Heaven Has No Favorites: A Novel (2 page)

The Bella Vista Sanatorium stood on a small height above the village. Clerfayt parked the car in a level square, where a few sleighs stood. He switched off the motor and put a blanket over the hood to keep it warm. “Clerfayt!” someone called from the entrance.

He turned, and was astonished to see Hollmann running toward him. He had expected him to be in bed.

“Clerfayt!” Hollmann called. “Is it really you?”

“As real as I’m ever likely to be. And you! You’re up and about? I thought you’d be lying in bed.”

Hollmann laughed. “That’s old-fashioned.” He slapped Clerfayt on the back. His eyes devoured the car. “I thought I heard Giuseppe’s roar, but figured it must be some kind of hallucination. Then I saw you coming up the rise. What a surprise! Where are you coming from?”

“From Monte Carlo.”

“What do you know!” Hollmann was in a state of high excitement. “And with Giuseppe, the old lion! I was beginning to think you two had forgotten me.”

He patted the chassis of the car. He had driven it with Clerfayt in half a dozen races, and had been in it when he had his first bad
hemorrhage. “It’s still Giuseppe, isn’t it? Not a younger brother already?”

“It’s Giuseppe. But he’s not running any more races. I bought him from the factory. He’s in retirement now.”

“Just like me.”

“You’re not in retirement; you’re on leave.”

“A whole year! That’s not a leave any more. But come on in. We have to celebrate your coming. What do you drink these days? Still vodka?”

Clerfayt laughed. “Don’t tell me you have vodka up here?”

“For visitors, we have everything. This is a modern sanatorium.”

“It would seem so. It looks like a hotel.”

“That’s part of the treatment. Modern therapy. We’re guests taking a cure, not patients any longer. The words ‘sickness’ and ‘death’ are taboo. They’re ignored. Applied psychology. Marvelous for morale, but people die just the same. What were you doing in Monte Carlo? Did you ride in the rally?”

“I did. Don’t you read the sports news any more?”

Hollmann gave an embarrassed laugh. “At the beginning, I used to. Then I stopped. Idiotic, isn’t it?”

“No, sensible. Read it when you’re driving again.”

“Right,” Hollmann said. “When I’m driving again. And when I win the grand prize in the sweepstakes. Who was your co-driver in the rally?”

“Torriani.”

They walked toward the entrance. The snowy slopes glowed pink in the setting sun. Skiers shot like black commas through the glitter. “Pretty up here,” Clerfayt said.

“Yes, a pretty prison.”

Clerfayt did not reply. He knew other prisons.

“Are you teamed up with Torriani regularly these days?” Hollmann asked.

“No. I keep changing co-drivers. I’m waiting for you.”

That was not true. For the past six months, Clerfayt had been driving all the sports-car races with Torriani. But since Hollmann no longer read the sports news, it was a handy lie.

It affected Hollmann like wine. A light dew of perspiration formed on his forehead. “Did you win anything in the rally?” he asked.

“Not a thing. We were too late.”

“Where did you drive from?”

“Vienna. It was a crazy idea. We were stopped by every Soviet patrol. They seemed to think we might be kidnaping Stalin. Mostly, I wanted to try out Giuseppe’s successor. What roads they have in the Soviet Zone! Like leftovers from the Ice Age!”

Hollmann laughed. “That was Giuseppe’s revenge. Where did you start before that?”

Clerfayt raised his hand. “Let’s have a drink. And do me a favor—for the first few days let’s talk about anything you like, only not about races and cars.”

“But Clerfayt—what else should we talk about?”

“Just for a few days.”

“What’s the matter? Has something happened?”

“Nothing. I’m just tired out. I want to rest a bit and for a few days forget about this crazy business of putting people into machines that go too fast and having them drive like mad. Can’t you understand that?”

“Sure I can,” Hollmann said. “But what’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” Clerfayt replied impatiently. “I’m just superstitious, like the rest of us. My contract is running out and hasn’t been renewed. I don’t want to jinx anything, that’s all.”

“Clerfayt,” Hollmann said, “who has cracked up?”

“Ferrer. In a silly, stinking little race on the coast.”

“Dead?”

“Not yet. But they’ve had to amputate one of his legs. And that crazy woman who went around with him, that fake baroness, won’t go to see him. She sits in the casino and bawls. Can’t stand a cripple. Come on now and give me a drink. The last of my cognac disappeared down the gullet of a snowplow driver who’s got more sense than we have. His vehicle can’t go more than three miles an hour.”

They sat in the lobby, at a small table by the window. Clerfayt looked around. “Are all these people patients?”

“No. There are guests, too, visiting the patients.”

“The pale-looking ones are the patients?”

“No, they’re the healthy people. They’re pale because they’ve just come here. The others, who look so tanned and athletic, are the patients; they’ve been here a long time.”

A girl brought a glass of orange juice for Hollmann and a small carafe of vodka for Clerfayt. “How long do you intend to stay?” Hollmann asked.

“A few days. Where can I put up?”

“The best place is the Palace Hotel. They have a good bar.”

Clerfayt looked at the orange juice. “How do you know?”

“We go over there now and then when we play hooky from here.”

“Play hooky?”

“Yes, at night every so often, when we want to feel like normal people. It’s against the rules, but when the blues get you, it’s better than holding a hopeless discussion with God on why you’re sick.” Hollmann took a flask from his breast pocket and poured a shot into his glass. “Gin,” he said. “It helps, too.”

“Aren’t you allowed to drink?” Clerfayt asked.

“It isn’t absolutely forbidden, but it’s simpler this way.” Hollmann thrust the flask back into his pocket. “We get to be pretty childish up here.”

A sleigh stopped in front of the door. Clerfayt saw that it was the one he had met on the road. The man in the black fur cap got out.

“Do you know who that is?” Clerfayt asked.

“The woman?”

“No, the man.”

“A Russian. His name is Boris Volkov.”

“White Russian?”

“Yes. But just to vary things, not a former grand duke, and not poor. I gather that his father opened a bank account in London at the right time and was in Moscow at the wrong time. He was shot. The wife and son got out. The story goes that the wife carried emeralds the size of walnuts sewed into her corset. In 1917 women still wore corsets.”

Clerfayt laughed. “You’re a regular detective agency. How do you know all that?”

“Up here you soon know everything about everyone,” Hollmann replied with a trace of bitterness. “In two weeks the skiers leave, and this village goes back to being a gossip society for the rest of the year.”

A group of short people pressed by behind them. They were dressed in black and were talking animatedly in Spanish.

“For a small village, you seem to have a pretty international set here,” Clerfayt said.

“That we have. Death hasn’t got around to being chauvinistic yet.”

“I’m no longer so sure of that.” Clerfayt looked around toward the door. “Is that the Russian’s wife?”

Hollmann glanced around. “No.”

The Russian and the woman came in. “Don’t tell me those two are also sick,” Clerfayt said.

“But they are. They don’t look it, do they?”

“No.”

“It’s this way. For a while, the patients look as though they’re brimming over with life. Then that stops; but by then they’re no longer running around.”

The Russian and the woman lingered near the door. The man was saying something insistently to the woman. She listened, then shook her head vehemently and walked swiftly toward the back of the lobby. The man waited a moment, watching her; then he went outside and climbed into the sleigh.

“They seem to be quarreling,” Clerfayt said, not without satisfaction.

“That sort of thing is always happening. After a while everyone here goes a little off his rocker. Prison-camp psychosis. Proportions shift; trivialities become important and important things secondary.”

Clerfayt scrutinized Hollmann. “Does that happen to you, too?”

“To me, too. It’s this business of forever staring at one point. No one can endure it.”

“Do the two of them live in the sanatorium?”

“The woman does; the man lives out.”

Clerfayt stood up. “I’ll drive over to the hotel now. Where can we have dinner together?”

“Right here. The place has a dining room where guests can come.”

“Good. When?”

“Around seven. I must go to bed at nine. Like school.”

“Like the army,” Clerfayt said. “Or before a race. Remember how our manager in Milan used to come and shoo us up the stairs of the hotel like chickens?”

Hollmann’s face brightened. “Gabrielli? Is he still around?”

“Of course. What would happen to him? Managers die in bed—like generals.”

The woman who had entered with the Russian came back. At the door she was stopped by a gray-haired matron who seemed to be reprimanding her. Without replying, she turned around. Indecisively, she stood still—then she caught sight of Hollmann and came over to him. “The Crocodile doesn’t want to let me out any more,” she said softly. “She says I shouldn’t have gone for a drive and she’ll have to report me to the Dalai Lama if I do it again.…”

She stopped. “This is my friend Clerfayt, Lillian,” Hollmann said. “I’ve told you about him. He’s paying me a surprise visit.”

The woman nodded absently. She seemed not to have recognized Clerfayt, and turned to Hollmann again. “She wants me to go to bed,” she said angrily. “Just because I had a little fever a few days ago. But I’m not letting her keep me locked up. Not tonight! Are you staying up?”

“Yes. We’re eating in Limbo.”

“I’ll come, too.”

She nodded to Clerfayt and Hollmann, and left.

“It must sound like Tibetan to you,” Hollmann said. “Limbo is our name for the room where guests can eat. The Dalai Lama is the doctor, of course, and the Crocodile the head nurse.…”

“And the woman?”

“Her name is Lillian Dunkerque. Half Belgian, half Russian. Lost both her parents in the war.”

“She seems awfully worked up about nothing.”

Hollmann gave a shrug. Suddenly he looked weary. “I’ve told you that everybody here is a little off his rocker. Especially when there’s been a death in the place.”

“There’s been a death?”

“Yes, a friend of hers. Just yesterday. It doesn’t really concern the
rest of us, but something of ours always dies, too. A bit of hope, probably.”

“Yes,” Clerfayt said. “But that’s so everywhere.”

Hollmann nodded. “People start dying here as spring approaches. More than in winter. Odd, isn’t it?”

ABOVE THE FIRST FLOOR
, the sanatorium no longer looked like a hotel; it was unmistakably a hospital. Lillian Dunkerque stood in front of the room that had been Agnes Somerville’s. She heard voices and noise, and opened the door.

The coffin was no longer there. The windows were wide open, and two cleaning women were going over the room. The floor was wet; everything smelled of Lysol and soap; the furniture had been pushed into one corner, and the electric light fell with an even glare over every feature of the room.

For a moment, Lillian thought she had entered the wrong room. Then she noted the small plush bear which had been the dead woman’s mascot. It was lying on top of a wardrobe. “Has she already been taken away?” she asked.

One of the cleaning women straightened up. “She’s been moved to Number Seven. We have to clean up here. They need it for a new patient tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

Lillian closed the door. She knew Number Seven; it was a small room next to the freight elevator. The dead were put there because
they could then be conveniently carried down in the elevator at night. Like luggage, Lillian thought. And behind them, their last traces were washed away with soap and Lysol.

There was no light burning in Number Seven. Nor were there any candles. The coffin had already been closed, the lid pushed down over the thin face and vivid red hair, and screwed tight. Everything was prepared for removal. The flowers had been taken away from the coffin; they lay in a canvas wrapper on a nearby table. It was a special canvas for this purpose, equipped with rings and cords for bagging up flowers. The wreaths lay alongside, piled one on top of the other, like hats in a millinery shop. The curtains had not been drawn, and the windows were open. It was very cold in the room. The moon shone in.

Lillian had come to see her dead friend once more. It was too late. No one would ever again see the pale face and brilliant hair that had once been Agnes Somerville. Tonight the coffin would be carried down secretly and transported by sled to the crematorium. There, under the assault of the fire, it would begin to burn; the red hair would crackle once and spray sparks; the rigid body would heave up once more in the flames, as though it had come to life—and then everything would collapse into ashes and nothingness and a little faded memory.

Lillian looked at the coffin. Suppose she is still living, she thought suddenly. Could it not be that Agnes had returned to consciousness once more in this inexorable box? Didn’t such things happen? Who could say how often it happened? Only a few cases were known, it was true, when the seemingly dead were found to be alive; but how many might not have silently suffocated because no one came to their rescue? Could it not be that now, right now,
Agnes Somerville was trying to scream in the narrow darkness of rustling silk, trying with parched throat to scream, incapable of producing a sound?

I’m crazy, Lillian thought; I shouldn’t have come into this room. Why did I? Out of sentimentality? Out of confusion? Or out of that horrible curiosity that makes one stare into a dead face as if it were an abyss from which we hope to dredge some kind of answer? Light, she thought; I must turn on the light.