Arch of Triumph

  “And then?”

  Ravic shrugged his shoulders. “One shouldn’t think too far ahead.”

  “All right. But do you know what may happen in case everything goes to pieces here while you are sitting in a concentration camp? The Germans may catch you.”

  “Me and many others. Maybe. It may also be that they’ll let us go in time. Who knows?”

  “And then?”

  Ravic took a cigarette out of his pocket. “We won’t discuss it today, Boris. I can’t get out of France. Everywhere else it’s dangerous or impossible. Also I don’t want to move on any more.”

  “You don’t want to move on any more?”

  “No. I have thought about it. I can’t explain it to you. It can’t be explained. I don’t want to move on any more.”

  Morosow remained silent. He looked the crowd over. “There is Joan,” he said.

  She was sitting with a man, quite far away, at a table facing the Avenue George V. “Do you know him?” he asked Ravic.

  Ravic glanced at them. “No.”

  “She seems to change rather fast.”

  “She runs after life,” Ravic replied indifferently. “Like most of us do. Breathless, afraid of missing something.”

  “One can call it by a different name.”

  “One could. But it remains the same. Restlessness, old man. The disease of the last twenty-five years. No one believes any longer that he will grow old peacefully with his savings. Everyone smells the scent of fire and tries to seize what he can. Not you, of course. You are a philosopher of the simple pleasures.”

  Morosow did not reply. “She doesn’t know anything about hats,” Ravic said. “Just see what she is wearing! In general she has little taste. That’s her strength. Culture weakens. In the end it always comes back to the naked impulse of life. You yourself are a magnificent example of it.”

  Morosow grinned. “Let me have my low pleasures, you wanderer in the air! Who has simple tastes likes many things. He’ll never be left sitting with empty hands. Who is sixty and chasing after love is an idiot who hopes to win although the others play with marked cards. A good brothel sets your mind at peace. The house I frequent has sixteen young women. There, for little money, I am a pasha. The caresses I receive are more genuine than those many a slave of love bemoans. Slave of love, I said.”

  “I understand, Boris.”

  “Good. Then let us finish this drink. Cool light Pouilly. And let us inhale the silver air of Paris while it is still free from pestilence.”

  “Let’s do that. Have you observed that the chestnuts have bloomed for the second time this year?”

  Morosow nodded. He pointed to the sky in which Mars twinkled above the darkening roofs, large and red. “Yes, and they say that that fellow up there is closer to our earth than he has been for many years.” He laughed. “Soon we’ll read that somewhere a child has been born with a mole like a sword. And that it was raining blood somewhere else. The only thing missing now is the enigmatic comet of the Middle Ages to make all the ominous signs complete.”

  “There is the comet.” Ravic pointed at the electric signs over the newspaper building which seemed to chase each other without intermission, and at the crowd which was standing there, silently, their heads bent backward, staring at them.

  They remained sitting for a while. An accordion player posted himself at the curb and played La Paloma. The rug peddlers appeared with silken Keshans over their shoulders. A boy sold pistachios at the tables. It looked as it had always looked—until the newspaper boys came. The papers were almost torn from their hands and a few seconds later the terrace, with all the unfolded papers, appeared as if buried under a swarm of huge, white, bloodless moths sitting on their victims greedily, with noiseless flapping wings.

  “There goes Joan,” Morosow said.

  “Where?”

  “Over there, at the corner.”

  Joan walked across the street to a gray open car which was parked in the Champs Elysées. She did not see Ravic. The man who was with her walked around the car and sat down at the wheel. He wore no hat and was rather young. He skillfully maneuvered the car out from between the others. It was a low Delahaye. “Beautiful car,” Ravic said.

  “Beautiful tires,” Morosow replied and snorted. “Iron man Ravic,” he added angrily. “The detached Central European. Beautiful car—accursed wench, that I could understand.”

  Ravic smiled. “What does it matter? Wench or saint—it’s always what one makes out of it oneself. You with your sixteen women, you can’t understand that, you peaceful patron of brothels. Love is not a businessman who wants to see a return on his investments. And imagination needs only a few nails on which to hang its veil. Whether they are of gold, tin, or covered with rust makes no difference to it. Wherever it gets caught, it is caught. Thornbush or rosebush, as soon as the veil of moonlight and mother-of-pearl has fallen on it, either becomes a fairy tale out of A Thousand and One Nights.”

  Morosow took a gulp of wine. “You’re talking too much,” he said. “Besides, all this is wrong.”

  “I know. But in complete darkness even a will-o’-the-wisp is a light, Boris.”

  The coolness came on silver feet from the direction of the Etoile. Ravic put his hand around the frosted glass of wine. It was cool under his hand. His life was cool under his heart. It was borne by the deep breath of night and with it came deep the indifference toward fate. Fate and the future. When had it been like this before? In Antibes, he recalled, when he became aware that Joan would leave him. Indifference that became equanimity. Like the decision not to flee. Not to flee any more. They belonged together. He had had revenge and love. That was enough. It was not everything, but it was as much as a man could ask for. He had not expected either one again. He had killed Haake and not left Paris. He would not leave it now. That was part of it. Who profited by chance must expose himself to it, too. That was not resignation; it was the calm of a decision beyond logic. Vacillation had come to a stop. Something was set in order. One waited, pulled oneself together, and looked around. It was like a mysterious assurance to which existence committed itself before a caesura. Nothing was of significance any longer. All rivers stood still. A lake lifted its mirror during the night and the morning would show whither it would flow.

  “I must go,” Morosow said and looked at his watch. “All right. I’ll stay on, Boris.”

  “To enjoy the last evenings before the Götterdämmerung, eh?”

  “Exactly. All this won’t come again.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “No. Neither will we come again. Yesterday is lost, and no tears or magic spells can bring it back. But today is eternal.”

  “You are talking too much.” Morosow got up. “Be grateful. You are witnessing the end of a century. It has not been a good century.”

  “You also talk too much, Boris.”

  Standing, Morosow emptied his glass. He put it down as carefully as if it were dynamite, and wiped his beard. He was in civilian clothes and stood, huge and heavy, before Ravic. “Don’t think that I don’t understand why you won’t leave,” he said slowly. “I can understand very well your not wanting to move on, you fatalistic joiner of bones.”

  Ravic returned early to the hotel. He saw a little lost figure sitting in the hall, who, at his entrance, excitedly got up from the sofa with an odd movement of both hands. He noticed that one of the trouser legs had no foot. Instead a dirty splintery wooden stump showed underneath.

  “Doctor, doctor!”

  Ravic looked more closely. In the dim light of the hall he saw the face of a youngster, drawn into a broad grin. “Jeannot!” he said in surprise. “Of course, it’s Jeannot!”

  “Yes! The same! I have been waiting here for you the whole evening! It was only this afternoon that I got your address. I tried to get it several times before from that old devil, the head nurse in the hospital. But every time she told me you were not in Paris.”

  “I wasn’t here for a while.”

&nbs
p; “Finally this afternoon she told me you were living here. So I came right away.” Jeannot beamed.

  “Is anything wrong with your leg?” Ravic asked.

  “Nothing!” Jeannot patted the wooden stump as if he were patting the back of a faithful dog. “Absolutely nothing. Everything is perfect.”

  Ravic looked at the stump. “I can see you got what you wanted. How did you get along with the insurance company?”

  “Not bad. They allowed me a mechanical leg. I got the money for it from the shop with a discount of fifteen per cent. Everything in order.”

  “And your dairy shop?”

  “That’s why I am here. We opened the dairy shop. It’s small, but we make out. Mother does the selling. I do the buying and the bookkeeping. We have good sources. Straight from the country.”

  Jeannot limped back to the shabby sofa and fetched a tightly tied package in brown wrapping paper. “Here, doctor! It’s for you! I’ve brought you this. It’s nothing special. But all from our shop—bread, butter, cheese, eggs. When you aren’t in the mood to go out it’s quite a nice supper, isn’t it?”

  He looked eagerly into Ravic’s eyes. “This is a good supper at any time,” Ravic said.

  Jeannot nodded, satisfied. “I hope you’ll like the cheese. It’s Brie and some Pont l’Evêque.”

  “That’s my favorite cheese.”

  “Wonderful!” Jeannot vehemently patted the stump of his leg with pleasure. “The Pont l’Evêque was mother’s idea. I thought you would prefer the Brie. Brie is more of a man’s cheese.”

  “Both are first-rate. You couldn’t have hit on anything better.” Ravic took the package. “Thanks, Jeannot. It doesn’t often happen that patients remember their doctors. Mostly they call on us to haggle about their bills.”

  “The rich ones, eh?” Jeannot nodded shrewdly. “Not us. We are indebted to you for everything, aren’t we? If the leg had only been stiff, we would have received hardly any compensation.”

  Ravic looked at him. Does he perhaps believe I amputated his leg as an obliging act of service? he thought. “We couldn’t do anything but cut it off, Jeannot,” he said.

  “Certainly.” Jeannot winked. “That’s clear.” He pulled his cap lower onto his forehead. “Well, I’ll go now. Mother will be waiting for me. I’ve been away from home for a long time. I got to talk to someone about a new Roquefort too. Adieu, doctor. I hope you’ll like it!”

  “Adieu, Jeannot. Thank you. And much luck.”

  “We’ll have luck!”

  The little figure waved and limped self-confidently out of the hall.

  Ravic unpacked the things in his room. He looked for an old spirit-cooker which he had not used for years and found it. He found somewhere else a package of solidified alcohol and a small pan. He took two squares of the fuel, put it under the boiler, and lit it. The small blue flame flickered. He threw a piece of butter into the pan, broke two eggs, and mixed them. Then he cut the fresh crisp white bread, put the pan on the table, using a few sheets of newspaper as a pad, opened the Brie, got himself a bottle of Vouvray, and began to eat. He hadn’t done this for a long time. He decided to buy more packages of solidified alcohol tomorrow. He could easily take the cooker with him into a camp. It was collapsible.

  Ravic ate slowly. He tried the Pont l’Evêque too. Jeannot was right; it was a good supper.

  32

  “THE EXODUS from Egypt,” said Seidenbaum, the Doctor of Philology and Philosophy, to Ravic and Morosow. “Without Moses.”

  He stood, thin and yellow, at the door of the International. Outside, the Stern and Wagner families and the bachelor Stolz were loading their things. They had hired a van together.

  In the bright August afternoon a number of pieces of furniture were standing on the street. A gilded sofa with an Aubusson cover, a few gilded chairs to match, and a new Aubusson rug. They belonged to the Stern family. An enormous mahogany table stood there too. Selma Stern, a woman with a faded face and velvet eyes, watched over it as a hen over her chicks.

  “Be careful! The top! Don’t scratch it! The top! Take care, take care!”

  The table top was waxed and polished. It was one of the sacred objects for which housewives risk their lives. Selma Stern fluttered around the table and the two furniture movers, who with complete indifference carried it out and put it down.

  The sun shone on the top. Selma Stern bent over it, wiping it with a rag. She polished the corners nervously. The top reflected her pale face like a dark mirror—as if a thousand-year-old ancestress were looking questioningly at her out of the mirror of time.

  The movers appeared with a mahogany buffet. It was also waxed and polished. One of the men turned around too quickly and one of the buffet’s corners grazed the entrance door of the International.

  Selma Stern did not scream. She simply stood there, petrified, her hand with the rag raised, her mouth half open, as if she had been turned to stone when about to put the rag into her mouth.

  Josef Stern, her husband, short, with glasses, and a drooping lower lip, approached her. “Vell, Selmale—”

  She did not see him. She stared into a blank. “The buffet—”

  “Vell, Selmale. Ve hev our visas—”

  “My mother’s buffet. From my parents—”

  “Vell, Selmale, a scretch. So vot, a scretch. The main ting is det ve hev our visas—”

  “Det vill stay. You can never get it off any more.”

  “Madame,” said the furniture mover, who did not understand them but knew exactly what was going on. “Pack up your stuff yourself. I didn’t make the door so narrow.”

  “Sales boches,” the other man said.

  Josef Stern came to life. “Ve are no boches,” he said. “Ve are refugees.”

  “Sales réfugiés,” the man replied.

  “Look, Selmale, here ve are,” Stern said. “Vot are ve going to do now? Vot a business you have made over your mahogany! Ve left Coblenz four monts too late on account you couldn’t separate yourself from it. Ve hed to pay eighteen tousand marks more refugee tax! And now ve’re standing here on de street and de ship von’t vait.”

  He turned his head and looked at Morosow in distress. “Vot can ve do?” he said. “Sales boches! Sales réfugiés! If I tell him now ve are Jews he would say sales juifs, and den everyting is lost.”

  “Give him money,” Morosow said.

  “Money? He’ll trow it in my face.”

  “Not a chance,” Ravic replied. “Anyone who curses that way is always open to bribes.”

  “It is against my character. To be insulted and to hev to pay for it on top of it.”

  “Real insults don’t begin until they become personal,” Morosow explained. “This was a general insult. Turn the insult against the man by giving him a tip.”

  A smile sparkled in Stern’s eyes. “Goot,” he said to Morosow. “Goot.”

  He took a few bills out of his pocket and gave them to the men. Both took them contemptuously. Stern contemptuously put his wallet back. The furniture movers looked at each other. Then they began to load the Aubusson chairs into the van. They took the buffet as the last piece, on principle. As they loaded it, they gave it a twist and its right side scraped against the van. Selma Stern quivered, but she did not say anything. Stern did not even notice it. He was checking over his visas and other papers again.

  “Nothing looks so depressing as furniture on the street,” Morosow said.

  Now the belongings of the Wagner family were standing there. A few chairs, a bed which looked shameless and sad in the middle of the sidewalk. Two suitcases with clothing. Various hotel labels on the suitcases—Viareggio, the Grand Hotel Gardone, the Adlon Berlin. A rotary mirror in a gilded frame reflecting the street. Kitchen utensils—one did not know why such things were being taken to America.

  “Relatives,” Léonie Wagner said. “Relatives in Chicago have done all this for us. They sent us the money. And they got us the visa. It’s only a visitor’s visa. We must go to Mexico after th
at. Relatives. Relatives of ours.”

  She was ashamed. She felt like a deserter as long as she felt the eyes of those who remained behind resting on her. That’s why she wanted to get away quickly. She helped to push her belongings into the furniture van. She would breathe freely as soon as she was around the next corner. And the new anxiety would begin. Whether the ship would leave. Whether she would be permitted to go ashore. Whether they would send her back. It had always been one anxiety after the other. For years.

  The bachelor Stolz had little more than books. A suitcase with clothing and his library. First editions, old editions, new books. He was ill-proportioned, red-haired, and reticent.

  A number of those remaining behind slowly gathered at the door and in front of the hotel. Most of them were silent. They merely looked at the things and the furniture van.

  “Then auf Wiedersehen,” Léonie Wagner said nervously. They had finished loading. “Or goodbye.” She laughed in vexation. “Or adieu. Nowadays one no longer knows what to say.”

  She began to shake hands with a few people. “Relatives,” she said. “Relatives over there. Naturally, we alone would never have been able—”

  She soon stopped. Dr. Ernst Seidenbaum tapped her on the shoulder. “Never mind. Some are lucky, others not.”

  “Most of us not,” the refugee Wiesenhoff said. “Never mind. Have a nice trip.”

  Josef Stern said goodbye to Ravic and Morosow and some of the others. He smiled like someone who had perpetrated a fraud. “Who knows vot is vaiting for us? Maybe ve’ll vish ve vere beck et de International.”

  Selma Stern was already sitting in the car. The bachelor Stolz did not say goodbye. He was not going to America. He had only papers for Portugal. He thought that too insignificant for a farewell scene. He simply waved his hand briefly as the car rattled away.

  Those remaining stood around like wet chickens. “Come,” Morosow said to Ravic. “Let’s go! To the Catacombs! This calls for calvados!”

  They had hardly taken their seats when the others came in. They drifted in like autumn leaves before a wind. Two rabbis, pale, with thin beards; Wiesenhoff, Ruth Goldberg, the chess automaton Finkenstein, the fatalist Seidenbaum, a few couples; half a dozen children; Rosenfeld, the owner of the Impressionists, who had not got away after all; a few half-grown youngsters and several very old people.