Gérard shook his head, and drank greedily. He looked over at the telephone. Lillian saw that he was afraid the police would be tracing the call. “They thought someone had fired a shot,” he said. “It was the cork. Why is tragedy often so frightfully comic?”
Lillian handed the bottle to him to refill their glasses. “I must go,” he said.
“This time it’s you who must go. Good night, Gérard.”
He looked at the bottle. “If you don’t want any more, can I take it along?”
“No, Gérard. You can stay and help drink it, or make your safe retreat. It’s a choice.”
He took himself off, disappearing through the door with rapid strides. Now the night comes, alone, she thought, and gave the bottle to the porter. “You drink it. Is the radio still upstairs?”
“Of course, Mademoiselle.”
She ascended. The radio’s chrome and glass glistened in the darkness. She turned on the light and waited for a while at the window to see whether a police car would pass. She saw nothing. Slowly, she undressed. She considered whether she ought to hang her allies, the dresses, around her overnight; but she did not do so. The time for those aids was past, she thought. However, she left the lamp on and took sleeping tablets.
She awoke as though she were being hurled out of something. Through the curtains, the sun’s rays stabbed at the wan electric bulb. The telephone shrilled. The police, she thought, and lifted the receiver.
It was Clerfayt. “We’ve just arrived in Brescia!”
“Brescia!” She shook off the remnants of a dream already flying into oblivion. “You’ve come through!”
“In sixth place.” Clerfayt laughed.
“Sixth. That’s wonderful.”
“It doesn’t mean a thing. I’m coming back tomorrow. I’ll get some sleep now. Torriani is already fast asleep in the chair next to me.”
“Yes, sleep. It’s good you called.”
“Will you go to the Riviera with me?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Wait for me.”
“Yes, darling.”
“Don’t go away before I come.”
Where would I go? she thought. To Brescia? “I’ll wait for you,” she said.
After noon, she walked along the rue de Seine. The street was the same as always. She searched the columns of the newspapers. She found nothing. That a human being had died was too small a matter for a newspaper item.
Chapter Nineteen
“I BOUGHT THE HOUSE long before the war,” Clerfayt said. “In those days, you could buy half the Riviera for a song. I’ve never spent any time here, only bought a few things and stored them in the place. As you see, it’s built in the most ghastly style, but the stucco ornamentation could be knocked off and the whole place modernized and decently furnished.”
Lillian laughed. “Why? Do you really want to live here?”
“Why not?”
She looked out of the dim room into the darkening garden with its gravel paths. The sea could not be seen from here. “Perhaps when you’re sixty-five,” she said. “No sooner. After a hard-working life in Toulouse. Then you can lead the life of a good French pensioner here, with an occasional dinner in the Hôtel de Paris and an outing to the casino on Sundays.”
“The garden is big, and there’s a lot could be done with the house,” Clerfayt replied, undeterred. “I have the money for it. The Mille Miglia proved quite remunerative. I hope I’ll add to the building fund with the race in Monaco. Why does it seem to you so impossible to live here? Where else would you like to live?”
“I don’t know, Clerfayt.”
“Come now, people know such things. At least they have a general idea.”
“I don’t,” Lillian said, with a touch of panic. “Nowhere. To want to live anywhere is always to want to die somewhere.”
“The climate here in the winter is a hundred times better than in Paris.”
“In the winter!” Lillian picked up the words as if she were saying Sirius and Styx and Eternity.
“Winter comes faster than you think. We would have to start the remodeling soon if we wanted to be finished by winter.”
Lillian looked around the gloomy room. I don’t want to be a captive here, she thought. “Don’t you have to work in Toulouse in the winter?” she asked.
“I can do that also. I only want to settle you somewhere during the winter where the climate is best for you.”
What do I care about the climate, Lillian thought. In desperation, she said: “The sanatorium has the best climate.”
Clerfayt looked at her. “Ought you to go back there?”
She did not answer.
“Would you like to go back there?” he asked.
“What do you want me to answer to that? Am I not here?”
“Have you asked a doctor? Have you ever asked a doctor down here?”
“This is nothing I need to ask a doctor about.”
He looked mistrustfully at her. “We’ll go together and see a doctor. I’ll find the best doctor in France for you, and we’ll ask him.”
Lillian did not reply. So we’re going through that, too! she thought. Earlier, Clerfayt had asked her every so often whether she had been going to the doctor, but he had been satisfied with her assurances that she was. This was different. It fitted right in with the house, the future, love, solicitude, with all the fine names for things she had to brush aside because they only made dying harder. The next logical step would be for him to try to pack her off to a hospital.
A bird began singing shrilly outside the window. “Let’s go out,” Clerfayt said suddenly. “This fancy chandelier gives the damnedest light. But all that can be changed.”
Outside, the evening leaned against the stucco house walls, with their fake Moorish ornamentation. Lillian took a deep breath. She felt as if she had escaped. “The truth is that you don’t want to live with me, Lillian,” Clerfayt said. “I know it.”
“But I am living with you,” she replied miserably.
“You’re living with me like someone who won’t be there tomorrow.”
“Didn’t you want it that way?”
“Maybe—but now I don’t want it that way any longer. Have you ever wanted to live differently with me?”
“No,” she said softly. “But not with anyone else either, Clerfayt.”
“Why not?”
She remained defiantly silent. Why is he asking these foolish questions? she thought. “We’ve talked about it often enough,” she said at last. “Why go into it again?”
“A relationship can change. Is love something so contemptible?”
She shook her head.
He looked at her. “Never in my life have I really wanted anything very intensely for myself. Now I do. I want you.”
“But you have me.”
“Not enough.”
He wants to tie me down and lock me in, she thought, and he is proud of it and calls it marriage and tenderness and love, and refuses to understand that the thing he is proud of is what is driving me away. Full of hatred, she looked at the little villa with its gravel paths. Did I run away from the mountains to end up here? she thought. Here or in Toulouse or in Brescia? What has become of the adventure? What has become of Clerfayt? What has changed him? Why don’t we laugh it off? What else is there left for me to do?
“We can at least try it,” Clerfayt said. “If it doesn’t work out, we’ll sell the house.”
I have no more time to try things out, Lillian thought. And I have no time for experiments with domestic bliss. I must leave. I also have no more time for such conversations. I’ve known all that up at the sanatorium, and I fled from there, too.
She grew calm. She still did not know what she would do, but that she could do something made everything less unbearable. She did not fear unhappiness; she had lived too long with it and by it. She also did not fear happiness, as did so many of those who thought they were seeking it. What she feared was the prison of mediocrity.
T
hat evening, there were fireworks over the sea. The night was clear and a great vault, and since the horizon was formed by sky and sea, the rockets rose and fell as if they were being shot off into infinity and plunging each time beyond the earth into a space that was no longer space because it seemed to have no limits. Lillian recalled the last fireworks she had seen, at the ski lodge. That had been the evening before her departure. Was she not again on the eve of a departure? The decisions of my life seem to take place amid fireworks, she thought. But had not everything that had happened been essentially that—fireworks that were now beginning to fade and turn to ashes and cinders? She looked around. Not yet, she thought anxiously, not yet, not now! Was there not always, before the end, at least one last great flare in which everything was squandered on a grand finale?
“We haven’t gambled yet,” Clerfayt said. “Have you ever done that? At the casino, I mean.”
“No.”
“Then you have to see what it’s like. It’s kind of fun. Besides, the innocent always bring luck. Shall we drive over? Or are you tired? It’s already two o’clock.”
“Early in the morning! Who would be tired then?”
They drove slowly, through the sparkling night. “At last it’s warm,” Lillian said, leaning back.
“We can stay here until it’s summer in Paris also.”
She leaned against him. “Why don’t people live forever, Clerfayt? Without death?”
He put his arm around her shoulders. “Yes, why not? Why do we grow old? Why can’t we all live as if we were thirty, until we’re eighty, and then die quickly?”
She laughed softly. “I’m far from thirty yet.”
“That’s true,” Clerfayt said. Somewhat taken aback, he released her. “I keep forgetting that. I have the feeling that you’ve grown at least five years older in three months—you’ve changed so much. You’ve grown five years more beautiful. And ten years more dangerous.”
They played in the big salons first; then, when these emptied, in the smaller ones, where the stakes were higher. Clerfayt began to win. He played trente et quarante at first, and then went to a roulette table where the maximum was higher than at the others. “Keep standing behind me,” he said to Lillian. “You’re bringing me luck.”
Clerfayt played the twelves, the twenty-twos, and the nines. He gradually lost until he had only enough chips to bet the maximum once more. He placed it on red. Red won. He took in half the winnings and left the rest on red. Red won again. He let the maximum stand. Red won twice more. The chips were heaped up in front of Clerfayt now. Other players in the salon began to watch. The table was now crowded. Lillian spotted Prince Fiola, her dancing partner at the party in Sicily. He, too, came over to the table. He smiled at her and bet on black. Red won again. At the next turn, black was covered with maximum bets from all sides, and players thronged around the table three rows deep. Almost all were betting against Clerfayt. Only a withered old woman in an evening dress of blue chiffon continued to join him in betting on red.
The room was very quiet. The ball rattled. The old woman sneezed. Red won again.
Fiola made a sign to Clerfayt to quit; the series had to stop, after all. Clerfayt shook his head and again left the maximum on red.
“Il est fou,” someone behind Lillian said.
At the last moment, the old woman, who had already taken in her winnings, pushed everything back on to red. In the silence, she could be heard breathing violently, and then holding her breath. She was trying to suppress another fit of sneezing. Her hand lay like a claw on the green cloth. Beside it, she had a small green tortoise as a mascot.
Red once again. The old woman’s sneeze exploded. “Formidable,” the woman behind Lillian said. “Who is that?”
There was scarcely any betting on numbers now. The rumor of the unprecedented run on red had spread through the casino. A battery of large chips accumulated in heaped-up rows on black. Red had come seven times; the color had to change. Clerfayt was the only one to stick to red. In her excitement, the old woman at the last moment bet the tortoise. Before she could change it, a whisper ran through the hall; red had won again.
“Madame, we cannot duplicate your tortoise,” the croupier said, and pushed the creature with its wise, ancient head back across the table to its owner.
“But what about my winnings!” the old crone croaked.
“Excuse me, Madame, but you neither placed your bet nor announced it.”
“But you could see I wanted to bet. That’s good enough.”
“You must either bet or announce your bet before the ball falls.”
The old woman threw an embittered glance around. “Faites vos jeux,” the croupier called mechanically.
Clerfayt again bet on red. Irritably, the old woman placed her stake on black. All the others likewise chose black. Fiola bet on the six and black.
Red came again. Now Clerfayt took in his winnings. He pushed a number of chips over to the croupier and stood up. “You really have brought me luck,” he said to Lillian, and lingered until the ball lay still again. Black had won. “You see,” he said. “Sometimes there is something like a sixth sense.”
She smiled. If only you had it in matters of love! she thought.
Fiola came over to them. “Congratulations. Quitting at the right time is the great art of life.” He turned to Lillian. “Don’t you agree?”
“I don’t know. I’ve had no practice at it.”
He laughed. “I don’t believe that. You vanished from Sicily and left behind a good deal of confusion in a good many minds. You arrived in Rome and were gone like a flash of lightning. In Venice, too, nobody could find you, I’ve been told.”
They went to the bar to celebrate Clerfayt’s luck. “With what I’ve won, I think I have enough to have the house redone right now,” he exulted.
“You can lose it again tomorrow.”
“Would you like that?” he asked mistrustfully.
“Of course not.”
“I’m through playing,” he declared. “We’ll keep it all. I’ll even have a swimming pool built into the garden for you.”
“I don’t need one. I don’t swim—you know that perfectly well.”
He threw her a quick glance. “I know. Are you tired?”
“No.”
“A series of nine reds is almost a miracle,” Fiola said. “Only once in my life have I seen a longer series. Black twelve times. That was before the war. In those days, there were tables with a much higher maximum than they have in the cercle privé today. The man who played the series broke the bank. He bet on black and then on thirteen. The thirteen came six times in twelve coups. It was a sensation. Everybody was betting with him, so that he ruined the bank twice in a night. The man was a Russian. What was his name again? Volkov, or something like that. Yes, that was it, Volkov.”
“Volkov?” Lillian asked incredulously. “Not Boris Volkov?”
“Right, Boris Volkov! Did you know him?”
Lillian shook her head. Not that way, she thought. She saw that Clerfayt was observing her.
“I wish I knew what became of the fellow,” Fiola said. “There was a man who created a sensation here! One of the last gamblers in the great tradition. A first-class marksman besides. He was here with Maria Andersen at the time. You may have heard of her. One of the most beautiful women in Europe. She was killed in an air raid in Milan.” He turned to Clerfayt. “Haven’t you ever heard of Volkov?”
“Never,” Clerfayt said.
“Strange! He drove in a few races at the time, too. As an amateur of course. I’ve rarely seen anyone who could stand so much alcohol. Probably he wrecked himself with it; he certainly gave the impression that he was out to do that.”
Clerfayt’s expression had darkened. He signaled to the waiter to bring another bottle. “Are you going to play any more tonight?” Fiola asked him. “You’d better not.”
“Why not? Series come in series. Who knows, there may be another run of black thirteen times.”
r /> “A great mistake to go back to the table,” Fiola said to Lillian. “That’s a law as old as the world.”
Lillian looked in Clerfayt’s direction. This time he had not asked her to come along to bring him luck, and she knew why. How childish he is, she thought tenderly. And how blind is his jealousy! Has he forgotten that it is never the other man, but always and only oneself, who does the wrecking?
“On the other hand, you ought to play,” Fiola said. “This is your first time here. Would you like to play for me? Come!”
They went to another table. Fiola began placing stakes, and after a few minutes, Lillian, too, changed a few bills of her own into jettons. She cautiously staked small sums; money was more than possession to her, it was a fragment of life. She did not ever want to be dependent upon her uncle’s grudging help.
She began to win almost at once. “That’s the child’s hand,” said Fiola, who was losing. “This is your night! Do you mind if I go along with you?”
“You’ll regret it.”
“Not in gambling. Just follow your hunches.”
For a time, Lillian placed her bets on red and black, then the second douzaine, and finally on numbers. Twice she won on zero. “Nothingness loves you,” Fiola said.
The old woman with the tortoise appeared. She sat down opposite Lillian, with an angry face. Between stakes, she whispered with the turtle. On her yellow hand a diamond of great beauty rotated loosely. Her neck was as wrinkled as that of the tortoise, and Lillian saw the resemblance between the two. They also had the same kind of almost lidless eyes which showed no whites.
Lillian was now playing alternately black and thirteen. When she looked up after a while, she saw that Clerfayt was standing across the table, watching her play. Without thinking of it, she had followed the same betting pattern as Boris Volkov, and she saw that Clerfayt had noticed it. Rebelliously, she continued to bet on thirteen. After six coups it came. “Enough,” she said, and raked her jettons into her bag. She had won, but did not know how much.
“Do you want to go on soon?” Fiola asked. “This is your night—that’s plain. It will never come again!”