Lillian did not grasp it at once. The loud-speaker was not clear; the voice in it seemed smothered and incomprehensible because of its own echoes. In his excitement, the announcer was standing too close to the microphone. She heard something about cars that had gone off the track and crashed because another car had lost its oil on the road. Then she saw the pack passing the stand. It could not be so bad, she thought, or the race would not be continuing. She looked for Clerfayt’s number. She did not find it, but he might already have passed; she had not been paying too close attention. The loud-speaker was now saying rather more clearly that an accident had taken place on the quai de Plaisance; several cars had collided and some drivers had been injured, none killed; there would be more news shortly. The positions now were: Frigerio, with fifteen seconds lead, Conti, Duval, Meyer III.…
Lillian strained to listen. Nothing about Clerfayt; he had been second. Nothing about Clerfayt, she thought, and heard the cars coming and leaned forward to see the Twelve, the red car with the number Twelve.
It did not come, and into the barren stillness of horror that spread through her rolled the announcer’s bland voice: “Among the injured is Clerfayt; he is being taken to the hospital. It appears that he is unconscious. Monti has injuries to his knee and foot, Sacchetti—”
It cannot be, something inside Lillian thought. Not in this toy race, not in this toy city with its toy harbor and its pretty toy panorama! It must be a mistake. His car will come shooting out of the distance from somewhere in a moment, as it did that time at the Targa Florio, perhaps delayed slightly, gouged and battered, but otherwise safe and sound. But even as she thought this, she felt the hope growing hollow, collapsing, before it had become established. Unconscious, she thought, and clung to the word. What does that mean?
It could mean anything. She became aware that she had unknowingly left the stands. She was on the way to the pit; perhaps he had been taken there. He would lie on a stretcher, having done something to his shoulder as in the Targa Florio, or to his arm, and would laugh at his hard luck.
“He’s been taken to the hospital,” the manager said, sweating. “Holy Mother of God, holy Christopher, why should this happen to us? Why not to the others or—what? One moment!”
He rushed away to signal. The cars shot past; so close, they looked bigger and more dangerous than from the stands, and their thunder excluded everything else. “What has happened?” Lillian cried. “Forget your damned race and tell me what has happened.”
She looked around. No one met her eyes. The mechanics busied themselves with spare parts and tires, and avoided looking up. When she approached one of them, he moved away. It was as though she had the plague.
The manager came back at last. “It wouldn’t help Clerfayt any for me to let the race go to the devil,” he said hoarsely. “He wouldn’t want that, either. He’d want—”
Lillian interrupted him. “Where is he? I don’t want any sermons on racing drivers’ code of honor.”
“In the hospital. They took him straight to the hospital.”
“Why isn’t anyone with him, to help him? Why not you? Why are you here?”
The manager looked at her uncomprehendingly. “How could I help him? Or anyone here? That’s a job for the doctors.”
Lillian swallowed. “What happened to him?” she asked softly.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him. We were all right here. We have to stay here, you know.”
“Yes,” Lillian said. “So that the race can go on.”
“That’s the way it is,” the manager replied forlornly. “We’re all only employees.”
A mechanic came hurrying up to them. The growl of the cars was swelling. “Signorina—” the manager spread his hands and looked toward the track. “I must—”
“Is he dead?” Lillian asked.
“No, no! Unconscious. The doctors—sorry, Signorina, I must—”
The manager snatched a placard from a box and rushed out to give his signals. Lillian heard him crying: “Madonna, Madonna, oh that damned oil; why must this happen to me; damn this life of mine!” He held his placard toward someone, waved, and held one hand high, and remained standing, although the pack was already gone, staring hard at the road, unwilling to return to the pit.
Lillian slowly turned to go. “We’re coming—after the race, Signorina,” one of the mechanics whispered. “Right after the race.”
The black canopy of noise continued to overhang the city as she rode to the hospital. She had found only one of the horse-drawn carriages decorated with flags and colored ribbons, and a funny straw hat for the horse. “It will take longer than usual, Mademoiselle,” the driver explained to her. “We must make a big detour. The streets are blocked off. Because of the race, you understand—”
Lillian nodded. She sat wrapped in grief that seemed not to be grief, rather, a dull ache that had been deadened by a narcotic. Nothing functioned completely inside her, nothing but her ears and eyes, which heard the motors and saw the cars clearly, with excessive sharpness, so that she could scarcely endure it. The driver chattered and tried to point out the sights. She did not hear; she heard only the motors. Someone tried to stop the carriage and have a word with her. She did not understand what he was saying, and had the driver halt. Perhaps, she thought, it was someone with a message from Clerfayt. The man, an Italian in a white suit, with a thin black mustache, invited her to dinner. “What?” she asked uncomprehendingly. “What else?”
The man smiled. “There might be more. That would be up to you.”
She did not reply. She no longer saw the man. Her eyes dropped him; he knew nothing about Clerfayt. “Go on!” she ordered the driver. “Faster.”
“All these sporty types have no money,” the driver opined. “You were right to give him the brush-off. Who knows, you might have had to pay for the dinner yourself in the end. Older men are more reliable.”
“Faster,” Lillian said.
“As you please, Mademoiselle.”
It took an eternity before they stopped in front of the hospital. Lillian had made many vows in the meanwhile, vows she believed she would keep. She would not leave, she would stay, she would marry Clerfayt, if only he would live! She made these vows and let them drop like stones into a pond, without thinking about them.
“Monsieur Clerfayt is in the operating room,” the nurse at the reception desk said.
“Can you tell me how badly he is hurt?”
“I’m sorry, Madame. Are you Madame Clerfayt?”
“No.”
“Related?”
“What has that to do with it?”
“Nothing, Mademoiselle. Only our rules are such that after the operation only the nearest relations will be allowed to see him for a minute.”
Lillian stared at the nurse. Should she say that she was Clerfayt’s fiancée? How absurd was that. “Must he be operated on?” she asked.
“So it would seem; otherwise he would not be in the operating room.”
Lillian stared at the nurse. The kind that can’t stand me, she thought. She had experience with nurses. “May I wait?” she asked.
The nurse gestured toward a bench. “Don’t you have a waiting room?” Lillian asked.
The nurse pointed to a door. Lillian went into the dreary room in which tired potted plants drooped, old magazines lay beached, and flies hummed around a ribbon of flypaper depending from the ceiling over the center table. The noise of the motors reached even into this place, like frenzied, distant drums, muted but there.
Time became sticky as the flypaper on which the flies died a slow, tortured death. Lillian fretted the worn magazines, opened and closed them, tried to read and could not, got up and went to the window and sat down again. The room smelled of anxiety, of all the anxiety that had been radiated into it. She tried to open the window, but closed it again because the growl of the motors immediately leaped in upon her. After a while, a woman came in with a baby. The baby began to cry; the woman opened her blouse and nursed i
t. The child smacked its lips and fell asleep. The woman smiled shyly at Lillian and buttoned her blouse.
A few minutes later, the nurse opened the door. Lillian stood up, but the nurse paid no attention to her; she nodded to the woman with the baby to come with her. Lillian sat down again. Suddenly she listened. Something had changed. She felt it at the nape of her neck. A tension had ceased; something had relaxed. It took a while before she realized that it was the stillness; the roar of the motors had stopped. The race was over.
Fifteen minutes later, she saw an open car, with the manager and two mechanics in it, draw up to the hospital and stop. The reception nurse brought them into the waiting room. They stood around, grim and downcast.
“Have you found out anything?” Lillian asked.
The manager indicated the younger mechanic. “He was there when they pulled him out.”
“He was bleeding from the mouth,” the mechanic said.
“From the mouth?”
“Yes, it was like a hemorrhage.”
“That’s impossible. He wasn’t sick!”
Lillian looked at the man. What gruesome confusion was this? A hemorrhage belonged to her, not to Clerfayt. “How could he have a hemorrhage?” she asked.
“His chest was jammed against the steering wheel,” the mechanic said.
Lillian slowly shook her head. “No,” she said. “No!”
The manager went to the door. “I’m going to see if I can find the doctor.”
Lillian heard him in violent argument with the nurse. The sound faded, and the hot silence returned, with the two mechanics breathing loudly and the flies buzzing.
The manager came back. He stood still in the doorway. His eyes looked unnaturally white in his tanned face. He moved his lips several times before he spoke. Then he said: “Clerfayt is dead.”
The mechanics stared at him. “Did they operate on him?” the younger one said. “The doctors must have done something wrong.”
“They didn’t operate. He died before they could.”
All three men looked at Lillian. She did not move. “Where is he?” she asked at last.
“They’re preparing him.”
With great effort, she said: “Have you seen him?”
The manager nodded.
“Where is he?”
“It’s better if you don’t see him now,” the man replied. “You can see him tomorrow.”
“Who says that?” Lillian asked in a voice lacking all emotion. “Who says that?” she repeated.
“The doctor. You wouldn’t recognize him. It will be better if you come tomorrow. We can drive you to the hotel.”
Lillian remained where she was. “Why wouldn’t I recognize him?”
The manager did not answer for a while. “His face,” he said at last. “It was bashed in. The steering wheel crushed his chest. The doctor thinks he didn’t know a thing. It happened too fast. He lost consciousness immediately, and didn’t wake up again. Do you think it doesn’t hit us hard, too?” he said in a louder voice. “We knew him longer than you did!”
“Yes,” Lillian replied, “you knew him longer than I did.”
“I don’t mean it that way. I mean, this is how it always is when someone dies—suddenly he’s gone. He no longer speaks. He’s just been here and then he isn’t here any longer. Who can grasp it? I mean, we feel the same way. We stand here and can’t grasp it. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Then come with us,” the manager said. “We’ll take you to the hotel. This is enough for today. Tomorrow you can see him.”
“What would I do in the hotel?” Lillian asked.
The man shrugged. “Call a doctor. Tell him to give you a shot. A strong one, so you’ll sleep till tomorrow. Come along now. There’s nothing more you can do here. He’s dead. None of us can do anything any more. When a man’s dead, it’s over; there’s nothing more to be done.” He took a step forward and placed a hand on her arm. “Come! I know what it’s like. Porca miseria, this isn’t the first time for me. But damn it, it’s always the first time.”
Chapter Twenty-one
SHE AWOKE FROM SEETHING SLEEP. For a moment, she had no connection with the world; then the grief stabbed sharply through her. She sat upright in bed with a jerk, and looked around. How had she come here? Slowly, she remembered—the deadly, late afternoon, the wandering about in the small city, the early evening, the hospital, Clerfayt’s alien, damaged face, the head lying somewhat askew, the hands that someone had folded as if in prayer, the doctor who had come with her. It was all not true, it was not right, it could not be so—it was not Clerfayt who should be stretched out on the hospital bed, but she, she alone, and not he; it was a horrible distortion; someone had put across a dreadful, sinister joke.
She got up and drew the curtains apart. The sun rushed in. The cloudless sky, the palms in the light and the brilliant flower beds in the hotel’s garden made the death of Clerfayt seem even more incomprehensible. Me, Lillian thought, it was supposed to be me, it was destined for me, not for him! In a strange way, she felt that she had been unfaithful; she felt like someone who had been left over, whose time was long past, who was still living only by a mistake, for whom someone else had been killed, and over whom the vague, gray shadow of murder hovered, as it might over a driver so overtired that he had run over a person he could have avoided.
The telephone rang. She started and lifted it. The representative of a funeral home in Nice recommended his firm for a coffin, a plot, and a dignified burial at fair prices. In case the body was to be sent home, zinc coffins were available.
She hung up. She did not know what she ought to do. Where was Clerfayt’s home? Where he had been born? Somewhere in Alsace-Lorraine? She did not know where. The telephone shrilled again. This time it was the hospital. What was to be done with the body? It had to be disposed of, by afternoon at the latest. A coffin must be ordered.
Lillian looked at the clock. It was noon. She dressed. With ringing and bustle, the demands of death were assailing her. I ought to have black clothes, she thought. A firm that delivered wreaths telephoned. Another wanted to know what Clerfayt’s religion had been, in order to reserve time for the church ceremony. Or had the deceased been a freethinker?
Lillian could still feel the effects of the strong sedative she had taken. Nothing seemed quiet real. She went downstairs to ask the desk clerk for advice. A man in a dark-blue suit rose as soon as he saw her. She turned away; she could not endure the professional expression of condolence.
“Order a coffin,” she said to the clerk. “Do whatever is necessary.”
The clerk explained to her that the authorities had to be informed. Did she wish an autopsy? Sometimes it was necessary to determine the cause of death. What for? Because of later claims. The automobile firm could attempt to make the sponsors of the race bear the responsibility. Then there was also the insurance to consider; moreover, there were other possible complications. It was best to be prepared for everything.
It seemed simple to die—but not to be dead. Did she want Clerfayt buried at the cemetery here? “In the suicides’ cemetery?” Lillian asked. “No.”
The clerk smiled forbearingly. The suicides’ cemetery was a legend, like so much else at Monte Carlo. There was a proper, beautiful cemetery here, where the citizens of Monaco were buried. Did she have Clerfayt’s identification papers?
“Papers? Does he still need papers?”
The clerk was once more the soul of understanding. Of course papers were necessary. They would have to be obtained. He would also get in touch with the police.
“The police?”
In any accident, the police had to be notified at once. That had undoubtedly already been done by the firm and the race committee; but the police must also release the body. Everything was only a matter of form, of course, but it had to be done. He would attend to it all.
Lillian nodded. She suddenly wanted to get out of the hotel. She was afraid she would faint. It
occurred to her that she had eaten nothing since yesterday noon, but she could not bear the thought of entering the hotel restaurant. Quickly, she left the lobby and went to the Café de Paris. She ordered coffee, and sat for a long time without drinking it. Automobiles rolled past and stopped in front of the casino; the usual sight-seeing buses came, and hordes of tourists gathered around the drivers, whom they then obediently followed into their petty-bourgeois dream of Babylon. Lillian started in alarm when a man sat down at her table. She finished her coffee and got up. She did not know what she wanted to do. She tried to tell herself that if there had been no accident, she would be alone now anyway, in Paris or on her way to Switzerland. It did not help; the hole in the ground beside her was there; it led into a bottomless abyss and could not be reasoned away. Clerfayt was dead; that was different from his not being with her.
She found a bench from which she could look at the ocean. She had the feeling that there were many urgent things she had to do; but she could not decide on any of them. Clerfayt, she thought again and again—Clerfayt, not me! What does that mean? Everything was insane. She was the one to die, not he. What ghastly irony was this?
She returned to the hotel and went to her room without speaking to anyone. At the door, she stopped. Dead air puffed into her face; everything in the room seemed to have died along with it.
She remembered that the desk clerk had asked for Clerfayt’s papers. She did not know where they were, and had a horror of going to Clerfayt’s room. She knew, from the sanatorium, that it was often harder to see the things the deceased had left behind than the body itself.