Heaven Has No Favorites: A Novel (28 page)

Lillian returned to the hotel. She felt that she had fever, but decided to ignore it. She had it often, sometimes only two degrees, sometimes more, and she knew what it meant. She looked into the mirror. At least I don’t look so done in at night, she thought, and smiled to herself at the trick she was employing again: to change the fever from an enemy to a nocturnal friend which lent a glow to her eyes and the animation of high temperature to her face.

When she stepped back from the mirror, she saw the two telegrams on the table. Clerfayt, she thought, with a heartbeat of panic. But what could have possibly happened so quickly? She waited a while, staring at the small, folded and pasted papers. Cautiously, then, she picked up the first and opened it. It was from Clerfayt: “We’re starting in fifteen minutes. Deluge. Don’t fly away, flamingo.”

She laid it aside. After a while, she opened the second. She was even more afraid than before that it might be from the management of the race, reporting an accident, but it was also from Clerfayt. Why is he doing this? she thought. Doesn’t he know that a telegram at such a time is frightening?

She opened her wardrobe to choose a dress for the evening. There was a knock at the door. It was the porter. “Here is the radio, Mademoiselle. You can reach Rome and Milan easily with it.”

He plugged it in. “And here is another telegram.”

How many more will he send? she thought. He might just as well post a detective in the next room. She picked out a dress. It was the one she had worn in Venice. It had been cleaned and all the stains were gone. She had decided that it was her lucky dress, and wore it like a mascot. Now she held it firmly in her hand while she opened the last telegram. It was not from Clerfayt, but contained wishes of good luck for him. How was it that it had come to her? She looked at the signature once more in the deep dusk. Hollmann. She stared at it. She deciphered the point of origin. The telegram had been sent from the Bella Vista Sanatorium.

She laid the slip of paper on the table with great care. Today is the day for ghosts, she thought, sitting down on her bed. Clerfayt, sitting there in the radio set, waiting to fill the room with his roaring motor—and now this telegram which makes silent faces stare in through the window.

It was the first word she had had from the sanatorium. She had never written, had no impulse to. She had wanted to leave it completely behind her forever. She had been so certain she would never return that the parting had been like death.

For a long while, she sat still. Then she turned the knobs of the radio; it was time for the news broadcasts. Rome rushed in with a surge of noise, with names, known and unknown villages and cities, Mantua, Ravenna, Bologna, Aquila, with hours and minutes, with the overwrought voice of the announcer who spoke of minutes gained as if they were the Holy Grail, who described defective water pumps, frozen pistons, and broken gasoline lines as if they were cosmic disasters, who hurled the race with time into the dimness of the room, the dashing for seconds, not for seconds of life, but in order to arrive, after hurtling along a wet road with ten thousand curves and a screaming mob, at a particular spot a few hundred yards sooner, only to leave it again immediately; a wild dash as if the atom bomb were behind one.

Why don’t I understand it? Lillian thought. Why do I feel nothing of the thrill of millions of people who are lining the highways of Italy to watch this? Shouldn’t I feel it more strongly? Isn’t it something like my own life? A race to gather in as much as I possibly can? A pursuit of a phantom that speeds along in front of me like the artificial rabbit in front of the pack in a greyhound race?

“Florence,” the voice on the radio announced triumphantly, and began listing times, names, and brands of car, average speeds and maximum speeds. And then, bursting with pride: “If the leading cars keep up this pace, they’ll be back in Brescia again in a new record time.”

She started. In Brescia, she thought. Back in the little provincial town of garages, cafés, and shops, back where they had started. They play with death, they roar through the night, they endure the terrible weariness of early morning, with stiff, masklike faces encrusted with filth; they race on, on, as though all the glory of the world were at stake—and all this only to return again to the little provincial town from which they had come! From Brescia to Brescia!

She switched off the radio and went to the window. From Brescia to Brescia! Was there any more vivid symbol of meaninglessness? Had life given them such miraculous gifts as healthy lungs and hearts, incomprehensible chemical factories like liver and kidneys, a soft white mass inside the skull which was more fantastic than all the stellar systems—had life given them all that so that they could risk it and, if they had luck, go from Brescia to Brescia? What horrible folly!

She looked out at the endless chain of cars gliding along the quay. Was not every one of them driving from Brescia to Brescia? From Toulouse to Toulouse? From self-complacency to self-complacency? And from self-deception to self-deception? Me, too? she thought. Yes, probably me, too. In spite of everything. But
where is my Brescia? She looked at Hollmann’s telegram. Where it came from there was no Brescia. Neither a Brescia nor a Toulouse. At that place there was only the quiet, inexorable struggle for breath on the eternal border. There was no self-complacency and no self-deception there.

She turned away from the window and for a while walked about the room. She felt her dresses, and it suddenly seemed to her that ashes were trickling through them and in them. She picked up her brushes and combs and laid them down again, without knowing that she had held them in her hand. Like a dim shadow, there entered through the window a premonition that she had made a terrible mistake, a mistake that had been unavoidable and that was now irrevocable.

She began dressing for the evening. The telegram still lay on the table. In the light of the lamps, it seemed to be brighter than any other object in the room. She glanced at it from time to time. She heard the plashing of the river, and smelled the water and the foliage of the trees. What are they doing up there now? she thought, and began for the first time to remember. What were they doing, while Clerfayt raced behind the glare of his headlights over the dark roads outside Florence? She hesitated a while longer; then she picked up the telephone and gave the number of the sanatorium.

“Siena,” Torriani shouted. “Gas up and change tires.”

“When?”

“In five minutes. This damned rain!”

Clerfayt made a face. “We’re not the only ones who have it. The others, too. Watch out for the pit.”

The houses were coming closer together. The headlights wrenched them out of the pattering darkness. Everywhere people stood in raincoats and beneath umbrellas. White walls appeared,
people who spurted away like splashes of water, umbrellas that swayed like mushrooms in the storm, the car skidding—“The pit!” Torriani screamed.

The brakes caught; the car shook itself and stood still. “Gas, water, tires, get going!” Clerfayt shouted into the echoing resonance of the motor. His ears were ringing as if they were empty old halls in a thunderstorm.

Someone gave him a glass of lemonade and a new pair of glasses. “What’s our position?” Torriani asked.

“Fine! Eighteenth!”

“Lousy,” Clerfayt said. “Where are the others?”

“Monti in fourth, Sacchetti in sixth, Frigerio in seventh place. Conti has dropped out.”

“Who’s first?”

“Marchetti, with a ten-minute lead. Then Lotti, three minutes behind him.”

“And what about us?”

“Nineteen minutes behind. Don’t worry—the first team in Rome never wins the race. Everybody knows that.”

The manager appeared at their side. “The Lord has fixed it that way,” he declared. “Mother of God, sweet blood of Christ, you know it, too!” he prayed. “Punish Marchetti because he was first. A little gas-pump breakdown no more. And one for Lotti, too. Holy Archangels, protect …”

“How did you get here?” Clerfayt asked. “Why aren’t you still in Brescia?”

“Ready!” the mechanics shouted.

“Let’s go!”

“I’m taking planes—” the manager began, but his words were snatched out of his mouth by the roar of the motor. The car raced away, scattering people to both sides, and the ribbon of the road to which they were glued again began its endless windings. What
would Lillian be doing now? Clerfayt thought. He didn’t know why he had expected a telegram at the pit. But telegrams could be delayed; perhaps it would be at the next pit. Then the night was there again, the lights, people whose shouts he could not hear because of the motor’s roar, so that they seemed like characters in a silent movie, and finally there was only the road, this snake which seemed to run around the earth, and the mystical beast that screamed under the hood of the car.

THE CONNECTION CAME
very quickly. Lillian had not expected it for hours, because she knew the French telephone system, and also because she had the feeling that the sanatorium was terribly far away, as if it were on another planet.

“Bella Vista Sanatorium.”

Lillian was not sure whether she recognized the voice. It might still be Miss Heger. “Mr. Hollmann, please,” she said, and became aware of how her heart was pounding.

“One moment, please.”

She listened to the almost inaudible hum of the wires. Apparently, they were having to look for Hollmann. She glanced at the clock; it was after dinner at the sanatorium. Why am I so agitated? she thought. As if I were summoning a dead man.

“Hollmann. Who is speaking, please?”

She started in alarm—the voice was so clear. “Lillian,” she whispered.

“Who?”

“Lillian Dunkerque.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then Hollmann said incredulously: “Lillian! Where are you?”

“In Paris. Your telegram for Clerfayt came to me. It was forwarded by his hotel. I opened it by mistake.”

“You’re not in Brescia?”

“No,” she said, feeling a slight stab of pain. “I’m not in Brescia.”

“Didn’t Clerfayt want you to come?”

“No, he didn’t want me to.”

“I’m hanging over the radio,” Hollmann said. “I suppose you are, too, of course.”

“Yes, Hollmann.”

“He’s driving magnificently. The race is still wide open. I know him; he’s waiting his chance, letting the others drive their machines into the ground. He won’t put on the pressure till midnight, maybe even later—no, around midnight, I think. It’s a race against the clock—you know that. The wearing part of it is that he never knows himself what his position is; he only finds out when he stops for gas, and what he hears then may be already outdated. It’s a race with uncertainty—you understand me, Lillian?”

“Yes, Hollmann. A race with uncertainty. How are you?”

“Fine. The speeds are fantastic. Averages of seventy-five miles an hour and more. And many of the big motors are only now reaching the long straight stretches. Average speeds, Lillian, not maximum speeds!”

“Yes, Hollmann. You’re feeling well?”

“Very well. Much better, Lillian. What station are you listening to? Switch on Rome; Rome is closer to the race than Milan, now.”

“I have Rome. I’m glad to hear you’re better.”

“How about you, Lillian?”

“Very well. And—”

“It’s probably the right thing that you aren’t in Brescia—it’s
raining like mad there. Though I wouldn’t have been able to stand it; I would have been right out there at the start. How are you feeling, Lillian?”

She knew what he meant. “Fine,” she said. “How is everything up there?”

“Same as ever. Little has changed in these few months.”

Few months, she thought. Had it not been years? “And how is—” She hesitated, but suddenly she knew that she had only telephoned to ask this question. “How is Boris?”

“Who?”

“Boris.”

“Boris Volkov? We don’t see much of him. He no longer comes to the sanatorium. I think he’s all right.”

“Have you seen him at all?”

“Yes, of course. Though it’s two or three weeks ago. He was walking his dog, the police dog; you know it, of course. We didn’t talk. How is it down below? As you imagined?”

“Pretty much,” Lillian said. “I suppose it always depends on what you make of it. Is there still snow on the mountain?”

Hollmann laughed. “Not any more. There are all those crocuses and things. Lillian—” He paused. “I’m going to be out of here in a few weeks. It isn’t a swindle. The Dalai Lama has told me.”

Lillian did not believe it. She had been told the same thing years ago. “That’s wonderful,” she said. “Then we’ll see each other here. Shall I tell Clerfayt?”

“Better not, yet; I’m superstitious about those things. There—the latest news is coming in. You’ll have to listen, too! So long, Lillian.”

“So long, Hollmann.”

She had wanted to add something about Boris, but she did not do so. For a while, she looked at the black receiver; then she carefully placed it on the hook and gave way to her thoughts without
taking account of them, until she became aware that she was crying. Like the rain in Brescia, she thought, and got up. How foolish I am! One has to pay for everything. Did I think I had already done so?

“The word ‘happiness’ has acquired an excessive importance in our times,” the Vicomte de Peystre said. “There have been centuries in which it was unknown. It was not a part of life. Read Chinese literature of the best epochs, or Indian or Greek classics. Instead of emotion, in which the word ‘happiness’ has its root, people sought an unperturbed, elevated sense of life. Where that is lost, the crises begin, the muddles of emotion, romanticism, and the search for happiness comes in as a foolish substitute.”

Lillian laughed. “Isn’t the other also a substitute?”

“One worthier of human dignity,” de Peystre replied.

“Is the one impossible without the other?”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “Almost always. In your case not, I think. That fascinates me. You have both. It presupposes a state of such pure despair that names for it, and for the despair also, are already matters of indifference. It is far beyond anarchy—on the polar plateau of solitude without the slightest grief. In you, I think, grief and rebellion have long ago mutually annihilated one another. Consequently, little things have the same value as big things. Details begin to take on radiance.”