Arch of Triumph (23 page)

“No. But it must be like that.”

“I don’t understand.” She stared at Ravic, irritated. “After all it was most improbable.”

“That’s just why.”

Kate Hegstroem smiled. “Doctor Ravic has a theory, Daisy. He
calls it the systematics of chance. According to it the most improbable is always practically the most logical.”

“That’s interesting.” Daisy smiled politely and entirely uninterestedly. “It wouldn’t have led to anything,” she continued calmly, “if Louis had not made a terrific scene. He was completely beside himself. Now he is living in the Crillon. Wants to divorce her. Both are waiting for evidence.” She leaned back in her chair, full of expectation. “What do you say?”

Kate Hegstroem looked quickly at Ravic. He was studying a branch of orchids which stood on the table between hatboxes and a basket of fruit containing grapes and peaches—white flowers like butterflies with lascivious, red-spotted hearts. “Unbelievable, Daisy,” she said. “Really unbelievable!”

Daisy enjoyed her triumph. “I’m sure you couldn’t have known that beforehand, could you?” she asked Ravic.

He carefully put the branch back into the narrow crystal vase. “No, certainly not that.”

Daisy nodded in satisfaction and picked up her bag, her compact, and her gloves. “I’ve got to go. I’m late now. Louise is having a cocktail party. Her minister is coming. All sorts of rumors are going around.” She rose. “By the way, Ferdy and Marthe have broken up again. She has sent her jewelry back to him. For the third time now. It still impresses him. The poor fool. He thinks he is loved for his own sake. He’ll return everything to her and another piece as a reward. As always. He doesn’t know—but she has already selected what she’d like to have at Ostertag’s. He always buys there. A ruby brooch; big square stones, best pigeon-blood. She is smart.”

She kissed Kate Hegstroem. “Adieu, my lamb. Now you are at least somewhat au courant. Can’t you get out of here soon?” She looked at Ravic.

He caught Kate Hegstroem’s look. “Not right away,” he said. “Sorry.”

He helped Daisy into her coat. It was a dark mink without a collar. A coat for Joan, he thought. Daisy made a very good appearance, slim, exquisite, with a short nose and delicate joints, well groomed and entirely without sex appeal. “Why don’t you come for tea with Kate?” she said. “Only a few people are there on Wednesdays; so we can chat undisturbed. I’m very much interested in operations.”

“Gladly.”

Ravic closed the door behind her and came back. “Beautiful emeralds,” he said.

Kate Hegstroem laughed. “Well, that was my life before, Ravic. Can you understand that?”

“Yes. Why not? Wonderful if one can do it. It gives you protection against so much.”

“I can’t understand it any longer.” She got up and walked carefully to her bed.

Ravic smiled. “It makes very little difference where one lives, Kate. Some places are more comfortable than others, but it is never important. The only important thing is what one makes of it.”

She put her long beautiful legs onto the bed. “Everything is inconsequential,” she said, “when you have been in bed for a few weeks and can walk again.”

Ravic took a cigarette. “You don’t have to stay here any longer if you don’t want to. You can live in the Lancaster if you take a nurse with you.”

Kate Hegstroem shook her head. “I’ll stay here until I can travel. Here I am protected against too many Daisies.”

“Throw them out when they come,” Ravic said. “Nothing is more tiring than listening to gossip.”

She stretched herself cautiously on her bed. “Would you believe that Daisy is a wonderful mother in spite of her gossiping? She is bringing up her two children magnificently.”

“That can happen,” Ravic declared, unimpressed.

Kate Hegstroem smiled. She drew the blanket over her. “A hospital is like a convent,” she said. “You learn to appreciate the simplest things again. Walking. Breathing. Seeing.”

“Yes. Happiness lies all around us. We only have to pick it up.”

She looked at him. “I really mean it.”

“So do I, Kate. Only the simple things never disappoint us. And as far as happiness is concerned you can’t start too far down.”

Jeannot was lying on his bed, a heap of pamphlets scattered over his blanket.

“Why don’t you put the light on?” Ravic asked.

“I can still see well enough. I have good eyes.”

The pamphlets contained descriptions of artificial legs. Jeannot had got them together in every way he could. His mother had brought him the last ones. He showed Ravic a wonderfully colored folder. Ravic turned on the light. “This is the most expensive,” Jeannot said.

“It is not the best,” Ravic replied.

“But it is the most expensive. I’ll explain to the insurance company that I must have it. Naturally I don’t want it at all. Only the insurance company shall pay for it. I want a wooden stump and the money.”

“The insurance company has its own physicians who check on everything, Jeannot.”

The boy straightened up. “Do you think they won’t allow me a leg?”

“They will. Perhaps not the most expensive. But they won’t give you any money; they’ll see to it that you really get it.”

“Then I’ll have to take it and sell it immediately. Of course I’ll not get the full price. Do you think twenty per cent off is enough?
I’ll offer it first for ten. Maybe we can talk with the shopkeeper in advance. What does it matter to the insurance company whether I take the leg? They must pay; nothing else really matters to them, or does it?”

“Of course not. You can try.”

“It would amount to something. We could buy the counter and the equipment for a small crêmerie for that money.” Jeannot smiled cunningly. “Thank God, a leg like that with its joint and everything else is pretty expensive. A precision job. That’s fine.”

“Has someone from the insurance company already been here?”

“No, not yet about the leg and the compensation. Only about the operation and the hospital. Do we have to hire a lawyer? What do you think? It was a red light! I’m quite positive. The police—”

The nurse came with the supper. She put it on the table beside Jeannot. The boy did not say anything until she had gone. “They give you a lot to eat here,” he declared then. “I’ve never had so much. I can’t finish it all by myself. My mother always comes and eats the rest. There is enough for both of us. She’s saving money this way. The room here costs a great deal anyway.”

“That’s paid by the insurance company. It makes no difference where you are.”

A gleam flitted across the gray face of the boy. “I spoke to Doctor Veber. He’ll give me ten per cent. He’ll send the bill for what it costs to the insurance company. They pay it; but he’ll let me have the ten per cent in cash.”

“You’re efficient, Jeannot.”

“You’ve got to be efficient when you are poor.”

“That’s right. Are you in pain?”

“In the foot I don’t have any more.”

“Those are the nerves which are still there.”

“I know. It’s funny just the same. To have pain in something that isn’t there any more. Maybe the soul of my leg is still there.”
Jeannot grinned. He had cracked a joke. Then he removed the lid from his supper plates. “Soup, chicken, vegetable, pudding. That’s something for mother. She likes chicken. We didn’t often have it at home.” He leaned back comfortably. “Sometimes I wake up at night and think we have to pay for everything here ourselves. That’s how one thinks at night, the first moment. Then I remember that I’m lying here like the son of rich people and I have the right to ask for everything and can ring for the nurses and they must come and other people must pay for all that. Wonderful, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Ravic said. “Wonderful.”

He sat in the examination room of the Osiris. “Is there still someone there?” he asked.

“Yes,” Léonie said. “Yvonne. She is the last.”

“Send her in. You’re all right, Léonie.”

Yvonne was twenty-five years old, fleshy, blonde, with a broad nose and the short chubby hands and feet of many whores. She swayed into the room complacently and lifted the sleazy silk rag she wore.

“There,” Ravic said. “Over there.”

“Can’t it be done here?” Yvonne asked.

“No. Why?”

Instead of answering Yvonne turned silently around and showed her hefty behind. It was blue with welts. She must have received a terrific thrashing from someone.

“I hope your client paid you well for it,” Ravic said. “This is no joke.”

Yvonne shook her head. “Not a centime, doctor. It was not a client.”

“Then it was fun. I didn’t know you liked that.”

Yvonne again shook her head, a satisfied mysterious smile on her face. Ravic noticed that she enjoyed the situation. She felt important. “I’m not a masochist,” she said. She was proud of knowing the word.

“What was it then? A row?”

Yvonne waited a second. “Love,” she said then and stretched her shoulders voluptuously.

“Was he jealous?”

“Yes.” Yvonne beamed.

“Does it hurt very much?”

“Something like this doesn’t hurt.” She sat down carefully. “Do you know, doctor, that Madame Rolande at first didn’t want to let me work? Just one hour, I told her; try it only for one hour! You’ll see! And now with the blue behind I have much more success than ever before.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. There are fellows who are mad about it. It excites them. In the last three days I have made two hundred fifty francs more. How long will it show?”

“At least two or three weeks.”

Yvonne clicked her tongue. “If this goes on I’ll be able to buy a fur coat. Fox—perfectly matched catskins.”

“If it doesn’t last long enough your friend can easily help you out with another sound thrashing.”

“That he won’t do,” Yvonne said vivaciously. “He is not like that. He is not a calculating beast, you know! He only does it out of passion. When it comes over him. Otherwise I could beg him on my knees, but he wouldn’t do it.”

“Character.” Ravic glanced up. “You’re all right, Yvonne.”

She picked herself up. “Then the work can go on. An old one is already waiting for me downstairs. A man with a gray pointed beard. He always comes after these visits. To be the first because he
wants to be sure. I’ve shown him my streaks. He is wild about them. He has no say at home. That’s why. So he dreams about how he would like to thrash his old lady, I believe.” She burst into clear bell-like laughter. “Doctor, the world is funny, isn’t it?” She swayed out of the room complacently.

Ravic put aside the things he had used and stepped to the window. The dusk hung silver-gray above the buildings. The bare trees rose through the asphalt like the black hands of the dead. One had at times seen such hands in buried trenches. He opened the window and looked out. The hour of unreality, hovering between day and night. The hour of love in the small hotels—for those who were married and at evening presided with dignity over their families. The hour of apéritifs. The hour in which the earth caught its breath. The hour in which the Italian women in the lowlands of Lombardy were already beginning to say
felicissima notte
. The hour of despair and the hour of dreams.

He closed the window. Suddenly the room seemed to be much darker. Shadows had fluttered in and crouched in the corners, full of silent chatter. The bottle of cognac which Rolande had brought up sparkled on the table like a polished topaz. Ravic remained standing for a moment—then he went down.

The music box was playing and the big room was already brightly illuminated. The girls were sitting in their short pinksilk chemises in two rows on the hassocks. They all had their breasts bare. The customers wanted to see what they were buying. Half a dozen had arrived, mostly middle-aged tradesmen. They were the cautious experts; they knew when the examinations took place and came about this time to be positively sure of not risking a clap. Yvonne was with her old gentleman. He sat at a table with a Dubonnet in front of him. She stood beside him, one foot on a chair, and drank champagne. She received ten per cent for each bottle. The man must be really crazy to spend so much. That was
something only foreigners did. Yvonne was aware of it. She had an air of a benevolent circus trainer.

“Do you want another calvados?” Ravic asked.

Joan nodded. “Yes, let me have another.”

He called the maître d’hôtel. “Have you still older calvados than this?”

“Isn’t this good?”

“It is. But maybe you have still another in your cellar.”

“I’ll see.”

The waiter went to the cashier’s desk where the proprietress was asleep with her cat. From there he disappeared through a ground-glass door into the room where the owner lived among his accounts. After a while the waiter returned with an important, composed air and went downstairs into the cellar without glancing at Ravic.

“It seems to be working.”

The waiter returned with a bottle which he held in his arms like a baby. It was a dirty bottle; not one of the picturesquely incrusted bottles for tourists, but simply one that was dirty from lying in the cellar for many years. He opened it cautiously, sniffed the cork, and then fetched two big glasses.

“Sir,” he said to Ravic and poured a few drops.

Ravic took the glass and inhaled the odor. Then he drank, leaned back, and nodded. The waiter returned his nod solemnly and filled both glasses a third full.

“Just try this,” Ravic said to Joan.

She took a sip and put the glass down. The waiter watched her. She looked at Ravic, astonished. “I’ve never tasted anything like that before,” she said and sipped a second time. “One doesn’t drink it—one just inhales it.”

“That’s it, madame,” the waiter declared with satisfaction. “You’ve grasped it.”

“Ravic,” Joan said, “there’s danger in what you’re doing. After this calvados I’ll never drink any other kind.”

“Oh yes, you’ll drink other kinds too.”

“But I’ll dream of this one.”

“Fine. It’ll make you a romantic. A calvados romantic.”

“But then I won’t like the other any more.”

“On the contrary. It will taste even better than it really is. It will be a calvados with the longing for another calvados. That in itself makes it less ordinary.”