Arch of Triumph by Erich Maria Remarque Page B

slide under the microscope.
    “You know what I don’t understand?” Léonie said, watching him.
    “What?”
    “That you still feel like sleeping with a woman when you do these things.”
    “I don’t understand it either. You’re all right. Now who’s next?”
    “Marthe.”
    Marthe was pale, slender, and blond. She had the face of a Botticelli angel, but she spoke the argot of the Rue Blondel.
    “There is nothing wrong with me, doctor.”
    “That’s fine. Let’s have a look at you.”
    “But there is really nothing wrong.”
    “All the better.”
    Suddenly Rolande was standing in the room. She looked at Marthe. The girl stopped talking. She looked at Ravic apprehensively. He examined her thoroughly.
    “But it is nothing, doctor. You know how careful I am.”
    Ravic did not reply. The girl continued to talk—hesitated and began again. Ravic swabbed a second time and examined it.
    “You are sick, Marthe,” he said.
    “What?” She jumped up. “That can’t be true.”
    “It is true.”
    She looked at him. Then she broke out suddenly—a flood of curses and maledictions. “That swine! That damned swine! I didn’t trust him anyway, the slippery trickster! He said he was a student and he ought to know, a medical student, that scoundrel!”
    “Why didn’t you take care?”
    “I did, but it went so quickly, and he said that he, as a student—”
    Ravic nodded. The old story—a medical student who had treated himself. After two weeks he had considered himself cured without making a test.
    “How long will it take, doctor?”
    “Six weeks.” Ravic knew it would take longer.
    “Six weeks? Six weeks without any income? Hospital? Do I have to go to the hospital?”
    “We’ll see about that. Maybe we can treat you at home later—if you promise—”
    “I’ll promise anything! Anything! Only not the hospital!”
    “You’ve got to go at first. There’s no other way.”
    The girl stared at Ravic. All prostitutes feared the hospital. The supervision was very strict there. But there was nothing else to do. Left at home she would furtively go out after a few days, in spite of all promises, and look for men in order to make money and infect them.
    “The madame will pay the expenses,” Ravic said.
    “But I! I! Six weeks without any income! And I have just bought a silver fox on installments! Then the installment will be due and everything will be gone.”
    She cried. “Come, Marthe,” Rolande said.
    “You won’t take me back! I know!” Marthe sobbed louder. “You won’t take me back! You never do it! Then I’ll be on the streets. And all because of that slippery dog—”
    “We’ll take you back. You were good business. Our clients like you.”
    “Really?” Marthe looked up.
    “Of course. And now come.”
    Marthe left with Rolande. Ravic looked after her. Marthe would not come back. Madame was much too careful. Her next stage was perhaps the cheap brothels in the Rue Blondel. Then the street. Then cocaine, the hospital, peddling flowers or cigarettes. Or, if she were lucky, some pimp who would beat and exploit her and later throw her out.
    ———
    The dining room of the Hôtel International was in the basement. The lodgers called it the Catacombs. During the day a dim light came through several large, thick, opalescent-glass panes which faced on the courtyard. In the winter it had to be lighted all day long. The room was at once a writing room, a smoking room, an auditorium, an assembly room, and a refuge for those emigrants who had no papers—when there was a police inspection they could escape through the yard into a garage and from there to the next street.
    Ravic sat with the doorman of the Scheherazade night club, Boris Morosow, in a section of the Catacombs that the landlady called the Palm Room; on a spindly legged table a solitary miserable palm languished there in a majolica pot. Morosow was a refugee from the first war and had lived in Paris for the last fifteen years. He was