining when I left. You were desperate about all that rain. And now—”

  “Yes,” she said. “And now—”

  She was lying close beside him. “Now we have everything,” he said. “Everything. Even a garden. The carnations on the window sill of the refugee Wiesenhoff. And the birds down there in the chestnut tree.”

  He saw that she was crying.

  “Why don’t you ask me, Ravic?” she said.

  “I’ve asked too much already. Didn’t you say so yourself?”

  “That’s different.”

  “There isn’t anything to ask.”

  “About what happened in between.”

  “Nothing happened.”

  She shook her head.

  “My God, what do you think I am, Joan?” he said. “Look at that outside. The red and gold and blue. Ask it whether it rained yesterday. Whether there was a war in China or Spain. Whether a thousand men are dying or a thousand men are being born at this moment. It exists, it raises, that’s all there is to it. And you want me to ask you! Your shoulders are bronze in this light, and I am to question you? Your eyes in this red glow are like the sea of the Greeks, violet and wine-colored, and I am to inquire about something that is done with? You’ve come back and I am to be a fool and rummage about among the withered leaves of the past? What do you take me for, Joan?”

  Her tears had ceased. “I haven’t heard that for a long time,” she said.

  “Then you have been among blockheads. Women should be adored or abandoned. Nothing in between.”

  She slept clinging to him as if she didn’t ever want to let him go. She slept deeply and he felt her regular light breath on his chest. He lay awake for a while. The noises of the morning began in the hotel. Water gurgled, doors were slammed, and below old Aaron Goldberg went through his morning routine of coughing at the open window. He felt Joan’s shoulders on his arm, he felt her warm slumbering skin, and turning his head he could see her completely relaxed face given up to sleep, a face that was as pure as innocence itself. Adore or abandon, he thought. Big words. Who could do that! But who really wanted to?

  20

  HE AWOKE. JOAN WAS no longer lying beside him. He heard the water in the bathroom running and sat up. He was immediately fully awake. This was something he had learned again in the last few months. Whoever wakes instantly may sometimes still escape. He looked at his watch. It was ten o’clock in the morning. Joan’s evening gown was lying on the floor together with her coat. Her brocade shoes stood by the window. One of them had fallen on its side.

  “Joan,” he called. “What are you doing taking a shower in the middle of the night?”

  She opened the door. “I didn’t want to wake you up.”

  “That makes no difference. I can always sleep. But why are you up at this hour?”

  She had put on a bathing cap and was dripping with water. Her gleaming shoulde
rs were a light brown. She looked like an Amazon with a close-fitting helmet. “I’m not a night owl any more, Ravic. I’m no longer at the Scheherazade.”

  “I know that.”

  “From whom?”

  “Morosow.”

  She looked at him searchingly for a second. “Morosow,” she said. “That old babbler. What else did he tell you?”

  “Nothing. Is there anything more to tell?”

  “Nothing that a night doorman could tell. They are like hat-check girls. Professional gossipers.”

  “Leave Morosow alone. Night doormen and doctors are professional pessimists. They get their living from the shadow side of life. But they don’t gossip. They are obliged to be discreet.”

  “The shadow side of life,” Joan said. “Who wants that?”

  “No one. But most people live in it. Besides Morosow helped you get your job at the Scheherazade.”

  “I can’t be eternally and tearfully grateful to him for that. I was no disappointment. I was worth my money, otherwise they wouldn’t have kept me. Besides he did it for you. Not for me.”

  Ravic reached for a cigarette. “What have you really got against him?”

  “Nothing. I don’t like him. He has a way of looking at you. I wouldn’t trust him. You shouldn’t either.”

  “What?”

  “You shouldn’t trust him. You know, all doormen in France are stool pigeons for the police.”

  “Anything else?” Ravic asked calmly.

  “Of course you don’t believe me. Everyone in the Scheherazade knew it. Who knows whether—”

  “Joan!” Ravic flung back the blanket and got up. “Don’t talk nonsense. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing. What should be wrong with me? I can’t stand him, that’s all. He has a bad influence. And you are constantly with him.”

  “I see,” Ravic said. “That’s why.”

  Suddenly she laughed. “Yes, that’s why.”

  Ravic felt that this was not the only reason. There was something else besides. “What do you want for breakfast?” he asked.

  “Are you angry?” she asked in return.

  “No.”

  She came out of the bathroom and put her arms around his neck. He felt her wet skin through the thin fabric of his pajamas. He felt her body and he felt his blood. “Are you angry because I am jealous of your friends?” she asked.

  He shook his head. A helmet, an Amazon. A Naiad, come up out of the ocean, the scent of water and youth still on her smooth skin.

  “Let me go,” he said.

  She did not answer. The line from the high cheekbones to the chin. The mouth. The too heavy eyelids. The breasts pressing against his bare skin under the open pajama jacket. “Let me go or—”

  “Or what?” she asked.

  A bee was buzzing outside the window. Ravic followed it with his eyes. Very likely it had been attracted by the carnations of the refugee Wiesenhoff and now was looking for other flowers. It flew inside and alighted on an unwashed calvados glass which stood on the window sill.

  “Did you miss me?” Joan asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Much?”

  “Yes.”

  The bee flew up. It circled around the glass several times. Then it buzzed through the window back to the sun and the refugee Wiesenhoff’s carnations.

  Ravic was lying at Joan’s side. Summer, he thought. Summer, meadows in the morning, hair full of the scent of hay and skin like clover—the grateful blood silently flowing like a rivulet and desirelessly flooding the sandy places, a smooth surface in which a smiling face was reflected. For a bright moment nothing was dry and dead any longer. Birches and poplars, quiet and a soft murmur that came like an echo from far, lost heavens and beat in one’s veins.

  “I’d like to stay here,” Joan said leaning against his shoulder.

  “Stay here. Let us sleep. We haven’t slept much.”

  “I can’t. I must go.”

  “You can’t go anywhere in your evening gown at this time.”

  “I brought another dress with me.”

  “Where?”

  “I had it under my coat. Shoes too. It must be among my things. I have everything with me.”

  She did not say where she had to go. Nor why. And Ravic did not ask.

  The bee reappeared. It was no longer buzzing around aimlessly. It flew straight toward the glass and sat on its rim. It seemed to know something about calvados. Or about fruit sugar.

  “Were you so sure you would stay here?”

  “Yes,” Joan said without moving.

  Rolande brought a tray with bottles and glasses. “Nothing to drink,” Ravic said.

  “Don’t you want some vodka? It is Subrovka.”

  “Not today. You may give me some coffee. Strong coffee.”

  “All right.”

  He put the microscope aside. Then he lit a cigarette and went to the window. The plane trees had put on their fresh full foliage. The last time he was here they had still been bare.

  Rolande brought the coffee. “You have more girls now than before,” Ravic said.

  “Twenty more.”

  “Is business so good? Now in June?”

  Rolande sat down with him. “We don’t understand either why business is so good. The people seem to have gone crazy. It starts even in the afternoon. But then in the evening—”

  “Maybe it’s the weather.”

  “It isn’t the weather. I know how it is in May and June. But this is some kind of madness. You wouldn’t believe how well the bar is doing. Can you imagine Frenchmen ordering champagne?”

  “No.”

  “Foreigners, certainly. We carry it for them. But Frenchmen! Even Parisians! Champagne! And they pay for it too! Instead of Dubonnet or Pernod or beer or a fine. Can you believe it?”

  “Only when I see it.”

  Rolande poured the coffee for him. “And the activity!” she said. “It deafens you. You’ll see for yourself when you come down. Even at this time of day! No longer just the cautious experts waiting for your visits. A whole crowd are sitting there already! What has got into these people, Ravic?”

  Ravic shrugged his shoulders. “There is a story of an ocean liner sinking—”

  “But nothing is sinking with us! Business is wonderful.”

  The door was opened. Ninette, twenty-one years old, slim as a boy in her short pink silk panties, entered. She had the face of a saint and was one of the best whores in the place. At the moment she carried a tray with bread, butter, and two pots of jam. “Madame learned that the doctor was drinking coffee,” she declared in a hoarse bass. “She sends you some jam to taste. Homemade.” Suddenly Ninette grinned. The angelic countenance broke into a gamin’s grimace. She shoved the tray onto the table and skipped out of the room.

  “There you see,” Rolande sighed. “They get fresh the minute they know we need them.”

  “Quite right,” Ravic said. “When else should they be fresh? What does this jam mean?”

  “Madame’s pride. She made it herself. On her estate on the Riviera. It is really good. Will you try it?”

  “I hate jam. Particularly when made by millionaires.”

  Rolande unscrewed the glass top, took out several spoonfuls of jam, smeared them on a sheet of thick paper, put a piece of butter and a few pieces of toast with it, wrapped it all up tightly and handed it to Ravic. “Throw it away afterwards,” she said. “Do it as a favor to her. She checks on whether you have eaten or not. The last pride of an aging and disillusioned woman. Do it out of politeness.”

  “All right.” Ravic got up and opened the door. He heard voices from downstairs, music, laughter, and shouting. “Quite a pandemonium,” he said. “Are those all Frenchmen?”

  “Not those. They are mostly foreigners.”

  “Americans?”

  “No, that’s the strange thing. They are mostly Germans. We have never had so many Germans here before.”

  “That’s not strange.”

  “M
ost of them speak French very well. Not at all the way the Germans used to speak a few years ago.”

  “I thought so. Aren’t there a good many poilus here too? Recruits and colonial soldiers?”

  “They are always around.”

  Ravic nodded. “And the Germans spend a lot of money, don’t they?”

  Rolande laughed. “They do. They treat everyone who wants to drink with them.”

  “Especially soldiers, I imagine. And Germany has a currency embargo and has closed the frontiers. One can get out only by permission of the authorities. And one can’t take more than ten marks with him. Odd, these merry Germans with plenty of money and speaking French so well, eh?”

  Rolande shrugged her shoulders. “For all I care—as long as their money is good—”

  It was after eight when he got home. “Has anyone called me up?” he asked the porter.

  “No.”

  “Nor in the afternoon?”

  “No. Not the whole day.”

  “Has anyone been here inquiring for me?”

  The porter shook his head. “Nobody.”

  Ravic went upstairs. On the first floor he heard the Goldberg couple quarreling. On the second floor a child was crying. It was the French citizen Lucien Silbermann, one year and two months old. He was an object of veneration and high hope to his parents, the coffee dealer Siegfried Silbermann and his wife Nelly, née Levi, from Frankfort on the Main. He was born in France and they hoped to get French passports two years earlier because of him. As a result Lucien had developed into a family tyrant with the intelligence of the one-year-old. A phonograph was playing on the third floor. It belonged to the refugee Wohlmeier, formerly of the Oranienburg concentration camp, who played German folk songs on it. The corridor smelled of cabbage and dusk.

  Ravic went into his room to read. He had once bought several volumes of world history and now he took them out. It was not particularly cheerful to read them. The only thing one gained by it was a strangely depressing satisfaction that what was happening today was not new. Everything had happened before dozens of times. The lies, the breaches of faith, the murders, the St. Bartholomew massacres, the corruption through the lust for power, the unbroken chain of wars—the history of mankind was written in blood and tears, and among the thousands of bloodstained statues of the past, only a few wore the silver halo of kindness. The demagogues, the cheats, the parricides, the murderers, the egoists inebriated with power, the fanatic prophets who preached love with the sword, it was the same time and again—and time and again patient peoples allowed themselves to be driven against one another in a senseless slaughter for kaisers, kings, religions, and madmen—there was no end to it.