Arch of Triumph

  Rosenfeld nodded. “It’s time to get away from here.”

  Ravic looked at him. “The Bird of Death is leaving,” Rosenfeld said.

  “What Bird of Death?”

  “Ah yes—Markus Meyer. We call him the Bird of Death. He knows by smell when one has to flee.”

  “Meyer?” Ravic said. “Is that the short bald-headed man who plays the piano in the Catacombs from time to time?”

  “Yes. We have called him Bird of Death since Prague.”

  “A good name.”

  “He always smells it. Two months before Hitler, he left Germany. Vienna three months ahead of the Nazis. Prague six weeks before they marched in. I’ve stuck to him. Always. He smells it. That’s how I have saved the paintings. One could no longer take money out of Germany. The mark was blocked. I had a million and a half in investments. I tried to liquidate it. Then the Nazis came and it was too late. Meyer was smarter. He smuggled part of his fortune out. I hadn’t the nerve. And now he’s going to America. So am I. It’s a pity about the Monet.”

  “But you can take the rest of the money you got for it with you. There are no blocked francs as yet.”

  “Yes. But I could have lived on it longer if I had sold it over there. This way I’ll probably have to sacrifice the Gauguin soon.”

  Rosenfeld fumbled with his spirit-cooker. “They’re the last ones,” he said. “Only these three more. I must live on them. A job—I don’t count on one. It would be a miracle. These three more. One less is a bit of life less.”

  He stood forlornly in front of his suitcase. “In Vienna—five years, it was not yet expensive, I could live cheaply; but it cost me two Renoirs and a Degas pastel. In Prague I lived on and ate up a Sisley and five drawings. No one wanted to give anything for drawings—there were two by Degas, a crayon by Renoir, and two sepias by Delacroix. In America I could have lived longer on them, a whole year. You see,” he said sadly, “now I’ve only these three paintings left. Yesterday there were still four. This visa has cost me at least two years’ living. If not three.”

  “There are many people who have no paintings to live on.”

  Rosenfeld shrugged his skinny shoulders. “That’s no comfort.”

  “No,” Ravic said. “That’s true.”

  “They must get me through the war. And this war will last a long time.”

  Ravic did not answer. “The Bird of Death says so,” Rosenfeld said. “And he is not even sure that America will remain safe.”

  “Where would he go then?” Ravic asked. “There is not much left now.”

  “He does not yet know exactly. He is thinking of Haiti. He doesn’t believe a Negro republic would go to war.”

  Rosenfeld was entirely serious. “Or Honduras. A small South American republic. San Salvador. Perhaps New Zealand too.”

  “New Zealand? That’s pretty far away, isn’t it?”

  “Far?” Rosenfeld said, smiling sadly. “From where?”

  27

  A SEA, A SEA of thundering darkness beating against his ears. Then a shrill ringing through the corridors, a ship marked for destruction, the ringing—and night, the familiar pale window intruding into the ebb of sleep, still the ringing—telephone.

  Ravic lifted the receiver. “Hello—”

  “Ravic—”

  “What’s the matter? Who is it?”

  “I. Don’t you recognize me?”

  “Yes. Now. What’s the matter?”

  “You must come! Quick! Right away!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Come, Ravic! Something has happened.”

  “What has happened?”

  “Something has happened. I’m scared! Come! Come immediately! Help me! Ravic! Come!”

  The telephone clicked. Ravic waited. The open-line signal buzzed. Joan had hung up. He put the receiver back and stared into the pallid night. Drugged sleep still hung heavy behind his forehead. Haake, first he had thought it was. Haake—until he had recognized the window and become aware that he was in the International, not in the Prince de Galles. He looked at his watch. The phosphorescent hands stood at four-twenty. Suddenly he jumped out of bed. Joan had said something on the evening when he had encountered Haake—something about danger, fear. If—anything was possible! He had seen the strangest things happen. He hurriedly picked up the most necessary implements and dressed.

  He found a taxi at the next corner. The driver had a small griffon with him. The dog lay around the man’s neck like a fur collar. It swayed when the taxi swayed. It drove Ravic mad. He would have liked to throw the dog onto the seat. But he knew Parisian taxi drivers.

  The car rattled through the warm July night. A faint scent of shyly breathing foliage. Blossoms, somewhere linden trees, shadows, a star-studded jasmine sky, in between an aeroplane with intermittent red and green lights like a sinister and threatening beetle among glowworms, colorless streets, buzzing emptiness, the singing of two drunks, an accordion playing in a basement, and suddenly hesitation and fear and driving, rending haste: perhaps too late—

  The house. Lukewarm drowsy darkness. The elevator came creeping down. Creeping, a slow, lighted insect. Ravic had already reached the first landing when he changed his mind and turned back. The elevator was faster however slow it was.

  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. “D
on’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 th
en 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.”