The Demoiselles Bloch were sure that even fire conspires.
When the roof falls, said the crowd, then it will be something. The falling of the roof is always the best.
‘But where are the pompiers?’ Theodora asked.
‘It appears that they are having some difficulty with the carburettor,’ said Mademoiselle Berthe. ‘It is often like this, the people say.’
Yes, exactly, Theodora realized, exactly this fire, but which does not always burst skywards so triumphantly.
She craned her neck to watch the stars of sparks. Much sawdust would burn in this fire, and combed hair, and the black beetle in the wood, and the cockroach in the cold consommé.
‘Katina! Katina Pavlou!’ the voice called.
Theodora Goodman had not heard this old ewe since lambing time, its solitary bleat separated by frost.
‘I have lost Katina Pavlou,’ said Miss Grigg. ‘I was asleep. Then, people are shouting fire. ’Ow can a woman keep ’er wits amongst a lot of bloody French? And now I ’ave lost Katina. I shall never answer to ’er parents.’
‘Miss Grigg, it cannot, you will see, it cannot happen,’ Theodora called, before the exasperated bell.
‘Ah, voilà les pom piers!’
Nothing can happen, she promised glibly, when everything did.
But the bell will save, they said. Voilà les pompiers.
‘Vite! Vite! II y a des hommes dans la maison,’ said Theodora, salving with difficulty a few words.
Her tongue was as effectual as the stiff clapper of a bell.
‘Ouai, ils sont perdus là-dedans, les gens,’ said the pompier.
He began with tact to unfold a hose, which neither he nor Theodora expected to function. They brought a thin ladder to prop against an incandescence.
‘Regardez. Voyez,’ they said. ‘Ahhh! La vieille!’
Theodora watched the window, on which the crowd now focused. The window had become quite encrusted with fire. It had a considerable, stiff jewelled splendour of its own, that ignored the elaborate ritual of the flames. Everything else, the whole night, was subsidiary to this ritual of fire, into which it was proposed that the thin ladder should intrude.
‘Mais ils n’approcheront jamais de cette fenêtre,’ said the hopeful crowd.
The window remained aloof, apparently determined to resist. For a moment Mrs Rapallo looked out, as if she were not watched, but watching something that was taking place. She was wearing her hair, for the occasion, but her eyes had floated out of reach. How the petit paquet will flare, Theodora regretted, and the commode en marbre crack. But it was obvious that Mrs Rapallo was gratified by such magnificence. From the window she contemplated, only vaguely, the vague evidence of faces. Fire is fiercer. Fire is more triumphant. Then, she turned and withdrew, and there was the windowful of smoke, and Mignon pressing her hands on hot glass.
‘Ah, la pauvre!’ they called. ‘La pauvre bêtel La vieille!’
‘But where is Katina Pavlou?’ cried Miss Grigg.
‘And the Countess, and Wetherby?’ said the Demoiselles Bloch. ‘And General Sokolnikov? It is a tragedy of which one reads in the papers.’
‘I doubt whether Wetherby and Lieselotte are alive,’ Theodora said.
Because fevers consume, or are consumed. Nor did she expect Monsieur Durand, le petit, or Henriette. They too must have destroyed each other. But Sokolnikov, she said, there are some lives.
‘Yes, I am here, Ludmilla,’ said Sokolnikov, blowing like the sprays of several hoses. ‘I have escaped. That is, a few minutes earlier I was delivered by a miracle from a horrible and tragic death. Let us praise your saints. It reminds me a little of the occasion at Dvinsk when the barracks caught fire. Afterwards, at an inquiry, it was established that it was arson. The occasion at Dvinsk was as impressive, if also more emotional, on account of the number of horses which were roasted alive. The screaming of burning horses was heard by the peasants of a village several versts away. It even became the source of a local proverb: When horses scream at night, look to your kvass.’
Sokolnikov mopped his head. His spectacles were brilliant with excitement.
‘It was no miracle, ‘Alyosha Sergei,’ said Theodora, ‘that you failed to burn.’ Her affection could not have allowed it.
‘What is it you are muttering, Ludmilla?’ shouted Sokolnikov. ‘I wish you would explain.’
At most, he would evaporate in a great, hot cloud.
‘It is nothing,’ she said.
Not even a cloud. Sokolnikov was deathless. She could not explain.
She could not explain the certainties, even in the fierce mouths of fire.
‘Mais dites,’ the crowd said, ‘il n’y a pas d’amants là-dedans, qui meurent enlacés sur un grand lit de fer?’
‘There is still Katina Pavlou,’ whimpered Miss Grigg.
‘But here she is,’ said Theodora, with the certainty of certainty that fire will open.
‘Ahhh, regardez,’ sighed the crowd. ‘Une jeune fillel Elle a perdu son fiancé? Où est sa mère?’
‘The Lord be praised!’ cried Miss Grigg. ‘What are they saying about ’er mother? Madame Pavlou is at Evian les Bains.’
They were watching Katina Pavlou walk out of the burning house. She walked with her hands outstretched, protecting herself with her hands, not so much from substance, as some other fire. She could not yet accept the faces. As if these had read a reported incident, of which, she knew, the details had been inevitably falsified. But Katina Pavlou had seen the face of fire.
‘Thank you, Grigg,’ she said, receiving the shawl, because it was easier to.
Miss Grigg was all psalms and angora. She put, and touched. She touched again.
It was essential to wrap up tight, the Demoiselles Bloch advised, on account of the night air, it was essential for the poitrine.
But for the crowd it was essential that the roof should fall. It waited for this intensification of its lives.
‘Miss Goodman,’ said Katina Pavlou, ‘have you ever seen a burning piano?’
Theodora had not, but she had watched other moments writhe, distorted by less than fire.
‘Let us go somewhere else,’ she said because it was exhausting.
The Hôtel du Midi was now a set piece of fire. Theodora Goodman and Katina Pavlou went round to the back, pressing close to the wall of the confiserie. They sat on a bench in the jardin exotique, where a slight dew had fallen, in spite of events. Katina Pavlou took Theodora Goodman’s hand.
‘I shall go away,’ Katina Pavlou said, touching the bones in Theodora’s hand. ‘I shall go to my own country. Now I know. I shall go.’
‘But how?’ Theodora asked, remembering the revolving doors of many-starred hotels.
‘Why, but I am at liberty,’ said Katina Pavlou. ‘Aren’t I?’
Theodora considered the phases of the fire.
‘Why, yes, I suppose,’ Theodora smiled.
‘I shall take some money and some food,’ Katina Pavlou said. ‘Tomorrow you shall come with me to the station, Miss Goodman, and I shall buy the ticket.’
It was easy as this. Already Katina Pavlou sat in the train, eating the chocolate and the petits pains. The mountains flowed.