“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.”
Clerfayt did not feel like arguing. “Not for you. But it is for me,” he said. “Can you put it up?”
The driver clambered laboriously down from his seat and pulled and tugged at the leather hood of the sleigh. “That better?”
“Good enough. I want to go up to the sanatorium, to the rear entrance.”
Lillian Dunkerque was already there. She had on a thin coat of black fur which she hugged tightly around her. It did not strike Clerfayt as very warm. “Everything’s all right,” she whispered. “I have Josef’s key. He gets a bottle of kirsch for it.”
Clerfayt helped her into the sleigh. “Where is your car?” she asked.
“It’s being washed.”
She leaned back into the darkness of the hood as the sleigh turned and drove past the main entrance. “Did you leave the car down below on account of Hollmann?” she asked.
He looked at her in surprise. “Why on Hollmann’s account?”
“So that he won’t see it. To spare his feelings.”
She had a point there. That afternoon, Clerfayt had seen how the sight of Giuseppe excited Hollmann. It was true, though he had not thought of it.
“That didn’t occur to me,” he replied. “It was only that the car badly needed washing.”
He took out a pack of cigarettes. “Give me one,” Lillian said.
“Are you allowed to smoke?”
“Of course,” she replied, so sharply that he knew it was not true.
“I have only Gauloises. Strong black Foreign Legion tobacco.”
“I know them. We smoked Gauloises during the Occupation.”
“In Paris?”
“In a cellar in Paris.”
He gave her a light. “Where did you start out from today?” she asked. “Monte Carlo?”
“No, Vienne.”
“Vienne? In Austria?”
“Vienne near Lyon. I guess you’ve never seen it. It’s a sleepy little town famous for having the best restaurant in France—the Restaurant de la Pyramide.”
“Did you drive by way of Paris?”
Clerfayt smiled. “That would have been quite a detour. Paris is much farther north.”
“Which way did you drive?”
He wondered why she was so interested. “The usual route,” he said. “Via Basel. I had something to do there.”
“What was it like?”
He wondered again why she wanted to know. “Boring,” he summarized. “There’s nothing but gray sky and flat country until you reach the Alps.”
In the darkness he heard her breathing. Then he saw her face as they passed through a lane of light from a shop that sold watches. It held a curious expression of astonishment, mockery, and grief. “Boring?” she said. “Flat country? My God, what I would give not to see these eternal mountains all around.”
All at once, he understood why she had been interrogating him. For them, these mountains wer
e walls barring them from real life. The mountains meant easy breathing and hope; yet they could not leave them. Their world had constricted to this mountain valley, and for that reason all news from down below seemed word of a lost paradise.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
“Three years.”
“And when will you be able to go down to the low country?”
“Ask the Dalai Lama,” Lillian replied bitterly. “Every few months he promises that it will only be a little while now—the way bankrupt governments promise one four-year plan after another.”
The sleigh stopped at the turn into the main street. A group of tourists in ski clothes rollicked past them. An exceedingly blonde woman in a blue sweater laughingly threw her arms around the horse’s neck. The horse snorted. “Come, Daisy darling,” one of the tourists called. Lillian tossed her cigarette into the snow.
“People like that pay a lot of money to come here, and we would give anything to get down again. Isn’t it ridiculous?”
“It depends on how you look at it.”
The sleigh started forward again. “Give me another cigarette,” Lillian said.
Clerfayt held out the pack to her.
“I know it must be incomprehensible to you,” she murmured. “That all of us up here feel as if we were in a prison camp. Not in a prison; there you know when you’re getting out. But in a camp, where there isn’t any sentence.”
“I understand,” Clerfayt said. “I was in one myself.”
“You? In a sanatorium?”
“In a prison camp. During the war. But everything was the reverse for us. Our camp was on a flat moor, and for us the Swiss mountains were the dream of freedom. We could see the mountains from the camp. One of the fellows, who knew the Alps well, used to drive us almost crazy with his stories about them. I think that if they had offered to release us on condition that we just hole up in the mountains for several years, most of us would have snapped at the chance. Ridiculous too, isn’t it?”
“Would you have?”
“No. I had a plan of escape.”
“Who didn’t? Did you escape?”
“Yes.”
Lillian leaned forward. “Did you succeed? Or were you recaptured?”
“I succeeded. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. There were no halfway stages about it.”
“What about the other man?” she asked after a while. “The one who told stories about the Alps?”
“He died of typhus. A week before the camp was liberated.”
The sleigh stopped in front of the hotel. Clerfayt noticed that Lillian was wearing no overshoes. He lifted her out, carried her across the stretch of snow, and set her down on the threshold. “Satin shoes weren’t made for wading through snow,” he said. “Shall we go into the bar?”
“Yes. I need a drink.”
In the bar, skiers were clumping about the dance floor in their heavy footgear. The waiter arranged the chairs at a corner table for them. “Vodka?” he asked Clerfayt.
“I think not. Something hot. Mulled wine or grog.” Clerfayt looked at Lillian. “Which would you like?”
“Vodka. Isn’t that what you’ve been drinking?”
“Yes. But that was before dinner. How about something that the French call God in velvet trousers? A Bordeaux.”
He saw that she was scrutinizing him mistrustfully. She seemed to think he was treating her like a sick person who had to take precautions with what she drank. “I’m not trying to put anything over on you,” he said. “I would order the wine if I were by myself. We can drink all the vodka you like tomorrow before dinner. We’ll smuggle a bottle into the sanatorium.”
“All right. Let’s drink wine. Could we have the kind you drank down in the plains in France last night—in the Hôtel de la Pyramide in Vienne?”
It surprised Clerfayt that she had retained the name. Have to be careful with her, he thought; anyone who notices names so well will notice other things, too. “It was a Bordeaux,” he said. “A Lafite-Rothschild.”
This was not strictly true. He had had a regional wine in Vienne, one that was not exported; but there was no need to explain that. “Bring us a Château Lafite 1937, if you have it,” he said to the waiter. “And don’t warm it with a hot napkin. Let’s, rather, have it as it comes from the cellar.”
“We have it chambré, sir.”
“What luck!”
The waiter went over to the bar, and returned. “You are wanted on the telephone, sir.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know, sir. Shall I ask?”
“The sanatorium,” Lillian said nervously. “The Crocodile.”
“We’ll soon find out.” Clerfayt stood up. “Where is the booth?”
“Outside in the corridor, to the right.”
“Bring the wine meanwhile. Open the bottle and let it breathe.”
“Was it the Crocodile?” Lillian asked when he returned.
“No. It was a call from Monte Carlo.” Clerfayt hesitated a moment, but when he saw her face light up, he thought that it could do her no harm to hear that people died in other places too. “From the hospital in Monte Carlo,” he added. “Someone I knew has died.”
“Do you have to go back?”
“No. There’s nothing to be done. I almost think it’s lucky for him that he did die.”
“Lucky?”
“Yes. He had a smashup in the race. He would have been a cripple for the rest of his life.”
Lillian stared at him. She thought she had not heard correctly. What kind of barbarous nonsense was this healthy intruder talking? “Don’t you think cripples also like to live?” she asked softly, suddenly filled with hatred.
Clerfayt did not reply at once. The harsh, metallic, demanding voice of the woman who had telephoned him was still ringing in his ears: “What am I to do? Ferrer hasn’t left a penny. Come! Help me! I’m stuck here. It’s your fault. You’re all to blame. You with your damned races.”
He shook it off. “It depends,” he said to Lillian. “This man was madly in love with a woman who cheated on him with every mechanic. He was also wild about racing, but he would never have risen above the average. All he wanted from life was to win in the big races and be with that woman. He died before he found out the truth about both—and he also died without knowing that the woman wouldn’t even come to his bedside after he was amputated. That’s why I call it luck.”
“Even so, he might have wanted to live,” Lillian said stubbornly.
“I don’t know about that,” Clerfayt replied, irritated. “But I’ve seen people die more miserable deaths. Haven’t you?”
“Yes. But in every case, they would have liked to live.”
Clerfayt remained silent. What am I saying? he thought. And what for? Am I talking to convince myself of something I don’t believe? That harsh, cold, demanding voice of Ferrer’s woman on the telephone!
“Nobody escapes,” he said at last, impatiently. “And nobody knows when and how it will catch up with him. What’s the use of haggling over time? What is a long life, anyhow? A long past. And the future always extends only to the next breath. Or to the next race. Beyond that, we know nothing.” He raised his glass. “Shall we drink to that?”
“To what?”
“To nothing. To a bit of courage, perhaps.”
“I am tired of courage,” Lillian said. “And of consolations, too. Just tell me what things look like down there, beyond the mountains.”
“Desolate. It’s been raining for weeks.”
She set her glass down on the table. “Up here, it hasn’t rained since October. Only snowed. I’ve almost forgotten what rain looks like.”
———
It was snowing when they came out. Clerfayt whistled for a sleigh.
They were drawn up the serpentines. The bells on the horse’s harness jingled. The darkness was full of white flakes, and they had the road to themselves. After a while, they heard the jingling of other bells farther up the mountain. T
he driver turned into a bypass, beside a street lamp, to make room for the other sleigh. The horse stamped and puffed. In the sifting snow, the other sleigh glided past them almost without a sound. It was a low goods sleigh on which stood a long box wrapped in black oilcloth. Beside the box lay a piece of canvas protecting flowers, and another that covered a heap of wreaths.
The driver of their sleigh crossed himself, and urged his horse on again. In silence, they drove up the last curves and stopped at the side entrance to the sanatorium. An electric bulb under a frosted shade cast a circle of yellow light on the snow, in which lay a few scattered green leaves. Lillian got out. “Nothing helps,” she said, and smiled with an effort. “You forget it for a while—but you don’t escape it.”
She opened the door. “Thank you,” she murmured. “And forgive me—I was bad company. But I couldn’t be alone tonight.”
“Neither could I.”
“You? Why you?”
“For the same reason as yours. I told you about it. The telephone call from Monte Carlo.”
“But you said he was lucky.”
“There are all kinds of luck. And we say all sorts of things.” Clerfayt reached into his coat pocket. “Here’s the kirsch you were going to give the attendant. And here’s that bottle of vodka for you. Good night.”
Chapter Three
CLERFAYT AWOKE to an overcast sky. The wind was shaking the windows.
“Föhn,” the waiter said. “The warm wind that makes everyone tired. You feel it in your bones beforehand. Old fractures ache.”
“Are you a skier?”
“Not me. With me, they’re war wounds.”
“How would a Swiss—?”
“I happen to be Austrian,” the waiter said. “My skiing days are over. I have only one foot left. But you wouldn’t believe how the missing one hurts in this weather.”
“How is the snow?”
“Strictly between ourselves, sticky as honey. According to the hotel bulletin: good, powder snow in the higher elevations.”
Clerfayt decided to put off skiing. He did not feel up to it; the waiter seemed to be right about the effect of the wind. He had a headache, besides. The cognac last night, he thought. Why had he gone on drinking after taking the girl back to the sanatorium—that odd girl with her mixture of Weltschmerz and craving for life? Curious people up here—people without skins. I used to be a little like that, he thought. A thousand years ago. I have changed from the bottom up. Had to. But what was left? What besides a measure of cynicism, irony, and false superiority? And what was there to look forward to? How much longer could he go on racing? Wasn’t he already overdue? And then what followed? What awaited him? A job as auto salesman in some provincial town—and old age slowly creeping up with endless evenings, diminishing forces, with the pain of memory and the wear and tear of resignation, the empty pattern and the pretense of an existence that seeped away in stale repetitions?
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