She saw that the key was in the lock and assumed that the maid was cleaning. That was better than being alone in the room. It encouraged her enough so that she opened the door.
An angular woman in a gray tailored suit looked up from the desk. “What do you want?”
Lillian thought she had come into the wrong room. Then she saw Clerfayt’s coat on a hook. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I think I might rather ask you that,” the woman replied. “I am Clerfayt’s sister. What do you want here? Who are you?”
Lillian remained silent. Clerfayt had once told her he had a sister somewhere whom he hated and who hated him. He had not heard from her for many years, he had said. This must be she. She did not bear the slightest resemblance to Clerfayt.
“I did not know you were here,” Lillian said. “Since you are, I have nothing more to do here.”
“That is quite true,” the woman replied frostily. “I was told that my brother had someone living here with him. Are you the person?”
“That is not any of your affair,” Lillian said, turning away.
She went out and back to her room. She began to pack, but soon stopped. I cannot go away as long as he is still here, she thought. I must stay until he’s put into the ground.
She went to the hospital once more. The reception nurse explained that she could not see Clerfayt again; an autopsy was being performed at the request of a member of the family. Afterward, the body was to be sealed into a zinc coffin and sent back home.
In front of the hospital, Lillian met the manager. “We’re leaving this evening,” he said. “Have you seen the old nag with the big teeth? The sister? She’s having him cut up. She wants to file suit against the firm and the sponsors of the race for compensation on account of negligence. She’s been to the police already. You know our director. She went to see him, too. He’s a guy who can stand up to anybody; but I’m telling you, he was looking pretty green after a half hour with that woman. She’s demanding a lifetime pension. Claims that Clerfayt was her sole support. We’re all leaving. You’d better leave, too. It’s all over.”
“Yes,” Lillian replied. “It’s all over.”
She walked aimlessly about the streets; she sat at tables and had something to drink; and in the evening she returned to the hotel. She was now very tired. The doctor had left a sedative for her. She did not need to take it; she fell asleep at once. The telephone woke her. Clerfayt’s sister was calling. She said she urgently had to talk to her; would Lillian come over to her room.
“If you have anything to say to me, do it now,” Lillian said.
“It can’t be done over the telephone.”
“Then we’ll meet in the lobby at noon.”
“That’s too late.”
“Not for me,” Lillian said, and hung up.
She looked at the clock. It was shortly before nine. She had slept for fifteen hours and was still tired. She went into the bathroom and was close to falling asleep in the bath when someone pounded violently on the door of the room. She came out of the tub and put on her wrapper. Before she could open the door, Clerfayt’s sister came charging in.
“Is your name Miss Dunkerque?” the woman asked. She was still in her gray tailored suit.
“We can talk at twelve o’clock, in the lobby,” Lillian replied. “Not now, and not here.”
“It comes to the same thing. Now that I’m here I—”
“You have forced your way in,” Lillian interrupted. “Shall I call the management to help me?”
“I cannot wait here until twelve. My train is leaving before that. Do you want my brother’s remains to sit in the blinding sun on the platform until it suits your ladyship to talk with me?”
Lillian looked at the narrow black cross the woman wore on a chain around her neck. This female will stop at nothing to get her way, she thought.
“I have here,” the sister went on, “a copy of a legal paper that I found among my brother’s documents. No doubt you have the original. It has to do with the assignment to you of a house on the Riviera.”
“To me?”
“You do not know about it?”
Lillian looked at the paper in the rawboned hand, on which there were two wedding rings. A widow, then—no wonder.
“Show me the paper,” Lillian said.
The sister hesitated. “Haven’t you seen it?”
Lillian did not answer. She heard the water still running in the tub, and went to turn it off. “Was that what you so urgently wanted to talk to me about?” she asked when she returned.
“I wanted to make it clear that the family would not recognize this transfer. We will contest it.”
“Contest it, then. And now please, let me alone.”
The woman stood her ground. “It would be simpler, and save you embarrassing questions, if you make a statement to the effect that you relinquish this bequest, which my brother certainly did not make except under some pressure.”
Lillian stared at her. “Haven’t you already drawn up such a statement?”
“I have. You have only to sign it. Here! I’m glad to see you have some understanding.”
Lillian took the paper and tore it to bits. “Get out now. I’ve had enough of you.”
The woman did not lose her composure. She scrutinized Lillian sharply. “You said you knew nothing about this legacy?”
Lillian went to the door and opened it. “That is for you to find out.”
“I certainly will. Justice is on our side. There happens to be a crucial difference between proper blood relations and some little adventuress who—”
On the table stood a bowl of violets that Clerfayt had brought two days ago. Lillian picked it up without knowing that she was doing so, and pitched the flowers into the bony face. She wanted only one thing—to silence that harsh, unbearable voice. The flowers were already withered and clung to the sister’s hair and shoulders.
The woman wiped the water from her eyes. “You’ll pay for that!” she snapped.
“I know,” Lillian replied. “Send me the bill for the hairdresser, and no doubt for the suit, and probably for your shoes, your undergarments, and the shock to your feelings. And now get out!”
The sister departed. Lillian looked at the glass bowl still in her hand. She had not known that she was capable of such acts of violence. Thank God I didn’t throw the bowl, too, she thought, and suddenly began to laugh, and could not stop, and then the tears started, and with the tears came, at last, release from her rigidity.
The clerk stopped her in the lobby. “An embarrassing matter, Madame.”
“What is it now?”
“You instructed me to order a coffin and a cemetery plot. As soon as Monsieur Clerfayt’s sister arrived, she likewise ordered a coffin to be charged to the automobile company and had it delivered. Now yours is superfluous.”
“Can’t you send it back?”
“The firm’s representative says the coffin was specially ordered. He says he can take it back as a favor, but not at the same price.”
Lillian looked helplessly at the clerk. A grotesque image rose to her mind—of herself going back to some sanatorium in the mountains with an empty coffin, while Clerfayt’s sister carried off Clerfayt’s dissected remains in a second coffin, for a family interment.
“I suggested to the lady that she take your coffin for Monsieur Clerfayt,” the clerk said. “But she did not want to. The lady has her own ideas about things. She is also having her hotel expenses charged to the automobile company. Full board, of course, and last night two bottles of Château Lafite 1929. The best wine we have. The funeral home would take the coffin back at half-price.”
“All right,” Lillian replied. “And make up my bill. I’m leaving this evening.”
“Very good. Then there’s the matter of the plot. I’ve already paid the requisite amount. They always want such payment in advance. It’s difficult to do anything today. This is Saturday. There’ll be nobody at the office until Monda
y.”
“Doesn’t anybody die here on Saturdays and Sundays?”
“Oh yes. But in those cases arrangements are made on Monday.”
“Put what you paid on my bill.”
“Would you want to keep the plot then?” the clerk asked incredulously.
“I don’t know; I don’t want to talk any more about it. Put down what you paid. Put it all down. But I don’t want to hear another word about it! Not another word! Can’t you understand that?”
“Very well, Madame.”
Lillian returned to her room. The telephone rang. She did not answer it. She packed the rest of her things. In her bag, she found the ticket to Zurich. The train was leaving this very evening.
The telephone rang again. When it fell silent, she was seized by a panicky terror. It seemed to her that more had died than Clerfayt—that everything she had known had died. Boris, too, she thought. Who knew what had happened to Boris? Perhaps he, too, was already dead, and no one had informed her because no one knew her address or had had the courage to tell her.
She reached for the telephone, but let her hand sink again. She could not call him. Not now. He would think she was calling because Clerfayt was dead. He would never be able to believe that she had made up her mind to leave Clerfayt. She would never be able to tell him either.
She sat still until the dusk crept grayly into the room. The windows were open. She heard the crackling of the palm leaves outside like the gossip of malicious neighbors. The clerk had told her that Clerfayt’s sister had left at noon; it was time now for her to be leaving, too.
She stood up, but hesitated again. She could not go before she knew whether Boris was still alive. It was unnecessary to telephone him directly. She could call the house and ask for him, giving some other name; then if the girl went to call him, she would know that he was all right, and could hang up before he answered.
She gave the number. It was a long while before the operator called back. There was no answer. She asked for the number once more, asked that it be made an urgent call.
She heard footsteps outside on the gravel paths of the hotel garden. It reminded her of Clerfayt’s garden. A wave of hopeless tenderness flooded her. He had left his house to her, without saying anything about it. She did not want to have it. It would stand empty and slowly weathering, with its awful stucco ornaments—unless Clerfayt’s sister, armed with the double morality of bourgeois justice, got hold of it.
The telephone shrilled. Lillian heard the high-strung French voices of the operators. She forgot her whole strategy. “Boris!” she cried. “Are you there?”
“Who is there?” a woman’s voice asked.
Lillian hesitated a second; then she gave her name. In two hours, she would be leaving the Riviera, and nobody would know where she was bound. It would be ridiculous not to speak to Boris once more.
“Who is there?” the voice repeated.
She gave her name again.
“Who?”
“Lillian Dunkerque.”
“Mr. Volkov is not here,” the voice replied through the humming and crackling of the line.
“Who is this? Mrs. Escher?”
“No, Mrs. Bliss. Mrs. Escher is no longer here. Mr. Volkov also is not here. I am sorry—”
“Wait!” Lillian cried. “Where is he?”
The noise in the telephone swelled. “Left—” Lillian made out.
“Where is he?” she repeated.
“Mr. Volkov has left.”
“Left? For where?”
“I don’t know.”
Lillian held her breath. “Has anything happened to him?” she asked finally.
“I don’t know, Madame. He’s left. I can’t tell you where. I’m sorry—”
The connection was broken. The excited French operators twittered. Lillian put down the receiver. Left—she knew what that mean in the language of the sanatorium and the private houses that boarded patients. It was what was said when someone had died. It could mean nothing else—where would he have gone to? And his old landlady was no longer there either.
For a while, she sat quite still. At last she stood up and went downstairs. She paid her bill and tucked her ticket into her pocket. “Send my things to the station,” she said.
“Already?” the clerk asked in surprise. “Your train does not leave for two hours. It is too soon.”
“Now,” she said. “It is not too soon.”
Chapter Twenty-two
SHE SAT ON A BENCH in front of the little railroad station. The first lights of early evening were burning, stressing the barren dreariness of the building. Tanned tourists bustled past her, making for a train to Marseilles.
An American sat down beside her and launched into a monologue on the fact that in Europe you could not get a decent steak or a tolerable hamburger. Even the frankfurters were better in Wisconsin, he said.
Lillian sat without thought, in a state of such utter exhaustion that she no longer knew whether it was grief, emptiness, or resignation.
She saw the dog without recognizing it. The animal was running in long arcs over the square, sniffing at women here and there. It paused and then rushed toward her. The American sprang to his feet. “Mad dog!” he shouted. “Police! Shoot it.”
The German shepherd dog ran past him and leaped up at Lillian, putting its forepaws on her shoulders and almost knocking her off the bench; it licked her hands and tried to lick her face, and whined and howled and barked until a circle of astonished people gathered around them. “Wolf,” she said incredulously. “What are you doing here?”
The dog abruptly abandoned her and shot off toward the crowd, which quickly made a path for it. It ran up to a man who was striding rapidly toward them, and then returned to Lillian.
She had stood up. “Boris!” she said.
“So we’ve found you at last,” Volkov said. “The clerk at the hotel told me you were already at the station. Just about in time, I guess. Who knows where I would have had to look for you later.”
“You’re alive,” Lillian said. “I telephoned you. Someone told me you’d left. I thought …”
“That was Mrs. Bliss. The new landlady. Mrs. Escher has remarried.” Volkov gripped the dog’s collar. “I read about the accident in the newspapers; that’s why I came. I didn’t know what hotel you were at, or I would have telephoned.”
“You’re alive!” she said again.
“And you’re alive, Dusha. Everything else is unimportant.”
She looked at him. She understood at once what he meant—that everything else, all offended egotism, all wounded pride, had been swept away by this last consolation: that the person you loved was not dead, was still living, still breathing, no matter what his feelings were or what had happened. Neither weakness nor pity had prompted Boris to come, but rather the lightning-flash of this ultimate knowledge—the only insight that was left to him, and the only one that always remained in the end, that canceled out everything else, and that, almost always, you became aware of too late.
“Yes, Boris,” she said. “Everything else is unimportant.”
He looked at her baggage. “When does your train leave?”
“In an hour. Let it go.”
“Where were you going to go?”
“Anywhere. To Zurich. It doesn’t matter, Boris.”
“Then let us leave here. Move into another hotel. I’ve reserved a room in Antibes. In the Hôtel du Cap. We can get another room. Shall I have the baggage sent there?”
Lillian shook her head. “Leave it here,” she said with sudden resolution. “The train is going in an hour. Let’s take it. I don’t want to stay anywhere around here. And you must get back.”
“I don’t have to get back,” Volkov said.
She looked at him. “Are you cured?”
“Not that. But I don’t have to go back. I can go with you wherever you like, Lillian. As long as you wish.”
“But—”
“I understood you when you left,” Volkov sai
d. “My God, how I understood that you wanted to get away.”
“Then why didn’t you come with me?”
Volkov did not answer at once. He did not want to remind her of what she had said. “Would you have gone with me?” he asked at last.
“No, Boris,” she replied. “That’s true. At the time, I wouldn’t have.”
“You didn’t want to take the disease with you. You wanted to escape it.”
“I no longer know. Perhaps it was so. It’s so long ago.”
“Do you really want to leave tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Have you a berth?”
“Yes, Boris.”
“You look as though you needed something to eat. Come to the café over there. And I will see whether I can still get a ticket.”
They crossed to the café. He ordered eggs, ham, and coffee for her. “I’m going back to the station,” he said. “Stay here. Don’t run away.”
“I’m not running away any more. Why does everyone think that?”
Boris smiled. “It isn’t the worst thought in the world, Dusha. When a man thinks that, it means that he wants you to stay.”
She looked at him. Her lips quivered. “I don’t want to cry,” she said.
“You’re only exhausted. Eat something. I bet this is your first meal today.”
She raised her head. “Do I look so bad?”
“No, Dusha. And even if you look tired, you always snap back after a few hours’ sleep. That’s how you are. Have you forgotten that?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve forgotten a great deal. And not forgotten some things.”
She began eating, but broke off to take out her mirror. She studied herself very closely, face, eyes, blue shadows. What had the doctor in Nice said? Before summer, and perhaps sooner, if you go on with your present life. Summer—it was already summer here, but in the mountains the summer came late. She studied her face once more, then took out powder and lipstick.
Volkov returned. “I have a ticket. The train is not sold out.”