Arch of Triumph by Erich Maria Remarque Page A

woman.
    “The room is not locked.”
    “Your money and your papers might be stolen if you don’t lock it.”
    “That could happen even if I locked it.”
    “That’s true with these keys. Although it isn’t quite as easy then.”
    “Maybe. But I don’t want to come in alone from outside and take a key and open a door in order to enter an empty room—that’s as if I were opening a tomb. It is enough already to have to enter this room—in which nothing awaits one but a few suitcases.”
    “Nothing awaits us anywhere,” Ravic said. “We always have to bring everything with us.”
    “That may be. But there is at least sometimes a merciful illusion. Here there’s nothing—”
    Joan Madou flung her Basque beret and coat on the bed and looked at Ravic. Her eyes were light and large in her pale face and as though fixed in a furious desperation. She stood thus for a moment. Then she began to walk in the small room back and forth, with long strides, hands in the pockets of her jacket, resiliently swinging her body when she turned. Ravic watched her attentively.Suddenly she had strength and a catlike grace, and the room seemed much too narrow for her.
    There was a knock. The doorman brought in the cognac. “Would the lady and gentleman care to eat something?” he asked. “Cold chicken, a sandwich—”
    “That would be a waste of time, brother.” Ravic paid and shoved him out of the room. Then he poured two glasses full. “Here. It is simple and barbaric—but the more primitive the better in difficult situations. Refinement is something for quiet times. Drink this.”
    “And then?”
    “Then you will drink another.”
    “I have tried that. It didn’t help. It is not good to be drunk when one is alone. Things just become sharper.”
    “One only has to be drunk enough. Then it works.”
    Ravic sat on a narrow wobbly chaise longue which stood by the wall opposite the bed. He hadn’t seen it before. “Was this here when you moved in?” he asked.
    She shook her head. “I had it put there. I didn’t like to sleep in the bed. It seemed so pointless. A bed, and to have to undress and all that. What for? Mornings and in the daytime it was somehow possible. But nights—”
    “You must have something to do.” Ravic lit a cigarette. “It’s too bad we didn’t meet Morosow in the Scheherazade. I didn’t know that today was his day off. Do go there tomorrow night. About nine o’clock. I’m sure he’ll find something for you. Even if it’s work in the kitchen. Then at least you would be busy at night. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
    “Yes.” Joan Madou stopped walking. She drank her glass of cognac and sat down on the bed. “I’ve walked about, outside, every night. As long as one walks everything is easier. Only when one sits down and the ceiling falls on one’s head—”
    “Didn’t anything ever happen to you on the street? Nothing stolen?”
    “No. I probably don’t look as if I had anything one could steal.” She held her empty glass out to Ravic. “And as for the other—I waited for it often enough. At least to have someone speak to me! To be something more than mere nothing, mere walking! That at least eyes would look at one, eyes and not just stones. That one would not run around like an outcast! Like someone on a strange planet!” She threw her hair back and took the glass that Ravic handed her. “I don’t know why I’m talking about it,” she said. “I don’t want to. Maybe it is because I was silent all those days. Maybe because today for the first time—” She interrupted herself. “Don’t listen to me—”
    “I’m drinking,” Ravic said. “Say whatever you want. It is night. No one hears you. I am listening to myself. Everything will be forgotten by tomorrow.”
    He leaned back. Somewhere in the house there was the sound of rushing water. The radiator rattled and the rain knocked with soft fingers at the window.
    “When one comes back and switches off the