“Everyone would like to do that.”
“You, too?”
“Me, too.”
“Then why don’t we do it?”
“It would not change anything. We would only feel the glass ring that surrounds us more keenly. Or else shatter it, cut ourselves on its sharp edges, and bleed to death.”
“You, too?”
Boris looked at the thin figure before him. How little she knew about him, for all she thought she understood him! “I have accepted it,” he said, knowing that this was not true. “It’s simpler, Dusha. Before we consume ourselves with pointless hatred of it, we ought to try to see whether we can’t live with it.”
Lillian felt a wave of weariness coming over her. Here they were, at it again, the everlasting discussion in which you entangled yourself as in a spider web. It was all perfectly true, but how did that help you?
“Accepting is resignation,” she murmured after a while. “I’m not yet old enough for that.”
Why doesn’t he go? she thought. And why do I insult him even when I don’t want to? Why should I despise him for being here longer than I have and for having the good fortune to think differently about it? Why does it drive me wild that he is like the man in prison who thanks God for not having been executed—and I like the one who curses God because he isn’t free.
“Don’t mind me, Boris,” she said. “I’m just talking. It’s noon and the vodka and the föhn. And perhaps X-ray panic, too—only I don’t want to admit it. Up here, no news is bad news.”
The bells of the church down in the village began to ring. Volkov stood up and lowered the awning somewhat to shut out the sun. “Eva Moser is being discharged tomorrow,” he said. “Well.”
“I know. She’s been discharged twice before.”
“This time she really is well. The Crocodile told me so.”
Through the fading clangor of the bells, Lillian suddenly heard Giuseppe’s roar. The car sped up the serpentines and stopped. She wondered why Clerfayt was bringing it up; this was the first time since the day of his arrival.
“I hope he doesn’t intend to go skiing with the car,” Volkov said.
“Certainly not. Why?”
“He’s parked it on the slope behind the fir trees. By the practice field for novices, not in front of the hotel.”
“He must have his reasons. Tell me, why can’t you bear him, really?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps because I was once much like him.”
“You?” Lillian replied sleepily. “That must have been a long time ago.”
“Yes,” Volkov said. “That was long ago.”
Half an hour later, Lillian heard Clerfayt’s car drive off. Boris had already left. She continued to lie for a while, eyes closed, looking at the flickering brightness under her eyelids. Then she stood up and went downstairs.
To her surprise, she saw Clerfayt sitting on a bench in front of the sanatorium. “I thought you drove down just before,” she said, sitting down beside him.
He blinked into the strong light. “That was Hollmann.”
“Hollmann?”
“Yes. I sent him to the village to buy a bottle of vodka.”
“With the car?”
“Yes,” Clerfayt said. “With the car. It was high time for him to be getting his hands on the wheel of that buggy.”
They heard the motor again. Clerfayt stood up and listened. “Now we’ll see what he does—whether he comes right back up here like a good little boy, or whether he tears off in Giuseppe.”
“Tears off? Where?”
“Wherever he likes. There’s plenty of gas in the tank—enough to take him practically to Zurich.”
“What?” Lillian asked. “What’s that you’re saying?”
Clerfayt was listening again. “He’s not coming back. He’s driving along the village street toward the lake and the highway. See, there he is already—beyond the Palace Hotel. Thank God!”
Lillian had sprung to her feet. “Thank God? Are you crazy? You’ve sent him off in an open sports car? To Zurich if he likes? Don’t you realize that he’s sick?”
“That’s just the reason. He already had the idea he’d forgotten how to drive.”
“And suppose he catches cold?”
Clerfayt laughed. “He’s warmly dressed. And cars have the same effect on racing drivers as evening dresses on women—if they’re having fun, they never catch cold in the one or the other.”
Lillian stared at him. “And suppose he does catch cold just the same? Do you know what that means up here? Water on the lungs, adhesions, dangerous relapses. Up here a cold can mean the end of you.”
Clerfayt looked at her. He thought her considerably more attractive than she had seemed last night. “You ought to keep that in mind when you play hooky and go to the Palace bar at night, instead of staying in bed,” he said. “In a skimpy evening dress and satin shoes.”
“That has nothing to do with Hollmann!”
“Of course not. But I believe in the therapy of the forbidden. I thought you did, too.”
Lillian was perplexed for a moment. Then she said: “Not for others.”
“Good. Most people believe in it only for others.” Clerfayt looked down toward the lake. “There he is. See him? Just listen to the way he’s taking the curves. He hasn’t forgotten how to shift yet. Tonight he’ll be a different man.”
“Where? In Zurich?”
“Anywhere. Here too.”
“Tonight he’ll be in bed with a fever.”
“I don’t think so. And even so! Better a little fever than for him to go skulking around the car and thinking he’s a cripple.”
Lillian turned sharply. It was as though he had slapped her. Cripple, she thought. Because Hollmann is sick? How dare he, this ignorant lout! Did he by any chance think of her as a cripple, too? She recalled the first evening in the Palace bar when he had talked on the telephone with Monte Carlo. Hadn’t he also spoke of cripples then? “Up here a little fever can quickly turn into fatal pneumonia,” she said angrily. “But I suppose that wouldn’t bother you. All you’d say was that Hollmann was lucky to die after having sat in a sports car once more and imagined he was a great racing driver.”
At once she was sorry she had said that. She did not understand why she was so furious.
“You have a good memory,” Clerfayt said, amused. “I’ve noticed that before. But calm down; the car isn’t as fast as it sounds. With chains on the wheels, you can’t exactly drive at racing speeds.”
He put his arm around her shoulders. She did not speak or move. She saw Giuseppe emerge from the woods behind the lake, small and black. Compact as a buzzing bumblebee, it shot through the white glare that hung above the snow, in the sunlight. She heard the pounding of the motor and the echo tossed back by the mountains. The car headed for the road that led over the pass to the other side of the mountains, and suddenly she knew what it was that had so excited her. She saw the car vanish behind a curve. Only the sound of the motor remained, a furious, imperative drumbeat that called to some unknown departure and that she felt as deeper than mere noise.
“I hope he really isn’t skipping out,” Clerfayt said.
Lillian did not reply at once. Her lips were dry. “Why should he skip out?” she said with an effort. “He’s almost cured, you know. Why should he risk everything?”
“That’s the time people often do take risks.”
“Would you risk it if you were in his place?”
“I don’t know.”
Lillian took a deep breath. “Would you do it if you knew you would never get well again?” she asked.
“Instead of staying here?”
“Instead of vegetating here for a few months longer.”
Clerfayt smiled. He knew other kinds of vegetating. “It depends on what you mean by that,” he said.
“Living cautiously,” Lillian replied quickly.
He laughed. “That’s hardly the sort of thing you ask a racing driver.”
&nb
sp; “Would you do it?”
“I have no idea. One never knows what one will do beforehand. Perhaps I would—to make one last effort to seize hold of everything that means life, without considering time. But I might also live by the clock and scrimp on every day and every hour. One never knows. I’ve experienced some odd reactions.”
Lillian drew her shoulder away from under Clerfayt’s arm.” Don’t you have to settle that with yourself before every race?”
“It seems more dramatic than it is. I don’t drive for romantic reasons. I drive for money and because I can’t do anything else—not because I’m so adventurous. I’ve had enough adventures in this damned age of ours without wanting any more. Probably you have, too.”
“Yes,” Lillian replied. “But not the right ones.”
They suddenly heard the motor again. “He’s coming back,” Clerfayt said.
“Yes,” she repeated, taking a deep breath. “He’s coming back. Are you disappointed?”
“No. I only wanted him to have a chance to drive the car. The last time he was in it, he had his first hemorrhage.”
Lillian saw Giuseppe zooming toward them on the highway. All at once she could not endure the prospect of seeing Hollmann’s radiant face. “I have to go in,” she said hastily. “The Crocodile is already looking for me.” She turned toward the entrance. “And when are you driving over the pass?” she asked.
“Whenever you like,” Clerfayt replied.
It was Sunday, and Lillian always found Sundays in the sanatorium harder to get through than weekdays. The Sundays had a false peacefulness, and lacked the routine of weekdays. The doctors paid no calls, unless it was essential, so there was one reminder the less that you were ill. On the other hand, for this reason the patients were all the more restless, and at night the Crocodile often had to collect bed-patients from rooms where they did not belong.
Lillian came down to dinner in defiance of orders; the Crocodile did not usually check up on Sundays. She had had two glasses of vodka to defend herself against the dreariness of dusk; but it did not do any good. Then she had put on her best dress—clothes sometimes gave one more of a lift than any philosophic comforting. But this time, even that had been useless. There was no throwing off the blues, the sudden attack of melancholia, the contending with God that everyone up here was prey to, and that came and went without visible cause. It had come fluttering upon her like a dark moth.
Not until she stepped into the dining room did she realize where it came from. The room was almost full, and at a table in the center, surrounded by half a dozen of her friends, sat Eva Moser, a cake, a bottle of champagne, and a pile of gaily wrapped gifts in front of her. This was her last evening. She was due to leave tomorrow afternoon.
At first, Lillian wanted to turn back. Then she saw Hollmann, sitting alone next to the table of the three black-clad South Americans who were waiting for Manuela’s death. Hollmann beckoned to her.
“I drove Giuseppe,” he said. “Did you see?”
“Yes. Did anyone else see you?”
“Who?”
“The Crocodile? Or the Dalai Lama?”
“Nobody. And what if they did! I feel great. I was beginning to think I couldn’t drive the damned buggy any more.”
“Everyone seems to be feeling great this evening,” Lillian replied bitterly. “What do you think of that?”
She gestured toward Eva Moser. The girl sat with plump and overheated face, the center of attention for all her sympathetic and gloomily envious friends, who exaggerated their good will because it could not entirely dispel their envy. Eva Moser was like someone who has drawn the grand prize at a lottery and cannot understand why everyone else is so interested in her.
“Have you taken your temperature?” Lillian asked Hollmann.
He laughed. “That can wait till tomorrow. I don’t want to think about it today.”
“Don’t you think you have fever?”
“I don’t care. And I don’t think so.”
Why am I asking him? Lillian thought. Am I envious of him? “Isn’t Clerfayt eating with you tonight?” she asked.
“No. He had an unexpected visitor this afternoon. And why should he be coming up here all the time, anyhow? It must get dull for him.”
“Then why doesn’t he leave?” Lillian asked with hostility.
“He is leaving, but not for a few days. Wednesday or Thursday.”
“This week?”
“Yes. I suppose he’ll be driving down with his visitor.”
Lillian did not answer. She did not know for certain whether Hollmann was supplying this information intentionally, and since she did not know, she assumed that it was intentional and therefore did not ask anything further. “Have you anything to drink with you?” she said.
“Not a drop. I gave the rest of my gin to Charles Ney this afternoon.”
“Didn’t you buy a bottle of vodka this morning?”
“I gave that to Dolores Palmer.”
“Why? Have you decided to become a model patient?”
“Something like that,” Hollmann replied with a touch of embarrassment.
“This morning you were anything but.”
“This morning is a long time ago.”
Lillian pushed back her plate. “Who will I go out with at night from now on?”
“There are plenty of others. And Clerfayt is still around for the time being.”
“All right. But what about afterward?”
“Isn’t Boris coming tonight?” Hollmann asked.
“No, not tonight. And you can’t play hooky with Boris. I told him I had a headache.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” Lillian said, and stood up. “I’m even going to make the Crocodile happy tonight, so that there won’t be one unhappy soul in the place. I’m going to sleep. Good night, Hollmann.”
“Is something the matter, Lillian?”
“Just the usual thing. The panic of boredom. A sign of good health, the Dalai Lama would say. I hear that when you’re really badly off, there’s no more panic. You’re too weak for it. How kind God is, wouldn’t you say?”
The night nurse had completed her evening round. Lillian lay on her bed, trying to read. After a while, she dropped the book. Once again the long night stretched before her, the waiting for sleep—sleep and then the sudden starting out of sleep and that weightless moment when you recognized nothing, neither the room nor yourself, when you hung in soughing darkness and nothing but fear, nebulous fear of death, for unending seconds—until the window slowly became familiar again and its frame was no longer a shadowy cross in an unknown cosmos, but once more a window, and the room a room, and the coil of primordial terror and soundless screaming became yourself once more, a being called Lillian Dunkerque for its brief time on earth.
There was a knock at the door. Charles Ney stood outside in a red bathrobe and slippers. “The coast is clear,” he whispered as he came in. “Come on over to Dolores’ good-by party for Eva Moser.”
“What for? Why doesn’t she just go? Why does she have to have a good-by party?”
“We want one, not she.”
“You’ve already had one in the dining room.”
“That was only to fool the Crocodile. Come on, don’t be a wet blanket.”
“I don’t feel like going to a party.”
Charles Ney smiled a perfectly lovely smile. “Come, columbine of moonlight, silver, and smoky fire! If you stay here, you’ll be mad at yourself for being alone, and when you’re there, you’ll be mad at yourself for having come. It’s all the same—so come!” He listened toward the corridor, and opened the door. The clicking of crutches could be heard. A gaunt, elderly woman hobbled by. “Everybody’s coming. Here’s Streptomycin Lilly already. And here comes Schirmer with André.”
A graybeard in a wheelchair was rolled past them by a young man who pranced along behind the chair, doing a Charleston step. “You see, even the dead rise to offer Miss Moser an Ave Eva, morituri te salutant,
” Charles Ney said. “Forget your Russian blood for one evening and remember your life-loving Walloon father. Get dressed and come.”
“I won’t dress. I’ll come in pajamas.”
“Come in pajamas, but come!”
Dolores Palmer lived a floor below Lillian’s. She had been there for three years, occupying a suite that consisted of bedroom, living room, and bath. It was the most expensive unit in the sanatorium, and Dolores took care to claim every privilege to which this entitled her.
“We have two whole bottles of vodka for you in the bathroom,” she said to Lillian. “I hope that’s enough. Where do you want to sit? Next to our debutante, who’s sailing forth into the real world, or among the feverish stay-behinds? Pick your place.”
Lillian looked around. It was a scene familiar to her: the lamps were draped with cloths; the graybeard was in charge of the record player; Streptomycin Lilly sat in a corner, on the floor, because the drug had affected her sense of balance and she tended to topple. The others sat around with the half-hearted, artificial Bohemian air of overage children secretly staying up too late. Dolores Palmer was wearing a Chinese gown, long and straight, with slit skirt. She had a tragic beauty of which she had not the slightest awareness. Her lovers were deceived by it, as travelers in the desert are deceived by a mirage. While they wore themselves out trying to be interesting to her, Dolores really wanted something far simpler: a petty-bourgeois existence, but with a maximum of luxury. Grand emotions bored her, but she inspired them and was constantly having to contend with them.
Eva Moser sat by the window, looking out. Her mood had shifted violently. “She’s bawling,” Maria Savini said to Lillian. “Would you believe it?”
“Whatever for?”
“Ask her yourself. The craziest thing. She says this place is her home.”
“It is my home,” Eva Moser sobbed. “I’ve been happy here. I have friends here. Down there I won’t know anybody.”
There was a general silence for a moment. “You can stay on if you want to, Eva,” Charles Ney said finally. “There’s no one stopping you.”
“Yes there is! My father! It costs a lot of money for me to stay here. He wants me to get a job. What sort of job? I can’t do anything! Whatever I used to know, I’ve forgotten here.”