Heaven Has No Favorites: A Novel (3 page)

She started back toward the door. Suddenly she stood still and listened. She thought she heard a rustling noise, very low, but quite distinct, like nails scratching on silk. Swiftly, she pressed the light switch. The strong illumination of the bare bulb on the ceiling drove back night, moon, and horror. I’m hearing ghosts, she thought. It was my own dress, my own fingernails. It was not the last feeble flicker of life stirring one last time.

She stared at the coffin. No, this black polished box with the bronze handles, standing there in the glare, contained no life. On the contrary—enclosed within it was the darkest menace known to mankind. It was no longer her friend Agnes Somerville who lay there motionless in her white dress, with halted blood and rotting lungs; nor was it any longer the waxen image of a human being slowly beginning to be destroyed by its own enclosed fluids. No, in this box lurked nothing more than absolute zero, the shadow without shadow, the incomprehensible nothingness with its eternal hunger for that other nothingness that dwelt within all life and grew, that was born with everyone and that was also silently growing in herself, Lillian Dunkerque, consuming her life day after day, until it alone would be all that was left and its shell would be packed into a black box just as this one was, consigned to decay and disposal.

She reached behind her for the door handle. As she touched it, it
turned sharply in her hand. She suppressed an outcry. The door opened. An attendant stood there, staring at her as wild-eyed as she stared at him. “What the hell!” he stammered. “Where did you come from?” He looked past her into the room, and at the curtains fluttering in the draft. “The room was locked. How did you get in? Where is the key?”

“It was not locked.”

“Then somebody must have—” The attendant glanced at the door. “Oh, the key’s still in the lock.” He wiped his hand over his face. “You know, for a moment I thought—”

“What?”

He pointed to the coffin. “I thought you were it and—”

“I am,” Lillian whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

The man took a step forward into the room. “You didn’t get me. I thought you were her in the coffin. Whew! Sure made me jump.” He laughed. “That’s what I call a scare. What are you doing here, anyway? We’ve already screwed the lid down on Number Eighteen.”

“Who?”

“Number Eighteen. I don’t know the name. No need to. When it comes to this, the finest name does no good.” The attendant turned off the light and closed the door behind them. “Be glad that you’re alive and kicking, Miss,” he said genially.

Lillian dug some change out of her bag. “Here’s something for the scare I gave you.”

The attendant saluted, and rubbed the bristle on his face. “Thank you, Miss. I’ll share it with my assistant, Josef. After a little job like this, we can always use a shot with a beer chaser. Don’t take it so to heart, Miss. Sooner or later we all have our turn.”

“Yes,” Lillian said. “That’s a comfort. It really is an enormous comfort, isn’t it?”

She stood in her room. The central heating hummed. She had all the lamps on, as well as the ceiling light. I’m crazy, she thought. I’m afraid of the night. What shall I do? I can take a sedative and go to sleep with the lights on. I can call up Boris and talk with him. She moved her hand toward the telephone, but did not lift it off the hook. She knew what Boris would say. And she also knew that he would be right; but what good was it being right? The meager rationality of human beings was there to show them that they could not live by reason alone. People lived by feelings—and being right was no help, as far as feelings went.

She crouched in an armchair by the window. I am twenty-four years old, she thought, the same age Agnes was. I’ve been up here for three years. And before that there were nearly six years of war. What do I know of life? Destruction, the flight from Belgium, tears, terror, my parents’ death, hunger, and then this illness caused by malnutrition and homelessness. Before that, I was a child. I scarcely remember what cities used to look like in peacetime. The sparkling lights and the radiant world of the streets—what do I remember of them? All I know are blackouts and the rain of bombs from the merciless dark, and then occupation and dread and hiding and cold. Happiness? That glorious word that once inspired so many splendid dreams—how its meaning had shriveled! Happiness had been a room even without heat, a loaf of bread, a cellar, a place that was not under fire. Then she had come here. She stared out of the window. Below, at the entrance, stood a sled in which supplies were brought to the sanatorium. Or perhaps it was the sled for Agnes Somerville, already come. A year ago, Agnes had arrived at
the main entrance to the sanatorium, laughing, wrapped in furs, holding flowers; now she was secretly leaving the building through the delivery entrance, as though she had not paid her bill. Six weeks ago, she had been talking with Lillian about plans for departure. Departure—the phantom, the mirage that never came true.

The telephone rang. She hesitated, then lifted it. “Yes, Boris.” She listened. “Yes, Boris. Yes, I am being sensible—Yes, I know it happens everywhere—Yes, I know that many more people die of heart attacks and cancer—I’ve read the statistics, Boris—Yes, I know that it only seems so to us because we live so close together up here—Yes, many are cured—yes, yes, the new drugs—Yes, Boris, I am being sensible, certainly. No, don’t come—yes, I love you, Boris, of course.”

She laid down the telephone. “Sensible,” she whispered, staring into the mirror. Her face stared back at her, a stranger’s face with a stranger’s eyes. “Sensible!” Good God, she thought, I’ve been sensible far too long. What for? To become Number Twenty or Thirty in Room Seven beside the freight elevator? Something in a black box that horrifies people?

She looked at her watch. It was shortly before nine. The night loomed dark and endless before her, filled with panic and boredom, that mixture peculiar to hospitals—the panic in the face of disease, and the boredom of a regimented existence—which together became intolerable because they led to nothing but a feeling of utter helplessness.

Lillian stood up. She couldn’t be alone now! There would certainly be a few people downstairs—at least Hollmann and his visitor.

Aside from Hollmann and Clerfayt, three South Americans were still sitting in the dining room: two men and a fat, stocky woman.
All three were dressed in black; all three were silent. They sat hunched like dark little mounds in the center of the room, directly under the chandelier.

“They come from Bogotá,” Hollmann said. “The sanatorium wired them. The daughter of one of the men—the one with the horn-rimmed glasses—was dying. But since they came, the girl has taken an upturn. Now they don’t know what to do—fly back or stay here.”

“Why can’t the mother stay and the others fly back?”

“The woman isn’t her mother. She’s the stepmother; she’s the one who has the money that pays the sanatorium bills. None of them really wants to stay, not the father either. Back home in Bogotá, they’d almost forgotten Manuela. She wrote them a letter once a month, they sent the check regularly, and that was that. So it went for five years, and as far as they were concerned it could have gone on that way forever. Until Manuela decided to become a nuisance by dying. Then, of course, they had to fly over, or else what would people think? Complications arose; the woman wouldn’t let her husband fly over alone. She’s older than he, and, as you see, not terribly good-looking. She’s jealous and won’t let him out of her sight. For reinforcement, she took her brother along. Back in Bogotá, people were saying that she’d forced her stepdaughter out of the house. She wants to show them now that she loves Manuela. So it’s not only a question of jealousy, but also one of prestige. If she flew back alone, the talk would begin all over again. So all three sit here and wait.”

“And Manuela?”

“They were terribly loving to the girl when they arrived; after all, she might die any moment. Poor Manuela, who had never known love, was so overwhelmed that she actually began to get better. By now, her visitors are impatient. Besides, they suffer from nervous hunger, so they stuff themselves with the famous local
confectionery, and get fatter by the day. Another week and they’ll be hating Manuela for not dying quickly enough.”

“Or else they’ll take a fancy to the village, buy the confectioner’s shop, and settle down here,” Clerfayt said.

Hollmann laughed. “You have a macabre imagination.”

“On the contrary. Only macabre experiences. But how do you know all this?”

“I’ve told you there are no secrets here. Nurse Cornelia Wehrli speaks Spanish, so the stepmother pours out her heart to her.”

The three black figures stood up. They had not exchanged a word with one another. With somber dignity, they walked in single file to the door.

They almost collided with Lillian Dunkerque, who came in so quickly that the fat woman was startled and jumped to one side, with a high little cry. Almost running, Lillian went straight to the table where Hollmann and Clerfayt were sitting. Then she turned around and looked at the South Americans. “What made her shriek?” she said. “I’m not a ghost, after all. Or am I? Already?” She fumbled in her handbag for her mirror. “I seem to be frightening everybody tonight.”

“Who else?” Hollmann asked.

“The attendant.”

“Josef?”

“No, the other one, who helps Josef. You know the one I mean—”

Hollmann nodded. “You don’t frighten us, Lillian.”

She put the mirror away. “Has the Crocodile been here yet?”

“No. But she’ll be along any minute and throw us out. She’s as strict and on the dot as a Prussian drill sergeant.”

“Josef is at the door tonight. I’ve asked. We could get out. Will you?”

“Where? The Palace bar?”

“Where else?”

“There’s nothing doing at the Palace bar,” Clerfayt said. “I’ve just come from there.”

Hollmann laughed. “There’s always enough doing as far as we’re concerned. Even if there’s not a soul around. Anything outside the sanatorium is exciting to us. After you’ve been here a while, you don’t ask for much.”

“We could slip out now,” Lillian Dunkerque said. “Josef is the only one watching. The other attendant is still busy.”

Hollmann shrugged. “I have a touch of fever, Lillian. Just this evening, all of a sudden. God knows why. Maybe from seeing that dirty sports car of Clerfayt’s.”

A cleaning woman came in and began setting the chairs on the tables. “We’ve slipped out with fever before this,” Lillian said.

Hollmann looked at her with some constraint. “I know. Not tonight, Lillian.”

“Also on account of the dirty sports car?”

“Possibly. What about Boris? Isn’t he going?”

“Boris thinks I’m in bed. I made him take me out for a sleigh ride this afternoon. He wouldn’t dissipate twice.”

The cleaning woman opened the curtains. The landscape, mighty and hostile, appeared outside the window—moonlit slopes, black woods, snow. Against it, the three people seemed utterly forlorn. The cleaning woman began turning out the lights along the walls. As each successive light was extinguished, the landscape seemed to advance a step further toward the three in the room. “Here comes the Crocodile,” Hollmann said.

The head nurse was standing in the doorway. She smiled with
prominent teeth and cold eyes. “Night owls, as always. Closing time, Messieurs and Madame!” She made no comment on the fact that Lillian Dunkerque was still up. “Closing time,” she repeated. “To bed, to bed! Tomorrow is another day.”

Lillian stood up. “Are you so sure of that?”

“Absolutely sure,” the head nurse replied with depressing cheerfulness. “There’s a sleeping tablet on your night table, Miss Dunkerque. You’ll rest in the arms of Morpheus.”

“In the arms of Morpheus!” Hollmann said with disgust after she had left. “The Crocodile is the queen of clichés. Tonight she was comparatively gracious. Why in the world must these hygienic policewomen treat everyone who lands in a hospital with that gruesome, patient superiority, as if we were all children or idiots?”

“It’s their revenge upon the world for what they are,” Lillian replied spitefully. “If waiters and nurses didn’t have it, they’d die of inferiority complexes.”

They were standing in the lobby in front of the elevator. “Where are you going now?” Lillian asked Clerfayt.

He looked at her. “To the Palace bar.”

“Will you take me with you?”

He hesitated for a moment. He had a bit of experience with overexcitable Russian women. With half-Russians, too. But then he recalled the incident with the sleigh, and Volkov’s arrogant face. “Why not?” he said.

She gave a rueful smile. “Isn’t it dreary? We plead for a little freedom the way a drunkard begs a grudging bartender for one last glass. Isn’t it miserable?”

Clerfayt shook his head. “I’ve done it often enough myself.”

For the first time, she looked squarely at him. “You?” she asked. “Why you?”

“Everyone has reasons. Even a clod. Where do you want me to pick you up? Or would you like to come along right now?”

“I’d better not. You must go out through the main entrance. The Crocodile is on watch there. Then go down the first serpentine, hire a sleigh, and drive up to the right, behind the sanatorium, to the delivery entrance. I’ll be waiting there.”

“Good.”

Lillian stepped into the elevator. Hollmann turned to Clerfayt. “You don’t mind my not coming along tonight?”

“Of course not. I’m not leaving tomorrow, you know.”

Hollmann looked probingly at him. “Would you have preferred to be alone tonight?”

“Not at all. Who wants to be alone?”

Clerfayt went out through the empty lobby. All the lights were out except one small one. Through the big window, the moonlight laid wide rhombuses on the floor. The Crocodile stood beside the door.

“Good night,” Clerfayt said.

“Bonne nuit,”
she replied. He could not imagine why the woman had suddenly decided to speak French.

He walked down the serpentines until he found a sleigh. “Can you put up the top?” he asked the driver.

“Tonight? It’s not very cold tonight.”