Arch of Triumph (3 page)

Under the white light on the table lay what a few hours before had been hope, breath, pain, and quivering life. Now it was only an insensible cadaver—and the human automaton called Nurse Eugénie, with responsibilities and respect for herself, proud of never having taken a false step, covered it up and rolled it away. These are the ones who live forever, Ravic thought—life does not love them, these souls of wood—therefore it forgets them and lets them live on and on.

“So long, nurse,” Veber said. “Take a good sleep today.”

“Goodbye, Doctor Veber. Thank you, doctor.”

“Goodbye,” Ravic said. “Excuse my swearing.”

“Good morning,” Eugénie replied icily.

Veber smiled. “A character of cast iron.”

———

Outside a gray day was dawning. Garbage trucks rattled through the streets. Veber turned up his collar. “Nasty weather! Can I give you a lift, Ravic?”

“No, thanks, I’d rather walk.”

“In this weather? I can drop you. It’s not out of my way.”

Ravic shook his head. “Thank you, Veber.”

Veber gave him an appraising look. “Strange that you still get worked up when someone dies under the knife. Haven’t you been at it for the last fifteen years? You should be used to it by now!”

“Yes, I am. And I’m not worked up.”

Veber stood before Ravic, broad and heavy. His big round face shone like a Normandy apple. His black, trimmed mustache, wet with rain, glittered. The Buick standing at the curb also glittered. Presently Veber would drive home comfortably in it—to a rose-colored doll’s house in the suburbs with a neat glittering woman in it and two neat glittering children and a neat glittering life. How could one explain to him something of that breathless tension when the knife began the first cut and the narrow red trace followed the light pressure, when the body, under clips and forceps, opened up like a multiple curtain, when organs which had never seen the light were laid bare, when one followed a track like a hunter in a jungle and suddenly faced the huge wild beast, death, in destroyed tissues, in lumps, in tumors, in scissures—and the fight began, the silent, mad fight during which one could use no other weapon than a thin blade and a needle and a steady hand—how could one explain what it meant when then all at once a dark shadow rushed through the blinding white of stark concentration, a majestic derision that seemed to render the knife dull, the needle brittle, and the hand heavy—and when this invisible, enigmatic pulsing—life—then ebbed away under one’s powerless hands, collapsed, drawn into this ghostly vortex which one could never reach
or hold—and when a face that had a moment ago breathed and borne a name turned into a rigid, nameless mask—this senseless, rebellious helplessness: how could one explain it—and what was there to explain?

Ravic lit another cigarette. “Twenty-one years old,” he said.

With his handkerchief Veber wiped the shiny drops from his mustache. “You worked marvelously, Ravic. I couldn’t have done it. That you couldn’t save what a quack had botched up—is something that does not concern you. Where would we be if we thought otherwise?”

“Yes,” Ravic said. “Where would we be?”

Veber put his handkerchief back. “After all you have gone through, you should be damned tough by now.”

Ravic looked at him with a trace of irony. “One is never tough. But one can get used to a lot of things.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Yes, and to some things never. But that is difficult to realize. Let’s take for granted that it was the coffee. Maybe it actually was the coffee that made me so edgy. And we confuse it with excitement.”

“The coffee was good, wasn’t it?”

“Very good.”

“I know how to make coffee. I had an idea you’d need it, that’s why I made it myself. It was different from the black water Eugénie usually produces, wasn’t it?”

“No comparison. You’re a master at making coffee.”

Veber stepped into his car. He trod on the starter and leaned out of the window. “Couldn’t I drop you? You must be tired.”

Like a seal, Ravic thought absent-mindedly. He is like a healthy seal. But what does that mean? Why does it occur to me? Why always these double thoughts? “I’m no longer tired,” he said. “The coffee woke me up. Sleep well, Veber.”

Veber laughed. His teeth glistened beneath his black mustache. “I won’t go to bed now. I’ll work in my garden. I’ll plant tulips and daffodils.”

Tulips and daffodils, Ravic thought. In neat, separate beds with neat graveled paths between. Tulips and daffodils—the peach-colored, golden storm of spring. “So long, Veber,” he said. “You will take care of the rest, won’t you?”

“Naturally. I’ll call you up in the evening. Sorry the fee will be low. Not even worth mentioning. The girl was poor and, as it seems, had no relatives. We’ll see about that.”

Ravic dismissed it with a gesture.

“She gave a hundred francs to Eugénie. Apparently that was all she had. That will be twenty-five francs for you.”

“Never mind,” Ravic said impatiently. “So long, Veber.”

“So long. Till tomorrow morning at eight.”

Ravic walked slowly along the Rue Lauriston. Had it been summer, he would have sat down on a bench in the Bois in the morning sun and, with vacant mind, would have stared into the water and the young woods, until the tension left him. Then he would have driven to the hotel and gone to bed.

He entered a bistro at the corner of the Rue Boissière. A few workers and truckdrivers stood at the bar. They drank hot, black coffee, dipping brioches into it. Ravic watched them for a time. This was ordinary, simple life, a life to seize hold of, to work with: tiredness in the evening, eating, a woman, and a heavy dreamless sleep.

“A kirsch,” he said.

The dying girl had worn a cheap narrow chain of imitation gold around her right ankle—one of those little follies that are possible only when one is young, sentimental, and without taste. A chain
with a little plate and an inscription:
Toujours Charles
, riveted around her ankle so that one could not take it off—a chain that told a story of Sundays in the woods near the Seine, of being in love and of ignorant youth, of a small jeweler somewhere in Neuilly, of nights in September in an attic—and then suddenly the staying away, the waiting, the fear—Toujours Charles who never showed up again, then the girl friend who knew an address, the midwife somewhere, a table covered with oilcloth, piercing pain and blood, blood, a bewildered old woman’s face, arms pushing you quickly into a cab to be rid of you, days of misery and of hiding, and finally the ride to the hospital, the last hundred francs crumpled in the hot moist hand—too late.

The radio began to blare. A tango, to which a nasal voice sang idiotic words. Ravic caught himself performing the whole operation over again. He checked every move. Maybe, some hours earlier there might have been a chance. Veber had had him called. He had not been in the hotel. So the girl had to die because he had been loafing on the Pont de l’Alma. Veber could not perform such operations himself. The idiocy of chance. The foot with the golden chain, limp, turned inward. “Come into my boat, the moon is shining,” the crooner quavered in falsetto.

Ravic paid and left. Outside he stopped a taxi. “Drive to the Osiris.”

The Osiris was a large middle-class brothel with a huge bar in Egyptian style.

“We’re just closing,” the doorman said. “There is no one inside.”

“No one?”

“Only Madame Rolande. The ladies have all gone.”

“All right.”

The doorman ill-humoredly stamped on the pavement with his
galoshes. “Why don’t you keep the taxi? It won’t be easy to get another one later. We’re closed.”

“You said that once before. I’ll get another taxi all right.”

Ravic put a package of cigarettes into the doorman’s breast pocket and walked through the small door past the cloakroom into the big room. The bar was empty; it gave the usual impression of the remains of a bourgeois symposium—pools of spilled wine, a couple of overturned chairs, butts on the floor, and the smell of tobacco, sweet perfume, and flesh.

“Rolande,” Ravic said.

She stood in front of a table on which was a pile of pink silk underwear. “Ravic,” she said without surprise. “Late. What do you want—a girl or something to drink? Or both?”

“Vodka. The Polish.”

Rolande brought the bottle and a glass. “Help yourself. I still have to sort and list the laundry. The laundry wagon will be here any minute. If one doesn’t keep track of everything that gang will steal like a flock of magpies. The drivers, you understand. As presents for their girls.”

Ravic nodded. “Turn the music on, Rolande. Loud.”

“All right.”

Rolande put the plug in. The sound of drums and brass went thundering through the high empty room like a storm. “Too loud, Ravic?”

“No.”

Too loud? What was too loud? Only the quiet. The quiet in which one burst as though in a vacuum.

“All through.” Rolande came to Ravic’s table. She had a buxom figure, a clear face, and calm black eyes. The black Puritan dress she wore characterized her as the
gouvernante;
it distinguished her from the almost naked whores.

“Have a drink with me, Rolande.”

“All right.”

Ravic fetched a glass from the bar and poured. Rolande pulled the bottle back when her glass was half filled. “Enough. I won’t drink more.”

“Half-filled glasses are disgusting. Leave what you don’t drink.”

“Why? That would be wasteful.”

Ravic glanced up. He saw the reliable intelligent face and smiled. “Waste! The old French fear. Why save? You are not saved from anything.”

“This is business. That’s something else.”

Ravic laughed. “Let’s drink a toast to it! What would the world be without business ethics! A pack of criminals, idealists, and sluggards.”

“You need a girl,” Rolande said. “I can call up Kiki. She is very good. Twenty-one years old.”

“So. Twenty-one years too. That’s not for me today.” Ravic refilled his glass. “What do you actually think of, Rolande, before you fall asleep?”

“Mostly of nothing. I am too tired.”

“And when you aren’t tired?”

“Of Tours.”

“Why?”

“An aunt of mine owns a house with a shop there. I hold two mortgages on it. When she dies—she is seventy-six—I’ll get the house. Then I’ll make a café out of the shop. Light wallpaper with flower designs, a band, three men, piano, violin, cello, in the rear a bar. Small and fine. The house is situated in a good district. I think I’ll be able to furnish it for nine thousand five hundred francs, even with curtains and lamps. Then I’ll put aside another five thousand for the first few months. And naturally I’ll have the rent from the first and second floors. That’s what I think about.”

“Were you born in Tours?”

“Yes. But no one knows where I’ve been since. And if the business prospers, no one will bother about it either. Money covers everything.”

“Not everything. But a lot.”

Ravic felt the heaviness behind his eyes that slowed down his voice. “I think I have had enough,” he said and took a few bills out of his pocket. “Will you marry in Tours, Rolande?”

“Not right away. But in a few years. I have a friend there.”

“Do you go there occasionally?”

“Rarely. He writes sometimes. To another address of course. He’s married, but his wife is in the hospital. Tuberculosis. One or two more years at the most, the doctors say. Then he’ll be free.”

Ravic got up. “God bless you, Rolande. You have sound common sense.”

She smiled appreciatively. She believed he was right. Her clear face showed not a trace of tiredness. It was fresh as if she had just got up from sleep. She knew what she wanted. Life held no secrets for her.

Outside it had become bright day. The rain had stopped. The pissoirs stood like armored turrets at the street corners. The doorman had disappeared, the night was wiped out, the day had begun, and a bursting crowd thronged the entrances to the subway—as if they were holes into which they flung themselves as sacrifice to some dark deity.

The woman started up from the sofa. She did not cry out—she just started up with a low suppressed sound, propped herself on her elbows, and stiffened.

“Quiet, quiet,” Ravic said. “It’s me. The man who brought you here a few hours ago.”

The woman breathed again. Ravic saw her only indistinctly;
the glow of the electric bulbs blended with the morning creeping through the windows in a yellowish, pale, sticky light. “I think we can turn these off now,” he said and turned the switch.

He felt again the soft hammers of drunkenness behind his forehead. “Do you want breakfast?” he asked. He had forgotten the woman and then when he got his key he had believed she had left. He would have liked to be rid of her. He had drunk enough, the backdrop of his consciousness had shifted, the clanging chain of time had burst asunder, and memories and dreams stood around him, strong and fearless. He wanted to be alone.

“Do you want some coffee?” he asked. “It’s the only thing that’s any good here.”

The woman shook her head. He looked more closely at her.

“What’s the matter? Has anybody been here?”

“No.”

“But something must be the matter. You stare at me as if I were a ghost.”

The woman moved her lips. “The smell—” she said.

“Smell?” Ravic repeated uncomprehendingly. “Vodka hardly smells, neither does kirsch or cognac. And cigarettes you smoke yourself. What’s there about that to be scared of?”

“I don’t mean that.”

“What is it then, for God’s sake?”

“It is the same—the same smell—”

“Heavens, it must be ether,” said Ravic, suddenly understanding. “Is it ether?”

She nodded.

“Have you ever been operated on?”

“No—it is—”

Ravic did not listen further. He opened the window. “It will be gone in a minute. Smoke a cigarette meanwhile.”

He went into the bathroom and turned on the faucets. He saw
his face in the mirror. A few hours ago he had stood here in the same way. In the interim a human being had died. It did not matter. Thousands of people died every moment. There were statistics about it. It did not matter. For the one individual, however, it meant everything and was more important than the still revolving world.