“Not me. All I’d do would be to catch a cold. Here’s a package for you. It looks like flowers.”
Boris, Lillian thought. He often sent her flowers after she had been pumped up.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” the nurse asked curiously.
“Later.”
Lillian dabbled at her food for a while, then had it taken away. The nurse made her bed. “Don’t you want to turn your radio on?” she asked.
“If you want to hear it, turn it on.”
The nurse experimented with the knobs. She got Zurich with a talk on Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, and Lausanne with news. She turned the dial farther, and suddenly she had Paris. Someone was playing a Debussy piano piece. Lillian went to the window and waited for the nurse to finish and leave the room. She stared out into the evening mist, and listened to the music from Paris, and it was unendurable.
“Do you know Paris?” the nurse asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ve never seen it. It must be wonderful.”
“When I was there, it was cold and dark and dreary and occupied by the Germans.”
The nurse laughed. “But that’s over now. It hasn’t been like that for several years. By now it must be just as it was before the war. Wouldn’t you like to go again?”
“No,” Lillian replied harshly. “Who would want to go to Paris in winter? Are you through?”
“I will be in a moment. What’s the hurry? There’s nothing in particular to do here.”
The nurse left at last. Lillian turned off the radio. Yes, she thought, there was nothing in particular to do here. You could only wait. Wait for what? For life to continue to consist of waiting?
She undid the blue ribbon around the white box. Boris—he had come to terms with the idea of staying up here, she thought. Or at least that was what he said. But could she ever?
She parted the tissue paper that wrapped the flowers, and instantly let the box drop as if there were a snake inside.
She stared at the orchids on the floor. She knew those flowers. Coincidence, she thought, a ghastly coincidence; they are other flowers, not the same ones, others like them. But something in her knew, even as she thought this, that such coincidences did not occur. This kind of orchid was not kept in stock in the village. She had tried to buy some, and not found them, and at last had ordered hers from Zurich. She counted the blossoms on the spray. The very same number. Then she saw that a petal was missing from the lowest blossom. She remembered having noticed that when the package arrived from Zurich. There could no longer be the slightest doubt: the flowers lying on the rug at her feet were the very ones she had placed upon Agnes Somerville’s coffin.
I am having a fit of nerves, she thought. There must be an explanation for all this; these aren’t ghost flowers that have manifested themselves again. Someone is playing a gruesome joke on me. But why? And how? How could this spray of orchids possibly have come back to me? And what is the meaning of this glove beside them, looking like a dead, blackened hand reaching out in menace, like the symbol of a ghostly mafia?
She walked around the spray on the floor as though it were really a snake. The blossoms no longer seemed to be flowers; contact with death had made them sinister, and their whiteness was whiter than anything she had ever seen before. Quickly, she opened the glass door to her balcony, warily picked up the tissue paper, and with it the spray of flowers, and threw both over the railing. She sent the box flying after it.
She listened into the mist. Distant voices and the bells of sleighs wafted through it. She went back into her room and saw the glove on the floor. Now she recognized it, and recalled having worn it in the Palace bar with Clerfayt. Clerfayt, she thought—what had he to do with it? She must find out. At once!
It was some time before he answered the telephone.
“Did you send my glove back to me?” she asked.
“Yes. You forgot it at the bar.”
“Are the flowers from you, too? The orchids?”
“Yes. Wasn’t my card along?”
“Your card?”
“You didn’t find it?”
“No.” Lillian swallowed. “Not yet. Where did you get those flowers?”
“In a flower shop,” Clerfayt replied in a tone of surprise. “Why?”
“Here in the village?”
“Yes, but why? Were they stolen?”
“No. Or perhaps they were. I don’t know—”
Lillian fell silent.
“Shall I come up?” Clerfayt asked.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“In an hour—it’s quiet then.”
“All right, in an hour. At the delivery entrance.”
“Yes.”
With a sigh, Lillian set the telephone back on the hook. Thank God, she thought, here was someone you did not have to give explanations to. Someone who simply came, and did not pester you with questions. Someone who did not care about you and was not worrying over you, like Boris.
Clerfayt stood at the side door. “Can’t you stand orchids?” he said, pointing to the snow.
There lay the flowers and the box. “Where did you get them?” Lillian asked.
“In a small flower shop down below—on the outskirts of the village. Why? Is there something wrong with them?”
“These flowers—” Lillian said with an effort—“these are the very same flowers I put on my friend’s coffin yesterday. I saw them once again before the coffin was taken away. The sanatorium doesn’t keep any of the flowers. Everything is taken away. I’ve just asked the attendant. Everything was sent to the crematorium. I don’t know how—”
“To the crematorium?” Clerfayt asked.
“Yes.”
“Good Lord! The shop where I bought the flowers is right near the crematorium. It’s a poor little place, and I wondered that they had flowers like these. This explains it.…”
“What do you mean?”
“Instead of burning the flowers with the coffin, one of the workers at the crematorium must have kept them out and sold them to the shop.”
“How could that be?”
“Couldn’t be anything else. Flowers are flowers, and one spray of orchids looks much like another. Hardly likely that a little trick like that would be found out. Who would count on the crazy coincidence that a rare type of orchid would come back to the very person who sent it.”
Clerfayt took Lillian’s arm. “What shall we do about it?” he asked. “Shall we be shocked, or shall we laugh at mankind’s deep-seated money-making instinct? I propose we laugh; if we didn’t laugh now and then, we’d die of grief at all the things that happen in this glorious century of ours.”
Lillian stared at the flowers with abhorrence. “How repulsive,” she said under her breath. “Stealing from a dead woman.”
“Neither more nor less repulsive than many other things,” Clerfayt replied. “I never would have thought I would search corpses for cigarettes and bread, and yet I did just that. In the war. It’s terrible at first, but you get used to it, especially when you’re hungry and haven’t had a smoke in a long time. Come, let’s go out for a drink.”
She looked at the flowers. “What shall we do with them?”
“Leave them there. They have nothing to do with you, with your dead friend, or with me. I’ll send you other flowers tomorrow. From a different shop.”
He opened the door of the sleigh. As he did so, he noticed the driver’s face. The man’s eyes were resting upon the orchids with calm interest, and he knew that the driver would be back after the orchids just as soon as he had taken Lillian and himself to the hotel. God only knew what would happen to the orchids then. He thought of trampling on them. But why should he choose to play God? That never worked out well.
The sleigh stopped. Some planks had been laid down on the wet snow to make a path to the hotel entrance. Lillian got out. She suddenly struck Clerfayt as somehow exotic, as, slender, bending forward a little and holding her coat wrapped close across her chest,
she made her way in her evening shoes through the clumping, heavy-shod crowd of winter-sports people, amid all that noisy health strangely radiating the dark fascination of her illness.
He followed her. What am I letting myself in for? he thought. And with whom? Isn’t she one of those people whose emotions stick out like the legs of a young girl in a much too short dress? Still, she was quite a bit different from Lydia Morelli, with whom he had talked over the telephone an hour ago, Lydia Morelli, who had learned all the tricks and never forgot a single one.
He caught up to Lillian at the door. “This evening,” he said, “we are going to talk about nothing but the most superficial things in the world.”
An hour later the bar was packed. Lillian looked toward the door. “Here comes Boris,” she said. “I might have known it.”
Clerfayt had already seen the Russian pushing his way slowly through the crowd clustered at the bar.
Boris ignored Clerfayt. “Your sleigh is waiting outside, Lillian,” he said.
“Send the sleigh away, Boris,” she replied. “I don’t need it. This is Mr. Clerfayt. You’ve already met him.”
Clerfayt rose, a shade too negligently.
“Really?” Volkov said. “Oh, so I have. I beg your pardon.” He glanced at Clerfayt, and past him. “You had that sports car that made the horses shy, hadn’t you?”
Clerfayt felt the hidden disdain. He did not reply, and remained standing.
“I suppose you have forgotten you’re due to be X-rayed tomorrow,” Volkov said to Lillian.
“I have not forgotten, Boris.”
“You must be rested and well-slept.”
“I know that. I have time enough.”
She spoke slowly, as if answering a child who did not understand. Clerfayt realized that this was her only way of restraining her irritation. He felt almost sorry for the Russian; the man was in a hopeless situation. “Won’t you sit down?” he asked, not entirely with benevolent intent.
“No thanks,” Volkov replied coldly, as if he were speaking to a waiter who had asked whether he wished to order anything. Like Clerfayt a moment before, he sensed the other man’s disdain.
“I am waiting for someone,” he said to Lillian. “If you want the sleigh meanwhile—”
“No, Boris! I am going to stay.”
Clerfayt had had enough. “I brought Miss Dunkerque here,” he said quietly. “And I think I am capable of taking her back.”
Volkov looked fully at him for the first time. His expression changed. He almost smiled. “I am afraid you misunderstand me,” he said. “But there would be no point in explaining.”
He bowed to Lillian, and for a moment it seemed as if the mask of superiority were falling away, and there was nothing he could do to preserve it. Then he composed himself and went to the bar.
Clerfayt sat down. He was dissatisfied with himself. What am I up to? he thought. After all, I’m no longer twenty years old. “Why don’t you go back with him?” he asked.
“Do you want to get rid of me?”
He looked at her. She seemed really helpless, but he knew that helplessness was the most dangerous attribute a woman could have—for no woman was really helpless. “Of course not,” he said. “Then we’ll stay.”
She craned a bit to see the bar. “He isn’t going,” she said softly. “He’s watching me. He thinks I’ll give in.”
Clerfayt took the bottle and filled their glasses. “Good. Let’s see who holds out longest.”
“You don’t understand him,” Lillian countered sharply. “He isn’t jealous.”
“Isn’t he?”
“No. He’s unhappy and sick and concerned about me. It’s easy to be superior when you’re healthy.”
Clerfayt set the bottle down on the table. This damn loyal little bird! No sooner was she saved, than she pecked at the rescuing hand. “Possibly,” he said evenly. “But is it a crime to be well?”
The expression in Lillian’s eyes changed. “Of course not,” she murmured. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I had better go.”
She reached for her handbag, but did not get up. Clerfayt had had enough of her for the day, but not for anything in the world would he have let her go as long as Volkov stood at the bar waiting for her. He was not yet that old, he thought. “You don’t have to be careful about my feelings,” he said. “I’m not very sensitive.”
“Everybody here is sensitive.”
“I’m not from here.”
“Yes,” Lillian said. “I suppose that’s it!”
“What?”
She smiled. “That’s what gets on all our nerves. Haven’t you noticed? Even your friend Hollmann’s.”
Clerfayt looked at her in surprise. “That could be true. I probably shouldn’t have come.” He nodded toward the bar. “Do I get on Volkov’s nerves, too?”
“Haven’t you noticed?”
“I suppose so. He certainly doesn’t try to hide it.”
“He’s leaving,” Lillian said.
Clerfayt could see that. “And what about you?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you be in the sanatorium too—rather than here?”
“Who knows? The Dalai Lama? I myself? The Crocodile? God?” She picked up her glass. “And who is responsible? Who?” she asked hopelessly. “Myself? God? And who is responsible for whom? Come, let’s dance.”
Clerfayt remained in his seat.
She stared at him. “Are you worried about me, also? Do you think I shouldn’t—”
“I don’t think anything,” Clerfayt replied. “Only, I cannot dance. One of my legs isn’t up to it any more. But if you want to, we can try.”
They moved to the dance floor. “Agnes Somerville always did what the Dalai Lama told her to—” Lillian said as the noise of the tramping tourists closed around them. “To the letter—”
Chapter Four
THE SANATORIUM WAS QUIET. The patients were taking their rest cure. Silently, they lay in their beds and deck chairs, stretched out like sacrificial victims, the weary air fighting a silent battle with the enemy nibbling at them in the warm darkness of the lungs.
Lillian Dunkerque, in blue slacks, sat curled in the chair on her balcony. The night was far away, forgotten. That was how it always was up here—once the morning was reached, the panic of the night dwindled to a shadow on the horizon and you could hardly understand it any longer. Lillian sat up and stretched in the light of the late afternoon. It was a soft, shimmering curtain that veiled yesterdays and made tomorrows unreal. In front of her, packed around with snow which had blown upon the balcony during the night, was the bottle of vodka Clerfayt had given her.
The telephone rang. She want to it, lifted it. “Yes, Boris—No, of course not—where would we end if we did that?—Let’s not talk about it—Of course you can come up—Yes, I’m alone, naturally—”
She returned to the balcony. For a moment, she considered whether she ought to hide the vodka; but then she went for a glass and uncapped the bottle. The vodka was very cold and very good.
“Good morning, Boris,” she said when she heard the door. “I’m drinking vodka. Would you care for some, too? Then get yourself a glass.”
She stretched out in the deck chair and waited. Volkov came out on the balcony, a glass in his hand. Lillian breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God, no sermon, she thought. Volkov poured himself a glass. She held out hers. He filled it to the brim. “Why, Dusha?” he asked. “X-ray panic?”
She shook her head.
“Fever?”
“Not that either. Subnormal temperature, rather.”
“Has the Dalai Lama said anything about your pictures?”
“No. What would he say? I don’t want to know what he thinks, anyhow.”
“Good,” Volkov replied. “Let’s drink to that.”
He drank his vodka down in one swallow and put the bottle at a distance from him. “Let me have another glass,” Lillian said.
“As much as you like.”
She observed him. She knew that he h
ated her to drink; but she knew also that he would not say a word to dissuade her from drinking. Not now. He was too diplomatic for that; he knew her moods. “Another?” he asked. “The glasses are small.”
“No.” She set her glass down beside her without having drunk. “Boris,” she said, drawing her legs in their blue slacks up on to the chair, “we understand each other too well.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You understand me too well and I you, and that’s our misery.”
“Especially in föhn weather,” Volkov replied, laughing.
“Not only in föhn weather.”
“Or when there are strangers around.”
“You see,” Lillian said, “you already know the reason. You can explain everything. I can’t explain anything. You know everything about me in advance. How wearisome that is. Is that the föhn, too?”
“The föhn and springtime.”
Lillian closed her eyes. She felt the oppressive, disturbing air. “Why aren’t you jealous?” she asked.
“I am. All the time.”
She opened her eyes. “Of whom? Of Clerfayt?”
He shook his head.
“I thought not. Then of what?”
Volkov did not answer. Why was she asking? he thought. What did she know about it? Jealousy did not begin with another person, nor end with that. It began with the air that the beloved breathed, and never ended. Not even with the other’s death.
“Of what, Boris?” Lillian asked. “Of Clerfayt, after all?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps of the thing that has come up here with him.”
“What has come up?” Lillian stretched, and closed her eyes again. “You don’t have to be jealous. Clerfayt will drive away again in a few days, and will forget us and we him.”
For a while, she lay still in her deck chair. Volkov sat behind her, reading. The sun advanced until the edge of its shifting rectangle of light reached her eyes, filling them under her closed lids with warm orange and golden light. “Sometimes I would like to do something utterly crazy, Boris,” she said. “Something that would shatter the glass ring here. Let myself go—let the chips fall where they may.”