Arch of Triumph (24 page)

Joan laughed. “That’s nonsense. You know it yourself.”

“Naturally it’s nonsense. But we are living on nonsense. Not on the meager bread of facts. Otherwise, what would happen to love?”

“What has that to do with love?”

“A great deal. It takes care of its continuance. Otherwise we would love once only and reject everything else later. But as it is, the remnant of desire for the man one leaves behind, or by whom one is left behind, becomes the halo around the head of the new one. To have lost someone before in itself gives the new one a certain romantic glamour. The hallowed old illusion.”

Joan looked at him. “I find it abominable to hear you talk like this.”

“I too.”

“You shouldn’t do it. Not even in fun. It turns a miracle into a trick.”

Ravic did not answer.

“And it sounds as if you were already tired and were thinking about leaving me.”

Ravic looked at her with a remote tenderness. “You need never think about that, Joan. When it comes to that, you will be the one who leaves me. Not I you. That much is sure.”

She set her glass down hard. “What nonsense! I’ll never leave you. Are you trying to talk me into something again?”

Those eyes, Ravic thought. As if behind them lightning were flashing. Soft, reddish lightning out of a thunderstorm of candles. “Joan,” he said. “I don’t want to talk you into anything. I’ll tell you the story of the wave and the rock. It’s an old story. Older than we are. Listen. Once upon a time there was a wave who loved a rock in the sea, let us say in the Bay of Capri. The wave foamed and swirled around the rock, she kissed him day and night, she embraced him with her white arms, she sighed and wept and besought him to come to her. She loved him and stormed about him and in that way slowly undermined him, and one day he yielded, completely undermined, and sank into her arms.”

He took a sip of calvados. “And?” Joan asked.

“And suddenly he was no longer a rock to be played with, to be loved, to be dreamed of. He was only a block of stone at the bottom of the sea, drowned in her. The wave felt disappointed and deceived and looked for another rock.”

“And?” Joan looked at him suspiciously. “What does that mean? He should have remained a rock.”

“The wave always says that. But things that move are stronger than immovable things. Water is stronger than rocks.”

She made an impatient gesture. “What has all this to do with us? That’s only a story without meaning. Or you’re making fun of me again. When it comes to that, you’ll leave me, that’s the one thing I’m sure of.”

“That,” Ravic said, laughing, “will be your last statement when you go. You’ll explain to me that I’ve left you. And you’ll find reasons for it—and you’ll believe them—and you’ll be right before the oldest law court in the world: Nature.”

He called the waiter. “Can we buy this bottle of calvados?”

“You want to take it with you?”

“Exactly.”

“Sir, that’s against our rules. We don’t sell bottles.”

“Ask the patron.”

The waiter returned with a newspaper. It was the
Paris Soir
. “The patron will make an exception,” he explained, as he pressed the cork tight and wrapped the bottle in the
Paris Soir
after first removing the sports page and putting it, folded, into his pocket. “Here, sir. You had best keep it in a dark cool place. It comes from the estate of the patron’s grandfather.”

“Good.” Ravic paid. He took the bottle and looked at it. “Sunshine that has lain all through a hot summer and a blue fall on apples in an ancient wind-swept orchard of Normandy, come with us. We need you! There is a storm raging somewhere in the universe.”

They stepped out into the street. It had begun to rain. Joan stopped. “Ravic! Do you love me?”

“Yes, Joan. More than you think.”

She leaned against him. “Sometimes it doesn’t look like it.”

“On the contrary. Otherwise I’d never tell you such things.”

“You’d better tell me other things.”

He looked into the rain and smiled. “Love is not a pond into which one can always look for one’s reflection, Joan. Love has its ebb and flow. And wrecks and sunken cities and octopuses and storms and chests with gold and pearls. But the pearls lie deep.”

“I don’t know anything about that. Love is belonging together. Forever.”

Forever, he thought. The old fairy tale. When one can’t even hold the minute.

Shivering, she buttoned her coat. “I wish it were summer,” she said. “I’ve never longed for it as I have this year.”

———

She took her black evening gown out of the wardrobe and flung it on the bed. “How I hate this sometimes. Always the same black dress! Always the same Scheherazade! Always the same! Always the same!”

Ravic looked up. He didn’t say anything.

“Don’t you understand?” she asked.

“Oh yes—”

“Why don’t you take me away from here, beloved?”

“Where to?”

“Anywhere.”

Ravic unwrapped the bottle of calvados and drew the cork. Then he fetched a glass and filled it. “Come,” he said. “Drink this.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t help. Sometimes it doesn’t help to drink. Sometimes nothing helps. I don’t want to go there tonight, to those idiots.”

“Stay here.”

“And then?”

“Phone that you are sick.”

“Nevertheless, I’ll have to go tomorrow. It will be even worse then.”

“You could be sick for a few days.”

“That’s just the same.” She looked at him. “What can it be? What’s wrong with me, Ravic? Is it the rain? Is it this wet darkness? Sometimes it’s like lying in a coffin. These gray afternoons that drown me. I had forgotten it a while ago, I was happy being with you in that little restaurant—why did you have to talk about things like leaving and being left? I don’t want to know or hear anything about that. It makes me sad, it holds pictures out to me which I don’t want to see, and it makes me restless. I know you don’t mean it this way, but it hits me. It hits me, and then rain and darkness come. You don’t know that. You are strong.”

“Strong?” Ravic repeated.

“Yes.”

“How do you know that?”

“You have no fear.”

“I haven’t any fear left. That’s not the same, Joan.”

She wasn’t listening to what he said. She walked across the room with her long strides for which the room was too small. She always walked as if she were walking against a nonexistent wind. “I want to get away from all this,” she said. “Away from this hotel, this night club with those greedy eyes, away from it all.” She stopped. “Ravic! Must we live the way we live? Can’t we live like other people who love each other? Can’t we be together and have things that belong to us around us, and evenings and security, instead of these suitcases and empty days and these hotel rooms where one is a stranger?”

Ravic’s face was indecipherable. There it comes, he thought. He had expected it any time. “Do you actually see that for us, Joan?”

“Why not? Other people have it! Warmth, belonging together, a few rooms, and when one closes one’s door the restlessness has gone and it doesn’t creep through the walls as it does here.”

“Do you really see that?” Ravic repeated.

“Yes.”

“A neat little apartment with a neat little bourgeois life. A neat little security on the edge of the abyss. Do you really see that?”

“You could just as well call it something else,” she said defiantly. “Something not quite so—contemptuous. When one is in love one finds other names for it.”

“It remains the same, Joan. Do you really see that? Neither of us is made for it.”

She stopped. “I am.”

Ravic smiled. There were tenderness, irony, and a shadow of
sadness in it. “Joan,” he said, “not you either. You even less than I. But that isn’t the only reason. There is still another.”

“Yes,” she replied with bitterness. “I know.”

“No, Joan. You don’t know. But I’ll tell you. It will be better so. You shouldn’t think what you are thinking now.”

She still stood before him. “Let’s get it over quickly,” he said. “And don’t ask many questions afterwards.”

She did not answer. Her face was empty. Suddenly it was again the face she had had formerly. He took her hands. “I live illegally in France,” he said. “I have no papers. That’s the real reason. That’s why I’ll never be able to rent an apartment. Nor can I marry if I love someone. I need proofs of my identity and visas for that. I don’t have them. I’m not even permitted to work. I must do it clandestinely. I can never live otherwise than now.”

She stared at him. “Is that true?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “There are a couple of thousand people who are living in a similar way. I’m sure you know that, too. Everyone knows it nowadays. I am one of them.” He smiled and let her hands go. “A man without a future, as Morosow calls calls it.”

“Yes—but—”

“I’m even very well off. I work, I live, I have you—what are a few inconveniences?”

“And the police?”

“The police don’t bother too much about it. If they happened to catch me, I’d only be deported, that’s all. But that’s improbable. And now go and telephone your night club that you won’t come. We’ll have this evening for ourselves. The whole evening. Tell them that you’re sick. If they want a certificate I’ll get you one from Veber.”

She did not go. “Deported,” she said as if she could understand
it only slowly. “Deported? From France? And then you would be away?”

“For a short while only.”

She did not seem to hear him. “Away!” she repeated. “Away? And what would I do then?”

Ravic smiled. “Yes,” he said. “What would you do then?”

She sat there, leaning on her elbows as if paralyzed. “Joan,” Ravic said, “I have been here for two years and it has not happened.”

Her face did not change. “And if it should happen in spite of that?”

“Then I would be back soon. In a week or two. It’s like a trip, nothing more. And now call the Scheherazade.”

She got up hesitantly. “What shall I say?”

“That you have bronchitis. Speak a little hoarsely.”

She walked over to the telephone. Then she came quickly back. “Ravic—”

He freed himself carefully. “Come,” he said. “Let’s forget it. It’s really a blessing. It protects us against becoming rentiers of passion. It keeps love pure—it remains a flame—and doesn’t become the stove for the family cabbage. Now go and telephone.”

She lifted the receiver. He looked at her while she spoke. At first her heart wasn’t in it; she still looked at him as if he were going to be arrested immediately. But then she began gradually to lie, easily and casually. She was actually lying more than was necessary. Her face became alive and reflected the pain in her chest which she was describing. Her voice became more tired and steadily hoarser and finally was punctuated by coughs. She was no longer looking at Ravic; she looked straight ahead and was completely absorbed in her role. He watched her silently and then drank a big gulp of calvados. No complexes, he thought. A mirror which gives a wonderful reflection—but which holds nothing.

Joan put the receiver down and smoothed her hair. “They believed everything.”

“You did it first rate.”

“They said I should stay in bed. And if it wasn’t completely gone by tomorrow, for heaven’s sake, stay there then.”

“You see! That takes care of tomorrow too.”

“Yes,” she said, gloomy for a second. “If you take it that way.” Then she came to him. “You frightened me, Ravic. Tell me it isn’t true. You often say things just for the sake of saying them. Tell me it isn’t true. Not the way you said it.”

“It isn’t true.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. “It can’t be true. I don’t want to be alone again. I’m nothing when I’m alone. You must stay with me. I’m nothing without you, Ravic.”

Ravic looked down at her. “Joan,” he said. “Sometimes you are like the janitor’s daughter and sometimes Diana of the woods. And sometimes both.”

Her head did not move on his shoulder. “What am I now?”

He smiled. “Diana with the silver bow. Invulnerable and deadly.”

“You should tell me that more often.”

Ravic remained silent. She had not understood what he meant. Nor was it necessary. She took what she liked the way she liked and did not bother about anything else. But wasn’t it just this that attracted him? Whoever wanted someone who was like himself? And who would ask for morals in love? That was an invention of the weak. And the dirge for the victims.

“What are you thinking of?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Something,” he said. “We’ll go away from here for a few days, Joan. There where the sun is. To Cannes or Antibes. To hell with all caution! To hell too with all dreams of three-room apartments
and the vulture cry of the middle class! And to hell with the darkness and the cold and the rain! Aren’t you Budapest and the odor of blooming chestnuts at night when the entire city, hot and longing for summer, is sleeping with the moon?”

She had straightened up quickly. “Do you really mean that?”

“Yes.”

“But—the police—”

“To hell with the police. It is no more dangerous there than here. Resorts for tourists are not so painstakingly checked. Particularly not the expensive hotels. Have you never been there?”

“No. Never. I was only in Italy and on the Adriatic. When are we leaving?”

“In two or three weeks. That’s the best time.”

“But have we any money?”

“We have some. In two weeks we’ll have enough.”

“We could live in a small pension,” she said hastily.

“You don’t belong in a small pension. You belong in a hole like this or a first-rate hotel. We’ll live in the Cap Hôtel in Antibes. Besides, it’s very sensible. Those hotels are entirely safe and no one asks for papers there. In the next few days I have to carve open the stomach of someone of importance, a governor or minister; he’ll provide the money we still need.”

Joan got up quickly. Her face was changed. “Come,” she said. “Let me have more of that old calvados, Ravic! It really seems to be a calvados of dreams.” She went to the bed and lifted the evening gown. “My God! And I only have these two old black rags!”