“Sixty francs. For you. Because you gave me that prescription for my rheumatism.”
“Did it help?”
“No. How can it, as long as I have to stand in the wet at night?”
“You’re the most sensible patient I ever met in my life.”
He took the roses. “Here is my apology for having left you to wake up alone this morning,” he said to Joan and put the flowers on the floor of the taxi. “Would you like to have a drink somewhere?”
“No. I’d like to go to your place. Put the flowers here on the seat. Not on the floor.”
“They are all right down there. One should love flowers, but not make too much fuss about them.”
She turned her head quickly. “You mean one shouldn’t spoil what one loves?”
“No. I only mean that one shouldn’t dramatize beautiful things. Besides, at the moment it is better if there are no flowers between us.”
Joan looked at him doubtfully for a moment. Then her face brightened. “Do you know what I did today? I lived. Lived again. I breathed. Breathed again. I existed. Existed again. For the first time. I had hands again. And eyes and a mouth.”
The driver maneuvered the taxi out from among the other cars in the small street. Then he started with a jerk. The jolt threw Joan toward Ravic. He held her in his arms for a moment and felt her closeness. It was like a warm wind as if she were melting away the crust of the day, the strange defensive coolness within him, while she sat there and spoke, carried away by her feelings and by herself.
“The whole day—it threw itself over my neck and against my breast as though to make me grow green and put out leaves and blossoms—it held me and held me and did not let me go—and now here I am—and you—”
Ravic looked at her. She sat leaning forward on the dirty leather seat and her shoulders shone out of her black evening gown. She was open and outspoken and without shame, she said what she felt and he found himself poor and dry in comparison.
I was performing operations, he thought. I forgot you. I was with Lucienne. I was somewhere in the past. Without you. Then when the evening came a certain warmth came slowly with it. I was not with you. I thought of Kate Hegstroem.
“Joan,” he said and put his hands on her hands, which she had rested on the seat. “We can’t go to my place now, I’ve got to go first to the hospital. Only for a few minutes.”
“Have you got to look after the woman you operated on?”
“Not the one of this morning. Someone else. Would you like to wait somewhere for me?”
“Must you go right away?”
“It would be better. I don’t want to be called later.”
“I can wait for you. Have we enough time to go by your hotel?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go there first. Then you’ll come later. I can wait for you.”
“All right.” Ravic gave the driver his address. He leaned back and felt the top of the seat against his neck. His hands were still on Joan’s hands. He felt that she was waiting for him to say something. Something about him and her. But he could not. She had already said too much. It was not so much, he thought.
The cab stopped. “You go on,” Joan said. “I’ll manage here all right. I’m not afraid. Just give me your key.”
“The key is in the hotel.”
“I’ll have them give it to me. I’ve got to learn to do that.” She took the flowers from the floor. “With a man who leaves me while I sleep and comes again when I don’t expect it—there are many things I’ll have to learn. Let me start right away.”
“I’ll come up with you. We won’t overdo anything. It’s bad enough to have to leave you alone again immediately.”
She laughed. She looked very young. “Please wait a moment,” Ravic said to the driver.
The man slowly closed one eye. “Even longer.”
“Let me have the key,” Joan said as they walked upstairs.
“Why?”
“Let me have it.”
She opened the door. Then she stopped. “Beautiful,” she said into the dark room into which a bleak moon shone through the clouds outside the window.
“Beautiful? This hole?”
“Yes, beautiful! Everything is beautiful.”
“Maybe right now. Now it’s dark. But—” Ravic reached for the switch.
“Don’t. I’ll do it myself. And now go. And don’t wait till tomorrow noon to come back.”
She stood in the doorway in the dark. The silver light from the window was behind her shoulders and her head. She was indistinct and exciting and mysterious. Her coat had slipped down; it lay at her feet like a heap of black foam. She leaned against the doorframe and one of her arms caught a long shaft of light from the corridor. “Go and come again,” she said and closed the door.
Kate Hegstroem’s fever had gone down. “Has she been awake?” Ravic asked the drowsy nurse.
“Yes. At eleven. She asked for you. I told her what you instructed me to say.”
“Did she say anything about the bandages?”
“Yes. I told her you had to make an incision. A light operation. You’d explain it to her tomorrow.”
“That was all?”
“Yes. She said everything was all right as long as you considered it right. I was to give you her regards if you came again tonight and tell you that she has confidence in you.”
“So—”
Ravic stood awhile and looked down at the nurse’s parted black hair. “How old are you?” he asked.
She raised her head in astonishment. “Twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three. And how long have you been nursing?”
“For the last two and a half years. In January it was two and a half years.”
“Do you like your profession?”
The nurse smiled all over her apple face. “I like it very much,” she declared chattily. “Of course some of the patients are trying, but most of them are nice. Madame Brissot gave me a beautiful, almost new silk dress as a present yesterday. And last week I got a pair of patent leather shoes from Madame Lerner. The one who later died at home.” She smiled again. “I hardly have to buy any clothing. I almost always get something. If I can’t use it I exchange it with a friend of mine who has a shop. That’s why I’m well off. Madame Hegstroem too is always very generous. She gives me money. Last time it was a hundred francs. For only twelve days. How long will she be here this time, doctor?”
“Longer. A few weeks.”
The nurse looked happy. Behind her clear unlined forehead she was calculating how much she would get. Ravic bent over Kate Hegstroem once more. She was breathing quietly. The slight odor from the wound mingled with the dry perfume of her hair. Suddenly he could not stand it. She had confidence in him. Confidence. The flat cut-up abdomen in which the beast was feeding. Sewn up without the possibility of doing anything. Confidence.
“Good night, nurse,” he said.
“Good night, doctor.”
The chubby nurse sat down in the chair in a corner of the room. She dimmed the light on the side toward the bed, wrapped her feet in a blanket, and reached for a magazine. It was one of those cheap magazines containing detective stories and movie pictures. She adjusted herself comfortably and began to read. Beside her on a little table she had put an opened box of chocolate wafers. Ravic saw her take one without looking up. Sometimes one doesn’t comprehend the simplest things, he thought—that in the same room one person should be lying deadly ill and the other not at all concerned about it. He closed the door. But isn’t it the same with me? Am I not going from this room into another in which—
The room was dark. The door to the bathroom was ajar. There was a light beyond it. Ravic hesitated. He did not know whether Joan was still in the bathroom. Then he heard her breathing. He walked through the room to the bathroom. He did not say anything. He knew she was here and was not asleep, but she too said nothing. Suddenly the room was full of silence and expectancy and tension—like a vortex which silently called—an
unknown abyss, beyond thought, from which rose the poppy clouds and the dizziness of a red tumult.
He closed the door of the bathroom. In the clear light of the white bulbs everything was familiar and known to him again. He turned on the taps of the shower. It was the only shower in the hotel. Ravic had paid for it himself and had had it installed. He knew that in his absence it was still being shown to the patron’s French relatives and friends as a remarkable sight.
The hot water ran down his skin. In the next room Joan Madou was lying and waiting for him. Her skin was smooth, her hair surged over the pillow like an impetuous wave, and her eyes shone lucidly even when the room was dark, as if they caught the meager light of winter stars from outside the window and reflected it. She lay there, subtle and changeable and exciting because there was nothing left of the woman whom one had known an hour ago, she was everything that enticement and temptation could give without love—and yet all of a sudden he felt something like an aversion to her—a strange resistance mixed with a violent and sudden attraction. He looked around involuntarily—if the bathroom had had a second exit, he thought it possible that he would have dressed and gone out to drink.
He dried himself and hesitated for a while. Strange, what had fluttered in from nowhere! A shadow, a nothing. Perhaps it was because he had been with Kate Hegstroem. Or because of what Joan had said in the taxi earlier. Much too quick and much too easy. Or simply because someone was waiting—instead of his waiting. He tightened his lips and opened the door.
“Ravic,” Joan said out of the dark. “The calvados is on the table by the window.”
He stood still. He realized that he had been tense. He could not have stood many things she might have said. This one was right. His tension eased into loose, light certainty. “Did you find the bottle?” he asked.
“That was easy. It was standing right here. But I opened it. I discovered a corkscrew somewhere among your things. Give me another glass.”
He poured two glasses and brought one to her. “Here—” It was good to feel the clear apple brandy. It was good that Joan had found the right word.
She leaned her head back and drank. Her hair fell over her shoulders and in this moment she seemed to be nothing but drinking. Ravic had noticed this in her before. She gave herself completely to whatever she did. It occurred to him vaguely that therein lay not only fascination, but also danger. Such women were nothing but drinking, when they drank; nothing but love when they loved; nothing but desperation when they were desperate; and nothing but forgetfulness when they forgot.
Joan put down the glass and laughed suddenly. “Ravic,” she said. “I know what you are thinking.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You felt already half married just now. So did I. To be abandoned at the door is not exactly an enviable experience. Left alone with roses in one’s arms. Thank God, the calvados was here. Don’t be so careful with the bottle.”
Ravic refilled her glass. “You are a wonderful person,” he said. “It’s true. There in the bathroom I could hardly stand you. Now I find you wonderful. Salute!”
“Salute.”
He drank his calvados. “It is the second night,” he said. “The dangerous night. The charm of the unknown is gone and the charm of familiarity has not yet come. We’ll survive it.”
Joan put her glass down. “You seem to know quite a lot about it.”
“I know nothing at all. I just talk. One never knows anything. Everything is always different. Now too. It never is the second night. It is always the first. The second would be the end.”
“Thank God! Otherwise where would it lead? Into something like arithmetic. And now come. I don’t want to go to sleep yet. I want to drink with you. The stars stand naked up there in the cold. How easily one can freeze when one is alone! Even when it is hot. Never when there are two.”
“Two together can actually freeze to death.”
“Not we.”
“Naturally not,” Ravic said and in the dark she did not see the expression that crossed his face. “Not we.”
10
“WHAT WAS THE MATTER with me, Ravic?” Kate Hegstroem asked.
She was lying in her bed, slightly raised, with two pillows under her head. The room had the odor of Eau de Santé and perfume. The window was slightly opened at the top. Clear, somewhat chilly air streamed in from the outside and mingled with the warmth of the room as if it were not January but already April.
“You were feverish, Kate. For a few days. Then you slept. Almost twenty-four hours. Now the fever has gone and everything is fine. How are you feeling?”
“Tired. Still always tired. But different from before. Not so tense any more. I have hardly any pain.”
“You will have some later. Not very much, and we’ll take care of it so you’ll be able to stand it. But it won’t stay the way it is now. You know that yourself—”
She nodded. “You have cut me up, Ravic—”
“Yes, Kate.”
“Was it necessary?”
“Yes.”
He waited. It was better to let her ask. “How long will I have to be in bed?”
“A few weeks.”
She remained silent for a while. “I think it will be good for me. I need quiet. I’d had enough. I realize it now. I was tired. I did not want to admit it. Did this thing have something to do with it?”
“Certainly. Most certainly.”
“Also the fact that I had hemorrhages from time to time? Between periods?”
“That too, Kate.”
“Then it’s a good thing that I have time. Maybe it was necessary. To have to get up now and face all that again—I don’t think I could do it.”
“You don’t have to. Forget about it. Think only of the very next thing. For instance, of your breakfast.”
“All right.” She smiled faintly. “Then pass me the mirror.”
He gave her the hand mirror from the night table. She studied herself attentively in it.
“Are these flowers from you, Ravic?”
“No. From the hospital.”
She put the mirror on the bed. “Hospitals don’t send lilacs in January. Hospitals send asters or something like that. Neither do hospitals know that lilacs are my favorite flowers.”
“Here they do. Here you are a veteran, Kate.” Ravic got up. “I have to go now. I’ll come back about six o’clock to look after you.”
“Ravic—”
“Yes.”
He turned around. Now it will come, he thought. Now she will ask.
She extended her hand. “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks for the flowers. And thanks for looking out for me. I always feel safe with you.”
“All right, Kate. All right. There was nothing really to look out for. And now fall asleep again if you can. In case you should have pains call the nurse. I’ll see that you get medicine. This afternoon I’ll be back.”
“Veber, where is the brandy?”
“Was it as bad as that? Here’s the bottle. Eugénie, get us a glass.”
Eugénie reluctantly went for a glass. “That’s a thimble,” Veber protested. “Get us a decent glass. Or wait, it might break your hand, I’ll do it myself.”
“I don’t know why it is, Doctor Veber,” Eugénie declared bitingly, “whenever Mr. Ravic comes in, you—”
“All right, all right,” Veber interrupted her. He poured a glass of cognac. “Here, Ravic. What does she believe?”
“She does not ask anything,” Ravic said. “She trusts me without asking questions.”
Veber glanced up. “You see,” he replied triumphantly. “I told you so.”
Ravic emptied his glass. “Has a patient ever expressed his thanks to you when you couldn’t do anything for him?”
“Often.”
“And believed everything?”
“Naturally.”
“And how did you feel about it?”
“Relieved,” Veber said in astonishment. “Very much relieved.”
“I feel
like vomiting. Like a fraud.”
Veber laughed. He put the bottle aside again. “Like vomiting,” Ravic repeated.
“That’s the first human feeling I ever discovered in you,” Eugénie said. “Except, naturally, for the way you express yourself.”
“You are not a discoverer, you are a nurse, Eugénie, you often forget that,” Veber declared. “The affair is settled, Ravic, isn’t it?”
“Yes. For the time being.”
“All right. She told the nurse this morning that she wants to go to Florence as soon as she leaves the hospital. Then we’re in the clear.” Veber rubbed his hands. “The doctors over there can take care of it then. I don’t like it when someone dies here. It always hurts the reputation.”
Ravic rang the bell at the apartment door of the midwife who performed the abortion for Lucienne. After some time a sinister-looking man opened. He kept the latch in his hand when he saw Ravic. “What do you want?” he growled.
“I want to speak to Madame Boucher.”
“She has no time.”
“That doesn’t matter. I’ll wait awhile.”
The man was about to close the door. “If I can’t wait I’ll be back in a quarter of an hour,” Ravic said. “But not alone. With someone who will certainly be able to see her.”
The man stared at him. “What does that mean? What do you want?”
“I told you. I want to speak to Madame Boucher.”
The man pondered. “Wait,” he said and then closed the door.
Ravic studied the peeling brown paint on the door, the tin letter box and the round enameled label with the name. A great deal of misery and fear had passed through this door. A few senseless laws which forced so many lives into the hands of quacks instead of doctors. No more children were born because of it. Whoever did not want a child found a way, law or no law. The only difference was that the lives of some thousands of mothers were ruined every year.
The door was opened again. “Are you from the police?” the unshaven man asked.
“If I were from the police I wouldn’t be waiting here.”
“Come in.”
The man showed Ravic through a dark corridor into a room crowded with furniture. A plush sofa and a number of gilt chairs, an imitation Aubusson carpet, walnut Vertikows and pastoral prints on the walls. In front of the window stood a metal stand with a bird cage and a canary in it. Wherever there was any space there were chinaware and plaster figurines.